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THE QUIET REBELLION
I built my media company in Pakistan when everyone told me not to. Pakistan’s youth proved them wrong.When I told people I was building my media company in Pakistan, the warnings came fast.Be careful.Why would you do that?Do you have security?My followers acted like I’d announced I was relocating to an active war zone. Some of them literally thought I was going to Afghanistan.One message said: “You’re a Gora. Be careful out there.”For those who don’t know: gora is a slang term some Pakistanis use for white foreigners. And yes, I’m very white. Italian-Canadian. Loud. Zero filter. I stand out. I don’t blend. I’m not mysterious. I’m not subtle. I’m a walking neon sign.But here’s what those warnings ignored: I’d been working with fourteen Pakistanis for a year and a half. Remotely. Building my company from Canada while they built it from Lahore and Islamabad. Day after day. Deadline after deadline. They showed up early, stayed late, pushed back when I was wrong, and delivered work that was better than anything I’d paid for in Toronto or New York.So I came to Pakistan to meet the people who were already building my company.What I found wasn’t what North America thinks Pakistan is.It was a country in the middle of a quiet revolution—economic, generational, personal—and the West is too busy clinging to its old story to notice.The Flight Everyone QuestionedThe warnings started the moment I booked the ticket.Friends: “Have you told your family?”My mother: “Why can’t you run it from here?”Random people online: “Do you have a security detail?”The subtext was always the same: Pakistan is dangerous. Pakistan is backwards. Pakistan is a place people like me don’t belong.I get why people think that. The narrative has been sold for decades: Pakistan equals instability. Terrorism. Poverty. Religious extremism. A place to fear, not a place to build.But fear based on what?None of the people messaging me had been there. None of them had worked with Pakistanis. They were reacting to a story they’d absorbed, not a reality they’d experienced.I’d spent eighteen months working with my team through Zoom calls and What’s App messages—watching them solve problems, build systems, ship product, and handle pressure with the kind of calm competence that makes you realize how much of North American “professionalism” is just performance. I knew what they could do.What I didn’t know was who they were beyond the screen.So I went.And the moment I landed, I realized how much of what we’re told about Pakistan is less about Pakistan—and more about the West needing somewhere to project its fear.I Didn’t Do Pakistan a FavorLet me be clear about something before we go any further: I didn’t build my company in Pakistan out of charity. I didn’t do it because I’m noble. I didn’t do it because I wanted to “help.”I built here because the talent is better—and North America is pricing itself out of relevance.Here’s the math that no one wants to discuss at dinner parties:In late 2025, the United States imposed a $100,000 fee tied to new H-1B visa petitions. One hundred thousand dollars to hire a single skilled foreign worker—on top of the existing filing costs.The stated goal was to force American companies to hire Americans instead of foreign workers.The real result is a brain drain with consequences no one wants to own.A huge share of H-1B holders are Indian and Pakistani professionals—software engineers, data scientists, doctors, researchers, the kind of people who built the modern economy. People with graduate degrees and specialized skills. People American companies depend on.And when you make it that expensive—or that humiliating—to hire them, you don’t suddenly create a domestic workforce overnight.You just push talent away.Canada tried to capitalize on that shift. But Canada is also becoming unlivable for many people. The cost of living is punishing. Housing is obscene. Winters are brutal. And immigrants get tired of being treated like they should be grateful for the privilege of enriching a country that still keeps them slightly outside the circle.So people go home.And here’s the part North America still isn’t saying out loud: Pakistan is ready for them.The Economy We Refuse to SeeThe numbers don’t lie, even when the narrative does.In October 2025, Pakistan’s IT exports hit a record $386 million in a single month.Pakistan’s broader targets are even more ambitious: multi-billion-dollar annual IT exports now, with a stated push toward $10 billion in the coming years.Pakistan has a deep pool of English-speaking IT and business-process professionals, and tens of thousands of new tech graduates each year trained in the same languages and frameworks Silicon Valley uses: Python, JavaScript, React, Node, backend systems, full-stack engineering. This isn’t “cheap labor.” It’s modern talent.And yes—Pakistan’s developers cost dramatically less than North American developers.Not because they’re less skilled.Because currency exchange rates make the same work cheaper in dollars. Because a massive, young workforce creates scale. Because Pakistan’s economic instability—devastating for everyday people—has created a brutal reality: their world-class skill is undervalued in Western currency.The work is the work. The quality is the quality. The only thing that changes is what the West pays for it.And while the West argues about immigration, Pakistan keeps building.Large multinational companies have long had operations in Pakistan—real engineering, consulting, and R&D work. Not the caricature of “call centers reading scripts.” Actual technical infrastructure.So when Western companies can’t bring talent in, they don’t stop needing the talent.They move the work out.Which means Pakistan gains economic power while North America pays them to do it.I didn’t do Pakistan a favor by building my company here.Pakistan made my business possible.My TeamI landed in Lahore on a Sunday Evening.The air was warm, even in January. The city hit me immediately: the hum of traffic, the honking, the street vendors, the call to prayer echoing in the distance. Lahore didn’t feel like a place people were “surviving.” It felt like a place that was alive—messy, loud, layered, and moving.My CTO and my assistant met me at the airport in Lahore. They’d hired a driver—steady, unbothered, navigating the city with the kind of calm that comes from knowing exactly where you are.I was only in Pakistan for three days. Lahore was my entire world during that time.We didn’t go straight to the hotel. We went to dinner.They took me to the Lahore Polo Club, and it immediately dismantled whatever expectations I’d arrived with. The grounds were immaculate. Green, expansive, elegant. It felt layered—historical without being stuck, refined without trying to impress.The food was exceptional. Deeply flavored, intentional, generous. The kind of meal that makes you question how often you’ve accepted “good enough” elsewhere without realizing it.But what stayed with me most wasn’t the food.It was the atmosphere.The service wasn’t performative. The staff weren’t rushing or resentful or going through motions. There was pride there. Ease. A sense that they belonged to something that worked.It was my first real moment of dissonance. Pakistan wasn’t matching the story I’d been told.Before we talked about work—before platforms, logistics, timelines—I gave them the floor.And that mattered.They were honest with me in a way that took courage.They told me they were scared.Not of the work. Not of the ambition. But of what Between the Covers represents.BTC is real. It speaks the truth. And in Canada, that truth includes conversations around LGBTQ identities, cannabis, bodily autonomy, and systems that don’t align neatly with Pakistani culture or religion.They worried about what it would mean to bring a magazine known for honesty into a context where honesty carries different risks. Different responsibilities. Different consequences.They weren’t asking me to dilute BTC. They weren’t asking me to censor it.They were asking whether BTC Pakistan would listen before it spoke.That conversation mattered more than any strategy meeting could have.We talked about Pakistan having one of the largest youth populations in the world. About how young people here are deeply aware of global conversations—but also deeply rooted in faith, family, and cultural responsibility. About how many Pakistanis leave to work in Dubai or abroad, and how many come back not because they failed—but because they want to build something at home.And that’s when the direction of BTC Pakistan became clear.Pakistan doesn’t need a magazine for women aged 35 to 65 modeled on Western exhaustion. That story doesn’t fit here.BTC Pakistan will be younger.It will speak to a generation navigating ambition, belief, identity, economics, and change—often all at once. A generation that is educated, globally fluent, politically aware, and deeply conscious of its cultural and religious frameworks.This isn’t about importing Canadian conversations and forcing them onto a different society.It’s about creating a platform that reflects the reality Pakistani youth are already living—their questions, their pressures, their hopes, their contradictions.I wasn’t there to tell them what BTC Pakistan would be.I was there to listen to what it needed to be.That conversation—open, careful, honest—was its own kind of rebellion. Not loud. Not performative. Just people choosing integrity over convenience.And it set the tone for everything that comes next.The Generation North America IgnoresPakistan has one of the largest youth populations in the world. Roughly two-thirds of the country is under 30.Think about that.A country the West writes off as “dangerous” is mostly young—ambitious, impatient, educated, connected, and done waiting for permission.And they’re not just building apps and startups. They’re pushing for accountability. For change. For a democracy that functions.In 2025, Pakistan’s youth showed up again and again despite arrests, internet shutdowns, suspended mobile service, and state pressure designed to