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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jermaine Ee, founder of HeirLight. It has been edited for length and clarity.Even when I was living in New York, I frequently flew home to visit my parents and three younger siblings in LA. When the pandemic made travel harder, I…
Hitting the road and traveling the country in an RV is nothing new for my 90-year-old mother, Margie.After her husband died when she was 82, she surprised the whole family by buying a 24-foot motorhome she named Whimsey — because she had purchased it on a whim.For over five years,…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brian Majewski and Teresa Green, co-founders of One Final Message. It has been edited for length and clarity.Back when people still had genuine conversations on X (then, Twitter), I connected with people I’d never met in real life. I knew some…
The year I turned 51, I wasn’t thinking about getting older. I was thinking about my dad.Fifty-one was the last birthday he ever celebrated, and as my own birthday got closer, I couldn’t shake the thought that I was about to become the age he never lived past.When my dad…
I come from a long line of mothers who have mastered the art of guilt as manipulation. I believe it started with my great-grandmother. I never met her, but I’ve been told that she ruled her home with an iron fist in a velvet glove, commanding her 11 children to…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sandra Bonola, 56, who moved from Connecticut to Charleston, South Carolina, in 2021, then to Beaufort, South Carolina, in 2023, before deciding the South wasn’t right for her. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.I am a native New…
Three years ago, my husband and I packed up our lives in the suburbs of London and moved aboard a 36-foot sailboat.We’d sailed before and had spent weeks on boats each year for our vacations, but living on one full-time proved to be very different. We ended up living aboard…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sara Wilczynska, the founder of Swil Arts Studio. She left her job as a software engineer at Google, spent a year traveling with her partner, and discovered watercolors in Thailand. Her words have been edited for length and clarity.I was born…
