Cappadocia, Turkey For the first time since my traumatic brain injury, I am beginning to picture a future outside the day-to-day commitments for recovery. I hadn’t noticed how small my world had become until it started to open up again. For years, these commitments restricted my focus to the urgent: medical appointments, neurological milestones, pain, exhaustion, never-ending paperwork, and the daily challenge of inhabiting a body that no longer moved as it once did. Recovery

Ilulissat, Greenland 2016 I recently watched footage of thousands of people attempting to swim from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Much of the reporting focused on the scale of the event, and the language quickly became familiar: crisis, wave, invasion, which we are bombarded with on the news channels. But what stayed with me was when a journalist asked why they wanted to come to Europe, and from within the crowd came one unanimous response: hope. They didn't whispe

COVID-19 TESTSTATION in Charlottenburg, Berlin, 2026 For the past week, I've been working with my lymphatic system. For years, my body has carried swelling that would come and go. There were days when my clothes no longer fit comfortably and days when walking became painful. Like so many people living with multiple health conditions, it wasn't always obvious which symptom belonged to which diagnosis. Was it my traumatic brain injury? Chronic pain? Hormones? Stress? Something

The other night, I found myself at a salon in someone's apartment in Berlin. There were performances, conversations, and a steady stream of people arriving throughout the evening. As the apartment filled, it quickly moved beyond my comfort level. Since my brain injury, I have a much lower threshold for stimulation, and after a while, I needed to step outside. What happened next became more interesting than the event itself. A small group formed on the sidewalk. Maybe ten peop