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BEFORE I BECAME A MAMA, I was a long-time backpacker, drifting between countries, sometimes teaching English to stretch my dollars, doing almost anything to avoid ending up back in my hometown. My dad used to call it the ABC plan: Anywhere But Calgary. It wasn’t that I hated where I was born; it just never matched who I felt like on the inside. Once I started travelling, I began collecting pieces of myself in unfamiliar places that often felt more like home than the city where I spent the first eighteen years of my life.

It wasn’t until I travelled to India as an adult and encountered my South Indian mother’s culture without the immigrant-in-Canada filter that I found the language for the sense of marginality I had felt my whole life. Suddenly, I was immersed in a world that felt like my mother: the intense song of Tamil, the soft rolls of flesh on my back I had inherited and spent years resisting, the fragrant curries burying themselves into the walls of homes and returning later in our sweat. It felt like finding my tribe, reclaiming the parts of myself that had been left behind by the early rejection of my foreign roots.

I grew up mostly thinking that my Indian mom was backwards, out of touch with modern culture, too conservative for the country I was growing up in, and I rebelled against her rules at every chance I got. When my parents separated at twelve, I thought I gained the upper hand because I could easily outsmart my mom and felt the superiority of being born in a culture in which her accent revealed her as a visitor. I have never known a life without the pull of the old culture tightening the noose on my self-expression in the place where I should’ve felt free.

From a young age, I learnt how to perform the version of myself each room expected—how to anesthetize the wild in me in sparkling traditional costumes that hid my true identity. There was the version of me who snuck into bars at fifteen and dated criminally older men, and the other one that donned a sari in a room of Tamilians, bangles clinking while I served juice to the elders. It was like taking one jacket off and putting on another, interchangeable layers of my multiplicity.

It was my Scottish father, born in Dumbarton in the early 50’s, who left home at 18 to travel and live around the world. The story goes that he bought two broken trucks in a farmer’s field and built one working vehicle out of them (he was a mechanic). He drove it to Europe, lived in Germany, overlanded to India via Afghanistan, walked across Iran, travelled on buses in Pakistan and got stuck in the desert in a broken-down train in India, where he ate some mysterious food that made him so sick that he claims he was never the same again. Eventually, he immigrated to Canada in the 70’s and began regularly travelling to India to study classical music, where he met my mom in a tea shop. After a short courtship and a year-long absence, he returned to marry her in a simple civil ceremony, which resulted in half of her family disowning her.

Although I visited Scotland several times in my younger life, the dominant culture in my home was Indian. And since my amma was closer to her family than my dad was to his, our connection to our roots followed theirs. When I finally spent time as an adult in India, in a culture where self-expression is often crippled for social approval, I began to see her particular kind of courage. Context changes everything, and looking at her through the lens of an immigrant single mom, raising two children in a culture that she too was learning, navigating the shame of being a divorced woman, and living in so much goddamn snow for most of the year, is an unseen kind of revolutionary.

I always thought I had inherited my bravery for new worlds from my father, but now I realize they each have their own version of stepping into the uncharted.

THIS ALL MEANS SO MUCH MORE to me now as I navigate separation, co-parenting and expatriate life as a mama to my Mexican daughter in the mountains of Jalisco. I now know what it feels like to be the newcomer, the outsider, the not-quite-local. No matter how good I am at speaking the language, moving with ease in the market, and getting the jokes, it isn’t the whole picture of who I am. I question whether this is where I truly want to live now that the dream is gone, because it was the only reason I came in the first place. I wonder if my mom ever wanted to leave the hustle of Canada behind for the familiarity of tropical streets fragranced with coconut, jasmine and curry. Where women gathered in shaded corners and walked circles on Chennai rooftops in their long cotton nightgowns.

Like my mother before me, I live between worlds and versions of myself. All of them real, all of them me. I am from a lineage of immigrants who chose new lives and new identities. I carry the grief, homesickness, nostalgia and longing for elsewhere implanted in us through the generations.

My mom recounts that in the early days, just after immigrating to Canada, when she was home alone while my father went to work, she would sit by the window each morning and wait for the postman to bring her a letter from home. She didn’t have daily video calls, audio messages and chat groups to keep her connected as I do. She had movie songs, family recipes simmering in the kitchen and thin paper letters full of elaborate squiggles I would never be able to read. She made Tamil friends in Calgary, hosted dinner parties and became famous for her cooking. Although it wasn’t a substitute for the feeling of being at home, it was a community where she could be a Tamil woman without translation.

Still, I wonder how she navigated the loneliness and the strangeness of everything from snow to the spaciousness of Western Canada, with babies who didn’t have her skin colour and grew up by the same cultural rules.

How was she able to live for so long with her heart stretched between homes and selves? How will I be able to bridge the divide between where my feet, heart and dreams lie?

I once judged my own mother for being an outsider. For being too brown. Too conservative. Too naive.

But now I know we are women of the margins, shapeshifters that live between worlds, at home in our longing for what might never be ours.

Now I understand my amma was teaching me how to survive between worlds.

Below, I am sharing a poem from my collection, Hips Like Holy Rivers.

THE LONG ROAD LIBRARY

Movie recommendation: Girls Will Be Girls

I don’t think I’ve seen a better movie in a long time. A complex relationship between mother and daughter, set in the Indian Himalayas at a boarding school where 16-year-old Mira experiences a sexual awakening with a new classmate that turns her world upside down. In this coming-of-age film, the complex characters, layered relationships, and pressures of girlhood and motherhood are so exquisitely portrayed in this award winning movie.

Have you ever heard of the streaming platform Kanopy? For members of participating libraries in various countries around the world, you can watch a high quality curated library of films that are often behind paywalls elsewhere. All you need is a library card to use this service. Check out Girls Will Be Girls, available for free on Kanopy.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women out their raising babies, dogs, birthing projects, dreams, and building the new world we all pray for.

Love Yamuna x

This season, each podcast episode will have a companion piece here—offering deeper reflections, prompts and practices, curated books, films, and art, and occasional photo essays from my archives. Paid subscribers ($5/month) unlock full access to these posts—a quieter, more immersive space to reflect, engage, and create from what you’re taking in.

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KERALA was where I took Aramara during our solo week together in India.

I had no real reason, other than that I would be visiting some friends I’d made on Instagram—an Australian-Indian couple living tucked into a remote fold of the Western Ghats, mountains famous for their tea plantations. They were raising their four children on a piece of land they had invested their life savings in, after relocating from Australia not long before.

Having just recently split from my daughter’s father, and now alone for the first time in the almost three months we had spent travelling in India, I wanted to go somewhere I would feel supported—somewhere gentle on our nervous systems and, most importantly, somewhere with children.

Aramara and I landed in Kannur, a small town in northern Kerala on the Arabian Sea, and a gateway to the surrounding mountains. I booked us a few nights at an Airbnb near the beach and coordinated with the family in the mountains to visit a few days later. I figured the two of us needed time to find our rhythm as mother and daughter, after her father had returned to Mexico just days earlier.

I had been to Kerala a handful of times before, mostly in the south, and had no idea what to expect. First, the airport was stunning—modern, spotless, the bright sun gleaming off the polished tiles so that the whole place looked like a jewel glowing in the desert. My Airbnb host, Aneesh, picked us up and drove us 45 minutes to a tiny home hidden among dry leaves and palm trees, where we would spend the next three days doing nothing but walking from the house to the beach and back again. We bounced along a curving single-lane highway, through small towns, past stately mansions built with Dubai money, Muslim supermarkets, and the gabled roofs of Hindu temples.