exhaust them.They kept showing up.Imran Khan—former cricket star, former prime minister—has been in prison since 2023, serving multiple sentences on corruption charges he says are politically motivated. His supporters argue the same. And international scrutiny has intensified around reports of detention conditions.Whether you love him or hate him, his imprisonment has become a symbol: for political suppression, for institutional power, for the cost of dissent.And young Pakistanis understand that symbolism.My team is part of this generation.We don’t sit around debating politics in meetings. That’s not my lane and not my right to center. But I see something political in how they work: the conviction. The insistence that the future can be built, not begged for.In Toronto, young people are exhausted. Burned out. They’ve been sold hustle culture, then priced out of the life hustle promised. They’re working harder for less and being told to “practice gratitude” for the privilege.In Pakistan, young people are exhausted too—but in a different way.They’re tired of being underestimated.So they build anyway.What I Found in PakistanI met two Types Pakistans.The first is the one the West rarely acknowledges: old money and young millionaires. Families who built empires. Entrepreneurs who run logistics, textiles, tech, real estate. People living lives Canadians assume only exist in Dubai or London. Beautiful homes. Impeccable food. A level of luxury that makes Toronto look modest.I had dinner with a family connected to major industry. The house was marble and light. Art on walls that belonged in galleries. The meal served with a kind of ritual seriousness that made me want to straighten my posture.We talked about supply chains and global markets and the way Pakistan is positioned in a world that loves using Pakistan for labor but refuses to give Pakistan credit for competence.The patriarch, in his sixties and sharp as hell, said something I couldn’t stop thinking about:“The West thinks we need them. We don’t. They need us. They just haven’t realized it yet.”The second Pakistan is the one the West uses as its whole story: young people who want change, who want freedom, who want the right to speak without being punished for it. People who are brilliant and ambitious and working nonstop—and still struggling because systems are inconsistent, corruption is real, inflation is brutal, and opportunity doesn’t always match effort.Both Pakistans exist. Both are real. And that’s what the West refuses to do: hold complexity.We want simple narratives. Pakistan is either a dangerous hellscape or an undiscovered paradise.But Pakistan is complicated. Like every place that’s alive.The Hospitality North America MisunderstandsI stayed at Lahore Grande, a boutique hotel in Lahore. The owner, Aisha, made me feel at home in a way that didn’t feel like service.Within a day, she knew how I took my coffee. She knew I worked late and slept in. She knew I was constantly in motion, constantly thinking, constantly half-stressed even when I’m pretending I’m not.Every morning, she asked about my plans. If I mentioned wanting to see something, it was arranged. If I looked tired, tea appeared. If I came back frustrated, someone noticed before I had to say anything.One night, I returned to the hotel carrying the kind of tension you can’t hide. A meeting earlier that day hadn’t gone the way I’d hoped. Decisions were heavier than they’d felt that morning. The familiar questions had started looping: Was I moving too fast? Was I underestimating the risks? Was I asking too much of people I barely knew in person?I hadn’t said a word. I hadn’t complained. But somehow, it was visible anyway.Aisha noticed before I made it past the lobby.She didn’t ask what went wrong. She didn’t offer solutions. She didn’t try to fix anything. She simply asked if I wanted tea, without a word she poured it, and said quietly, “Don’t work to much.”It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t sentimental. It was simply true.And it landed harder than any motivational speech ever could.This is the part North America consistently misunderstands about Pakistani hospitality. We mistake it for politeness. For softness. For deference. We assume warmth means people are easy to exploit, easy to overrun, easy to take advantage of.That assumption is wrong.Hospitality in Pakistan isn’t weakness. It’s intelligence. It’s awareness. It’s a deeply ingrained understanding that people do their best work when they feel safe, seen, and respected.In North America, we perform friendliness to close deals. We smile, network, exchange cards, connect on LinkedIn, and then disappear the moment the transaction ends. Relationships are provisional. Conditional. Useful until they’re not.In Pakistan, hospitality is relational, not transactional. It’s an investment in trust. It’s the long game. It’s understanding that business, loyalty, and reputation are built through consistency—not optics.You’re welcomed not so you’ll owe something later, but so you’ll stay. So you’ll return. So you’ll build something that lasts.That night, sitting in a quiet lobby in Lahore, it became clear to me that what I was experiencing wasn’t kindness for show. It was cultural confidence. The kind that doesn’t need to announce itself. The kind that knows its value without demanding recognition for it.North America confuses loudness with strength. Pakistan understands that steadiness is power.And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.What This Means for Between the CoversI’m announcing something here that will surprise some people and make perfect sense to others:Between the Covers is expanding to Pakistan.Not just Marbella. Not just Canada. Pakistan.BTC Pakistan will launch in 2026.And before anyone asks: yes, it’s still a magazine for women. But for different reasons than Canada or Marbella.In Canada, BTC exists because women are exhausted from performing. From being told to lean in, optimize, self-care, practice gratitude, and somehow stay beautiful and productive while the world keeps extracting from them.In Marbella, BTC exists because women want luxury without the bullshit. Not aspirational branding. Not perfection theatre. Just real life with better lighting.In Pakistan, BTC will exist because women are navigating a different set of systemic barriers—and still building businesses, raising families, and shaping change inside constraints most Western women don’t have to think about.I’m not going to pretend I fully understand what Pakistani women need yet. I’ve been here once. I met incredible women—smart, ambitious, building empires while navigating restrictions I don’t face and never will.But I know this:Pakistani women don’t need me to save them. They need a platform that doesn’t patronize them.They need stories that reflect their actual lives—not the “exotic Pakistan” bullshit Western media sells. They need a magazine that understands rebellion looks different depending on what systems you’re refusing.And they need it run by Pakistanis.My team will build BTC Pakistan. Not me. I’ll fund it. Support it. Protect the vision. But Pakistani editors will run it. Pakistani writers will shape it. Because they understand the terrain in ways I never will.That’s not virtue signaling.That’s respect.The Truth About PakistanI’ve lived around the world. I’ve worked in multiple countries. I’ve seen wealth, poverty, innovation, corruption, beauty, violence.And I’m telling you: I see more truth in Pakistan than I see in North America.More directness. More genuine connection. More people who say what they mean instead of performing what they think you want to hear.In Toronto, people smile and nod and ghost you. In New York, everyone’s networking. In LA, everyone’s a brand. In Vancouver, everyone’s performing wellness while quietly falling apart.In Pakistan, when someone commits, they commit. When someone says you’re family, it often isn’t a line. When they invite you in, you’re inside. Fully.And yes—before anyone accuses me of romanticizing—Pakistan has real, severe problems. Poverty. Corruption. Political repression. Violence against women that makes my blood boil. Systems that need dismantling and rebuilding from the ground up.I’m not pretending Pakistan is perfect.I’m saying the West has decided Pakistan is only its problems—and that decision is lazy.Because while the West warns people like me not to go, Pakistan is building an economy the West now depends on.While the West clings to superiority, Pakistan’s youth are building leverage.Quietly. Strategically. Without asking for permission.The RebellionHere’s what rebellion looks like now:It’s building your company in Pakistan when everyone tells you not to.It’s highly skilled Pakistani professionals walking away from Western systems that tax their existence and returning home to build something better.It’s youth demanding accountability while also building the infrastructure of the future—one line of code, one startup, one business, one refusal at a time.It’s women navigating barriers and still building empires, raising families, and refusing silence.It’s hospitality as strategy, not weakness.It’s proving North American assumptions wrong not by arguing with them—but by outworking them.There’s a revolution happening in Pakistan. Quiet. Economic. Political. Personal.While North America was busy warning me, Pakistan was building the workforce the world now needs.I came to Pakistan expecting to meet employees.I found people building a country while the rest of the world looks away.That’s not hospitality.That’s rebellion.And Between the Covers Pakistan will tell that story.Because if there’s one thing I learned in Pakistan, it’s this: the people the West has been taught to fear are already building the future. And we’re too arrogant to see it.Between the Covers recognizes the importance of responsible storytelling and affirms that this feature is not intended to speak on behalf of Pakistani citizens, institutions, or movements. The publication respects Pakistan’s cultural, political, and social diversity and supports local editorial leadership in all regional editions.
