Such tragic news.

A university professor died by suicide. A Black man from a prestigious university, amid plagiarism allegations.

I feel compelled to say something as both a psychiatrist and as someone who knows the pressure and isolation one goes through in academia.

Suicide is one of those things that nobody can predict with certainty. We always go by the person’s history. If they have attempted suicide before, they are at greater risk of attempting again. But nobody can look at someone’s behavior or their words and know for certain who will died by suicide.

In Jason’s case, one is left asking: Is it worth it? Not life itself. I mean entering some of theses academic places.

I can not help but think of Martin Luther King Jr., who once described the struggle for integration and then warned that we might be ‘integrating into a burning house.”

We encourage people of color to enter these spaces. Earn a doctorate. Become a professor. Become the example we didn’t have growing up. But sometimes we do all of this while feeling that we are doing it at the expense of our souls. No wonder some people of us come out of medical residency or doctoral programs saying we are traumatized. We spent years becoming what we were told to, only to realize that somewhere along the way, we became disconnected from ourselves. We feel a split in our core being. All of that for the illusion academia promised. An illusion that can be taken away from us whenever those in power want.

in these spaces, we become representatives of a group whether we ask for it or not. We are watched more closely. What we say, what we write, and sometimes even what we fail to say can be scrutinize way more than others.

How many times a Black scholars mention they feel attacked, only for others to dismiss what they are saying? or to be told they are taking it too personally. How many times they have reported feeling exhausted, or unwelcome, and instead of listening to them, we ask them if they are sure?

Sometimes it feels as though the world we entered was not designed with us in mind. We have to prove that we belong. When we speak or write, we have to prove that our words are our own. That, like everyone else, we are capable of thinking, questioning, and transcending. We sometimes feel that we have to speak louder, explain ourselves carefully, and work harder just to be heard.

Let this be clear: we did not inherit more biological abnormalities. We inherit more social barriers.

Barriers that determine whose knowledge is considered legitimate, whose voice is taken seriously. Sometimes academia simply treats the knowledge produced by our communities as peripheral—as a footnote.

A Black man in academia is dead.

I don’t know everything he has been through. I don’t know all the forces and thoughts that brough him to that final and fatal decision. None of us should pretend that we can reduce a person’s suicide to a single event, accusation, institution. But his death still makes me wonder about the environments that have been created for people of color.

We talked about suicidal people. Maybe we should also talk about homicidal environments. We need to pay attention to the places that slowly, but forcefully convince people of color that their lives have less value. We need to feel respected, valued, protected and cherished.

Our presence in those institutions should not be conditioned to make others feel good or to mark milestones in racial progress, but rather to affirm that our contribution is great, and our lives even greater.

I wanted to reflect on the word “community” because two weekends ago I found myself at the summit of Mount Rainier in Washington state with three friends—all of them from Mexico, one of them a former classmate. We have known each other for more than a decade. Given that I lived in a small town, I drove four hours to the Minneapolis/St Paul airport. Then, nearly a four-hour flight to Seattle. I knew the distance was long, but didn’t process it until I got to their house, tired and sweaty. I knew I couldn’t pass up the chance to meet my friends. Ever since they have placed an entry ban on Haitian passports, many of us are afraid to leave the territory because it is not guaranteed we can come back. This also means I have not seen my family for twenty-seven months. I told myself if we can’t go to Mexico, let Mexico come to us.

Climbing Mount Rainier showed me how unfit I was. I was tired, thirsty, and sometimes dizzy, but I wanted to be with my friends, even if it was to see the top of the glacier together or take memorable pictures. It was an instant for us to reflect on friendship, what it means to leave home, and also to dream of better days together. It was an occasion to reflect on how different we were from each other, but also on how the tie between us grew stronger over the years.

Three days later, I needed to go to Boston. I needed to attend a conference on faith and science and present a poster on auditory hallucinations. During residency, I developed an interest in faith and mental health after caring for many patients from the Somali community. In March 2023, the State University of Michigan invited me to discuss one of my patients who has Somali ancestry whose hallucinations reflected his faith, and his ethnicity.

After that conference, I realized there was much more to learn, so I began attending the ASA, a conference on faith and science. So, when the opportunity came to present a poster, there was no topic I wanted to talk about more than auditory hallucinations and faith. I had wrestled with the question of how to show respect to a patient’s faith when they say God is talking to me, and how to explain auditory hallucinations to them or their family. But the conference was one hour away from Boston, so I stayed at one of my best friends’ houses, Brendan’s, for one night.

It was a virtuous night because I had a chance to meet two new friends from Venezuela after celebrating with Brendan and Tara over Dominican food and Akasan’s ice cream, made from a Haitian dish. I also found myself thinking of the community: what does it mean to move from seeing some friends from Mexico to seeing friends from Minnesota, but this time in Boston. It is thanks to the community that I had a place that night, and also good conversation too. The following day, Brendan and I were discussing identity formation, culture, and migration. I love talking with him because he can hold my thoughts without contradicting or being scared of them. If anything, he tends to build over them, not like an echo chamber, but more like rock strata.