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Hi, and welcome back to The Long Road Home Podcast.

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Abby Kneipp, joining us from the mountains of Peru—a place she now calls home after a profound and challenging period of transformation.

About this conversation

This conversation is about what happens when life strips everything back.

Over the last few years, Abby moved through what many would call a dark night of the soul—a period marked by deep physical illness, heartbreak, isolation, and the unravelling of almost every part of her life.

It’s a story of loss, but also of listening.

Of learning to trust the quieter voice beneath the noise.

And of finding a way back—not to who you were, but to something deeper and more true.

Because at the heart of this episode is a question I keep returning to:

What does it mean to live in alignment with the soul?

About Abby Kneipp

Abby Kneipp is a mystic, healer, and guide who has spent over a decade working with indigenous communities and sitting in plant medicine ceremonies around the world.

Her work centers on supporting women in healing trauma, reconnecting to their bodies, and reclaiming their power—particularly through womb work and feminine embodiment.

She is also an advocate for children and indigenous rights, and brings a deeply lived understanding of trauma, resilience, and transformation into everything she shares.

What we talk about

In this conversation, we explore:

• the experience of a dark night of the soul and spiritual awakening

• healing trauma through ceremony, embodiment, and deep inner work

• learning to listen to the soul and trust your inner voice

• the cost of speaking your truth—and how it can impact belonging

• navigating illness, sensitivity, and environmental factors like EMFs

• ancestry, identity, and Abby’s journey to Ireland

• returning to Peru and finding a sense of home in the land

• womb wisdom, feminine power, and reconnecting to the body

• practical ways to come back into the body and feel more grounded

Key Takeaways

1. Your soul often speaks quietly—but it is persistent and deeply guiding.

2. Telling the truth can sometimes cost you belonging, but it can also lead you to a deeper alignment.

3. Healing is not linear—it can involve collapse, isolation, and rebuilding from the ground up.

4. The body is not something to escape, but a place we return to.

5. The womb can be a powerful center of connection, intuition, and belonging for women.

6. Environment matters—where we live can deeply impact our well-being.

7. Belonging is not always found externally—it can be cultivated within.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Abby Kneipp’s Journey
00:53 The Call to the Medicine Path
04:01 Listening to the Soul
07:00 Navigating Inner Voices
08:52 The Near-Death Experience
15:59 The Dark Night of the Soul
22:52 Returning to Peru and Healing
31:21 Finding Wisdom in the Journey
32:46 The Depth of Healing Work
33:30 Feminine Empowerment and Sexuality
35:03 The Wisdom of the Womb
37:53 Connecting with the Womb
43:04 Ancestral Ties and Identity
49:34 Finding Home in Peru
51:57 Connecting to the Body and Soul
58:48 The Search for Belonging

Connect with Abby

Website
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook

Abby Kneipp

Mystic. Oracle. Author. Secrets of the womb. Feminine mysteries. Lover of the otherworldly. Indigenous rights. Grief & trauma guide.

Original theme music composed by Diego Tenorio

If you listen, I’d love to hear what resonates or what it brings up for you.

Leave a comment

In gratitude,

Yamuna x

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BACK IN JANUARY, I published my first book—a poetry collection. A slim thing of beauty with delicate letters against expansive white backdrops, like little jewels you have to lean into to capture. I had written the 42-poem collection over the last decade or so while travelling to India, where my Amma is from.

The cover is the genius of my best friend, Tali Demassi, who proposed the eye-popping red veil over the voluminous bust of a stone idol I’d photographed at the Queen’s Stepwell, Rani ki Vav, in Gujarat. I named her Hips Like Holy Rivers: In the land of desire and devotion. She is small but mighty. A thing of beauty.

Putting this work out into the world has brought up a lot of shame for me. It exposes me as a woman of lust, a devotee of intimacy, a daughter of India who knelt at lovers’ bedsides as a way to pray. Could the Cross really just be two bodies intersecting, penetrating? Couldn’t sex be a pathway to superconsciousness, as Osho posits?

Hips Like Holy Rivers asked to be born before my trip to India because it is where I have stood in front of aunties and uncles for whom I’ve performed innocence my entire life. It is where I would admit to submitting myself to the flame of erotic love because it was the path to know God. It is where I would find my voice.

But in order to do it, I would have to watch my mom’s look of horror as she flipped through its freshly printed pages, realizing that what she already knew was now available for public consumption. I’d have to stop hiding it and tell people what the book is about—and let go of the fact that my dad and brother would become readers.

After so many years of half-sharing, half-truth-telling, this was the moment. I was going to launch myself into a new level of visibility because the shame I had carried for my truth had begun to feel heavier than the truth itself.

So, soon after arriving in my mother’s hometown, Chennai, in South India, I took my book to a recommended printer and ordered 200 copies.

It was raining the day we all piled into a taxi, moving through dark, slick streets across town, where my books sat in the lobby, wrapped in brown paper—heavy, real, mine. It would be another month before it was available online, and so the first people to hold my book in their hands, to read my words, were the ones for whom it was written—Indians.

Over three months, I travelled from south to north, visiting the places where many of my poems were born, and even meeting the lover who inspired half of the collection. Along the way, I spread copies of my book everywhere I could—with friends, in cafes, book exchanges, a couple of bookstores, hotels, and even in the hands of Ananth Padmanabhan, the CEO of HarperCollins Publishing India, in the delegates’ lounge of Jaipur Book Mark. I imagined my little poems like tiny sailboats on the currents of India’s holy rivers, navigating a life all their own.

I didn’t care if anyone paid me for it. The first people who offered—a couple I met in a cafe in Tiruvannamalai—made me erupt into tears when they pushed 200 rupees (2 USD) into my hands. The guy insisted, “My mother was a writer, so I know how it is. Take it—you deserve it.” Another wave of deep sobs took my breath.

It’s a big deal to be seen. To believe in ourselves and to stand in our truth when we are creatures hard-wired for social approval.

But it is worth it. And I’ve learned that it is not always about us anyway. It’s for the love of beauty. The devotion to passion. The creative urges that ask us to give our feelings form, to honour the way our souls have been stretched across continents, stories, and versions of ourselves.

AND SO, THE JOURNEY CONTINUES. This coming week, I am hosting an event in El Tuito with a friend, in the little Mexican pueblo where I live. It will be an evening of sharing my poetry, photography, and artisanal goods collected in India. It’s a little dream coming true—to share myself in this way in my real-life community—and I am facing an old fear that has found me in dreams over the years: being on stage, my teeth falling out, getting stuck with gum, forgetting my lines. Stage fright, I guess?

But honestly, I’m more excited than nervous. By sharing my art with the world, I am learning that self-promotion doesn’t have to be self-centred. It can be love-centred. God-shaped. Truth-filled.

Sharing beauty can be an act of devotion.

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Hi, and welcome to The Long Road Home Podcast!

In this first episode, I’m recording from the Western Ghats of India, under the stars, sharing tea and conversation with Ras Akarsha and Irie—an intercultural couple raising their four children on a mountainside homestead in Kerala. (Please bear with the first 5 minutes as I figure out my tech ).

