The twinge of heritage by Anastasia Ashman

Designing la dolce vita by Karen Armstrong

It takes a virtual village by Catherine Yigit

The twinge of heritage
Mirror in Topkapı harem by A. Ashman By ANASTASIA ASHMAN Since the Ottoman royal harems were filled with women from the Mediterranean and the Baltic — Italian families even casting their daughters on the Adriatic to be picked up by the sultan’s sailors — my Turkish husband jokes he finally brought me back to Istanbul where I belong.

Designing la dolce vita
by Karen Armstrong Life design for expat women is absolutely necessary due to the unique factors in our lives: location, language skills, cultural integration and local laws, to name a few. In the spring of 1995, I was in Rome doing a semester study abroad during my junior year of college.  As often happens with those who visit the land of “la dolce vita”, I fell hard and fast in love with the Italian language and culture and vowed to return. Later, as a U.S. Navy officer, I was stationed on a ship home-ported in Japan.  Experiencing the Japanese culture was difficult as

It takes a virtual village
by Catherine Yigit We don’t meet up for coffee or playdates. In fact, on my infrequent visits to Ireland I’ve only met a few mothers from the village I turn to for parenting concerns. Instead, we’re tied together by a link to Ireland and an internet connection. In the last six years we’ve supported each other through relationship problems, illnesses, multiple pregnancies and births, several miscarriages, three weddings, one stillbirth and a marriage breakup. We come from a range of backgrounds and educational levels; all work, some outside the home and some as full-time mothers. Plus, we share the extra b

Journey to Jerusalem
By Holly Warah Due to the political discord, my family had put off a trip to Jerusalem for years. We decided to do it in 2008. I would return to the Old City, so magical and meaningful to me, and my husband Sami would visit his family after nearly a decade. Our children were excited to see their father’s country, but scared to visit this place so associated with conflict. They had a rough idea of our family history: their mother, a girl from Washington State, travelled to Palestine and snatched up their father, a boy from Bethlehem. She fell in love with him and with

Writing to save your life
By Jo Parfitt I started a diary at 11 years old, excitement such as ‘got up, had breakfast, went to school’. When adolescence caught me in its clutches my journaling went up a gear. Private writing became my friend, my confidante and my saviour when I became a serial expat in 1987, following my brand new husband from the UK to Dubai. I could ramble away, examining my thoughts, dreams, ideas, pain and joy, even before I knew the value of writing as therapy and how the defining moments in our lives become our personal story. Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones started me on that journey, with Sheila