Medicaid is becoming that raggedy wig in your closet.

You know the one.

The lace has been lifting for years.

The edges have given up.

Every time someone tells you to “just replace it,” you laugh because replacing it isn’t that simple.

So you keep adjusting it.

Pinning it.

Hoping no one notices.

That’s Medicaid.

A program millions of Americans rely on, yet one that somehow manages to feel both lifesaving and barely held together at the exact same time.

If you’ve followed my caregiving journey, you already know I have an unhealthy amount of experience with the healthcare system.

Days before my father’s health crisis, I was standing in his primary care physician’s office on the phone with Medicare for at least 45 minutes adding myself as an authorized caller. Less than two weeks later, I was filling out paperwork for Medicaid assistance while he was fighting for his life in the ICU.

I know the paperwork.

The phone calls.

The eligibility workers.

The asset limits.

The waiting.

The contradictory answers.

The appeals.

I know what it’s like to open an approval letter with relief, knowing it wasn’t just another piece of mail—it was the difference between getting help and figuring it out on your own.

Medicaid quite literally made it possible for my father to receive the long-term care he needed after multiple strokes, an aneurysm, brain surgery and heart surgery.

But if navigating today’s system felt like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube underwater, the changes coming in 2027 threaten to make an already difficult system even harder for many families to access.

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So, What’s Actually Changing?

Beginning in 2027, many adults who receive Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act expansion will have to regularly prove they are working, volunteering, attending school, or otherwise meeting community engagement requirements—generally 80 hours each month—unless they qualify for an exemption. States are required to begin implementing these requirements by January 1, 2027, although some may begin earlier or receive limited implementation extensions.

On paper, that may sound reasonable to some people.

In practice?

Government paperwork has never been known for simplicity.

And as someone who has built a career navigating bureaucracy, I can tell you the paperwork alone is enough to make me want to snatch my invisible wig clean off my head.

History has shown that many people who qualify for benefits don’t lose coverage because they suddenly became ineligible. They lose it because they miss paperwork deadlines, don’t receive notices, can’t upload the required documentation, or simply get buried in administrative red tape. Analysts expect much of the projected reduction in Medicaid enrollment to come from these administrative hurdles rather than from people who truly no longer qualify.

The work requirements aren’t the only change.

Some adults will also face more frequent eligibility reviews instead of annual renewals. That means more notices to watch for, more forms to complete, and more opportunities for paperwork to fall through the cracks simply because life happened.

The law also significantly reduces federal Medicaid spending over the next decade and limits how states can finance their Medicaid programs through provider taxes. Depending on how individual states respond, that could mean fewer providers accepting Medicaid, longer wait times, and additional pressure on hospitals and healthcare systems.

None of this guarantees those outcomes everywhere.

But it does mean families should be paying attention.

Why People Disagree

Supporters argue these changes are necessary to reduce fraud, encourage work among able-bodied adults, and slow the growth of federal spending. They believe adding work and community engagement requirements promotes personal responsibility while helping control the long-term cost of the program.

Critics see it differently.

They argue the greatest risk isn’t fraud—it’s bureaucracy. They worry eligible people will lose healthcare simply because navigating the system becomes too difficult, while states spend millions creating new reporting and verification systems.

And honestly, after living inside this system for the last year as both a caregiver and a bureaucrat, I keep coming back to one question:

Who are we actually helping?

A few months ago, I went down a rabbit hole watching documentaries about life in Appalachia. I couldn’t stop thinking about the people living in isolated hollers where the nearest grocery store, doctor’s office, or employer may be miles away.

Imagine you’re an able-bodied adult living there.

You don’t have reliable transportation.

Jobs are scarce.

Public transportation is virtually nonexistent.

Now imagine being told that to keep your health coverage, you have to document 80 hours each month of work, school, volunteering, or another qualifying activity.

On paper, it sounds simple.

In reality, it assumes opportunity exists everywhere. It doesn’t.

For some people, the biggest barrier isn’t a lack of willingness to work. It’s geography. It’s poverty. It’s the absence of transportation. It’s living in a place where opportunity itself is limited.

My concern is that these new requirements will add another layer of bureaucracy to a system that’s already difficult to navigate.

When people lose health coverage, they don’t stop getting sick.

Diabetes doesn’t disappear.

High blood pressure doesn’t pause.

Mental health conditions don’t wait for paperwork to catch up.

Instead, many delay care until a manageable health issue becomes an emergency. By then, the emergency room is often their only option. That’s harder on families, more expensive for the healthcare system, and exactly the kind of outcome reform should be trying to prevent.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe these changes will accomplish exactly what their supporters hope.

But after spending the last year watching families fight through one bureaucratic hurdle after another just to receive basic healthcare, I have a hard time believing that adding more hurdles will make the system work better.

Here’s the Part That Keeps Me Up at Night

Policy debates happen in Washington D.C.

Reality happens in living rooms.

It happens when a daughter is trying to figure out how to get her father home after multiple strokes.

It happens when a caregiver is already juggling doctors, medications, physical therapy, work, and life—and now has one more government requirement standing between their loved one and healthcare.

I’ve lived enough of the Medicaid experience to know this: The hardest part has never been proving someone needs help.

The hardest part has always been proving it over...

and over...

and over again.

If we’re going to reform Medicaid, the goal should be a system that’s easier for eligible families to navigate—not one that requires them to become part-time case managers just to keep healthcare.

Sources

Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF)

• A Closer Look at the Work Requirement Provisions in the 2025 Federal Budget Reconciliation Law

• Tracking the Medicaid Provisions in the 2025 Budget Bill

• Tracking Implementation of the 2025 Reconciliation Law: Medicaid Work Requirements

Reuters

• Key Healthcare Provisions in Trump’s Tax Bill

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)

• Administration’s Last-Minute Restrictions Likely to Worsen Impact of Medicaid Work Requirements

• ---

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For more than a year, I knew exactly who I was.

I was a caregiver.

And because no one stands in front of their elementary school class and says, “When I grow up, I want to be a caregiver,” the title always felt abrupt—almost forced.

If I’m honest, I wear it with both honor and reluctance.

Not because I don’t love my father.

Not because caring for him was a burden.

And certainly not because I’m inherently selfish.

Quite the opposite.

When my dad’s health crisis began, I was finally learning that being a little selfish wasn’t selfish at all. It was self-love. I was learning to prioritize my health, protect my peace, and make room for the woman I was becoming.

Then life had other plans.

Somewhere in the middle of hospital rooms, insurance appeals, medication schedules, and doctor’s appointments, I discovered a completely different kind of love.

A love that looked like advocating when I was exhausted.

A love that looked like learning medical terminology I never wanted to know.

A love that looked like sacrificing time, sleep, and pieces of myself without keeping score.

This past year turned my definition of love completely on its head.

Love looks different to me now.

But so does my identity.

For more than a year, every decision, every phone call, every calendar reminder, and nearly every ounce of my energy revolved around making sure my dad had what he needed.

Then one day, the urgency eased.

The appointments became less frequent.

The phone stopped ringing as much.

A new normal quietly began to settle in.

But I noticed something unexpected.

Almost every conversation I have—with old friends, new acquaintances, coworkers, or someone I’m just meeting somehow circles back to caregiving.

It’s become the story people know me by in this chapter of life. And if I’m not careful, it starts to feel like it’s the only story I have to tell. So lately, I’ve found myself sitting with a question that’s both uncomfortable and liberating.

Who the hell am I outside of this caregiving arc?

IYKYK

If you know, you know.

You don’t realize how all-consuming caregiving is until it quietly becomes the filter through which you make almost every decision.

Even leaving the country doesn’t mean you stop caregiving.

Before I left for Argentina, I put together a binder with my dad’s medications, emergency contacts, doctors’ information, daily routine, and everything someone would need if I couldn’t be reached. I scheduled emails, coordinated with my cousins so someone checked on him every other day, and made sure the home health aide knew exactly what was expected.

The goal wasn’t just to enjoy my vacation.

It was to make sure my absence was almost invisible.

The day I was supposed to leave for Argentina, I got into a car accident a few hours before my flight. Thankfully, I was okay, but my car ended up in the body shop. They asked if I needed a rental car.

That wasn’t my concern.

All I could think about was getting my car back because if something happened to my dad, I needed to be able to get to him. My mind never even considered my own inconvenience. It immediately went to, “What if my dad has an emergency?”

A few weeks ago, I went on a date. We had such a great time that we decided to go somewhere else afterward. My dad was staying with me that weekend, so I told my date, “I have to stop home first to make sure my dad has taken his meds and is settled. Then I’ll meet you.”

He smiled and said, “No worries. I have to stop by my mom’s house too.”

If you know, you know.

Looking back, none of those moments felt unusual at the time.

They were just life.

It wasn’t until the urgency started to fade that I realized how many of my decisions had quietly stopped revolving around me.

I didn’t need caregiving to end.

I needed to stop disappearing inside of it.

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Side Quest Queen

I’ve always loved a mission.

Maybe that’s why every stage of my career has been rooted in purpose. Whether it was serving overseas in the Foreign Service or leading event operations now, I’ve always been motivated by work that feels bigger than me.

Caregiving fits that instinct almost too well. It gave me a mission every single day. But somewhere along the way, I realized I needed a mission that belonged to me.

So, I started fighting back.

Not against caregiving.

Against the idea that caregiving was my entire identity.

I’ve become what I lovingly call a side quest queen.

The more random, ambitious, or seemingly unrelated the goal, the more committed I’ve become.

In a previous essay, I wrote about relearning how to run while my dad relearned how to walk.

• Since then, I finished the Cherry Blossom 5K.

• I’m training for the Army Ten-Miler this fall.

• I’ll wrap up the year with a half marathon in Mexico City.

Have I lost it? Probably.

Am I committed? Absolutely.

Earlier this year, I decided I wanted to learn how to hand dance. Washington, D.C., has its own style, and I figured it was finally time to learn something beyond my early-2000s millennial two-step. So, for three months, every Tuesday night, I showed up to class.

Then there’s writing.

Writing has been one of the greatest gifts to come out of this season.

It has helped me process grief, celebrate progress, document lessons, and make sense of a chapter I never asked to live.

But writing is also bigger than caregiving.

It’s the foundation for the family history book I’ve dreamed of writing for years—a project rooted in legacy, love, and preserving the stories that deserve to outlive us.

Each side quest reminds me that while caregiving is part of my story, it isn’t the entire story.

It reminds me that Brittany still has dreams and goals.

She still has curiosity.

She still has a future that deserves just as much attention as everyone else’s.

Maybe that’s what healing actually looks like.

Not pretending the caregiving chapter never happened. But refusing to let it become the only chapter that defines you.

So — I’ll leave you with this, whether you’re a caregiver today or simply someone who’s been consumed by one season of life for a little too long.

Who are you outside of the role you’ve been playing?

What part of yourself has been waiting patiently for your attention?

And maybe most importantly...

What’s your next side quest?

The Bills That Never Stop

The envelopes were thick. Before I even opened them, I already knew what they were.

Hospital bills.

I don’t remember exactly when they started piling up, but by the end of last year there was a noticeable pattern. Not only did the number of envelopes increase, but so did the balances inside them.

The first bill said my dad owed roughly $2,000. After his second surgery, it climbed to nearly $6,000.

Insurance covered the overwhelming majority of the more than $1 million in medical charges. That’s what everyone points to when they tell you, “At least insurance paid most of it.”

But no one talks about the thousands you’re still responsible for. Or the costs that never appear on a bill.

The time. The exhaustion. The bureaucracy. The emotional labor.

No one prepares you for that part.

Sometimes, you even learn that saying the right words to the right person can mean the difference between paying a bill and having it reduced or forgiven.

You learn.

Not because anyone teaches you. The alternative is paying the price for not knowing.

The Charge I Never Asked For

One charge that still makes me laugh — because if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry — was for palliative care. I never requested it!

A man walked into my dad’s hospital room while he was unconscious and connected to more machines than I could count. He asked if I needed emotional support.

My immediate thought was, Is he here because my dad isn’t going to make it and no one has the heart to tell me?

We talked for maybe five minutes. The service? More than $300.

He came back again a few weeks later while my dad was “boarding” in the emergency room because there were no available hospital beds. Not in a room. In the hallway.

My dad was receiving inpatient-level care in an ER hallway while insurance was billed as though he had a private room upstairs.

The palliative care provider stopped by again. Another brief conversation. Another charge of more than $300. I never asked for the service either time.

I would soon learn this wasn’t an exception. It was the business model. Every time the healthcare system reached its limit, the responsibility shifted somewhere else. Usually onto family.

The Legal Maze

Because my father was unconscious, he couldn’t legally sign a power of attorney. That option disappeared the moment he lost capacity.

Instead, I had to petition the DC court system for guardianship and conservatorship. The paperwork required physicians to complete court forms. The physicians had never seen the forms before — at a Washington, DC hospital, for Washington, DC court proceedings. They called their legal department to ask if they were allowed to complete local court documents.

I remember standing there thinking, How is this even possible?