About this conversation

This episode also marks the beginning of the first season of the podcast, where I’ll be exploring what it really means to feel at home.

Not just in a place, but in our bodies, our choices, and our lives as they are.

I’ll be in conversation with people who have followed that question in their own way—across countries, across identities, and within themselves—and exploring what that journey has looked like for them.

Because for many of us, the question of belonging is still unanswered.

About Irie & Ras Akarsha aka Aje

Irie and Aje are partners in life and purpose, raising their four children in the mountains of South India.

After leaving Australia, they chose to build a life rooted in simplicity, land, and presence—creating a home that is less a fixed structure and more a living ecosystem. Part food forest, part farm-school, their days revolve around wild schooling, regenerative living, and a deep connection to the rhythms of nature.

Aje is a farmer, founder of the Hinterland Village School of Yoga, and a teacher of nervous system–informed practice. His work focuses on guiding people out of striving and into a more embodied way of living.

Irie is a free-birthing mother, holistic pregnancy and birth mentor, and interdisciplinary creative. Her work weaves together art, herbalism, and earth-based practices, supporting women and families to reconnect with their bodies and their intuition.

What we talk about

In this conversation, we explore what it actually takes to build a life like this—from the ground up.

We talk about:

• leaving behind familiar ways of living

• the reality of arriving somewhere new and adjusting to it

• raising children outside of conventional systems

• grief, discomfort, and the loss of community

• building a home through land, routine, and daily life

• identity, culture, and raising children between worlds

• and what it means to feel at home, beyond place

Key Takeaways

• Belonging is something we come into relationship with over time—not something we instantly find

• Choosing a different way of living often comes with grief and uncertainty

• Children can thrive outside traditional systems when given space and trust

• Simplicity can feel confronting before it becomes freeing

• Building a life from the ground up requires resilience, creativity, and adaptability

• Home can be shaped through daily rhythms, land, and connection

• Presence plays a central role in how we experience belonging

Chapters

00:00 Finding Authenticity in a Conformist Society
12:48 Parenting with Freedom and Boundaries
18:44 Cultural Identity and Belonging
24:45 Embracing Change and Overcoming Fear
30:25 Rituals of Connection and Home
36:23 Grief and Growth in New Beginnings
42:28 The Essence of Belonging

Connect with Irie & Aje

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rasakarsha/
Instagram: @iriemama.india
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RasAkarsha/videos

Original theme music composed by Diego Tenorio

If you listen, I’d love to hear what resonates or what it brings up for you.

With love,

Yamuna x

Here, we explore what it means to find your place in the world—
through identity, relationships, movement, and the quiet work of becoming.

Here, you are allowed to be in-between.

Each episode offers:

• intimate, honest conversations

• stories of leaving, staying, and starting again

• reflections on identity, place, love, and loss

• glimpses into the lives of people finding their way

and gentle reminders that belonging is not something you chase
but something you grow into

These aren’t stories with neat endings.
They’re lived experiences—
unraveling, evolving, and becoming.

For the wanderers, the seekers,
the ones who have built a life in one place but still feel the question…
the ones who have crossed oceans and are still finding themselves—

you’re in the right place.

This is a space to listen, to reflect,
and to remember that home is not always a destination—
but something within.

Subscribe, and welcome to The Long Road Home.

Subscribe now

SEX IN KOREA often starts with a shower.

There’s nothing to kill the mood like a good ‘ol rinse to preemptively douse the spontaneous eruption of passion when two people who’ve never undressed in front of each other, politely go to the bathroom separately, returning in a towel to smash their naked bodies against one another. It’s so transactional, even if the absolute certainty in one’s hygiene makes it easier to get kinky.

I was nineteen years old, living in South Korea as an illegal English teacher on a tourist visa in a windowless one-bedroom apartment with yellow linoleum flooring. On the weekends, I was drinking vodka with coke at the American-style nightclubs, making eyes with cute Korean guys and drunken soldiers, looking for someone to fuck. It wasn’t hard to hook up with the plethora of love motels in every neighbourhood with their hourly rates, neatly folded towels, darkened windows and porn-on-demand to get you in the mood.

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WHEN I WAS A KID, there was one channel on television that played World Vision infomercials all day Sunday. Filling the screen were the kinds of images designed to make you feel something—scenes of adorable, snotty-nosed kids with flies crawling on their faces, parents trying to make a meal out of dust, and kids playing with toys they fashioned from old tires. When no one was around, I would watch that channel for hours, until hot, thick tears rolled down my cheeks. I wanted to feel something; to be close to a suffering I had never known. Somehow, it felt like the only fair exchange was to subject myself to the torment of some stranger’s malnutrition across the world to deserve the extravagant Christmas mornings and hot lunches of my childhood.

At school, I was a fairly popular kid but I found myself drawn to the ones who didn’t seem to belong anywhere. My heart sunk when I saw some lonely kid on the playground or the one in class who wasn’t picked as a partner for an assignment. There was Rebecca, the awkward and quiet Chinese girl who I tried to chat up in the elementary school yard, pained at always seeing her spend recess alone. There was Kurt, the boy in my seventh grade science class with a misshapen body and eyes in two different places on his face, and Jody, a girl with down syndrome who lived on my street and who I’d play with at her house. In truth, we didn’t have much in common in the ways friendships are usually measured, but I just couldn’t let them be friendless. Perhaps, it was pity or better yet, compassion, but if I had the means to make one person feel less alone, less forsaken, I would pick them to partner with or approach them in the school yard.

Later in my life, this altruistic habit of mine became known as the ‘rescuer complex’. My desire to fix the world and to love the ones it seemed to overlook, became a troublesome pattern that left me taken advantage of by those who knew the softness of my heart. Many of my love affairs were lopsided, instead of having partners, I often had projects that drained me of my energy and resources. My friends said I needed better boundaries, to take care of myself first, but I didn’t know how to ignore the stinging in my chest when I sensed someone needed the love that I could provide.

LATELY, as I plan interviews for the soon-to-be-launching The Long Road Home Podcast, I’ve found myself returning to these memories.

In the almost year and a half that I have been writing on Substack, I feel as though I am getting closer to understanding what makes me tick. The themes of home and belonging feel like the deepest anchors of this publication and as such they are the themes I am focusing on for the podcast.

In my relentless self examination for purpose, I have found it the most sensible to retreat to my earliest memories where the threads of my truest identity were woven into my being before I learned to perform on social media or traded my time for money.

When I was younger, I’d sit in the living room with the TV guide and read it out loud, pretending I was a news anchor. When I went camping with my friends, I’d spend hours on the wooden stages of the campground amphitheatres, imagining myself performing for a large crowd. I loved talking and people seemed to love talking to me; to this day I am still a vault of secrets entrusted to my safekeeping.

And, I befriended everyone. I felt as though I had some strange power to make people comfortable, to let their guard down, to come out of their shell. And so, when I started backpacking the world at 18, it came very naturally to me to show up in unfamiliar places and strike up a conversation with a stranger. When people ask me what kind of superpower I would choose if I could have one, I always say: To speak every language in the world. I have always wanted to talk to everyone and understand them through the context of their own vernacular and the worlds of meaning each language reveals.

