I have always believed parenting is a one-way street. You give without expecting anything in return. At least, that’s how I’ve tried to approach motherhood.

I don’t expect my daughters to look after me in my old age. Frankly, I’d rather they live their lives without feeling burdened by me.

I say that, and I believe it.

Or do I?

Because expecting and hoping are different.

I don’t expect my daughters to care for me. But I hope they will. That they will offer, not out of obligation, but out of love. That somewhere in their busy lives, there will be room for me.

Is that too much to hope for?

My therapist once told me that children view their parents the way we view appliances. We expect them to work, to be there when needed. We don’t think much about them until they stop functioning.

Perhaps that’s how children see their mothers. Always there. Always available. Always functioning.

But we aren’t appliances. We’re human beings. We have feelings, disappointments, insecurities, and our own needs. We get lonely. We want to matter, not just for what we do, but for who we are.

It sounds trivial when I write it down. A forgotten birthday. Hardly a tragedy.

But I spent the day looking at my phone, waiting for a text, a call, even an emoji. Something that said, I remembered you today.

Nothing came. Not that day. Not the next.

For two days, I walked around on the verge of tears, telling myself it wasn’t a big deal. She has her own life and responsibilities. People forget things.

My heart, however, wasn’t interested in reason.

Finally, I texted her.

The following day, she replied.

“I’m sorry. I will make it up to you when I can.”

And that should have been enough.

She apologized. I expressed my hurt. The subject was closed.

Except it wasn’t.

Instead of accepting her forgetfulness as an oversight, I turned it into something much bigger.

Does she love me? Did I do something wrong? Was I not a good enough mother?

Suddenly, a forgotten birthday became a measure of my worth.

The rational part of me knows love isn’t measured by birthday greetings. I’ve forgotten birthdays myself, including those of people I love dearly.

So why couldn’t I extend that same understanding to my daughter?

Perhaps because motherhood makes us vulnerable in ways we rarely admit.

We spend years remembering everything about our children. Their birthdays, favorite foods, fears, and disappointments. We celebrate their victories and carry their heartbreaks as though they were our own.

And somewhere along the way, we begin to hope that we occupy a similar space in their hearts.

Not the center. We don’t need to be the center.

Just somewhere.

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Somewhere important enough to be remembered.

But motherhood comes with unspoken rules. Love unconditionally. Give generously. Expect nothing. Understand that your children have lives separate from yours.

I understand all of that. I want my daughters to have full, independent lives.

But does their independence mean I must silence my own emotional needs?

Does unconditional love require unconditional silence?

Can I tell my daughter she broke my heart without making her responsible for putting it back together?

That’s the question I keep coming back to.

I don’t want my daughters to call out of guilt, remember my birthday out of obligation, or visit because they worry I might be lonely.

I want their love to be freely given.

But I also want to be allowed to feel hurt when it isn’t expressed in the ways I had hoped.

Maybe both things can be true.

Maybe my daughter can love me deeply and still forget my birthday. Maybe her forgetfulness says nothing about my worth, just as my hurt says nothing about her love.

I’m still trying to figure out how to be honest about my feelings without making them my children’s responsibility. How do I give them the freedom to live their lives without interpreting every missed call or forgotten occasion as proof I no longer matter?

An appliance doesn’t sit beside the phone waiting for a birthday message.

It doesn’t wonder whether it’s loved.

It doesn’t search a two-line apology for reassurance.

It simply works. Until it doesn’t.

Sometimes I wish I were an appliance.

Because being human is hard.

And being a human mother is harder.

I remember when 40 sounded old. Not a little older than me. Old. I couldn’t imagine being that age, much less imagine who I might be when I got there.

I’m still getting used to that sentence.

Something about approaching a new decade makes me pause. A birthday comes every year, but a number ending in zero seems to demand a little more attention. It invites me to review where I’ve been and raises questions about what comes next.

Looking back, I can say something I don’t think my younger self would have expected: my 50s have been the best decade of my life.

My 20s were about finishing graduate school and finding myself. There was so much to figure out—what I wanted to do, where I belonged, and what kind of life I hoped to build. I made decisions without knowing where they would lead, even when I thought I did.

My 30s were about motherhood. I poured so much attention and energy into raising my daughters and navigating the responsibilities that came with it. My own life unfolded alongside the lives I helped shape.

My 40s were about reconnecting with myself and my identity. Who was I within all the roles I held? What mattered to me? What did I want to make room for?

Those questions took time. I couldn’t answer them simply because I had reached an age when I thought I should know.

Then came my 50s.

Somewhere in this decade, I began to feel that I was thriving. I became more comfortable with myself. I became more willing to take my own interests seriously. More open to pursuing something without knowing exactly how it would turn out.

That doesn’t mean these years have been free of disappointment, doubt, or difficulty. Calling them my best decade doesn’t erase any of that. But my relationship with myself has changed, and that has changed how I experience my life.

I have a better sense of what deserves my energy. I’m more accepting of the person I am, including the parts I once thought I needed to explain or fix. I can look back at earlier versions of myself with a little more understanding. They were working with what they knew at the time.

There is wisdom in that, although I hesitate to suggest that birthdays automatically make us wise. We can get older and hold tightly to the same assumptions. We can live through something and need years to understand what it taught us.

For me, the wisdom has come slowly. Often, I recognize it only when I respond to something differently than I once would have.

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I wish I could have handed some of that understanding to my younger self. I might have saved her a little worry. I might have encouraged her to trust her own voice sooner.

But would she have believed me?

When I thought 40 was old, I doubt anyone could have convinced me that I would be celebrating 59 and calling my 50s my favorite decade.

Some things only become understandable after we’ve lived them.

And you can't skip the line.

We each have to travel through our own questions, choices, mistakes, and discoveries. Someone else’s experience can offer guidance or comfort, but it can't live it for us. Acceptance has its own pace, too.

