…feelings that I know orbit around this single question:

How far will it go—or rather, how far will we take it?

Knowing what our species does with any technological advancement, I am not stupid for worrying. Except as I heard once, “worrying is praying for what you don’t want,” which reminds me that worry is useless.

So next comes intrigue—a wondering about what I can do about it. Might AI be a good thing? This gives way to hope, that maybe it can help, which quickly deteriorates to disgust because I see how others are misusing it, exploiting the work of others, etc. etc. At this point, I become irritated, at myself for considering it, as well as other people for falling for it. But who am I to stop this thing? Perhaps I’ll move far away and live off the grid...

It is then the rage emergs. FUCK NO! I am a WRITER! My perspective matters! And I need to live amongst people for my writing to mean anything…. I have to consider the technology and take a stance.

First thing’s first: I don’t use AIT to write. For me, using AI has been a discipline, in that I have disciplined myself to not use it as a shortcut to the work I most enjoy doing, that is, drafting, writing, revising…carving out a story (for readers, as much as for myself.)

Writing is challenging. It sometimes flows right out. Sometimes getting a word out is like pulling teeth. But in the end, it is a process. You start with words and you end with words. It is what happens in the middle that matters.

The middle is a process few can pinpoint, truly…We definitely try, but each work asks to be approached differently. Some writing practices remain consistent for a writer, but they don’t always work.

A lot happens in the subconscious when we write. And a lot happens at the conscious level. And then there is a spiritual component to writing as well, an energy about the whole thing I can’t quite explain, but one thing I know is that it’s a process that can’t be replicated from one work to the next, not by a technology, and not by us.

AI and writing

However, I am human with access to technology. And I can’t bash something I know little about. Technology is meant to make our lives easier. It’s supposed to the bridge the gap and even the playing field. Arguably, it has.

As a new mom, my brain isn’t operating the way it used to. My memory has gone to shit and I lack time and energy. But I am committed to writing and I want to produce something of value.

So what to do…

First off, I consider the ethics. I know that AI exists because existing work has been taken, often without consent, to train AI models. In using it, we are questioning copyright and fair use. In “confessing” we use AI, we are confessing to holding a double standard, in a way. Many of us defer to the companies, trusting that they’ve done things “by the book” (what a serendipitous phrase to use...) and so we decide, why not give it a try. Everyone else is doing it, right?

Like with all technology, the early days are a testing period. Current AI companies have given away the tools practically for free. They want to see how users are using it and use this information to further train the technology. They’re building context for the tool, and in some ways I do want to be a part of that.

This cheap AI era won’t last forever. Tokens have a price. AI needs infrastructure and energy to operate. Someone is paying for this and right now, it’s the tech companies who have more to gain from use than from monetization. Give it enough time and it won’t be about equal access. It will be yet another tool that is exploited by some at the detriment of others.

It’s inevitable it seems that any question we pose about our culture and society always reduces itself to a question about late-stage capitalism. It’s a system that is difficult to escape. It’s everywhere. It doesn’t care if we agree with it or not. It’s a jungle out there and we are just one more generation trying to survive.

But for now, it’s a free-for-all, and I want to be part of the statistic that uses it in a way that adheres to a creative ethic. And that means I don’t want it to generate text for me.

It’s not even so much about quality, really. I just don’t value its process. It generates text for me using too wide a pool of data that is not relevant to me, my life, my experiences, or my world. Predictive models are inherently not creative if they’re based on probability. And leaning into generative AI is akin to leaning into Groupthink.

How could I expect AI to generate writing of value when what makes my writing mine is that the pool of data I use is wholly my own?

But in my effort to survive as a writer and a new mom, I have given myself permission, for the time being, to use AI—but only in one of two ways that I feel are ethical and allow me to be the creative writer that I am.

The first type of prompt I use is this:

The second type of prompt I use is this:

So there you have it. This is how I am using AI right now. It’s limited in this way because I do not want it to replace an essential aspect of a piece of writing: the writing process.

Writing, technically, requires tools, whether it be a library, a pen, or a keyboard. But to be a writer requires my brain, my mind, my heart, and my spirit, and the only way to generate writing which is 100% statistically in line with that is by writing it myself. Otherwise, I’m just a machine and this is not the kind of writing I am interested in pursuing.

The speech in question is on the topic of tikkun olam—the Jewish concept of repairing the world. I don’t remember what I shared on the subject though. I guess I blacked out.

I’ve stepped onto many stages since that day. Exposure therapy, I thought. At work, I volunteered to give more presentations and facilitate more workshops. On the side, I taught marketing courses, then moved into creative writing courses and conference presentations. At one point, in 2024, I even took improv lessons, which helped, but I still wasn’t cured of that hellish heartbeat that made me speed my way to the finish line every time I had a captive audience.

I know it’s a flight response, an animalistic fear of being singled out and eaten by a predator.

Since becoming a mom, something has changed though. Earlier this year, I stood up in front of about a dozen people and read a chapter from my memoir-in-progress. I was still, at the ready. I adjusted my mic and my voice came through loud and clear, steady. I was fully myself, present and committed and yes, nervous, but not jittering or afraid to be myself. I made some jokes, got a few laughs—dare I say, I felt comfortable.

Another time, this past spring, it happened again like this. This time, it was in front of a crowd of forty people in a more formal setting. And I didn’t even flinch. I got up there and said my piece and didn’t rush off the stage when I received applause. Heck, I even made a few mistakes, scrolled too fast on my phone as I read then had to find my spot again and again. I came away feeling superbly proud of myself, the only lingering sensation, a lesson: print out the excerpt next time.

The contrast of feeling as I think back to those two moments are not lost on me. It almost feels like two different people.

It’s true, in a way.

Over the years, I spent a lot of time searching for myself, chipping away at the many labels and boxes society threw upon me or forced me to step into for survival. I sat in silent meditation, experimented with altered states of consciousness, explored ego death. But nothing brought about a rebirth the way motherhood has, a journey that started long before I was pregnant with Nora.

I grew up hiding so much of myself, but over the years, I’ve seen how healing it is to be willing to show different sides of myself. By being okay to talk about things like my miscarriage, my battle with depression and anxiety, the intergenerational trauma I carry, my migratory grief…I’ve brought consciousness into my life and clarified my sense of self to others but as well as to myself. I don’t always know what I’m about or what I feel or think, but I’m exploring it, often out in the open, and that expression of self feels authentic to me even if I can’t always pin myself down.

Then I became Nora’s mom and in that experience I continue to see the unfolding, which only opens me up to more fluidity in my identity.

I guess I had to become something else—something more—to finally understand who I am—which is someone who is always changing, usually unsure, but always willing to show up and try.

I wrote a creative nonfiction piece once about going for a haircut back in my twenties. It opens with me driving, my eye on the radio clock in my old ‘82 Corolla. I am late. I am cutting through traffic, cursing under my breath. Every car is in my way. No one knows how to drive. I am brilliant and they are all idiots. And they’re going to make me late for my hair appointment.

When I finally arrive and get into the chair, my hairdresser Diana asks me what kind of cut I want. I shrug as if I could care less, except in actuality, I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Every time I go for a haircut, I obsess over photos, looking for the perfect reference so I can finally cut it the way I like. It’s the reason I was running late. I spent too much time thinking, right to the last minute after I finally became willing to admit to myself, yet again, that I yearned for change.

But like every other time, I say to Diana, “I’m not sure. What do you think?” I am too scared to show her the photo saved in my screenshots folder.

She offers some suggestions, as she tousles my hair, feeling its fullness and coarse texture and gently leads me to a decision. Another shaggy bob.

Every hair appointment thus, ends like this: Diana puts down her blowdryer, I smile saying I love it, then I walk out feeling fresh. I snap a photo and send it to my mom and a friend or two. Then, I come home, look in the mirror, and reach for the scissors. There’s always something wrong with it. Every wash after thst, the scissors come out, again and again.

The way we cut our hair, is the way we live our life.

This is a direct quote from that essay I wrote. I was writing about hesitation, my lack of confidence. With every new haircut, I was always feeling stuck with the old. I wanted to change the world, my circumstances, but I didn’t realize that what I actually needed was to change my relationship to myself.

Then I became a Mom. I cut my hair once because it took too long to dry. Then I cut it again because Nora was grabbing at it. Then another time I cut it just for kicks, in Kyoto, with a hairdresser I could barely understand. Then a couple of months later, I came back to Diana and had it cut it again. Each time, I demanded a major change.

I didn’t always love the new style, but who cares. Even the one I have now, which is the shortest I’ve ever had my hair, I was not so sure about. My opinion of it changes as quickly as it grows out. But it’s just hair and I’m done being afraid—of a better version of myself. I love who I am and who I am fighting to be.

There was a time when I thought of that little girl who was jittering at the front of the classroom and I was ashamed of her. I believed that because she existed I was destined to be her forever, nervous and alone. But now I know that she was fighting for herself then too, even if it didn’t look like it.

It took me loving Nora to learn to love myself. She showed me how important it is not to run from my fears but to face them and fight them—for my future and hers.

And this might just be how we fix a broken world, I realize. We can’t heal the world if we can’t heal ourselves. We can’t love each other unless we love her.

Love,

Vish

No small incident (stepping on a slimy hairball, spilling coffee beans all over the counter, missing an important delivery), is worthy of becoming an avalanche if we can manage it. Every “bad day” can be salvaged, if anything, by changing expectations, just as every “good day” can take a complete 180 despite our greatest efforts :) It’s the Wheel of Fortune, and the more you can accept that life is unpredictable, the more you’re likely to feel it spinning. (I, for one, have never felt it more than since having a child, which has been my greatest meeting with unpredictability.)

