Issue 05: Threshold is now live on our website in digital flipbook format, offering a more visual, intentional way to experience the magazine as a whole. You may also purchase a physical copy from our online store.

If you’d prefer to read more gradually, you can also subscribe here to receive weekly featured pieces from the issue, shared over the coming weeks as part of our newsletter.

From the Editor’s Desk

This issue of Unbordered launches on November 2nd. Election Day in the U.S. is November 3rd. So I feel as if I’m writing to you from across a divide. You know a little more about the story of the United States than I do. And its story is one we’re all irrevocably caught up in. Even those of us who left. Even when, more and more, some endings feel inevitable.

And with the uncertainty back home, it can be tempting to force our life abroad to be in order. But as we all know, chaos reigns in a life built far from home. And so, I believe we must learn to live in this space of uncertainty, if only in the brief space of these pages. Here, we practice existing in contradiction. Here, we give you permission to be as you are.

And that brings us to this issue’s theme: threshold, the space between where you were and where you are going. It is the bridge to board the flight, the moment your passport is scanned, or the door at the immigration office. A threshold is liminal and temporary, and yet it holds us captive as the point of no return, at both the moment of certainty and uncertainty. How do we build this strange, new life? As Jessica Wilde puts it in her piece, “Living Liminally,” “I curl up in the corner, grab a blanket, a cup of coffee and let the doorframe dig into my back as I wiggle to find a somewhat comfortable spot. “

So find a blanket and settle in as we explore what it means to live on the threshold. In this issue, Katherine Riegel writes about how past and present sense memory collide on the Scottish coast, and Samuel R. John explores how the language of prejudice becomes a through line connecting before and after. Kay Fabella writes about how some bodies are given stories before they’re allowed to tell them, and Magnus Briar writes about the shrinking American dream. Pamela Ruhl Gibson writes about leaving a place while loving the people that remain, and Michael Bailey writes about finding peace when the world is too loud, something I think we can all relate to right now. And in our first-ever sponsored post, Anna Luzader from WhereTu writes the essential questions we must ask ourselves in order to assimilate without losing ourselves.

So as we head into this time of uncertainty, we wish you optimism. As the holidays approach, we hope that you find comfort in old traditions and wonder in the new. And we hope that, whatever your circumstances, you take the time to look at the space between past and becoming and find joy there, waiting for you to open the door.

With love and gratitude,

Amber Stewart

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Amber Stewart is a writer, editor, and founder of Unbordered Magazine, a literary publication documenting the stories of Americans living outside the United States. She lives in Montevideo, Uruguay with her wife, Jamie, and their dog, Libby. Read more about her journey from the U.S. to Uruguay in her book, In the Garden: An Almanac for Uprooting.

Coming soon: Issue 05 of Unbordered is coming out on November 2nd, and we can’t wait for you to read it! But in the meantime, we want to share some prompts for our next two issues of the magazine. If you’re an American living abroad, the Unbordered team invites you to submit to Issues 06 and 07.

Issue 06: Seasons (Deadline: December 31, 2026)

Time moves differently when you leave. Summer no longer smells the same. You find yourself grieving October and the way it felt on your skin. Holiday celebrations are upside down, the climate all wrong in a new hemisphere. But over time, with enough turns of the Earth around the sun, you begin to build new associations. You begin to redefine what a season means to you. For Issue 06, Unbordered is looking for essays, nonfiction, poetry, and art that explore both the literal and figurative seasons of a life lived abroad.

Not sure where to start? Try one of these:

• Choose one of the four seasons. What comes to mind when you think of it? Is that how you experience it now? Where are the differences? The pain points?

• Describe a holiday or seasonal tradition you tried to keep alive abroad, and what happened to it.

• What season were you in emotionally when you left, and what season are you in now?

Issue 07: Translation (Deadline: March 31, 2027)

When a move asks us to carry our words into a new language, something always gets left behind. Sometimes, there’s no direct translation. Sometimes, a joke that was brilliant in your first language falls completely flat in your second. This issue asks writers to look closely at what is both lost and found in translation.

Submissions should be original writing in English that reflects on your own experience of language and the gaps between them. We are not accepting translated works for this issue.

Not sure where to start? Try one of these:

• Think of an English word or phrase you used without thinking back home that sounds strange, flat, or too big abroad. Write about what it used to mean to you, what it means now, and what you say instead.

• Write about a time you didn’t understand. Write about what they meant, what you understood, and what you filled in yourself.

• Describe the first word you learned in your new country’s language that you still use every day. Write about why that word stuck, and what it has come to hold for you.

If these resonate with you, and you like what you’ve written, we’d love it if you would submit! We can’t wait to hear from you!

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Dear Amber,

You’ll find this annoying, but I need you to breathe. Box breathe, like you teach your students. Don’t be a hypocrite. I know you need it. I remember feeling raw, like every inch of our skin was an exposed nerve. I remember walking through the streets of the city that claims tranquilidad but every footstep, every car start, every bus breaking felt like sandpaper on an open wound.

You’ll grow to appreciate hearing candombe, I promise.

Now that you’ve taken a breath, I want to directly answer the questions that are burning you up inside. The ones you’re feeling too scared to say out loud.

1. You’re not going to have a baby.

2. It’s going to get rough. You and Jamie both have a lot of growing to do, individually and together. But you’ll be alright. Stronger, even, in the end.

3. And I know it feels close to unbelievable right now, but you will be able to understand Rioplatense Spanish. One day, your friends (yes, friends), will rely on you for interpretation. But it’s going to take longer than you think.

I know it’s scary. I know it all feels too big. I know you’re clinging desperately to the person you were before you decided to abandon your home in search of a life with less fear. And yet. And yet.

And yet, we’re here. I promise, you are less afraid. Jamie is less afraid. We no longer worry about her being able to access the hormones that she needs. We no longer worry about being shot in the street.

That’s not to say that life is without worries. You’re working a lot. Probably too much. You still find a sense of meaning in productivity. That programming is as stubborn as you are.

And Uruguay is an expensive country, something you won’t totally understand until you’re no longer making U.S. money. And I know: you were never making much to begin with. And yet.

You will surprise yourself with how much you are willing to change. And also how much you are unwilling to change. You become protective of your roots, of the culture that raised you. You’re not proud to be an American per se, but a little distance creates a lot of perspective. There’s a lot of people you will think about forgiving.

And yet your faith is going to take a beating. It feels like a refuge right now, but pretty soon you’ll realize that your perception of God is really wrapped up in being an American. We were taught to see God in the immigrant and the refugee. But what about when we are the ones fleeing our country? Do you pray for healing when you can afford a doctor? Do you seek out church when community (yes, you will find it) is built into every aspect of everyday life? And yet, I still feel pulled in the direction of the divine, widely defined.

You’re going to have some work to do. You’ll start a magazine. You’ll start teaching again. I know you think our time in the classroom is done, but it’ll be good for you.

And yet, you have a lot of (un)learning to do. I don’t think it ever ends.

You’ll adopt a dog named Libertad, born on Uruguayan Independence Day.

The people back home will both surprise and disappoint you.

You’ll finally get the diagnosis you’ve been needing.

And yeah, you finish the book.

If I could offer one piece of advice to you, it’s this: do the trust fall. Your belongings are in the middle of the ocean, so the only things to your name are a suitcase full of clothes, a cast iron skillet, and your belief in your own possibility.

Be stubborn with that belief.

With love and in awe,

Amber

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Amber Stewart is a writer, editor, and founder of Unbordered Magazine, a literary publication documenting the stories of Americans living outside the United States. She lives in Montevideo, Uruguay with her wife, Jamie, and their dog, Libby. Read more about her journey from the U.S. to Uruguay in her book, In the Garden: An Almanac for Uprooting.