Then came the court hearing. The attorney assigned to the case wanted me to video conference my unconscious father into the hearing. When I explained — for what felt like the tenth time — that he was medically incapacitated and that the physician had documented exactly that on the required forms, she casually responded that she hadn’t gotten to that section yet.

I wish I could tell you I handled that conversation gracefully. I didn’t. Somewhere between hospital bills, court filings, insurance battles, and sleeping in hospital rooms, I had run out of patience.

Ironically, one of the kindest people I encountered during that entire season wasn’t in healthcare at all. It was the HVAC technician repairing my air conditioner after my house reached ninety-five degrees in the middle of summer.

He heard everything I had going on with the attorney’s insane request. He gave me a discount.

Sometimes strangers show more humanity than systems built around care.

“You Need to Take Responsibility”

The first time my dad was going through pre-approval for acute rehabilitation — a fancy way of saying intensive rehab — the hospital social worker pulled me aside before the rehab interview. She wasn’t giving me medical advice. She was coaching me on how to answer the rehab’s questions.

“When they ask about his discharge plan,” she said, “you need to tell them you’ll be responsible for him for at least two weeks.”

I remember staring at her. Responsible? After multiple strokes, a heart attack, a brain hemorrhage, and an aneurysm, they expected me — a non-medical professional — to assume responsibility for his care?

The message was clear: either I agreed to take responsibility for his care, or he risked being denied admission to acute rehab. I was backed into a corner.

Even my mother, a registered nurse with more than thirty years of experience, didn’t believe me at first. She thought I had misunderstood. Then she joined the three-way call with the acute rehabilitation representative.

At the time, I was out of town, about to meet my ex-boyfriend’s mother for the first time. I had already been sitting outside a Red Lobster, on the phone for nearly thirty minutes, asking follow-up question after follow-up question because I simply couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

The representative calmly explained that if I wasn’t willing to assume responsibility for my father’s care after discharge, he could be denied admission to acute rehabilitation.

The silence that followed was deafening.

Finally, my mother broke it.

“In more than thirty years as a registered nurse,” she told the representative, “I’ve never heard of something this absurd.”

When the call ended, I walked into the Red Lobster bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and cried.

Not because I didn’t love my father.

Because I was trying to give him the best chance at recovery while realizing I was being asked to take on a level of medical responsibility that was well beyond my training.

After a few minutes, I wiped my face, took a deep breath, and tried to erase every trace of what had just happened. Then I walked back out and met my ex’s mother for the first time, hoping she couldn’t tell that just moments earlier, I had been crying in a restaurant bathroom.

I said yes because saying no didn’t feel like a real option.

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Seventy-Two Hours in the ER

My dad had developed MRSA and pneumonia while in acute rehabilitation. His rehab stay was cut short, and he was sent back to the hospital. There were no beds. So he stayed in the emergency room hallways. For three days.

The first night, I stayed until three o’clock in the morning. Because of the fluid on his lungs, he was receiving diuretics that caused him to urinate every thirty minutes. He couldn’t safely get up by himself, and we’d never managed oxygen equipment before. At one point he couldn’t hold it and accidentally sprayed me while trying to use the urinal.

I asked a nurse for help because my dad needed to use the bathroom. The response felt more like annoyance than compassion. He helped us get there. Then he left. I cleaned my father.

When we returned to his stretcher, I didn’t realize his oxygen had been turned off during the transfer. No one turned it back on. For nearly an hour.

I still think about that. What if I hadn’t noticed?

Starting Over, Every Time

Almost every new medical professional spoke to us as though my father had always been chronically ill. I found myself repeating the same sentence over and over again: “He wasn’t like this six months ago.”

He had been fully independent. Driving. Living his life.

But every shift change seemed to begin with assumptions instead of reading the chart. Again and again, I repeated the same medical history, medications, surgeries, timeline, and concerns — even though every bit of it had already been documented in the electronic medical record.

It may have saved the provider a few minutes. It cost me another layer of exhaustion.

Then there were the social workers. Every time my father moved to a different floor, another unit, or another facility, we were assigned someone new. In about six weeks, I told my father’s story four different times. Every request. Every concern. Every question. Every goal. Starting over each time. No continuity. Just another introduction.

Six Months of Becoming His Nurse

My dad ultimately lived with me for a total of six months. When he was discharged the first time, the hospital forgot to include his feeding tube in the home health orders. The visiting nurse arrived at my house, reviewed the paperwork, and immediately noticed it was missing. She looked at me in disbelief, walked back to her car, searched through the supplies in her trunk, and improvised what she needed to clean a feeding tube that was already backing up.

For the next two months, until my dad’s heart surgery, I cleaned it. I flushed it. I changed the dressings. When he was too weak to bathe himself, I bathed him. I prepared his meals. I checked his blood pressure and oxygen levels. I organized and administered his medications. I argued with the pharmacies more times than I can count because prescriptions were incorrect or medications weren’t ready. I learned how to troubleshoot his oxygen machine. Medical tubing stretched across my living room and down my hallway.

I drove him to every appointment. I coordinated with specialists. I managed insurance. And somehow, I still showed up to work forty hours every week.

One of the greatest gifts my career in the Foreign Service gave me was a mindset: Trust, but verify. I carried that philosophy into every doctor’s appointment. I asked follow-up questions. I requested clarification. I sent emails. I made phone calls. I documented everything.

Because somewhere along the way, I realized something unsettling. If I wasn’t paying attention, things got missed. Orders got left off. Information didn’t get passed along. Medications weren’t coordinated. The system assumed someone would catch the mistake.

That someone was me.

Over and over again, I found myself asking the same question: How is this considered an acceptable way to deliver healthcare?

What “Baseline” Really Means

When my father was discharged from his third rehabilitation facility, he’d only been there about a month. His progress in a short window of time was remarkable. In just a few months, he relearned how to walk and progressed from mumbling and grunting to speaking in full sentences. The discharge team explained that he had reached his “baseline.”

I remember asking them, “How did you determine his baseline?” Because before the stroke, surgeries, infections, and hospitalizations, his baseline was a healthy, fully independent man.

Was this new baseline based on his actual recovery? Or was it based on when the insurance company decided it was no longer willing to pay?

Everyone knew the answer. No one would say it aloud.

I appealed the discharge. Insurance granted two more days. Every appeal after that was denied. So my father — now dependent on a wheelchair and walker — was discharged to my home without what I considered a realistic long-term plan.

He lived with me for four months until I transferred him back to his home to receive his home health services.

The Search for Assisted Living

For three months we explored assisted living facilities while my dad lived with me after his third rehab discharge. I completed application after application. Nearly forty pages each. Facility after facility denied my father. Every time I asked why, I was told they couldn’t provide specific details. No explanation. No guidance. No recommendations. Just another rejection.

Many of these facilities receive taxpayer funding. Still, there was no accountability.

Friends helped me call private assisted living facilities instead. The cheapest quote we received was around $8,000 per month. Some were significantly more. Every single friend was shocked by the numbers. But that’s the reality.

Even if you’ve saved responsibly your entire life, America’s healthcare system can drain decades of savings during your final years if you haven’t prepared well in advance.

Then came the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities Waiver (EPD)— a requirement before qualifying for Medicaid-funded long-term care services. Another application. Another agency. Another waiting list. Another maze of phone calls trying to convince someone that time actually mattered.

Eventually after multiple assisted living denials and an EPD finally approved, we were able to switch to home health services as the only option for his long-term care support needs.

What I Learned

This experience has changed the way I think about aging in America.

Before this experience, I thought healthcare was about finding good doctors and having good insurance. I was wrong.

Healthcare in America is also about whether your family has the time, education, flexibility, emotional capacity, and financial stability to become an unpaid extension of the healthcare system itself.

I learned how to flush a feeding tube. I learned how to troubleshoot oxygen equipment. I coordinated specialists. I navigated insurance appeals. I filed court petitions. I completed Medicaid applications. I advocated for my father in rooms where no one seemed to be talking to one another.

I never went to nursing school. I never went to law school. I never worked for an insurance company.

I just loved my dad.

And somewhere along the way, that became the qualification the system relied on most.

If You’re Reading This

At thirty-seven years old, I’m already thinking about long-term care insurance. I’m thinking differently about retirement. I’m thinking differently about where I want to grow old.

If you’re healthy today, don’t wait.

Complete your advance directives. Talk with your family about powers of attorney before they’re needed. Understand long-term care insurance. Learn what insurance does and does not cover.

Have the uncomfortable conversations now, because crisis is the worst time to discover how complicated this system really is.

My father survived multiple strokes. A brain hemorrhage. An aneurysm. MRSA. Pneumonia. Brain and heart surgery. The odds were stacked against him.

Our family survived the American healthcare system.

Those are two very different victories.

For fellow caregivers: What’s a moment in your journey through the healthcare system that still surprises you when you think back on it?

For those who might be facing this soon: What do you wish someone had told you before you needed to know it?

But there’s a part of this conversation that almost never gets named: what happens to your professional life when you’re also somebody’s everything at home.

Not just the logistics. The identity of it. The way you show up to a meeting having just handled something you can’t explain. The leadership skills you built over a career — the ones you thought were for the boardroom — suddenly being the exact skills keeping your family afloat.

Recently I sat down with two former senior diplomats on their podcast, Leadership Tea, and we finally had that conversation. Out loud. Honestly. The kind of conversation most workplaces are still not having.

We talked about caregiving in the workforce — the realities of it, the professional toll and the unexpected growth, and why the people navigating it deserve more than silence and a quietly rearranged calendar.

It’s the conversation I wish had existed when I was first figuring this out. Watch it below.

You can also listen to Leadership Tea on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Buzzsprout

If it lands for you — share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe to Leadership Tea on YouTube. They’re doing the work of making these conversations visible.

I want to hear from you: when did you first realize your professional skills were quietly keeping your family afloat? Drop it in the comments — I read every single one.

After the height of every crisis comes the quiet.

The tempo steadies.
You find a routine.
The calls and texts dwindle.
There are longer gaps between the check-ins.

And you find yourself in the long between of what was and what is.

I remember at the beginning of last year my vision board was full of ambitious goals and plans. When I finally tore it down, I kind of laughed at the version of myself who made it.

I’ve always leaned into expecting the best while preparing for the worst. Last year was the first time I truly watched that play out in real life.

While my dad’s life has changed, so has mine.

I am not the same Brittany from before caregiving.

And instead of reliving the trauma — the ambulance ride, the ICU, the broken healthcare system that almost broke me too — I made a choice.

I chose to celebrate by leaving the country.

I wrote this on my layover in Panama, en route to Buenos Aires, where I’ll reunite with my colleague turned dear friend. I overpacked. A spa day is already on the books. I plan to eat steak and drink wine every night. I will love on the people who held fast to me when I was a turbulent storm last year.

And I will celebrate this new version of me.

More confident. More bold. More courageous.

These Jobs Don’t Give a Damn About You. Put Yourself First.

Becoming a caregiver was the final shedding I needed to step into this new season.

Before caregiving, I was the constant giver.
The people pleaser.
The problem-solver.
The strong one.
The one that didn’t break.

I said yes when my gut screamed no. I stayed in friendships longer than necessary. I carried obligations I should have never shouldered alone. I stayed in institutions quietly crushing my spirit.

It served me in previous chapters. It will not serve me in the ones ahead.

Last summer, I sat beside my dad during rehab, periodically scrolling to see if I was about to lose my own job. Luckily, I did not. But over 1,300 Foreign and Civil Service employees were fired in a single summer. My most brilliant, decorated colleagues — people with decades of service, language specializations, commendations — were dog-walked out the front doors of my agency as if they were enemies of the state.

I gave that agency everything. So did my former colleagues.

It didn’t matter.

What 2025 taught me is that loyalty, dedication, and brilliance will not stand a chance against a program much bigger than you.

So I stopped agonizing over a job that would never lose sleep over me.

Caregiving refocused my why. My why no longer looks like prestige or a title. It looks like alignment. Purpose. Peace.

Not all clarity arrives gently. But it arrives.

Do Not Focus on Who Didn’t Show Up. Focus on Who Did.

There is a strange phenomenon about crisis: most people show up at the very moment that demands only a few in the room.

If I were to liken it to any imagery — imagine a tornado warning has been issued. As a first responder, should you show up at the beginning of the storm, or focus on the aftermath?

That is what a medical crisis is like.

I had to send messages to loved ones asking them not to visit my dad in the ICU. I know their reaction was out of love, but logistically and operationally, it made no sense. He was tethered to machines with ticking time bombs dangerously close to going off. I could not manage visitors while also managing grief and medical decisions in real time.

And when the storm finally settled, the flock of people became just a few.

For a while, I obsessed over how people showed up and when they showed up.

Eventually, I stopped.

Because grief confuses people.

Sometimes they don’t know what to say. Sometimes your crisis is retriggering their own. Sometimes they are in the middle of their own hellstorm and you just don’t know it. Focusing on who didn’t show up is a waste of energy.

I started asking different questions:

Who can I call to help me with this task? Who can I lean on when I need to vent? Who can help me take my mind off of things?

