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The following essay, "Menstruation as a Dialogue with the Dao," was originally written in Vietnamese by Hiếu Đức and shared on his Facebook page. I was deeply moved by the way he weaves together traditional philosophy, Daoist principles, observations of the feminine cycle, and reflections on living in harmony with life's natural seasons. Because many of my readers may not read Vietnamese, I have prepared this English translation to make his words accessible to a wider audienc

Lately, I’ve been wearing my parents’ wedding bands. Two simple gold circles. Quiet. Ordinary. Easy to overlook. But to me, they hold an entire universe. My parents stopped wearing these rings a long time ago—after they decided their marriage was a failure. For years, I carried that story in my body, even if I didn’t always have words for it. Because when your parents are unhappy, you don’t just witness it…you absorb it. Somewhere inside, my inner child held a painful belief:

I sat in the garden this morning with a cup of cacao warming my palms, letting myself sink into the quiet of a Slow Monday. I created these Mondays as a commitment to myself, a non-negotiable ritual to calm my nervous system after a lifetime of alarm clocks, urgency, expectation, productivity… and survival. For the first time in days, I wasn’t rushing. I wasn’t bracing. I wasn’t performing. And that’s when it surfaced… the memory I never allowed into the sunlight, the one I b

Sometimes the smallest acts of self-care can open the deepest doors to healing. For me, that door was my own face — the one I never thought to nurture beyond skincare. I had already been practicing Qi Gong and Yin Yoga daily, finding calm through movement and breath. But when I stumbled across a simple face acupressure video on YouTube one night, I decided to give it a try, thinking it would just be a way to keep my skin glowing and youthful. I had no idea it would change how