The image of the wheel spinning reminds me of the Five Rhythms, a conscious dance movement I joined when I was living in London many years ago. It’s pretty much a two-hour dance party where you move however you feel. Our body knows—the five rhythms: chaos, lyrical, staccato, flow, and stillness. (Yes, stillness is one, too.) Practicing it shows you that all you have to do is stop and notice and then before long, you’re calibrated, modulating to the environment effortlessly.

Life is like getting whirled around in a dance. We stumble, we get stepped on, but the music’s always there to be enjoyed if we can listen to the beat and then set our tempo accordingly—half time, double time, whatever works for us and our energy.

My recent trip to Squamish with Nora, our first mom and daughter getaway, is experiential proof.

On the drive up everything was splendid, until it wasn’t. I was organized and planned everything to a T. I had a great morning with a friend and then decided I’d hit the road at 2 pm just after Nora’s nap. But by 2:45pm, we were pulled over, Nora standing shirtless next to me as I pulled wet wipe after wet wipe into a dirty heap on the pavement. She had been slightly cranky on the drive up. I thought maybe she was hungry so I decided to turn off and prepare a bottle, but then got all twisted up around Lions Bay and forgot that a windy road and all that reversing was probably not great for a one-year-old tum-tum.

Cut to us at the parking lot with no bathroom in sight. As soon as I stopped the car, poor Nora threw up everywhere (what was clearly yogurt and cherries…)

Luckily, she wasn’t perturbed (bless her little giant soul). She happily complied with all my fussing, sat back down in the disgusting car seat and we were on our “merry way.” I put on Feist to lift the mood and turned on the AC to mask the smell and she fell asleep promptly as we arrived in Squamish, her power nap just long enough for me to unload the car. The next three days were absolutely lovely. She slept like a dream in her travel crib, and this mama really got a good break, enjoyed some cider, finished reading her book, saw my best friend every day, and even got to bed early two out of the three nights.

But on the last night, after a full day with Auntie Stef and at Alice Lake, I couldn’t fall sleep. So I stayed up on my phone posting photos to Instagram then got pulled into stupid NYT Games vortex—until midnight. All the while my Gene Wolfe book mockingly sat on my lap until the guilt finally overpowered me and got me reading… myself to sleep.

Then, low and behold, five freakin’ hours later, I heard Nora. After weeks of 8 am wakeups, my little lady decided to wake up at 5 am wide awake.

I think it’s the first time since having her that I felt like I was going to die of tiredness and fantasized about melting away into the mattress...

I tried the milk trick, and the cuddle trick, and even the Tylenol trick, but it wasn’t hunger, it wasn’t sleepiness, and it wasn’t teething. She was just ready to go. So I did the only thing I knew to do: Go. I packed the car, skipped one last breakfast with Stefie, and we got on the road back to the city.

The drive was luckily uneventful and traffic-free. Nora slept the whole way, and by 9:15 am we were rolling into our parkade with Daddy at our heels helping to unload the car. I was utterly exhausted and with Jason back to work shortly and Nora already having had her nap, I hit a major wall. The day was going to kill me slowly as I imagined myself dragging around, barely keeping my eyes open for the next eight hours. My Destination BC coworkers were planning a big day at the FIFA FanFest at the PNE and I said I’d join them but now, there was no way we were going to make it.

But then I took a moment and thought: Why not?

So, I got us back in the car and we headed out again. I decided that what I actually needed was to go double tempo to beat the exhaustion (and the FOMO).

Shortly into the drive, I learned my had a free ticket for me for the Amphitheatre. And if that wasn’t good omen enough, I even found free parking four blocks away!

And it turned out to be THE best day ever. The hormones kicked in—this time, adrenalin. We watched Messi et.al. take on Beckham et.al. on the big screen, then met up with my coworkers at the Vineyard for some drinks…and even caught Feist herself on the big stage. (Nora, in her Nora way, modulated perfectly to the day and even took a short nap on me in between the game and the concert, just enough to be back at it again in the stands.)

Our time is too valuable to just dismiss a day as a total loss. Sometimes it’s just about shifting gears, whether slowing down or amping up, to align our energy with the rhythms around us. (I looked up the idiom and apparently “to write the day off” comes from accounting and insurance and that is one field I won’t draw life advice from….)

Some days we need the couch, a bath, laying about the bed with our toddler. Some days, we gotta just go, get out the door and see where the day takes us. And some days you do go and then you realize you just gotta head back. I’ve had those too (literally crying in my car in the parking lot and deciding to tun back home because I didn’t have it in me to sit with my friends and drink wine).

All of it is okay.

Just listen, modulate, and repeat. 🎶

I didn’t expect it, but I felt the most “at home” cheering on Canada. This realization has been difficult to accept. Let me explain.

When Bosnia played Canada in Toronto’s opening match, I felt torn, and I wrote about it, as many of you read. My cousins had invited me over to watch the game with them. I was genuinely excited to go, but then Nora, got sick and we wound up staying home.

Looking back, it feels profoundly symbolic—as if motherhood responsibilities gave me a valid reason to step back from the entire damn thing. I don’t think I was ready to feel into the paradoxical hesitation of not wanting to cheer on either side while also longing to cheer on both.

Lately, I’ve felt really alienated from my own culture—whatever it is. In one way this is showing up is when thinking about my own language, arguably one of the most significant aspects of a culture any one of us can claim.

I am perfectly fluent in Serbo-Croatian, often more fluent than many people my age who grew up in the diaspora. This is thanks to having spoken it exclusively at home growing up.

But I don’t consistently speak it with Nora. A cousin in Belgrade was openly surprised by this when I sent him a video where I was speaking to her in English. A Serbian friend of mine here in Vancouver speaks the language to her child daily, despite struggling to speak it around her Canadian husband. But for me, it just doesn’t feel natural. It takes great effort, even when I’m alone. I do try, but I just reset back to English without even noticing.

I think in English. I feel in English. English was the language that welcomed me when I was a little seven-year-old kid trying to understand a complicated new world.

I recently brought this up in a multicultural parenting group on Facebook, and another mother introduced me to an idea that hit me to the core: the distinction between functional language and emotional language.

That is exactly the boundary I am hitting. My Serbo-Croatian is functionally fluent. I have the vocabulary, the grammar, the accent. But language carries the emotional climate of the era in which it was built. For me, that language is inextricably tied to the highest collective stress of my family’s life—the war, the flight, the uncertainty of being a refugee. My nervous system remembers... when I speak my mother tongue, a rougher, tougher, angrier version of myself surfaces—a version that at once feels real but also…resentful, ugly, and most of all, tired.

English, on the other hand, I realize, is my emotional language. It is the language of my safety, my adulthood, and my spiritual growth. It is the language of my inner self, and of my motherhood.

When I am with Nora, there is of course much more to our communication than just verbal language. I practice being present with her, unhindered in my instincts, which ultimately have a verbal component…. But, I don’t want to play a role of a Balkan mother. I want to just be her mother. I don’t want to be performing my heritage and efforting my way out of principle (whose principle?). (Un?)Fortunately, my heritage is as such that I do not feel authentic when speaking solely in Serbo-Croatian with her.

Yet.

I often feel guilty.

I stay awake at night wondering, how has my culture been stolen away from me? If my daughter loses my language, will I have failed her—will I have surrendered to some greater (colonizing/Western power)? Or did I willingly assimilate myself away because tribalism and nationalism don’t align with my core values?

I admit I like being neutral. Not in a passive way, but in a radical way. I reject the rigid, tribal boxes so many of us are coerced into by powermongers (who start civil wars). There was a time when nationalism was a bad word. Now it seems to be everywhere and accepted gladly and I think it’s because of the system we live in (the same one that sponsors wars and international sports, which require competition).

I think back to yesterday’s afternoon game at the Pearl, when I watched Brazil win in a massive club full fans clad in vibrant green and yellow. I watched from the edge of the room with a familiar, heavy ache in my stomach. People were jumping, singing, spilling their drinks, locked in a collective, uncomplicated, sense of national belonging. They looked so incredibly happy and it looked so easy.

The sad math of neutrality is that it often feels like it equals zero. In my efforts to feel like I am from everywhere (a child of the world,) I feel like I am from nowhere, (a forgotten child). I feel cheated when I look around me and see the joyous ways in which some people are able to celebrate their belonging.

But I also know how quickly, this ease, this happy sense of tribalism, can turn into fervour, fanaticism, violence (like when there is financial unrest, geopolitical tensions, a power vacuum). We’ve seen it happen everywhere from afar. Some of us have seen it up close.

Luckily, Nora’s starting point is entirely different from mine. Canada will be her default. She won’t feel the sting of being “from nowhere” because she will be entirely from here. I hope she won’t carry the heavy, generational trauma of Balkan politics that build division and cruelty in people’s hearts (just the other day I was blasted on a forum for calling my language “Serbo-Croatian”). She will grow up, I hope, effortlessly rooted in the land she is on because no one will strike her from it.

It scares me though, because that’s what my parents once believed. My grandparents, too. I think all generations who grew up with privilege, at some point believed that their way of life was untouchable. Until it wasn’t.

Yesterday, our FIFA day started with the noon match, watching Canada play, this time against the “neutral” Swiss (the symbols continue). I sat on the steps outside Relish, sipping cold beers pulled from my backpack and struck up a conversation with some folks. One of them was a guy from Ontario whose grandparents had immigrated from Italy—specifically, the Free Territory of Trieste. Without skipping a beat, he told me how Trieste had actually been administered by Yugoslavia for a brief period after WWII, a piece of history I didn’t know.

It felt so beautifully and uniquely Canadian to sit on those steps, trading fractured historical timelines with a stranger. He confessed that he never felt at home in Toronto, and that Vancouver felt much warmer to him, both figuratively and literally. As he spoke, I nodded, thinking about the massive Yugoslav diaspora concentrated in Ontario, my mind drifting to the Instagram reels flooding my feed, the sea of Bosnian flags choking Toronto’s streets. I just couldn’t picture myself in that crowd.