And that’s when things began to flow.

Build Your Community Before the Crisis

You must build the community before the storm. The community will be your first responders. The crisis will only test the strength of what you already built.

I am lucky in ways I know other caregivers are not. I come from two very large families and grew up in a close-knit neighborhood. I also built communities outside of family — internationally, through university, through years of showing up for people.

I could devote an entire blog to the ways my community showed up for me and my dad this year.

The aunt and cousins who came at midnight so I wouldn’t be alone. The friend who got off the plane and came straight to the hospital the next day. The cousin who took my dog for three weeks. The neighbor who periodically charges the battery in my dad’s car. The college friend and god-sister who served as witnesses for my dad’s will — just in case. The friends who called assisted living facilities and added everything to a master spreadsheet. The friend who found movers in 24 hours. The friend who brought the rollator walker so my dad could move better at home. The cousins who helped sell and move his vehicle. The cousins checking on my dad right now, this week, while I finally take a breath. The friend waiting for me in Buenos Aires who already has an itinerary curated to help me relax.

These are lifelong relationships at work.

Love personified.

A community built before the fire tested it.

People love to complain about the lack of community. But community is built through genuine connection — shared experiences, belly laughs that make tears run down your face, relationships that hold space when you’re stumbling. These are the people who stand with you through life’s hardest chapters.

Don’t let life pass without building a tribe that shows up to help you rebuild after the storm.

Behind Everything Are Other Humans Going Through Human Experiences, Too. Give Grace.

I remember calling my dad’s primary care physician’s office, frustrated about a delayed prescription. The woman covering the front desk sounded aloof and scattered. I was irritated.

A few days later, I found out her father had just died.

She was grieving while still showing up to work, still functional, still doing her job — while quietly crumbling.

I had to learn to breathe and not take it personally. Because behind every system, every long wait for a referral, every missed call, every bureaucratic frustration — there are humans also living through human experiences.

Just like I showed up to work with personal crises still brewing. So did everyone around me.

Give grace. Because one day, you will need it yourself.

No One Is More Responsible for Taking Care of You Than You

For the longtime caregivers reading this — I know you smiled when you saw I left the country.

Because you already know what I’m still learning: if you don’t captain the ship of your own care, you will eventually fall overboard.

Everyone loves to say: “Make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”

It’s kind. But after hearing it for about the tenth time, I realized —

these folks ain’t gonna help me relax.

I need to help myself relax.

Caregiving makes you take stock quickly of what is draining you. The act of caring for a loved one creates an exhaustion that no amount of sleep can solve. It forces you to dig from the deepest parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed. It will test your limits, your resilience, your capacity for grace and for triggers.

As this one-year anniversary approached, I knew I needed to return to the one thing that has always regulated my nervous system: traveling.

I didn’t leave because I stopped caring.
I left because caregiving taught me that I still needed to exist too.

And since this is the year of alignment — in order to show up fully as myself, with this extra title of caregiver, I must also give to myself.

The right to live, too.

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“There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Hurston

I opened my piece in my alma mater’s alumni journal with that line because it said in ten words what I’ve spent two years trying to say out loud.

Hurston’s headstone reads Genius of the South. She was a storyteller, anthropologist, and ethnographer who captured history before it could be erased — who refused to sanitize Black dialect, who recorded Cudjo Lewis, one of the last known survivors of the illegal slave trade, brought to Alabama on the Clotilda in 1860. His story sat unpublished for nearly ninety years. She wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks in Haiti. Her era dismissed it. She died poor and forgotten. And yet her work became an archive that outlasted everyone who ignored her.

She wrote knowing the value of these stories even if her country did not. Sometimes that is the duty of the witness. I didn’t quote her casually. I quoted her because she understood what silence costs — and what it finally refuses to do.

That’s what my alumni journal piece is about.

I wrote about diplomacy. About caregiving. About the land my family lost during Jim Crow.

Over a career navigating Guyana’s oil discovery, evacuating Americans from southern China during the pandemic, and overseeing one of the largest U.S. missions in post-war Iraq, I learned that some truths can’t be smoothed. They have to be blunt to transform.

Caregiving taught me the rest.

My generation is the sandwich generation in real time — still building, still paying off the debt of becoming, while holding up parents in a country with no real plan for any of it. Medicare covers less than you think. Medicaid requires near-poverty before it steps in. And someone — usually a woman, usually a daughter — quietly rearranges her entire life and calls it a personal choice.

Caregiving is not a personal choice. It is a policy failure dressed up as family love.

That too is a story that has been waiting to be named.

Zora Neale Hurston captured post-slavery life from the inside — not as tragedy observed from a distance, but as a living world with its own textures, humor, and grief. I am trying to do something similar for a different hinge moment: the years between progress and its reversal, when the ground shifts beneath people who were only just beginning to stand on it.

The book I am writing is about the legal lynching of my great-uncles during Jim Crow and the land my family lost in its aftermath. This is not history at a distance. On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Louisiana v. Callais, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the provision that for decades protected Black voters from maps designed to erase their political power. Within days, states across the South moved to dismantle the majority-Black districts that had stood as hard-won proof that representation was possible. The machinery that rendered my family’s dispossession legal is not a relic. It is active. It is current. And it has always known exactly what it is doing.

Writing about that history right now is not looking backward.

It is reading the room.

Hurston wrote without applause, without fandom, without knowing that Alice Walker would rescue her work decades later. She wrote to bear witness. To refuse erasure.

I write for the same reasons: for my father, for my great-uncles, for every millennial daughter quietly rearranging her life inside a system that was never built for her. I’m not writing for applause. I’m writing because these years are answering — and someone has to take notes.

📖 Read the full piece here: The Term Spring 2026 - Potomac School

And if you haven’t read Their Eyes Were Watching God yet — it’s time.

Daddy was still in the ICU last summer.

A breathing tube protruded from his mouth. Machines beeped every few seconds while nurses rotated in and out of the room — checking fluid levels, adjusting his body to prevent sores, taking vitals.

A faint pink liquid moved steadily through the tube connected to the patch on his head. Drainage from the hemorrhage.

I had not heard his voice in weeks.

At that point, he was suspended somewhere between life and death. And every day, I felt like I was holding my breath right alongside him.

It was during those first few weeks that my mom finally said what was really underneath the curt response she had given me days earlier.

“I just don’t want to be cut out.”

And in that moment, she was not just my mother. She was a woman grieving too. For a second, she almost sounded like a little girl.

There is a particular tenderness that comes with watching the adults in your life age. Caregiving and grief have a way of stripping people down to their most vulnerable selves. Sometimes, in the middle of it all, you catch glimpses of the little girl or little boy still living inside them.

I almost lost my dad during this health crisis. But if I’m honest, there has been a relational crisis unfolding too.

It serves no one to pretend otherwise: my parents are divorced. At the onset of my dad’s medical emergency, they had been divorced for nearly two years. And yet, like many families trying to survive this economy, they still cohabitate in the home they both own — co-parenting my adult brother, who has special needs.

So while I’ve been navigating a healthcare system that often feels one step away from collapse, I’ve also been navigating the emotional wreckage that illness exposes inside a family.

What do you do when someone has been the next of kin for nearly forty years, and suddenly their child is the one making the decisions?

When the Roles Reverse

What happens when a child becomes the emergency contact — and the family power structure shifts overnight.

I first felt the tension at the onset of the crisis.

After I dialed 911, I called my dad’s oldest sister. Then I called my mom. I have always called my mother in my worst moments.

By that third call, I finally broke. I started hyperventilating and told her she needed to come home.

Legally, she did not have to. Relationally, she felt compelled to.

And so, she returned.

In the chaos of my dad’s rapidly evolving medical emergency, one question kept surfacing: “Who is next of kin?”

Her name was still listed in the hospital system as his.

The silence that followed felt heavy. Together, we diplomatically explained the family dynamics. But something much larger was happening beneath the surface.

“The queen was being asked to step down from the throne.”

The nurses and doctors nodded politely as they updated the system with my information. But beneath the professionalism was an unspoken understanding: they were witnessing a shift in power.

Because what people do not talk about enough is how caregiving quietly rearranges authority inside a family.

The child becomes the emergency contact. The child signs the paperwork. The child makes the medical decisions. The child carries the weight of outcomes that used to belong to the parents.

Not simply because of illness. But because power, grief, love, history, and identity were all colliding in real time.

Who’s Paying for This?

The real cost of a parent's hospitalization: what millennial caregivers discover when they open the financial files.

As next of kin, I became the manager of my father’s finances overnight. And in peeling back the lid on what I found, this unfolded into a second crisis — one that was about to hit my pockets, his pockets, and the rest of the household.

You don’t know how bad something is until you are thrust into the caregiving role.

I am no exception.

After sorting through his documents, I let out what I can only describe as the biggest scream of the summer. I definitely startled my dog. Because WTF.

It’s as if the mask had slipped. Suddenly, the heroes of your memory are just mere mortals — humans making human decisions and trying to figure out life just like you.

This is where I had to dig from my well of grace. And mercy.

The numbers told a brutal story:

• Dad’s hospitalization bill was well over a million dollars

• Private assisted living facilities quoted a minimum of $8,000 per month

• The lowest cemetery plot estimate was roughly $10,000 — just for the plot!

And we are not alone. According to the Federal Reserve, the median American has just $65,000 in retirement savings — well below what most financial planners recommend. By age 65, the average 401(k) balance sits around $232,000. The gap between what people have and what they need is staggering.

“Living and dying in this country is becoming a bill none of us can afford.”

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While I’ve been managing his bills, I’ve also been managing my own silence — about what I found, what it cost me, and what it means for all of us going forward.

There is a particular grief in discovering that the people who raised you were just winging it too.

So Are We Going to Talk About It or Not?

How caregiving breaks down communication between adult children and aging parents — and what it takes to rebuild it.

Writers like , , , and many more have written about how caregiving fractures the stories we tell ourselves about family. I’ve lived it.

I will stand on the hill that communication skills should be taught from grade school. We communicate every day — personally, professionally, casually, formally. And yet it remains one of humanity’s greatest challenges.

Caregiving challenged my communication in ways I did not anticipate.

My mother and I were once in sync. It was easy, at first — she works in the medical field, so talking through prognosis and next steps felt manageable. But like most crises, I packed my emotions into a box. Compartmentalization has always been how I cope in my hardest seasons.

Eventually, that box ran out of room.

Proximity is not the same as understanding. Watching my mother navigate her own grief, her own sense of displacement, her own fear of being made invisible — I started to see her differently. Not as my mother first. As a woman first. A woman who spent nearly forty years as someone’s partner, someone’s emergency contact, someone’s person. And then, quietly, wasn’t anymore.

I am no stranger to difficult conversations. But navigating them with people who share 50% of your DNA tests your ability to be deferential, hold the line, and remain compassionate — all at once, for decisions that carry the full weight of a life.

Some conversations have been explosive. Some are still living in the pauses between what we say and what we mean.

But I am learning that caregiving is not just about the person in the bed. It is about every person in that waiting room. Every person holding their breath. Every person pretending to be fine so someone else can fall apart.

My dad survived. And I am grateful every single day.

But I have spent the last year grieving versions of my parents I thought I knew. And slowly, painstakingly, learning to love the real ones.

If this resonated with you

If you’ve been in that waiting room — holding your breath, managing the paperwork, grieving people who are still alive — I’d love to hear from you. Drop a comment below. Tell me where you are in it.

This community is small but it’s real, and the conversations in the comments are some of the most honest ones I’ve had all year.

If you’re not yet a subscriber

This essay is free. But the deeper work — the diplomatic archives, the behind-the-scenes of rebuilding a life after a career and a crisis — lives in the paid tier.

If this is the kind of writing you want more of, consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s the most direct way to tell a one-woman operation: keep going.

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If you know someone who needs to read this

Forward it to the friend who is quietly carrying their family right now. The one who hasn’t said it out loud yet. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do for someone is hand them the words they couldn’t find themselves.

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“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” — Albert Einstein

At the beginning of 2023, I knew my time as a diplomat was coming to an end.

It did not arrive as a dramatic decision. It was quieter than that. More like a whisper that grew louder over time, until I could no longer ignore it. By the time I reached my final tour, I made a decision that felt both grounding and uncertain. I would not bid on another role.

I did not yet know what would come next, but I knew I was leaving.

So at the beginning of 2025, I started my search.

At first, I approached it the way I had approached everything else in my career, with structure, discipline, and a clear strategy. But by March, that strategy had already begun to shift. What I thought would be a straightforward transition turned into something far less predictable.

By the middle of last year, I checked my application count. It had crossed 500.

Last July, the State Department went through a reduction in force. I was in between tours at the time, which meant I was watching both my losing office and my gaining office restructure in real time. There was a period where I genuinely did not know whether I would have a job.

That uncertainty settled in a way I had not experienced before.

My faith in landing something began to shrink. It did not disappear, but it got smaller.

Looking back, these moments have something in common. At the time, they felt small. Now, I can see they were not random.