So yes, I’m a little afraid of the BIG 60. I’m excited about it, too. Both feelings can come along.

I don’t know what the next decade will hold. I do know that these past nine years have given me good reason to look forward with curiosity. I still have work I want to create, more I want to learn, and more of myself to discover.

For today, though, I get to be 59.

I want to enjoy this year without spending all of it looking ahead at the next number. I want to appreciate how far I’ve come and stay open to being surprised.

And when 60 arrives? If my 50s are any indication, bring it on.

Wherever you are in your own journey, safe travels.

It’s a question I get asked often about writing, making art, and pursuing the things I love alongside work and everything else life requires.

I don’t have extra hours in my day. Twenty-four is all I get, too.

What I have learned is that making time begins with identifying my priorities and setting boundaries around them. We all have multiple demands on our calendars: family obligations, work, paid or unpaid, and the everyday responsibilities that keep our lives moving. Some of those demands are beyond our control. But unless I decide what deserves my time, other people and other demands will fill every available space.

There will always be something else I could be doing. Another task will always be waiting.

And, if I’m honest, sometimes the obstacle is me.

Sometimes we say something matters to us, then make excuses not to begin. We wait for a quieter week, a cleaner house, a better mood. We tell ourselves we will write when we have a whole afternoon, even though we might have twenty minutes today.

I’ve heard people say, “After staring at a computer all day, the last thing I want to do is sit in front of one and write.”

I get that. Really, I do.

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But I also wonder: Is there another way to begin? A notebook? A voice recording? A few sentences before the workday starts? What would make room for the thing you say you want?

If it matters to you, what are you willing to give up to make space for it? An hour of television? Some scrolling? Saying yes to something you would rather decline?

And does giving up that hour feel like a sacrifice when you spend it doing something you love?

For me, writing and making art give me energy. Even after a demanding workday, I often want to spend time with a story or a piece in progress. Sometimes I stay up an extra hour or two because I’m absorbed in what I’m doing. I feel happy to have that time.

That doesn’t mean I’m never tired or that every creative session brings joy. Some days the words resist me. Some days a piece refuses to become what I imagined. But there is satisfaction in returning to something that matters to me, even when the work is difficult.

It also helps to ask whether the things on our priority lists still belong there. Do I want to do this? Does it bring me joy, meaning, or a sense of possibility? Or am I carrying an expectation about who I should be?

Sometimes our avoidance has deeper roots.

Maybe we are afraid of failure. Maybe we feel ashamed of being beginners. Maybe we grew up in a household where art was considered a luxury, something you could pursue only after all the “real” work was finished. Maybe taking time for ourselves still feels selfish.

Those beliefs can follow us into adulthood. We may finally have a little space to create and still struggle to give ourselves permission to use it.

I try to pay attention to what is happening when I say, “I don’t have time.” Sometimes I truly need rest. Sometimes my responsibilities leave very little room. And sometimes I’m avoiding something I want because wanting it makes me vulnerable.

Knowing the difference helps me decide what to do next.

We don’t have to rearrange our entire lives to begin. We can protect a small pocket of time and see what happens when we return to it. Twenty minutes with a notebook. An hour at the art table. One evening we keep for ourselves.

Sometimes it starts with turning off the television, stepping away from watching characters live their lives, and becoming an active character in our own.

What have you been saying matters to you?

And what would making room for it look like this week?

For a long time, I believed that too.

Recently, I traveled alone through seven cities in Italy.

I ate meals alone. I wandered unfamiliar streets alone. I sat in cafés and watched people pass by. I figured out trains, found my way when I got lost, stood in front of art that moved me, and experienced beautiful places without someone beside me to turn to and say, “Look at that.”

I was alone.

But I was never lonely.

There is something powerful about realizing that your own company can be enough. Not because you don’t need or love other people, but because you no longer need their presence to make an experience meaningful.

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When I was younger, I might have wondered what other people thought when they saw a woman sitting alone at a restaurant. Now I wonder why I ever cared.

Getting older has taught me that loneliness has very little to do with how many people are around us. You can be lonely in a crowded room. You can be lonely in a relationship. You can be lonely sitting across the table from someone you love.

And you can travel through seven cities in a foreign country completely by yourself and feel extraordinarily connected to the world, to the moment, and perhaps most importantly, to yourself.

I am no longer afraid of being alone.

In fact, I have discovered that sometimes solitude is where I feel most fully present in my own life.

With my six-month-old daughter wrapped in my arms, I watched the second plane hit the Twin Towers.

I was dressed and ready to leave for Mommy and Me. It was our Tuesday morning ritual. New mothers and newborns gathered at the Presbyterian hospital, where we sat on the floor and took turns talking about our babies, our bodies, our health, and our struggles adjusting to this new normal called motherhood.

We talked a lot about our bodies. We talked less about what was happening inside our minds.

We discussed postpartum depression, but even then, there was an unspoken question: How can you be depressed when you have been blessed with a healthy child?

There was a level of guilt attached to even admitting that motherhood was hard. A sense that struggling somehow meant we were ungrateful.

My daughter had come into the world earlier than expected. I don’t know if that was the reason, but despite countless attempts and even having a lactation consultant come to our home, my body would not produce enough milk.

I remember the consultant telling me, “Just look at your baby. Your milk will come.”

So, I looked at her.

I stared at this tiny person I loved, willing my body to do what everyone told me it was supposed to do.

But the milk didn’t come.

And I wondered: What does that mean? Do I not love my child enough? What is wrong with me?

The pressure we put on ourselves as mothers is enormous. Then there are the pressure other people place on us, the expectations of what a “good mother” should look like, feel like, and be able to do.

Add exhaustion and lack of sleep, and everything becomes magnified.

I had very little support outside of my Tuesday morning group. My daughter’s father went back to work after two weeks.

I still remember the sound of the garage door closing that first morning, leaving me alone in the house with a newborn.

I wanted to cry.

