Hello, Readers. It’s been three years. Sorry to have kept you hanging. Coming back here is kind of like visiting a house I don’t live in anymore; it feels simultaneously familiar and foreign. But I do miss my neighbors from time to time and I do often remember my blogging days and how this place served as my therapy and support system for so long. So again, hello! It’s me! I’m approaching the 14th anniversary of my Saudi life. I’ve lived in Riyadh for longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life, which feels strange to say. In fact, I have lived it my current home longer than I’ve lived any ..read more

I’m back with my annual craving to get my thoughts out into the world. I always feel this way as my anniversary of living in Saudi and my next birthday both approach. And I’m always drawn back here, to my old blog, where the new me was born so many years ago, to plant my feelings so I can come back to see how they’ve grown this time next year. As I approach my 11th(?!) Saudiversary and 36th birthday, I feel a kind of peace in my life that I, at one point, believed was impossible. There’s nothing I’m anxious about. There’s nothing I’m desperately wanting. Other than the completion of the f ..read more

Tomorrow marks one year since I posted on this blog.  This month marks 10 years since I first moved to Saudi. Was it a coincidence that I felt the urge to write this evening, or was it my remembering how writing used to help me make sense of my inner world and to relieve certain amounts of stress and anxiety? Either way, I guess it’s time for an update. So much has changed in my life over the past year. So much is changing here in Saudi, too! We are growing together, this place and I. I’m a year older, nearly 35, and have learned that getting older means getting wiser and that wisdom is r ..read more

There are some things about life that you can never truly understand until you have experienced them first hand. I’ve always heard people say that grief never goes away, you just get used to living with it. We grieve many losses throughout life. Marriages end, once special friendships fizzle out, jobs are lost, grandparents and pets and school friends die. But we move on. We reflect on those losses and we look fondly upon our pasts that they were a part of and we move on. But this has shaken me so deeply. I believe there will always be a part of me that will never be able to truly move on and ..read more

I was going through old blog entries today, visiting myself like I often do, trying to figure out who this woman was who started writing here five years ago, when I ran into this. Most days my previous marriage no longer crosses my mind. Sometimes I actually forget it ever happened. At best it feels like a movie I watched a long time ago, not something that definitely happened to me. Despite doing my best to block out an entire decade of my life, I still deal with the secondary effects of my experiences, which are delightful: I’m afraid of loss and abandonment. I have a hard time with tru ..read more

Hi everyone. I know I’ve been MIA. I’ve been so on purpose. I also know my domain expired. I let it on purpose. Truthfully I’m just not driven to write about my life anymore. I want to keep my life safe and secret and just for me and those closest to me. Although sharing throughout my separation and divorce was extremely therapeutic, sharing since my divorce has felt almost like a chore. I can’t promise I’ll keep writing or if I do, how often, but I think I’m finally ready to talk about something. One of my greatest fears about living Saudi Arabia has always been something happening to on ..read more

Most days I’ve really got it together. I struggle internally with my life’s circumstances, but I get up every day and put on my big girl panties and a smile and do what I have to do to, at the very least, keep myself and my struggle financially afloat. But there are some days (and today is one of them) that I feel such a heavy weight on me and I feel so thinly stretched that I can do nothing other than come home, toss myself into bed, and have a good cry. It’s as dramatic as it sounds. I have no right to complain about my life. My struggles pale in comparison to those of others in this world ..read more

I sat at work this morning with a friend discussing life and men and relationships as we usually do when the subject of forgiveness came up. It’s a funny subject, isn’t it? It’s something every single human being struggles with, yet many are hesitant to discuss. We expect it from others but often refuse to give it ourselves. We tuck our forgivenesses for offenses both petty and devastating away inside of ourselves and move on with our lives. We share what people have done to us, but we never share our journey to forgivness with each other. Why? Here’s what I think. I think that a lot of people ..read more

I try to visit with my daughter most days after work. After all, this is why I live here. To give her a happy life with both of her parents in her daily life. Some days this means she comes to me, and some days I stop by to see her at her Grandmother’s house where she lives with her father, which is what I did today. Usually on days like today I’d have her Grandmother’s driver take me home since it’s only five minutes by car, but he is on vacation and I had some steam to blow off after a particularly trying day, so I decided to walk the 20 minutes home. In terrible shoes. Everyone who knows me ..read more

The state of my love life is always directly proportional to the amount of Sex and the City I’m watching. And I’ve been watching a hell of a lot of my four old gal pals these days. You see, I have a knack for attracting men who don’t want the same things I want. Most probably because I have a knack for meeting men in the wrong ways. I’m also great at ignoring the fact that a man isn’t looking for what I’m looking for when I really like him, which leads to me staying longer than I should and trying harder than any sane person would to make it something it’s not meant to be. What is it I’m looki ..read more