It was not until August that one conversation helped me narrow my focus. I stopped applying broadly and became intentional. I focused specifically on event operations roles, the work I knew how to do well and the work I had quietly been building toward for years.

That same month, I came across a role on LinkedIn: Manager of Event Operations at the Library of Congress.

I read the description carefully. Something about it felt aligned in a way I could not fully explain at the time. It was not just that I was qualified. It felt familiar.

A year earlier, I had been inside the Library of Congress scanning NAACP files, looking for any trace of my great-uncle’s case for my book. Trying to understand a history that had been buried, overlooked, or never fully told.

A year later, I wrote about that experience in my cover letter.

Around that same time, I realized I had not taken professional headshots in over five years. A recently laid-off State Department employee was offering sessions, so I booked one for September.

A few days before the shoot, she sent the location: the Madison Building corridor at the Library of Congress.

It was a Thursday.

After the shoot, I passed a sign advertising the Library of Congress Live happy hour that evening. I had already applied for the role weeks earlier, so I decided to go. I figured someone from the office might be there.

The event was full. Packed. People everywhere.

At the entrance, a woman asked if I had registered and helped me get checked in. I walked through the space, taking it in, scanning the room, trying to figure out who might be connected to the events team.

Eventually, I approached one of the volunteers and asked if they could point me to the event coordinator. I wanted to introduce myself.

Before leaving, I went back to thank the woman who had helped me register. I told her I had recently applied for the role and introduced myself.

Then I left.

And I would not hear anything from the Library of Congress for four months.

With each passing week, my hope began to wane.

By November, I decided I needed to encourage myself.

I took a piece of paper, tore it into four slips, and wrote messages to myself. I taped them to my wall so I would see them every morning.

Five days before Christmas, I received an email inviting me to schedule an interview for January.

By that point, I had already been through multiple interview processes with other roles, so I knew I had to give it everything I had.

And by February, I got the call. The Madison Building, where I had taken those headshots just months earlier, is now where I work.

“When I say nothing with your name on it will pass you by, I am speaking from experience, not theory.”

I used to think these moments were separate. Now I see they were part of the same pattern.

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Mustard Seed Faith

Faith, for me, has not always looked like certainty. More often, it has looked like continuing without clarity.

Sometimes, faith sounds like silence. And with silence, doubt naturally follows.

That doubt is on full display in the notes above.

In November, I wrote myself a series of encouragement slips and taped them to my wall. On the top right note, the one that begins, “Faith requires trust and belief,” I reminded myself to believe in the job offer and a salary commensurate with my experience. Beneath that, I had originally written, “First Manager of Event Operations for the Library of Congress.”

At some point in early December, after weeks of hearing nothing, I tore that part off.

I remember the feeling more than the moment. The quiet disappointment. The questions that start to creep in when there is no response, no signal, no movement.

But I kept the rest of the slips up.

Mustard seed faith.

And by Christmas of 2025, when I finally received the email invitation to interview, I wrote the phrase again on a new slip.

I learned about mustard seed faith growing up in church.

In the Gospel of Matthew 17:20, Jesus says, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Throughout my life, my faith has come in varying sizes. Last year was no different.

This past year stretched that understanding. There were long stretches where nothing moved, where effort did not translate into visible progress. It would have been easy to interpret that as failure or misalignment.

Instead, what I see now is that things were unfolding in an order I could not yet see.

Not random. Not rushed. Just not revealed all at once.

The Day That Wasn’t Planned

There are moments in my life that refuse to feel random, not because they are dramatic, but because of how ordinary they appear at first.

Last May, I returned home from a two-week work trip to South Korea to find my dad nearly 15 pounds lighter. I could not get him to go to the emergency room, but he agreed to a doctor’s appointment. During that visit, we updated his insurance and listed me as the authorized representative for his Medicare.

It felt like a routine administrative task at the time. Necessary, but not urgent.

Three days later, I went to a farewell gathering in the park. I had not planned to stop by my parents’ house that day. I was going to go the next day.

But on my way home, I needed to use the bathroom, so I drove over.

That decision, as small as it was, led me to check on him a day earlier than planned. That afternoon, I found him in the middle of a health crisis in my parents’ basement.

In the weeks that followed, while he was unconscious in the ICU, I was able to call his insurance, speak on his behalf, and make decisions that would have otherwise been delayed or denied.

What had felt like a simple update during a routine appointment became something far more significant.

The First Yes

I was fourteen years old when I wrote my name on a clipboard for a summer immersion trip to China.

There was no long-term plan attached to that decision. I was not thinking about a career, or a trajectory, or what it might lead to.

It was simply something I decided to do.

Looking back, that moment shaped far more than I could have understood at the time. That first trip led to a series of experiences that built on one another over the years:

• A study abroad trip to China my junior year of college

• A Chinese economics course during that semester

• An introduction to a U.S. diplomat in through that class

• An internship at the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai the following summer

• Meeting a State Department fellow on her first tour during that internship

• A Fulbright in Taiwan after college

• A Fulbright alumna introducing me to White House internship opportunities during orientation

• A White House internship when I returned home

• A conversation with a retired diplomat volunteering in my section during that White House internship that prepared me for the interview that led to a State Department fellowship

• And eventually, returning to China to serve my second tour as a U.S. diplomat

Each step made sense only after it had already happened.

Seeds, Timing, and Faith

I do not believe in coincidences.

Not because everything in life makes sense, but because enough of it only becomes clear with time.

If you are in a season where things feel stalled or uncertain, it does not always mean you are off track.

“Sometimes it means things are still taking shape in ways you cannot yet see.”

What I have learned is that not everything that is growing is visible.

Some things take root long before they break through the surface.

And sometimes, all you have to hold on to is the smallest measure of faith.

What’s a moment in your life that didn’t make sense at the time, but makes sense now?

I published the professional version of this yesterday on LinkedIn.
The polished one.
The one that says what it needs to say without sending shockwaves into the diplomatic ether.

But today, I get to be more candid.
And moving forward, I will be even more so.

Because for the first time in over a decade, I am no longer writing from inside the institution. I am writing from outside of it. That distinction matters more than people realize.

Talking about my work as a diplomat while I was still a diplomat, especially in this administration’s hypersensitive climate, often felt like I was self censoring in real time. Like I was constantly editing myself before I even formed a full thought.

Muting.
Softening.
Rounding the edges of things that were never meant to be smooth.

That is no longer the case.

And with that comes a different kind of responsibility: telling the truth more fully, more honestly, and eventually, more deeply.

Some of those stories will live here.
Some will be for paid subscribers.

Because some experiences deserve context, care, and protection, not just consumption.

But for now, here it is.

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3,876 Days at the Table

I have resigned from the Foreign Service.

In preparation, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what it means to serve, to stay, and to finally choose myself.

I spent 3,876 days in the Foreign Service.
This is what it gave me and what it asked of me.

On September 8, 2015, I raised my right hand and entered the Foreign Service.
On April 19, 2026, I closed that chapter.

3,876 days.

Six tours: three overseas and three domestic. Countless flights. Countless rooms. And countless moments where I had to decide, again and again, who I would be in spaces that did not always make room for me and many others.

There is a photograph tucked into the last office where I served as a diplomat: Louis Armstrong, playing his horn atop a camel in front of the pyramids in Egypt.

Every time I passed it, I thought about his service, about being sent abroad to represent a country that, at the time, still struggled to recognize his humanity at home.

That tension is not new, and neither is the work, especially when you sit at the intersection of being Black, young, and female in a space that has long been overwhelmingly “male, pale, and Yale”.

We have always served.
Even when we were told, explicitly and implicitly, that we did not have a seat at the table.

Sometimes a seat was reserved for me.
Sometimes I pulled up a chair.

This career gave me the world.

Guyana. China. Iraq. Washington, D.C. Côte d’Ivoire. Togo. Kenya. Germany. The United Arab Emirates. Canada. Antigua and Barbuda. Paraguay. Peru. Azerbaijan. The Republic of Korea.

I have led negotiations for major lease transactions and managed large teams at some of the most consequential missions. I have passed tissues and transcribed letters for incarcerated Americans abroad. I have made calls to deliver the worst news about loved ones overseas.

I have boarded charter flights and helicopters.
Taken the only flight leaving an international airport back into the epicenter of a pandemic.

I will always know the sound of a drone crashing into a building.
I will always remember the heat inside a shipping container in 120+ degree weather.

My career placed me in conference rooms and crisis response centers that demanded precision, pressure, and purpose.

So much of diplomacy is built on words.

The right words can hold a line.
Contain a crisis.
Delay something from reaching the levels that affect gas stations, grocery stores, job markets, elections, or battlefields.

Words are often the United States’ first line of defense.

But for everything this career gave me, it also asked for everything in return.

There were nights I held the line professionally and cried myself to sleep personally. There were moments I showed up composed and capable while quietly carrying a homesickness no one could fix.

There are losses I still do not name out loud.
Sacrifices that do not fit neatly on a résumé.

And still, I stayed.

Because I believed in the work.
Because I believed in what it meant to represent.
Because I believed my presence mattered.

And it did.

I will miss the people the most.

The locally employed staff, the heartbeat of every mission.
My colleagues, who I would choose any day to weather the worst crisis.
The mentors, the quiet advocates, the ones who saw me clearly and made space where there was none.

In the final weeks of my last tour, I found myself taking photos of the walls. I did not fully understand why at the time, but I have learned to trust that instinct.

The office where I last served was preparing to move buildings. And I had a feeling that some of those photographs, especially the ones of Black musicians on State Department sponsored missions, might not make the move.

Over the past few years, since returning home, I have asked myself a series of questions about this career. One, more than the rest, stayed with me:

Do I want to be part of the erasure?
Or part of the archive?

I chose the archive.

And over this past year, the questions shifted.

From: Can I do this for 20 more years?
To: Do I want to?

And more importantly:

What does it cost me to stay?

Because alignment is not always about pushing through.
Sometimes alignment requires resistance.
And sometimes resistance looks like letting go.

If the prayers that sustained me for 3,876 days have kept me, they will also be the prayers that release me.

I am still in Washington, D.C., my hometown, serving in a different capacity.

My work is shifting.

During my swearing in ceremony in 2015, I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, bearing true faith and allegiance to the same.

For now, my oath of service feels closer to home.

More rooted.
More anchored.
More focused on domestic priorities than foreign ones.
More familial.

I will always be deeply interested in world affairs. That does not go away.

But right now, the mission has changed.

And so has my voice.

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What’s Next

In the weeks ahead, I will be sharing more of what this career actually looked like beyond the polished versions.

The stories behind the rooms.
The decisions behind the headlines.
The human cost behind the work.

Some of that will live publicly.
Some will live behind a paywall, because real stories deserve to be held with care.

If you have been here for a while, thank you.
If you are new, welcome.

We are just getting started.

My father was in the ICU when the retirement course on eldercare proved to be wrong in real time.

Months earlier, I had logged into a mini virtual session offered by my agency—one I almost didn’t take seriously at 30-something.

The presenter for the eldercare session opened with a simple premise: “Most people start focusing on eldercare toward the end of their career.”

Something in me shifted.

I didn’t have the language for it yet, but I remember thinking—that’s not right.

I told myself I’d take the full course in June. I had questions I wanted answered. I assumed I had time to ask them.

I never made it to June.

By April, I’d been bumped from the course altogether. Colleagues were retiring en masse under resignation programs, and the agency was shifting fast. I wasn’t “close enough” to retirement to keep my seat.

And then, almost a month later, I was sitting in an ICU.

Listening to machines breathe for my father.

Trying to understand medical language I had never needed before.

Making decisions I didn’t feel prepared to make.

That presenter’s words came back to me—not as guidance, but as a quiet, dangerous assumption.

Eldercare is something you plan for later.

No.

Eldercare didn’t wait for the end of my career.

It started at 35—just shy of ten years in.

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Most People Don’t Care Until It Happens to Them

Talking about getting old—and dying—is not the sexiest topic. It’s heavy. Almost too heavy to sit with for long.

So most people don’t.

Because what do you mean one day I won’t have my parents or the people I love most for my entire life?

I’ve been in the orbit of caregiving for as long as I can remember.

My brother has cerebral palsy. By the time I was old enough to imagine my life at 30, 40, even 50, I had already factored in guardianship over him.

What I did not factor in was guardianship over my father at 35.

But when I step back and take stock of my family—immediate and extended—it has always been the women carrying the weight.

I’m currently reading Memory Drive by Natasha Trethewey, and she quotes William Faulkner: “Memory knows before knowing remembers.”

And somewhere between hospital treks, rehab visits, and medical appointments, those memories surface—uninvited, but familiar.

• I was five when my granddaddy’s house burned down, and my grandmother took him in. They were divorced, but he had nowhere else to go.

• My grandmother fostered so many children over the years I lost count. She eventually adopted two with special needs.

• When she could no longer care for my grandfather, he moved to Alabama with my aunt, and later to D.C., where he lived until he closed his eyes my freshman year of college.