For a while now, the writers and artists featured in Unbordered Magazine have given us their work without pay. But after a year’s worth of content, we think it’s time we changed that. Behind every essay is a person who wrote from a kitchen in a new city, or from a bed in a country where they don’t yet know the word for the thing they need, and their work deserves more than a thank-you and social media tags.

So we’re building a contributors’ fund on a founding principle: this community grows together. Sponsors who understand life across borders will be able to put their names in front of the readers they most want to reach, and those readers gain access not only to compelling essays and art that speak to their experience, but also to goods and services that make moving abroad just a little bit easier. Plus, we know that a magazine that pays its writers grows faster, which means more eyes on every ad.

But how much we can pay depends on how many of us step up.

We’re looking for advertisers whose work sits close to the experience our readers live every day. Maybe you help someone ship familiar things overseas, or make a rented apartment feel like home. If your business serves people building a life somewhere unfamiliar, we’d love to hear from you.

We won’t fill our magazine pages with noise. Ads will be clearly labeled and kept to a number that leaves room for the writing to breathe. Every sponsor will be a business we’ve looked at closely, one whose product we’d be comfortable recommending to a friend.

Pay is the least we can offer people who trust us with the most personal parts of their lives. If you’re a writer in this community, nothing changes about how you submit. Issue 05 is coming soon, and the “Seasons” call for Issue 06 is open through December 31. You can find the weekly prompts on Instagram and TikTok every Saturday.

If you run a business and this sounds like a fit, please complete this Google Form and someone from our team will reach out shortly.

Let’s grow together!

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Kenneth Kesner, who previously contributed these poems in Issue 03, photographs the Caucasus and Western Asia.

His work shows a lived in, earthly quality to physical spaces that are often glamorized. It invites viewers to take a second look at images that are often reduced in complexity for the sake of travel blogs and magazines.

These images evoke stories waiting to be told, in the form of both grand narratives and everyday intimate moments, giving us a peek into the landscape he inhabits.

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Kenneth Kesner (肯内思) splits his time between the Caucasus and South East Asia. Some recent works are featured in: the engine(idling, Glint Literary Journal, Midsummer Dream House, Pictura Journal, and Plato’s Caves.

Immigration stripped away the scaffolding of my life. When we moved to a completely different country, our universe shrunk overnight. The vast network of support—the family that shared my history, the friends who anchored my weekends—evaporated. Suddenly, I found myself in an incredibly vulnerable situation. I looked around and realized that this wasn’t my world; I was just a guest in it.

In our old life, love was built into the background, but I treated it with caution. I carried the armor of past trauma, a persistent fear that anything good must eventually end. Because I always kept one eye on the exit, bracing myself for the shock of an inevitable ending, at times I came off as aloof or hardened to love. My partner’s doting nature was a constant, but I kept a deliberate emotional distance from it, a shield to protect myself from a loss I was certain would come.

Then, we crossed an ocean.

Living as an immigrant is teaching me a brutal, necessary lesson in surrender. In the months since we arrived, I have quickly realized that nothing here is going to conform to my preferences. I cannot force this new place to be what I want it to be. To survive, I am having to get really good at accepting what is. I am learning to stop fighting the differences, to let go of my need for absolute control, and to simply accept the environment around me.

And quietly, almost imperceptibly, that daily practice of radical acceptance is spilling into my partnership.

In this new space, we are both vulnerable, leaning entirely on each other to navigate the unfamiliar. With the outside noise cleared away, I finally have the emotional room to reflect. I am realizing that the habit of surrender I practice every day in my new country is exactly what my relationship has always needed.

I look at my partner—the one person holding my hand through this vulnerability—and I see that there is no longer any reason to be so worried. If I can learn to accept a whole new world on its own terms, I can finally begin to accept the love that has been standing in front of me all along. My need to control the outcome, to brace for the ending, is starting to wither away.

I am softening. As I stop focusing on making things fit my old blueprint, I naturally find myself looking for joy and peace instead. I am learning how to deeply appreciate the person I have and the love right in front of me.

It is an ongoing evolution; I haven’t magically transformed overnight, and the old fears still whisper. But being an immigrant is making me a better partner because it is actively breaking down my defenses. It is teaching me how to lay my weapons down and accept reality as it unfolds. We left our homeland behind, but in learning to yield to a new world, I am finally learning how to fully receive the home they have been offering me all along.

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Antonia was born and raised in the Appalachian mountains of Eastern Kentucky. After living in different states in the South and the Midwest, sheearned a degree in Speech-language Pathology and settled in her husband’s home state of Wisconsin. They thought they would be there foreever, raising kids and grandbabies, but with the political turmoil in the USA, and the rise in white nationalism and fascism, Antonia and her husband decided to move to Aotearoa (New Zealand) where they have put down roots in a culture that intentionally works to integrate indigenous values like kotahitanga (solidarity) and manaakitanga (kindness).

“Crys, what do you do with those bottles?” my neighborhood pulperia lady asked me, nodding to the small plastic bottle of Coca Cola I’d just purchased.

Immediately, I felt shame. I was terrible at recycling. It didn’t help that until recently, no one seemed to know what the actual recycling truck schedule was. But also… I was buying approximately one 355mL bottle of Coca Cola a day. So… it was a fair number of bottles.

I started babbling something, and thankfully she interrupted me to say, “It’s just that I make chilera, and if you aren’t using them for anything, I could take them.”

Oh, thank goodness. Of course I can save up these particular small, clear, plastic bottles for my neighbor to reuse. That I have approximately thirty or so of every month. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! I don’t even need to worry about when the recycling pickup is scheduled!

* * *

My adulthood has been semi-unrooted, to say the least. After living my entire childhood in one house, something seemed to unwire in my brain. I wasn’t moving from East Coast to West Coast every year or anything, but there seemed to be something about the year and a half mark that I just couldn’t bust through–and most of my rentals were significantly shorter than that. I nearly didn’t sign a second year lease in 2020, regardless of all the uncertainty around us, because the idea of committing to two years in one house seemed utterly foreign to me.

(I did end up leaving a month or two before the end of the lease, but my house mate finished it out for us.)

But as of today, I can proudly say I’ve been in the same house for 3.5 years with no signs of “itchy feet”–no urge to pick up and move any time soon. I suspect the pulperia and the family who runs it are a large part of it.

* * *

Of course it’s not just the fact that I can walk two minutes to my neighborhood store and pick up eggs and butter when I’m halfway through a recipe and realized I don’t have enough supplies. Nor that the beach is a five minute walk from the house. Nor that the school my child attended was five minutes around the corner and I could hear band practice on Tuesdays.

It’s all these and more.

I’m a small-town girl. I’ve known that since the moment I went to visit a university that had a student population approximately seven times the size of my hometown and made my parents leave without talking to a single person.

I like to be known. I’m not saying I have to be friends with everyone–that would overwhelm my introverted nervous system. But I like knowing people’s faces, at the least. I like living places where everyone greets each other when they pass by on the street, whether they’re strangers or not.

Like my dad said the last time he visited me, “I wanna live somewhere I don’t have to worry about locking up my house.”

That’s how I grew up, in small-town western NY, USA. And that’s what I’ve been able to find again in small-town Caribbean Costa Rica.

It took me 17 moves in 10 years to find a place that didn’t leave me thinking about my next move. As certain as I was about living in Costa Rica after the first six years, it still took me almost four more years to find and build the place and connections that were right for me.

Maybe it was how long it took me to learn Spanish. Maybe the town I lived in before was still too busy for me. Maybe the arrival of my child made me seek more stability.

Maybe all of these and more.

Now I’m my Coca-Cola dealer’s used bottle supplier. I know at least three quarters of the people I pass by on a daily basis by face, if not by name. And I’m still learning not to leave the keys in my new electric scooter, though no one has stolen her yet.

Call me biased, but I think building and participating in community is easier in a small town. And that is the same no matter what country you live in.

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Crys Cain is a writer, immigrant, and solo parent who has been living in Costa Rica since 2014. They are an editor at Unbordered.