To get to the ASA, I took a combination of Uber and the train, and it was so nice to view faces I have seen for three years now. There again, I thought of community. Of iron sharpening iron. One of my best conversations happened there, between an attendee from Germany with Pakistani ancestry who works in agriculture. Another one from Nigeria working in sociology discussing product or service consumption: how do people end up choosing what they choose? And what determines which one is better than the other? How can one product come from a region (like tomatoes from South America), while another region (like Italy) takes credit for the product (with pizza)? It was a very enriching conversation about what recipes mean and how some regions around the world do things over and over, developing them with a certain taste that makes you forget the origin of every ingredient beyond the forces of the market.

I came home on Sunday exhausted, but the one-week trip was worth it. It was an occasion to reconnect with friends, learn about their lives, and continue to grow together. Community is important, but more than that, it is the individuals who form it, how they shape one another, and how far we are willing to go to protect our community and keep it alive. I need to finish this and go back to the notes, but I hope you make time in your busy schedule to spend time with someone dear to you. To know something about their life, or let them know something about you.

I just finished reading Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, and I can honestly say it is one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read in a long time. It is a novel that challenges the reader ethically, psychologically, and philosophically.

Inspired by the real-life tragedy of November 24, 2021, when an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the English Channel, killing 28 of the 30 people on board, Delecroix does more than recount a disaster. He invites us to wrestle with our own moral assumptions and to recognize the humanity of those whose stories are too often reduced to headlines.

Reading it also made me realize that Small Boat is in conversation with my forthcoming memoir, What the Ground Couldn’t Shake. While Delecroix places us on the boat and asks us to confront the tragedy itself, my memoir asks a different question: What brings people to that boat in the first place?

Why do people risk everything to cross borders? What makes uncertainty feel safer than staying home? Through my own experience during and in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, I invite readers to explore those questions alongside me.

What the Ground Couldn’t Shake will be published by in August 2027. I can’t wait to share it with you.

I have two essays to share with you.

The first, This Thing in My Pocket, published in Solstice Literary Magazine, explores the paradox of being both indispensable and unwelcome as an immigrant. It began as a response to what was happening in Minneapolis earlier this year — a moment that demanded witness. The essay reflects on what it means to carry a passport not as a tool for travel, but as proof of permission to exist.

The second, Arrival, published in of Narrative Medicine, grew out of a clinical encounter with one of my patients. It is a reflection on aging in America — on loneliness, despair, and the ways we care for one another as we grow older. I wrote it because I believe that growing old does not make a person less valuable. If anything, it makes them more in need of being seen — and more worth learning from.

I hope these essays give you a sense of my writing and invite you to sit with what it means to be an immigrant and to grow old in America. If they resonate with you, please share them — with friends, family, students, or colleagues who might need them. Encourage them to subscribe to my Substack.

Writers are witnesses of their time. These two essays are my attempt to bear witness to mine.

A book update

I recently received thoughtful feedback from my editor, and I have worked carefully through each suggestion. The revisions are done. I am now rereading the entire manuscript before sending it back for a second round of edits.

I am excited to keep going, and even more excited to share What the Ground Couldn’t Shake with you in fall 2027.

Thank you, as always, for reading and for being part of this journey with me.

Happy Haitian Flag Day, and happy Haitian Heritage Month.

On May 18, 1803, the Haitian flag was born. The story goes that the French tricolor was taken, and its white center, the symbol of colonial power, was torn out. Catherine Flon stitched the blue and red back together, and in doing so, created something new: a flag that declared not only rupture, but refusal. Six months later, on November 18th, 1803, we would defeat Napoleon Bonaparte’s army to become the first Black republic in the world, January 1st 1804.

May 18 is a sacred day in Haiti and in the diaspora. Growing up, I remember the streets running blue and red — parades, music, the president himself required to appear and celebrate. It was one of those days when the whole country remembered, together, who it was.

In the United States, the Haitian diaspora carries that tradition forward, especially in Florida, Boston, New York, and New Jersey, where Haitian communities have built deep roots. But the relationship between Haiti and America runs much deeper than most people know. When the United States was fighting for its independence, Haitian soldiers were already there. Haiti — then the French colony of Saint-Domingue — fought at the Siege of Savannah in 1779, under the name Les Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue. Before Haiti was Haiti, it was already helping to build this country.

May was chosen as Haitian Heritage Month because of Flag Day. It is an opportunity to remember who we are, and how Haitians have contributed — and continue to contribute — to the United States and to the world.

A few ways to honor the month:

• Support Haitian businesses

• Uplift Haitian voices

• Share our stories

• Learn our history

If you are following my work, my memoir, What the Ground Couldn’t Shake, is forthcoming from in 2027. It is a first-person account of surviving the 2010 earthquake — and of everything that came after: collective grief, displacement, survival, and the question of what language can and cannot hold.

If this resonates with you, share this page with someone who might want to follow along. I use this space to reflect on the book, the publishing process, and what it means to write as a Haitian in America.

