Ashma John

There is something about trying to lose weight that feels almost impossible and pointless in the beginning.

I think that one of the best ways to show you appreciate someone is by offering them your time and effort.

Holidays are weirdly tortuous when you are an immigrant. It almost feels like an endless marathon, trying to recreate the magic of the holidays that you were once accustomed to,   knowing fully well it will culminate with feeling a profound sense of loss sandwiched in droplets of happiness and disappointment at having yet another season come around and still not managing to get it quite right.

When I think about my school days (primary and secondary) in Guyana, much of it feels like a blur.

 I always swore to myself that I would never become consumed by any reality TV show.

As I look on and observe from an incredibly far distance while the nation’s teachers protest for both liveable wages and decent working conditions, I remember two stories my late Godmother who worked as a nurse in the public healthcare system shared with me growing up.

A few days ago I came across a snippet of a viral  radio interview which featured a local beauty influencer as its guest.

A little over halfway into  Bell Hooks’ book “All About Love: New Visions”, and my mind  cannot stop reshuffling memories of my past relationships, friendships, family dysfunction, and my own shortcomings when it comes to  consistently enacting a love ethic in all aspects of  my life.  

There is much fear and anticipation when it comes to pregnancy and bringing life into this world and understandably so.

There is something magical about the start of the New Year.

How can anyone, at this point, muster up any joy to celebrate Christmas?

There is something deeply traumatising about navigating online social spaces in moments of absolute political turmoil and instability.

Living in a western country and seeing the traditional Indian beauty ritual hair oiling rise in popularity when it was once scoffed at, is perplexing.

Dave Martins’s song “Not A Blade of Grass” is playing on steroids right now and while there is a heightened sense of national pride across certain sections of the population due to the border controversy, there is a big part of me that can’t help but to interrogate the phrase, “is we own” that is being plastered everywhere.

Waking up every day feels like both a privilege and nightmare.

I first learnt of Israel’s occupation of Palestine about 12 years ago; not through a news report,  United Nations or Amnesty International but a friend’s Facebook post after their interaction with a Palestinian man that took place as they were in a queue (if my memory serves me correctly it was a bank to be exact).

The memes about Mariah Carey defrosting have already started to circulate on my social media.

An impulsive buy, a scented candle, a bath bomb, a new essential oil, pillow mist, the list can go on and on, are all products and practices we tend to associate with self-care, a word that gets thrown around steadily that seeks to describe the way in which we tend to ourselves after we have been battered by life and all its woes.

Maybe it’s just my friends circle, but it currently feels as if everyone and their mother has a baby or one on the way and as much as I would like to tell myself and you the friendships will remain the same with just some extra planning; they evolve in a such a way that requires you  to be re-introduced to a 2.0 version of your friend.

‘Never see, come to see’ is a local idiom some of us use when we or those around us have encountered new ways of doing things or new things in general.