ASMA JAHANGIR: The Woman Who Said No First
Every rebellion needs an origin story. Asma Jahangir is Pakistan’s.At 18, she marched to the Supreme Court to demand her father’s release from military detention. He had been imprisoned for speaking against the government’s actions in East Pakistan—what the world would later recognize as genocide in Bangladesh. Most teenagers wouldn’t know where to begin. Asma filed a petition.She won.That victory—Asma Jilani v. Government of Punjab—became a landmark constitutional case. It established that even military governments could not detain citizens without legal justification. She was barely an adult, and she had already handed the Pakistani state its first lesson in accountability.She never stopped teaching.What She BuiltIn 1980, Asma and her sister Hina Jilani founded AGHS Legal Aid Cell—Pakistan’s first law firm run entirely by women. Their clients were the people everyone else refused: Christians facing death sentences under blasphemy laws. Women accused of adultery for being raped. Bonded laborers. Teenagers on death row. The voiceless, the erased, the inconvenient.She co-founded the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. She co-founded the Women’s Action Forum. She became the first woman elected President of the Supreme Court Bar Association in 2010—after decades of men telling her she didn’t belong in courtrooms at all.The United Nations appointed her Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, then Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion. She investigated human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, Israeli settlements, and Iran. She stood on international stages and said what needed saying, even when governments wanted her silent.Especially then.The CostIn 1983, police beat, tear-gassed, and arrested Asma during protests against laws that reduced a woman’s legal testimony to half a man’s. She was imprisoned. Then placed under house arrest. Then imprisoned again.In 1995, she defended two Christian teenagers accused of blasphemy. Mobs surrounded the courthouse. They smashed her car. They threatened her children. She sent her children abroad to keep them safe—and kept showing up to court.In 1999, a gunman walked into her office and shot a client dead. The bullet missed Hina by inches. The client, Samia Imran, had come seeking help to escape an abusive marriage. Her own family had ordered the killing.Asma didn’t stop taking cases.In 2007, Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule and had her detained. She spent months under house arrest. In 2012, U.S. intelligence uncovered a plot by Pakistani security officials to have her assassinated.She kept going.Why She MattersAsma Jahangir didn’t just challenge laws. She challenged the assumption that laws were unchallengeable.She defended people accused of blasphemy in a country where that accusation is a death sentence—social if not legal. She fought honor killings when the culture called them tradition. She represented women accused of adultery for the crime of being raped, then watched courts overturn unjust verdicts because she refused to let them stand.She made rebellion look possible.Every woman in Pakistan who starts a business, builds a platform, or speaks without permission is walking a path Asma cleared. She didn’t do it politely. She didn’t do it quietly. She did it while governments tried to silence her, mobs tried to kill her, and critics called her a traitor.“I cannot bear to live where there is so much injustice and I cannot do something about it,” she once said. “What kind of a torturous life is that?”The InheritanceAsma Jahangir died of a heart attack on February 11, 2018. She was 66. The day before, she had spoken at a protest demanding justice for a young Pashtun man killed by police. She called the detained children of Swat “her own kids.” She was still fighting.Her name means world conqueror. Her legacy is simpler—and fiercer: she proved that one woman’s refusal to accept injustice can reshape what an entire nation believes is possible.Aleena Mohsin Mughal builds ethical fashion empires.Shameelah Ismail restructures who gets to earn.Myra Qureshi dismantles toxic beauty standards through market power.They stand on ground Asma Jahangir broke open with her bare hands.She said no first. She said no loudest. And she never, ever stopped.
The Thirty-Two: When TV Chose Kites Over Bodies
At 1:38 PM on February 6, 2026, CCTV captured the exact moment a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the Khadija Tul Kubra Mosque in Islamabad. Security guards had stopped him at the entrance. He opened fire. Then he walked into a hall packed with Shia worshippers mid-Friday prayer and blew himself up.Thirty-two people died. One hundred and seventy were injured. Glass and debris scattered across bloodied floors. Victims visible in the mosque's garden. Families running. Ambulances screaming toward hospitals already placing surgical teams on standby.And on Pakistani television? Kites.For hours after the bombing—the deadliest attack in Islamabad in seventeen years—major TV channels continued airing Basant festival programming. Celebrity interviews about kite-flying. Entertainment segments. Cheerful coverage of Lahore's spring celebration. Geo TV had actor Naeema Butt discussing Basant just as news of the blast broke.The contrast wasn't subtle. It raised a question that applies far beyond Pakistan: What does it mean when a country's major news channels continue entertainment programming while the capital buries its dead?I have a team in Islamabad. They texted me within minutes of the blast. My first instinct was to turn on the television—the way you do when something catastrophic happens, when you need to see it to believe it.Basant coverage was still running.I've seen this before. I lived in Bahrain during their internal conflict. I know what it looks like when certain communities' deaths become routine enough that regular programming continues. I know the math that gets done—consciously or not—when news organizations decide which bodies merit interrupting the schedule.My best friend is Shia. So I know what it costs to be the community that gets calculated away.This isn't theoretical for me. This is what I watched happen, again, on February 6.The Metrics That Should Have MatteredBy every traditional news standard, the Islamabad bombing should have dominated coverage:Deadliest attack in the capital since the 2008 Marriott Hotel bombingSecond major attack in three months (November courthouse bombing killed twelve)Happened during Friday prayers—maximum casualties, maximum horrorCCTV footage of the exact explosion momentISIS claimed responsibility within hoursInternational condemnation from the UN, EU, USA cousin of Islamabad's own Inspector General among the deadPakistani print media covered it extensively. Dawn ran comprehensive reporting. Express Tribune documented the aftermath. International outlets from Al Jazeera to CNN to the Washington Post covered it immediately.But in Pakistan, television is how most people consume news. And for hours, television showed kites.Were editors waiting for verified information? Avoiding broadcasting graphic scenes? Operating under regulatory constraints? Worried about inflaming sectarian tensions?Perhaps. But Journalism Pakistan, a media watchdog, noted that "critics linked extended entertainment coverage to commercial interests and advertising." The Islamabad Bar Association called for a day of mourning.Whatever the internal reasoning, the result was the same: viewers who turned on their TVs while the injured were still being pulled from the mosque saw spring festival coverage instead of the deadliest attack their capital had seen in nearly two decades.The Pattern That Precedes the SilencePakistan's Shia community represents about twenty percent of the population—roughly fifty million people. They've been systematically targeted for decades. ISIS explicitly stated after this attack that it views Pakistani Shias as "legitimate targets." This bombing wasn't anomalous: the 2017 shrine attack killed ninety-plus, regular attacks plague Kurram district, sectarian violence that analysts warned would "inflame tensions" continues.There's a calculation that happens—conscious or not—when news organizations decide what merits urgent coverage. Commercial considerations. Political pressure. Audience fatigue with certain types of violence. The normalization that happens when specific communities are targeted so regularly that each new massacre becomes, somehow, less newsworthy than the last.You can call this systemic bias. You can call it market forces. You can call it editorial caution. But you can't call it coverage.The Narrative That Moved FasterWithin hours, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif blamed Afghanistan and India for the attack—claims made without immediate evidence, rejected by both countries. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi announced four arrests including an "Afghan ISIS mastermind." The narrative took shape quickly: foreign enemies, cross-border terrorism, external threats.What got less attention: This was the second major Islamabad attack in three months. The bomber operated freely in a heavily guarded capital. When asked about security lapses, Naqvi responded that "if one blast happens, 99 others are being foiled."Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad interviewed people after the bombing. "They say this is a lapse of security," he reported, "that authorities knew very well there was an imminent threat, given the fact that intelligence-based operations are going on in Balochistan and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province."Whether through coordination or coincidence, the extended entertainment coverage meant fewer hours of uncomfortable questions about how thirty-two people died in Friday prayers while intelligence agencies were supposedly conducting operations against known threats.It's easier to watch kites.The Mechanics of DisappearanceThis is how marginalized communities disappear in real-time. Not through dramatic censorship or obvious propaganda, but through the accumulated weight of editorial decisions that—individually—might seem defensible. Waiting for confirmation. Avoiding graphic content. Balancing competing priorities. Considering audience appetite.But when those decisions consistently result in certain communities' deaths receiving delayed or diminished coverage, the pattern reveals something darker than any single choice.The victims' families buried their dead on Saturday. Thousands gathered for funeral prayers. Coffins lined up. Mourners screaming. All of it well-documented by photographers whose images ran in international media.But for hours on February 6, while bodies were still being identified, Pakistani viewers who turned on their TVs saw entertainment programming.You could argue this was editorial judgment. Caution. Market-driven programming decisions. Fear of inflaming tensions.You could also ask: How many times does this have to happen before the pattern becomes the point?What Gets CountedThere's a reason print media covered this and television delayed. Print doesn't rely as heavily on advertising from festivals and consumer brands. Print doesn't face the same regulatory pressures. Print can afford to publish uncomfortable truths and wait for subscribers to find them.But television's reach dwarfs print's. Television shapes what most people understand as urgent, important, newsworthy. And on February 6, television made a choice about what mattered most.This matters beyond Pakistan. Every marginalized community worldwide knows this calculation. Knows their grief only becomes news when it's profitable or politically convenient. Knows that some deaths will lead broadcasts while others won't interrupt regularly scheduled programming.The mechanics aren't subtle. They're mathematical. The question is whether we're willing to name what the math reveals about whose humanity gets counted and whose gets calculated away.The Names You Don't KnowThirty-two people died on February 6. Their names were printed in Dawn, Express Tribune, international outlets. Their families held funerals while TV aired festival coverage.Analysts warned after the bombing that it could be part of a broader attempt to inflame sectarian tensions. They urged the government to take action against urban militant networks. They noted the danger of normalization.But something was already normalized: that certain deaths aren't urgent news. That commercial and political pressures can delay coverage of mass casualties. That you can have bodies in a mosque and kites on screen, and the kites win.This isn't speculation. It's what happened. The interpretation is yours.But if this pattern continues—if the next attack on a marginalized community receives the same delayed coverage while entertainment programming runs—we'll know it wasn't an aberration.It was a choice.And systems don't build themselves—but they do sustain themselves.Joseph Tito is the Editor-in-Chief of Between the Covers. He operates businesses in both Canada and Pakistan and has teams in Lahore and Islamabad.