Thank you for reading, for remembering, and for being part of this journey.

Thank you for joining me as I share behind-the-scenes updates about my book, What the Ground Couldn't Shake, which will be available for preorder in March 2027. I plan to send this newsletter once or twice a month, just enough to stay in touch without filling your inbox.

Where the book is now

I sent the manuscript to my editor, , on March 21. She has been working diligently, bringing her experience as both writer and editor to every note she leaves. From what I have seen so far, she is doing a remarkable job.

What I’m reading

This month, I’m reading three books:

• Where the Wind Calls Home by Samar Yazbek

• Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat

• Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre

  

Places I’ve visited

I spent the first weekend of April at the Walker Art Center, where I saw Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night — a wide-ranging survey of her work exploring sound, language, and Deaf culture. Her art allowed me to journey into a world that I know very little about. It also says a lot about disability advocacy and the spaces we create, or fail to. I left and bought Disability Visibility, edited by Alice Wong. Some experiences send you straight to a book.

The following weekend, I traveled to Fargo and Moorhead. In Moorhead, I stopped into More Than Words, an independent bookstore, and left with White Teeth by Zadie Smith and Tremor by Teju Cole. But the real surprise came in Fargo, where I found a Haitian restaurant, Mariah’s Kitchen. The lemon juice, the diri kole ak pwa, the akra ak pikliz, the music, all of it brought me home for a moment. I did not expect to find Haiti in North Dakota, but there it was.

First of all, thank you for being with me over the past four months. This space has been growing, and I appreciate every subscription and every time you share my Substack with a friend. It means a lot.

By the title, you already know that I have some big news to share.

Some of you know that I’ve been working on a memoir of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. I was able to complete the manuscript and submit it to a number of presses. One of them selected it and offered me a contract. It came as a shock to learn they choose only one manuscript per submission period.

I’m deeply grateful to , and to all of you who have been part of my writing community since the moment I decided to take this work seriously.

The book, What the Ground Couldn’t Shake is set to be released in fall 2027, with preorders opening in March 2027.

For now, the best way to support this journey is simple: share this news with a friend, and encourage them to subscribe so they can be among the first to know when preorders go live.

I’m grateful for you. Thank you for being part of this.

Merci beaucoup

More soon.

On Friday, February 27, I drove nearly 230 miles from a small town in northern Minnesota to join fellow writers in St. Paul for an afternoon event organized by PEN America: Voices Without Borders. We gathered to share work about what refuses containment—memory, language, home.

After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, I became a refugee in Mexico. I know migration not only as an immigrant, but as someone displaced by disaster. I have lived across Latin America, beyond the borders of Haiti, carrying both rupture and reinvention with me. So when PEN America brought writers together during such a heated moment in Minnesota, I could not remain indifferent. As an immigrant and a psychiatrist, I could not keep my skills or my lived experience to myself when they might serve something larger than me.

So much is unfolding here right now — in our state, in our country. I believe each of us must show up in whatever ways we can. This event felt less about personal ambition and more about community — about reminding one another that we are not alone, that we are living through this together.

I am deeply grateful to everyone who attended. It was a Friday afternoon; there were many other places they could have been. But they chose to gather. They chose to listen. In the audience were friends and colleagues, including people I had not seen in eight years. There was healing in the words, yes — but also in the embraces, in the physical presence of those who came.

Writing, for me, is not a burden. It is a privilege. If my words can travel beyond the psychiatric office — if they can offer even a small measure of clarity or comfort — I feel not only fortunate, but entrusted.

I am currently revising the essay I read that day and plan to submit it to a journal. If it is accepted, I will share the link here. For those who could not attend, I hope the words will carry something of that afternoon to you. And for those who were there, perhaps they will allow you to inhabit it once more.

I am also working on a memoir, What the Ground Couldn’t Shake. But a book remains incomplete until someone else reads it. Thank you for reading. Thank you for bearing witness.

The moment I stepped out of the airport in San Juan, I knew I was in a familiar place, even though I couldn’t yet explain why. Words were failing me. It was the second week of February. A direct flight from Minneapolis to Puerto Rico. The air was warmer than Minnesota, and people were speaking Spanish instead of English.

San Juan felt like home—not home as in Haiti, where I was born, but home in the sense of returning to the Caribbean as a Haitian; home in the way of returning to Spanish, the language I once used to build a life in Mexico.

Fourteen years earlier, I left Haiti to join my family in Mexico. That journey happened just weeks before Valentine’s Day. I didn’t speak the language yet, and the streets of Mexico City felt foreign, so I spent Valentine’s Day 2010 indoors, alone.

But the following year, I was more integrated into my host country. I was in medical school. My growing mastery of Spanish helped me learn how to belong. That was when I discovered something that changed the way I understood Valentine’s Day. In Mexico, people don’t say Feliz Día del Amor—they say Feliz Día del Amor y la Amistad. Love and friendship. As if everyone deserves to be included. As if no one should be left behind. If you have a partner, it is your day to celebrate. If you don’t, all you need is a friend.