I’m an immigrant. That’s a label that I sometimes marvel at. I’m an American. That’s a label I feel like I should apologize for, even though I didn’t vote for him. I’m 39 and I wish I were a little younger. I’m white, a cis-gender woman, an atheist, a wife, a teacher, a leader, a mom, a poet, and a friend. I’m intense, introverted, and a little bit weird. Every morning, I wake up and dress myself in layers of labels, pulling them on like my favorite sweaters.

Last year, a new label was added to my identity: I’m queer.

At first, I rejected this label as if it smelled like sour milk. Smelling it again, just to be sure. Certainly, I would have known before now. I let the label lay on my tongue, rolled it around in my mouth, queer… queer… queer.

I looked at various people while walking around the grocery store trying to figure this out. I held this label at arms length, like dirty laundry, let it drop to the floor and walked away. Nope.

I’ve been straight all my life, I’ve been married to a man for sixteen years, or at least that is what we both thought we signed up for when we said our vows. A straight relationship. A man and a woman, these were the labels we wore. However, it turns out, that is not who we were anymore. More likely than not, it is not who we ever were but it was what society had assigned to us.

You might be wondering how I found out about my new label. Did I have an illicit affair? Did I get divorced? Did I fall in love with someone else? No, no, and no. It’s not as dramatic as that, but it is also not entirely boring either.

I knew my husband had been going through something for a while but we struggled to communicate properly. Neither one of us really had a solid blueprint for what a healthy relationship looks like, so we were just doing our best. Sometimes winning and oftentimes failing, but sticking together nonetheless.

It was a school night, I was 10 weeks pregnant with our second child, our seven year old was watching TV, and we were sitting in the office. It took my husband hours to actually say it but I knew what was coming. I had figured it out as well, but now it was going to be said out loud. It was going to be real. The label whispered out of his lips and hung in the air like humidity. He is transgender.

He was afraid to tell me because so many people lose their families and their children over this. We sat in silence for a little while. We ended the conversation with support and love. We tucked our daughter in and had a normal evening.

I kept it together for him but I fell apart at work. As a teacher, it is hard to find space to be human and even harder to hold it together when all those precious faces are staring at you, waiting to learn. They could tell I had been crying but we did the community circle and the math lesson and I dropped them off at PE. Come lunch time, I couldn’t continue. I turned off the lights and hid behind my desk, sobbing with a thousand questions running through my mind. What does this all mean? Are we still going to be married? I’m pregnant! Does this mean I’m gay? Our entire future seemed to crumble. I went home early because I couldn’t stop crying and I could no longer pretend that I was ok.

Over the years, I carefully curated my labels. I painfully peeled off the layers that didn’t fit–christian, republican, an obedient daughter, and a good girl. It was an excruciating process that ended with me being the outcast in my very narrow minded family. They have accused me of being brainwashed by my partner. The irony is never lost on me.

Fast-forward a couple of months and heaps of therapy and we were both coming to terms of what our new labels meant. At first I thought I was bisexual, so I tried on that label privately for a few months. It wasn’t horrible, albeit a bit uncomfortable. I let the label linger in my mouth bisexual… bi… bisexual. I came out to a close friend. Something felt a little off but I couldn’t quite place it.

During these months, we watched Kamala Harris campaign and we talked to our daughter about how we will likely see the first woman president. We knew America was backwards and behind the world in many ways, nevertheless, we didn’t expect Trump to win again. We naively had hope for the future, even if we had to hide our newly found labels from our right-winged family.

I decided to pick my new label up off the floor, shake it out, and stick in the wash. My baby was growing inside me, healthy, and her kicks were strong. She nearly knocked me over a couple of times. We nested and prepared her nursery. We could not wait to go from a family of three to a family of four. November swept in with an unforgiving cold and even more unforgiving news. With our new labels we knew this time, it would be different. We were a rainbow family and now my partner belonged to a group this administration would target. I switched my label from the wash to the dryer and we started daydreaming of possibilities outside the country.

We decided early on that Europe was out of the question. The last place we wanted to put ourselves was between the U.S. and Russia, should the worst of the worst happen. Our state was neighbors with Canada. We looked at possibilities there, watched videos of British Columbia, but ultimately it looked like it would be hard to get a permanent teaching job that wasn’t in an isolated rural community. We had already survived years of isolation during COVID, we didn’t want to do it again. We looked at Australia but there was nothing permanent available. Two weeks after our daughter was born, Trump took office. Two months after she was born, we decided to hire an immigration advisor and leave. Nine months after she was born, we landed in our new home, Aotearoa, New Zealand. We were seven thousand miles away from home and we were safe.

We took our new labels with us. Mine came out of the dryer looking a bit different than when it went in. The colors seemed to shift and change, yet somehow seemed more vibrant. Through some research and many conversations with my partner, I realized I am pansexual. I held my label close, and breathed in deep, it smelled of fresh laundry, dried in a radiant yellow sun somewhere by a dazzling blue ocean. It felt new… I felt new. Something in me clicked and all of a sudden a crucial layer of my identity was discovered.

I had never really had a type.

I didn’t have a thing for blue eyes or black hair. However, I had always been attracted to kindness and intelligence. Regardless of gender, my partner has always been kind and intelligent. I am so lucky.

Our families will never forgive us for moving. For taking their grandchildren thousands of miles away and out of “the greatest country that ever was.” We will never forgive them for voting our futures away and choosing harmful beliefs over loving and supporting family. I’m not even sure my family understands that I am queer. I have not told them but they all think they have figured out what is going on with my partner. My mom spat the word “transgender” at me like it was poison and claimed they were all pedophiles… again, the irony is ironic at this point, considering Trump’s history with women and children.

We are more free here, yet we are not fully out. My partner is still figuring themselves out. Sometimes we still pass for a straight family, many times we get looks because people can’t immediately place my partner in a gendered box. I don’t hide my new label but I don’t openly share it either. I find myself walking fine lines when introducing my family or mentioning my partner. I go through the extra steps of making sure people are safe before sharing all of me.

I let my new label swirl in my mouth. I’m pansexual… pansexual… I’m pan. It feels special, it feels sacred, it makes me feel more whole.

Every morning I wake up and put on the layers of labels that I have slowly accumulated for myself over the years. I have unintentionally become everything that my family hates and I have also never been more me. I’m a 39 year old white cis-gender American woman, an immigrant, an atheist, a wife, a mom, a teacher, a leader, a poet, a friend, and I am queer. I’m proud of who I am.

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Emily Austen lives in Aotearoa, New Zealand with her family. She enjoys reading, crocheting, and poetry. She is currently working on her debut poetry novel and hopes to share it with the world soon.

Moving to a new country can be overwhelming! There are so many things to do when you first arrive that it can be easy to forget to actually live life. Between government office, paperwork, appointments, and trying to navigate it all in another language, months can pass in what feels like an instant.

When I moved to Barcelona, I felt the stress of navigating the visa process, taking intensive Spanish classes, and working at the same time! Urban sketching became one of the ways I stayed connected to the experience of actually living there instead of only moving through my to-do list.

What is urban sketching?

Urban sketching is the practice of drawing on location from direct observation. It is what we are doing when we capture the people, places, and everyday moments around us! The modern urban sketching movement began in 2007 when journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario created an online group to share drawings made on location. That project grew into what is today an international community. The idea is that we draw what we see to tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live, and where we travel. You can use any type of media, and part of the Urban Sketchers manifesto is to cherish your individual style and support each other!

Why you should give it a try!

Urban sketching is a great way to explore your new home when you move abroad because many cities around the world have Urban Sketchers chapters, which hold monthly meetups to draw on location. This is a wonderful way to meet new people and practice the local language. But, if that is intimidating, you can always go out on your own and sketch or just sketch at home in the beginning. Because drawing on location encourages you to slow down and notice details, it can become a way to learn your new city and create moments of pause during a time that may otherwise feel fast and overwhelming.

