Another chapter, one iced tea, and a little bit of quiet

I spent a few hours in a café today. Just me, my laptop, and a cookie I didn’t plan to eat but did anyway. The iced tea helped. Not because I was thirsty, but because sometimes having something cold to hold onto helps you think.

This chapter wasn’t easy to write. I found myself circling around one question: who do we become when we leave everything familiar behind? What happens to our identity when we’re constantly translating ourselves — not just in language, but in gesture, in silence, in how we show up for our children?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how those shifts aren’t exclusive to parents. They happen to anyone building a life somewhere new — people who care, people who carry, people who rebuild.

So this chapter tried to hold that. The quiet parts. The in-between moments that don’t make it into guides or advice columns. Where identity, belonging, and care blur together in the everyday.

Maybe you’ve felt this too, in your own way. If so, I think we’d understand each other.

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