Thirteen years after my understanding of Valentine’s Day expanded, my two closest friends from Minnesota and I decided to spend it in Puerto Rico. As the plane crossed the sky, leaving the U.S. mainland, I felt—if only for a moment—that it might be heading toward Haiti. Instead, it carried me to another island, as if the Caribbean were introducing itself to me in a new accent.

Walking the streets of San Juan and encountering so many Dominicans felt familiar too, given that Haitians and Dominicans share an island—and an intertwined history. It was the first time I had visited a place that felt both deeply familiar and undeniably foreign, as if my mind were blending Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and even the U.S. mainland into one emotional geography. Yet it was none of them. It was something entirely its own: la tierra de Benito—Bad Bunny’s island.

We wandered through Old San Juan. We stayed at an eco-lodge. We explored El Yunque. We swam in a swimming hole, imagining that thousands before us had done the same, and thousands would after us. We walked along the ocean, our bare feet brushing the sand. And we celebrated Valentine’s Day the way I first learned to in Mexico: Feliz Día del Amor y la Amistad. We were grateful for our friendship. This time, though, with Puerto Rican dishes—mofongo on our plates and salt in the air.

Two years after visiting Puerto Rico, its images returned to me—its warmth, its joy, its rhythm—when I saw Bad Bunny during the Super Bowl halftime show. Like many people who know little about American football, I had no idea who was playing against whom. But the halftime was worth watching. Through social media and YouTube clips, I caught fragments of the performance: the flags, the voices, the choreography, the faces of mi gente. It all came rushing back, as if I were walking the streets of San Juan again, as if Valentine’s Day had arrived early.

This year, I found myself at a conference in Las Vegas on Valentine’s Day. Yet my mind kept drifting south—to Mexico, to Puerto Rico—as if that were where I was meant to be celebrating el Día del Amor y la Amistad, the way those places know how to do it: expansive, inclusive, warm. A celebration not imposed by the expectation that romance must define the day, nor by the quiet reminder that if you are single, it is somehow not yours.

Whether with a partner or a friend. Whether on the island where I was born, the one I visited, or the mainland that I call home.

Some places teach you that love is romantic. Others teach you that love is communal. The Caribbean—and Mexico—taught me it can be both.

The first time I heard about Substack was last summer, thanks to . Today, I reached my first 100 subscribers. I’ve met many of you in person—across the U.S. and Mexico—and I’m deeply grateful for your presence, for reading my work, and for helping me build a readership. Your support means more than I can put into words.

Even though I launched Substack two months ago, this journey didn’t start there. In September 2024, I attended a book signing by Edwidge Danticat. I was the first person to ask her a question. I spoke about my fear of writing about Haiti and asked if she had any advice. Of all the topics people could read about, I thought Haitian literature would be the last thing they’d choose. She told me to start by writing for myself, then for people I knew—and when I felt ready, to go public. I started writing after work, and between seeing patients.

Later, when I joined the first-ever Minnesota refugee writers’ group, I felt more confident speaking about my homeland and the migrant experience. I was encouraged to do so boldly, and publicly. But still, I wasn’t sure anyone outside of my friends would want to read what I had to say until I saw a crowded library the day of our public reading.

Here’s what makes this milestone feel improbable: I’m a Haitian immigrant, a psychiatrist in rural Minnesota, someone who writes in his fourth language (there are moments I pause mid-sentence to search for the right English word). My stories are about displacement, borders, and what it means to belong when you’re constantly asked to prove you’re allowed to be here. These aren’t easy topics. And yet, you’ve shown up. You’ve read. You’ve shared. Some of you have written to tell me that my words resonated. That means everything.

I’m working on longer pieces now—essays that hold complexity, that ask readers to question who they are and what they feel. I’m writing about what it costs to be asked, again and again, Where are you from? I’m writing about grieving a patient when professional ethics prevent me from being physically present with their family. I’m writing about Haiti, about memory, about the earthquake that changed my life.

Some of these pieces will be published elsewhere first. Some will appear here. But all of them are for you—for anyone who has ever felt foreign, who carries displacement in their body, who understands grief even when they don't have the language for it, who gets asked about their accent, for anyone who knows what it means to build a life in a language that never quite feels like home.

Thank you for being here. For reading. For helping me believe this work matters.

More to come.
—Jonas

P.S. If you’re curious, here’s the moment (around 1:14:00) when Edwidge Danticat answered my question about writing and fear. And here’s a recording of my public reading with the Minnesota Refugee Writers group

I should have anticipated it. On my connecting flight to Berlin, passengers filled the aisles in red and white—Polish jerseys, flags draped over shoulders. Euro 2024. I wasn’t there for the matches—though I am a devoted soccer fan myself. I was there for something else. Something heavier. Something that can only be grasped, at least in part, on German soil.

I had come to understand ethics under Nazi Germany.

This wasn’t something I could learn from books. Places speak. They carry memory. They bear witness to what happened—and where. They may not explain why events unfolded as they did, but they testify to what happened—and where. For those willing to listen, places confess.

