I was born on October 4, 2004. As a 6-month-old baby, I struggled with constant illness until I turned 3. My parents rarely slept through the night. They often rushed me to hospitals at 3 a.m. My mother still shares stories of arriving in torn skirts, desperate just...

I was never the girl who stood out in a room. In fact, I spent most of my days trying to shrink into the background, hoping no one would notice the chaos I carried within. At 13, life felt like a maze I didn’t know how to navigate. I wasn’t close to my family—they...

I was born in a beautiful place in Kerala, India — Wayanad, surrounded by misty hills, green forests, and fresh air. My earliest memory takes me back to a bus ride with my parents. We were traveling to the Nilgiri Hills. I remember the winding roads, the cool breeze...

Since my husband committed suicide in the fall of 2019, my life took a turn for the worst. I was 48 years old, suddenly homeless, and living on the streets of Tucson, Arizona. I lost my husband of 27 years, David, to the voices of his disease—paranoid schizophrenia....

I remember sitting at my desk one night, books and papers scattered everywhere, the glow of my laptop screen reminding me of yet another looming deadline. My bank account was nearly empty, my overdraft stretched thin, and debts still lingered. My chest felt heavy—as...

I always thought of myself as an optimist. But optimism gets tested—hard—when homelessness and joblessness strike at the same time. In 2019, I left engineering school against my traditional family’s wishes and suddenly found myself without a home in a city where I...