Perhaps in the years to come, I will wave Canada’s flag more readily. I don’t know. But what I do hope is that whatever Jason and I teach Nora, it will ultimately be the values that uphold human dignity, respect, and love.

I hope she will learn resilience from me. I hope she will learn authenticity and critical thinking and mindfulness and curiosity and justice and self-respect. I hope that she will learn cooperation and teamwork and love.

I ultimately hope she cheers for herself. But I also want others to be cheering for her. I want her cheering for others. I want her celebrating her own victories, not because others lost but because she experienced growth.

I also hope the world she grows up in will support all this. That it won’t break her. That it won’t kill the kindness in her as it has for so many. That she will know when to wave the white flag because it’s morally required—not because she’s surrendering, but because she needs a rest from the chaos, needs to kill the momentum before it causes harm.

xx

I come in peace,

Vish

I was born in Sarajevo, a city historically nicknamed the “Jerusalem of Europe” because for centuries, it was defined by its multiculturalism. Think: mixed marriages between Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews. Think: atheist Yugoslav Partisan families. Think: Roma and countless other minorities, all living side by side.

Of course, this romantic title was one given from the outside, by spectators who didn’t have to live it. Because in modern state terms, what we think of as “multiculturalism” is actually riddled with artificial imaginings and manipulations backed by political agendas. We are not living in the wild. We are living in a garden where what survives and thrives is determined by the system that systemically nurtures certain aspects while neglecting and eradicating others.

When modern nationalism tore through the Balkans in the 1990s, it didn’t just divide the land. It institutionalized tribalism and difference, a tendency that continues to force its citizens into rigid ethnic categories that contradict their deep, shared history.

I see this happening as a watch soccer fans on the streets in Toronto cheering on Bosnia and Hercegovina at the World Cup match against Canada today.

We can understand this evolution of this landscape by looking at the evolution of the country's flags.

The country’s first post-independence flag featured the golden lily. Though often mistaken for a French or Yugoslav symbol, the lily stretches back 600 years prior to Yugoslavia. It was the medieval crest of King Tvrtko I and the Kotromanić dynasty in the 14th century. At that time, modern ethnic labels did not exist; to be “Bosnian” (Bošnjanin) was purely geographic, a designation for anyone living within the kingdom, whether they were Catholic, Orthodox, or members of the independent, homegrown Bosnian Church of Christians (who later, under the Ottomans, converted to Islam and comprised the Bosniak population (Bošnjaci) we know today).

In 1992, the lily was revived as an expression of independence, holding particular emotional power for Muslim Bosniaks who had no safety net from the outside the way Catholics did in Croatia and Eastern Orthodox Christians did in Serbia. For Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats however, the symbolbecame tied to their wartime adversaries because by identifying so heavily with the medieval kingdom, Bosniaks are seen as asserting a political claim to the entirety of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a unified state, which rejects the autonomy of others within its borders (like Republika Srpska).

So in 1998, the flag was replaced by an ad-hoc committee funded and directed by something called the Peace Implementation Council (PIC)—a club of 55 countries (including the US, UK, EU members, and others) that oversaw the Dayton peace process. The abstract yellow triangle and blue background with white stars was chosen specifically because it had zero historical meaning and therefore couldn’t offend any one of the ethnic groups living in Bosnia today.

Of course…the official BiH flag has Western/EU symbolism painted all over it, and well, that’s far from being apolitical… It simply expresses the dominance of the international community over Balkan affairs, a pattern that started centuries ago.

It began when our shared identity was fundamentally fractured by Ottoman colonialism. Before that, we were simply Bosnians. But, the Ottoman Millet system organized society strictly by religious affiliation for administrative control. These socio-religious boundaries hardened over generations and eventually modern nationalist movements tied Eastern Orthodoxy to Serbian identity and Roman Catholicism to Croatian identity. The local Muslim population eventually adopted the term “Bosniak” (Bošnjak) to secure their own distinct political and cultural survival, something that was upheld by the Yugoslavian constitution under Tito.

But then a war happened. I won’t get into the nitty gritty of why and how, but ultimately, as with most wars, they erupt when there is a vacuum of power. After Tito died and the Soviet Union fell (no causation), socialism and its unifying ideals eroded away and were replaced by sharply politicized ethnic identities that held old, though far from insignificant, WWII grudges that ignited violence. People were no longer united through a shared land but by modern narratives based in fear of no existence (over peaceful co-existence). And today’s political elites continue to feed this divisiveness. They maintain power by keeping their respective populations terrified of the other two.

Some folks believe the lily should be reclaimed but the tragic irony is that it has become so thoroughly associated with the Bosniak wartime experience, Bosnian Serbs and Croats come to view it as a threat, rather than a shared heritage. It’s too polarizing.

Cut to the flags in Toronto today. Some show lilies, others the official “neutral” Bosnian flag. Neither cut it, in my opinion.

The 1995 Dayton Accords effectively institutionalized centuries-old colonial divides, treating the state not as a collection of individual citizens, but as a collection of three ethnic tribes with power distributed through strict quotas. Every government agency, every state-owned power company, and the presidency itself must be perfectly split between Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats.

The system feels so deeply unnatural to me. It forces people to choose a side in a historical narrative that was largely imposed on them from the outside. And the alternative?

“Other.” (Ostali.)

I’m not kidding. Yugoslavia had it, too. A quick Google search tells me about 3% identified as such in Tito’s Yugoslavia, a number that’s remained the same since (and under Tito, in the ‘81 census, 8% of the Bosnian population identified as “Yugoslav” while in urban Sarajevo, that number was close to 20%).

However, in Tito’s time, this designation was merely a cultural choice, but in modern Bosnia, identifying yourself as an “Other” legally barred you from running from office, creating an effectively marginalized underclass. Today, about 3-4% of the population identifies this way.

And in the diaspora, as a child of a mixed marriage and with no nationalistic ties, identifying myself as “Other” bars me from cultural belonging. I don’t have another flag or symbol to wave that stands for something else, something better, something more accurate.

And I guess that’s the trouble with all national symbols and nationalist narratives. They uphold simplicity over complexity.

To be an “Other” isn’t a lack of identity though. It is quiet and radical rejection of labels and definitions.

…in which there is a danger…

By being quiet and subtle, we risk being invisible and ultimately unrepresented. The rejection of the tools of a system doesn’t dismantle the system. It just invalidates you within it and erases you. We exist in a world of competing narratives and bureaucracy. We can’t just exit the plot. I guess my solution is writing about it….

The thing I connect to best is the land. The landscapes that nourish us are older and bigger than the politics and the paperwork. The valley of the Bosna river, the rocky Hercegovinian soil my grandfather tended to in his youth….the coastal rainforest I walk through today… I can’t touch all of them in a single day but I know they are there as much as I am here…as much as we are all here on this earth together.

xx

Višnja

p.s. I started this post at half-time and I’m posting it now as a convoy drives down Main Street honking in celebration of the 1-1 draw in today’s match between BiH and Canada. There’s something deeply poetic about this. I guess I’m glad no one lost. Everyone gets a point in a game neither will win though….but what else can we do but play and at least try to enjoy it?

I remember sitting across from my baka in the kitchen, swirling a tiny sugar spoon in my Nescafe coffee, the clock ticking above our heads. We spoke so little in those years and even less that summer as I had so little energy to initiate conversation. I was hollowed out by heartbreak and anger. But perhaps some part of me was also waiting for her to notice and act on it.

She never asked how I was doing though. Instead, she asked how everything else was: How is school? How is work? How is the boyfriend? Her interest was not in my inner world but the scaffolding of a version of me that was more manageable for her.

So, I lied. He’s fine, I said. Everything is fine.

Lately that memory has been looping in my mind, finding a surprisingly resonant alignment to how I am feeling right now and as I reflect on my last year of postpartum.

So many of my foundational relationships are shifting. Since becoming a mom, my capacity for reaching out, for organizing, for holding space, or for being the social glue in my circle has shrunk. And I’m finding that in stepping away, I see now exactly who is willing to step in to fill the distance, to ask me how I’m really doing, and who is slowly disappearing by staying silent.

—

Cut to last week: a rainy day, which added to my emotional fog. I managed to pull myself together and get us out the door, to Oakridge Centre. The mall had just reopened after a major reno so I was relieved to find no lineup at the entrance (the day before, social media had lit up with influencers flocking.)

Oakridge Centre is super bougie now, a total magnet for the loud luxury types, the folks who love the bling, the brands, the labels, the acronyms. But beneath the high ceilings, the bright lights, and the opulent installations hanging from the large skylights, it felt, in a lot of ways, like the same old playground I use to frequent as a kid. Sure there's no more ball pit, and the old White Spot and movie theatre are gone, but the mall is already proving to again be a gathering place.

Teens were snapping selfies in front of the new signage, parents pushed strollers around as kids ran amuck. Elderly folks where being wheeled around by their caregivers. It was lively and quite lovely, and I must admit, way more wholesome than I expected it to be. Plus, it was a total toddler paradise, what with the wide open floors and mirrored walls…Nora had a total ball practicing her steps.

She waddled around barefoot, claiming the space, waving to passersby. Before long, she drew in a friend, a little girl named Artemis, who promptly joined Nora on the floor. There they were, crawling and toddling around, completely identical in height and born only eight days apart. As they held each other (in what was Nora's first hug with another child), unbeknownst to them shoppers in the background browsed expensive LV bags.

Eventually, we had to say our goodbyes. Artemis and her mom went one way, and we went the other. Nora just waved and smiled, completely untroubled by the fact that she would never see this sweet girl again.

