Columns

“Wow, look at the COVID-19 stats in the U.S.! Our numbers are awesome! With so many people getting vaccinated, we can finally start going back to normal.” — Seemingly everyone but me It feels like I’m the only person in my part of the world that still has to…

Here’s what you need to know about disabled people. First, don’t call them “disabled people” unless they want to be called disabled people. Or people with disabilities. Or neither. I don’t call myself a disabled person, personally. It’s not because I don’t support the community or consider myself an…

My message is simple: It is a systemic injustice, even ableist, to heap unbearable financial burdens on people with disabilities (PwD). Before I continue: This column doesn’t critique political parties or provide solutions; it raises red flags so others are mobilized to finding solutions. This column focuses on issues…

“My second nephew was just born,” my boss texted me the other day. “If you have any parenting advice, I’ll pass it along.” I sat down to write him a couple of sentences regarding his brother’s first baby. Instead, I wrote this column. I became a mother unexpectedly as a…

My whole life changed after I had a double-lung transplant three years ago. When drastic life changes occur, they can shake us to the core. We can struggle to understand the implications of what we are going through until we’re already facing the aftermath. That’s what happened to me when…

This column is brought to you by anxiety. My anxiety isn’t very nice to me. She knows I need to write a column today, and that it’s the only day I can do it, but also that I have a mile-long to-do list I need to finish quickly. She knows…

When I was asked to write this column over two years ago, I was thrilled, but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write about. I knew I would have some leniency to tackle different subjects, and I didn’t want to be boxed in. But I also wanted to…

My friend wrote a column about me and it goes like this: “Have you ever sat and actually stared at the sky, following a cloud, watching it transform and dissipate? Have you ever seen a flower wilt in decay? Have you ever felt so physically miserable that you actually had…

I wonder what it would look like if our mental health struggles were visible to the outside world. Most of the time, they aren’t. In school, we weren’t taught how to manage our mental health. There was no subject about being healthy mentally or emotionally. Western medicine has led those…

“I need to change my language.” I said this to my rehearsal director the other day after realizing I said the word “adaptive” again. “I hate the word adaptive,” I kept saying with increasing intensity. “It denotes that something is more and something is less.” In dance, we use the…