• My mother, the family’s nurse, now drives to North Carolina almost every month to care for that same grandmother, now living with dementia.

• My aunt on my father’s side moved in with my grandmother Rachel, taking her to every appointment, managing her care until she passed away.

• And now me—the diplomat with a plan to pivot—is my father’s caregiver.

It’s not that I didn’t care. It’s that caregiving was never my immediate role. I built a life around what felt certain.

A husband. Children. My brother.
Then—later—caregiving.

Structured. Planned. Supported.

I imagined my own unit, the way my mother held ours together when my grandfather came to live with us.

But last year, that image ruptured. I did not imagine doing this alone.

And somewhere deep inside of me, I find myself asking a question I don’t quite know how to answer:

Is this my penance or price for being born a woman?

Why You (Especially as a Woman) Should Care—Even If It’s Not Happening to You Yet

Women are paying the highest cost in caregiving.

I am no exception.

In America, nearly 1 in 4 adults are caregivers.

Women make up about 60% of those caregivers, and they are more likely to provide more intensive, long-term care, often at the expense of their own income and retirement security. Many of those caregivers are part of the “sandwich generation,” and millennials now represent one of the fastest-growing groups—about 30% of caregivers are millennials, many balancing care for aging parents while still supporting themselves or raising children.

Caregiving doesn’t just interrupt your life.
It reshapes it.
It reroutes your timeline.
It quietly rewrites your future.

Two memories kept resurfacing at the height of my father’s health crisis.

The first memory: Guangzhou, 2020

I was standing in the American Citizen Services unit in Guangzhou, China. The virus from Wuhan was no longer contained. Authorized Departure had just been declared. Within 24 hours, it escalated to Ordered Departure for all dependents under 21.

The office was filled with women and children.

The tension palpable.

Travel orders were being cut in real time. Flights were disappearing just as quickly as we could book them. One colleague was breastfeeding in a random cubicle. Another was gathering documents for five children while her husband stayed behind to support evacuation operations.

Those orders could have easily read: All women and children must leave immediately.

And in many ways, that’s exactly what it was.

Months later, the conversations started.

The women who evacuated weren’t just processing the disruption to their families. They were calculating the impact on their careers. Promotions delayed. Evaluations disrupted. A quiet fear that stepping away even under orders would cost them.

The colleagues who remained were mostly men.

The second memory: South Korea, 2024

I was sitting in a hotel lounge having a conversation with a senior diplomat about retention in the Foreign Service.

He was trying to convince me to stay until I was 50.

Something about that picture didn’t sit right with me.

Even then, I knew this wasn’t the life I could sustain for another 15+ years.

A 2022 talent retention survey had already outlined the issues: career growth concerns, poor management, unmanageable workloads, lack of flexibility, and family support gaps. But one group stood out—Black women.

We were leaving at higher rates.

Three years before I became a caregiver, I already understood why.

Family.

Caregiving.

The weight of being the one people call.

Now I am living it.

Whether I frame it as responsibility, reality, or something heavier, I don’t have the luxury of opting out.

I cannot plan my life the way I once imagined.

I cannot pack up and leave for a three-year overseas tour without consequences.

I cannot move freely without a plan for my father, for my dog, for the life that now depends on me.

And as I begin to reimagine my 30s, 40s, and 50s, the questions don’t stop—they multiply.

Who will care for me when I can no longer work?

When do I start planning and paying for long-term care?

What systems will be in place for my parents as they continue to age?

What about my brother and the care he will need long after today?

What does partnership look like when you are already carrying so much?

What does motherhood look like when time is no longer abstract—but shrinking?

And across both sides of my family, I see it clearly now:

Groups of women. Strategizing and planning, while holding everything together.

Trusts.
Land.
Care plans.
Legacies.

The work is already happening—even if no one taught us to name it.

Even if no one warned us how much it would cost.

So, no. This is not just something to think about later.

Because later has a way of arriving early.

And as a woman, whether it has reached you yet or not—

It will.

So yes, plan for your retirement.

But also plan for the life that will interrupt it.

Sources

National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) and AARP. Caregiving in the U.S. 2020. Washington, DC: AARP, 2020.

AARP and S&P Global. Caregiving Out-of-Pocket Costs Study. Washington, DC: AARP, 2021.

Pew Research Center. A Growing Share of Americans Are in the Sandwich Generation. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2023.

MetLife Mature Market Institute. The MetLife Study of Caregiving Costs to Working Caregivers. Westport, CT: MetLife, 2011.

Last year I researched which literary conferences I should attend to help me write my first book.

That was probably one of the best decisions I made.

This past weekend I attended the 2026 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP26) Conference and Bookfair in Baltimore, Maryland — a four-day literary gathering for writers, publishers, and students, featuring hundreds of panels, events, and one massive bookfair.

At the end of last year, I promised myself that no matter what happens, I would not abandon myself or my dreams.

Being a caretaker of a parent and a steward of family land and legacy can stretch you incredibly thin. But I did not want to be stretched so thin this year that I stopped showing up for myself.

This year is about discipline and alignment, and I’ve been intentional about the events and activities I pursue.

This writers’ conference was one of them.

That alignment felt undeniable.

AWP was practically in my backyard this year — leaving me with no excuse not to finally step into the room.

I came with the intent to learn and gain inspiration.
I left feeling empowered — almost called — to write what I’ve felt sitting inside me for quite some time.

I also somehow left with 15 new books on my reading list, which feels like a predictable outcome of spending four days around writers.

Here are five takeaways from my first writers’ conference.

1. Logistics Make or Break a Conference

The conference manager in me noticed it immediately.

10,000 people showed up and the logistics were strong — the seamless website, the conference app, clear signage, and the volunteer system that allowed people to exchange volunteer hours for conference attendance.

Since this was my first AWP conference, I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on registration. So, I opted for the work-exchange volunteer option — volunteer four hours in exchange for the registration fee.

During my early shift I had the opportunity to start practicing my book pitch.

It was also the moment where the conference manager in me came fully alive. I found myself ushering people quickly through registration lines, bringing a bit of structure and organization to a badging line that was crowding beyond belief.

It reminded me of something I’ve always known from my professional life:

Great conferences don’t happen by accident.
Thoughtful logistics make everything else possible.

2. The Literary World Is Surprisingly Inclusive

I walked into a space where there seemed to be room for everyone.

People from all walks of life — poets, essayists, novelists, publicists, editors, magazine executives, first-time writers, and seasoned authors — were moving through hallways, panel series, auditoriums, and long pathways through the bookfair.

I’m used to attending and managing conferences where the headliners and panelists are incredibly difficult to approach.

This felt different.

One minute I was talking to a poet laureate.
The next minute a major publicist from a literary magazine.
Then I found myself chatting with a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist.

People weren’t guarded with information.

They were generous — with advice, connections, and encouragement.

3. Writers Are Passionate and I Found My Tribe

There’s a certain energy when writers gather.

People care deeply about words, stories, archives, memory, and language. Conversations spill into hallways, coffee shops, and late-night gatherings.

Somewhere between the panels and the conversations, I realized:

I think I found my tribe.

By the second day, I felt confident enough to practice my pitch for my book. It completely stopped a group of poets I bumped into at a coffee station inside the bookfair.

In another moment, my pitch made a new friend I had just met burst into tears moments before the start of a panel.

I don’t know if it was their reactions or my growing confidence, but the genuine interest in the story I’m writing opened the door to some incredible connections.

4. The Real Magic Happens at the Side Events

I’m late posting this because last week I was outside outside.

Partying on a Thursday night and coming back home to my dad sitting on the couch like I was home from summer break during my college years.

Whew.

The official sessions are great. But the people I met in those sessions led to impromptu invites to side events later in the evening.

And on the first night of the conference, I found myself at a party at the late Lucille Clifton’s Baltimore residence, now known as The Clifton House.

Lucille Clifton, the American poet who served as Maryland’s poet laureate from 1974 to 1985, built her writing career in that house. Today it serves as a creative space and cultural home for writers.

And that night?

Oh, we gathered.

We danced.
We ate.
We fellowshipped.

And my nervous system — for the first time in months — finally relaxed.

Because at the heart of all the networking, I found something deeper:

Community.

The real progress happens in the in-between moments — hallway conversations, small gatherings, and side events where people are relaxed and open.

That’s where connections form, ideas spark, and collaborations begin.

5. Sometimes You Walk In Hesitant and Leave Empowered

Many times, throughout the conference, I was asked:

“Are you a writer?”

For the first time, answering that question felt different.

But now, after this conference?

Yes.

Yes, I am a writer.

Sometimes the biggest shift isn’t learning something new.

It’s finally owning who you already are.

“Don’tchu know they hung Momma’s brothers?”

I can’t recall the first time I heard my uncle shout this.
Maybe I was eight. Or maybe twelve.

By then, I knew what lynchings looked like. I had seen the photographs — Black bodies hanging from trees and poles — plastered along the walls at the Black Wax Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.

When Rosewood came out, I shut my eyes and covered my ears as they mutilated black men hanging in the town square. The film was based on the true story of the Rosewood Massacre in Florida in the 1920s.

I remember connecting those images to my uncle’s outbursts.

It was always jarring.
Always slicing grown-up conversation clean in half.
Always followed by silence.

A thick kind.

The kind that made you aware you were standing too close to something sacred.

I was always curious. And nosey.

So I was always nearby — within earshot of those gatherings. At the kitchen table. On the porch. In the living room after church. At the “Happy House” — the small shack where my father and his ten siblings were raised.

The Happy House still sits near our family land. It’s where generations of the Carrolls, the Outlaws, and family friends congregated. The adults spoke in lowered tones about land and politics while passing cups of corn liquor.

About names.
About what was taken.
Who went on to be with the Lord.
Who’s making their way.
Who ain’t.

I entered those rooms an intruder. I left bewildered. There were always more questions than answers.

“That white lady lied. Then Momma said she took it back, but it was too late.”

I grew up knowing the oral banter.

But it wasn’t until 2015 that I saw their names listed on a site documenting people who were missing or murdered in North Carolina:

Sylvester Outlaw.
Apsom Outlaw.
Lonnie Gardner.

Pink Hill, Duplin County, North Carolina — 1937

“3 NEGROES ATTACK A WHITE WOMAN” sprawls across the front page of the Duplin Times, August 18, 1937.1

Clara Stanley and James Suggs were walking home from a tent show in Pink Hill when three Black men in a truck allegedly offered them a ride. The pair refused. The male companion fled. Clara was forced into the truck, driven to a wooded area, and later released.

The newspaper reported an assault. It also noted she had no visible bruises, despite claims she had been beaten.

Within hours, law enforcement organized a search party.

An estimated 1,000 men joined the manhunt, using bloodhounds to track Sylvester through the swamps.2 Newspapers described grim-lipped men armed with shotguns and pistols patrolling Pink Hill and nearby townships.

Within days, all three men were in custody.

Reports noted they were moved to an undisclosed location because the town had become “unruly.”3

In October 1937, they were brought to trial in Kenansville, North Carolina. An estimated 2,500 people crowded the courthouse.4 The jury returned a guilty verdict in thirty minutes.

The judge sentenced them to death by gas chamber. All three appealed. Their cases reached the North Carolina Supreme Court.

The appeals were denied.

The reason: an administrative delay. The paperwork, the court determined, had not been filed in time.

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The only photograph we have of Sylvester comes from the News & Observer.

All three were scheduled to die alongside two other men on April 29, 1938 — what would have been the highest number of executions recorded in North Carolina at the time.

The governor granted Apsom and Lonnie a reprieve for a later execution date.

Sylvester’s execution date remained.

He refused to admit guilt.

Eleven minutes and forty-five seconds.

That’s how long it took the State of North Carolina to end his life.

Every time I read that detail, I return to 2020 — when we all knew what eight minutes and forty-six seconds stood for.

Spectacle.

The newspapers recorded the moment he entered the chamber and the moment he took his last breath.

And on November 8, 2025, I sat in his youngest son’s dining room — the last living son — trying to capture as much of our family’s history as possible.

The Visit in New York

My dad wanted me to wait before going to New York so he could come along. Under different circumstances, he probably would have driven me.

But he was days away from heart surgery. And my cousin is in his nineties.

If I’ve learned anything from last year, it’s that we do not have as much time as we think.

So I took my aunt with me, so she could see her first cousin after years apart.

My cousin, Willie Gray, is the youngest of Sylvester’s six children. He had a twin. As a young man, he left North Carolina and became a pastor in New York. He lives in a brownstone in Brooklyn and founded a Church of God in Christ congregation in the 1970s. The sanctuary occupies the lower level; he lives upstairs.

When we arrived, he was listening to a sermon.

As I often must do with older relatives, I announced how we were kin.

He is sharp. Clear. His memory even clearer.

After his father was executed by the State of North Carolina, his mother — widowed with six children — returned to Rose Hill. I showed him the 1940 census record listing her living with her brother.

He later lived in Pink Hill. His mother split the fraternal twins — a not uncommon Southern practice when relatives helped raise children or when a parent remarried. Sometimes children were sent to grandparents, even if the surviving parent was still alive.