There was my own search for belonging too. As a young woman it put me in the clutches of older men who took advantage of my desperation for approval. It took me to faraway places where I tried to shed every skin of familiarity to find out who I was without those cloaks of comfort. I shaved off all my hair in an ancestral ritual, got scammed in a romance in Africa, built a water well in a marginalized South Indian community, and have sat in Ayahuasca ceremonies all over the world, just to name a few.

I have come to see all of this as a thread of my yearning for belonging that has been running through me all along—misunderstood at times, overextended at others, but always pointing me in the same direction.

Toward people. Toward connection. Toward the quiet places where we recognize ourselves in each other.

Belonging is often framed as something fixed—a place, a family, a culture you’re “from.” But I am starting to recognize belonging as an urge to bridge our perceived differences and celebrate our shared humanity, our integral part of the web of life and our unbreakable bond with our divine origins.

The Long Road Home then is less of a geographical destination than it is a path back to our truest selves, to our deepest purpose, and our greatest sense of belonging.

So, if you are unsure of your path or purpose, all you have to do is go back to the little version of yourself for the clues to what the big version of you should be doing in the world.

She’s been pointing the way all along.

Journal Prompt:

Think back to your childhood. Before you knew who you were supposed to be, what naturally drew your attention? Who or what did you feel pulled toward—and why?

When you examine your life now, does it feel in alignment with the expression of your little self?

UPDATES

I’m recording my second podcast interview today, with several more already lined up. The only hiccup is that I have to travel into town to record—my satellite is continually obstructed by the trees, and there doesn’t seem to be a remedy. So for now, I’m relying on my lovely pals in El Tuito for shelter, internet, and a quiet corner to have these conversations.

That said, I’m genuinely thrilled to be using my voice in a new way and to expand the kind of stories I get to tell.

Here’s what you can expect:

Sunday letters for free subscribers will now alternate between a written essay and a podcast interview each week. For the time being, I’ll be releasing a new episode every two weeks while I find my rhythm and build a small library of conversations—then we’ll see if there’s an appetite for more.

I’m aiming to launch the podcast next Sunday, April 19th, across all platforms. As a subscriber, you’ll receive the episode straight to your inbox.

Paid subscriber Wednesday letters will continue as usual.

If you’d like to upgrade your subscription, for $5/month or $50/year you’ll unlock the full archive and receive:

🔥 Exclusive essays & series + behind-the-scenes reflections.
🎧 Audio notes & bonus content.
📖 Memoir excerpts & writing process insights.
🎯 Curated book, film, and author recommendations on The Long Road Library.

Till next time,

Yamuna x

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THIS PAST WEEK, an old friend of mine shared her new music album with the world.

Destiny Rochelle Chapin’s album, River Gospel, is an incredible collection of songs—so pure and heart-centered that tears poured from my eyes as I listened to her gorgeous southern drawl croon these sweet incantations through my mountain home.

In her words, River Gospel is “an offering of simplicity & devotion. Each of these songs arrived to guide me through dark moments, to awaken my heart and help me return to center. The gospel is love. Love is like a river, that flows through each of us. May the river of love flow freely, may it heal and guide us all.”

I remember the days, over ten years ago, when we used to hang out on the porch of a creaky old house in Texas Hill Country, where a collection of lightworkers, medicine family, and wildlings lived. I was a newbie in the spiritual community she was a part of, and as I felt my sensitivity to the otherworldly increase, I was drawn to Destiny’s confident and clear voice, her seemingly pure channel to higher realms.

She had big, bright eyes, an infectious smile, and hair like Farrah Fawcett. A Southern girl with a touch of Hollywood and disco boogie, often dressed in big, flared bell bottoms. Her cozy room was filled with trinkets, beautiful clothing, and a central altar with hymnals, candles, and a giant wooden cross. She felt like a character out of a film and a safe place in all my newness.

I hadn’t seen or spoken to Destiny in years when I pressed play on her album. But even across time and distance, her voice—smooth, expansive, and full of warmth—wrapped around me in a way that felt instantly familiar. It reminded me of everything I’ve always known and loved about her.

And what struck me most was witnessing this creation now, after knowing her as a young woman strumming her guitar and singing in crowded living rooms among friends.

In that moment, as my throat softened and warm tears gathered in my eyes, something became clear:

The circle of creation is not complete until we share our creativity.

Creativity is a current—like the river gospel—flowing freely through each of us, if we don’t obstruct it with the dams of our judgment or the boulders of our fear. We are all channels for this force, both mystical and ordinary, that moves through everything and is why we are here at all.

And yet, somewhere along the way, we lost the thread.

We hoard our gifts like fragile treasures, afraid they will spoil in the light. We question whether we’re doing it right, whether it’s as good as someone else’s. We obsess over perfection instead of allowing ourselves to enjoy the process. Our ideas pile up—unshared, unfinished—until we carry them quietly, leaving this world with our music still in us.

Witnessing Destiny’s courage to share her gift and receiving the beauty, purity, and soul-soothing balm of it reminded me that our creativity is meant to be shared.

To add beauty.
To offer joy.
To inspire.
To give others permission to bring forth their own magic.

And when we withhold it—when we judge it, diminish it, or tether it to vanity and metrics instead of love—something remains incomplete.

The circle stays open.

From this place of inspiration, I created an Instagram reel to thank the friends and supporters of my book, Hips Like Holy Rivers, and to remind myself—and all of us—that all we have to do is step into the current of creativity that surrounds us, and let it flow through us like a river to a thirsty world.

Let’s explore some ways you can bring your gifts into the light:

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THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE who don’t come from the world you and I do.

They don’t live in the Metaverse. They are off-grid and out of the cultural times. They don’t know anything about Trump, the war in Iran or that our world is run by a bunch of billionaire satanic pedophiles. They are not part of the collective reality that most of us know, with our mind-numbing news cycles and endless rat races.

These folks live with the beat of the sun on their backs. Their fingers knead soft, wet tortilla flour while smoke curls through their hair, soil black beneath their fingernails. They plant the earth and are returned with the sustenance she gives to those who tend her with love.

If you are fortunate enough to meet such a person—one who has not been tainted with the insanity of our world, whose innocence shines bright like a child even in old age—then you must never let them go.

Listen to them.

Absorb their unbroken connection to purity.

Let yourself be changed by it.

I am fortunate to know one such person. And he lives just up the road from me.

WHEN I ASK PETACO if he was born in the mountains of El Tuito, he replies with steadfast conviction,

“Naci en la Sierra. Soy de la Sierra.” (I was born in the mountains, I am from the mountains.)

He was born a three hour walk from the highway, seventy-eight years ago. For the last forty years, he’s lived on a faraway ranch: wood slats, a tin roof, a string of solar-powered bulbs, and a central hearth that never goes cold—usually with a pot of beans simmering.

Petaco looks like the land he lives on—weathered, rustic, real. He is a character out of a storybook. The kind that reminds me why I travel.

I watch him shift the logs in his clay oven, press homemade tortillas in his wooden tortillera, and prepare medicinal beverages from the local cactus lechugilla.

I can barely understand Petaco’s accent during the deluge of an afternoon storm hitting the metal roof. He speaks like a man who rarely converses with anyone except his farm animals. He has never married, never had children, and has survived twenty-five scorpion stings.

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A YEAR AGO, I took a group of my local girlfriends to the waterfalls near his home. It was my first time on a girls’ adventure to my happy place since I had my daughter, and I was excited to show them my favourite swimming holes and, most especially, the man who feels like a part of it.