I don’t know how to draw!

This is a common reason people use to not do urban sketching. I want to encourage you to give it a try. Nobody starts out good at drawing. Drawing is a skill that develops through observation and repetition. If you go to an urban sketching event - or even just look up urban sketching online - you will see a wide variety of styles, skills, and media used. There is no single “right” way to do it.

What supplies do you need?

Most people assume they need a lot of supplies, but you don’t! You need a sketchbook - any size you are comfortable carrying around with you. Start with one a pen or marker that feels comfortable to use. I prefer waterproof pens, but its not required. Many urban sketchers use watercolor to add color to their drawings. You can get a small watercolor set at any art store. Other people use markers or colored pencils. Use whatever you have or whatever you will actually use! I usually recommend choosing supplies that are easy to carry rather than supplies that are “perfect.”

Where do you go and what do you draw?

People sketch everywhere! I’ve done many sketc

hes on the bus and train. Cafes, parks, and museums are also great places to sketch. Almost anywhere you go can become a place to sketch. To pick what you draw just look around and see what is interesting to you. Pick a main object (like a chair, window, table, building corner) and start with it. Then add in the surroundings. One of my favorite things to do is draw my food when I go out to eat (and yes, I still think drawing food is hard).

Scared by perspective?

Perspective can sound intimidating, but you already understand it naturally. Perspective is simply how objects appear to change as they move farther away from you. If you are sketching a building, start with the corner closest to you and build outward. Vertical lines usually stay straight up and down, while horizontal lines appear to angle slightly as they move into space. You do not need a perfect perspective to make a sketch feel believable. Urban sketching is about observation, not technical perfection. I’ve included a few illustrations to show what I mean, and if you just want to forget perspective altogether, you can do things like draw twisted or tilted buildings.

My art never turns out how I want it to!

Welcome to the club. Remember it is called urban SKETCHING, not urban perfect drawing. A sketch does not have to look any particular way. Every sketch you do will contribute to your growing skills, and you will get better over time. If I don’t like my drawing (which I assure you does happen), I just remind myself that sometimes that happens, and drawings I don’t love still teach me something.

A simple exercise for you to do!

Two of my favorite “warm-up” exercises are continuous line drawing and blind contour drawing. Continuous line drawings are when you draw something with only one line. You don’t pick up your pen the entire time you are drawing it. This means you have to be creative and do interesting things! Blind contour is similar. In this exercise, you are looking only at the thing you are drawing - not at your paper!! Put your pen down and start drawing, and don’t look at the paper until you are finished. Because you are not looking, you will end up with a very wild drawing, but that happens to 99.9% of people! I love these drawings because they are wonky - and they should be wonky because you didn’t even look at the paper!

Get Started Today

You don’t need to be an artist. You don’t need any special tools or training. You only need a willingness to look longer than usual. I want to encourage you to visit a place you go to often and make a sketch. Notice how it changes your experience of the place. Pay attention to how you see things differently and how time slows down while you are sketching. Record your experience on the page - even if it didn’t turn out the way you hoped. You can add things like “this drawing sucks!” or “I ordered coffee and a pastel de nata and it was delicious!” to make it more personal. And don’t forget to put the name of the place and the date.

Interested in a little more?

I’ve created a free Urban Sketching Starter Kit for anyone who wants to slow down and begin noticing their surroundings through drawing. Inside, you’ll find simple guidance on supplies, where to sketch, and beginner exercises to help you get started right away. You can access it for free here.

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Rachel Mims is an art therapist, creative educator, and urban sketcher currently living in Barcelona. She believes sketchbooks can become a way of slowing down, noticing more, and creating connection to place. You can find her at wildfreeart.com.

We are, every single one of us, born into a story. A simple plot from a collection of stories that link a community. From birth to high school graduation (exposition, rising action), and from your wedding to a first house (climax, falling action), a narrative of expectation—your class position, college and career, even how long you will live—has already been imagined, mapped onto your body and your bones. (denouement).

This is not to say that we are powerless. We can break norms, travel, start a band, become an influencer. We can buy our friends a round, sit in a bar, and perfect the story we’ve told a thousand times (and they’ll laugh at the right parts, like good friends should), and we can create beautiful moments of memory and meaning-making. But the shape of destiny has already been sketched onto our futures. In many ways, we are simply filling in the details.

I was, personally, fine with this. I had moved away from home for college and my early 20s, but I was happy to come back. I bought a townhouse around five minutes from the house I grew up in. I shopped at the same grocery store my mother and I had when I was a kid. Went to the same parks, drove by the same churches. This isn’t to say that the city hadn’t changed. The Nashville of my 1990s childhood was definitely different from the Nashville of the 2010s and early 2020s. But as a queer woman who has never really felt like I fit, the connections to the past were a source of comfort in a confusing world. I felt grounded.

I had a job I loved, a queer community that felt like family. My wife and I belonged to an affirming church. We were trying to have a baby who would have been a ninth generation Nashvillian.

But then, we got “the call,” and knew, soon, we were going to have to leave. Our story fell apart. It could no longer follow the simple plot. Instead, we needed to walk a different path. Little did we know, we had just started our “Immigrant Journey.”

Inspired by “The Hero’s Journey,” “The Immigrant Journey” also starts with home, with the familiar. If The Hero’s Journey starts in District 12, The Shire, Tatooine, then The Immigrant’s Journey starts in your home town. Home might not be comfortable, but it’s what you know. You know the shape of life there. And then something happens. Something brings you out of your home and into the unknown. This is the beginning of the journey.

For an immigrant, this “call” can be thought of as the moment that you decide you need to leave: a piece of legislation passed, a chronic illness diagnosis, violence in your neighborhood, or simply an unshakeable knowing that home cannot give you what you need, cannot provide you with the life that you seek.

For us, it was the overturn of Roe. Because a nation that limits the choices of women limits itself. I did not want to live in such a society.

But like any good Hero, I couldn’t accept that we had to leave. I refused the call. Logic and emotion were battling it out, and I stayed in denial for a long time. We continued fertility treatments, talked about planting fruit trees in the back of our yard. We kept imagining what the details of our life would look like. We were not yet ready to accept that the life we had been promised was no longer available to us.

And then, they began passing legislation to limit gender affirming care in the state of Tennessee. This is when we decided to seek the aid of an expert.

You see, immigrants defy the story we’re given. Whether chosen or forced to immigrate, or a combination of the two, immigration is an act of agency, a declaration that your story will follow a different narrative. You can leave with a certainty that there are previously unassumed futures out there waiting for you to arrive in them.

We took a visit to Montevideo, Uruguay (a country we suspected we could build a life in) and met there with a residency specialist. For others, this might be a lawyer or a relocation firm. In the Hero’s Journey, this is known as a mentor (think: Virgil guiding Dante through Hell).

Then, we cross into the unknown, otherwise known as a border. And then, everything changes. There’s some good here: some new food, both the gentle and abrupt ways a new culture asserts itself. And some paperwork. And some more paperwork. There’s language teachers and trying to learn how to pay your bills and a loneliness so deep that you think you’ll never get out of it. Then, the immigrant reaches her “ordeal.”

For me, this was our first winter. We had few friends, my language learning was going slowly, and because of the isolation, my wife and I were fighting a lot. Every day I missed home and wanted to return. My nephew was born and I wouldn’t get to meet him for over a year. I bargained, I cried, I got angry. I grieved. And ultimately, I, like others who call themselves immigrants, decided to stay.

But I can tell you I didn’t feel much like a hero. Was I brave? At times. Though my bravery looked less like saving my district or the world or even just the rebellion. It looked more like making sure I got out of bed and dressed every day. Bravery, for an immigrant, looks less like a journey through Hell and more like braving the meat counter at the grocery store. It looks like showing up to your court dates, not knowing how the judge is going to rule. It looks like putting your future into the hands of faceless bureaucracy and not being sure if it will extend you welcome.