Since the beginning of my psychiatry residency, I have been preoccupied with understanding violence—overt and covert, explosive and subtle. That pursuit eventually led me to apply to FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics), a two-week program that brings U.S. students and early-career professionals to Germany and Poland to examine how their own fields participated in the rise of Nazism and the advancement of its agenda.

FASPE fellows were divided into two cohorts. One included law, business, design, and technology. The other—my cohort—brought together medicine, journalism, and clergy. Across disciplines, we were called into the same work: self-reflection. How did people from our professions—within a society widely regarded as educated, cultured, and civilized—become complicit in genocide and crimes against humanity?

That question did more than follow us. It haunted us. In lecture halls. In memorials. In silence. And within ourselves.

We visited Charité Hospital, where physicians associated with them had experimented on incarcerated people—those deemed disposable: the mentally ill, the disabled, those pushed to the lowest rungs of society. We stood at train platforms where human beings were packed tightly together and transported to concentration camps. We visited gas chambers, where we were told that it had been psychologically difficult for soldiers to shoot another human being face-to-face. The gas chambers were designed to create distance—distance from the act, from the names, from the faces of the victims.

Throughout the journey, many of us struggled to grasp what it meant for German society to dig its own grave and descend into it with its own people. We learned about the complicity of both citizens and the government. Overnight, people born German lost their citizenship because of religious affiliation. Some were university professors. Many of their colleagues remained silent—because removing these individuals meant less competition for professorships. When Jewish homes were vandalized, their furniture and property were sold to neighbors.

Silence and personal gain became fuel as German society burned itself from within.

But it wasn’t only average citizens or politicians. Professionals were deeply involved—the very people entrusted to think critically, to challenge power, to guide society forward. Among them: religious leaders who blessed the regime. Business owners who starved forced laborers. Journalists who traded truth for proximity to power. Lawyers who drafted policies so government actions could be seen as legal.

For me, the most difficult part was Poland—Auschwitz.

They say it is a dark place, where silence is deafening and pain is almost visible. They say you leave changed. But that does not fully capture it. Language itself breaks down there. Before the rise of Nazi Germany, even the term genocide did not exist. People lacked the language to describe what was happening to them in real time. When I left Auschwitz, a migraine seized me—cellular, skeletal, as though my body had absorbed what words could not hold. Perhaps it was the sun. Perhaps dehydration. Or perhaps the unbearable accumulation of suffering that space continues to radiate.

When we returned to our accommodations, I went straight to bed, needing darkness and stillness. The migraine was unbearable—anything else would have undone me.

The question that remained—how did this happen?—felt both urgent and impossible. The answers were complex, layered, and deeply uncomfortable. Yet one thing became clear as I walked those grounds, listened to scholars, and attended to the silence between places and across time.

Self-righteousness.

That was the answer I brought back. The moment we become convinced that we are right and everyone else is wrong. The moment our beliefs eclipse the humanity of others. That is the beginning of the end.

When the Nazi government rose to power, one of its first priorities was eliminating opposition—anyone who thought differently or challenged their agenda. Without resistance, without regulation, the ideology fed on itself, growing unchecked until it reached a metastatic scale across Europe.

Here is another thought that haunts me—more than a government drunk on self-righteousness, more than German citizens plundering the homes and belongings of those they labeled as others: it was the indifference of so many.

No matter how destructive the government’s agenda was, no matter how ill-intentioned its architects, those who remained silent—those who chose neutrality—also contributed to Germany’s moral decay. Silence was not absence; it was participation.

Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel captured this with unsettling precision: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” A year and a half since I was in Germany and Poland, those observations, and thoughts continue to haunt me.

I left Europe, feeling grateful to FASPE for this life-changing opportunity, and returned to Chicago, then Minneapolis. But that lesson stayed with me—the danger of framing opponents as threats, as enemies deserving erasure. The obvious support of some for their personal benefits, and the indifference of many others.

For eighteen months, I walked the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, asking myself what it would mean for us today. For eighteen months, my imagination failed me. Perhaps because the events I was trying to grasp belonged to another time, another country, another people. The past felt distant, insulated by geography and history. And so, eventually, I returned to my daily routines, as if distance itself could stand in for understanding.

The question persists: In what ways do I participate in injustice—through my actions, or worse, through indifference to my neighbor’s pain?

Eighteen months after visiting Auschwitz, in January 2026, I am hearing and witnessing the persistently high levels of anxiety in our community. People are traumatized by what they see—tear gas surrounding children’s schools, an elderly man taken away in shorts and Crocs—by what is happening to friends and family. When they come to see their provider, when they try to name traumas that will take years to process, they ask for higher doses, more refills—as if medication could undo what their minds can no longer unsee.

People have not yet begun to grieve when another death is added to the list. Some of us no longer feel safe traveling into the cities. Others are constantly flooded with messages: Stay home. Don’t go out alone. I am left to offer words when medication reaches its limits.

