I got the call from my son’s school that he isn’t feeling well and I should come pick him up. It was almost like a scene from a movie. We had just returned from a spring break trip to New Orleans and the kids were back in school giving me time to catch up on my business and carve out some time for myself. I had finished all the urgent tasks for my business and had just sat down on the couch with a cup of tea and an electric blanket to finish the last few chapters of a book I was engrossed with. Chapters I had saved for as a treat for making it through a logistics heavy vacation where I had to figure out where we were eating for each meal, sightseeing tours, jazz clubs that would allow minors, and meeting up with two different groups of friends. It was fun but not relaxing. I was just taking the first exhale in a week when I got the call.

He had a sore throat and an upset stomach and said he would have thrown up if he had to go to PE. I believe him, PE is his favorite class and he wouldn’t just skip it. Every once in a while, I wonder if I made the right choice. Leaving a corporate career to be a stay at home mom and start a business out of my house that I could run mostly from home. It was risky but I had made it through some major hurdles and I could finally draw enough to live on without dipping into savings. Handling the unpredictability of motherhood was the main reason I chose to be a solo entrepreneur.

I recently noticed the LinkedIn profile of a former colleague. She was a colleague of mine who had moved to New York City. Her career trajectory was impressive, management consulting and then c-level positions at well known companies. Her profile had “Single Mother By Choice” listed prominently in her tagline. I wondered how she would handle a child needing to be picked up from school. Tweens and teens are too old for a full-time nanny. Maybe backup childcare? It’s a service I used when I was in corporate America. I’m also a single mother but it was definitely not by choice and the circumstances defy quick summarization.

Her profile made me think, ‘that’s a life I could have had if I had stayed in corporate’. My life lacks glamour and recognition but it is a spacious life. I buy fresh ingredients most days and start cooking before the kids get home so the aroma fills the air when they walk in the door. It’s a detail I would never have considered when I was tripled booked for meetings. I can be at my son’s school in 15 minutes to drop off his uniform if he realizes he forgot it before a track meet. I can drop everything and pick up my son if he’s sick and be home with him for four days without apologizing to anyone about missing meetings. Mom is a fixture in my kids life who can be depended on for any last minute problem, the reliable shock absorber who will fix anything that goes wrong. My son and I watched Star Wars, A New Hope, and acted out scenes with lego characters. We watched the whole trilogy together that week. No regrets about any of it.

For months, I’ve been debating whether to keep this Substack alive or shut it down forever. I’ve struggled with the pressure of a cadence I can’t commit to and a focus I refuse to narrow. With my business thriving, I have zero interest in monetization. So why do it? Why risk handing my deepest thoughts over to a data-industrial complex that builds a profile on every human—a record that could easily be weaponized against me? Why risk my hard-won peace for something with clear downsides and no quantifiable gain?

The answer is simple: the pain of staying silent has finally eclipsed the pain of speaking out.

Something in me is coming out of the closet. Not the one you might think, but a deeper room where I have kept my witness hidden. I am aghast at the world, and despite the small bubble of peace I have meticulously built around myself, I can no longer look away. I have borne my share of human suffering, and while I loathe risking the stability I’ve found, the truth is pushing against the door.

I am infuriated by the state of our world. I lived in the Middle East during a war; I have seen the bombed-out skeletons of buildings and seen innocent people in casts and bandages. Today, I see that same cycle fueled by the usual suspects: war profiteering by the fossil fuel and military-industrial complexes. What is more sinister now is the blatant graft—a first family selling drones to the Pentagon while the geopolitical interests of Vladimir Putin are served (intentionally?) by the chaos. We are told there is no money for food assistance or healthcare for our neediest, yet we find endless billions to feed the mouth of war.

At home, we are witnessing the rise of a secret police force and black-site prisons. These are tools of distraction, designed to demonize the vulnerable—immigrants and people of color—to keep us from looking at the staggering income inequality driven by the billionaire class. Big Tech has fueled this fire, distracting our collective minds and providing the tools for insidious misinformation while hollowing out the business model of the journalists who once held power to account. To me, the nine scariest words in the English language have become: “I’m a new technology and I’m here to help”.

But even in this, I find a different kind of power—the power of courage.

I find strength in the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, women who endured the unthinkable and are now showing us a bravery that the billionaire class can’t fathom. I am moved by the protestors in Minneapolis and beyond who have put their bodies in the street. And I am inspired by the artists who continue to resist, showing far more backbone than our elite law firms or traditional media outlets. Survivors, protestors, and artists are my heroes. I aspire to model their courage.