But ultimately, we prevail. We get the residency card, and with it, a sense of belonging. We get the Duolingo streak and learn the social niceties. We change the way we approach the world. Our identities are challenged and we watch them shift.

We return from the unknown back to the known, not because we went back home, but because we integrated our new way of being into our sense of self. We found our home, new and hungry for different stories.

This is a story unlike the one we were expected to tell. So when I say immigrants make the best writers, I mean that we changed our stars. We see the world with eyes that have been taught a new understanding. And when we write, we learn that we cannot rely on the old adages, the old cliches. We must invent. Our lives demand it.

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Author’s Note

I started writing this piece as a way to talk about Unbordered Editorial, an offshoot of Unbordered Magazine, inspired by my own writing journey after becoming an immigrant. Somewhere along the way, the essay became something more personal than I planned, but the impulse behind both is the same. We believe that people who have had to rebuild their lives from scratch have something particular to offer as writers, and we want to help those voices be heard.

If you’re in the process of writing your own story, Unbordered Editorial can help. Our team is made up of people who know what it means to give everything up and find a new story elsewhere.

We’re also currently accepting submissions for issues 05 and 06 of our magazine, themed “thresholds” and “seasons.” We publish commentary, essays, poetry, and art, and you can find submission details here.

And if you’re still in the thick of your own version of the ordeal, consider following along. We tell the stories of people who are going through it, the same as you.

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Amber Stewart is a writer, editor, and founder of Unbordered Magazine, a literary publication documenting the stories of Americans living outside the United States. She lives in Montevideo, Uruguay with her wife, Jamie, and their dog, Libby. Amber is the author of In the Garden: An Almanac for Uprooting.

Unrecognizable

Maybe your death turned me into
something I wasn’t before.

My shadow grew darker than
the one I donned as a girl.

Dad, you lost your father too—
why didn’t you warn me that

I’d have to grieve myself after you?
It’s not just that I had to change,

perhaps part of me wanted this too.
Now, I speak a different language

in the home I built across the world.
Dad, I know you’d be disgusted

by some of the things I’ve done.
I can almost hear you shouting

from the heavens, telling all
the worst guys I’ve dated to scram.

Dad, I’ve been feeling like
the worst kind of daughter.

Maybe I should’ve held on tighter
to the last fragments of her.

But eventually one of us had to die
and it wasn’t going to be me. 

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The Picture Looks the Same

We used to say our family portrait
was a puzzle with one missing piece.

Now, they’ve rearranged themselves
to be whole again without me

and the picture still looks the same. 

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Hannah Dilday (she/her) is an emerging American writer currently residing in the Netherlands. Prior to relocating abroad in 2020, Hannah earned her BS in philosophy from The University of Oregon. Hannah’s writing has recently appeared in Divinations Magazine, Moonflake Press, and Haunted Words Press, among others. When Hannah is not writing poetry, she enjoys photography, traveling, and practicing Dutch. Additionally, Hannah serves as an Editor at Forevermore.

A Note From the Editors

We don’t typically publish fiction. But “The Witness” felt like an exception worth making.

The piece imagines a future in which the people who left the United States become its historians, the ones who watched from outside and lived to tell what they saw. It’s speculative, but it speaks directly to conversations we’ve been having with contributors and readers alike about what it means to witness a place from beyond its borders.

We’re running it because it asks a question our nonfiction pieces have been circling for a while: what do you owe a country you’ve left?

And it came to pass that in those early years of the ‘20s, the people of the land of the free were restless, and the children of the old country turned their faces toward the horizon. Many packed only what they could carry in trembling hands, leaving behind the homes they had built with hope and fear alike.

The cities strained under the weight of occupation, for they did not know who would triumph in the struggle between the governed and the governors. The streets, the trees, the quiet corners of homes once filled with laughter, now overrun with unmarked vans and masked men. The people spoke little, for words seemed heavy with the weight of what they lived in, brave souls suited up in frog costumes to stand against tyranny.

Yet some carried songs, small prayers pressed to the chest, and some chose to flee over borders and rivers, across deserts and mountains, into lands whose names they did not know well, seeking only the chance to breathe freely, to keep their children whole.

Future generations will read of these days, and they shall know that those who left, bore witness to a time of trembling and choosing, when the earth they were born on seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see who would remain, and who would go. There were many that could not leave and so they are Stayers. We the Watchers, the ones who left, yet watch from distant lands. Carried the memory of choice, of courage, and of what might yet be.

We watched and hoped to bear witness to the Stayers, grieving for the loved ones that we had left behind. Grieving for the communities that we built, watching as the tyrants broke down their doors and zip tied their children naked in the streets. Watched as the land we had been taught was our birthright was stripped of its freedoms one by one. The Strongman of Mirrors paved over the roses, mocked those who came before him, and tore down the people’s house to rebuild it in his own image.

The Stayers remained not out of hope, but out of obligation. To honor the dead, to the land, to one another. When the laws were rewritten and the names erased, they became the memory itself. They learned how to endure quietly, how to pass truth hand to hand. Long after the Strongman of Mirrors vanished into his own reflection, the Stayers were still there, tending what could not be replaced. Some stayed not by choice, but by cost. Leaving demanded money, papers, strength, and a future unencumbered by the care for others. Many had none of these. They remained because survival was cheaper than escape. And yet they kept the land, sharing what could not be seized, remembering what could not be erased, honoring the blood of the people when the state would not.

Let the record show: their endurance was not lesser for being unpaid.

It was told that some of the Stayers in the occupied cities built barricades of books, of chairs, of their own bodies, and they held what they could. And some fell, and some vanished into the night, and the earth remembered them all. And those of us who fled carried these stories in their hearts, that no one might forget.

There were many who left. Among them was a woman, named Maria, who took her children in the night. She pressed a photograph of her father to her chest, whispering blessings over his face still slumbering under his red hat. She drove past the barricades and the soldiers, her heart a drum in the silence of the streets. She did not look back, though her eyes ached to remember the home she had known.

And there was a man, called Eli, who carried his beloved satchel of books, pages worn and corners frayed. A man of science for years he was suddenly named suspect among his own brothers. He murmured the words aloud, as if they might shield him from the chaos behind him. “We are leaving,” he said, though none answered. And the roads before him were empty, yet alive with the echoes of footsteps that had gone before.

And there was a trans woman whose name we will not record here, because names had already been used against her. She left because staying had become a sentence. Laws had learned her outline. She packed what could be carried and memorized what could not, knowing that visibility had turned from promise to threat. She crossed borders with her shoulders squared, her papers correct, her fear disciplined. History would later argue about politics; her body had already rendered its verdict. If she is remembered without a name, let it be known this was an act of care, not forgetting.

Many others walked in their footsteps, each burdened with memory and hope. They crossed rivers swollen with sorrow, they crossed oceans with long airline journeys that tested their will. And in the lands they reached, unknown and strange, they whispered prayers for mercy and mercy came not swiftly, but it came in small, stubborn ways.

And the Watchers recorded their journey, for it was a testimony to what had been. They spoke of hunger and of laughter, of fear and of courage intertwined. And they wrote of the nights when the sky was a canopy of stars, and the wind carried the scent of home across the distance, across borders, across the oceans of years.

And it came to be that the children of the exodus learned the names of strangers as kin, and the taste of bread baked in unknown ovens became their sustenance. They learned that courage is not a roaring fire, but a quiet pulse that persists even when everyone around you speaks in a foreign tongue.

They grew like cuttings placed in unfamiliar soil, slow at first, then certain. What they lost was real, and what they gained was not a replacement but a widening. They carried both forward. These children who grew up in places their parents had once only pointed to on maps. They learned new alphabets, new songs for the same games, new ways of belonging that arrived before understanding. They missed what had been taken from them, the friends whose names now lived only in memory, the houses they could no longer describe without stumbling. And yet they thrived. They went to school without rehearsing where to hide, without learning the geometry of terror before multiplication. They spoke freely, dreamed broadly, and imagined futures unshadowed by the tyranny their leaving had outrun. If they carried grief, it was not a wound that stopped them, but a weight they learned to balance as they grew.