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Winning Her Way: How Melissa Grelo Redefines Success
THE NOTE WAITING IN HER HOTEL ROOMMelissa Grelo was on the brink of one of the boldest moves of her career - a wellness retreat built on her Aging Powerfully platform, the passion project she’s nurtured alongside running a podcast, parenting an 11-year-old, and hosting The Social, Canada’s most-watched daytime talk show. Her daughter, Marquesa, had tucked a note into her bag with strict instructions: Don’t open until you get there.Alone in her hotel room, minutes before leading a room full of women who’d come to learn from her and the group of experts she had curated, Melissa finally opened it. On the first page, in her daughter’s unmistakably confident handwriting:I am so proud of you.“It was a very long letter,” Melissa laughs now. “She’s a very prolific writer. Her vocabulary is fabulous.”But the message was simple: Go. Do this. I’m good. I’m cheering for you.This is what it looks like when a woman builds a life that supports her joy - and raises a daughter who sees and celebrates it.THE GAME IS RIGGED. SHE PLAYS IT ANYWAY.Let’s get something straight: Melissa Grelo hasn’t come undone. She’s building a life, a career, and a rhythm that reflect her strengths, not society’s expectations. What she has done is thrive in an industry where women, especially those on camera, still face extra layers of scrutiny: age, appearance, composure, perfection. Viewers often expect media personalities to be flawless, polished, and ever-present, even when their lives are evolving behind the scenes.And still, Melissa moves forward with clarity and confidence.When The Social finally premiered, it wasn’t just another show for her. It was something she had dreamed up, pitched, and championed for years. So even though she was only 11 weeks postpartum, she chose to be there - excited, grateful, and fully aware of the significance of stepping into a project she had helped bring to life.“I went back to work really fast after I had her,” she says calmly. Not apologizing. Not justifying. Simply acknowledging that the moment mattered to her. She wanted to show up for something she had helped build.Men call this dedication. Women are often told it’s “balance.” But the truth is simpler: Melissa followed her ambition and trusted herself.WHEN HER BODY HIT PAUSE, SHE HIT RESETA year and a half after Marquesa was born, Melissa was hosting Your Morning and The Social. Early mornings, long days, big interviews, and two live shows that demanded focus and energy. Her career was expanding quickly, and she was embracing every opportunity that came with it. Mid-flight to Calgary, her body signaled it was time to calibrate - dizziness, racing heart, the kind of symptoms that demand attention. Doctors checked her vitals: all perfect.The lesson wasn’t “slow down,” it was “support yourself.”She did exactly that. Therapy. A later call time. And a more intentional approach to her already full life.“I’m very bad at resting,” she admits with a smile. “I’ve always been foot-to-the-floor.”But instead of pushing harder, she adjusted smarter. She didn’t crumble; she evolved.THE MATH OF MODERN PARENTHOODMelissa had Marquesa at 36, and like many parents who have children later in life, she occasionally does the quiet calculations – how old she’ll be at major milestones, how life stages might line up. “Always, always,” she says. “Everybody does the math.”But here's what the math doesn't consider: wisdom. Experience. A fully formed self."What we feel like we might be behind in or losing in age, we've gained in wisdom," she says. "We're bringing a whole different self to parenting."Her daughter gets the version of Melissa who knows who she is. Who lived a full life first. Who built a career and collected stories and mistakes and victories before motherhood.This Melissa doesn't crumble when the culture whispers that she's "aging out." She launches a podcast called Aging Powerfully and fills a retreat with women who want what she's modeling: strength without shame."I'm going to be the youngest version of my age at every step of the way."CHOOSING A FAMILY PLAN THAT FITS THEIR LIFEAfter four years of fertility treatment and two clinics, Melissa conceived naturally the very summer The Social was greenlit.Later, when she and her husband Ryan discussed having a second child, they communicated honestly and without pressure.“I’m not slowing down,” she told him. “If we have another, lead caregiving will fall on you.”They talked it through. They both had ambitions. They chose one child. A thoughtful, mutual decision.No guilt. No external expectations. Just a family designing a life that makes sense for them.“I’m very proud of how I’ve navigated the challenges,” she says, recognizing her own growth and the strength in choosing intentionally.RAISING A DAUGHTER WHO KNOWS SHE BELONGSPeople often ask ambitious mothers how they teach their daughters that they can “have it all,” but Melissa reframes the question. For her, the focus is helping her daughter understand that when challenges arise, the issue isn’t her, it’s the world she’s moving through.The approach in their household is simple and open. “There are no secrets in our family,” she says. “Just living life.”Marquesa knows the real stories behind Melissa’s journey - the fertility challenges, the anxiety attack, and the truth of what ambition can cost and give. She also sees something her mother developed later in life: strong boundaries.“She has boundaries very clear in a way I didn’t figure out until my mid or late 30s,” Melissa says. “When my daughter sees me pushing myself too hard because I don’t have good boundaries, she already does.”Their connection is built in everyday moments. At bedtime, Melissa asks: “What makes you feel loved?” and “What moments matter most?” And the answers are always the same - braiding her hair, cuddling on the couch, the rituals that make her feel safe and seen.It’s presence over perfection. Consistency over performance. Love woven into the ordinary parts of life.THE COSTUME AND THE TRUTHEvery morning, Melissa puts on the polished on-air version of herself. Every night, she settles into sweatpants on the couch.“This is who I am,” she tells her daughter. “Work-Mommy is a costume.”Marquesa prefers the no-makeup version.Melissa even built a clothing line - MARQ, named after her daughter, because she wanted kids to feel free before the world labels them.“I’m not throwing gender expectations on a child who still has placenta on her,” she jokes.Their house uses RuPaul’s Drag Race and Love Island as jumping-off points for conversations about character and confidence.“What’s more important than being pretty?” Melissa asks.Marquesa never hesitates: Being smart. Being kind.CHOOSING A FAMILY PLAN THAT FITS THEIR LIFEAfter four years of fertility treatment and two clinics, Melissa conceived naturally the very summer The Social was greenlit.Later, when she and her husband Ryan discussed having a second child, they communicated honestly and without pressure.“I’m not slowing down,” she told him. “If we have another, lead caregiving will fall on you.”They talked it through. They both had ambitions. They chose one child. A thoughtful, mutual decision.No guilt. No external expectations. Just a family designing a life that makes sense for them.“I’m very proud of how I’ve navigated the challenges,” she says, recognizing her own growth and the strength in choosing intentionally.RAISING A DAUGHTER WHO KNOWS SHE BELONGSPeople often ask ambitious mothers how they teach their daughters that they can “have it all,” but Melissa reframes the question. For her, the focus is helping her daughter understand that when challenges arise, the issue isn’t her, it’s the world she’s moving through.The approach in their household is simple and open. “There are no secrets in our family,” she says. “Just living life.”Marquesa knows the real stories behind Melissa’s journey - the fertility challenges, the anxiety attack, and the truth of what ambition can cost and give. She also sees something her mother developed later in life: strong boundaries.“She has boundaries very clear in a way I didn’t figure out until my mid or late 30s,” Melissa says. “When my daughter sees me pushing myself too hard because I don’t have good boundaries, she already does.”Their connection is built in everyday moments. At bedtime, Melissa asks: “What makes you feel loved?” and “What moments matter most?” And the answers are always the same - braiding her hair, cuddling on the couch, the rituals that make her feel safe and seen.It’s presence over perfection. Consistency over performance. Love woven into the ordinary parts of life.THE COSTUME AND THE TRUTHEvery morning, Melissa puts on the polished on-air version of herself. Every night, she settles into sweatpants on the couch.“This is who I am,” she tells her daughter. “Work-Mommy is a costume.”Marquesa prefers the no-makeup version.Melissa even built a clothing line - MARQ, named after her daughter, because she wanted kids to feel free before the world labels them.“I’m not throwing gender expectations on a child who still has placenta on her,” she jokes.Their house uses RuPaul’s Drag Race and Love Island as jumping-off points for conversations about character and confidence.“What’s more important than being pretty?” Melissa asks.Marquesa never hesitates: Being smart. Being kind.WINNING LOOKS DIFFERENT THAN THEY TOLD USOur interview took place on Melissa’s train ride home, a quiet moment in her busy day. As the train pulls into the station, Melissa gathers her things. Ryan is on pickup duty. Tomorrow she’ll do it all again, the work she loves, the routines she cherishes, a life she’s built intentionally.Tonight, she’ll braid Marquesa’s hair. She’ll ask the questions that matter. She’ll settle into the couch as her real self.The version that is fully present.The version that embraces every part of her life with intention.The version showing her daughter what’s possible when you follow your own path.And someday, when another letter comes, it won’t say I miss you.It will say:I see you. And I’m proud.