I wanted to scream; I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m lonely. I’m scared.

Those Tuesday mornings became my lifeline.

And then September 11 happened.

After that morning, our group stopped meeting. People were afraid to go out. The world suddenly felt unsafe.

As a woman with Islamic heritage raising a mixed-race child, I became afraid to leave the safety of our walls.

The isolation was real.

So was the devastation that seemed to permeate everything. It came through the television, through conversations, through the silence of suddenly empty routines. It entered our homes and became part of the air we breathed.

Motherhood was already isolating.

Now the world outside felt dangerous too.

Twenty-five years later, there are many more conversations about a woman’s mental health after giving birth. There is greater awareness of postpartum depression and anxiety, and more effort to understand what the mind and body endure during pregnancy, childbirth, and the months that follow.

We still have a long way to go.

I cannot speak for how childbirth and motherhood affect every woman. I only know what they did to me.

And I know that a little compassion and a lot less judgment is a good place to begin.

For me, the memories of September 11 will always be wrapped around my memories of becoming a mother.

The two cannot be separated.

When I think about that morning, I remember the planes and the towers. But I also remember holding my daughter. I remember the Mommy and Me group. I remember the garage door closing. I remember wondering whether I was failing at motherhood because my body would not produce milk.

And now, as I watch that six-month-old baby blossom into a strong woman, I think about my Tuesday morning sisters.

I think about the lives we were just beginning to build as mothers when the world changed around us.

Ten years after September 11, some of us stood inside the Pentagon with our children beside us. We held them close and felt profoundly blessed.

And, if I am completely honest, perhaps a little guilty too.

Grateful that they were here.

Grateful that we were here.

Aware of all the mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, and friends who did not get another twenty-five years.

For some of us, history is remembered through dates.

For others, it is remembered through the lives we were living when history arrived.

September 11, 2001, will always be part of the story of my first year of motherhood.

Twenty-five years later, I still remember.

We shall not forget.

If only they knew how unavailable their grandmother was. If only they knew that, when I was young, I had to find ways to support myself, including doing other people’s laundry and ironing their clothes.

My friends and I have had countless conversations about our children and how little they seem to understand the advantages they’ve been given. We talk about how they take things for granted, the lessons, the activities, the opportunities, the rides, the parents sitting in the front row at every performance or cheering from the sidelines at every game.

And maybe there is some truth to that.

But lately, I’ve been asking myself a different question:

Isn’t this exactly what we wanted?

Wasn’t the whole point to make sure our children didn’t experience the hardships we did? Didn’t we work so hard precisely because we wanted them to know what it felt like to have parents who showed up, who drove them to music lessons, helped them pursue their interests, and made sure they had opportunities we never had?

So why are we complaining now that they don’t understand the life we worked so hard to protect them from?

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I’ve come to realize that some of my frustration isn’t really about my children at all.

Part of me is envious of what I was able to give them. A part that still grieves what I didn’t have. When I look at the opportunities and support my children received, I sometimes wonder who I might have become if someone had given me those same things.

What might I have tried?

What talents might have been nurtured?

What would it have felt like to have a parent sitting in the front row, watching me?

Those feelings aren’t really about my children’s lack of gratitude. They are about my own sadness for what could have been.

And then another thought occurred to me.

Maybe my parents felt the same way.

Maybe what they gave me, even what sometimes felt insufficient, was still more than what they themselves had received. Maybe they, too, were trying to leave things a little better than they found them.

Perhaps this is what happens from one generation to the next.

We give our children what we wished someone had given us. Then, because their lives look so different from ours, we sometimes mistake their lack of hardship for a lack of appreciation.

But maybe the fact that they cannot fully understand our struggles is not evidence that we failed to teach them something.

Maybe it is evidence that we succeeded in changing something.

The goal was never for our children to suffer enough to appreciate what they have.

And then hope they will do the same.

Even when the “better” we give them still isn’t perfect.

Even when it isn’t enough.

Even when the next generation looks back at us and decides there are things they want to do differently.

Maybe that is exactly how it is supposed to work.

Except now, that distance doesn’t feel quite as vast.

Time has a way of creeping up on us. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just quietly, year after year, until one day you realize you are no longer standing at the beginning of your life looking toward an impossibly distant end.

Recently, I saw an AI-generated image of Dolly Parton walking into heaven. Waiting to greet her were Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston, and so many other celebrities I grew up listening to and watching. People who once seemed larger than life. People whose music forms the soundtrack to entire chapters of my own life.

The image stayed with me.

Maybe it was because I remembered when they were young. And when I was young.

There is something unsettling about watching the people who populated your childhood and adulthood slowly disappear. Their deaths become markers of time. You hear a familiar name and, for a moment, you aren’t simply thinking about the life that ended. You are remembering who you were when that person was part of your world.

And lately, every time I hear about another death, I find myself thinking about my own mortality.

Not necessarily with fear. More with an awareness I didn’t have when I was younger.

My list of things I still want to do feels more urgent with each passing year. There is still so much I want to write. So much art I want to make. So many places I want to see. So many experiences I don’t want to keep postponing for some imagined future when I have more time.

Maybe that is what mortality is beginning to teach me.

Not to be afraid of death, but to stop assuming there will always be another year, another trip, another book, another canvas, another someday.

Carpe diem. Seize the day.

Not recklessly. Not desperately.

But deliberately.

Because perhaps the real question isn’t how much time I have left.

It is what I want to do with the time that is still mine.

There was the initial shock. The tears. The silence that comes when children are trying to understand something that will change the shape of their lives.

Then my 11-year-old daughter looked at me and asked, “After Dad moves out, can we have a vegetable garden?”

Why she thought we couldn’t have one while her father and I were together, I still don’t know. But after delivering news that had just shifted their entire world, I wasn’t about to question the request.

“Sure,” I said.

I had no idea how much that one word would come to mean.

