Last week I shared a story about how an experience I had during our year abroad put me in the shoes of any new immigrant who’s ever come to America. It’s impossible to understand the difficulty of being a stranger in an unfamiliar land until you experience it firsthand. That’s why I did a little dance when I discovered the nonpartisan, nonprofit, Welcoming America.
The heavy Florida humidity filtered through the air conditioner outside Sister Margaret Mary’s office. My labored asthmatic breath left me in a position to simply observe the goings-on of the…
Last week’s post highlighted the rewards of going abroad to get “educated” — a valuable endeavor, to be sure. However, plenty of children around the world don’t even have the luxury…
The cheers in the stairway reverberated off the walls, giving us goosebumps as we waited to ascend into Scuola Mazzini in Genoa, Italy. It wasn’t easy to have all eyes…
I can shout from the mountaintops until I’m blue in the face about how valuable and important it is to get out of our cultural bubbles. Since I want to…
Growing up far from my big fat Italian roots in Chicago, the only cultural underpinnings that piggybacked into my adulthood were a determination to learn the language, a magnetic draw…
As the very first donation post, I’m excited to feature a non-profit whose work resonates with what I’m looking to advance as I launch BecomingBetterPeople. The mission of StoryCorps is…
What is Becoming Better People? I’ve previously shared the motive behind this blog and how I intend to use it. Here’s a recap: Becoming Better People is a platform for personal…
We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For There’s a hack out there that says “Believe it to become it”: if you act as though you already are some aspect…
Becoming Better as a New National Narrative Deep down I’ve always been an optimist. Despite plenty of reasons to focus on the negative, the gradual trajectory toward “better” in my…