The years will speak of these things as shadows and light, as memory and witness, and they will understand that leaving was not cowardice, but a claim to life, to choose to breathe. And the chronicles of the future shall hold these stories, written in the ink of sorrow and hope.

As it has been written: They left because the land had become heavy, because the walls of law and fear pressed too close. They left to live, to protect, to bear witness. And in their leaving, they carried a light for the generations yet unborn, so that none might forget the tremor of those days, nor the courage it demanded.

And so we remember. And so we write. And so, with every word, their exodus endures.

This record, sealed in the year 2157, so that our history endures.

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SN Corvin is a writer of fantasy and contemporary fiction, exploring themes of myth, family, queer stories and transformation. She is currently completing her debut novella, Unholy Liturgy. Now living in Uruguay, Corvin, when she isn’t writing, is most likely to be found raising 4 kids, gardening, studying fungi, rewatching Schitt’s Creek (starting at the David/Patrick arch) or plotting the next story no one asked for.

What nobody tells you when you leave your homeland for a new horizon is that you relinquish the right to your first self. It is a permanent, bittersweet truth—one we discover in small pieces along the way.

I first realized I was fractured during a visit back home. Holding a takeaway cup of Starbucks while walking through the mall, I caught my reflection in an American Eagle store window and wondered, When was the last time I did this? In France, we don’t amble with coffee. We sit with coffee. We chat with coffee. We connect at a table with friends over coffee. This coffee didn’t taste the same served in a paper cup—it felt rushed, it felt sterile.

That was the beginning. My fifteen years in France chipped away at my old identity piece by piece, yet I never became entirely French. At my core, a part of me will always be that Midwestern girl from Missouri—the one who smiles openly at strangers, leaving cashiers in France wondering, Why is she smiling at me? Do I know her?

Certain pieces never fade. They are deeply ingrained by your upbringing, your childhood landscape, and the shared cultural rhythms of your youth. Because of that stubbornly beautiful part of myself, I could sit at a six-hour dinner with French friends, understanding every word spoken, yet still miss the subtle cultural references or ancestral jokes. I would leave the table full, but quieted by a subtle loneliness.

When I left France, I carried a piece of it with me, only to be transformed again in Costa Rica. Here, the land is reshaping me once more. I am no longer simply split between American and French; I am a mosaic pieced together by three years of living alongside Costa Rica’s lush nature and vibrant culture.

I have learned the song the yigüirro sings before the rain. I have found beauty in the quiet stillness of the September ocean. I’ve felt the rush of watching clouds part just enough to reveal the river valleys below, and felt my heart swell on a simple walk with my dog, rain or shine. I have discovered the beauty of a simpler life, and I will never be the same.

If I ever return to my homeland, I know I will never completely fit back into the old mold. And here, no fellow traveler will ever carry this exact same tapestry of places. I am fractured, and yes, sometimes lonely because of it. But I love every incredible, bittersweet piece of this journey—and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Summer Riffaud is a multi-country immigrant. First to France where her husband is a national, and lastly to Costa Rica. Her brain is full of languages and pieces of culture that she’s constantly piecing together.

Issue 04: Reinvention is now live on our website in digital flipbook format, offering a more visual, intentional way to experience the magazine as a whole.

If you’d prefer to read more gradually, you can also subscribe here to receive weekly featured pieces from the issue, shared over the coming weeks as part of our newsletter.

Subscribe now

From the Editor’s Desk

A few weeks ago, I made a TikTok video talking about some of the difficulties people encounter when moving abroad. In it, I mention that, “You will need to redefine almost everything about yourself–what you like, who you are, what your values are.” Someone commented “What do you mean you have to redefine what you like and who you are?” I never responded because I wanted to take a beat. What did I mean?

Now that I’ve had a little bit of time to think about it, I think any time our context changes, we are not only encouraged to reevaluate our understanding of ourselves, but we are almost forced to. Think about it–if you were raised in a world where everything is blue, you would wear blue. You would speak blue. You would put things in a hierarchy based on how blue they were. But what happens when you are dropped into a world that is green? You could continue to remain the same, but it might be difficult to make green-world friends or build green-world tastes. Can you learn to speak the language of green when your mind still conceives of everything in blue?

Let’s bring these questions into the real world: What foods do you like to cook when the spices you used to depend on aren’t available? Does your sense of gender change in a place where men kiss each other as a greeting? Do you still pray for healing in a place with universal healthcare?

When we chose the theme of “Reinvention” for this issue, we were thinking about it in two ways. The first was the sort of fresh start that can only come with uprooting everything you’ve ever known and starting from scratch. You get to ask yourself a question most people never will: who do I want to be in this new life? But for the second, we were thinking of the longer, more hidden process of reinventing yourself because the world around you changed. And we have no choice but to evolve, for better or worse.

So in this issue, SN Corvin writes from a possible future the story of the “Watchers,” and their (our?) role in remembering, Hannah Dilday writes poems about her changing relationship to grief, and Antonia Peplinski writes about how her marriage continues to evolve in light of her immigration. Emily Austen writes about her queer awakening, and Summer Riffaud reminds us we are an amalgamation of our experiences.

And, of course, our artists help us see the world differently, as artists tend to do. Kenneth Kesner gives us a peek at Western Asia and Rachel Mims shows us how to get to know our new environment through urban sketching.

I hope this issue delivers a sense of camaraderie for this strange space we each find ourselves in. And I look forward to meeting you all where you are while we grow together in community.

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Amber Stewart is a writer, editor, and founder of Unbordered Magazine, a literary publication documenting the stories of Americans living outside the United States. She lives in Montevideo, Uruguay with her wife, Jamie, and their dog, Libby. Amber is the author of In the Garden: An Almanac for Uprooting.

Coming soon: Issue 04 of Unbordered is coming out on August 3rd, and we can’t wait for you to read it! But in the meantime, we want to share some prompts for our next two issues of the magazine. If you’re an American living abroad, the the staff of Unbordered invites you to submit to Issues 05 and 06.

Issue 05: Thresholds (Deadline: October 1, 2026)

A threshold is an in-between place, a place where you don’t know what awaits you on the other side. It’s the moment before the door opens and the last look back at your loved ones before getting on the plane. Issue 05 invites essays, nonfiction, poetry, and art that sit with these in-between moments. Tell us what you carried across and what you’re leaving behind.

Not sure where to start? Try one of these:

• Write about the last ordinary moment

• Describe a word or phrase you can only say in one language and what is missing in translation.

• Make a piece of art about something you carried with you that you didn’t expect to need.

Issue 06: Seasons (Deadline: January 31, 2027)

Time moves differently when you leave. Summer no longer smells the same. You find yourself grieving October and the way it felt on your skin. Holiday celebrations are upside down, the climate all wrong in a new hemisphere. But over time, with enough turns of the Earth around the sun, you begin to build new associations. You begin to redefine what a season means to you. For Issue 06, Unbordered is looking for essays, nonfiction, poetry, and art that explore both the literal and figurative seasons of a life lived abroad.

Not sure where to start? Try one of these:

• Choose one of the four seasons. What comes to mind when you think of it? Is that how you experience it now? Where are the differences? The pain points?

• Describe a holiday or seasonal tradition you tried to keep alive abroad, and what happened to it.

• What season were you in emotionally when you left — and what season are you in now?

For submission guidelines, word counts, and formats, visit our submissions page.

We’re so grateful for this community, and we can’t wait to read what you send us!

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One of the things I hear most from Unbordered’s writers is that they’re working on something bigger: a memoir, a poetry collection, a book that’s been living in their head for years. For a while, I didn’t have anything concrete to offer beyond encouragement. But publishing my own book this year changed how I think about what Unbordered can be — and what it can offer this community.

