MAGPIE

Ever since moving back to the States and interacting much more with young adults in my day-to-day life, I have had to keep myself up-to-date with Internet cu...

Congratulations! You’ve successfully finished your internship with a prestigious international NGO, working in the fight to end cybersex trafficking of child...

Have you ever wished that there was a sliding scale to tell you when your “well, it’s been kind of rough season” officially turns into “yeah, okay, I need he...

I’ve moved back from the Philippines five months ago and since being home, I’ve been stuck in a weird loop of family crises and brief intermissions. I’ve flow...

I thought about Getting Bangs™ as any mentally stable, very healthy person ignoring major life changes also contemplates doing, but then I remembered that my...

It’s midnight on my 23rd birthday. I’m standing exactly 8,345 miles away from home in a Filipino town outside Manila and ugly-crying over a chocolate bundt c...

Every expat ((I’m talking at least half a year, buddy!)) has a reentry moment, after they leave the place they learned to call home and return to their “home...

As I prepared to leave the Philippines and my 15 months’ service with International Justice Mission fighting against cybersex trafficking of children, I star...

I love email and letter correspondences because they are whimsical, genuine, and impossible. You both try to share as much as you can but you just can’t capt...

Over a year ago, I left Romania shaky and weepy. My three-ish month stint serving at a survivor shelter for vulnerable women and children was watershed, seis...

The Saturday before last, I was begrudgingly convicted that I should go to my church’s fundraiser for their big location move (from a bar to a mall, which co...

You know that feeling when you try to wake up from a self-induced NyQuil coma and you’re kinda awake and moving, but also like, are you even? Living in South...

A little boy and his grandfather walk along the beach one morning during low tide. The ocean had washed up hundreds of starfish overnight and they were now d...

#update

When we decided as a family to adopt my little brother and sister, I was 20 years old. My biological siblings’ ages ranged from 22 to 14. I was living at hom...

(A Listicle: brought on by melancholic thoughts of leaving for a year and reflecting on the women in my family who inspire me and nurture my love of learning...

So I find myself sitting at a public park in Carmel because its public amenities are on par with that of a small Scandinavian country and all I want is a lit...

Two things happened on the same day recently that opened up a subject that I have desperately tried to avoid for a while now: my tempestuous relationship wit...

As Facebook kindly reminded me, last year I graduated college. After three and half years of hard work, I finished college magna cum laude at 20. It was pret...