Later, after this Mama had a quick break at the Nespresso bar, we caught a live set in the amphitheater just outside the store. Nora spent the next twenty minutes bopping around and clapping until a little girl named Anne, a year older and very curious, came over. Nora grabbed her hand and pulled her around, unceremoniously using her for balance. It almost looked like they were dancing.

Watching them, I realized how much I envy the way young children can just enjoy each other with no strings attached, completely locked into the immediate moment. There’s such a purity of joy in being together that time seems to pause—and when it starts moving along again and catching up to the adult world, they move along too, satisfied and without pain.

—

In the last year, I expected certain people in my life to reach out more to ask how I’m doing, but they didn’t.

I find myself to be a completely new human being in a lot of ways, yet I still carry old hurts. I know I am navigating a beautiful experience of raising a daughter but it's also exhausting, as I am simultaneously trying to re-parent the child inside myself. My marriage is a steady anchor, but outside the walls of my immediate home, the landscape feels fractured and I don't have the energy to fix it.

The social map has rearranged itself, and I guess I’m still calibrating and feeling a bit heartbroken even as my heart grows bigger and bigger. I find myself mourning the care I never received from the people who I thought were supposed to give it.

But.

Then there are the friends who truly are my village, and I don’t really know how we got here. It just happened so naturally.

I grew up before smartphones and the Internet. I remember friends knocking to ask my parents if I could come out to play, then hours later, running home as the street lights turned on. I remember being a kid, making fast friends at the park, on vacation, at a restaurant. But now I’m an adult. I can appreciate the slow friendships, the relationships that took a long time to grow, the relationships that survived a lot of change in short spans of time…and now I’m also seeing the ones that may not survive this next big transition I’m going through.

I consider myself lucky that in this strange, modern way of life, a little village has emerged for me anyway. The beautiful twist is that it’s largely made up of people who aren’t even parents themselves. It strikes me as deeply touching that they don’t need to know exactly my experience to know how to care for me.

Yet, I think of certain faces and I feel like I’m at that kitchen table again pretending to be fine when I’m not. But as with everything in life, to everything there is a season and it's my turn to let go.

xx

Vish

Yet so many of the identities I’d been given to work with just didn’t fit, whether Jewish, Serbian, Bosnian, Canadian…. Each came pre-loaded; over time, it became simpler to drop them altogether than to try to redefine each one on my own terms. It was easier to pretend and perform, than to try and be myself, whatever it was.

I called myself a utilitarian buddhist for a while.

On Xanga, the precursor to MySpace, I was lollybabe666.

Then I came across the term “third culture kid.”

I love the idea of “the third thing.” It’s a concept Jason introduced into my life many years ago. The idea is that whenever you’re stuck making a decision, consider what might be a less obvious, third choice: A Third Way. It gets you out of black-and-white thinking. It reminds you to get creative, think bigger, go beyond.

There’s a kind of abstractness to it. The third culture is like the fourth dimension. I can imagine what I am by knowing what I am not: I am not of the culture I was born to and I am not of the culture that I grew up around. I am something more…a third thing… My identity bends time and space.

Except, as I started to read more about it, I realized that “third-culture kids” are not like me at all.

Coined in the 1950s by sociologist Ruth Hill Useem, the term refers to the blending of the culture of one’s parents with the culture the host culture(s) into a unique “third culture” identity. They tend to be kids of diplomats, military families, religious missionaries—kids living in families who are “hosted” to be there. They live in a world of others like them, who all know that where they find themselves is temporary.

For years, I looked at our move to Canada as a typical immigrant moving to a new, lifelong home though. I didn’t know that my parents had always planned for us to return; our life in Canada was entirely temporary, a secret timeline ticking away in the background of my childhood.

This hidden impermanence unexpectedly aligned my story with the definition of a third culture kid yet I didn’t have the same systemic supports to cushion the blow of transition. Instead, I carried the heavy, unspoken weight of our past while navigating a fragile, temporary present entirely in the dark—trying to adapt to a country my family never intended to keep.

So here I am more than three decades later, still wondering what label to claim.

What am I?A fourth culture kid?

Nope. Apparently that one’s taken, too. Fourth Culture Kids are children parents who themselves grew up as Third Culture Kids. I don’t think my parents fulfil the criteria, unless we think of the golden age of Yugoslavia, after WWII, as a sort of temporary culture they took on as a single generation…(maybe?). No, I don’t think so. They really believed it was the real deal, that it would never go away, and this was a vision they shared with their parents.

So am a fifth culture kid?

I looked that one up, too. Many sociologists and cross-cultural experts categorize all of these variations under the umbrella of “Third Culture Kids,” though the specific “fifth” label highlights extreme transience.

But I haven’t been all that transient. I’ve lived in two places for the better part of the last forty years and tried on a third place (England) for a short stint (though I never called myself an expat).

So what the fuck am I. I don’t know. Maybe I am part of the Nth culture.. the culture that strips all the labels away and decides that it’s not so important to be called anything. Maybe I don’t need a name to feel that I belong?

I’m not so sure. Names make us exist. Labels call us into a circle or out of one. I am not sure I know how to live outside of all of that and still feel like I matter.

Except…maybe now I do. Maybe the label of “mom” is the truest thing about me, the most undeniable thing. Everything else is up for grabs, open to deletion, hyphenation, revising.

Yet when I think of a future where I am raising her, I wonder what cultural inheritances she’ll take on from me. Will they confuse her or clarify her own self to herself? And what’s better— a world where we are clearer about who we are and aren’t, or where we see the nuance?

I guess there’s only one way to find out…

xx

Vish

p.s. Maybe I should have studied physics… hmm.. is cultural physics a thing?

Today, Jason “let” me dawdle in bed with a coffee and cuddle the cats until 8:30 am. He took Motherhood Duties off my plate so that I could get extra rest. I'm all for this, but also other days are no exception. We moms should get rest as much as we can and whenever we can get it.

After, we went for a walk to one of my favourite coffee shops in the neighbourhood for breakfast (I’m a major fan of the no-fuss, pre-pay, self-serve format). We got a table outside and lavished in the early morning sun.

Then we came home and I got to work: baking Nora a birthday cake.

Two days from now, on May 12, is her first birthday. She will grow up celebrating herself in the shadow of Mother’s Day, a day designed to recognize the mothers (and mother figures, I think) in our lives.

What I really hope for her is that she will celebrate herself and that Mother’s Day will really be another reason for me to celebrate her. I don’t really need nor want her to celebrate me. She didn’t choose to have a mom. I chose to to be a mom.

I’m not a baker. Never been one, nor have I ever wanted to be. Until now. I always cherished my birthday cakes, made by my mom every year, and I want to pass on the tradition.

I’m making an almond flour strawberry smash cake. No sugar (just a weeeeeee bit of maple syrup). It will probably be ugly (I did not have a 6 inch pan so I jerry-rigged), but it will be delicious and it will get smashed. Nora is not judgmental or critical of me in any way, which is incredibly freeing. There’s nothing like doing something for someone who loves you unconditionally.

The cake is baking right now. I can smell the sweet smell of almonds in the air. I’m going to do the whip coconut milk whip tomorrow.

Jason and I are going to celebrate Nora’s birthday a day early, as he is off for a work summit the rest of the week. On Tuesday, I’m going to take her to the Vancouver Aquarium in the afternoon for a birthday date, just us. And in the morning, Baka is going spend some quality time with her, while I spend the morning writing (my memoir, which I now I realize will also be a gift to her one day).

All this is making me wonder whether we have it wrong: Maybe Mother’s Day should be the day we celebrate our children for making us moms. And their birthdays should be days they get to celebrate the relationships they get to enjoy in this life. Right now, for Nora, is mostly with me and Jason and my mom, because she sees us most. As she grows, her birthday will include more and more people. We’ll throw parties to surround her with a bigger and bigger circle of love. But this year, it’s about us—we’re a little mighty team and tomorrow we’re going to smash that cake and smother each other with love and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Now, I gotta run and get that cake out of the oven before my pottery class… I’m thinking I’ll make something for Nora :)

xx

Nora’s Mom

She didn’t skip a beat. As soon as I put her down, she grabbed a plastic digger and a boy’s hand and was off before I even turned around.

Downstairs, I grabbed a desk and got to work—polishing my workshop materials for an upcoming session I’m teaching as part of the Federation of BC Writers’ Memoir Writing Intensive: Avoiding the Potholes on Memory Lane.

The theme really spoke to me when I sent in my proposal in March (we were in Okayama at the time and I wrote it up with my thumbs on my smartphone…) I realized that while I may not have a book published, it doesn’t mean I have no wisdom to share. Having been working on my memoir for close to six years now, I’ve come away with a lot of learnings about the writing process and I’m excited (and a little nervous) to talk about it!

This past year, with Nora in my life, I’ve definitely become a braver writer. Motherhood has given me such perspective that what used to scare me doesn’t so much anymore. I’m signing up for public readings, I’m sending pitches (not just contest entries), and I’m ready to step into the light as a writer with something to say outside of the published page.

My writing practice has also become more flexible. Earlier this week, Nora spent the morning with her baka so I could take some time at a nearby coffee shop and get to work. Just the other day on a walk with Nora, I “wrote” a potential ending for my memoir via dictation (I use the Whispr app); when I weaved it into the MS, it wasn’t half bad! And yesterday, there I was at this co-working space diving into my slide deck for a quick 20-minute sprint (….that is before I got enthralled in a conversation with another mom in the kitchen over a cup of coffee—a pastime I miss almost as much as I do my solo writing time).

I’ve found the ON/OFF switch for my writing brain and it feels incredible and incredible efficient.

But if I’m being honest, I’m in an emotional pothole myself right now.