The Woman Who Wouldn't Giggle: Elvira Caria's Four Decades of Refusing to Play Nice
After 40 years of fighting for her voice in broadcasting, Elvira Caria lost the only title that ever mattered to her: Matthew's momThere's a street named after Elvira Caria in Vaughan. She didn't pay for it, she'll tell you right away. Awards line her walls—forty years' worth of recognition for lifting up her community, for being the voice that shows up at every damn event with her phone and her genuine give-a-shit attitude.But when I meet her at The Roost Café on a grey autumn morning, she says the work that matters most is the stuff nobody sees."My real satisfactory work?" She pauses, weighing whether to trust me with this. "I help young girls escape human trafficking. You can't put that on social media."This is Elvira Caria: the woman who refused to be radio's giggling fool, who chose late-night shifts over morning show glory so she could be home when her son's school bus arrived, who now sits across from me one year after burying that same son at 25."I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the community," she says. And she means it literally.The Day She Found Her Voice by Refusing to Use ItPicture this: a young Elvira in a radio control room, told by a well-known male broadcaster that her job was to giggle. To be the pretty voice that makes him sound better."I don't do giggling fool," she says now, decades later, the Southern Italian fire still in her voice.She stopped showing up to giggle on cue. Got fired on a Friday. Instead of folding, she handed her termination papers back: "If you can find a better reason to fire me on Monday, I'll accept it. If not, I'm coming back."Monday passed. So did Tuesday. By Friday she expected another dismissal—everyone fires on Fridays. But a month later the man who told her to giggle was gone. Elvira stayed for six more years."I found my value voice," she says. "I wasn't going to bend for someone else's value."The Choice That Looked Like SacrificeAt the height of her career, being groomed for a morning show at one of Canada's top stations, Elvira walked away."Nobody quits Rock Radio," her boss said."Well, I just did."She took the shifts nobody wanted—weekends, evenings, 3 a.m. hits at Yonge and Dundas. People called it sacrifice. She calls it choice."While others were sleeping, I was talking to the people we now call homeless. Nobody wakes up saying, I want to be on the streets when I grow up. Nobody."The choice meant she was home when Matthew got off the school bus. It meant knowing his friends, his teachers, his world. For 25 years, it meant being Matthew's mom first, Elvira Caria second.The Irony That Breaks YouHere's the part that will gut you: she spent decades insisting she was more than just Matthew's mom. She was a broadcaster, a journalist, a voice for the voiceless. She built a career on authenticity when authenticity could get you fired.And then, in 2024, Matthew was gone— twenty-five years old and on the edge of everything. Suddenly all Elvira wanted was the one title that had been stripped away."Matthew never saw me as a radio announcer," she says, voice steady, eyes somewhere else. "He saw me as his mom. And that's all he cared about."The Part Where She Stops Pretending Everything's FineLet's talk about not getting out of bed. About hygiene being optional when grief is bone-deep.Her sister-in-law was the one who finally broke through: "They need you. My boys need you! You're more than their Zia." So Elvira took small steps. A shower became a victory. Coloring her hair, an achievement. Looking in the mirror and trying to recognize whoever stared back."I'm mad at God," she admits. "People say everything happens for a reason. What's the fucking reason? Why take away a kid who never did anything wrong, who was just starting his life?"The Community That Saved Her When Awards Couldn'tTen people can tell Elvira she's wonderful. One critic cuts deeper at 3 a.m. That's human.She'll admit some awards now feel hollow—accolades in a season of loss. The recognition doesn't heal the absence.But the community? They showed up in ways that mattered. The woman from her coffee shop who just sat with her, no words needed. The neighbor who mowed her lawn without asking, week after week, because grief means grass keeps growing when you can't. The radio colleague who took her shifts without question when she couldn't form words, let alone broadcast them. The mothers from Matthew's old baseball team who still text her his jersey number on game days. Or the Baseball league who named an umpire award after him."Someone left groceries at my door every Tuesday for three months," she tells me. "Never found out who. Just bags of real food—not casseroles, not sympathy lasagna—but the exact brands I buy. Someone paid attention to what was in my cart before. That's community."The vigils, the legacy fund in Matthew's name, the quiet notes slipped under her door—that's what kept her standing."The real work happens in shadows," she says. "Helping a girl escape trafficking. Watching her graduate two years later. That's when I think—okay, maybe I've done enough to meet my maker."The Wisdom of Not Giving a FuckAfter decades of answering every critic, she's learned the most radical act: indifference."You don't have to react to everything," she says. "Not everything requires an explanation."She still hates small talk, still loves a stage. The influencer economy baffles her. "People think having a phone makes them reporters. Broadcasting is an accreditation—you're trained how to interview, how to fact-check, how to smell bullshit."Who She Is NowA year later, she's still figuring it out. Still showing up at community events with her phone and her give-a-shit intact. Still ironing her underwear (yes, really) because some control is better than none.The street sign with her name stands in Vaughan, but she lives in the in-between—between public recognition and private purpose, between the veteran broadcaster and the grieving mother."The evil grows faster than good," she says. "We're always catching up."So she keeps going. Not because grief eases—it doesn't. Not because she's found a new purpose—she hasn't. But because stopping isn't her style.She refused to giggle back then. She refuses to perform now. And maybe that's the lesson: sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is keep showing up, even when you don't know why you're still here. Especially then.Elvira Caria continues to support multiple charities across the GTA while maintaining her broadcasting career. She's still mad at God, still helping girls escape trafficking, still learning who she is now. She does not need your sympathy. She might need you to know that grief has no timeline, authenticity isn't content, and sometimes the bravest thing you can do is refuse to play along.