One of my favorite authors, Alexander Chee, wrote: “A book gets written when the pain of writing the book is less than the pain of not writing the book”.

I’ve realized that I am at that threshold. If you want to hear from me occasionally as I navigate my emerging artist voice, I invite you to subscribe or follow.

“It’s a deer!” shouted Raj as I was making him quesadillas for breakfast. I grabbed my phone and ran out the door to take a picture. The stag was purposefully striding through the parking lot of my condo. A flock of ducks, geese, and seagulls feeding nearby fly away in unison, making a cacophony from wings flapping in unison in the pre-dawn darkness. He walks past the Yacht Club right in the center of the road. I fiddle with my phone to zoom in on the picture. When I look up, he has disappeared into the darkness. Did he go left, deeper into the city, or right, where there is a park he can hide in? It’s cold without a coat and in my slippers so I turn around and go back inside.

A couple weeks later, I walk Sage just after dusk on his nightly walk. We trace the path of the deer. The sky is dark grey but you can see white low lying clouds and the lights on the houses that ring the Bay. A few already have their holiday lights up. As we turn around and start walking home, our eyes meet. A barred owl on a perch five feet high and less than 10 feet in front of me looks into my eyes. Sage and I are keenly in her field of awareness. We continue on our path home, which requires me to walk closer to her. Her eyes lock with mine. I shout, “Stay back! Stay back!” I pull Sage closer to me as we walk home. I like to have Sage for safety, but he seems oblivious to the situation, and I need to be the protector. Her head turns as we round the corner. I see her blink. Her talons grip the signpost she is perched on. Sage and I walk briskly through the cool evening air as we round the corner and make it home safely.

The Big Dark is a period in the Seattle area where daylight hours shrink faster than any major city in the lower 48. A rainy, short day can put out 1/10,000 the amount of light on a sunny summer day. The air is cold, and the ground is often damp. Leaves are about half fallen from the deciduous trees, mostly yellow-leafed Big Maples this time of year. The Big Dark shortens days so to stay sane, one must be comfortable in the darkness.

The crowd went wild. People stood up and took out their cell phones to tape the moment or hold it up like a flame at a concert. The applause was thunderous. At first, I didn’t know why I was clapping.

It took a lot to get here. This was the first trip I had taken for myself in two decades that wasn’t a business trip or vacation with the kids. I was heartsick over the authoritarianism I read about in textbooks happening before my eyes. I protested. I wrote a letter to my representative. When I heard about a conference being hosted by Pod Save America in Washington, DC to bring together the left-wing, I knew I had to go despite my hesitancy to travel in busy US air corridors during the current administration. I made travel arrangements but knew I could bail if the political situation took a turn for the worse.

Then came the troops being deployed to DC. That would be ok, right? They won’t shoot at libs just because we are libs, right? As I was pondering that, Charlie Kirk was murdered. There was a real fear that the United States of America would descend into cycles of violence like Northern Ireland.

The government shutdown was scary, but necessary given the tens of millions who would lose their health insurance. An anxious nation awaited the results of an off-year election cycle.

Then, like a magnificent sunrise, the results came in. Sherril won. Mamdani won. Spanberger won. The clouds had parted, and the sun was unmistakably shining through.

The wind blew yellow leaves off the oak trees that lined both sides of the street on the Uber to my hotel in DC. The Washington Monument glows against a dusky purple sky.

“Be in your seat by 8:10, you won’t regret it,” says the security guard at the historic Warner Theater. I was settled in my seat when the podcast hosts walked on stage. They turned to the right and started clapping as he strode out on stage. The crowd went wild. We were on our feet. We smiled, laughed, and even shed tears. President Obama addressed the crowd for about 15 minutes. I was awe-struck.

For months, I had been developing the theme of outsiderhood for my memoir. My patron saint of outsiderhood, President Obama, had just addressed the crowd in which I stood. The Universe is telling me I can follow my dreams to be an artist and spiritual teacher and be a loving, present mother. She gave me a huge hug along with a wink and a nod.

Typing that title was hard. I was raised to believe a woman’s highest calling is motherhood. I must give my children everything I have—and want to. It never needed saying—it was the kind of truth too sacred to name. Speaking about motherhood reduces its sanctity. I was born in Seattle on September 30, 1975—fifty and proud. My parents had just immigrated from India. My dad was a PhD student in aeronautical engineering at the University of Washington. My mom had a law degree in India but never practiced in the US.