My desire for radical transparency is at odds with the ethical weight of protective silence.

On the outside, the “lane” of my life looks very different from how I’m experiencing the journey. The lines are painted straight and the asphalt is smooth. I’m walking with Nora on one hip with my manuscript under my arm. I’m wearing sunglasses and looking very cool and at ease. But in reality, I’m tripping, I’m tired, and I don’t always know where I’m going. I’m articulating a lot of emotions, but many, I’ve yet to even explain to myself, let alone you.

But being braver, also means being more discerning. I am not running into the fire just to be a hero.

As a memoirist, I often feel a duty to be very candid about my life here. I really opened myself up during some of the most vulnerable moments—as a new mom, as an emerging memoirist, and as a survivor of intergenerational trauma. But right now, I’m tending to some wounds I’m not ready to share. I’m not sure when I’ll be ready to share either. Maybe it’ll be its own book one day. Or a poem. Or just entries in my journal that will never see the light of day.

I’m writing this now as an attempt to be radically honest, even if I can’t be radically transparent. It takes a certain courage, too, to have restraint.

I badly want to share. I have many thoughts and feelings about what I’m going through. But I’m not just a content creator. I’m a person with relationships and emotions in flux. Some of what I’m experiencing I’ve not yet processed. It’s too raw to put out into the world. I need time before I can set it down to the page meaningfully and not just for the sake of catharsis.

It’s kind of like I’m living through what Betsy Warland (in Breathing the Page) calls an “inscription” phase. I’m still right in the middle of this story and I don’t have the necessary perspective to recount my current experience without sounding immature, ashamed, or unnecessarily harsh. One day, when enough time has passed and I’ve processed it meaningfully, I might take this living draft and set it down, revise it (and revise it and revise it and revise it), and then share it in one form or another. But right now, it’s a vomit-first-draft and it reeks of wounding, ego, and unchecked emotion.

This is one piece of advice I plan to share at the May 11 workshop: To really consider if and when something is ready to be shared.

George Saunders often returns to this idea in his interviews. In a podcast episode with Ezra Klein in 2021, he compared writing to meditation—this idea that your first draft is your mind speaking without filter. We have to watch it and grow more equanimous to it before we can revise it and make it better.

We aren’t our thoughts. We are what makes sense of our thoughts and decides which ones are worthwhile. As we enter the writing process, we return again and again to those first ideas and evolve them; as we do this, we gain consciousness—a greater awareness of the personal truth that hides within. Only once we’ve grown in awareness, can we see our words as material to be worked with rather than material that is working us. The craft of writing truly begins when we have agency—the power of choice.

So with that, I’ll leave you.

If you’re interested in checking out the intensive, get your ticket here and I’ll hopefully see you on May 11 at 2:00 pm PT to talk about truth, boundaries and feedback in memoir.

xx

Vish

At the beginning of the month, we were rounding out our trip with a stay at Kinosaki Onsen and five days in Kyoto (hence the header image—our first sakura sighting!). On the 10th, we got back from Japan, promptly got over jet-lag, Jason started a new job, Nora cut another tooth, and then I turned around and turned 39.

So much to celebrate.

So much to feel through.

And so much to write about.

But not today.

I’m more tired this year than any birthday season before (I was a high-energy pregnancy) and I’ve decided to let myself off the hook this time. This week, I’m going to rest, take baths, go to bed early, and not guilt myself for not writing more. I need down-time after an adrenaline-filled month (and year) :)

So, I’ll leave you with some photos to capture as much as I can of the feeling I’m having as I think back on the last year —

And…. (because as soon as I start typing, the words just come….), here is also a list of three things I’m looking forward to this coming season as I start my 40th year of life:

1. Starting to pitch! Now that I will be receiving Arts Canada Council funding (!!!), I can dedicate more time to my memoir this spring and finally get that final draft over to Diaspora Dialogues and then…we’ll be off to the races (right?!!? eek..)

   
   I found a co-working space that offers childminding in Vancouver (how awesome is that!). I’m working toward 2-3 half-days per week so that both Nora and I can get our creative juices flowing :) I checked out the space last Friday and it’s beautiful, the program looks incredible, they have a dedicated ECE and a really lovely ratio (5:1) While I’m not keen on passing her onto just anyone, I think some structured time with other kids is going to do her some good :) Besides, I’ll be at a hot desk in the same building while she’s doing arts and crafts and playing with other babies — win-win!

2. Cycling! I went to a dentist appointment last week and decided to cycle over as the weather was so nice (and traffic in Vancouver sucks at rush hour) and it reminded me of just how much I love biking in the city. It was my primary form of commute before I got pregnant and went on mat leave and I want to make it more central to my life again, even with Nora in tow.

   
   In fact, I’d love to test out actually taking her along with me (safely, slowly, defensive-ridingly)! If you have bike seat recommendations let me know (Thule mini?)
   

3. Beach volleyball! It’s been two solid years since I last threw myself into the sand and I gotta say I’m ready. (I’m counting on muscle memory to be on my side!) Also with Nora being so small last year, the beach was one part of summer I really missed. I can’t wait to have a weekly excuse to head to Kits (and maybe even bring her along if her bedtime allows, before we get into full beach-mode this summer.)

xx

The Bday Girl

(My birthday was yesterday but I celebrate for a solid 10 days because why not!)

I admit I’ve been nervous to pick up this Substack again… it’s been so long since I published last (over a month—a new record). I thought that I might have forgotten how to do it altogether, which sounds crazy I know, but right now, typing this feels like speaking a new language.

Travel-mom mind

Never before have I ever been this present as a tourist, even as someone who considers herself quite mindful. I recall once when, upon arriving to a new city, my travel companion said, “I can’t wait to come back here,” and it made me laugh because we’d barely scratched the surface and she was already thinking of her next visit. I can barely process that I’m here now, let alone process the idea of returning in the future. The past and future just don’t exist here.

Also: Who was it that said travelling with a kid is never a vacation, it’s just parenting in a new country? Well, it’s SO TRUE. There’s no disassociating, tuning out, daydreaming… I’m just here all the time.

All this in-the-moment-ness has meant that all my downtime on the trip has been 100% dedicated to utmost rest, because while being present conserves one type of energy, it’s also quite taxing. The trip was thoroughly planned, (as it must be when travelling with a small child for so long and to an unfamiliar country), but now that I’m here, I’m in total download mode, taking in the world around me, subconsciously gathering information, moving entirely on instinct and in-the-moment decision-making. Kinda reminds me of Burning Man actually; come prepared, listen to immediate needs and wants, then trust that the universe will provide.

This attitude has not led me astray, even when my preparation missed the mark, (like say, when I failed to book us lodging one night in Naoshima and we got a last-minute reservation in a yurt! Or the time we missed the last train and had to make four transfers, which proved to be a most beautiful route on some pretty cool vintage train lines!)

Travelling with 10-month-old Nora has proven to be most exquisite abd exhilarating. But in ways I did not expect. I seriously have no analogous comparison, not a single moment, because whatever it is that I’m doing, however familiar or deja vu (counting foreign coins, buying a postcard, ordering off a menu, looking for a platform number), it’s different because she’s here, which makes me here. And when we are here, the universe makes contact.

Writer mind

I also haven’t felt like I have the mind of a writer on this trip. Whether walking riverside in Kinosakionsen, in a shopping arcade in Hiroshima, in Okayama down the canal, or meandering up a hill in Onimichi, without a sidewalk in Kyoto, or between art pieces in Naoshima (and regardless if I’m with others, alone, or with Nora), my focus has been razor-sharp. I’m watching each step and reading signs like a captcha machine. There’s little-to-no room for reflection.

All this to say, I’ve not been drawn to write. It’s hard to digest anything else other than what’s going on immediately in front me.

Japan has been like a giant escape room except i’m not trying to escape, I’m trying to go inside further.

Visions…and revisions

OK, that’s as far as I got with my stream-of consciousness before I fell asleep. I am now typing this (and revising it) on my phone in the darkness of our hotel room. Jason is sleeping next to me, Nora’s in her travel crib and the noise machine is muffling the sounds of a rainy Kyoto night. I’m rested from my long train nap and have discovered that no, I did not forget how to write. The discipline and desire are still here, after all (I just couldn’t leave this post unfinished....!)

It was the sweetest sleep. Nora laying on me, snoozing away, as the train swayed us toward slumber. There’s no better feeling than her weight on me, her little body fully at rest and the knowledge that somehow I can hold her entirely even if I am at full rest myself. Gah. That was by far my most favourite train journey of all time and I remember very little of it apart from washing down a crab steamed bun and some mochi with a bottle of cold Georgia coffee before my eyelids fell heavy with Nora in my arms.

Nora has been co-sleeping with us half the night since we arrived. She makes it a maximum of five hours in her Guava Lotus before she wakes wanting her bottle and cuddles, which we freely give. At the beginning it made me nervous. Her incredible A++++ independent sleep skills went out the window on Night #2. I started worrying about what coming home might look like, but travel-mom-brain soon learned to let it all go. On our three-night trip to the Seto Inland Sea islands, we left the crib behind and just slept on tatami mats together. (Half-way through the trip I also started telling myself that she’d have to acclimatize back to Vancouver time anyway so who cares when she eats now… haha)

The nights have been extra special… She turns on her side and I spoon her now. Other times I lie face-to-face with her and watch her little smooshed cheeks as she sleeps. And other times, she sleeps right on me and I’m right back on that train ride swaying to dreamland…

Mono no aware (物の哀れ)

This is the Japanese term for “the pathos of things” — that bittersweet awareness that all things come to an end. It’s been ever-present with me on this trip and it’s starting to really set in now.

