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The thought came to me while I was swimming in the pool this morning: the more open we are, the easier it is to connect with people. The reverse is true too. We build a shield to hold between ourselves and a stranger. I know something about shields. There was a period in my life when I had been badly hurt, and I became determined not to let it happen again. I even pictured it. I put my heart inside a wooden box. I nailed the box shut. Then I placed a heavy concrete slab on

I don't drink soda. It's simply too sweet for my taste, so it's a rare guest in our house. When my daughter brought home an energy drink and poured it into a glass, I got curious about the bright blue color. "Can I try it?" I asked. She nodded. I took a sip. Yeah, unbearably sweet. And without thinking, I said, "That's disgusting." She looked at me, and I watched her smile disappear. "Mom, what did you just do? I was excited to drink it, and now you've ruined it. If you don't

No doubt your family has its Christmas stories. The ones that get told again, that become shorthand for something larger. This one is ours. In Eastern European countries that follow the Orthodox Christian calendar, Christmas arrives later, on January 7th, not December 25th. The real holiday stretch begins on New Year's Day and unfolds slowly through the first week of January, a long exhale of winter celebration. As a child, I loved this about our calendar. The world outside h

I remember exactly when it happened. I was ten. The eve of International Women's Day, a holiday that, in the Soviet Union, turned cities briefly floral. Bouquets everywhere. Women smiling under armfuls of tulips. A day off. A celebration. I wanted to give my mother something of my own. Drawing was out of the question. I knew my limits early: it was the only subject where I earned a B, surrounded by a sea of As. Handicrafts didn't cooperate with me either; glue, scissors, and

A few years ago, I visited the Maya exhibition at Kansas City Union Station. The gallery sat low, almost underground, and walking down into it felt like descending along a timeline. The deeper I went, the older the air seemed to grow. The exhibition was mesmerizing. I followed the arc of Maya history, their daily life, their inventions, and their sense of order and time. At the end, a small note stopped me: the Maya people did not vanish with the Spanish invasion. Their desce

There was a period in my life when the light went flat. Not dramatic. Just — flat. I signed up for a group coaching program, the way you reach for something solid when the floor feels uncertain. One of our assignments was to write ten gratitude points every day for a month. Share them each morning with an accountability partner. I stared at the page. Ten. Every day. I ran through the previous twenty-four hours like checking empty pockets. Nothing remarkable had happened. Noth

The people who shape you aren't always loud about it. Sometimes they do it simply by being who they are — consistently, quietly, over years you don't recognize as formative until much later. Both of my parents were engineers. My father, Val, led an electrical engineering group at a machine-building plant. Our home overflowed with technical books, not for show. Dad read daily, the way other people ate or slept. It wasn't discipline. It was just who he was. I think I inherited

During our recent Caribbean cruise, one of the stops was an island I had carefully researched in advance. Planning our activities, I selected a few places we could realistically visit. One attraction was a glass-bottom boat that toured every hour. To ensure our logistics run smoothly, I asked the agent for more details. "Does it leave every quarter hour? Every half hour?" His reply made me laugh out loud. "We agree… in a perfect world, the glass-bottom boat would be on a set

31 December 2025 I woke that morning into a stillness. The house felt suspended, as if holding its breath. My daughter was still sleeping. My husband worked in his office. In my previous life in Russia, New Year's Eve had never been quiet. It was usually a small domestic storm: people arriving and leaving, shared responsibilities negotiated on the fly, the kitchen alive with noise, opinions, and clattering dishes. In my parents' home, where the whole family gathered, chaos wa

A five-part blog series: On books, uncertainty, and trusting what unfolds Part one of five The Door I Always Return To Books, solitude, and the seasons of going inward I love books. I learned to read when I was five, and since then, they have been my favorite way to explore worlds beyond my own. That doesn't mean I'm a bookworm in the classic sense. Even as a child, I noticed a rhythm in myself, almost a strict cycle. Periods of intense reading would alternate with stretches

Part one of two: When knowing the lesson isn't enough There is a particular lesson life seems determined to teach me more than once. Not because I failed to learn it the first time. I did learn it — genuinely, carefully, with the kind of insight that feels permanent. I wrote about it. I carried it. I thought I had it. And then life sent me another person, wired differently from the first, and I discovered that understanding a pattern and executing it gracefully under pressure

As we were ending the call, my friend said quietly, "I feel much calmer after talking to you. Thank you." I smiled. And almost immediately, another voice surfaced — familiar, gentle, a little curious: You've heard these words before. From your son. From neighbors. From other friends. I sat with that for a moment. Because I am not particularly calm. I am not soft-spoken. I don't dissolve problems with incense and careful breathing. I interrupt. I joke at unexpected moments. I

A year ago, just before Christmas, a friend of mine, a life coach, invited me to a holiday gathering she hosts for her clients. The plan was to create a vision board. I waved it off immediately. "Darling," I said, "vision boards are for young dreamers. I'm a little past that phase." She didn't argue. She smiled and said I was welcome to come anyway, for conversation, snacks, and a glass of something warm in good company. That part I liked. When I arrived, I saw a few women ci

You don't design your future in advance; you discover it through thoughtful experimentation. Yesterday I disappeared into a poem. My poem. Three hours passed while I translated it into English, slowly, attentively, listening for the moment when the words stopped sounding correct and began sounding true. I don't remember deciding to do this. The day simply opened, and I stepped inside. One rhyme led to another, one syllable insisted on being replaced, until the English version

These Midwestern cities panic at snow. Schools close, roads empty, people photograph it like a rare animal. For me, born above the Arctic Circle, it feels like a time machine. Suddenly, I am seven again, tunneling through drifts that reached second-floor windows, building snow fortresses with numb fingers, staying out for hours in temperatures that would send this city indoors for a week. Snow here feels like a gift. A private one. Alina and I met in the kitchen this morning,

Recently, I received a message from a friend that made my stomach drop. Life is shit. Everything is bad. I'm exhausted carrying this alone. My boss says I underperformed — they'll definitely fire me. How am I going to pay for my house? It read like a scream. I called her immediately. I expected tears. Collapse. The particular exhaustion of someone who has been holding something too heavy for too long. Instead, she was having dinner. She sounded — fine. We talked about food fi

I became a mother at eighteen. In January 2004, right after the New Year, Art, my sixteen-year-old son, and I flew to Goa, India. I was thirty-three, freshly out of a long relationship that had ended the previous fall, and badly in need of something to look at other than my own thoughts. A year earlier, I had moved to Moscow and taken a mid-level role in a large international company, which opened the door to travel. I loved it and embraced every chance to see the world. This