#RamadanKareem to my friends & colleagues all over the world. Whether or not you are observing #ramadan2021, I send you my best. My mom, Dr. Shireen Akter, taught gave me an empowered perspective on Ramadan, during my teenage years: "Fasting is not about starving yourself. It's about starving your mind & life of useless things so that you can reflect on who you really are, and live a life worthy of that." No doubt, I had internally rolled my teenage eyes at that time, but I h

We had a pool in our suburban home in Zimbabwe. I wanted to swim but did not know how to. So I watched other swimmers & thought about how I would move my arms and then my legs, & then breathe from side to side. But I was too scared to actually jump into the pool; my excuse was that I would first learn everything about swimming, & then I would jump into the shallow end of the pool. I practiced the front crawl in the bathtub & I chipped my front tooth for my efforts. Then, when