The Dentist Is Between My Legs: Bif Naked on Heart Surgery, Picking Felons, and Why She's Just Getting Started at 54
The punk icon who found euphoria on an operating table talks death doulas, divorce gratitude, and why her failing marriage hurt more than cancerBy Joseph Tito | Between the Covers | November 2025Bif Naked is cutting up her dog's food with her hands when I ask how it feels to be a legend.She looks at me like I've asked her to explain quantum physics in Swahili. "I'm a dog mom," she says, and goes back to mincing. Her fingers work methodically, tearing dog food into smaller and smaller pieces. The woman who once spit on audiences from punk stages now performs this daily ritual of care with the focus of a surgeon.This is going to be that kind of conversation—where every expectation gets shredded like dog food.The Operating Table High"So I was wide awake," Bif says, settling into her Toronto condo couch, miniskirt riding up as she crosses her legs. She's talking about her heart surgery like most people describe a spa day. "They thread a little camera through your leg all the way to your heart, and they can see what they're doing on the screen."She leans forward, eyes bright with the memory. "The surgeon is wearing a pineapple hat—like, the surgical hat had cartoon pineapples on it. And they're listening to William Shatner singing. Have you ever heard him sing? Who knew this album existed?"This is a woman describing having a hole in her heart closed with what she calls "a little umbrella device," conscious the entire time, finding it all hilarious and profound in equal measure. Her voice gets almost reverent: "I thought, this is the coolest shit ever. How is it possible that in this lifetime, I can listen to these people talking about their day jobs, which is fixing my stupid heart?"Then comes the moment that gives this article its title. They need to inject Novocaine into her leg to make the incision. You know that heavy, aching feeling from the dentist?"I said, 'Oh! It feels like the dentist is between my legs.'"She covers her face, laughing and mortified simultaneously. "The nurses started howling. This patient is on the table, making what they think is dirty talk. But I just meant—" she gestures helplessly "—the Novocaine!"Her whole body shakes with laughter now. "Of course that's what I said. How fucking funny is that?"God's Rejection and Other Love Stories"God is not going to choose me for whatever reason," she says, the laughter suddenly gone. "I'm going to stay here on earth and have to deal with it. Because I'm not learning my lessons yet."The shift in energy is palpable. She's talking about her pattern now—the violent men, the criminal boyfriends, the marriages to liars. "If there's a wrong guy, send him my way. If he is a criminal, if he's a violent felon, send him my way. I'm going to fall in love with that idiot every time."She delivers this like a weather report, no self-pity, just fact. When I ask why she got divorced, she doesn't hesitate: "Because I married liars." Then, catching herself: "But I have to look at what my fault was."She discovered what healthy relationships actually look like at 54. Fifty-four. After two failed marriages, cancer, and enough medical trauma to kill most people twice. "I had no idea relationships were supposed to be healthy," she says, and the wonderment in her voice is genuine. "I think that I've always been chasing true love. I'll never give up on love, ever."The contradiction sits there between us: the woman who picks monsters still believes in fairy tales."My emotional crisis of my failing marriage trumped my cancer experience."She says this so matter-of-factly that I almost miss it. The dissolution of her marriage during treatment hurt more than the actual cancer. Her hands, which had been still, start moving again—straightening pillows, adjusting her jewelry."Which was good," she adds quickly, "because it forced me to throw myself into volunteering."The man who married a rock star got a cancer patient instead, couldn't handle the plot twist. Now she trains as a death doula, works in palliative care. "If I was told tomorrow that I could not be a performer anymore," she says, her voice steady, "I think I would go into hospital administration."The Stage She Was Always SeekingBefore Bif Naked existed, there was a theatre kid at the University of Winnipeg who'd taken ballet for 13 years. She demonstrates a position, her leg extending with muscle memory from decades ago. "I wanted to be an actress and a ballet star."Then a drummer named Brett needed a singer. Suddenly she had a vehicle for all her poetry, all her rage about El Salvador and Indigenous treatment and misogyny. Whether it was ballet slippers or combat boots, she was always searching for a stage—just took her a while to find the right one."I got to stand up there. I got to spit on the audience. I got to say, fuck you, you can't objectify me." Her voice rises with the memory, that old fire flickering. "I didn't even have to sing very well. And believe me, I could not. I sounded like a dying cat."She pauses, grins. "And I don't mean the band Garbage."They opened for DOA. NoMeansNo. Bad Religion. She dropped out of university, and here's the kicker—"I'm still waiting to go back to school," she laughs, thirty-something years later, like she might actually do it.The same rage that fueled her screaming about El Salvador now targets Doug Ford's Ontario. "I couldn't figure out why I moved here," she says. "Then Ford got elected and I thought, 'Oh. I'm here to use my big mouth.'"The Children She'll Never Have (Or Will She?)When she cuts up that dog food with such maternal precision, I have to ask about kids. Her whole body language shifts—shoulders dropping, a softness creeping in."My ovaries were taken out at 36. So breast cancer didn't just cut up my tit." She says this with the same directness she uses for everything else, but her hand unconsciously moves to her stomach. "I've been in menopause since I was 36 years of age."People ask about adoption—she is, after all, adopted herself. The sarcasm returns, protective: "Oh yeah, let me get right on that. Let me turn around as a divorcee who's working nonstop as a self-employed artist in Canada and get right on the adoption train."But then, unexpectedly: "Now in my mid-50s? Yeah, I suppose I am ready."The possibility hangs there. Not this year. But the door isn't closed.Tina Turner's Miniskirt Ministry"I look to women like Tina Turner," she says, smoothing her miniskirt with deliberate intention. "Tina Turner didn't start playing stadiums till she was in her 50s."At 54, she genuinely believes she's just getting started. The documentary premiering across Canada this month (November 12 in Toronto, November 4 in Vancouver). The album finally released after she shelved it during the George Floyd protests because "the world didn't need a fucking Bif Naked record" during that summer of unrest."The sky is the limit," she says, and means it.When I ask who she's fighting for now, what her voice stands for at 54, she barely breathes before answering."When I was singing 'Tell On You' on my first record, I wasn't the only girl who was sexually assaulted," she says, her voice dropping to something harder, older. "I was the only girl with a microphone."The room goes quiet. Even the dog stops moving.She calls herself "a square" now—no cocaine, no partying. "I can be thoughtful and intelligent. I can try very hard to be a voice for the voiceless."But square doesn't mean silent. She's angrier about politics than ever, advocating for animals, healthcare inequality, LGBTQ+ rights rollbacks."Unfortunately," she says with a grin that's pure punk rock, "I'm still the one holding the mic."What's Next Is What She WantsThey're making a feature film about her life. The documentary's touring. When I ask what's next, she almost defaults to "that's a Peter question"—her manager's domain—then catches herself, takes ownership."We're working on the feature film based on the book."But really, what's next is whatever the fuck she wants. She's earned that.I ask what she'd tell a young girl starting out in music today. She thinks, really thinks, her face cycling through decades of memory."Never take it personally. Never take anything personally, no matter what."Then she says something that makes me stop writing: "There's room for everybody."This from a woman who had to claw for every inch of space. Who quit drinking partly to avoid being "misinterpreted" by men who'd use any excuse to discredit her. Who's been assaulted, dismissed, divorced, nearly killed."Anybody can make music on their computer, anybody can learn piano on YouTube, anybody can upload a song and send it to their nona," she continues, and she means it. "That's actually a gift."As I'm leaving, she's back to cutting up dog food, this ritualistic care that anchors her. I think about what she said about God not choosing her yet, about having to stay here and deal with it.But watching her hands work—the same hands that punched stage divers, that held microphones during cancer treatment, that reached for violent men who couldn't love her back—I realize something.She keeps saying she hasn't learned her lessons. But maybe she has. Maybe the lesson is you can marry liars and still believe in love. You can lose your ovaries at 36 and mother the whole world anyway. You can tell your surgical team the dentist is between your legs and still become a legend.She looks up from the dog bowl, catches me staring."I wasn't the only girl who was sexually assaulted," she says again, quieter this time but somehow louder. "I was the only girl with a microphone."Bif Naked's documentary tours Canada this month. Her album "Champion" is available now. She still wears miniskirts and heels. She's just getting started.