This trip has not been without its challenges but ultimately it’s been a beautiful experience in parenting and travelling that’s shown me the pleasure of letting go, of going with the flow and of focusing on the simple joys...watching Nora grow and learn and take in this new environment alongside me…

I’m now sitting on our hotel bed taking a final stab at this post so I can finally hit publish. Jason is washing bottles and Nora is sitting on the floor babbling to a hotel slipper. I’m hungry for words but already tired. I know they’ll never capture it all. There must be a Japanese term for that bittersweet awareness, too, no?

Our friend Dave Olsen gifted me a scrapbook. I’ll pull together all the miscellaneous scraps we’ve collected throughout the trip (prolifera? no, that’s not a word, but maybe it should be). I’ll also print an album of photos. But the stories… ah..those will have to emerge naturally one day when Nora is bigger and we reflect on this unique time we had as a family on our first trip overseas.

Maybe I’ll pitch some travel mags, too.. if someone bites, I’ll write something then... And then I’ll just have to trust that it’s all here, somewhere inside me, subconsciously remembered even if i didn’t process it all or write it down... that the cream will rise to the top and the words will come on their own. Nostalgia, the great unlocker. Longing, the great motivator. Acceptance, the great releaser.

xx

Višnja-chan

Read more

Thanks to this grant I’ll be able to work on finalizing my manuscript while taking additional leave. My goal is to start pitching to agents by end of the year.

Writing—truth-telling—is a form of resistance to the status quo, if not in its content, then in its very gesture. It asserts that creativity in and of itself has value, that its output is an important social contribution. It likely will not generate any revenue; ROI modelling doesn’t apply; it usually doesn’t always scale well, and margins are nil.

Yet, creative writers are rarely, if ever, propelled by income; if money were the engine, 99% of us would have long given up. We write because something inside us insists on it—an urgency, a restlessness, a need to make sense of the world through language and share it with others. Ignoring it has consequences on the psyche.

The work begins in solitude, long before anyone offers to pay for it. And yet, when that work is recognized by others as having value—even by virtue of simply consuming it for free—it offers us validation. It affirms that what felt private and instinctual has resonance beyond the self.

Recently, I told a friend that if you think your writing is impeccable, you’re probably a terrible writer, and if you think your writing sucks, it means you’re actually good. You can’t create anything worthwhile without process—which implies time to create and that kind of time, for many of us, is quite scarce.

This is why it means so much to know people are reading what I put out there. It’s also why it means so much that the Canada Council put money behind my idea, and not only now, but also a second time; beyond the monetary value of the grants themselves, it’s a vote of confidence and a recognition that the artistic process matters.

But we can’t pretend we don’t live within an economic system that includes a cost of living or that material support doesn’t matter. And for me, as a writer who holds a full-time job and now, the duties of childcare, financial support buys me time, and time is the one resource writing truly requires.

My time is scarcer these days and this show of financial support tips the scales in my favour. I will get this book finished.

And so with that, I’d like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. (🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳)

Wahooo!!

The only time I read anything IRL was at a writing retreat at Hollyhock on Cortes Island. (I don’t count reading my piece from the Emerge 20 anthology when I graduated from The Writer’s Studio because it was online and felt more like a work Zoom meeting than a literary moment.)

At Hollyhock, my hand shook, my voice quivered, but I got it done half-disassociated. Three minutes had felt like an eternity. My audience was a group of ten, all retreaters I’d spent the week with in intimate co-creation, collaboration and writerly presence. Very different than standing at a microphone in front of 25+ people, most of whom I’d never met. I chose a piece that was rather funny, but I couldn’t hold back my emotions. Just naming things—the people in my life, the places—brought that familiar sour tightness to the bridge of my nose. It felt confessional, like there was something inherently pitiful about sharing my story. I felt zero power in it.

But this time, my voice was steady. Reading felt natural. I knew where to put my hands (sort of), and I even made some jokes. I didn’t over-prepare. Hearing my own voice didn’t make me cringe. I simply arrived and stayed present.

I saw delighted faces, alertness in people’s eyes—they eager to hear my story.

And I was eager to share it with them. Reading my own words out loud made me feel connected to my power because my writing was connecting me to others in my community.

And even long after the kudos I received at the event, my community of fellow writers continues to cheer me on. There’s a power in that, too, to feel the kindness and support of others who are on a similar path.

Facing my fear of public readings

In the time between these two readings, I did two things that I think contributed to this change in my demeanour and attitude: I gave birth to Nora and I took improv classes.

The improv classes taught me about audience—the compassion that is there. No one watching wants us to fail when we’re up there baring it all. (In some way, this was true of labour, too 😆 )

Becoming a mom has also really changed my relationship to fear. It’s shown me my frailty and my resilience.

I can be scared and do it anyway. Fear doesn’t imply inability; it means I care.

I’m following my instincts more consciously than ever before. When once it was a thin current I’d catch sight of here and there, I’m in the flow of it now. It’s visceral and all around me.

So when the message came through, it was a no-brainer.

Till next time,

xx Vish

p.s. Paid subscribers, keep an eye on your inboxes for the chapter I read on Monday!

It’s been a lovely dance for me, as I sway between my two identities: writer and mother. They complement each other and thanks to the support of those who love me—most notably, Jason—these two genres of self are in harmony.

Unspoken Truths: A poetry workshop with Evenlyn Lau

In my early girlhood, I found a copy of Evelyn Lau’s debut memoir, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid at my local library in Marpole. I was eleven years old, sitting on my bedroom floor, peach fuzz legs sticking out of my Bootlegger khaki shorts, reading it—in secret. The memoir chronicles Evelyn’s life as a teenage runaway surviving on the streets of Vancouver. Through diary entries, it explores homelessness, addiction, sexual exploitation, and the emotional isolation she endured while searching for autonomy and identity, at the young age of fourteen. I suspected my mom let me take the book home because she didn’t know what it was about.

It was so refreshing to be in Lau’s presence today. Her life is an inspiration to me. She’s come so far in her writing career since publishing her memoir when she was 18. Oedipal Dreams was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry three short years after that (when she was only twenty!) and she went on to win numerous awards since; and in 2011, she was named the Poet Laureate of Vancouver. Today, continues to teach, write, and do what she does best: Write honestly and specifically.

Honesty and specificity in writing

About five years ago, I engaged Lau in a manuscript consult. We spoke on the phone. I remember being kind of star struck, then surprised at how easy it was to talk with her. We discussed themes of isolation, identity seeking, and culture—got to the heart of things quickly, as she offered feedback on a piece I’d shared with her before our call. To my surprise, she told me my writing was poetic, quoting to me some of her favourite lines from my piece. It was the greatest compliment I could have received. To hear her reading my words out loud with such delight….oof, I still get the chills!

Lau as a writer continues the important and difficult work of capturing painful, heartfelt moments on the page with honesty and specificty. At the UBC workshop she spoke of this, how poetry in particular is well suited for this, what, with its efficiency and precision. It cuts right to the core. A single image unlocks a thousand words inside the reader’s mind. A short phrase can enliven a memory in seconds and make it feel real and present for the reader. Lau is a master of this. I am apprentice.

Specificity and honesty are two tenets I try to bring to my own writing. The task is to touch on the poignant, acute details. In memoir in particular, this can often bring about a surge of painful memories, and sometimes, unresolved feelings and contradictions.

The latter should spur further emotional exploration and eventually, resolve. If it doesn’t, I think we shortchange ourselves and the work. If we’re unconscious of the emotional undercurrents in our writing, the book is writing us instead of the other way around. And I don’t think readers want to read something that feels unresolved, something so out of control.

Resolving the emotional subtext of our work

In all my writing, I wonder about the emotional aspects of what I’m sharing and what I may be unaware of. What is actually going on? What is the psychological subtext? If I find there is a contradiction, how might it be explained or resolved? If I don’t ask these questions, and if I can find satisfying answers to them, the writing isn’t finished.

Right now, I’m wondering, for example, how might my own mom read into this Substack post today, knowing about the book I was reading so young all those years ago? Will she think she failed me by letting me take it home to read? Might it trigger fear or sadness in her, that I might have considered running away from home back then given I had been so drawn to such a book?

I’d be lying if I said that didn’t consider running away. Every child does. It’s a kind of rite of passage, I think. And no, she did not fail me. She let me follow my instincts and gave me privacy, a safe space to do so.

The cover of Lau’s memoir had caught my eye: The word “runaway” in red font and the face of a young Asian girl blurring into a pitch black background, her face grey, her gaze probing. She was looking at me, challenging me to consider what I might be willing to do to find myself—what I might be willing to give up in exchange for independence and freedom.

In my case, reading Runaway helped me placed my life experience in greater context. It helped me place myself and my own troubles in a broader backdrop of possibilities, lived experiences, and outcomes, and ultimately, it helped me land in gratitude.

I knew my family had had its share of hardship, a war in our wake, a loss of home, culture, security. My parents’ marriage was on the rocks. We were on welfare cheques. But the primary context I had to refer to for comparison was a world of wealth and privilege, having attended, at the time, a private elementary school on the west side. My definition of security was tangled up with ideas about class and money and home ownership.

But Evenlyn Lau’s memoir showed me that monetary security was not the only security. Despite the emotional upheavals under my family’s roof, I had parents who cared for me, who supported my interest in reading and writing—perhaps my mom had even turned a blind eye when she saw me eyeing that book from the library…

I never did run away but I think in picking up Lau’s book and examining my own life against hers was my own taste of independence and freedom. It was maybe the first time I considered my life as my own, having spent the better part of my childhood moving from one place to another as my parents saw fit. So, I stayed home, and this I felt, in my own adolescent way, was significant because it was my decision.

And there you have it. I’ve resolved something I didn’t know needed resolving by following the undercurrent.

Mom, what do you think?

