During the hardest year of my life, I only shared my two biggest accomplishments — In 2018, this is what I posted on my Facebook timeline: April 22: Victory! May 24: Happiness!

In fleeing Kyiv, I left behind everything normal — I’m sitting in a cool, hipster-looking coffee shop with wooden floors and red brick walls, right in the centre of Ivano-Frankivsk. I drink filtered coffee. I see people of all sorts coming inside to sit or take away a latte, a croissant, a cake. …

I’m live blogging my most difficult days of the year — Day 30: These bleak February days with their unsettled weather patterns make me so impatient for spring. I watch the feeders from my office window, counting the cardinals in the naked branches of the nectarine tree. As the day of your death draws closer, I make an endless, futile wish…

On loving your child and losing yourself — In March 2020, my son was born three weeks early in a Brooklyn hospital just as news reporters started to flood New Rochelle and the CDC debated the merits of masking. We didn’t know it at the time, but those extra three weeks meant that we could enjoy his birth…

Seven lessons that make sense of the scrabble — I think I’m a Words With Friends addict. I blame my mum. Over the past eight years, my mum and I have played 566 games of this Scrabble-inspired mobile app together. For us, it’s an easy way to connect when we’re not physically with each other. In that time, I’ve…

A veteran shares what gives him pause in owning a weapon even after experiencing the D.C. riots — On May 31, 2020, rioters ransacked our apartment complex the night DC burned. I woke up at 2 a.m. and watched from the 8th-floor balcony as protesters fought with police and destroyed the stores on our block. The mob had set a church near the White House ablaze. …

How I’ve tried (and failed) to outrun it in the past — I’ve had a few bouts with depression in my life, and not once did I see it coming. After the first such incident, I thought I would come to recognize the signs and address my mental health in the proactive way I deal with dripping pipes or holes in my…