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Living Inside the Chaos
Now that I'm in my 50s, I see people and places differently. Less through emotion, more through pattern. I notice how things hold together, where tension builds, and what people do when they live inside it for long periods of time.I was recently in Naples, and for reasons I can't fully explain, I felt almost removed there. Not disengaged—just observing.This city feels like it's perpetually hanging by a thread. Chaotic, loud, always one step away from erupting. Built on contradiction, it's both self-aware and resilient. Survival relies on wit, humour born from hardship, chaos guided by intelligence. The struggle is real and visible. So are joy and ambition. You can't ignore the extraordinary concentration of creative output this place has given the world—artists, musicians, filmmakers, writers. All of it emerging from the mess.This isn't an ode to Naples. The city doesn't need to be romanticized. Its tension is unresolved.What stays with me is how life in cities like this moves forward not because conditions are stable, but because life doesn't wait for fairness. People gather. They're passionate. They eat together. They talk. They laugh. They cry. There's momentum—not denial of reality, but an insistence on continuing anyway.Naples doesn't resolve its contradictions. It lives inside them.What strikes me most isn't protest. It's release. Pressure that could collapse inward instead finds another direction—moving into connection, creativity, motion. Rebellion doesn't catapult people into chaos. It catapults them into aliveness.Once you start noticing this at the scale of cities, it becomes hard not to see it everywhere.I can't help but bring it back to travel.The act itself resists stagnation, fear, and expectation. And much like Naples, travel is when people become alive. Resilient. Creative.After years of creating travel experiences, my interest in knowing what motivates people to travel has blurred in comparison to what happens once they arrive—and who they are when they leave.The same tension I notice in cities shows up in people still carrying the posture of their daily lives. The pressure from systems that move too fast, roles that leave no room to breathe, futures that feel uncertain. Conversations stay measured. Titles intact.Then travel shifts something, and tension eases.Lingering is permitted. Meals last longer. Conversations wander from meaningful to silly without effort. Laughter shows up unexpectedly—you know, the kind that takes over to the point of tears. The need to explain oneself fades. People stop leading with what they do and start engaging with who they are.It's immersive travel in the truest sense. Not depth of itinerary, but depth of presence.By the end of a trip, the goodbye bears little resemblance to the hello. It's warm, less careful. A hug held longer than necessary, as though people are surprised by the depth of connection that's been created. That familiarity feels disproportionate to the time spent together, but it's consistent.This arc repeats across destinations and cultures. Different people, different circumstances, same outcome. Energy moves. Connection takes its place.What Naples made clear to me—and what travel continues to confirm—is that tension doesn't disappear. It changes intensity, but just as often, it releases into connection, creativity, and presence.In cities and in people, I've seen that aliveness doesn't come from order or certainty. It comes from choosing to live fully inside contradiction. Not rebellion as protest, but rebellion as release—a steady insistence on being here, together, even when nothing is resolved.In a world that invites you to armour up and self-preserve, letting your guard down is the real defiance. Living inside the chaos—not despite it—is the ultimate rebellion in a hardened world.
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Istanbul: The Night I Stopped the Cab
I went to Istanbul for work.Meetings. Business dinners. Handshakes and strategy talks and the kind of scheduling that makes you forget what day it is. I was there to do a job, check the boxes, fly home. That was the plan.But Istanbul doesn't care about your plan.The funny thing about doing business in Istanbul is that nobody actually does business right away.We'd end up in the Grand Bazaar — this ancient, chaotic, sensory-overload maze where vendors are hustling spices and textiles and copper lamps, and every corner smells like something you want to eat. I'm there ready to talk strategy, timelines, deliverables. You know, work.But they sit you down first.And before you can even open your mouth about the deal, they're bringing you Turkish tea. In those tiny tulip-shaped glasses that burn your fingers if you're not careful. Not because they're trying to butter you up. Not because it's a sales tactic. Because that's just how it's done. You're a human first. The business comes second.There's no rush. No urgency. Just this unspoken understanding that if you're going to do something together, you should probably actually see each other first.It's such a simple thing. But when you've spent your whole life in a culture that treats efficiency like a religion, it's disarming. In the best way.I'd sit there, sipping tea I didn't ask for, surrounded by the noise and chaos and life of the Grand Bazaar, and think: When did we forget how to do this?After a full day of meetings, my brain fried and my body tense, I did what you're supposed to do in Istanbul: I went to a hamam.A Turkish bath. The real deal.It's not a spa. It's not Instagram-worthy in the way Westerners want things to be. It's ancient and steamy and a little intimidating if you're not ready for it. But the ritual — the tradition of it — is something else.You lie there on heated marble, sweating out every ounce of stress, and then these old men come over and scrub you down. And I mean scrub. Like they're peeling off not just dead skin but every bad decision, every petty argument, every moment you spent worrying about something that didn't matter.But it's their eyes that got me.These men — weathered, patient, probably in their seventies — had stories in their eyes. Decades of them. You could see it. They didn't speak much, but they didn't have to. There was something almost sacred about the way they moved through the ritual. Like they were keepers of something bigger than themselves.I walked out of there feeling… clean. Not just physically. Clean.Ready to pack my bags, catch my flight, go back to real life.I got in a cab. Told the driver where I was going. We pulled into traffic.And then — maybe two minutes in — I said, "Stop."Not because something was wrong. Not because I forgot something.I just… couldn't leave yet.I couldn't go back to the hotel, zip up my suitcase, and pretend this city was just another stamp in my passport. I couldn't board that plane without actually feeling this place one more time.So I got out.I didn't have a plan. I didn't Google "best spots in Istanbul." I just started walking.The cobblestones were uneven under my feet. The kind of streets that have been walked for centuries. And then I heard it — music. Live, raw, pouring out from somewhere I couldn't see yet. It pulled me like a thread.I followed it down a narrow pathway, past shuttered shops and tiny cafés, and there it was: this beautiful French bistro tucked into the corner like a secret. Outdoor tables, string lights, that kind of effortless charm that makes you feel like you stumbled into the right moment at the right time.I sat down. Alone.And before I knew it, I wasn't alone anymore.Conversations just… happened. Not small talk. Not "Where are you from?" surface-level tourist stuff. Real conversations. The kind where you're laughing and debating and sharing stories like you've known these people for years. Strangers who felt like old friends within minutes.We talked about life. About cities. About why some places grab you and others don't. About what it means to actually be somewhere instead of just passing through.I paid my bill and kept walking.And that's when I found the bar.It wasn't fancy. It wasn't trying to be anything. Just a small place with warm light spilling onto the street. I walked in, ordered a drink, and ended up talking to the owner.We talked for an hour. Maybe more. About Istanbul. About what it means to build something. About how the best things in life happen when you stop trying to control them.It was one of those nights that felt… I don't know… possible. Like the universe was saying, "You just have to show up. The rest writes itself."And here's what Istanbul taught me that night:If you open your eyes and open your heart, the possibilities are endless. The people you meet are endless.You can spend your whole life moving through places without ever actually arriving. You can have the meetings. Check the boxes. See the sights. And still miss the whole damn point.I'd been in Istanbul for days. But I hadn't been there. Not really. Not until I stopped that cab and let the city take over.Istanbul doesn't let you stay in your head. It doesn't let you hide behind your schedule or your phone or your comfort zone. It demands more. It demands that you show up — as a person, not a tourist. And when you do, when you let yourself be open to what's in front of you, it gives you everything.People kept messaging me during my trip: "Are you safe?" "Is it dangerous?" "Should I be worried?"Let me be blunt: I have never felt safer in my life.Not just physically safe — though yes, that too. But safe in the way that matters. Safe to be a person. Safe to wander. Safe to stop a cab in the middle of traffic and trust that the night will take care of you.Istanbul isn't dangerous. It's not chaotic in a "run for your life" way. It's chaotic in a "this city is alive and you're part of it now" way.It's ancient mosques rising out of the skyline like they've been watching humanity mess things up for centuries and they're still patient about it. It's ferries crossing continents like it's your morning coffee run. It's street food that tastes spiritual. It's vendors pouring you tea before you talk business because you're a human first. It's old men in hamams carrying centuries of ritual in their eyes. It's strangers who look at you like they're actually seeing you.I've been around the world. I've lived in the Middle East, traveled through Europe, modeled in cities I barely remember, survived airports that felt like personality tests.But nothing — nothing — has hit me the way Istanbul did.Because it reminded me of something I'd forgotten:You can plan your whole life. Or you can stop the cab.Istanbul taught me to stop the cab.To walk. To listen. To sit with strangers and let the night unfold. To trust that when you open yourself up, the world meets you halfway.It's not cute. It's not curated. It's not pretending to be anything other than what it is: raw, real, ancient, alive, generous, big-hearted, and unapologetically itself.And maybe that's why I fell for it.Because I don't need perfect.I need honest.Istanbul is honest.And I can't wait to go back.