We arrived in a sleek vehicle in the dust and stillness. I called out the way I always do, “Petacoooo,” letting the song of his name trail in the air. He stirred from within and emerged with a big smile and shiny eyes.

Weeks earlier, I’d told him I’d return with “unas muchachas bonitas.” He hadn’t forgotten.

I took my friends on a tour of the inner sanctum of his house, where Petaco proudly showed us a dead scorpion precariously perched atop his machete, ready to be buried with salt in the ground as per local tradition.

“Son del Diablo, no son de Dios,” (They (scorpions) are from the devil, not from God.) Although I am one of the few people in this part of the world who has never been stung by one, they are one of the few things that scare the hell out of me.

I asked him if he would accompany us part of the way to one of my favourite watering holes, which I lovingly renamed “El jardin secreto”—the secret garden. I noticed as we wove through the land that it had been freshly cut back. We all took a selfie just before he turned back for home.

It was a perfect day of sunshine, refreshing water, and great conversation about motherhood, home and belonging.

When we returned to Petaco’s with our bellies and hearts full, we discovered that he had gotten the fire going, prepared maseca to make tortillas, and even changed into the nicest shirt I have seen him wear. It was obvious he had gone to some lengths to host us, but since one of my friends had promised her husband she’d be home soon, we excused ourselves politely and headed home.

Even as I said goodbye, something in me knew it was wrong.

Later that night, after the berries he’d gifted us were divided, after my daughter fell asleep, I sat down to write and felt it fully land in my body.

I should never have refused his food.

It would’ve taken minutes to press a few tortillas and cook them on the comal. To eat a hot bowl of beans. To give this pleasure to a man who has little occasion to share his simple bounty with women like us.

And I know this. Deeply. From my own culture, from years of being welcomed at tables around the world, you don’t refuse food from someone like him.

Not if you understand what’s being offered.

The regret sat heavily in my chest. I could feel tears well up as I tried to reason with myself about why we couldn’t just give him that moment of happiness. I told Jaz, and though he agreed I’d made a mistake, he also offered to take me back.

So, the next morning, we did. We brought a jar of honey as a gift. The dog followed us running, and Aramara fell asleep on my lap as we bounced along the dusty dirt road to his ranch. When we arrived, his family was visiting. They made space for us immediately, with more than enough food and warmth to share.

When I finally saw Petaco in the middle of the crowd, I held his small, rough, soot-covered hand in mine and apologized. He smiled that way he does, with no possibility of a grudge in his heart.

“You’re the guide,” he said. “It was your decision.”

This time, I helped the ladies in the kitchen by making Pico de Gallo. Jaz went for firewood with the men, and Aramara played in the ash, dirty and delighted.

Petaco shifted the logs in the fire, casting an orange glow on his face and illuminating the childlike sparkle in his eyes.

Standing there, watching him, I felt it again—that ache for an innocence that feels like a stranger.

And the gratitude.

That there is still goodness in this world that I will hold onto so tight.

I want to believe that no matter what unfolds on our apocalyptic planet, there will still be people like him who hold a thread to what is simple, generous, and true.

People like Petaco.

May we be wise enough to recognize them.

And humble enough to receive what they offer.

Journal Prompt:

What is something small, ordinary, and sacred in your life right now that you may be overlooking or rushing past?

HAPPY EASTER

I’m resharing a story from a year ago, written during my time in Ethiopia, where I was taken deep into the hinterlands by extraordinary locals in search of something both myth and memory—the possibility that Jesus may have come from Ethiopia…

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I HAD ALREADY DECIDED I was going to move out—back to my ex baby daddy’s place, our place, my home, our home—when my girlfriend asked,

“So are you guys broken up or together?”

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Have trouble staring at a screen? Like hearing me whisper in your ear? Listen to me read you this piece.

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FOR ME, THERE WAS ALWAYS AN ELSEWHERE.

As a child of multiplicity and diaspora, I have never known the rootedness of being from the place of my ancestors.

As a child of immigrants, my idea of home was incomprehensible tongues over crackling phone lines, the friction of modern Canadian culture with the old world values of my parents, of my mother’s brownness treated as a disability in the racist culture of my early childhood.

Canada felt like only one strand of a great tapestry I was compelled to explore.

So, at eighteen, like my Scottish father before me, I set off to travel the world.

What began as a way to satisfy my young adult curiosity about the planet—and my place in it—has, twenty-five years later, become a life shaped by foreignness, plurality, and an enduring uncertainty about where I belong.

A Life Made of Many Places

When I’m in Canada, I love backcountry camping and slinging ice-cold IPAs on the river. I wander the otherworldly spires of the badlands, where I used to visit the most epic dinosaur museum as a kid. I reunite with the longest-running friends I still have—34 years and counting. In Calgary, I know the backroads and crisp autumnal winds, and have years of glacial-sized memories stored from the very first days of my life.

In India, I pin handwoven jasmine strings in my hair, never leave home without a bindi, and have yellow fingernails from all the turmeric in the food I eat with my hands. I effortlessly glide between English and Tamil, not quite fluent in speaking but fluent in understanding. I’m even better at Hindi. I map the city of Madras with inherited memory, like the convent school at the foot of St Thomas Mount where my mother studied, for the thousand-armed banyans of the Theosophical Society where my father spent his days listening to classical music performances, and the plot where my grandparents sold the family house to finance my parents’ wedding.

I visited my father’s native Scotland for the first time as a one-year-old, and spent a couple of summers there as a teen. I snogged boys while drunk on rum and Coke, feeling the excitement of the big world I would one day discover when I finally left home. I know the musky smell of Scotland in the mail that we received as kids—a highland dancer toy, a crocheted doll with black braids. At home, we drank orange pekoe tea and ate shortbread cookies, and I still don’t understand 50% of what my cousins say. One of them has exactly the same curls as mine.

Ireland is where my true paternal heritage lies, where my people were born, baptized, and recorded in the census. We were blacksmiths, weavers, bricklayers. It is where my last name is engraved on keychains, it hangs above bar doors, and the Flaherty’s even have a castle. My great-grandfather, Thomas, served in the 8th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment in World War I. And he, too, left his stone house in Connemara for the bigger opportunities of life in Scotland, where we would hybridize to Irish-Scots.

And now I live in Mexico, where I became a mother. Here, we eat everything on a corn tortilla, have driven our Jeep for years on expired plates, cold beers are an unspoken currency with mechanics, and my daughter is living between languages and identities. She is slowly learning to say corazón—heart—and adiós—goodbye—although agua—water—has been part of her lexicon for a while.

A Life Built on Movement

I don’t know life without movement, without twisting my tongue to speak new languages, stretching my heart to love strangers. I am shaped by stories of migration, longing and nostalgia.

And if there is one thing that makes this multiplicity possible, this intermingling of culture, cuisine, and consciousness, it is travel.

Travel is why my father hitchhiked to India in the 70’s, married my mom in Chennai, and learned to play the sitar. Travel is how my conservative Brown mom learned to survive in a white world, to raise her babies in the prairies and support her family back home. Travel is how I ended up in Mexico, looking for an escape route from India to Canada during the Covid-era, how I birthed a Mexican baby, how I am learning to navigate parenthood and personhood in a second language, and borrowed culture.

But the future of travel has never felt more uncertain to me.

The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices. Cartel violence near my home in Mexico. The price of EVERYTHING.

