Mutha Magazine

When my husband and I had our first child in the middle of winter, he was in his first year of medical residency, and I was a junior faculty member and the primary earner in our household at that time. Our days were long, our nights were fragmented, and our schedules rarely aligned. We were both working inside the health sector, yet what sustained us during that season of lif...

After the divorce, Layla and I grew into a rhythm. I methodically got us ready to meet each day. The condo felt too big for one and a half people. I missed my family of three. Her dad, Corey, wasn’t coming back. Two would have to do.

I captured Layla’s milestones and shared them with Corey. Little videos here and there and an almost daily picture accompanied a text....

Almost time. My roommate had sat on my suitcase and wrestled with the clasps to force it shut. She found a rope and tied it around the suitcase for safety. Then she gave me a tote with a picture of horses on it, so I could carry on the plane my treasured cassettes of the most-well known arias of women opera stars, my idols.

After four months, I could hardly believe ...

Intellectually I believed in it. Resting. Yet spiritually I fought it. It was an unconscious fight, but a fight nonetheless; it was a conflict deeply rooted.

Perhaps the roots of this fight started growing in my childhood. A childhood where I’d walk home from school with my siblings and find my mother asleep on the couch. I don’t know where I first heard th...

“Are these nits?” my mother-in-law said as she braided my niece’s hair.

“She might have dandruff,” said the father of the little girl with the beautiful thick mane.

It was a slow Saturday morning in the South of France, the first day of an eight-day trip to celebrate my mother-in-law’s milestone birthday. My husband Manu and his two siblings planned this ...