:)

xx

Višnja

Last week, I shared how I wasn’t sure when it would happen but that I’d know when the time came. And just this past weekend, it happened.

I was on a video call with two of my closest friends. One just signed her divorce papers while the other is getting ready to have a hysterectomy. It felt poetic somehow, seeing us at such widely different stages in our lives—all three of us newly empowered as we take the next step in our unique journey of womanhood… I felt buzzed for us and uplifted as we shared the unique challenges we are overcoming.

So, I strapped in and we all had a good laugh.

My last pump didn’t feel lonely, as I had imagined it might. It didn’t feel depleting. Well, I made sure of it. I listened to my body for signals of safety and found it. I wasn’t alone and my friends cheered me on and it felt so, so good.

That evening, my mom graciously offered to stay with Nora for her first solo overnight and gave us her apartment for the evening. As I packed a few things, I pulled out my brand-new nighty and unceremoniously tossed my old ride-or-die—the one I’d worn through pregnancy and postpartum, stretched and stained beyond repair (I’ve been tugging the neck down over my waist and wearing it as a skirt while pumping for almost nine months now, so you can imagine…)

Then Jason and I went out for a date. I aptly enjoyed a clarified milk cocktail. After that we joined our friends at a nearby pub (no bedtime pump needed!) and the next day, we got to sleep in, take our time over breakfast and some Sunday morning cartoons (okay, it was Ted, if I’m being honest.)

My pumping journey deserved a good ending. It really did.

Nora consolidates her naps and I consolidate my free time

My Spectra and its accoutrements are now all packed away, ready to be sold or donated. And right before I sat down to write this, I went out back and threw out my two very tattered pumping bras.

I thought I’d be more sad, I admit. I’ve been so focused on the ending that I forgot it would also bring about a new beginning. And now that I’ve done it, now that I’ve really put this chapter behind me, I’m so so so so excited for what’s to come.

I’m excited for the freedom. (No more alarms, no more engorgement, no more saying, “I have to pump!”).

I’m excited to take my body back (and to go braless for once).

I’m excited for us to eat as a family as Nora takes in more solids.

I’m excited for us to travel together (we booked a trip to Japan in March!!)

I’m excited for us to do new, hard things together.

To grow together.

To keep saying goodbye to old versions of ourselves because the good life demands it.

And so before I say goodbye to February, I have one demand of myself. It’s a goal that kinda feels like pumping, I admit. It’s gratifying and uncomfortable and inconvenient, and I will do it because I know it’s nourishing.

I will get my memoir manuscript revised and submitted to the Diaspora Dialogues.

Read more

I am currently writing this at our kitchen table, which has made its lovely return into our home after we got it refurbished over the holidays. We’d had it in storage since Nora was born as we figured we wouldn’t be dining any time soon. But we are slowly resetting our space to reflect a new chapter. We set up Nora’s high chair and also packed away the Pack n’ Play that was keeping her from tumbling into the gas fireplace. Now she leans right onto the glass and watches the flames dance and has learned to move away as it gets hotter.

We started solids a few months ago and are now almost through all the allergen introductions (we just have prawns left to go!) She especially loves scrambled eggs, peanut butter, yogurt (the tarter the better) and pureed carrots and beef, and, like her mother, is unsurprisigly, a huge fan of bread (a nice crusty piece often doubles as a spoon). And the latest craze? Cool cucumbers for her gums (her first two teeth just poked out the other day!)

In all this, I feel a return to a semblance of life with Jason that we had before Nora, except she is here with us. It’s a beautiful time, to see the past and future merge in this new life we are shaping. To eat around the table together, to stay up late with Jason after she’s gone to bed, and though we still sometimes wake at 4:30 am to give her a feed, it feels silly and sweet rather than the slog that it was some months ago when I also had to pump around the same time.

Actually, let me correct myself. I didn’t have to pump. I chose to pump.

There’s a huge difference in that and I’ve really tried to adjust my default language around this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used the words, “I have to pump,” in a single day over the last eight months. I sound like a mechanical parrot. I make it sound like some arduous obligation, when really, it was so much more than that: It was my choice.

When I first started pumping so many months ago, it filled me with utmost joy. Sure, my breastfeeding journey was different from what I had expected and it caused me a sizeable amount of grief in those early hormone-filled weeks. When Nora stopped nursing at three months and took to the bottle with no looking back, I was somewhat devastated. The disappointment made it easy to focus on all that wasn’t up to me. But I still had choices.

So I chose to pump and provide Nora with breastmilk. And as challenging as it was, it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It filled me with purpose (and oxytocin!) and it helped me to reflect on what motherhood means to me and what attitude I want to bring to it. It’s been the greatest test of my tenacity and selflessness—and an incredible view into what I feel motherhood should be.

Love as sacrifice: An oxymoron

This got me thinking about love and sacrifice. Yes, there is a selflessness we learn in motherhood, but selflessness should still, I think, ultimately feel good. If it doesn’t, it can quickly turn sour and becoming the complete opposite of selflessness.

Selflessness unchains us from the flighty hysterics of the ego. It connects us to a higher self that lives and breathes love. It’s a kind of forgetting of the self while also being a return to its most beautiful version.

But when selflessness begins to do us harm, we either need to work on ourselves or adjust how much of ourselves we are willing to give. Love should be sustaining and life-giving—not rooted in depletion or martyrdom.

Looking back, it’s hard to believe how easy I found it all. Pumping felt so deeply satisfying, both emotionally and physically. As much as I worried about supply, working hard to protect it was deeply rewarding. It showed me what an incredible thing my body is and how it responds to conditions. Yes, carrying around a pump sucked, but I found creative ways to make it work and doing so gave me a certain kind of confidence in the world and myself. Late-night pumps became “me time” and even in the middle of the night, trembling from lack of sleep, I still did it with a full heart. In truth, in those early morning hours, I discovered just how deep my love goes.

Maybe surprising to most, I have many fond memories of pumping. One, for instance, has me in the middle seat in the back of our RAV on our way to Kelowna last August. Jason’s driving, my dad’s in the passenger seat, my mom’s to my left, Nora’s to my right, and our two cats are perched behind us in their carriers, snoozing. I’m pouring milk, making a bottle for Nora on the centre console. The music is blasting—Talking Heads—and everything hard feels easy somehow. There is such an intimacy to this moment, so much so that I swear it rivals the intimate memories I have of nursing Nora.

The intensity I once carried around breastfeeding has loosened its grip. What once felt urgent and essential has begun to feel like a season that is coming to its natural end. Nora’s needs are no longer the same now that she’s bigger—and quietly, I’m realizing, neither are mine.

This is why over the holidays, I decided to wean.

At about 7 months postpartum, it’s as if the pump all of a sudden transformed into a ball and chain and the milk math started to make me lose my mind. Nora had a growth spurt and starting drinking a litre of milk a day and my supply just couldn’t keep up anymore, spurring in me deep insecurities. It didn’t matter if I had a strong yield or a low one; I was constantly worried about what the next pump would produce. It was torturous. I was so hard on myself.

Then all three of us came down with a cold. I got hit the hardest and dragged myself around the apartment for a week, splitting up what little energy I had on loving Nora and feeling absolutely miserable about pretty much everything else. This, of course, included hating hard on the goddamn pump.

But luckily I am the queen of finding silver linings. Watching Nora get her first cold showed me that no amount of breastmilk—or whatever else I give her—can keep her 100% happy. All I can do is love her through all of life’s aches and discomforts.

The line between selfishness and self-care

Loving takes many forms. And all love should ultimately make us feel good (it’s LOVE after all!). But somewhere along the way, pumping has started to feel like a sacrifice. What had once felt like a special treat—time to myself, time spent doing something good for my baby—has started to feel like a disruption. The alarm going off, a complete assault on the shape of the day.

As soon as I noticed it tinged with bitterness, I knew I needed to be rid of it, otherwise it would begin to leach its poison.

I feel fortunate that my body responded so well to the pump all these months, but it’s time.

It’s in the way, both abstractly and literally. Nora is curious now, watches the Spectra with interest, wants to play with it. I feel a growing resistance to that. I want her playing with toys. I want her playing with me—not the damn tubing!

But it hasn’t been all that easy to stop, I admit. There is a slight obsessiveness to it, perhaps an addiction to oxytocin (is that a thing?), perhaps a tinge of fear of postpartum blues returning.

I started dropping pumps back in the fall. Every time I did, this little critical voice returned. Why are you giving up? What’s another week or two to give your baby a little more milk? In those moments I’ve had to really think about my own needs, to not let myself get persuaded last minute by “mom guilt.” (Which isn’t a thing, by the way.)

But I persevered. I dropped those pumps.

But then the voice, rather than critical, started sounding dejected, like it lost the fight.

The Exclusive Pumping subreddit, which has been a great resource (in small doses), is full of women posting infographics celebrating the volume and hours they’ve poured into pumping (pun intended). They tag it with the flair, “hanging up the pump.” But this language doesn’t work for me.

I’m not giving up, nor have I been defeated. I am simply stopping this so I can start something new. It’s not monumental. Just the natural next step. At its core, weaning isn’t about taking something away. It’s about making room for what comes next.

This month will be my last pump. I’m down to two, which will turn to one, which will turn to none. I don’t know when this will be yet. I’ve stopped counting. I’m not rounding any numbers. I’m just going to try and feel into the moment and decide then and there, when it feels right to stop.

Just like this post.

Thanks for coming along for this zig-zaggy ride :)

Back to revising my manuscript…

xx

Vish

It was made of solid wood and painted frog green and had a twinkly bell inside. I think it was handmade.

Back then, I didn’t want a child. But when I returned to Vancouver and it came time to give it away, I just couldn’t part with it.

I had gravitated to it for its simplicity. The way childhood is supposed to be. Perhaps how I hoped motherhood might be, too.

