This year, two themes have stood out for me as we head into the fall: 1) fall is the best season for a new perspective and 2) it’s a time to intentionally slow down. Symbolically, fall has long been celebrated as a time to reflect on: balance (between night and day), impending darkness, change and transformation (and how foliage reminds us of the beauty, alongside the death, of transitions)…

It’s been quiet over here… a little too quiet sometimes. Silence can mean different things to different people: in Finland, silence is almost sacred. In Canada, we tend to say that silence is golden, but we run from its intimacy when it does grace us. Online, it can mean anything, but mostly it’s interpreted as abandon. A silence blog or website is an abandoned and neglected one. If I can choose, I’d interpret the silence on these pages as…

When I was 5 years old, my parents and I moved from Bucharest, Romania to Montreal, Canada. After the initial excitement of my first time on a plane, I struggled to understand why my parents had made this life-altering decision to move as I tried to adapt to a place without my grandparents, in a language I didn’t speak (French) with no friends and other family nearby.

One day, I asked my parents:

5 years ago, I got on a plane a moved to Finland. I no longer wanted to live in Canada.

2014 was the year of new beginnings. In some ways, 2014 was a hard year, and in other ways, it was a much easier year than those which came before it.

I noticed yesterday, while flying from Helsinki to Bucharest via Istanbul, that whenever I am on a plane, I feel deeply humbled. On board, everyone is equal.