Since my partner died of cancer in a Northwestern Hospital bed on a sunny day in June of 2018, every return to our former home city of Chicago has meant an emotional collapse for me. But not this time. This time I returned for Chicago’s Cycle for Survival event, joining Jeff’s friends in remembering …
Continue reading “Cycle for Survival: Putting a Positive Spin on Cancer”
I had a hard time deciding where I wanted to be on the day that marked the last in a year of firsts – the one year anniversary of my fiancé’s death. One never really knows when grief will claw its way out of its carefully contained space in the heart and squeeze, but …
Making a Wish for a Second Life in Laos: Outside of temples and padogas across Southeast Asia, there are cages full of tiny birds. If you buy a bird and release it, this symbolic gift of freedom is believed, by some, to bring good luck or to ensure a wish will come true. I …
Continue reading “Things To Do in Luang Prabang: The Land of Wishes”
What to do in Canggu: When I set out for the beach town of Canggu, just over an hour south of Ubud on Bali’s southeastern coast, I didn’t plan to learn to surf. Actually, I didn’t plan to…plan. My whole goal was to go somewhere new with absolutely no plan at all and to …
It’s never fun to admit failure, but it’s true that I threw in my fins and quit scuba school. In doing a little soul searching in the wake of dropping out of my (non-refundable) open-water scuba training, I can take the unpleasant admissions one step further: I just didn’t fit in on the island …
When I first decided to travel to all of the cities that my partner saw during his European adventure in his last year of life, I was pretty excited that Prague was on the list.
