Imagine you are….. abandoned at three days old found in a trash can raised in a Soviet orphanage abused repeatedly by an adoptive father found freezing on the winter streets of St. Petersburg thrown in jail beaten and abused by peers forced to carry the body a young friend to the outskirts of town for burial institutionalized If I had experienced only one or two of these events, I’d break.  Fall apart.  IF I survived it, I’d need years of expensive therapy to recover even slightly. My friend Alex lived through all of this before he reached fifteen. Today, Alex […]

Read More

I visited New York with my brother recently. Buried with work stress, I told him, “You’re in charge.  I need a break from decisions and timelines; I will just follow you.” We even agreed on a trip theme:  Meander.  We had no real schedule, no commitments.  Eat when we get hungry.  Stop when we are tired.  Watch people. How did that go?  Not so well. For three days, my brother set the pace, soaked in the city, and waited patiently for me to discover I was half a block ahead of him.  For three days, each time the gap between […]

Read More

4:30 AM is for the birds. Actually, the birds aren’t even up at 4:30! But we were awake and beginning our long journey home. We scrambled for last minute showers and packing, finalized the huge donation piles in our dorms, and shuffled out to the vans at 5:00 for the 30-minute ride to the airport. Upon check-in, we learned that our flight from Aguascalientes to Dallas was delayed by about an hour. Thankful that we had a long layover in Dallas, we weren’t too worried about this turn of events. We settled into the little waiting area, and many of […]

Read More