Tag: Committment

Categories
Culture Family Life

A love letter to libraries

[a girl wearing glasses in standing between shelves at a library] Via Unsplash
[Image Description: A girl wearing glasses is standing between shelves at a library] Via Unsplash.

I know that I am not alone when I say that we, as humans, find a lot of solace in libraries. They are temples of knowledge, housing collections of stories and dreams alike on their shelves. Libraries are as much a part of our culture as anything else. People have relied on these spaces for warmth, insight, and marvel for centuries. In a way, they hold the key to all of our stories,

I love libraries, and I am terrified to see their eventual demise, especially as our world becomes almost entirely digital. They are gems from the past that have maintained vitality no matter the circumstances or happening outside of their walls. Not to mention they are the cornerstones of entire communities, maybe even countries, granting light and stability to people when nothing, or no one, else seemed able to. They offer more than just books; they offer entry into a space that seems more like a sanctuary run by people grounded in compassion, commitment, creativity, and resilience.

People have relied on these spaces for warmth, insight, and marvel for centuries.

I used to go to the library near my grandparents’ house every other Friday. For the most part, my mom took my brothers and me there to get a new book for school or to see what DVDs we could bring home to watch that evening. But I remember roaming around, starstruck, in between the tall shelves, wondering about the people who wrote each and every single one of those books and how long it might have taken to get them all here.

Most weeks, my mother let me get two books instead of one. I could spend hours there if it was permitted. I always liked watching my mom pick her books for the week, too. She seemed so sophisticated and gentle while scanning the shelves, yet she never knew exactly what she was looking for. If it was winter, afterward we would all pile back into the car with our hardcover books and grab a slice of pizza. If it was summer, we would walk to the Italian Ice shop down the street for some cream ice – those were the best days. 

I fear that libraries have been taken for granted, even in my own life, and am always spellbound to find them chock full of unexpected people, doing unexpected things, with unexpected passions. There is absolutely nothing that compares to the feeling, the pure excitement in my stomach, that erupts every time I am searching in a library for the perfect tale to dig into. A trip to the library seems, to me, to be enchanted. I become whimsical, enveloped by the completeness and simplicity of the entire journey.

Even the smell of a library is impossible to replicate because of its specificity and poignance. I am reminded of sandalwood, dusk, and a particular, antiquated, dampness. Its familiarity is beyond comforting. The air itself seems to be saturated in possibility and imagination. 

I feel at home while pattering around and tracing my fingers between the shelves of books. I fall in love while blowing the dust off of the covers, revealing bright colors and exquisite lines. I spend hours crinkling through the aged, already yellowing, pages of novels wondering which I will pick this time. It is never an easy decision, and I always leave with dozens underneath my arms wondering if the others will still be there when I return the next week. But, that’s the beauty of libraries, isn’t it? Every visit is entirely different from the last and there is no telling what you might stumble upon. Yet each visit is also starkly familiar. 

The air itself seems to be saturated in possibility and imagination.

Books have changed so much of my life, with plotlines, characters, and lessons that have been woven into nearly everything I do – that is every decision, every consideration, and everything that I have grown to appreciate or even pay a little bit more attention to. Books are there to remind me of what’s important, and when I’m not so sure, they’re there for me to lean on. Without libraries, though, I might have never been allowed membership into such a world of splendor. 

Categories
Book Reviews The Tempest Reading Challenge Love + Sex Love Books

Relationship expert Iris Krasnow unravels the secrets of real intimacy

[A photo of Iris Krasnow in grayscale is in the center. On either side of her are the books covers of her books "Sex After..." and "Camp Girls"] Via iriskrasnow.com
[Image description: A photo of Iris Krasnow in grayscale is in the center. On either side of her are the books covers of her books "Sex After..." and "Camp Girls"] Via iriskrasnow.com

Iris Krasnow is a journalist, storyteller, friend, mother, wife, and my professor.

I first met Krasnow when I was a freshman in college. She was my professor for an introductory writing class in which I had written a personal essay about ghosting for my final assignment. Looking back at this piece, it might have been more of a rant, but nonetheless this was one of the first times that I felt heard through my writing. She let me write candidly about the space in-between the lines of nurturing and insufficient relationships. She let me grow. 

Krasnow is curious, compassionate, and the author of seven best-selling books all about intimate relationships. Her book Sex After… Women Share How Intimacy Changes as Life Changes is the self-help book that has been selected for The Tempest’s Reading Challenge this year and just this past April she published Camp Girls: Fireside Lessons on Friendship, Courage, and Loyalty.

For me, Krasnow is a defining voice of reason for anything in the periphery of relationships, communication, love, and womanhood. Each of her books revolves around personal growth in conjunction with intimate relationships. Sex After… offers a series of compelling, and reliable, insights about how to build an intimate relationship, whether that be romantically or with family and friends. The vitality of any relationship is dependent on love and commitment. Basically, true love is found within emotionality. That is, your ability to relate to another person and to enhance their experiences. It is not always about lust. But I’d say that it is somewhat about longing, though. 

This longing could be found within commitment. Each chapter in Sex After… focuses on some major life event or change being thrown suddenly onto a couple and ultimately how they persevere. She talks to breast cancer survivors, widows, women who came out later in life, and couples who have experienced infidelity. Each time they tackle the problem, make it their own, and connect through mind, body, and soul along the way. Sure, almost always they also go through the stages of despair and agony, but more often than not these couples do come out stronger and more in love than they were before. This is all a result of trust and reliability. Through this combined process of healing, people, especially women, begin to feel validated. And validation, to me, is an extremely close step towards genuine intimacy.