This year, I published my own debut memoir-in-essays, In the Garden: An Almanac for Uprooting, a book about leaving Nashville, becoming an immigrant in Montevideo, and what it means to plant a life in unexpected soil. Getting that book from idea to finished, distributed, reviewed, and in readers’ hands taught me more about the publishing process than anything else could have. And it confirmed something I’d been thinking about for a while:

The writers in this community deserve an editorial partner who gets it, who understands not just the craft of writing, but the specific weight of the stories we carry as emigrants.

So we’re building one.

Introducing Unbordered Editorial - the literary services arm of Unbordered Press.

Unbordered Editorial offers developmental editing, writing coaching, cover design, website design, and social media support for writers working in nonfiction, memoir, and personal essay. We specialize in supporting queer writers, emigrant writers, and writers navigating questions of identity, displacement, and belonging, but we welcome any writer whose story doesn’t fit neatly into a box.

Developmental Editing - A full manuscript assessment delivered via tracked changes, plus a 60-minute follow-up call and a 30-minute check-in 30 days later to support your revision process. Available for all nonfiction genres up to 80,000 words. Pricing from $800.

Writing Coaching - Weekly one-hour sessions focused on wherever you are in your process. You bring the questions, the stuck places, the fears. We work through them together. $250/month, 3-month minimum commitment.

Cover Design - Whether you have a vision for your cover or are starting from scratch, our designer will work with you to create something that connects your work with the readers it’s meant for. From initial consultation through weekly check-ins and design refinement, you’ll be part of the process every step of the way, from first idea to final delivery. Pricing from $600.

Website Design — Your book deserves a home on the internet that feels as intentional as the work itself. Whether you’re launching a debut or building a long-term platform, our web designer works with authors and creative entrepreneurs to build everything from simple landing pages to full multi-page sites — including branding, media kits, and online presence setup. Pricing from $555.

Social Media Support — Showing up consistently on social media is one of the hardest parts of building a platform as a writer. Our social media support services take the guesswork out of it, with done-for-you graphics, captions, and strategic support so you can stay visible without burning out. Pricing from $250/month.

If you’ve been sitting on a manuscript, circling a project, or just wishing you had someone in your corner who gets it, we’d love to hear from you.

Reach out at admin@unborderedmag.com with a brief description of your project and what kind of support you’re looking for. If you’re not sure, that’s ok! We can figure it out together.

And if you know a writer who needs this, please share this post with them. The whole point of building Unbordered has always been community. A rising tide lifts all boats.

With love from Montevideo,

Amber Stewart
Founder of Unbordered 

For more information about Unbordered Editorial Services, check out our website.

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Season Finale

Everyone’s afraid right now, and you’re
the one
leaving all of this behind,
my therapist is telling me as I sob on our
weekly zoom session and tell her
everyone seems to hate us now. It’s a thing
people do, when you tell them you’re
leaving, they leave you first,
they take the door you’ve cracked
open and slam it shut. I know you’re
standing there, knocking still,
screaming to them that you’re still here,
please, we have phones, we have planes,
we have years, we have days,
but they’ve slammed it shut, you
understand, so they can sit alone
behind the door, staring deeply into
a scratched-out mirror, ignoring your pleas
because you made it all real when it’s
not, it’s not real, any of this, there’s no
reason for you to leave, because nothing
bad is happening to you, none of this
affects anyone, the news is just
approaching the season finale,
and all of the good people will conquer
evil, like they always do, just sit
down and wait, you’ll see.
You’re overreacting.

Everyone’s just acting.

If you really leave, that means —

that           mean’s                 it’s —

that

                  means —

                                               it’s —

On Read

My words have left me on the wind. 
You ask me how I am doing  
after leaving the United States, 

But I have left you again on read, 
forgetting about hot dogs, 
my regular order from Target. 

I go to the right now to get 
in the car, I stop telling 
my children to put 

on their shoes. I have 
no right to ask about 
your daily fear, now, 

and I don’t know how to tell you 
about the breeze stirring my hair 
as I pull the tea towels from the line 

the walks to the coast from 
my new home, sun stinging 
arms and legs and eyes 

and the blessed cold 
of the sea, salt on my lips, 
waves rolling my hips 

saffron threads of Pohutukawa 
tumbling in the streets, 
and I collect them and twist 

each of them through the eye 
of a needle, delicate, 
sharp like the cry of the tūī 

in the cold of the morning 
and I stitch my fingers back 
together with my fingers — 

carefully, with mistakes, 
with unraveling and raveling 
and swallowed screams, and they 

shake, my hands, 
but they are crusted with scabs, 
volcanic stones for my skin. 

I have cancelled 
the New York Times. 

I still grieve for you, 
for us, but I am a mother, 

and I hold my guilt 
close to my gut 

as it has changed 
to nourishing foods, 

to rainwater, 
to pointed fingers, 

to effigies 
in the yard, 

to targets 
on my back. 

I have hardened 
both of my eyes, 

you understand, 
obsidian dreams, 

and when I close 
them, if it is quiet, 

I still see stars. 
What can I say 

to you, my friend, 
when all is quiet, 

the tide is out, 

and I am mile 

after mile 

of black 

sand, 

muddy, 

desperately 

waiting,

dreaming 

of who I once was 

under the moon 

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Cecily Stone is a mother, writer, computer nerd, American immigrant in New Zealand, and author of These Chasms in the Earth. Her works have appeared in Welcoming The Muse (Twenty Bellows), Poems in Praise of Libraries (World Stage Press), Gypsophila Literary Magazine, Retrograde Review, Canvas Creative Arts Magazine (Indiana University), and on a set of compost liners. Stone shares her stories of motherhood, sacrifice, and rebirth at open mics and on socials: @cecilystonespeaks. On the weekends, you can usually find her alongside her husband and children finding adventure in her new home country.

“I just feel at home here, it’s amazing. My grandmother was famous for her chicken parm recipe, we’re Italian you know,” boasted Phil… Fred? Frank. Definitely probably Frank. The rest of the group nodded in friendly acceptance.

A bead of sweat crept slowly down my forehead, but it didn’t distract me from reciting the difference between ice cream and gelato, with a smile, as I had 62,349 times that Roman summer. Overtourism meant two full food tour groups a day, guaranteed. And each one concluded with the shameful admission that they, too, had fallen prey to big chain gelato. They vowed to explore Italy ethically henceforth and I forced a smile at their kind intention. Perhaps I was saving local businesses, one scoop at a time. It was something both I and my clients could feel good about.

Lots of people choose to explore the world in hopes of an illuminating experience that leads to self-discovery. Italy, my home of the past twenty years, welcomes many such pilgrims. Some are tourists, some are heritage seekers, and some are more permanent transplants. Years of working as a tour guide and a teacher have led me to the conclusion that people generally do the best they can with the tools they have. We all want to be good guests. What Frank, and most people for that matter, didn’t realize was that, while buying a sweet treat at a family run business and perhaps venturing beyond the ransacked capitals of Italy were steps in the right direction, the “ethical exploration” they spoke of has less to do with overtourism than the underexamination of what we expect to find, and who we expect to be.

See, I didn’t tell Fletcher at the time, but chicken parm is not a native dish to Italy. In the past, I had gently suggested that Nonna had simply invented Italian-American cuisine, cool right? Wrong. This nearly always ended uncomfortably, either with an aggressive refusal to hear of it, or silence, and I don’t know which one was worse. I always felt as though I had, at best, ruined their vacation, and at worst, given them an existential crisis. When reality contradicted expectation, to my surprise, the expectation was defended. Exploration gave way to selective openness, a willingness to entertain difference only if it remained palatable. Authenticity is welcomed only if the fantasy is performed back.