Soon I was spending hours in the backyard, digging into the earth and installing two raised garden beds. Every morning before work, I watered the garden. Every evening when I came home, I watered it again. I even took a class and learned how to make a rain barrel.

I bought new outdoor furniture. A hammock. A fire pit. Countless little things that made the space feel like mine. Like ours. Like somewhere we could begin again.

We grew zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, flowers, and whatever else we thought we could coax from the soil. Of course, we enjoyed eating what we grew. But that wasn’t really what the garden gave me.

Every new leaf felt like evidence. Every flower that opened, every tomato that ripened, every vine that reached a little farther reminded me that an ending does not mean everything ends.

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For a long time, I thought the garden became my sanctuary because I needed somewhere to put my grief. Somewhere to be quiet. Somewhere to work with my hands when I couldn’t fix what was happening inside our family.

But now, more than eleven years later, I wonder if my daughter understood something before I did.

Maybe she wasn’t simply asking for a vegetable garden.

Maybe, after hearing that her family as she knew it was coming apart, she needed to know that we could still make something.

That we could plant something in the middle of loss and trust that it might grow.

Maybe she needed to see that alongside death, life can still take flight.

And maybe I did too.

Somewhere along the way, I have learned to expect bad news before good.

There is a Bengali word, nojor, that loosely refers to the evil eye, the belief that another person’s envy can somehow touch your life. If people know too much about your success, your wealth, your happiness, or even your good health, their jealousy might somehow diminish it or take it away.

It is superstition, of course. But some superstitions become so deeply embedded in a culture that we absorb them without realizing it. They become as natural as the air we breathe.

We hesitate before saying that our children are thriving. We downplay the promotion, the new home, the opportunity, the good diagnosis, the trip we have dreamed about taking. We qualify happiness with reminders of what is difficult. We knock on wood. We say mashallah. We find ways to protect what is good by making it appear smaller.

Don’t celebrate too loudly.

Someone might give you nojor.

I have always struggled with this because, to me, it contradicts the very faith we claim to have in a higher power.

If I believe that God or Allah, or whatever name we give the divine, is ultimately the source of what enters and leaves my life, then how much power am I willing to give another person’s envy?

Can someone else’s jealousy really determine my livelihood, my health, my happiness?

Or do I believe that what God has given me cannot simply be snatched away because someone looked at my life and wished they had some of it?

Perhaps this is why I notice the way my family communicates.

We seem much more willing to share the mishaps of our daily lives than the good fortune we have been given. Sometimes I wonder whether it is because we are afraid to name the good things out loud. Other times, I wonder if it is simply that we have become so accustomed to noticing what is wrong that we forget to acknowledge what is right.

That troubles me.

I am much more likely to text or call someone I love with good news than with the details of whatever I am struggling through.

It isn’t because my life is without hardship. Far from it.

We all carry something. The weight of it is subjective, and I have never found much value in comparing burdens. I don’t want to place my scars next to yours to determine whose wounds run deeper.

And when someone I love is hurting, knowing the details does not always make me feel closer to them. Sometimes it simply leaves me carrying their pain alongside my own.

But joy?

Joy I want to share.

When something beautiful happens to me, I want to call you.

I want to tell you about the opportunity I never expected, the thing I worked hard for that finally happened, the place I traveled to, the work I created, the moment that made me proud, the ordinary day when I suddenly realized how fortunate I am.

Not because I want you to envy me.

Not because I believe my happiness is greater than yours.

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I share it because maybe, for one moment, my joy can interrupt your struggle.

Maybe my good news can remind you that good things still happen.

Maybe watching someone you love experience happiness can give you permission to look around your own life and recognize something worth celebrating there, too.

I don’t want us to become people who only call one another when something has gone wrong.

I want us to call when something has gone right.

I want us to become witnesses to one another’s joy.

And if you look at my happiness and feel a little nojor, I am no longer afraid of that either.

Because I have come to believe something much stronger than superstition:

So I will not make my blessings smaller.

I will say them out loud.

I will celebrate them.

And when something beautiful happens to you, I hope you will call me, too.

Director. Vice President. Chief Something. And, in the nonprofit sector, the most coveted title of all: Executive Director.

The title told everyone, even people who didn’t know me, that I was someone. Or at least, that is what I believed.

More than a year ago, I gave up my “Chief” title and became unemployed. It may have been one of the best decisions I ever made.

Not because I disliked my job or stopped caring about the people we served. I left because the title, though impressive, did not come with the fulfillment I wanted.

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A few months into unemployment, I received an invitation to interview for the title I had once wanted most: Executive Director.

I was 57. Finally, I could be the boss.

But as I sat with the opportunity, I began to understand that job titles are just that—titles. Words created to make certain roles more attractive and difficult work environments more palatable.

The title does not make the job.

Perhaps the job makes the title.

I had started learning this lesson years earlier.

In 2021, I was unemployed and scared to death. I worried about paying the mortgage on time and putting food on the table. Then I received an offer to become Director of Development at a well-known nonprofit in the Dallas–Fort Worth area.

Even during the interview process, there was a quiet whisper telling me to pay attention.

Every time I met with the Executive Director, a board member was present. It felt like a red flag. I wondered: If the board micromanages the Executive Director, what will they do to me?

To everyone’s surprise, I turned down the job.

After moving to Seattle, I received another offer to serve as Director of Development at a nonprofit. This time, I accepted.

On my third day, I told the Executive Director it was not going to work out.

She was too hands-on for me. At this stage in my career, I valued independence more than a title and even more than the comfort of a steady salary.

Knowing your absolutes does not happen overnight. It rarely arrives through one dramatic, life-changing event.

It happens through the small choices we make as we move through life.

Each time we say no to something that looks impressive but feels wrong, we move closer to ourselves.

Each time we choose peace over prestige, purpose over position, and alignment over approval, we become clearer about who we are.

For years, I searched for an important title that would define me.

But I had already earned that title long before I became an assistant, a manager, a director, or a chief.