In Minnesota, I care for rural patients, including Native Americans. Some travel ninety minutes to see me. At times, when I must refer them to a particular specialist, the nearest option could be more than two hours away. I care for brave people—people who will drive through subzero weather, even at forty below, bundled against the cold, to keep an appointment.

As someone from the Caribbean, I never imagined such temperatures existed, let alone that I could survive them. Yet what is unfolding in Minneapolis reaches us fully, cutting across distance, weather, and geography. It has left no part of the state untouched, drawing the world’s attention to us once again.

Why does Auschwitz keep coming to mind in Minnesota?

As my patients speak, as my neighbors list the reasons they cannot sleep—the sharpness of intrusive thoughts, the constant hum of anxiety, the haunting paranoia, the torturing nightmares—their words summon photographs and murals I once saw in Germany.

This is part of my ongoing exploration of trauma, displacement, and what it means to bear witness. If you want to follow this journey—from earthquake survivor to psychiatrist to writer—please subscribe and share.

She was stunned. Delighted. She told me to get ready; we were going to the photographer. This was a time when taking a picture meant waiting weeks, sometimes months, for the film to be developed. I remember the way she looked at me that day, while we paused to take the pictures over those small stairs—as if she were in love.

And all I could think was that I wanted to be a man, the man of the family, because my father was living abroad. I was thin, fragile-looking, but I wanted people to know I was there. She wanted me to hold that gift, that poem as if I had created a masterpiece, and my nine year old self believed it too.

I have always loved words. They have always held a special place in my heart. I played with them—writing how I felt in the moment, hiding the pages between bricks in the wall, only to find them weeks or months later. It amazed me to read myself from the past, as if a former version of me had left behind a small gift. I was creating my own archive, my own memory, in a country where so much gets lost or forgotten.

Then came high school. Haiti was in the midst of a national movement for restitution and reparation under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, demanding that France repay the so-called “independence debt.” I was a junior when I wrote a piece titled Bay kou bliye, pote mak sonje. I wrote it in Creole, not in French, the language of formal education, because I wanted the cause to belong to us. I wanted the French government to hear me in the language of the formerly enslaved.

It came as a shock—to me and to my family—when we received a phone call inviting me to the National Palace to meet the president. That day, sitting only a few feet behind him, not far from national music icons like Black Alex, I felt simultaneously terrified and certain: education could change my life, and writing could open doors I hadn’t known existed.

Years later, after arriving in Mexico, writing would once again carry me forward. An essay I wrote was selected for a United Nations contest, which led me to spend nearly a week in New York City and deliver a speech at the UN. I spoke in Spanish—my third language—while my words were translated live into the other UN’s official languages: English, French, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic

And yet, somewhere along the way, I left writing behind. Medicine took over. Migration from one country to another, from one city to another, all in pursuit of a single dream—to be educated, to become a physician. I stopped writing as if I could escape myself by doing so.

Then something shifted, about a year before I graduated from psychiatry residency. I was grieving. Grieving the end of training—twenty years in total. Grieving the parts of myself I had lost along the way, the things that once gave me life. That grief pushed me back to writing. I enrolled in creative writing classes: first with The Bellevue Literary Review, then at the University of Minnesota, and eventually with the Refugee Writers Workshop under the guidance of Kao Kalia Yang—whose own memoir, The Latehomecomer, had shown me what was possible when refugees tell their stories

For nearly two years, I wrote—not so much to produce, but to find myself. To find the nine-year-old boy his mother looked at with love. The high school student who dared to ask France for its debt. The medical student who believed words could bring people together.

It was during that pilgrimage that I drafted my book, What the Ground Couldn’t Shake—a work of literary nonfiction about surviving the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the long aftershocks that reshaped identity, memory, and belonging. The book explores disaster, displacement, and the fragile work of rebuilding a life when the ground—both literal and emotional—can no longer be trusted. It moves between personal narrative, collective trauma, and medical humanities, tracing how catastrophe alters both nations and individual psyches.

I know publishing is not an easy path. But after twenty years of becoming a doctor, after surviving an earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands, after learning to hold other people’s trauma while carrying my own—I am ready. Perhaps all these years were necessary—to let the book cook, to let it form, to let it germinate. Perhaps I needed to become a psychiatrist, to listen to other people’s stories, to better understand trauma and emotion. And I truly hope that soon, you will be able to hold it in your hands.

If this story resonates with you—if you’ve ever felt caught between languages, countries, or versions of yourself—I’d love to hear from you. Subscribe to follow the journey from earthquake survivor to published author, and everything in between.

One image crosses our minds again and again: the ground shaking, opening its mouth to swallow us whole. More than 300,000 souls were lost that day. And for those of us who survived, our bodies and our minds were marked forever.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, geography changed. Borders shifted not on maps, but in lives. Many people—myself included—became migrants, refugees, our sense of place rewritten. January 12 is a day of grief for all of us, in different ways.

That day, I left my parents’ house in Carrefour, on the south side of Port-au-Prince, to meet a friend downtown, where most universities, banks, and government offices are located—a quick trip to pass along some digital pictures. At no point that morning did I think I was moving closer to the epicenter. At no point did I imagine that people I had seen just days or weeks before—my cousin, Camille*, or my housemate, François*—would be gone forever.

