I, too, was carrying around my own fate. All the things I couldn't know sat somewhere inside, embroidered into me-maybe not quite fixed to the point of inevitability but waiting, in any event, for a chance to unspool.

A little goes a long way in Somalia: $5 will feed a person there for about two weeks.

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.

I am so proud to be a Canadian.

I know firsthand how critical support systems are.

I don't only long for the thrill of being in the middle of a war, I must understand it; I must make other people understand.

I've realized that the world is, in essence, full of banana peels - loaded with things that may unwittingly trip an internal wire in my mind, opening a floodgate of fears without warning.