So instead of gifting it as I had intended, I hid it away from myself.

When I became pregnant with Nora, I remembered it right away. But I stayed away from the drawer I’d put it inside. I was afraid that even looking at it would be tempting fate.

Throughout the pregnancy, as I wished for all to go well, I visualized myself giving it to my baby. It was only weeks after Nora came home that I finally pulled it out of the drawer and shelved it alongside the many baby shower gifts I’d arranged on a bookshelf in her soon-to-be room.

When Nora’s grip became strong enough, I finally put it into her little hand. She shook it, put her mouth around the top of it. She delighted in it, as she does in all things. It was not her favourite toy by any means, but it was mine. Watching her play with it, the little bell twinkling… It made my heart sing.

Last week, I lost it at the end of a long walk in North Vancouver with a friend. Nora was strapped to me and I didn’t notice right away that it had dropped. I told my friend who promptly offered to post about it in a neighbourhood group in case someone might have picked it up. For a moment, I shared her hope.

She asked me for a photo of it. I searched my phone but I discovered I had taken none. The green frog rattle from Zlatibor lives in my memory alone, both the sound and the sight of it.

As a child, I was prone to losing things, especially at summer camp. My favourite towel, my film camera, bracelets, socks, hair pins. I shed a lot of tears over these objects and breathed in such relief when some of them were found. These objects exposed scarcity in my life as well as the fragility of the world, how temporary joy can be. When they were returned to me, I felt special, like the world was stil looking out for me.

Yet, losing Nora’s rattle has not made me quite as sad as I thought it would. It has not made me angry at the world for stealing it, nor angry at myself for being so careless. On the drive home, when I realized it was gone, my heart sank a little but only so much to awaken my appreciation for it.

There’s a joy that has come from accepting that it’s gone—its loss has made its existence more real somehow. I feel that in losing it and now writing about it, I get to appreciate it far more that I ever would have.

It served its purpose and like all objects, it is more than a physical thing. It’s a story.

It travelled far, beginning its journey in a distant forest of my homeland when I was a different version of myself, newly wed and afraid to hear the ring in my heart.

And it ended its journey in a forest near my new home. And somewhere in between those two places, it was held by my sweet girl. This makes my heart ring with joy.

I can hear the rattle’s little bell twinkling still.

Unquestionably, I am a different person now. And each day I am changing. But one thing will remain true until the day I die. I am Nora’s mom.

The lost toy represents a different time in my life, and a distant hope and dream—that came true. It represents a journey that my heart got to complete. It was only inevitable something would be lost along the way. But so much more has been found….

xx

Višnja

But I won’t dwell here. If I’ve learned anything this past year is that I am the hardest on myself and that I need to do a better job celebrating my accomplishments. Though it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees, in 2025, there were a lot of #writingwins for me, especially given how different my day-to-day looked, what with pregnancy hormones, post-partum, and now a sweet little baby keeping me busy.

2025: A year in review

1. I published my first piece in award-winning SAD Magazine, in their #39 issue TASTE. Though the piece is not typically on a topic I write about (popular culture), it was really rewarding to work with their editor and see that even when something feels “off topic” for me, my voice and perspective are still alive in it.

2. I submitted a Canada Council grant for my memoir in progress. Results are still pending but this is already a win because I’ve learned that putting together a grant package always helps me refine my vision. It forces me to practice articulating what my hope is for my book, which helps light the way during my revision process.

3. I revised my memoir MS and resubmitted it to Diaspora Dialogues for a first-run consult. A huge step in my publishing journey as I was provided some incredible direction and support that lit the fire under my ass to get the next draft over to them so we can start querying agents. Needless to say, this is most definitely a 2026 resolution. It will be slow but I’ll keep the work steady. A good writer friend told me to just make sure “I touch the work every day” so if that means working through only one page while Nora naps, so be it! My hope, too, is that the aforementioned grant funding will come through this year so that I can commit myself to getting this done before another year goes by.

4. I read nine books this year (spanning from novellas to 1000-page tomes!). This included three since I gave birth to Nora. I like to think of reading as a passive form of writing, so this is a huge win for me, especially given that my mind just doesn’t concentrate the same way when I’m sleeping in 3-4 hour blocks and still running on a sleep deficit. The year began with Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, which I devoured in less than a week. It ended with Gothic novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (a female-centered vampire myth that predates Stoker’s Dracula). I feel like their energy perfectly represents my year, celebrating the power of motherhood and womanhood.

   

5. I connected with 95 of you who continue to be subscribed to this Substack, including gaining 32 new subscribers as well as six new patrons this year. I am OVERJOYED that people are actually reading what I’m writing here. It touches my heart—each like, comment, email reply, and IRL kudos. There is no greater gift to a writer than a captive audience. THANK YOU.

Small wins over big ones

Motherhood has afforded me less time for myself and my writing, but it’s also gifted me perspective. Because I value my time so much more now, I am more selective with how I spend it. This means not only being more picky about what I spend my time doing, but also with what kind of attitude.

There are still plenty of things I “have” to do when I’d rather be doing something else (honestly, this is the real challenge: How to feel good about whatever it is I am doing now rather than dreaming of everything else I should be doing). But the theme continues: Motherhood is helping me hone the skill of being present in the moment in front of me so that I can make it feel as best as it can regardless of outside circumstances.

Gone are the days of luxurious marathons. Now it’s all about sprints. Whether it’s taking out the garbage (tie the bag first, leave it by the door, get to it later), or writing an entire book (start with one paragraph…), I am learning to apply this new way of doing things. Some goals feel insurmountable otherwise. So instead, we celebrate progress at however small the scale. It’s kind of freeing, really.

I also feel more ruthless when it comes to my creative life thanks to this new approach. I no longer need “a writing day” or “3000 net new words” to experience success. Rewriting a single paragraph, removing a clunky sentence, finding a new word: these are real efforts. These days it’s thankfully easier to stay out of my head (maybe because I’m so tired and my cognitive function has plummeted LOL), which makes gut decisions easier and the flow state easier to enter. All I need is time—any amount of time. And I think my memoir is better for it. I’m focusing on micro-moments now.

Bit by bit, it will all get done. That is the way.

xx

Vish

Year after year it has proven itself resilient whether in the face of wet Pacific Northwest winters or our year-round inconsistent gardening practices. Somehow, every spring, its bare stick branches flourish with large canopy leaves and for a few months of the year, though it’s limited to a ceramic pot, it looks like the fig tree it was born to be.

In especially hot summers, we might even find one or two hard green fruits hanging underneath a few of the biggest leaves, which give us a sense of the tree’s potential, spurring in us a kind of hope that can only be described as undeserved.

In late fall of 2024, when I returned from Mexico City 13 weeks pregnant, I found a single purple fig growing on our fig tree.

I looked at the plump sweet thing and was compelled to touch my stomach. From that point forward the baby in my belly we called Fig.

“Fig kicked again!”

“I swear Fig hiccupped today!”

“Fig is really keeping me up at night.”

And now, as magical as it was that Fig was continuing to grow inside me, here was a Mediterranean fig ripening in November. A double miracle!

Then, as if living out a real-life Greek myth, I plucked the plump purple fig off our little fig tree and devoured it...

Yum.

It was the most nourishing fruit I had ever eaten, in part because I’d grown it myself but mostly because as its honeyed flesh dissolved in my mouth, I knew it was nourishing the little fig growing inside me.

The fig has since established itself as a true symbol of life to me. How the universe truly does conspire with us to make our greatest wishes come true. How if we are lucky, special moments will catch us and help us decipher the poetry of the world so that we can better appreciate this great dance.

But this is not where the Tale of the Fig Tree began.

It was the summer of 2022 when figs began to carry meaning for us. We were searching for a location near our reception venue for our wedding ceremony and were running out of options. Then like cosmic clockwork, my friend rented out a house with a beautiful backyard just blocks away, which she offered to us. On August 22, we were married surrounded by our loved ones—and fig trees.

After I gave birth to Nora, we had another incredibly hot summer. Our little fig tree bore so many fruits. I watched them through our living room window at all hours of the day and night grow plumper and larger as the early weeks passed. Nora turned one two weeks, then four. She was growing and thriving and so were our figs.

But in the sleeplessness and Nora mania, we forgot to water our tree. Look at the wilting leaves, I said to Jason one morning. Then the next day I said it again. But we both forgot.

Some days later I looked out the window and all the leaves had fallen. I clutched Nora tighter in my arms as I took in the sad sight: Our little tree naked but for the half dozen fruits that still hung on by a thread, of cellulose and sugar no less, abandoned and sapped of life source.

My heart broke, my stomach gutted, my postpartum hormones deepening my despair. Joy squandered for lack of effort, insufficient energy. The tree tried but we failed it.

But.

The Tale of the Fig Tree does have a happy ending.

After our tree shed itself bare, I decided I must forgive myself. We had prioritized our baby fig over our fig tree and there was nothing wrong in that. And not all was lost. Motherhood, even as it depleted me, revealed an endless reserve of energy I didn’t know I had. So one day as Nora was sleeping, I returned to our patio and plucked the little fruits off the tree having read that it would help the tree redistribute its nutrients for quicker recovery. I left a handful of the larger figs that were farthest along their ripening path, then watered the plant over and over as August turned into September.

Then, I forgot about it, yet again.

But a week or so later, I looked out our window and to my surprise our fig tree was revived! Green! And oh so full, its big leaves back! And underneath one: A juicy fig, sweet flesh bursting through its purple skin.

In the last two weeks of summer, we harvested nine figs. It wasn’t too late.

Happy 2026, everyone. May it be filled with sweetness, forgiveness, and healing. Every day is a new day, every year, another chance for harvest. May you reap yours.

xx

Vish