Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold.

You are the one who creates your future, if not someone else will decide your fate and the road which will pave your destiny...is that the way you wish to live?!?

It was important to me to become day-to-day fluent and functional in another language, and about 10 years ago, I went to Rome for the first time and felt an instant gut connection and wanted to get to know the city.

A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.

A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling that I didn't fully belong, that my parents didn't belong.

The essential dilemma of my life is between my deep desire to belong and my suspicion of belonging.