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The Saturday after Thanksgiving always invites a pause. The rush settles, the noise quiets, and what remains is the simple question: What does gratitude look like for me this year? For me, it’s looked nothing like a curated holiday. It’s looked like real life in Bali—messy, unpredictable, surprising, and strangely beautiful. This week alone, one neighbor’s son battled lice… twice. After she disinfected every sheet, helmet, and surface, the lice returned three days later. Anot

There are weeks that pass quietly, and then there are weeks that feel like the universe is handing you a story. A couple of weeks ago in Bali was one of those weeks. It began with something simple: my neighbor Marina, sleeves rolled up, fully devoted to a mission she took on the moment she arrived. In just three months, she’s become a one-woman movement to spay and neuter as many stray dogs and cats as she can. Not because anyone asked her to. Not because she had funding. But

There are moments in life when something so unexpected happens that it makes you pause and wonder whether what we call coincidence is actually something far more intentional. Bali has been teaching me that when I stop gripping, stop pushing, and stop trying to control the timing of everything, life moves with a kind of clarity and precision I could never manufacture. About a month ago, word spread quickly through our community chat: a rare Javanese ebony monkey had been spott

The week before Halloween, my 12-year-old daughter came home with a mission. There was no Halloween party planned at her school, and she couldn’t believe it. New to the school, she assumed it was something the school organized every year—but it turned out that in previous years, it had been run by a family who’d since moved away. Most kids would’ve sighed and let it go. But not her. She wanted a party. Within hours, she rallied several friends to join her in proposing the ide