I spent my first five years as a parent living out of a suitcase on a beach. In those five years, we moved many times: when the rent was raised, when a typhoon knocked the power lines, and when my husband changed employers with different housing plans.

We literally lived out of a suitcase, one for each family member: one for me, one for my husband Francis, and one for our daughter Dione who moved with us to the beach when she turned one. …

My nine-year old daughter Dione just told me today, “You know what I’m feeling nostalgic for?” Nostalgia is a big word she’s been learning about lately. “I’m feeling nostalgic for construction sounds. For the sounds of heavy traffic in the morning going to school. For that irritating music at the mall. For the smell inside the plane, the salty noodles in a cup, or when we eat at the airport before boarding.”

Where we live, children have been locked down for a year already. They’re absolutely not allowed on the roads. …

It no longer astonishes me when I meet parents who unintentionally inflict on their children the same wounds they suffered while growing up.

It tends to arise from unconfronted, unresolved trauma.

My mother-in-law, for example, resented being given away by her parents to be raised by a cruel aunt. But when she had a child of her own (my husband), she couldn’t help falling back on the same severe, fear-based parenting style that casted dark shadows on her childhood.

As though her childhood wasn’t miserable enough, she was widowed early, just a couple of years into a happy marriage. She…

1. It would be presumptuous of me to think that what works for me universally works for others.
2. I’m not a clinician, therapist, or consultant with extensive client experience. I’m not a life coach, preacher, or guru. I’m a storyteller. I presume readers can pick whatever lesson from a story that’s particularly relevant to them— if there were any, at all.
3. I am, however, a teacher by profession. The best ones among us are too aware of the limits of what they teach, they hardly make guarantees of anything. They teach by example, not by prescription.
4. In writing as in life…

I unfollowed a writer who is clearly making a lot by publishing often on this platform, but publishing the same content over and over. The headlines vary, the words vary, but the message is the same: write often, write good headlines, and strangely — don’t obsess about making money, don’t obsess about your stats.

For someone who advises not to obsess about these things, but is barely writing about anything else, I wonder who really is the one being obsessed here?

This is not the first time I unfollowed such a writer.

I follow writers who give good writing advice…

I remember the first and only time I went cliff diving. I was young, and I was with young people. The tour operator said, “The first jump is the hardest. After that, you’d be surprised at how addicting cliff diving can be.”

I wore a life vest, so all I really had to do was let go. I wouldn’t drown, I would surely be lifted to the surface after the dive. I had always been afraid of heights, I hated rollercoasters and never learned to enjoy them, but I loved being in the water and the lowest jumping point was…

As any beginning blogger would, I searched the Internet for writing advice specific to blogging. I’ve been writing and editing for twenty years, from college as a creative writing major, to graduate school and then academia. I wrote newsletters for corporate clients and articles for magazines. In academia, I wrote papers and managed an academic journal. For a time, I lived on an island, worked with their local writers, and published their magazine.

But when it comes to blogging, I knew that the rules would be a bit different, so I dug around to investigate.

I discovered that most blogging…

I didn’t know what they were the first time I felt them bursting sweet, toasty, citrusy flavors in my mouth. My husband Francis and I were having an Indian dinner served with generous amounts of fragrant, saffron-yellowed basmati rice with a smattering of these tiny globules. They were few, but their ribbed roundedness stood out in a plateful of long and lanky basmati grains.

The rice was pillowy soft, so the unexpected crunch before the burst of spice took me by surprise, every single time. “What are these lovely things like popcorn in my mouth? …