I know what it means to feel like an outsider. As a child, I rarely felt that I belonged anywhere. I was shy, had few friends, and spent much of my time alone. While others seemed to move easily between groups and friendships, I often found myself standing at the edge, watching rather than participating….
It’s Tuesday afternoon. Nothing dramatic is happening. You have a list. You’re working through it. There are emails to answer, decisions pending, a conversation you’ve been meaning to have, something you need to finish before the week ends. And somewhere in the background, so quiet you barely notice it, is the feeling that your actual…
They told me my silence was unprofessional. I’ve carried those words for a long time, not because they wounded me, but because they revealed something about the way I, and perhaps we, understand strength. Somewhere along the way we decided that presence means noise.That engagement means response, that if a person says nothing, there must…
A while ago, one of my clients said something to me that I’ve never forgotten. “I feel completely lost. That person was my compass. Now they’re gone, and I don’t know which way is north.” I understood exactly what they meant. Most of us have experienced moments when someone or something gave us direction. A…
Most of us don’t live with complete freedom. We make decisions because bills need paying, children need feeding, and aging parents need caring for. Much of adult life isn’t choosing between good and bad opportunities. It’s simply doing what must be done. There’s nothing dishonest in that. Providing for your family, honouring a commitment, showing…
There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after. For me, one of those moments came during COVID. My mother died in Italy while I was living in Australia. Because of the lockdowns, I couldn’t get on a plane. I couldn’t be with my family. I couldn’t hold her hand one last…
It’s somewhere past 2:00AM. You’re not sick. The house is quiet. By every measure you can name, you should be asleep. But you’re awake, and something has shifted. It’s not the hour. It’s what the hour has taken with it. There is no one to perform for at 2am. No audience. No role to play….
I grew up in northern Italy, a country rich in history, culture, and philosophy. In high school, among many other subjects, we studied Latin, translating original works by Cicero, Tacitus, and Virgil, while also exploring philosophers such as Socrates, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and Epictetus. Looking back, something strikes me. We grew up. We made…
I remember sitting one evening, watching television, and noticing something that unsettled me. Not fear. Not sadness. Something quieter and harder to name. A kind of distance from my own life. A flatness. The feeling that if something happened in that moment, it would simply happen — and somehow that felt almost acceptable. And yet,…
I was thirteen years old when I learned what I was made of. Not in a way anyone saw, not in a way anyone celebrated. I was running down the stairs toward the locker room before an ice hockey game, wide concrete steps covered in rubber, taking them fast the way you do when you’re…
