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Becoming an Orphan in My Forties
You spend your entire life knowing that one day your parents will leave this world, but nothing truly prepares you for the day you realize you’re an orphan—even in your forties. Losing my parents wasn’t sudden; it was a long goodbye that somehow still ended too soon. This is a reflection on anticipatory grief, the…
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The Missing Middle: Why Having Children Feels Out of Reach for So Many Americans
But after budgeting for motherhood as a GS-14 in Washington, DC—and later experiencing the benefits cliff after losing my job—I began to understand why so many middle-class families feel squeezed. This is a reflection on the growing affordability gap facing the “missing middle” and why raising children shouldn’t feel like a luxury.
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The Baby Was Always the Goal
After becoming a mother by choice, I realized why many of my past relationships failed. My true goal was always motherhood, and that shaped how I approached dating and love.
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Watching My Mother Fade Through FaceTime: A Tribute to a Woman Ahead of Her Time
As this post is published, my mother, Tahera Rashid, is being laid to rest in Bangladesh. A woman ahead of her time, she built a life across journalism, banking, education, and family legacy while raising generations shaped by strong women. This is a reflection on grief, caregiving from afar, motherhood, and enduring love.
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Almost Forgetting My Dad’s Birthday
I almost forgot my dad’s birthday this year. That sentence alone feels impossible to write. Grief has a way of making certain dates feel etched into your bones, and yet life—messy, exhausting, relentless life—can sometimes blur even the moments you thought you’d never miss. Growing up, my dad never made much of a fuss about…
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When Caregiving Expands: The Rise of the Sandwich Generation
Part of the series Work, Care, and the Missing Middle There is a point where caregiving stops being one role and becomes many. It is not always a clear transition. It happens gradually. A doctor’s appointment here. A check-in call there. A shift in responsibility that at first feels temporary, until it is not. For…
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Part 3: Two Years Later — A Letter to My Dad
In the first two pieces of this series, I wrote about the early postpartum weeks and the systems that shape those first days after birth and the community that stepped in to help carry me through them. But becoming a mother didn’t just make me think about recovery, support, or survival. It also brought me…
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Part 2: The Net of Community That Carried Me
In my first post, Part 1: Birth — The Six Week Postpartum Journey, I wrote about the intensity of those first weeks after giving birth — the physical recovery, the emotional shifts, and the reality that postpartum doesn’t magically resolve at six weeks. What I didn’t fully talk about then was this:I didn’t go through…
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Caring From a Distance: The Heartbreak of Eldercare While Pregnant
Becoming pregnant — especially at 40 — has changed almost every part of my life. My routines, my priorities, and even my sense of identity have shifted. But the hardest change, the one that keeps catching me off guard, is how much it has limited my ability to show up for my mom during this…
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The Companion Who Became Family
Unconventional relationships have been the thread running through my life lately, and this one might be the most unexpected of all. I met him in the early days of COVID—not at USAID, where he also worked as a foreign service officer, but in the unlikeliest of places: our neighborhood dog-walking circuit. At first, I wrote…
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Bureaucrat to Baby Steps 