Camille was my cousin on my mother’s side. She was also a nursing student. François was my housemate and my classmate at the medical school, the Faculté de Médecine et de Pharmacie, and my teammate during our clinical rotations.

So many were school or college students, very young people, never given the chance to live a full life, to grow old. It is hard for those of us who survived to find anything good that came from that day. If there is gratitude, it is because we are still here—but that gratitude is not clean. It is sprinkled with guilt.

Why am I still here and not them?
Why did I survive when they did not?

Sixteen years later, forgetting continues to be impossible. Recently, I spoke with a friend from my former medical school for the first time since that event. It was as if our lives had been suspended on that day. Before we could exchange updates, before we could speak of the good moments we shared, our memories returned first to January 12.

He lost his youngest sister, who was still in middle school. I lost my cousin. Both of them were named Camesuze. That loss still leads the conversation

Healing takes time—not only our minds remember, our bodies also remember. It takes time because we know that we lost more people than the official numbers. Because on that day, we all lost someone. We all lost something. Our identities were reshaped in ways we still don't have language for.

A child who lost a parent calls themselves an orphan. But parents who lost children have no name for what they became. Siblings who lost siblings do not know what to call themselves. Friends who lost friends have no name either.

Sixteen years later, we are still here—trying to remember those who are gone, and also who we were before that moment, before the second that changed our lives forever.

So today we remember, because that is what the living do. We carry the memories of those who are gone, and the legacy they left behind. We also carry an earlier version of ourselves—a vestige of who we once were—and we search for peace between those selves.

*names changed.

If this piece resonated with you, please consider sharing it. For those who survived that day and those who carry similar losses, I hope this offers some recognition of what we continue to carry.

I’m looking for a home for my full memoir about the earthquake and its aftermath. If you’re a literary agent, editor, or know someone in publishing who might be interested, please reach out. If you’d like to follow that journey, please subscribe.

I’m sharing it here because it sits well with my last entry, “We Are Made of Stories,” and beneath everything I’ve been writing lately—language, memory, survival, and voice. Some stories don’t leave us. They wait for the right moment, the right place, the right prompt or trigger to be told “again”.

I have been thinking about what should come next in my writing. The more I think, the more I find myself drawn backward — toward the past, toward the places my feet once knew so intimately, toward faces that once lit entire rooms and now flicker like shy stars in memory.

But how do you return to the past when it has dissolved behind you like dew in the morning sun? How do you walk a road that no longer exists, except as fragments embedded deep within your bones?

Still, I feel an urge — a pull — to excavate what remains. To keep memory alive. To peer into the corners we have not yet dared to illuminate.

And I think I have found it: a memoir about the earthquake in Haiti.

The Story That Still Needs Telling

Fifteen years ago, we watched it unfold on our television screens — headlines screamed from every corner of the world. A natural disaster. An old wound deepened in a nation already weathered by countless storms. In an instant, a city was unmade. Over 300,000 souls vanished beneath the rubble, and the living were scattered like dust in a violent wind.

When people hear the word earthquake, they think of shattered concrete, collapsed homes, bodies lost beneath the weight of the earth. But it is more than that. It is a story of who we were before the ground split open, and who we became after — each of us as individuals, and all of us as a collective spirit.

I was there. I survived. And I believe I must write it.

More Than Just Survival

I envision a memoir that wanders into every hidden chamber of our emotions. One that drags grief out into the sunlight and dares to name it — grief when it is complex, grief when you feel guilty for surviving, grief braided with gratitude. And beyond grief: solidarity. The quiet, unwavering act of holding space for one another.

A memoir about how disaster — whether born of nature’s raw indifference or the failures of human care — can split our sense of self, fracture our meanings, and forever tilt the trajectory of our lives.

I remember us: dazed, staggering through a landscape of dust and broken screams. Some drifted into psychosis, marooned on islands of private agony. Dépaysé. Nou gaga. Others carried an invisible wound that never closed — a gash of trauma that swallowed names, homes, neighbors, loved ones, and pieces of ourselves.

The Silence After

I remember our collective confusion — the trembling earth, the nights sleeping in the open, feeling as if the sky itself pressed down upon us like an angry hand. Some thought it was a bomb; others whispered of divine wrath. In those first trembling hours, we did not yet comprehend the vastness of the devastation. The telephones fell silent. Radios went mute; their antennas folded like broken limbs.

Port-au-Prince turned perilous overnight. We fled like terrified chickens to the countryside, desperate for even a scrap of safety. Those who could, fled the country altogether. With the airport crippled, we crossed into the Dominican Republic, carrying only what we could hold — grief, terror, shards of identity — to find a plane, to find a future. To redefine ourselves. To begin again.

What We Became

The earthquake changed us. It reshaped not only our buildings and bodies, but our language, our silences, our very breath. Some names are no longer spoken; some stories lie buried with the rubble, waiting to be unearthed.