He talked about the land — the 122 acres my great-grandfather owned. About his business success. And about a crucial detail connected to the incident in 1937.

It was the suspicion I sensed in court transcripts and newspaper clippings.

It was the truth I hoped to obtain from the accuser’s granddaughter, whom I found on Ancestry.

But for now —

I’ll save that for my book.

Leave the Past in the Past?

The current discourse in America urges us to leave the unsavory parts of history behind.

But what if the past is still looking at us in the present?

There is something surreal about watching time bend — sitting across from someone who can account for a moment in history, filling in the gaps you’ve chased for years. Someone who lived with the very names you’ve only read in print.

I write this because this is not just my family’s story.

It is Black history.
It is American history.

This year marks one hundred years since the formal inception of Black History Month. And if I’m honest, this February has felt quieter. Flatter. Less adorned with celebration and more weighted with fatigue.

Maybe remembrance feels heavier right now.

Maybe honoring the past requires confronting what some would rather archive, redact, or rename.

But if this year has felt subdued, let this be my offering.

Not a highlight reel.
Not a sanitized tribute.
But a fuller telling.

Because Black history is not only triumph and firsts and breakthroughs.

It is court transcripts.
It is gas chambers.
It is widows splitting twins between counties.
It is land passed down — and land lost.
It is sons who grow into pastors in Brooklyn brownstones.
It is daughters who drive north before a parent’s heart surgery because time is not guaranteed.

And it is memory, insisting on being carried.

And this is sacred work.

We are warned that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

There are many paths to resistance. Mine is pushing back against erasure.

Because some trees don’t bear fruit.

They bear witness.

And so do we.

Questions for the Readers

1. What part of this story stayed with you the longest?

2. What stories live in your family that were never written down?

3. What does it mean to remember — especially when others would prefer forgetting?

Drone threats.
11:00 PM curfews on a compound.
Locking and closing an embassy with prison-grade keys at 2:00AM.
Being told to haul ass back from your Chinese New Year vacation in the Philippines because authorized departure is about to be called for COVID — and your dog is stuck in China, and your suitcase is full of bikinis.

Handled.

Professional.
Measured.
Composed.

But my biggest overseas crash-outs?

Inconvenience.

Massive. Irrational. Fully unhinged meltdowns.

And to kick off this series after more than a decade in the Foreign Service, I’m starting with the truth:

Let’s talk about butter, baby.

When I arrived in Georgetown exactly ten years ago this month, the first thing I felt wasn’t culture shock.

It was inconvenience.

Grocery shopping was not a “pop in and pop out” situation. It was a half-day excursion.

First stop: the open-air market. You had to go early — that’s when the produce was fresh and you could bargain like you had sense.

That’s where I learned callaloo is not collard greens.

It looks like greens.
It introduces itself like greens.
But that texture?

Baby, that’s a tough spinach betrayal.

Across the street was the coconut man. You brought your own containers. He’d slice open fresh coconuts and drain the water right into your jugs while you leaned out your driver’s side window like you were at a hydration drive-thru.

Then came the Chinese store — run by Chinese immigrants with the strongest supply chain in the country. If anybody had something resembling “home,” it was them.

Then the supermarket.

Before Massey Stores opened on the East Bank Demerara and changed the game, there was Bounty Supermarket.

Bounty felt like walking into a refrigerated wet market.

Cold.
Metallic.
Hints of poultry and seafood lingering in the air.

You braced yourself before inhaling.

And then there was the container store — literally two shipping containers retrofitted into a mini grocery store. Small. Efficient. Straight to the point. It carried the things foreigners whispered about:

Imported broccoli.
Spinach.
Butter.

And that’s where this story goes left.

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Five months earlier, I had been in a courthouse in Duplin County, North Carolina, tracing the disappearance of 122 acres of my family’s land.

I didn’t know those two moments were connected.

Caregiving collapses time. One minute you are a daughter. The next, you are next of kin, power of attorney, decision-maker, historian. My father is one of eleven siblings. Now only four remain. If we had lost him that night, the pool of heirs would have grown again — and the responsibility for our family’s land would have shifted into even more fragile hands.

Even with two degrees and a title that travels well, I didn’t understand transfer of wealth until I was responsible for protecting it.

Last MLK Jr. weekend, before my father got sick, I drove to eastern North Carolina to meet a retired lawyer about my book project. Snow was coming. If you know the South, you know snow shuts everything down. We met inside the Register of Deeds office in Kenansville just before noon, planning for a quick conversation before the roads iced over.

It didn’t go that way.

For five hours, we pulled record books from shelves thick with dust and history. The pages were heavy — almost biblical. Inside them was the paper trail of my great-grandfather’s life — every acre purchased, every transaction recorded in careful cursive ink.

Eventually we reached the final sale.

Book 518. Page 514.

There it was: notarized signatures from every heir and their spouses. In 1958, three years before his death, his children sold 122 acres for $10,000.

Truth, in ink.

I grew up believing a different story about that land — that it had been taken, forged, stolen. Instead, what I found was something more complicated and more dangerous.

Land doesn’t disappear in a vacuum.

It disappears when grief meets the law.

And five months later, when I found my father on the floor, I understood how easily history can repeat itself.

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Heir Property and the Quiet Erosion of Inheritance

I didn’t grow up hearing the phrase heir property.

I grew up hearing, “That’s our land.”

It was where we gathered every Labor Day for reunions. Where tents went up and cousins ran barefoot. It felt permanent simply because it had always been there.

Heir property is what happens when land outlives the people who owned it — and no one leaves instructions behind.

Without a will, ownership fractures. Children inherit. Then grandchildren. Then great-grandchildren. Sometimes dozens of names attach to a single parcel. No one holds clear title. Everyone owns a piece. No one is fully in charge.

It exists everywhere. In African-American families — especially in the rural South — it is pervasive.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Black Americans owned millions of acres of land. For families only a generation removed from enslavement, land meant food, safety, autonomy — something that couldn’t easily be taken.

Except it was.

Not all at once. Not always with mobs or violence.

Most often, quietly. Acre by acre.

Through paperwork. Through courtrooms.

By the time anyone noticed, most of it was already gone.¹

The reasons were rarely dramatic — just devastatingly ordinary: deaths without wills, families scattered across states, rising property taxes, and speculators who understood the law better than the families whose names were on the land.

Partition sales made it worse. A single heir could force a court-ordered sale — even against the wishes of dozens of others.²

The pattern was always the same.

We knew the land.
We didn’t know the law.

When my grandparents died, nothing seemed urgent. We still gathered. We still cooked. We still assumed the land would wait for us.

But land doesn’t wait.

As the elders began to pass — eleven siblings thinning down to four — the questions grew louder.

Who pays the taxes?
Who clears the road?
Who has the right to stay in the house?
Who decides?

No one had answers, because no one had ever been required to answer.

Until now.

We had never talked about succession.
We had never talked about ownership.
We had never talked about what happens when the generation holding everything together is gone.

It wasn’t until my father’s generation began thinning that I understood what was at stake.

Solon and Rachel had eleven children. All eleven had children of their own. I have roughly forty first cousins.

Forty.

Now imagine forty people trying to answer those questions for the first time — in the middle of grief.

In 2023, during our family reunion, I scheduled a consultation with a law firm in Wallace, North Carolina.

The meeting felt off from the start.

The lawyer — a white, middle-aged man — barely made eye contact with me or the relatives who came along. He skimmed the parcel map, leaned back in his chair, and said flatly:

“I would do nothing. Just leave it as is.”

That was it.

No discussion of heir property risk.
No mention of partition sales.
No warning about what happens when dozens of heirs inherit undivided interests.

Just: leave it alone.

Doing nothing is often the fastest way to lose land.

I walked out uneasy. Why recommend the one option that guaranteed vulnerability?

That’s when I started making calls.

A two-hour conversation with a Black farmer from the area came with a blunt warning: do not seek legal counsel from law firms in Duplin County.

Everyone is entangled, he told me — developers, attorneys, public officials, large landowners. The relationships run deep. The incentives are rarely neutral.

Eventually, I was referred to the Land Loss Prevention Project — a nonprofit legal organization dedicated to preserving African-American land.

By May 2024, we became clients.

Taking the lead for more than thirty heirs was heavier than I expected. But what unsettled me most was this:

Exactly a year later, my father nearly became another elder we lost — and the heir pool would have grown again.

The clock does not stop while you figure it out.

Difficult Decisions When the Elders Die

In the classic ’90s film Soul Food, Mama Joe—Big Mama—dies from complications of diabetes. What looks like a close-knit family, anchored by Sunday dinners and ritual, begins to unravel almost immediately after her death.

Not because they didn’t love each other.
Because she was the glue.

Death is triggering. Talking about it is uncomfortable. But when someone you love nearly dies—especially when you are their caregiver—time collapses.

The questions aren’t hypothetical anymore.

What if they don’t make it through surgery?
Who is next of kin?
Who holds power of attorney?
Who makes the call?

And if there is land—property, savings, assets—are there clear instructions? Or will the children of the deceased have to negotiate in the middle of grief?

Caregiving exposes family dynamics. Whatever was simmering beneath the surface rises.

Both of my parents are Southern, raised in the culture of informality—closed-door agreements, unspoken understandings, a careful “we’ll see, shug.” Those arrangements are ironclad amongst the matriarchs and patriarchs.

Until they die.

The silence turns into confusion when nothing is written down or no one formally assigned. Ownership, taxes, maintenance—everything becomes urgent at once.

My family is no exception.

History on Repeat

My great-grandfather purchased 122 acres and recorded the deed in Kenansville at a time when Black men could find themselves swinging from trees for far less than owning land.

Abraham “Abrams” Outlaw of Pink Hill, North Carolina paid $1,616.50 in cash and $4,849.50 in bank bonds. During Jim Crow — inside a county dominated by the Ku Klux Klan — he didn’t just buy the land. He recorded it.

Sitting in that same records office over MLK Jr. weekend, the retired lawyer slid his glasses down his nose and let out a low hmph.

“I’ve been doing this for decades,” he said. “And this still shocks me. Two things stand out. One: he had the money. And two: they let him record it. That’s rare.”

He was, arguably, the wealthiest Black man in Duplin County at the time. Nine children. Two sets of twins. My grandmother among them.

He built something meant to last.

Even after lynch mobs formed.
Even after his sons were executed by the state in 1938.
Even after his children scattered north.

He held the land until the final years of his life.

What happened next depends on who you ask.

But after sifting through those records…
After navigating heir property across dozens of relatives…
After finding my father on the basement floor and realizing how fragile succession really is…

I understand something I didn’t before:

Land doesn’t disappear because families don’t care.

It disappears when grief meets the law.
When no one is prepared to lead.
When silence feels easier than paperwork.

Caregiving stripped away any illusion that time is generous.
My father’s mortality is not theoretical.

The elders will not hold this together forever.
History does not pause while we gather ourselves.

In Soul Food, Big Mama says, “One finger won’t make an impact. But you ball all those fingers into a fist, and you can strike a mighty blow.”

For decades, our family was held together by matriarchs and patriarchs who carried everything quietly.

Now the quiet is over.

This time, we are writing it down.
Naming heirs.
Having the hard conversations before grief has them for us.

This time, we are choosing to be the fist.

References

1. Thomas W. Mitchell, “From Reconstruction to Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership Through Partition Sales,” Northwestern University Law Review 95, no. 2 (2001): 505–580.

2. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Heirs’ Property and Land Fractionation (Washington, DC: USDA, 2019).

Caregiving has a way of humbling what you thought your body—and your patience—could handle.

My dad is relearning how to walk.
I am relearning how to run.

A few weeks ago, I encouraged my dad to cook his lunch on the stove. A task that seems routine, but a first after almost nine months since his health crisis.

“You don’t think I know how to cook on the stove, Lex?”

I was already giving instructions. Already prepping. Something I’ve been doing for months now.

So I stopped.
And let him maneuver.

He had the hot dog bun neatly placed on the plate. Ketchup, cheese, and onions perfectly lined down the middle. The sausage sizzled in the cast iron skillet, browned just right on the outside.

I noticed it first, but stayed quiet.

The flames beneath the pan began to creep outward, wrapping around the edges. Smoke hovered above the sausage.

I needed to see if he noticed too.

He pulled the sausage from the pan, placed it into the bun, and started to walk away.

“Daddy. You forgot to turn off the stove.”

I didn’t wait for him to turn his walker around. I sprang into action before the ketchup caught fire. I grabbed a knife and cut into the sausage—the inside glistening, pink.

A deep sigh.

“Daddy, I know you know how to cook. But sometimes we have to relearn the things we once knew.”

My Journey

Since becoming a caregiver, my priorities have shifted almost entirely—supporting my dad’s health, maintaining a job, pivoting professionally, and trying to hold on to some semblance of sanity.

It has come with a cost.

Most of my outfits have become athleisure or plain athletic gear. Stretchy pants can be deceiving. I recently had an event and tried on a pair of tailored pants, only to realize I’d put on weight.

