Coming Home to Myself

We cross the Bosphorus Strait via a steamer ferry that has been running nonstop for decades, so we can wander through my old neighborhood. Europe to Asia. Two continents split a city that knows more splits than I can count. On the hill above, the newest and biggest mosque is rivaled in height by the…

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On Writing Myself Alive

First, I wrote Leyla. She was a teen I thought my own teen girls might like. Leyla was for them. A Turkish girl, wandering the old city, who falls into an epic adventure to uncover a secret passed among women for two millennia. As she learns to embrace her own strength, she must also accept…

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For Those Who Are Spiritually Homeless

I have a memory of belonging, of feeling at home.

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Chasing Passion Among Sheep

It is approximately 1:00 am when the bus pulls into the service center and I file out behind the women wearing headscarves. I am a spectacle, to be sure. I pay to use the Turkish toilet, remembering the awkward squat this set up requires and one particular time on a ferry boat while 7 months…

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The Presence of Photography

I miss my son. College is a brutal separation and makes me more sentimental than I have ever been. Scrolling through photos taken during our summer vacation, feeling a bit weepy over the ones with him and me, I am full of gratitude. Beyond the memories of the adventure, I marvel at the textures, the…

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A Bookend Journey

Above my desk hangs a framed black and white photo of two sets of feet. I took it on our first vacation as a family of three. My husband’s feet are covered in white sand and my one-year-old’s chubby toes sit atop. The vacation was paid for by parents and preceded our move overseas by…

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Spies, Spices and Scarves

I woke in a sweat and hurled myself into my husband’s arms in the kitchen. When had I last remembered a dream so vividly and when had I last felt such panic and fear?

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