I want to write about that. About who we became when the dust finally settled. A memoir not just for the dead, but for the living who walk alongside invisible ghosts. A story of what happened — and what did not. Of unspoken possibilities, of tomorrows forever lost. A way to call out their names, to affirm that they existed here among us, and that the emptiness they left behind will echo endlessly.

This memoir will serve as both memory and monument: a place to hold the dead tenderly, to cradle what we learned about survival, about the long ache of absence, and the fragile flame of remembrance that flickers like a candle in a restless night.

Why Now

To bear witness. To share it with the world. To keep memory breathing — so it does not vanish like dust at sunrise.

Some stories demand to be told, not because they are easy, but because they are necessary. This is one of them.

What stories from your own life feel urgent to tell? I’d love to hear your thoughts as I begin this journey of excavating memory and meaning.

My work is, at its core, an act of listening—listening not only to what people say, but to what they withhold. To what they are ready to share, and what remains carefully guarded. To what they feel proud of, and what carries shame or embarrassment. All of it matters. All of it is data.

Often, it feels as though we are more than bodies and minds—we are stories. Stories half told, and stories waiting for safety, language, or permission to emerge. These narratives are how we recognize one another. They are how we cross distance, create meaning, and soften the sharp edges of isolation. Stories are how we find our way back home to ourselves.

Through them, we learn who we are, where we have been, and where we might be going. In that sense, we are made of more than cells and DNA. We are shaped by memory, emotion, and the quiet narratives we carry long before we know how to name them.

Sometimes healing means returning to the story someone has told themselves for years—or the story they were born into and never chose. To tell a different story can feel like betrayal, or even illness, before it begins to feel like freedom. My work, then, is to validate these narratives, and at times to gently help people question what they have carried as truth for so long.

And once someone begins to feel better—once they feel lighter, freer—something subtle but powerful happens: they do more than change themselves; they change how they move through the world, how they meet others, how they love. They offer permission—often without knowing it—for others to set down what they have been carrying too.

I hope we reclaim our right to tell our stories, and in doing so, discover who we are. I hope we spend time with our grandparents, with the generations that came before us, so we can learn the stories that shaped them—and, more quietly, shaped us too.

And when our time comes, I hope we open ourselves to our children, to the generations that follow, and offer them pieces of ourselves—especially the parts we know will never be understood unless we speak them aloud.

Because we are made of more than biology. More than cells, water, electrolytes, enzymes, or the laws of physics. We are made of stories—passed down, interrupted, reclaimed, and retold.

One of the most meaningful of these was joining a group of seven writers—Minnesota’s first-ever Refugee Writers Cohort—to develop new work under the mentorship of award-winning author Kao Kalia Yang.

My fellow writers and I met monthly. In those sessions, we learned to listen deeply, offer thoughtful feedback, take creative risks, and shape narratives rooted in our personal histories as migrants and as children of refugees. Between meetings, we revised, reflected, and practiced weaving that feedback into our craft. The experience was rare. As immigrant writers, we don’t often have access to spaces like this. But thanks to the people who believe our stories matter—and that they deserve to be told—and through the support of a grant, we were able to gather and learn how to turn emotion into language: to name our joy alongside our heartbreak, our pride alongside the injustices we face, our sense of community alongside moments of isolation.

Our final meeting was a public reading, attended by friends, family, and colleagues from both literary and academic communities. I read a 1,179-word piece titled “Pronto te daré una sorpresa,” about the birth of my new nephew—an important family moment I had planned to attend but ultimately could not, because of how politics seep into our daily lives, drawing borders that dictate who may move freely and who may not.

Here is the YouTube link in case you missed the event.

It’s getting cold in northern Minnesota. Here, winter arrives a month early and lingers a month late. Snow begins to cover this small town before the rest of the state feels the shift. Roads turn icy, leaves disappear almost overnight, and people slip into quieter rhythms long before winter officially begins.

As a psychiatrist, I often see more mental health decompensation and substance-use relapse during these months. The long stretch of cold brings a loss of connection, a deepened sense of isolation, and a loneliness that settles into the body like frost. And while the holidays bring rest and joy for some, they also sharpen the ache for others—reminding people who is missing at the table, recalling divorces and estranged children, highlighting invitations that never come.

Wintering is necessary, but it’s also a skill. You need to know how to winter well. That means building a support system you can lean on for the five or six months of cold—sometimes more. It means creating winter activities, even if you prefer staying indoors. At some point, you need a change of scenery, the movement of walking, the shift in what your eyes take in. These small acts help lighten winter’s weight and soften the darkness that settles early each afternoon.

It’s getting cold here now. Those who know this landscape are preparing; those who don’t will need to lean on neighbors and friends to make it through. No one should face winter alone—not when a friend can appear through a screen or a loved one can reach you through a voice carried by invisible wires.

Winter is a season. It comes and it passes. We don’t need to rush it away, because it, too, has something to offer. It provides contrast, reminding us of the beauty of human existence. The question isn’t how hard winter can be, but whether we have the skill and the support to appreciate the season as it unfolds in our lives.