Screenshot of Terrell Jones in Vital Strategies’ “Harm Reduction Saves Lives” advertising campaign Despite significant strides in drug policy in recent decades, and changing attitudes about some substances, stigmatization of people who use drugs remains a pervasive...
For many years as a public speaking coach, I have encouraged people to share their personal stories and open up their lives to strangers. Sometimes this involves deeply emotional and tender subjects that aren’t easy to address but can have a powerful impact in opening eyes and sharing perspective. I have to say, it is much harder to do this in practice than to teach it.
I wrote this to honor my cousin Brandon's birthday on May 19. I am sharing it on the day he left this earth, August 12, four years ago. May 19, 2020 Brandon would have been 43 years old today. He came into the world only six months after me. I was an only...
A Danish friend put out an interesting question recently to his Facebook circle. Speculating that there might be a generational difference in parents saying “I Love You” to their children (as in older generations may have said this much less than parents...
The middle of life feels in some ways like adolescence, what with all the hormones and abrupt body changes. Only sometimes I wish that I felt as confident about taking on the world as I did when I was a teenager. I started thinking of myself as an activist when I was...
A few months ago, I had the incredible good fortune to visit the Smithsonian Museum of African American History in Washington, DC. The place is an awe-inspiring testament to the deep wounds, trauma, resilience, power, culture, magic and beauty of the Black...
I have a memory from when I must have been around seven or eight years old. My mother and I lived in South Jamaica, Queens in an apartment that we rented upstairs from a very large family on the ground floor. I think we were sitting in the kitchen. I remember that it...
There are no hard and fast rules for what I look like to people in terms of ethnicity. Often it seems to depend on context and who I am with. Although Indians in the US frequently recognize me, I remember an Indian-American girl I met once years ago who...
Whenever I pick up the phone and the person asks for Sharada Chandrasekaran with flawless accuracy, I immediately know that this has got to be from an Indian call center making me some sort of offer. It gives me particular amusement when they follow up the...
This may be a contradiction but I love to travel and I hate being a tourist. My best travel memories are sleeping in the living room of someone's (if not my own) extended family or sitting cross-legged on a mat around a cooking-fire. I prefer to be somewhere as an...