The female growth cycle seems to be evergreen in her writing. Each character becomes sexier and more alive with every turn of the page. Krasnow’s in-depth reporting and research explores sexuality credibly in real-time and ensures understanding on nearly every level—for nearly every emotion or phase of bodily awakening. 

I love the emphasis that she places on non-sexual love, too, which is why I find so much comfort in her recent book Camp Girls. There is truly nothing like the solace we find in conversations with friends about things along every dotted line in the spectrum. Together, Krasnow makes clear, we can manifest the ellipsis while gaining lessons that are impossible to replicate without the connected experiences that we share with those who are growing and learning just the same by our side. These relationships maintain incredible intimacy, as well as a shoulder to lean on, through allegiance, sympathy, care, and exploration. Krasnow shares that her friends help her feel stronger, more in tune with inner-self, and that hours together feel like seconds while memories from decades ago feel like yesterday. Their company keeps her young, feisty, and in love. 

One notion that I’ve learned from Iris Krasnow that has stuck with me is the idea that you have to be your own soulmate. You will never have the capacity to love someone else, or to believe that another person loves you, unless you love yourself first.

Real intimacy is found after unraveling the layers and free-falling into the depths that you alone locate. With compelling words, Iris Krasnow reminds women of every generation that we must remain honest with our raw selves and loyal to those we grace, and are graced, with companionship. 

Big news: I will be going live with Iris Krasnow herself on The Tempest Instagram (@WeAreTheTempest) on Thursday, May 21, at 12pm EST. We’ll have a candid conversation about love, sex, and everything in between! Join us and come ask Iris your questions.
Categories
Gender & Identity Life

Falling in love as a Third Culture Kid is complicated – here’s why

Tumblr

I am the quintessential Third Culture Kid (TCK).

I have moved 12 times and lived on every continent except Oceania and Antarctica. Like other TCKs, I grew up in between places, and I instinctively seek travel because the constant movement is more comfortable than stability.

My mother used to lament that I wouldn’t have roots, but the fact is what I have is so much more valuable and useful than that. I was built for this age. I see my peers learning to live as digital nomads, taking jobs across the planet because that is the future. But I am pre-programmed for this. It is nothing to me to pack up and leave for someplace new. Not only that, it is my lifeblood. I will never stop, not really.

These days, I am learning what it looks like to be an adult and negotiate the constant pull to find newer, more far-flung places to set up and call home. For people like me whose identity is wrapped up in constant change, it is not easy to settle down. I wish it were.

Now I find myself in my therapist’s office here in the sleepy city of Frankfurt, Germany, shaking in my boots at the possibility of settling down.

I have a job and a comfortable apartment, and I take full advantage of my European life, but still sometimes, the idea of staying makes me feel like my soul is sinking. I have battled a full-on depression spurred by the fear that I’m not living up to what I expect of myself because for the first time I have no plans to leave. I have moments of clarity when I can see just how irrational my fears are, but the anxiety remains.

I don’t know what spending five years in one apartment or one city even feels like. I am a smart woman, but I am falling prey to the most basic of fears – the unknown. If I keep moving, then I don’t have to learn to love people for longer than a couple of years. If I keep changing my identity, I don’t have to work on developing who I am as a grown woman.

It takes strength to stay and show up for your partner, your community and yourself and that’s the hard part of settling down. It would be much easier for me to bail on my life here and move to Beirut or Taipei tomorrow, but for the first time, I have a real reason not to.

They say that love makes you brave, and that must be true because I am slowly flirting with the idea of staying here. I am dipping my toe in the water until I no longer recoil at the very thought of settling in. I look at my partner across from me at the coffee shop, and I don’t know how he fell in love with someone so uninvested in the idea of ever staying still. He did, and he stuck with me through the emotional turbulence that has defined my first years in Europe.

Few people I know understand how I feel. They are puzzled when I lament that my life is too comfortable because stability runs contrary to my identity. Living overseas as an adult, people assume that my identity is first and foremost American. It’s an understandable assumption, and I will always belong to and love my country. It is just a sliver of my story, though.

My identity is that of the visitor above everything else. Sometimes that feels tragic, but mostly it feels like a gift. My home is not tied to one geographic location; it is anywhere I walk in the room and am met by my fellow transients.

I know how fortunate I am. If I never traveled another day in my life, I would have seen more of the world than many people on their deathbeds. I have loved this life, and I think that makes it even harder to own up to the ways it has left me afraid and confused. How do I continue to top the things I have already seen? How do I live up the incredible experiences that have made me who I am? How can I ever be happy if I’m not in a constant state of change?

I feel like I’m looking out into an abyss. I cannot know what it will feel like to stay still, to invest in the community around me. I am terrified, but I reach down and grab my partner’s hand, and I know, somehow, I will be able to do this. I can build myself a family that is spread like a great web across the planet. I cannot go home, so I cannot be torn away from home.

Passing this TCK identity onto my children will mean raising them in circumstances that will be alien to me. Maybe my kids will speak German, Japanese or Dutch the way I spoke Spanish and Portuguese. They will have me and my partner’s green eyes and passports, but they will have identities that are entirely different than ours. They will be all new.

I feel comforted by the knowledge that the adventure of building a home and a family, whether it is transient or stable, will be far more exciting than any adventure I have had so far.