Recently a friend of mine asked her four-year-old son ‘What does it mean to be poor?’ Her son immediately got down on the ground and began to beg. What struck my friend about this response was not so much that her son knew that being poor in Hong Kong often meant begging but rather what she was teaching her child if she continued to do what most people do when they see a beggar – …
I remember the first nursing shift I worked as a newlywed after returning from my honeymoon. I went to sign the medication log and wasn’t sure which name to use. Should I still use my maiden name or my married name? When does my name officially change, I wondered? My supervisor responded ‘Use your married name, that’s who you are now.’ Yesterday I picked up my new passport and now I’m using my maiden name …
I’m a crazy, busy mama of three, still in the trenches of grief after losing my mum. I’m like any other human who makes mistake after mistake, who has walked with a giant elephant of self-hatred for years resting on my chest. Combined with a decade of fad diets, post partum depression and a world that told me I wasn’t good enough. It led to an unhappy Angie. I looked in the mirror and saw …
My mother died of cancer at only 39 years of age having spent the last months of her life being cared for in a nursing home. My memories of that nursing home are not good; elderly people, unpleasant smells, illness and death. So even 13 years later when my elderly friend Frances was sent to a nursing home to recuperate from an illness I was reluctant and apprehensive about visiting her. As I entered the …
My name is Thida Toucht and I live in Cambodia. I am the oldest child in my family so when my father lost his income I had to leave school and find a job to support our family. Our family was separated as I looked for work all over Cambodia. Eventually I found a job washing clothes in a small a town on the border of Thailand and Cambodia. It was a very dangerous place …