The title that defined me was never printed on a business card.

Mama.

Mom.

Mother.

Sometimes that’s true. When we’re hurting, we seek people who understand our pain. There is comfort in being seen.

But that’s not the kind of misery I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the people who aren’t happy unless everyone around them is unhappy too. The ones who seem uncomfortable when someone else finds joy, peace, or contentment. The ones who insist, sometimes subtly, sometimes not, that if they are struggling, you should be struggling too. And if you’re not, then perhaps you should feel guilty about it.

I’ve seen it happen in families, friendships, workplaces, and communities. Happiness can be treated like a betrayal. Moving forward is mistaken for forgetting. Finding peace is interpreted as not caring enough.

A couple of nights ago, I attended a women’s networking event. At one point, they tossed a beach ball into the crowd. Whoever caught it had to shout out something they were no longer carrying.

When the ball landed in my hands, my answer came without hesitation.

The words surprised me almost as much as they surprised everyone else.

For years, I carried the quiet belief that my happiness needed an apology. That I shouldn’t celebrate too loudly if someone else was hurting. That I needed to dim my joy so others wouldn’t feel worse. That moving on somehow meant I wasn’t compassionate enough.

But joy is not a limited resource.

My happiness doesn’t diminish someone else’s pain. My laughter doesn’t invalidate another person’s grief. My healing doesn’t erase anyone else’s struggle.

We can sit beside someone in their darkest moments without climbing into the darkness ourselves.

Some people will never understand that. They need company in their misery because it validates their worldview. Your peace reminds them that another path is possible, and sometimes that’s uncomfortable.

But you don’t owe anyone your unhappiness.

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You don’t have to shrink your accomplishments, hide your gratitude, or apologize because life is good today.

Be compassionate. Be present. Be generous.

But don’t carry guilt for choosing joy.

I know I won’t anymore.

I’ve learned that good is one of the most subjective words we use. One person’s masterpiece is another person’s “not my style.” If I waited for universal approval, nothing would ever leave my desk. So I stopped asking permission. I stopped waiting for someone else to declare that my writing, my photographs, or my artwork had finally crossed some invisible line.

Oddly enough, I rarely ask whether my work is good enough.

I trust it.

Not because I believe everything I create is perfect, but because I know how much of myself I bring to it. I know the care, curiosity, revision, and heart that go into every piece. My confidence isn’t rooted in applause; it’s rooted in effort. I can stand behind my work because I know I gave it everything I had.

But there is another question that continues to follow me.

Am I good enough?

Somehow that question has never really been about my work. It’s been about me.

It has little to do with whether I can write a compelling essay, create meaningful art, or lead a workshop. Instead, it quietly asks whether I am enough to deserve the opportunities, the recognition, the belonging. It asks whether other people see value in me, not just in what I produce.

That’s a much harder question to answer because I’ve spent most of my life looking outward for the response.

Lately, I’ve been trying something different.

Instead of asking the world whether I’m good enough, I’m asking myself.

Not as an exercise in positive thinking or forced confidence, but as an act of reclaiming authority over my own life. If I’ve already decided that strangers don’t get to determine the worth of my art, why should they determine the worth of the artist?

Maybe the question was never meant for anyone else to answer.

Maybe it has always belonged to me.

And perhaps the real work isn’t becoming good enough.

Perhaps it’s learning to believe that I already am.

It’s posted in airports, hospitals, schools, museums, places where people move from one thing to the next. Every time I passed it, I understood it in the most literal way: don’t run because you might fall.

Recently, I realized I may have missed the more important message.

We have become a culture that glorifies speed.

We admire the people who are always busy. We compare calendars as though being overwhelmed is a measure of success. We wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. Productivity apps multiply, morning routines become increasingly elaborate, and our to-do lists somehow grow faster than we can cross things off.

Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped asking what all this rushing is for.

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For years, I lived by lists.

There was always another proposal to write, another presentation to prepare, another class to teach, another email that couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Even the things I loved, like writing, making art, and speaking, could quietly become tasks to accomplish rather than experiences to enjoy.

I kept telling myself that I would slow down later.

After this deadline.

After this conference.

After this exhibition.

After this project.

There was always another “after.”

The problem with “after” is that it tends to move farther into the future.

The finish line keeps shifting.

The inbox fills again.

The next opportunity appears.

The list is never truly finished because life isn’t designed to produce an empty checklist.

And yet, we often postpone living until we imagine we’ll finally have time.

We postpone conversations with people we love.

We postpone reading books stacked on our nightstand.

We postpone watching sunsets because we’re answering emails.

We postpone taking the long walk because there are errands to finish.

We postpone creating because we should be productive.

We postpone joy until we’ve earned it.

But what if joy isn’t the reward for productivity?

What if it’s meant to accompany us through the work?

I’ve begun noticing the irony.

The moments I remember most are rarely the ones where I accomplished the most.

Getting lost while wandering unfamiliar streets in another country.

Watching light move across an old building with my camera in hand.

Listening to someone tell me a story that had nothing to do with efficiency.

Laughing until no one remembered what started it.

None of those moments appeared on a to-do list.

None of them could be optimized.

None of them made me more productive.

But they made me feel more alive.

Perhaps we’ve confused movement with progress.

Running faster doesn’t necessarily mean we’re heading toward something meaningful.

Sometimes it simply means we’re too busy to notice where we are.

I’m not advocating for abandoning ambition.

Goals matter.

Purpose matters.

Meaningful work matters.

I’ve spent my career helping organizations grow, teaching others, writing, creating art, and advocating for causes I deeply believe in. I know the satisfaction that comes from building something that didn’t exist before.

But I also know how easy it is for meaningful work to become relentless work.

To confuse urgency with importance.

To believe that every moment must produce something measurable.

The older I get, the more I question that equation.

Perhaps success isn’t only about what we complete.

