Uncertainty has always been a dirty word for me. Even just the way it rolls off my tongue feels sticky and uncomfortable. Over the years, I’ve tried plenty of coping methods including obsessive exercising, marathon wine drinking, and even (cringe) excessive relationship “deconstructing” and “fixing”. It’s only since cancer dropped the certainty is an illusion bomb in my lap that I began playing in the...

Where do you go when one big hairy audacious dream ends and you have to choose between setting your sights on the next giant mountain or retreating into the land of safety and security? In April this year – after 18 months of different cities, faces, beds, and timezones – I rolled my suitcase through the door of my childhood bedroom and sealed the world out. In spite of the success of #Delhi2013, I felt unsure of exactly how to move...

When was your last earth-shattering A-HA moment? You know, that moment when you realized some universal truth and everything in your life instantly made sense and became perfect. If you are reading this and thinking, “Oh sh!t – I’ve never had a moment like that” - Welcome To The Club. Epiphanies don’t happen in real life like they do in the movies. There is no perfect moment of clarity where everything messy in...

Bearded men draped in white seem to float past me while caucasian girls wearing wrinkled Indian style tunics over their dusty jeans bend under the weight of overstuffed backpacks. The sound of bangles jingle as the woman beside me answers an email and across the expansive carpeted corridor a small child writhes out of his mother’s embrace. He screams at what I can imagine is the injustice of his early wake-up call, the long line he endured...

They say bad things come in threes. I haven’t decided if “they” are right. Three years ago, at the age of 30, three words sent my former life tumbling off the edge of a cliff and into a dark, wide abyss below. A little over a year later, after three months of chemotherapy and three surgeries, three new words changed everything. If you read, Risk Taking 101, you might remember my control-seeking, validation-junkie,...

The dark underbelly of the train station presses up against the window as fluorescent lights above me flicker and go out. Before my eyes adjust to the blackness, my boot knocks over one of my bags and my heels begin to bounce in a restless jig. The stranger beside me unwraps his toasted meatball sandwich and as the tinfoil crinkles against my frayed nerves, my stomach flips in hungry protest. Claustrophobia wraps its arms around my shoulders...