the curious anti-narcissist – Personal essays by Julia Cheung on the whimsy of love and self-forgetfulness.

What Makes Me So Special?

When you experience a traumatic loss like the one we did, everyone tells you to expect people to say...

I’m thinking about “parking spot” Christianity. What I mean by this is people who think that God has answered...

I couldn’t sleep on Christmas Eve and I spent the night planning an imaginary pottery studio in the basement...

The following is a guest post, written by my husband, Andrew Cheung: First it was his phone. We have...

Evan, today would have been your 19th birthday. You were just hitting your glorious, youthful prime. You hadn’t even...

Periodic Reflections on Grief and Loss Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proudBY JOHN DONNEDeath, be not proud, though some...

Fair enough to say that I am entirely obsessed. I’ve decided to pick up watercolors as both a hobby...

I was recently intrigued by an episode of RadioLab Podcast, exploring lying and liars. The episode concluded with a...

It slides in, and you wiggle it gently. There’s a soft pressure differential where you can feel a slight...

Giving has a bit of an underbelly. There’s the part of giving where you think about the recipient, and...

In the District of Columbia, we now have no: sports, shopping, gyms, vacations, new movies, the arts, parties, celebrations...

At a neighborhood happy hour last night, pleasantly buzzed and comfortable in my own skin for once (it...

This fall, I tagged along with the strongest female cyclist I know (my sister-in-law) on the Bourbon Country...

This is my husband, wearing my son’s Halloween costume, raising a frenzy on the busy street in front...

Dec 14, 2017. My foster son had his first sleepover with his biological family last night. The mixed emotions that came...

Three years ago, I was liberated from the tyranny of glasses! After that very first-world surgery, I wrote this...

For almost five years, I felt stuck. Like I was waiting at a train station, or maybe an airport. My waiting lasted from June...

I just finished my last scheduled long run of the training season. Then a week of rest, and I’ll...

You break my heart. There’s me on the left and you on the right. Ten minutes after we took this...

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill, 2006, is a portrait of childhood on the streets. And yes, it made me...