Perhaps it’s also about how fully we inhabit the moments in between.

Maybe “Walk. Don’t Run.” is less about preventing accidents and more about preventing a different kind of loss.

The loss of noticing.

The loss of presence.

The loss of delight.

The loss of a life spent racing toward tomorrow while missing today.

I’ve started experimenting with walking a little more.

Not just literally.

Walking through galleries instead of rushing to see every exhibit.

Walking through conversations without checking my phone.

Walking through creative work without worrying whether it will become something.

Walking through ordinary afternoons without needing them to justify themselves.

It feels strangely unfamiliar.

And surprisingly radical.

Because in a world constantly asking us to move faster, slowing down can feel like resistance.

Maybe the sign was never only about safety.

Maybe it was an invitation.

Walk.

Notice.

Look up.

Take the longer route.

Leave something unchecked.

Allow yourself to arrive before racing toward what’s next.

Life was never waiting at the end of the list.

It has been happening all along.

This time, I don’t know why.

Life is, by all outward measures, good. I don’t feel overwhelmed. I’m not carrying the kind of obvious stress that usually leaves footprints. Work is busy, yes. I recently moved into a new home. There is always another deadline, another responsibility, another expectation. But none of it feels unmanageable.

Still, my body has made a different assessment.

When I told my doctor that I couldn’t identify the cause, she suggested that perhaps I was carrying stress subconsciously. Maybe my mind had adapted so well that I no longer recognized it, while my body had been keeping score all along.

I dismissed the idea at first. I know what stress feels like, don’t I?

And yet, do any of us truly know what our minds notice before we do? What they quietly catalog while we continue checking boxes, smiling through meetings, making dinner, paying bills, believing we’re fine?

Recently, in my Healing Through Writing class, something happened that made me question the relationship between mind and body in a different way. Out of seventeen participants, five wrote about living with illnesses they had once been told would define, or even shorten their lives. Doctors had given them timelines, prognoses, and limitations. Yet there they were, years later, writing their stories.

None of them claimed to have cured themselves.

But each of them wrote about refusing to surrender.

Their stories carried a quiet determination. A decision, made somewhere deep inside, that they would continue living despite what they had been told. They spoke of persistence, stubbornness, hope. Reading their words, I found myself wondering whether the mind exerts an influence we don’t fully understand.

Can resilience alter outcomes?

Or is it simply that the human spirit is more difficult to measure than any medical test can capture?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ve relied on my mind before.

Years ago, after a serious car accident, I was airlifted by helicopter to the hospital. I couldn’t move. Strapped to a backboard, surrounded by unfamiliar sounds, I remember becoming consumed by a single fear, not that I would die, but that I might lose my ability to think.

So I started doing multiplication tables in my head.

Then I translated the answers from Bangla into English.

Again and again.

It became my private test. As long as I could calculate and translate, I believed I was still myself.

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Looking back, I realize I wasn’t testing my brain as much as I was reassuring my soul.

Perhaps that is why I have always believed that our minds carry us through more than we realize.

But if that is true, why am I waking up with inflammation that seems to have arrived without invitation, even when my mind insists that everything is okay?

Maybe the relationship between mind and body isn’t a hierarchy at all.

Maybe neither is in charge.

Maybe they are simply having conversations that we are only partially allowed to hear.

But perhaps there is another kind of wisdom worth honoring, the wisdom of a body that whispers before it screams. A body that notices what we overlook. A body that remembers what we have convinced ourselves we’ve already moved beyond.

I’m still trying to understand what mine is saying.

I don’t know whether this flare is the result of stress, biology, randomness, or some combination of all three. I don’t know whether my subconscious is carrying something my conscious mind refuses to acknowledge.

Sometimes the most honest place we can stand is inside the question itself.

So for now, instead of asking, What’s wrong with me? I’m trying to ask a different question:

What are you trying to tell me?

I’m not sure my body owes me an answer.

But perhaps it deserves to be heard.

It was such a simple question.

One sentence.

One that quietly broke my heart in ways I wasn’t expecting.

My youngest graduates from college this November. She is twenty-two, standing on the edge of adulthood, excited and uncertain all at once. Like so many graduates, she’s asking the questions that arrive before the answers: Where will I live? What job will I find? What comes next?

And then she asked, almost hesitantly:

Of course she can.

That was never the question.

The ache came from somewhere much deeper.

Four years ago, after she left for college, I sold the house where my daughters grew up. Their father and I had divorced. He stayed in Texas. I moved across the country. We have built new rhythms now. The girls visit me. I visit them. We text regularly. My youngest spends much of her summers and holidays with me, partly because Seattle is much kinder than the Texas heat.

We are close.

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And yet, when she asked if she could “come live with me,” I realized something.

In her mind, my home is no longer home.

It’s Mom’s house.

The house she grew up in is gone, and somehow our culture tells us that home disappeared with it.

But it didn’t.

The house was sold.

Home wasn’t.

Home has never been drywall, the carpeted floors, or the address we memorized for school forms.

Home has always been us.

Home packed itself into moving boxes and crossed the country with me.

I wish our culture talked more about that.

Instead, we have another story we tell our children that somewhere between eighteen and twenty-one, a switch flips. You’re suddenly an adult. Independent. Self-sufficient. Ready.

As if there is some magical birthday where uncertainty expires.

But I’ve never believed in magical numbers.

One of my daughters didn’t walk until she was eighteen months old.

The other took her first steps at eleven months.

One spoke in full sentences before she turned one.

The other found her voice on her own timetable.

I never worried that one was ahead or behind. They were simply becoming themselves.

Why do we stop believing that once they reach adulthood?

At twenty-two, becoming doesn’t end.

At thirty-two, becoming doesn’t end.

At fifty-two, becoming doesn’t end.

We are all still arriving.

As parents, perhaps our role isn’t to launch our children into independence as quickly as possible.

Perhaps it is to remain a place where they can land.

Not because they have failed.

