Dorian Hartwood

The house in Tijuana was small enough that you could hear every sigh it made when the wind pressed against the walls. The year was 2008, though it could’ve been any year that asked too much of a family.

There were six of us: my parents, my brother, two sisters, and me. The U.S. recession had spilled over the border like dark water, pulling jobs under and making everything feel thinner — money, patience, sleep. My dad’s hours came and went like a bad signal. My mom, never one to wait on luck, took...

I didn’t know I was in a war until the silence got loud.

It was a spring Sunday. Not cold, not warm — just that in-between weather where you wear a hoodie and regret it by noon. My dad and I were trimming the pomegranate tree in the backyard. The branches had gone wild over the winter, tangling into the fence like they were trying to escape.

We weren’t fighting. That’s what made it worse. It was the absence of ease — the way we tiptoed around topics, laughed a second too late, kept everything safe...

I remember the moment the compass moved.

Not an election night or a summit handshake, but a morning in early spring when a friend in manufacturing—an honest man with calloused hands and a calendar nailed to the wall—forwarded me a spreadsheet that didn’t care about anyone’s feelings. It was the kind of document...

I used to believe purpose was something you stumbled into. A career path. A calling. Maybe something your parents prayed over you, or your mentors saw in you before you ever did. But one morning — just before dawn, in the muted blue hour of a San Diego winter — I realized that wasn’t true.

I was sitting at my kitchen table, hands wrapped around a chipped mug of black coffee, staring blankly at my laptop screen. Work emails blinked in unread red. Bills collected in a slow-motion avalanche on my co...