Unsheathed

  It is the seventh day of the new lunar new year of the Water Tiger. As we move forward towards new chapters in our lives, may we turn new leaves with more confidence about who we are, and the love that we all deserve, always. Moving from an Eastern non English speaking world into a Western English speaking one as a young adult, crossing languages and cultures, from one which most messages are encoded implicitly in actions rather than explicitly in words, I became more acutely aware how much more often some words are used in the English language seemingly to me without the same kind of social and emotional accountability compared to the equivalent words used in culture and language I grew up in. Two of the most overused words on the internet, "FRIENDS" and "LOVE" are some of them. As we enter the second week of celebration to welcome the new lunar year of the Water Tiger, all alone together in our respective pandemic travel bubbles and reaching out to each oth...