So when my daughter asked, “Can I come and live with you until I find a job?”

What I wanted to say was this:

You don’t have to ask.

You never stopped belonging here.

The address changed.

The walls changed.

The view outside the window changed.

But home didn’t.

Because home isn’t a place you outgrow.

It’s a relationship.

It’s knowing there will always be a light left on for you.

It’s knowing there will always be room at the table.

It’s knowing that no matter where life takes either of us, there is still one place where you never have to wonder if you’re welcome.

“Can I come and live with you?”

The more I think about it, the less it makes sense to me.

Does it mean God already knows exactly what each of us is capable of enduring, and then carefully distributes suffering according to our capacity? If that’s true, where does free will fit into the equation? If our challenges are assigned based on what God already knows we can bear, how much of our lives are we actually choosing?

Or perhaps the saying isn’t about God at all. Perhaps it’s something we tell one another because we desperately want suffering to make sense.

I’ve come to wonder whether our need to involve God in every joy, every heartbreak, every inconvenience says more about us than about the divine.

What if a higher power isn’t occupied with the minutiae of our daily lives? What if the divine concern is not whether I get the parking spot I wanted, miss my flight, or get the promotion? What if the concern is humanity itself, the arc of compassion, justice, creation, and our collective responsibility to one another?

I find myself imagining a God who is less interested in directing every individual event and more interested in what we, together, become.

Perhaps our daily choices still matter deeply, not because they are orchestrated by God, but because they shape the world we create for each other.

Maybe free will is the point.

Maybe faith isn’t believing that God handpicked every obstacle we encounter. Maybe faith is believing that whatever life brings, we have the capacity to respond with courage, kindness, wisdom, or grace.

I don’t know the answers.

But I do know that I’ve stopped finding comfort in the idea that every hardship was intentionally assigned to me. Instead, I find more peace in believing that life unfolds through chance, choice, consequence, and the interconnectedness of human beings—and that the sacred may be found not in why suffering happens, but in how we choose to meet it together.

Perhaps our greatest need isn’t to explain God.

Perhaps it’s our need to feel close enough to the divine that we weave God into every chapter of our own stories.

P.S. The featured image is a mixed-media piece I created. To learn more, visit

https://www.behind-the-lense.com

My first start-over came when my grandmother brought me back to live with her. I was seven years old, and the move from Dinajpur to Dhaka felt like stepping into an entirely new world. For the first time, I sat down to meals and slept in my own bed. It was a fresh start, though not without its own challenges. Before long, I was learning that every beginning carries both possibility and uncertainty.

Years later, my family immigrated from Bangladesh to Memphis, Tennessee. Once again, I found myself standing at the edge of the unknown. America represented opportunity, hope, and the promise of a different future. Like many immigrants, I boarded that plane believing I was leaving certain things behind while moving toward something better.

Not long after we arrived, my father died. At fourteen, I desperately wished I could start over again, not for opportunity this time, but to escape grief. I wanted a version of life where that loss had never happened.

College became another beginning. For four years, it was both refuge and freedom. I discovered who I was outside of my family, built friendships that expanded my world, and experienced the exhilaration of independence.

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Graduate school offered yet another fresh start. A new city. My own apartment. A life built on my own terms. It was a season of possibility, filled with firsts and fueled by the belief that reinvention was always within reach.

Soon after, I packed my life into a car and drove to Texas. In Austin, I met my future husband and built a life together. Sixteen years later, that chapter ended too. Following my divorce, I found myself once again standing at the beginning of an unfamiliar road.

These days, I sometimes tell myself I am too old to start over. Yet life keeps proving otherwise.

The truth is, starting over is not an extraordinary event reserved for moments of crisis or transformation. It is the natural rhythm of being human. Every morning offers a chance to begin again. Every conversation, every decision, every unexpected turn invites us into a new version of ourselves.

Starting over doesn’t mean erasing what came before. It means carrying our experiences forward and allowing them to shape what comes next. The lessons, the losses, the victories, and the mistakes all travel with us. They become part of the foundation for whatever we build next.

Perhaps that is why I no longer fear beginnings the way I once did.

Starting over isn’t a sign that something went wrong. It isn’t a failure or a success. It is simply life doing what life does, moving forward.

And today, as I write these words, I realize I am ready to begin again.

The question came up countless times during a conference I attended last week.

My answer was always the same.

“Yes.”

And that answer has been bothering me ever since.

Because this may be one of the most frightening moments I have witnessed in my lifetime. I’ve lived through difficult political seasons before. I’ve watched rights challenged, communities targeted, and progress stalled. But this feels different. For the first time, I find myself looking at our government not as a source of protection, but as a source of harm. The very institutions meant to safeguard people are increasingly threatening the rights, dignity, and safety of many.

The more I sit with the question, the more uncomfortable the answer becomes.

I am comfortable because I have insulated myself.

I don’t watch the news every day. I avoid endless political arguments. I stay away from social media battles, especially those fueled by outrage and extremism. I live inside a carefully constructed bubble of relative safety.

And maybe that distance has become its own form of comfort.

I have spent decades fighting. I knocked on doors. I made phone calls. I carried signs. I marched. I chanted. I showed up.

I fought for a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body when I was nineteen years old.

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Today, decades later, I am fighting many of the same battles.

Sometimes I wonder: Did any of it matter?

Because the rights we fought to secure are once again under attack. The conversations are familiar. The arguments are familiar. Only the faces have changed.

The fight never seems to end.

What ends instead is our energy.

What ends is our optimism.

What ends is our belief that our individual efforts can make a difference.

So I slowly stepped back. Not because I stopped caring, but because I was exhausted. Because hearing the same stories, generation after generation, became heartbreaking.

A few weeks ago, I sat in a room with a young woman who shared that she poured hot water between her legs to numb her pain.

I had never heard anyone say those words before.