Stepping out the door feels like dodging bullets. And it is fast becoming the norm.

For a traveller and immigrant like me, I feel my very way of life is under threat.

I worry that soon I won’t be able to afford to visit my parents, or war will separate us on different continents, and parts of my identity will become estranged, geographically.

I frequently wonder how I will bridge the gap between the country where my daughter and her father were born, where my parents live, and the country where my ancestors are from.

Will I be able to visit my parents when they are ill?

Will my daughter ever meet her Scottish family?

How long will it be until my family in India sees us again?

How do we let go of elsewhere and make peace with the places where we stay?

The Future of Travel

My sense is that instead of scratching our itchy feet with faraway adventures, we have to choose perspective over location.

We have to be ready to pivot at a moment’s notice like nimble dancers twirling through the apocalypse.

And remember the truth in Marcel Proust’s famous words:

The real voyage of discovery consists
not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

If that’s true, then perhaps the question is no longer where we can go, but how we choose to see.

Here are a few ways to practice that—whether you’re a grounded nomad, a child of many worlds, or simply craving a little adventure in the midst of the mundane:

• Explore a neighborhood you’ve never walked through

• Eat somewhere new—or cook a cuisine you’ve never tried

• Take public transit and talk to someone you don’t know

• Read outside—on a bench, in a park, under the sky

• Start your day with a walk, no destination in mind

• Watch a foreign film—subtitles only, absolutely no dubbing allowed!

• Stay in a hotel in your own city

• Document it: photograph, paint, or draw the place you call home

Living between the pulse of many places is not merely indulgence—it is maintenance.

I no longer travel to find myself.

I travel because I am already made of many selves.

And there is no cure for that.

Journal Prompt

Do you have an incurable longing for elsewhere? Tell me about it in the comments or write about that place and what it means to you. What would it mean to you if you could no longer visit it?

Leave a comment

P.S. The title of this piece, The Incurable Longing for Elsewhere, has been a working title for one of my short story collections for years now. I just recently dusted that collection off to be my summer editing project. Although I thought I would hide that name until I published, it felt right to be here. So here it is.

Love Yamuna x

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This week’s paid subscription newsletter hits very close to home—because it was my home. If you’ve been here for awhile then you know about that house in the mountains and all it has come to mean to me. On the other side of separation with my partner, I revisit it and discover what it means to me. You can unlock this story and the archives for just $5 a month or $50 a year and support a stay-at-home mama in writing with courage, vulnerability and honesty.

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IN THE FIRST FLOOR BEDROOM, where the bright pink ojo hangs and the walls were once painted teal, my daughter was conceived.

It was in this home in the pine forest of Jalisco, where the walls heaved as I wrestled with doubts, where I asked myself if I was in the right place, in the right lifestyle, with the right person.

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On a recent beach outing, a friend and I fell into a familiar conversation—comparing our breasts, naming what we disliked, imagining what we wished we had instead. It felt like the prompt from the Universe to share this piece of writing. Its’s been in a folder for awhile. I’ve been afraid of being this honest. But this one feels like it belongs in the open—like something many of us have carried, quietly, for far too long.

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I have spent my entire life hating my breasts.

The left one hangs, deflated, like a punctured tire. The right one tries to raise itself skyward, tentatively.

Both are equally unsure of themselves.

A pair of odd socks.

In a sea of perfectly placed nipples, my breasts seem confused, lacking in a confident direction. I have tried to remember better days when perhaps they were more equal in measure, glowing with youth and not yet rejected by eyes that have seen a better set.

In the bedroom, I have resorted to lying on my back, worried that if I sat up, my pathetic breasts would crumple and fold like a stack of cards or sway like fishing nets heavy with their catch. I know my wares have likely disappointed those pleasure-seekers of perfection, sizing my melons against the magazine models whose nipples are always facing the right direction. But mostly, I have disappointed myself.

Sometimes, I glimpse the enormity of my blessings that these used-up tea bags are fixed to my chest to feed many children. I wish they looked like I hadn’t just spent a decade doing that already. But as much as I have hated my breasts, I have seen better and worse fixed to women who don’t seem to give a hooter.

Here are some of the impactful “breast” experiences I have had:

ONE

The first time I saw my best friend naked was two months into our backpacking trip in Lombok, Indonesia. She stood before me, her batik sarong wrapped around her.

“I want you to see me naked,” she said.

Since we were thirteen, we had masked our embarrassment with polite courtesy, turning away when we changed. Only when we met Europeans did we realize how unnecessary it all was. Planning to travel for a year together, it was time to drop our embarrassment.

That night, in a dim beach bungalow, I sat waiting by candlelight. The sea fizzed in the background.

“Ok, I am ready,” she said.

I held my breath, eyes down.

In one brave sweep, the flimsy cloth fell to her ankles.

She stood radiant, more beautiful than I imagined—supple breasts, perfect nipples, elegant hips. Our laughter cut through the tension.

“You are beautiful,” I whispered.

We both started laughing. Then crying. Then laughing again.

TWO

Years later, I travelled to a forest in Slovakia for the World Rainbow Gathering—a counterculture movement where thousands congregate in temporary villages built on a sharing economy.

Nudity was common and unremarkable.

Each day, I stood naked with others at the communal showers, waiting for my turn for a one minute rinse under the hose with an audience. The Rainbow was a place that encouraged me to let go of body shame and witness how many kinds of bodies there are.

There were women with round, taut breasts and thick thighs marked with cellulite. Men, built like Poseidon, with tiny penises. Perfection was rare, no matter what Hollywood has implied. There was one man who looked the part—hair like Fabio, body like marble, perfect penis—who wandered through wildflowers with a wooden staff. Like c’mon. I walked behind him a few times, captivated by his flexing butt muscles.

And there was that women who had the most unforgettable breasts of my life.

She sat across from me at a Tantra workshop, a pixie-like woman, porcelain features, children at her both her sides and one strapped to her chest. She sat and unwrapped her shawl, uncaringly revealing breasts that I would have gone to the ends of the earth to hide. Her boobs were so flattened, so utterly empty, they hung long and low like knee-length socks, her giant pink nipples grazing her thin waist. The rest of her was so exquisite that her breasts defied logic. What stood out even more was her posture—how straight, how unashamed she was in front of strangers. Hers chest made mine look like a model’s, and yet my shame stopped me from embracing my own body. In the circle, she spoke with confidence, her accent distinct. She was from Poland—a radiant woman with tits that didn’t astonish me as much as her self-assurance.

THREE

I once found myself in the epicentre of where the 1980’s famine struck the Ethiopian Highlands.

The scorched earth was still dry and unforgiving. Everywhere, women balanced water jugs on their heads and snotty-nosed kids on their hips, always with a chewed-up breast hanging out of a hole in their blouse.

Breasts in those parts were as drought-stricken as the land, stretched like leather, nipples left long and shaped to the roof of a baby’s mouth. The women seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that their breasts would be considered embarrassing in my culture and would likely never see the light of day without being stuffed with silicone.

Did the women here feel the same way about their breasts that I felt about mine?

My vanity embarrassed me.

I have lost track of how many hours I have spent contemplating a breast enhancement. Bra shopping used to send me into weeks of post-shopping depression. Every time I had a new lover, I wrestled with the feeling of dread that -klsat in the pit of my stomach for the moment I would take my shirt off and look into their eyes for their opinion.