Some people lose weight under stress.
I gain.

As the months wore on, caring for myself began to feel futile. As I poured into my dad’s recovery, my own health quietly slipped. My sciatica flared more often. Gym attendance became inconsistent. My sleep pattern completely unraveled.

Last September, I joined a gym and discovered I loved cycling classes.

Then came another realization.

I could no longer run a mile without stopping.

My treadmill in the basement has collected more dust than miles. One day, I decided to just run a mile. After three minutes, I had to slow to a walk. Lungs burning, I asked myself quietly:

What the hell happened to me?

Back then—before caregiving, before exhaustion—running had become a side quest.

In 2011, when I moved to Taiwan, I decided to teach myself how to run. I had always been a fat athlete in high school, and I hated running. I eventually realized I hated it because I wasn’t good at it and I was slow.

So I changed the goal.

Not speed.
Completion.

I signed up for races. Over the course of my Fulbright year, I explored Taiwan through those races, eventually completing a half marathon on the Taipei Expressway in 2012.

I came home and ran the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon in D.C. in 2013 with one of my best friends —a former track runner—keeping pace with her for most of the race.

Fast-forward more than a decade later.

A three-minute jog now leaves me winded.

So I’m returning to the same mindset that carried me then.

I am going to relearn how to run long distance—again.

Running is mental.
The body quits long before the mind gives permission.

I remember the internal dialogue from my races—syncing my steps to music and setting small goals:

Make it to that crowd in the distance. Reset.
Make it to that tree around the bend. Reset.
Just make it to the end of the song. Reset.

As my father relearns how to walk without assistance, I’ve decided that I will relearn how to run.

For 2026, I’ve already signed up for two races: the Cherry Blossom 5K in April and the Army 10-Miler in D.C. I’m waiting for registration to open for another 5K in Maryland in August. I’ll end the year running the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon in Mexico City.

Reset.

His Journey

“I’m going to be able to walk without this cane and walker before too long. I can feel it.”

My dad has always been a fighter. But with age, sometimes the fight takes longer.

He taught me how to ride a bike, swim, drive a car, change the oil, plant flowers. I have to remind myself how patient he was with me—and how much he needs my patience now.

In the early months, my normal was visiting him flat on his back, tubes and cords tethering him to machines keeping him alive.

I’ve documented his progress—from intensive physical therapy sessions to at-home work—and I’m continually amazed by what the body remembers, recalls, and relearns.

So while he takes on the journey of walking, I’ll take on another right beside him—running.

A few days ago, I told my dad my plan.

He smiled and said,
“Soon enough, I’ll be running right alongside you.”

And quietly, I hope so.

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I listened to my father’s heart fail while the government shut down last year — and people kept telling me I was “lucky” to be home.

It’s what people say when they don’t know what else to say.

Home was starting to feel like hell, if I’m being honest.

The government shutdown lasted from October 1 to November 12 — the longest in U.S. history. For the first time in my career, I was employed but unpaid. I was home but still working — just in a different capacity. Unpaid. Unclocked. Unrelenting.

It was also the first time in my adult life that I had to watch someone struggle to breathe. To live.

At the onset of my dad’s crisis, I knew there were two major issues:

1. An unstable mycotic aneurysm that, if left untreated, would cause a fatal stroke.

2. An infection that had severely damaged his mitral valve.

They diffused one bomb over the summer.

The other kept ticking — his heart.

That summer was a blur of urgency. Consultations with multiple medical teams. Doctors’ eyes peering over masks, heavy with concern. ICU hallways. Rehab centers. Shuffling back and forth to his room. Returning home to endless phone calls. Notes. Applications. Emails. Forms. Scans. Advocacy became my full-time job.

When my dad was discharged from his second rehab stay, a nurse casually named the remaining threat: CHF.

I had to ask what it meant.

Congestive heart failure.

He was prescribed medication to pull fluid from his lungs. But no one quite explained why, upon discharge, they also ordered him an oxygen tank.

Labor Day weekend, I brought my dad to my home. For two weeks, he seemed okay. The oxygen arrived. He only needed it for an hour or two.

Then his breathing worsened.

One hour became two.
Two became four.
Four became eight.
Soon, it was nearly constant.

And as the furlough days stretched on, so did the hours my dad depended on that machine.

“At least you got to be home during the shutdown.”

Home.
Waking up in the middle of the night to reposition his body so he could breathe.

Home.
Watching his appetite disappear.

Home.
Watching him gasp for air at the slightest movement.

Home.
Driving up and down highways for consults, trying to get clearance to address his CHF.

Home.

On November 11, my dad finally underwent surgery to replace his damaged mitral valve.

After six hours of surgery, I learned the full truth.

In addition to the Memorial Day strokes, the aneurysm, the brain hemorrhage, the heart infection, and the valve damage — my dad had also suffered a heart attack.

He survived only because his heart kept working through all of it.

I didn’t stand in a food line.
My bills were paid.
My mortgage was covered.

But my heart.
His heart.

He is recovering now.
He is getting stronger.

And so am I.

Over the holidays, I made the intentional decision to do absolutely nothing until after MLK Day.
Not subtly. Loudly.

My dad was released from his third round of rehab just two days before Christmas, and I wanted to prioritize rest, creating memories, and recalibration over productivity.

Being back in America for more than three years has made me hyperaware of the hustle culture embedded into nearly every fabric of our human experience. There is a constant push to build your brand. To keep climbing a ladder. To keep achieving. To keep pushing—even beyond exhaustion.

I only posted twice during December. Internally, I wrestled with giving my readers just two posts for an entire month. But I had to be honest with myself: if 2026 is going to be the year I return to myself, I need the time to just be—so that I can find the energy to honor my goals for the year ahead.

And as someone with an extreme Type A personality, I indulged.

• Not cleaning up for a few days

• Lounging without any real plans

• Binge-watching Stranger Things and obsessing over Welcome to Derry

• Letting the laundry pile up

• Eating ice cream for breakfast

• Going to the gym—even if it was only for 30 minutes

• Taking several days off from handling my dad’s affairs

In choosing rest—reflection and presence—I entered the new year with far more clarity around what I want in every area of my life: discipline and alignment.

Highlights from My Loud Holiday Sabbatical

1. Daddy’s Sweet Potato Pies Went Viral

Daddy made his sweet potato pies for Christmas—and they went viral on Threads.

I’ve been sharing my caregiving journey there, and those posts receive the most traction out of anything I write. Daddy has always made sweet potato pies during the holidays. At least two stay home, and the rest get delivered to friends and family.

After brain surgery and heart surgery—all within six months—he still remembered his recipe.

Watching him maneuver through new ways of moving, thinking, and navigating, while keeping that recipe etched in the instructions he gave me, was deeply endearing. Needless to say, every time I got up to tinkle, I grabbed a sliver of pie. By the next day, half of one was gone!

Cherish the moments—however big or small.

I recorded the experience because one day my dad won’t be here to make his pies. And I want to remember how proud he was after such a trying season.

2. Hosting My Annual Holiday Games Night—This Time in America

I loved hosting Christmas parties while living overseas—especially in Guyana and China. My gatherings never had an end time. One guest once left at 5 a.m.

I love bringing people together from all walks of life. Celebrating. Making sure people are fed and enjoying themselves. It’s my gift—southern hospitality mixed with diplomacy.

Many times, my parties attracted random strangers—friends of friends—because the energy was always the same: you are welcome here.

2025 was heavy. I needed to reinvigorate that energy.

So I called friends—old and new—and invited them to eat, hang out, play games, meet new people, and reconnect. It reminded me to return to the things I love, regardless of the season I find myself in.

3. The Gratitude Jar

I opened my gratitude jar and read every little note. I bawled my eyes out.

2025 was the first year I created a gratitude jar and wrote physical notes to myself—small reminders that God kept me, even when the storms felt too heavy to bear.

It reminded me of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hurricane”:

In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet
For just a moment
A yellow sky

When I was seventeen, a hurricane destroyed my town
I didn’t drown, I couldn’t seem to die
I wrote my way out
Wrote everything down far as I could see

Those lyrics. Those little notes.

They reminded me that even in my darkest moments last year—throughout every hurricane of my life—two things have always remained true:

1. The storm eventually ends.

2. I always find my yellow sky.

2025 was the year I finally picked up my pen and began documenting what these hurricanes have taught me. And I’m excited to share more of that journey—honestly, imperfectly, and out loud.

The sabbatical was necessary after such an intense year. It may be something I fold into my routine annually.

But I’m back.

Recharged.
Refreshed.
Rested.

And still loud.

It’s been nearly seven months since my dad’s health crisis.
Seven months of living in the thick of keeping him alive.

His stroke—among other serious health issues—has made me hyper-vigilant and deeply aware of the signs of a stroke. Strokes can happen suddenly, and knowing the early stroke warning signs can mean the difference between life and death.

I know so many people who have experienced a stroke, and the life-altering effects span a wide spectrum.

Each. Stroke. Is. Different.
And every stroke tells a different story.

In July, I sat beside my dad during one of his speech therapy sessions.

The therapist asked everyone in the room what they had been doing at the time of their stroke.

Three elderly Black stroke survivors—my dad included—sat at the table.
All of them had been home alone when it happened.

One woman said she had been on the ground for hours before help arrived.

Another, struggling to find her words, managed only one:

“Home.”

My dad looked at me, then told the room:

“I don’t remember. She found me.”

That’s when the therapist shared a stroke-warning acronym. She was teaching them—but she was really teaching me.

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B.E.F.A.S.T.: Stroke Warning Signs to Know

• B – Balance: Sudden loss of balance or coordination

• E – Eyes: Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes

• F – Face: One side of the face drooping

• A – Arms: Weakness or drift in one arm

• S – Speech: Slurred or strange speech

• T – Time: Call 911 immediately. Every second counts.

Days before I was furloughed, I walked through my new office, familiarizing myself with colleagues and rows of mostly empty cubicles. The RIFs, DRPs, and retirements had hollowed the space out.

On my way to the break room, I passed a B.E.F.A.S.T. stroke warning poster plastered on the side of an empty cubicle.

It was the first time I had ever seen it in print in an office setting.

And every time I pass that poster, it transports me right back to the week leading up to my dad’s crisis.

The Memory Gap

He doesn’t remember what happened in the days before his stroke.

His long-term memory is razor sharp—but the immediate lead-up to May 25 is a blank slate.

Maybe that’s a blessing.

Because I remember everything.

Especially the warning signs that snowballed into a trifecta:
a stroke, an aneurysm, and heart failure.

Memory loss after a stroke is common—and often masks the warning signs that caregivers remember vividly.

A Reminder for You

If your gut tells you something is wrong—listen.

Especially if you are caring for an aging parent, partner, or loved one.

Even if they dismiss it.
Even if they resist.

There’s still tension between all the things I did, am doing, and didn’t do.

I should have called an ambulance even when he said he wouldn’t go.
I should have tricked him into getting in the car.

At least I called his insurance at his doctor’s appointment and became an authorized agent before he lost the ability to speak.
At least I persuaded him to see his doctor.
At least I was home—and not overseas.

The moment I found him crumpled on the floor, I knew he’d had a stroke—without ever having witnessed one before.

These are the immediate steps I took when I recognized the signs of a stroke:

• Asking him to squeeze my hand. Right strong. Left weak.

• Rolling him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke.

• Talking to him to keep him distracted.

• Providing the timing to EMS.

• Grabbing the essentials before rushing to the hospital.

I was relentless—even when my best negotiating skills couldn’t crack the toughest deal of my life.

They may resist.
They may even resent you.

But if your gut is screaming and the stroke warning signs are there—B.E.F.A.S.T. and be firm.

You are not being dramatic.
You are being a lifeline.

If this helped you, share it with someone who lives alone—or someone that you love.

Last Friday night, I wrote a quick Threads post while sitting on my bed, sorting through my daddy’s papers… something I’ve been doing for months since his health crisis.

I hit “post,” put my phone down, and went to sleep thinking it would disappear into the ether like most late-night thoughts online.

By the time I woke up?

5,000 people had already agreed with me.
A few hours later? 10,000.
By Sunday? Over 16,000 likes, hundreds of comments, and reposts everywhere.

And when I actually started reading the comments, I realized something I didn’t expect:

This wasn’t a “me” problem. This is an everybody problem.

People of every age, race, city, and life story were saying the same thing:

“I’m drowning.”
“I’m the only daughter doing everything.”
“My parents didn’t have ANYTHING in order.”
“I’ve been dealing with probate for 15 years.”
“Caregiving broke me, and I’m still recovering.”

So I sat down and pulled out the biggest themes — the truths so many of us have been living through in silence.

Because if one late-night post cracked open 16,000 hearts, the conversation was long overdue.

1. The moment you become the parent to your parent

Every caregiver knows this shift.

One day you’re calling your parent for advice.
The next day you’re:

• Making their medical decisions

• Organizing their bills

• Calling their doctors

• Filling out long-term care forms you’ve never heard of

• Suddenly becoming the only adult in the room

The role reversal is jarring. It sneaks up on you. And it changes you.