In that moment, I realized that despite the decades between us, her struggle was not so different from the struggles women have always carried. Different circumstances. Different generation. Same pain.

I couldn’t solve it for her.

I couldn’t fix it.

All I could do was create space for her story and bear witness to it.

But her words have stayed with me.

As has another question that was posed during the conference.

The question landed heavily.

Because comfort is seductive.

Comfort tells us someone else will handle it.

Comfort tells us we’ve done enough.

Comfort tells us we’ve earned the right to step away.

But history rarely remembers the comfortable.

It remembers those willing to be uncomfortable.

That doesn’t mean we all have to protest in the same way. It doesn’t mean everyone needs to march, organize, campaign, or stand on a street corner holding a sign.

Maybe it’s having a difficult conversation.

Maybe it’s calling an elected official.

Maybe it’s donating money.

Maybe it’s volunteering time.

Maybe it’s simply refusing to look away.

But if we remain comfortable while others bear the consequences, then comfort itself becomes a privilege that future generations cannot afford.

I am beginning to realize that my comfort is not peace.

It is distance.

And distance may protect me for a while, but it does nothing to protect those I love, those whose rights are being threatened today, or those who will inherit whatever world we leave behind.

So perhaps the better question isn’t whether I’m comfortable.

Perhaps the question is whether I’m willing to become uncomfortable again.

Because until enough of us are, life will remain uncomfortable for those who have the least power to change it.

When someone needs to give me bad news, I don’t want a five-minute introduction. I don’t need a carefully crafted preamble. I don’t want to hear, “First, let me tell you how much I appreciate you.”

In fact, the longer the introduction, the more anxious I become. While the other person is trying to soften the blow, I am no longer listening. My mind is racing ahead, trying to figure out what is coming. The waiting is often worse than the news itself.

For years, I assumed everyone felt the same way.

As a leader, I have sometimes delivered feedback with the same philosophy. Why spend ten minutes making someone feel good when you could spend one minute getting to the point?

Every so often, I am reminded that not everyone appreciates this approach.

I have spent a lot of time wondering why.

Recently, I began asking a different question: What if my preference for directness is not simply a personality trait? What if it is connected to how I learned to survive?

Growing up, punishment rarely arrived without warning.

Sometimes it came as a sentence.

The punishment itself was terrible, but the waiting was often worse.

I remember listening for footsteps. I remember hearing them get closer. I remember trying to calculate how much time I had left before the inevitable happened. I remember wanting to run toward the punishment simply to end the anticipation.

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At least once the beating started, the uncertainty was over.

As an adult, I have come to realize that I still struggle with waiting for bad news. Uncertainty feels heavier than certainty, even when the certainty is painful.

Researchers call this “intolerance of uncertainty.” Studies have found that individuals who have experienced childhood abuse and trauma often have a harder time tolerating unknown outcomes. When your nervous system learns that danger can arrive at any moment, uncertainty is not experienced as neutral. It is experienced as a threat.

Suddenly, a lot of things make sense.

My desire for people to “just tell me.”

My frustration with long introductions.

My tendency is to rip off the Band-Aid rather than ease into difficult conversations.

The little girl listening for footsteps is still somewhere inside me.

She believes that waiting is dangerous.

She believes that anticipation hurts.

She believes that knowing is always better than wondering.

Understanding this does not excuse my bluntness. Not everyone shares my history, and not everyone experiences difficult conversations the same way. Good leadership requires meeting people where they are, not where I am.

But understanding the origin of a behavior allows me to hold it with more compassion.

Perhaps what I have called impatience is actually protection.

Perhaps what I have called bluntness is a nervous system trying to spare others from a kind of suffering it knows too well.

And perhaps growth is learning that the people around me are not waiting for my uncle’s footsteps.

I am.

Even now.

Sometimes, understanding ourselves is not about discovering something new.

It is about finally recognizing the child who has been quietly shaping our decisions all along.

People often assume that because I survived breast cancer, because I stopped wearing wigs, because I no longer spend hours trying to hide my thinning hair, I must have made peace with it.

I haven’t.

Not entirely.

I was a Bangladeshi girl with long hair until the night before my first day of school, when my uncle shaved my head. I cut it all off again after my father died and my mother slapped me for it. In college, I permed it, cut it, reshaped it, and experimented with it as an act of independence.

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Hair was never just hair.

It was identity.

It was femininity.

It was rebellion.

It was grief.

Then psoriasis arrived.

Then hair loss.

Then the extensions.

Then the wigs.

Then breast cancer.

And through every chapter, people offered reassurance.

“It’s just hair.”

The phrase is meant to comfort.

Instead, it often feels dismissive.

Why do I still notice women with thick ponytails?

Why do I still feel a small ache when I look in the mirror?

Why do I upload photographs into AI programs and ask them to give me back the hair I once had?

I have done that more times than I can count.

Sometimes the results are ridiculous. The hair is too thick, too perfect, too young.

But sometimes the image appears on the screen, and I stop.

And then I cry.

Not every time.

But enough.

The tears aren’t really about hair.

Or maybe they are.

I don’t know anymore.

They are about aging.

About illness.

About everything time took and everything it left behind.

They are about the woman I used to be and the woman I am still becoming.

People love stories that end with acceptance. We want the survivor to stand up and declare that she has learned to love every scar, every loss, every change.

I understand why.

Those stories are hopeful.

But they are not always true.

The truth is messier.

The truth is that some losses remain losses.

The truth is that I can be grateful to be alive and still mourn what was taken.

The truth is that I can advocate for self-acceptance and still wish I had my hair back.

Sometimes healing looks like opening an app, restoring the hair in an old photograph, staring at the image for a few minutes, and grieving all over again.

Not because I am stuck.

Not because I haven’t grown.

But because love and loss often occupy the same space.

I don’t have a lesson to offer.

I don’t have a tidy ending.

Sometimes I recognize her immediately.

Sometimes I miss her terribly.

And sometimes, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I cry.