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My Great Resignation

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I write this message after I recently resigned from the State Department. I served as a consular officer at the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar for the past two years. For 12 years, I have tried to attain where I am now only to realize after the fact that being a diplomat is not what I really want to do.   In the end, I must thank the pandemic for helping me get back to my true passion: writing. During my time when I was working from home in the summer of 2020, I had a lot of extra time for writing. I began regularly journaling, writing fiction, and even joined a virtual writing group. I finally felt in my element. I knew what I was supposed to be doing. But how did I get so off-course from my original plan of being a writer? It began at the crossroads of decisions in my senior year of high school.   How It Began   In the Spring of 2009, when I was deciding on colleges and majors, I watched how the Great Recession and the electronic revolution forced many major newspapers to cl
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The Stories that We Tell Ourselves

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I sit here, writing this post on the 29th day of March, which is my birthday. No one could have predicted how my birthday would have turned out this year, in the midst of the global coronavirus epidemic - least of all me. But as I commemorate my birthday here in a foreign country without friends or family, the best thing that I can do today is to remind myself of who I am truly am and how this virus won't defeat me or this world. For after love, I would say that the second most powerful force in this world is storytelling, especially the stories we tell ourselves - stories about our origins, our peoples and our faiths. In the midst of pain, we can find hope and strength from the stories that we tell ourselves. How will my story end? I don't know exactly. But I know that my faith has one story to tell, and that is the story that I cling to most dearly in dark times like these.
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Location: Doha, Qatar
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“You Will Be Found” Remembering Julie – One Year Later

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Julie was the best of us. She was goodness wrapped up inside of a person – the Beth March of our little family of friends. And like the wind, she was here for 26 years and then gone too soon. There is a stigma around depression and suicide, but it is a true disease. As I entered into my first real grieving period of my life, I learned how to grieve someone from a disease that I couldn’t quite make sense of or really even pinpoint. It is said that we only understand ten percent of the brain’s activity but use all of its function during our lives. Well, if Julie was using 100% of her brain to live, she used 150% of her soul to love others more than loving life and herself. One year later, and I’ve only begun to start the five-year period of grief. But the loss of Julie has taught me so much about life, especially life living in pain and with depression. Three Little Lessons Julie would often ask her class of first graders, “Is it a big thing or a little thing?” when referring to th
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Location: Chesterfield, MO, USA
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Unexpected, But Profound: A Response to the 2017 Tony Awards

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Watching the Tony Awards last night, my heart sank when Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 only snagged a couple of the awards of the ten or so categories for which it was nominated. I just knew Josh Groban was going to win for best actor in a musical, but behold - Ben Platt and the cast of Dear Evan Hansen won the night! I remember exiting the Imperial Theater on a cold March night in New York earlier this year, full of soaring energy after watching the cast of The Great Comet. Yet, over the bustle of taxis and exiting theater-goers, I heard roars from the crowd down the street, who were waiting for the main star (a.k.a. Ben Platt) of a musical I didn't know. I had never heard of Dear Evan Hansen before that March night, so I looked it up on the bus back to DC, seeing it was about teen anxiety, suicide & depression and finding where one belongs in a community. I remembered the musical of my era about youth struggles - Spring Awakening. It covered the range of
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Location: St. Louis, MO, USA
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I came. I saw. I lived.

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Reflections from My Time in Italy As I write this memento on my trip back to the States, I don’t leave Italy with any regrets because I lived. No, I didn’t visit every small town on the weekends or travel to Brussels or Geneva for fun, but I can say I became integrated into the local thread of Bologna. I entered Italy knowing zero Italian to speaking Italian every day with my italiana roommate. And I could understand between 60 to 70 percent depending on the context and accent. I had an Italian boyfriend and became exposed to the culture of love. We visited the palazzi , danced in the streets and drank classic red wine in Eataly and local bars on Saturday nights. There is no better life than the one the Italians live. Yes, it was hard adjusting to European culture those first two months. I didn’t know the language, I had to commute via cycling (which was frightening among the taxis, motorinos , and other cyclists), and I broke my foot. And let’s not even mention the devast
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Location: Saint Louis, MO, USA
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They Chose Joy in a World of Darkness

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Christmastime is the time to be extremely happy, right? We all try to hold onto that giddiness and magic we had as children when we become adults, but sometimes life wears us down. This year's Christmas in the U.S. after three months in Italy added some culture shock to my experience. Jet lag mixed with a highly commercial culture and fast food economy was making me nauseous the first few days back home in Missouri. My saving grace was my family and the time I could spend with them away from mainstream society. But Christmas wasn’t easy. Meeting my sister’s boyfriend had its bumps, and watching how my grandfather struggled with his dementia broke my heart. Wasn’t Christmas supposed to be all bliss like the good old days? But then I remembered how Christmas happened those 2,000 years ago, and it was anything but bliss. It was a hot, dirty, messy, depressing and tyrannically violent world for the Jews in the Roman Empire, so happiness was far and fleeting. A people
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Location: Saint Louis, MO, USA
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Dogs of Bologna, Florence & Marradi, Italy

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Merry Christmas , World ! Instead of waging war,  we just need to have  more furry friends! Airedale Terrier Akita   American English Coonhound American Pitbull Meets Great Dane American Pitbull Terrier American Pitbull Terrier Barbet Barbet Bernese Mountain Dog Bichon Frise Bichon Frise Black German Shepherd Black Terrier Cross Mix Border Collie Mix Boxer Boxer Chihuahua   Chihuahua Chihuahua Chihuahua Mix Chinese Shar-Pei Cocker Spaniel English Bulldog English Toy Spaniel English Toy Spaniel English White Terrier   Flat-Coated Retriever French Bulldog French Bulldog French Bulldog ***(personal favorite!) German Shepherd German Shepherd Lab Mix German Short-Haired Percentage Golden Retriever Great Dane Jack Russell Terrier Long-Haired Dachshund Maltese Poodle Poodle Poodle Mix
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Location: Saint Louis, MO, USA
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