On social media, “authenticity” within the travel niche has become a buzzword, but once the phones power down, we accept only the kind that flatters us. The immersion we thought would resolve the language barrier sounds great, but only if we can remain comfortably ourselves. We travel to be transformed, but not unsettled. And when a place refuses to act out the imagined version we’ve rehearsed, we label it disappointing and overrated.

The irony is that the more tightly we cling to our dream world, the more we help reshape the real place around it away from the authenticity we claim to seek. Businesses learn to bend towards our vision in order to survive. Those that don’t, vanish. Restaurants open earlier and include items on the menu not previously considered. Traditions are cartoonified. Neighborhoods reorient toward the visitor’s expectations. You might call it good business, and perhaps it is. Rarely do we admit it is also erasure.

Overtourism is not just a logistical or environmental failure, it is the external consequence of an internal refusal: the refusal to be changed, unsettled, or disappointed. I thought back to Fabian. I used to think my role was to correct misconceptions, to gently educate, to widen perspective and advocate for ethical choices. I still believe that matters. Over time, though, watching tourists unknowingly cling to their imaginary Italy forced me to confront the scary possibility that I was no different. I resisted the notion that this could possibly be true. I lived here, after all, and worked here. I spoke the language. Heck, I could tell you the trash collection schedule. Surely, I was more open and flexible.

Then again, we’re all guilty of adjusting the narrative to suit our ego. Who hasn’t edited a story in real time, cropping out the inconvenient details and retelling the memory in a way that bolsters the self we prefer? The version of myself I preferred was authoritative, seasoned, and fluent in the life I had built. Somewhere along the way, though, the line between gently correcting those pesky misconceptions and quietly lecturing otherwise curious people had blurred. It wasn’t that I believed I knew everything, it was that repetition had begun to feel like mastery. A life my clients regarded as luminous had, through familiarity, grown ordinary, and I had grown ungrateful. And I wasn’t ready to admit that, least of all to myself. Control can look like confidence from the outside. From within, it feels more like distance. This very mentality was what I had been warning amateur visitors against. You stand in the square you’ve already seen a hundred times online, reproduce the image, and still feel outside of it. Expectation turns experience into performance and somewhere between my 62,348th and 62,349th performance, I realized that Frank and I were not so different after all. I was only doing it in reverse.

After so many tours, I could practically lip sync what would come out of his mouth, and yet, I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t even remember the poor man’s name. Any natural curiosity and wonder had tip-toed out the back, somehow, yet keeping these characteristics alive had been one of the goals of moving abroad in the first place. “Frank” may be the tourist, but that doesn’t excuse the rest of us from carrying a quiet, curious, and unguarded posture of exploration, even into the most ordinary corners of our own days. It’s hard to let what is actually there meet us because it requires daily mindfulness and practice. It’s a decision we have to actively make. Ultimately, it’s up to you, the journey continues either way. The difference is whether we meet it resisting or receptive.

Ethical exploration, I began to understand, is not just about how we move through other people’s landscapes. It is about how honestly we move through our own. To explore ethically means releasing the demand that experience exists to fulfill us. It means observing before narrating and allowing disappointment to refine us rather than disqualify what we encounter. It requires admitting that we may not become who we imagined simply because we crossed a border, and it’s not the border’s responsibility anyways.

If I could ask travelers to let Italy be what it is, messy, layered, sometimes inconvenient, could I not ask the same of myself? Of each other? Is chicken parm not still delicious? Moving abroad never promised to change any of us. It only offered space. What I decide to do with that space, to defend myself within it or surrender to it, continues to be the real measure of what I’m willing to explore.

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Sarah Bolen is a writer and educator with a passion for curiosity-led learning. After two decades of living abroad, she writes about language, identity, and how we can make the world a better place when we reconnect with the process of learning.

This week we’re featuring the work of Gerrit Vooren, an artist who has made the journey of emigration twice: first from Holland to the United States, where he built a career as a dancer and actor, and then to Costa Rica in 2019. It’s in Costa Rica that he found the jícaro gourd, and with it, a practice rooted in stillness, attention, and the willingness to not know. In his own words:

My practice begins with not knowing. I come to each jícaro gourd without a plan—no preliminary sketch, no decided palette, no destination. I sit with it first. I look. Something in the particular swell of one side, or the way the stem meets the body, will eventually suggest a direction, and I follow. My intention is to follow the moment, to accept “mistakes” as a necessary part of both the process and the final design.

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Garrit Vooren is an immigrant twice over--first from Holland to the U.S. in his youth as a dancer and actor and then to Costa Rica in 2019.

I am proud to say that, as of yesterday, my book In the Garden: An Almanac for Uprooting is officially launched! You can find the ebook wherever ebooks are sold, and you can find the paperback version here.

For those of you who don’t know me–Hi! I’m Amber Stewart! I’m the founder and poetry editor for Unbordered Magazine, a magazine for Americans who have left the United States and are living abroad. I use the language “left,” because while there will always be a small group of Americans that choose to live outside the U.S., what we’re seeing right now is a cultural shift in what it means to be an American abroad. More and more Americans are leaving, not just because they want to have an adventure, but because their livelihoods, their safety, and their futures depend on it. For many Americans living abroad, they now have more in common with other immigrants worldwide than the romantic expat that lives in the hearts of artists and travelers.

This magazine is dedicated to exploring these changing definitions by sharing the stories, the art, and the poetry of American emigrants. The stories are different, but a lot of the sentiment is the same. Feeling fed-up. Feeling afraid. Feeling defeated or broken by a system that centers profits over people.

I started this magazine because I wanted our stories to be remembered. And I wrote my book because I wanted to show people what it looked like to be in the thick of it. I wanted to tell people what it costs when your life becomes the talking point used to divide the country. I wanted to show what it costs to uproot your life and plant it somewhere else. And I’m not just talking about money.

And then, ultimately, I wanted this book to show that it is possible to leave. That, despite the hardship and the pain, there is something worth reaching for on the other side. I don’t mean to say I’ve got it all figured out–I definitely don’t! But I have begun to glimpse what is possible when you take your fate in your own hands.

Buy "In the Garden"

I hope you’ll consider giving In the Garden a read. It’s a document and a testament to hard decisions and not backing down, to choosing the path that lets you be the fullest, most authentic person you can be. To choosing love.

Early readers have been very generous with their reflections. Here’s what just a few had to say:

“This is writing that earns its beauty honestly. Like the best spiritual autobiography, it refuses the comfort of resolution. Instead, it offers something rarer: the record of a self, a life, a country, being unmade and then slowly, tenderly, made anew.” — Adrian Shirk, author of Heaven is a Place on Earth

“Beautifully captures the heartbreak when home is no longer home. Amber reminds us how to heal as she opens up to the gentle promise of a new culture, learning to live life tranquilo.” - Antonia Peplinski, @Wisconsinitos

“Overall, I couldn’t stop reading and didn’t want to, even though the anxiety and stress were bleeding through. What a brave, soul-baring piece of work that is so personal and so universal too. The writing was poetic and informative in an accessible and relatable way. It was so interesting to read about a very different immigration experience to the ones we commonly see.” - NetGalley Reviewer Georgia T.

The book is incredibly touching and really well written…It’s about grieving your homeland and the desire to make a new country your home, to build a life you can feel safe and happy in. On having to change and grieve our dreams for the future when our bodies and circumstances won’t allow for said dreams. -NetGalley Reviewer, E.R.

This book has been a labor of love, and I am beyond excited to share it with you! If you do decide to read it, please feel free to reach out and let me know your thoughts, or consider leaving a review on Goodreads or Amazon.

Thanks for being here with me through this journey–we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled content next week.

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Amber Stewart is a writer, editor, and founder of Unbordered Magazine, a literary publication documenting the stories of Americans living outside the United States. She lives in Montevideo, Uruguay with her wife, Jamie, and their dog, Libby. In the Garden: An Almanac for Uprooting is her debut book.