So many people said they hit this wall in their 20s, 30s, and 40s — long before they imagined they’d ever be someone’s caregiver.

And honestly?
There’s no handbook for this.

2. The chaos that comes when parents don’t have their affairs in order

This is the part that hit me the hardest — because my dad did not have his affairs in order. And clearly, he is not alone.

People shared that their parents:

• had no will

• had no beneficiaries

• hadn’t paid bills

• let insurance lapse

• never shared passwords

• didn’t have a power of attorney

• didn’t tell anyone their wishes

• left houses full of decades of… everything

And because of that, their children:

• lost family homes

• spent thousands on lawyers

• drained savings

• fought with siblings

• shouldered everything alone

• and grieved while doing paperwork

Caregiving is one thing.
Chaos is another.
And chaos is preventable.

3. The eldest daughter / only daughter experience

Listen.

There is a sisterhood of exhausted eldest daughters and only daughters holding entire families together. I raised three fingers in the air while reading those comments.

People said:

“It’s five of us and I’m the only girl doing everything.”
“Only child here. I’m depleted.”
“My siblings disappeared the second things got hard.”

There is something about us — the capable daughters, the reliable ones, the fixers — that makes the world hand us more than our share.

Sometimes by choice.
Sometimes by default.
Sometimes because nobody else will step up.

And it’s heavy.
Really heavy.

4. Caregiving while working is two full-time jobs

People talked about:

• taking calls at work

• driving across states

• sleeping at hospitals

• managing rehab and surgeries

• paying out of pocket for emergencies

• trying to “perform” at work while their lives were on fire

I felt every word.

I have two phones, three calendars, and a full-time job…and still feel behind.

Caregiving doesn’t clock out at 5pm.

5. The system isn’t designed for caregivers — at all

Let’s be honest.

• Medical paperwork

• Medicaid

• Medicare

• Rehab facilities

• Insurance

• Emergency surgeries

• Discharge planning

• “We need a POA to speak with you.”

• “We can’t release that information.”

The system is not built for families in crisis. Caregivers pay with time, money, and mental health.

Most of us are learning in real time — during the scariest moments of our lives — how to navigate systems that should be helping us.

6. The grief + anger nobody talks about

This part was LOUD in the comments.

People said they were still angry years after their parents passed — not out of disrespect, but because their parents left such a heavy, avoidable mess behind.

Here’s the truth:

You can love someone deeply and still be frustrated by what they left undone.

Caregiving will show you parts of your family you never wanted to see.

7. The fear of leaving your OWN kids with this burden

One of the most powerful themes was people saying:

“I learned from my parents’ chaos — and I’ve already handled my affairs so my kids never go through this.”

This experience can change us for the better.

We can break cycles.
We can prepare differently.
We can leave peace instead of problems.

8. The emotional weight of STUFF

I didn’t expect the decluttering theme to dominate…but it did.

People talked about:

• expired food

• piles of paperwork

• hoarding

• outdated appliances

• entire homes filled with things nobody knew what to do with

Grief + physical labor = exhaustion.

One woman said:

“You DON’T need 3 hair dryers and canned goods from 2012. Ask me how I know.”

Sometimes love looks like letting go of things now — not leaving them for someone else later.

9. The loneliness

Even with siblings. Even with partners. Even with support.

Caregiving is lonely.
People don’t know how to help.
People don’t ask.
People don’t understand.

But reading those comments?
You helped each other feel less alone.

10. Family dynamics ALWAYS come to the surface

Caregiving doesn’t create dysfunction — it exposes it.

Who shows up.
Who disappears.
Who gets quiet.
Who gets loud.
Who becomes generous.
Who becomes selfish.

When parents get sick, the truth comes out.

Why I’m writing about this

Because this journey has changed me.
Because I want my future kids to have peace instead of paperwork.
Because I want families to avoid unnecessary pain.
Because I’m learning lessons people don’t talk about publicly.
Because too many of us are suffering in silence.

And because if over 16,000 people felt this in their chest?

It’s time we talk about it openly.

If you’re new here…

Welcome.

I never expected caregiving to become part of my public story, but here we are. And your responses showed me how many of us are carrying these quiet burdens.

If you want to follow this journey — the caregiving, the career pivots, the writing, the honesty — you can subscribe below.

And if you’re caregiving right now?

You are not alone.
You are not failing.
You’re doing the best you can with what you’ve been handed.
And that is enough.

Sometimes you don’t realize a moment isn’t closing a chapter — it’s quietly beginning a new one. You don’t always know why you’re placed in a certain space, who you’re meant to encounter, or how a single conversation becomes the hinge upon which your entire story turns.

In this final chapter, I’m pulling the thread through — showing how each encounter, each inflection point, aligned my steps toward becoming a U.S. diplomat.

Fulbright, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2011–2012)

The Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Program strengthens cross-cultural understanding by placing U.S. graduates in local classrooms to support English language education and build people-to-people ties.

It placed me in Kaohsiung, Taiwan — the island’s southernmost city — in August 2011. A humid, tropical metropolis where I arrived full of hope and curiosity.

The Taiwanese were warm, observant, and gracious — a contrast to the blunt curiosity I encountered in mainland China. Their cultural awareness was immediate: observe, but not intrusively; inquire, but not aggressively; honor personal space. It was the exact opposite of everything I had come to expect.

Kaohsiung quickly became my place of peace — and transformation.

• I taught nearly 600 elementary students across two schools.

• I walked — then jogged — through the Cultural Center park.

• I ate fresh, delicious food.

• I joined races across the island.

• I sharpened my Mandarin bartering at neighborhood produce stalls.

• I created a pen pal program connecting my Taiwanese students with classrooms in North Carolina — a project that continued long after I left.

• I grew close to my co-teachers and host family, sharing meals, attending church, and taking weekend excursions.

But Taiwan also introduced complexities I couldn’t avoid.

• It was the first place I heard plainly, “The boss has concerns about your skin color,” during a part-time job interview.

• It was the first time I heard someone I cared about casually repeat East Asian beauty standards — “头发黑黑的，眼睛大大的，皮肤白白的” (tóufa hēi hēi de, yǎnjing dà dà de, pífū bái bái de), meaning “dark hair, big eyes, very fair skin”— and followed it with the comment that dark skin simply wasn’t seen as beautiful.

• And it was the first time grief reached me across an ocean, when my godmother — the woman who helped fund my first trip abroad to China — passed away.

I left Taiwan grounded, sharpened, and ready for whatever came next.

Washington, D.C., Fall 2012

I returned home to a tight job market and a looming end to my student loan deferment. I eventually secured a project assistant role at a nonprofit making $20 an hour — less than what I made in Taiwan.

Within months, the misalignment became undeniable. First, your body senses it. Then it becomes a whisper. Then dread. And eventually, monotony grows loud enough to say: you can’t stay here.

During my Fulbright orientation, an alum had mentioned the White House Internship Program — “unpaid but unforgettable.” A résumé catalyst, but a financial sacrifice.

During my phone interview, they asked:
“On a scale from 1 to 10, how excited would you be to join the Spring 2013 cohort?”

I answered: “Three.”

Silence.
Then I explained: excitement doesn’t pay rent.

The next day, I received my acceptance letter.

God’s timing — and humor — are unmatched.

While sitting in a staff meeting where the CEO outlined projects he wanted me to lead, clarity settled over me. Minutes later, I sent my two-week notice. A few weeks after that, I walked into the White House complex for my first day.

White House, Spring 2013

D.C. in 2013 was electric. I was 23, back home, navigating corridors where National Security Council staff brushed past you as if it were routine.

I processed correspondence — digital and handwritten — for former President Obama. Certain letters were hand-selected for him to read; he often responded personally. It was a profound bridge between everyday Americans and federal policy.

We had closed-door briefings with the President, Vice President, senior advisors, and Cabinet-level leaders.

For many native Washingtonians, this level of access was unprecedented. We lived in the capital but rarely stepped into the rooms shaping the policies that governed our lives. This was my first real glimpse of policy in motion.

But the experience stretched me thin.

The internship was unpaid, so I worked two jobs:
45 hours at the White House,
and 20–24 hours at a special-needs respite facility on weekends.

I ran after children. I met their daily needs. Most nights, I took my shoes off in the car — feet swollen, shirt wrinkled, body running on fumes. I did this for 4.5 months. It required a level of grit that bordered on survival instinct.

Midway through the internship, I knew I needed a plan for what came next. Graduate school was calling.

I wrote on a scrap of paper:
“You will not pay a penny for your master’s degree.”
And taped it beside my bed.

I remembered a conversation from my 2010 internship at the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai — when a first-tour officer mentioned the Rangel Fellowship. I applied to three: Charles B. Rangel, Thomas R. Pickering, and Donald M. Payne.

I became a finalist for both Rangel and Pickering.

My Rangel interview humbled me immediately. Every finalist was exceptional — many former Fulbrighters, including one who flew in from Brazil. My confidence recalibrated in real time.

When I sat before legends like the late Ambassador Ruth Davis, I walked out knowing Pickering was my remaining chance.

Several retirees volunteered in my White House section, sorting correspondence. One, a retired Black FSO, took special interest in me. Two weeks before my Pickering interview, she agreed to run mock sessions. Midway through the first one, she stopped me cold:

“You’re interviewing like you don’t even want this. Decide if you want it.”

She was right. I had let small distractions obscure the magnitude of what was in front of me — a fully funded master’s degree and a direct pathway into the Foreign Service.

I walked into my Pickering interview ready — and I walked out a Pickering Fellow.

I ended my White House internship with a plan — and a path.

Pickering Fellowship & American University (2013–2015)

I pursued a master’s in International Affairs at American University’s School of International Service. The Pickering Fellowship, fully funded my master’s program and provided two professional assignments — one domestic, one overseas — designed to prepare fellows for a career at the Department of State. These programs were created to recruit exceptional talent, remove structural barriers, and widen access to diplomacy for those historically excluded.

For the first time in years, I could breathe. I did not have to strategize how to cover tuition, rent, or opportunity costs. I could focus on learning — and excelling.

My professional experiences during these two years fundamentally reshaped how I saw myself — Black, young, and gifted.

Domestic Internship — Office of West African Affairs (Summer 2014)

A 10-week internship as the desk officer for Ghana and Guinea rapidly transformed into a crash course in high-stakes diplomacy.

• The Obama administration was hosting the inaugural U.S.–Africa Leaders Summit.

• Ghana was preparing to receive the second tranche of its $500 million energy compact.

• Guinea was ground zero for a rapidly escalating Ebola outbreak.

At 24, I found myself on interagency calls with what felt like the entire U.S. government — coordinating information, tracking decisions, and managing competing priorities in real time. I was also tasked with helping orchestrate a sideline meeting between senior U.S. officials and the heads of state from the countries most affected by the Ebola crisis.

One morning in Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s office, I sat across from her, diligently taking notes during a phone call with former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She shared that she would not be attending the U.S.–Africa Leaders Summit — the Ebola outbreak had reached Liberia, and the response required her on the ground. Even in that difficult moment, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield balanced candor, compassion, and clarity. It was diplomacy at its most human.

Days later, I watched her meet with the Vice President of Liberia, who had been sent to lead the delegation. As staff passed plates of food around the room, she insisted I fix a plate as well — a subtle reminder that diplomacy is not merely policy or posture; it is presence, hospitality, and humanity.

Throughout that meeting, I watched her effortlessly weave personal history from her ambassadorship into the business at hand — grounding policy in shared experience, trust, and respect. It was a masterclass in relationship-driven diplomacy, and it left an imprint on me I still carry.

Overseas Internship — U.S. Embassy Banjul, The Gambia

Banjul introduced me to diplomacy’s sharp edges. While there, I witnessed my first persona non grata declaration — the expulsion of the European Union’s highest-ranking official under the authoritarian rule of then-President Yahya Jammeh. It was a real-time lesson in statecraft, consequence, and the fragility of political space.

In the fall of 2015, I entered the Foreign Service’s orientation program, A-100, as a member of the 184th class — officially beginning my career as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer.

The Lessons Underneath the Journey

When I joined the Foreign Service, I assumed my defining moments would unfold in the obvious places — embassies, crisis centers, foreign capitals nothing like home.

I believed the big things would shape me:
the evacuations, the political tensions, the midnight calls, the policies that bent entire communities.

And they did.

But the truth — the truth I understand most clearly now — is that the most enduring lessons didn’t come from work.

They came from what the work revealed in me:
resilience, discipline, discernment, and the capacity to carry weight long after my shoulders were tired.

I didn’t yet know those would be the exact traits I’d need when my career and my life collided in ways I never anticipated.

When my father’s health crisis struck this year, it felt like the universe pulled me out of one world and rooted me firmly in another. Suddenly, every skill I had sharpened overseas — structure, advocacy, negotiation, calm under pressure — became the toolkit I needed most at home.

And that’s my final truth of becoming a diplomat:
your training may begin abroad, but its greatest tests will meet you where you least expect them — often in the very place that shaped you first.