Here, in one of the poorest and most beautiful places on earth, none of it mattered.

How had I let the superficial world with its impossible beauty standards define my breasts and, ultimately, how I felt about myself?

FOUR

One of the last times I saw my grandmother in South India, we sat on a rice mat. She was wrapped in a sari, no longer able to walk properly because of a broken hip. Her thin blouse covered her wrinkled chest. Without warning, she lifted her blouse to expose a pus-filled sore on her left breast. She clicked her tongue the way Tamil women do—a mournful sound. We never named it, but I wondered if it was cancer.

Years later, my aunt lost a breast to the same disease. Life continued, but I began to worry about breast cancer too—from genes, or from how much time I’d spent hating on my breasts. During an Ayahuasca ceremony, I received the message that I had let my breasts be drained of their life force in hopes that someone else would love me more than I loved myself.

It was time for something to change.

FIVE

At forty-one, I gave birth to my daughter.

As my breasts swelled with my belly and my nipples darkened, my understanding grew with my child: breasts were no longer just things to attract—they existed to sustain my baby’s life. They were source. A function. A lifeline.

For the first time, I loved my breasts in a whole new way. Until I breastfed.

I didn’t expect breastfeeding to be such a horrendously painful affair. Maybe my nipples were too flat, or the latch was wrong, or I didn’t get enough milk, or perhaps I had tubular breasts without enough glands to produce milk. Once again, my breasts just couldn’t get it right.

And yet, something slowly shifted anyway.

When you become a mother, life becomes less about the love you wish to receive through things as superficial as one’s breasts and more about the devotion to the life you have created.

In my daughter’s eyes, I am beautiful. She tells me so when I put on a dress, and she pets me, saying, “Nice.” Sometimes, she pokes my boobs and giggles, curious and unashamed. I love seeing the world through her eyes, eyes that haven’t been taught what is desirable or lacking. Eyes that just see me.

I wish I could time-travel and tell my twelve-year-old self to love her body fiercely, no matter what anyone tells her is beautiful or not.

I wish I could show up before her tiny chest is sexualized so that she could know all the goodness God endowed her with in those two perfect breasts.

But I can’t go back.

I can only go forward.

I can guide my little girl toward loving her body just the way it was made.

I can appreciate my wrung-dry, crumpled-up old lady breasts.

And if I’m lucky, I can be a granny with one of those big ‘ol chests that wee grandkids lay their heads on and fall asleep.

It might take my whole lifetime.

To stop measuring them.
To stop apologizing.
To stop looking for proof in other people’s eyes.

But I am beginning to understand—

I have always been well endowed.

Journal Prompt: If you could speak to your younger self, before she learned what was “beautiful,” what would you tell her about her body?

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IT HAS BEEN ONE WEEK since I shared the “break up” post.

The news of a rupture in my personal life became my highest-performing post in a long time. I even gained a few new paid subscribers, thanks to a perfectly positioned paywall right at the cliffhanger.

You might think people are starving for gossip, that we like to gawk at the car wrecks of each other’s lives with our mouths agape.

But I see something else.

We love vulnerability. Honesty. Humanity.

The truth is: we are all fucking up our lives in one way or another.

Some of us are in the wrong relationships, unwilling to face the heartache that comes with choosing ourselves.

Some of us are in the wrong careers, feeling like we’ve walked too far down this road to turn back now. This is who I am. This is how the world sees me.

And many of us are kind of, sort of doing the thing—almost—but not really living our truth to its fullest expression.

And the worst part is, we know it.

So naturally, there is comfort in hearing from another human who didn’t get it totally right either. They fucked it up. Shit hit the fan.

My life kind of blew up about a month ago, in the middle of a family holiday in India. The things we had been sweeping under the rug were suddenly out in the harsh daylight: the ways we had hurt each other, the ways we had abandoned ourselves for the security of love, the quiet realization that we weren’t being our best selves with each other.

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ONE OF MY FIRST MAJOR REINVENTIONS was at the start of the 9th grade.

The year prior I was the depressed girl who was going to kill herself.

I was the girl in love with a dead Kurt Cobain.
I was the girl who felt so worthless that suicide seemed like the best option.

Depression became my identity.

Suicide became the proof of that identity.

Until my intended suicide date came and went and I was still alive. My junior high school had suspended me from school once they found the dates out—a strange way to avoid me offing myself on school property. I was gonna jump off a bridge near the school and believe me, in the years since I have revisited, I realized the bridge isn’t as high up as it seemed. Good thing I didn’t jump.

It’s been awhile—you can listen to me read you this piece here

All I can remember is my mom taking me for ice cream one afternoon, unwilling to leave me alone in the house for fear that she would return to a dead child. And somewhere on that car trip I recall thinking to myself, I can change the date right? I can grant myself an extension on my planned death.

And closely following that thought was this one: what will everyone think if I don’t do it?

It’s a strange thing how closely we can identify with our thoughts, our beliefs, our ways of being. In this case, it was even dangerous, how much depression and suicide had come to be a companion to me in my adolescent heartache.

I had divorcing parents.
I felt like the ugly girl at school.
None of the boys liked me.
Sometimes I wanted to be a boy myself.

So when I made it to 9th grade and walked through those same hallways where clusters of my peers would look at me and whisper—like a soon-to-be ghost gliding down the hallway—I made sure to come back with a bang.

I was no longer emulating Courtney Love as a skater chic with blue hair and baby barrettes, but a teen who had faced death and returned a Phoenix.

I uplevelled my look with chic embellishments that gave off the air of a girl much older. I made plans to transfer to an out-of-district high school where I could leave behind everyone who knew me at my weakest.

I sauntered the halls as if I had fought off a lion in the wilderness.

THIS COMMENT from a new subscriber, Mats Hoefler, on my last post really stopped me in my tracks and made me feel so seen,

What Mats says so insightfully here is how vital it is to have trust in the in-between parts of life.

When we are between stories.
Between relationships, homes, identities.
When we are between versions of ourselves and our lives.

If you’re anything like me, you probably want to peer around the corner and see into the future.

Do we get back together in the end?
Do I live in a place where I’m happy?
Am I in love?
Did I do what I planned to do?

But for better or worse, life ain’t like that.

Just like our precious children who hold onto the edges of sofas and tables to balance and take their first upright steps, we too have to wade out into the uncertainty of life—into the grief of heartache, into the doubt in our decisions, and ultimately into the trust that the in-between is just as vital as the times when we feel sure-footed.

The stumble is part of the dance.

This being human is a journey.

You have to lose yourself to find yourself.

That ninth grader in bomber jackets and platform boots, dating the boys in high school, is the same girl who now decorates new apartments and rebrands her website on a whim.

She is my editor-in-chief in life, and I trust she’s writing me an epic story.

𝘚𝘰, 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧, 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘢𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺.

Questions I’m contemplating:

1. What if it turns out better than you imagined?

2. What if this is not a mistake and part of the story?

3. Are you sure you have all the information?

Till next time homies,

Yamuna x

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YESTERDAY’S SUBSTACK post sent small waves through my universe.

It brought the biggest influx of new subscribers I’ve had from a single piece, and some free readers even upgraded to paid to unlock the story. I hate that I had to sell my breakup for a dollar. Solo motherhood makes you creative — sometimes even a little desperate.

