Contemplating Christmas when you are isolated and far from home brings its own unique pain.

Christmas was the one time of year when my brothers surfaced at home, when my parents and grandparents congregated to eat my mother's roast turkey.

The road to recovery will not always be easy, but I will take it one day at a time, focusing on the moments I've dreamed about for so long.

In my version of paradise, the air was always cold and the rivers ran with candy.

I know firsthand how critical support systems are.

Being in the dark, there's a real weight to it. It's heavy.

I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my arms—or, more accurately, my quivering bank balance, accessed through foreign ATMs—would give out, and I’d fall to the ground.