Before I go on, know this: I love my children with my whole heart. There’s no sacrifice I wouldn’t make—even my life.

Here’s the truth: the daily logistics of motherhood are incredibly challenging for me. Stifling even. I wake before my body wants to. Going to bed earlier helps—until it doesn’t. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night, punished for trying.

Most mornings, my kids wake me before the alarm, reminding me we’re late. They know I’ll hit snooze and sleep through the morning if they don’t.

Then I slap on some slightly “elevated” sweats—the kind made for women like me. I’ll probably spend all day in them, even though I aspire to dress cuter. So I pay a little more—to at least look elevated. Definitely not anything too expensive, I’m pretty careful about money and I’ve never seen the value in the designer stuff - the labels don’t matter to me, and the core product just isn’t that different. Actually, I dislike the labels, I like being my own brand. I probably spend more than the average mom would. I buy more pieces for more variety even though fewer pieces would be better for my inner peace. My heart wants to spend more time on beauty; hair, makeup, clothes, nails but somehow I can’t make that simple stuff happen.

Sanjay wakes me on weekdays; Raj takes weekends. I make them something hot—because that’s what good Indian moms do. Then I ask Raj what he wants— how many mini-croissants with cheese and plant-based pastrami, or maybe a quesadilla? They prefer three mini-croissants to one normal-sized one. No fruits or vegetables, unfortunately. I feel guilty about that—I’ll make it up at dinner. I leave Raj’s breakfast on the cast-iron griddle while I drive Sanjay to school.

Sanjay could walk, but daylight shrinks by the week here in the Pacific Northwest during Autumn, and I don’t want him walking in the dark. I navigate to the Queen playlist on Spotify—British rock that feels American—and it feels like good wake-up music. Freddie Mercury is South Asian. I call others that, but I still think of myself as Indian. I didn’t even know he was South Asian until that biopic on Hulu a few years ago. He’s Parsi and I’m Tamil; given the difference in cultures, the South Asian (or Indian) umbrella feels overly broad.

I’m back within ten minutes of dropping Sanjay off.

Raj walks to the bus stop while I leash Sage and follow halfway. I speed-walk through the parking lot so he doesn’t pee before we’re off-property—HOA rules.

I can’t go all the way—Sage slows me down, and Raj has to hustle to make the bus.

Raj hasn’t missed a bus, nor Sanjay a class. Both have good grades and active social lives. Sanjay rejects screens, preferring his bass. Raj has an online life, and I police his hours online. I wish he’d leave his phone at home, but confiscating it feels draconian. Sanjay and I both talk about how screens are destroying humanity. Raj feels left out because Sanjay and I sometimes complete each other’s thoughts on the subject.

This is the banality of motherhood—and the sun hasn’t risen yet.

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Raj’s soccer game was at 10:15 am on Sunday in Poulsbo, which required a ferry to get to from our condo in Bellevue. We left at 7:35 am, really way too late to catch the 7:55 ferry. But, somehow we made it with just one or two cars behind us.

Raj got the rare treat of Takis and Sanjay tried clam chowder from the galley kitchen which he had been wanting to try for a while. The ferry ride was spectacular. I really love the grey days, although that wasn’t always the case. The trees, the orange cranes at the Port, and the buildings that comprise the skyline of Seattle are the only pops of color amongst the grey of the Puget Sound.

We made it to the soccer field in Poulsbo 30 minutes early. My kids went out in the rain (carrying an umbrella is fun!) while I work on the book I’m writing with a hot cup of coffee. Sanjay watched the game and cheered for our team. I get to enjoy being in the car, surrounded by the rain and the beautiful Pacific Northwest landscape in autumn.

The game finishes (1-3), but at least we scored, and we stop at Taco Time to grab some hot food and head back to the Ferry Terminal. Along the way, we see bursts of yellow trees that smile at us on our way home. We cross Agate Crossing, a historic bridge connecting Bainbridge Island to the Kitsap Peninsula. Apparently, it cost $1.35M to build in 1950. You can’t even buy half a house for that in the neighborhood we live in.

We make it to the ferry terminal but just miss the 12:20 pm ferry. We get to spend an hour at the water’s edge and get hot chocolate and a croissant while we wait for the 1:20 pm boat. We are one of the first cars to board and get an eye-level view of the water and Seattle skyline from our car.

Sanjay says, “I can’t believe we took a ferry to Raj’s soccer game. It felt like a vacation.”

Yup.