But I also believe life is sacred, and so are the stories we make from it. If someone wants to step inside that world for a moment, there is a price.

Messages poured in from friends and readers around the world who have watched my life from afar — chasing love, moving to Mexico, living on a mountain, home-birthing a baby, travelling the world.

From the outside, it probably looked like a dream.

And it was.
Until it wasn’t.

I don’t owe anyone an explanation for my life or my choices. But as a writer, I thrive on rewriting the script halfway through the scene. I make stories from whatever life hands me. I let new characters enter. I let old loves linger in the melancholy.

I cathart through my keyboard and search for the beauty in whatever circumstance I’m living in.

It’s simply what I do.

Anyone who knows me well would tell you I’m very good at rebuilding after the fall — rewriting the story so that somehow it always becomes better. I’m an expert at beginning again. I’m addicted to discovering who I am in new places.

TODAY, I HAD ONE OF THOSE MOMENTS where you feel the sentience of the universe pulsing in your palm — its quiet conviction to co-create your dreams with you.

Aramara and I joined the Wednesday Ladies Lunch, a group of Mexican and expatriate women who meet each week in El Tuito to eat and socialize.

I had planned to keep a low profile. I was already tired of explaining that Jaz and I had split and that I’m now renting a place in town.

But we popped in to say hello — and somehow ended up staying for lunch.

At one point, one of the women commented on my outfit: a mustard tunic scattered with large white flowers and loose cotton trousers — airy, light, effortless.

She asked if I had brought anything back from India to sell.

Then the others chimed in.

They wanted to see what I had.
They started suggesting places I could sell.
They began making requests and offering ideas.

Suddenly the whole table was buzzing with possibility.

None of them realized how deeply their encouragement affirmed a dream I’ve carried quietly for a long time. Or how much it reminded me that the universe — God, creation, whatever name you give it — is always conspiring on our behalf.

Yesterday I wrote about not having a village.

Today the village appeared.

May we women never let each other go.

I managed to write, edit, format, choose photos, and design my banner during Aramara’s naptime. Woohoo. I think that means that rather than stick to a rigid schedule of posting for free and paid subs, I’m gonna go with the flow aka Aramara’s schedule. Last night, for example, I went to sleep with her at 9pm instead of staying up late to work, and I slept 11 hours. Hallelujah! Sleep changes lives. So, expect to hear from me whenever and wherever, but always hopefully just when you want to!

Yamuna x

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I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO SIT down here and write for a while. I am in the in-between—between lives, between homes, between versions of myself.

My family split up, and Aramara and I now live in a quiet bungalow in town, just a thirty-minute drive from the mountains where I made my home in the forest for the last four years. Her father still lives there and remains a huge part of our lives, but it is complicated. Partnering with a man from another country means that although my heart is in India—and given the chance I would whisk Ara away there in a heartbeat—I won’t.

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I TOOK A SMALL STEP back from showing up here on schedule because my life has been too full — steeped in the last drops of this monumental return to my motherland. With my flight from Mumbai to Mexico City via Istanbul in two days, I’d be lying if I said I even know what to write.

A week ago, I was considering cancelling my return because of cartel violence erupting in my little corner of Pacific Mexico. Tonight, I found myself on chat with Expedia trying to confirm whether my route would still pass through Iran. The world feels like it’s rearranging itself around me. I have a sneaking suspicion the gods want me to stay in India.

If I’m honest, I do too.

The last few weeks — aligned with the Year of the Fire Horse — have been nothing short of combustible. In no particular order:

• total upheaval in my partnership

• solo parenting in India

• my first solo journey with Aramara to Kerala

• I cut half my hair off

• my first professional portrait session

• my first formal interview — and the soon-to-be launch of the TLRH podcast

• depositing my book in the Connemara Library in Chennai—Connemara, Ireland, being where my Irish Flaherty ancestors hail from

• turning 44 today :)

  

MAMA INDIA ALWAYS BRINGS BIG MEDICINE.

She is the kind of mother who whoops you first and feeds you sweets after — once you’ve finished protesting. And if we’re honest, you probably needed it.

She has broken me down and rebuilt me more times than I can count, but she has always been generous. I think she knows I tend the line. I sit with the ancestors in ways the modern world has forgotten. I feel them near — guiding, correcting, celebrating. I do the work of breaking patterns that were never meant to be inherited. I speak where silence was expected. I choose pride where shame was taught. I write poems to the dead. I archive photographs. I draw the branches of our tree. I pass the stories to my daughter.

Love, in this lineage, is reciprocal.

A PILGRIMAGE TO ALIKHAN STREET is a return to origin — the narrow corridor where my family still lives in rooms smaller than some people’s bathrooms. It’s where my grandparents once sat cross-legged on woven mats. Where my grandfather would stand at the threshold, gazing down the passage toward the road. Where my cousins grew into men. Where my grandparents sold their house to pay for my mother’s wedding — a house that would have made them wealthy today instead of patching monsoon leaks that turn their bedroom into a shallow lake each year.

This morning, Alikhan Street welcomed its newest generation.

We lit the lamp at the ancestral altar. We bowed. We spooned sweet, milky payasam into our mouths in remembrance. Aramara followed our gestures as if her body knew them already. Once, back in Mexico, as I dried her after a bath, she looked toward the dim rafters above us and said what sounded unmistakably like, “Grandma.” I thought immediately of Vimla — my mother’s mother — whose quiet insistence seemed to usher us here without hesitation.

And so we came.

Now that this chapter is closing, all I can do is bow in gratitude to the thousand unseen hands that lift me higher than I could ever rise alone.

I am one daughter,
forever caught
in the hunger of return.

UPDATES

You may have noticed that The Long Road Home is shifting.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve changed the publication colours, refined the logo, and updated the welcome page image. I’ve been quietly rewriting the About page and subscriber emails too — not just polishing language, but clarifying vision. India has a way of stripping things down to their essence. What remains is truer.

If you’ve been walking this storykeeping path with me for a while, you already know where my heart lives: ancestry, heritage, culture, reclamation. Since my earliest blogging days, I’ve felt called to transmit the wisdom of the places and people I’ve encountered across continents. Over time, that outward gaze turned inward. I began examining my own cultural inheritance — the gifts, the fractures, the patterns that shaped me, and the ones I am determined not to pass on.

We are the living endowment of everything that came before us. And I believe one of our most vital tasks is to heal what we can, honour what deserves reverence, and become authentic within — not in spite of — the cultural forces that formed us.

So the writing here is evolving. It is becoming a clearer pathway for lineage repair — my own, and perhaps yours. Through storytelling, archiving, documenting, remembering, and celebrating, I hope to offer both transmission and invitation. This is not nostalgia. It is active reclamation.

And perhaps the most exciting unfolding: The Long Road Home Podcast is on its way.

I recorded my first interview in the Western Ghats of Kerala with dear friends — an intercultural couple who homestead, steward land, and are raising four wildly beautiful children between languages and worlds. Since then, I’ve been lining up music, mapping future conversations, and learning everything I can about this new medium. With everything else in motion, I can hardly believe I’m adding a podcast to the mix — but the Fire Horse energy is very real, and I seem to be galloping with it. When the ancestors start clearing the path, you don’t walk — you ride.

There is much ahead.

Thank you for being here — for reading, listening, witnessing. This community may still be small, but it is rooted. And roots, as we know, are where the real power lives.

Yamuna x

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