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The Mom who told her Son to get Lost
“I want to go, but it’s not like we’re friends or anything. What if I hate it? What if I get there and I’m just bored and…alone?” he said. Not loud. Just quiet, like maybe if he didn’t give the words too much power, they might disappear. He stared at the table, not at me - the way you do when you wish someone would let you off the hook.I sat in the garden across from my 19-year-old son, talking about backpacking through Europe — first on his own, and then halfway through meeting up with a family friend’s son he had known his whole life and yet, in many ways, barely knew. It’s not as if he had never travelled without us before. But this time was different. This time he would be truly alone — no friends, no familiar faces, just unfamiliar places and possibility. I wanted him to see it through my lens: new cities, long train rides, cafés, late nights surrounded by other young travellers learning life one day at a time, crooked streets that lead everywhere and nowhere, the kind of stories that don’t just happen – they’re lived. And yet, the pull of the unknown wasn’t enough to drown out the whisper of fear.“Listen to me,” I said - not gently, but with the weight and hesitation of my own parental fear. “Life isn’t about waiting for all the stars to align. It’s about aligning them yourself. If you wait, they never do. Not perfectly. Not all at once.” And as I told him to go, to get lost and discover new places; to take the chance, another voice tugged at me. The one that wanted to keep him close, safe, untouched by anything unpredictable. The one that wanted to say, “Stay here where I can protect you.” But I’ve had to learn – again and again - not to let that voice drive my decisions, not just for myself, but for the people I love more than my own life.Half annoyed, half nervous he looked at me. I could see his expression, so, I pushed a little more. “One day,” I continued, “your life will fill with responsibilities and no longer be just your own. Work. Bills. People counting on you. You’ll look back at this exact moment. The trip you could’ve taken. The places you could have gone to. The people you could have crossed paths with. The chances you had. The fear that stopped you and the sting of letting it decide for you.”My voice softened then, but I didn’t let the truth slip away. “Don’t let fear guide your decisions. Follow the voice that will make you braver, wilder - the one that wants you to live life.”He said nothing. Just sat with it, letting it sink in. And I let the silence do its work, because sometimes the most important messages just need to land. And honestly, that’s all I wanted. Fear doesn’t politely knock at your door. It kicks it open. It closes your throat and suffocates your words and presses its weight on your chest. Fear of failure. Fear of not being enough. Fear of not moving fast enough or too fast. Fear of being seen – or worse of being invisible. Fear of being alone. Fear of getting lost. Fear everything will change…or that nothing will. Fear is the background noise that never shuts up. Like a thief in broad daylight, it is quiet, slow and comes in unannounced to steal those moments that later become regrets. Every compromise, every goodbye, every lost opportunity. And parenting doesn’t remove fear - it just multiplies it. At some point though, we stop leading and start holding space. Our children stand on the edge of possibility glancing back to make sure we’re still there. It takes courage to let them lose control without losing themselves. It’s hard to watch and not fix. To stand by and see the moments when the world won’t match their plans and knowing you can’t protect them from everything. Fear doesn’t disappear because you face it or ignore it. It breathes with you. It holds your hand in the dark. I carry with me something someone once said to me, “Take your fear by the hand and walk with it into the unknown.” Not crush it. Just take its trembling hand and take that step forward anyway. Fear may seem like certainty or safety. It’s simply the moment the road meets the fog where the familiar becomes a blur. And strangely enough, it’s when certainty starts showing cracks where something deeper begins - the unraveling that is inevitable for growth.I can only speak from where I am sitting and my own experiences. I too was 19, when I found myself alone in a new country, new culture, new people. It wasn’t glamorous. It was uncomfortable. Long walks with no one to talk to. Seeing something beautiful with no one to turn to. Time eventually shifted that void into space. Space to linger on a park bench for hours and watch the sun go down without being rushed. Space to go down a street because I found it interesting. Space to follow curiosity instead of consensus. Slowly, I became a part of something. I learned new rhythms, new languages, new customs. Ordering coffee like a local in Rome; anticipating the familiar call to prayer that drifted through the air in Istanbul; Friday nights in Tel Aviv, joining the flow of people carrying flowers through the streets on their way to Shabbat dinner with friends - both new and old; finding my pace in Mexico City’s beautiful, organized chaos. It was subtle but the transformation began. For me, travelling, getting lost and finding myself out in the world disrupted my truths, handed me perspective, taught me patience, passion, tolerance and empathy. No grand gestures – just little, unexpected rituals. It shows up in that brief exchange of words with a stranger while having your coffee. Or getting a little lost with someone who is just as lost as you are. Sometimes those meetings last a day and sometimes they turn into friendships that span a lifetime. They aren’t curated moments but rather honest, unplanned and real. They are people you might have never met if you hadn’t walked out the door. People you had nothing in common with except that moment in time you shared. It is exactly in those moments where you meet yourself – and the world – in ways you would have never imagined. You become your best travel companion; your biggest cheerleader and you start to witness your own wonder. It is about finding the space to learn what you love, discover who you are, and what makes you smile when no one is around to influence the answer. It’s about the unexpected people you cross paths with along the way reminding you that the world is wide, alive and waiting for you. This isn’t just about travel. It’s about life. About the moments when people – whether at 19 or 59 – are paralyzed by their fears. The ones that say, “Maybe someday.” The ones that wait for the right time, the right people, the right circumstance and the perfect plan. The magic of travelling - and YES getting lost - is where a whole new world begins to unravel. Not out there but inside of you. A sense that everything you were clinging to was never meant to hold you forever. A place where fear becomes a witness rather than a warden. It is to dare see things differently and experience life through a new lens that keeps building who you are and who you will become. For all those wondering how this story ends. He woke up the next morning and booked his flight. He stepped away from the familiar, from his thoughts and the comfort of what he knew. He didn’t let fear steer him. It just went along for the ride in the passenger seat.He came back different. Not because the world changed - but because his world did. Angela Marotta, CEO and founder of Marotta Travel, is a travel designer with three decades of experience in the travel industry, having spent most of her career living and working in Italy and Mexico. Her mission today is to provide uniquely tailored travel experiences with purpose. https://www.marottatravel.ca/
The County Called, and I Answered (With My Credit Card)
A Love Letter to Prince Edward County, Where Time Moves Like Honey and Everyone Actually Gives a DamnI went to Prince Edward County on business. Two days, over fifty businesses to visit. I was there to introduce local shops to our newly launched BTC App—September baby, still got that new app smell. The plan was surgical: in, pitch, out, next.The County had other plans.What actually happened? I made it to exactly twelve businesses in 48 hours because I couldn't stop talking to people. Not networking. Not schmoozing. Actually talking. Like humans used to do before we all became walking LinkedIn profiles.Catherine Pacak at POA Studio? We talked for nearly an hour. An HOUR. In retail time, that's basically a lifetime. She wasn't checking her phone, wasn't eyeing the door, wasn't giving me the polite-but-get-the-fuck-out smile. She was just... there. Present. Asking real questions. Telling real stories. Making me remember why I started this whole magazine thing in the first place—because connection matters more than content metrics.And that's the thing about Prince Edward County that no tourism board will tell you: It's not just pretty. It's not just sophisticated. It's a place where people still look at each other. Where "How are you?" isn't rhetorical. Where a wine tasting turns into a therapy session and nobody's mad about it.Let's talk about "The County" (only tourists call it Prince Edward County, like only tourists call San Francisco "Frisco"). It's this almost-island jutting into Lake Ontario, about two and a half hours from Toronto, where vineyards kiss the water and Victorian buildings house boutique hotels. It's Napa Valley's cooler, less try-hard Canadian cousin who reads actual books and makes their own kombucha.But here's what the travel blogs won't tell you: The County isn't great because of what it has. It's great because of what it doesn't have. No Starbucks on every corner. No mall. No sense that everyone's racing toward some invisible finish line. Instead, you get purple barns full of Chardonnay, shops where the owners remember your name after one visit, and the radical notion that maybe, just maybe, we don't all have to be hustling every goddamn minute.When Business Becomes Pleasure (And Pizza)I stopped for lunch at The Royal Hotel because a girl's gotta eat, and holy shit. The pizza. THE PIZZA. Wood-fired perfection that made me reconsider every life choice that led me to eating pizza anywhere else. But then—because apparently The County doesn't do anything halfway—I ended up buying croissants and sourdough from their bakery that were so good I ate one in my car like some kind of carb goblin. No shame. Only flaky, buttery bliss.This is what I mean about The County: You go in for lunch, you leave with an armload of baked goods and an existential crisis about why you don't live somewhere that makes bread this good.At the Merrill House – If you’ve ever wanted to live inside a Victorian fantasy without the drafty hallways, check out the Merrill House. Rich in character, dripping with charm, and run by the kind of women who make you feel less like a guest and more like family.Walking in, I felt like a harlot from the 1800s making her grand entrance—lace, scandal, and all. I came to introduce myself and the app. Twenty minutes later, I was laughing so hard I had to excuse myself to use their bathroom. THEIR BATHROOM. These women—who manage this Victorian B&B like it’s their personal mission to restore your faith in humanity—had me cackling over stories of their worst guests, their best wines, and the time someone asked if the house was haunted. (It’s not, but they considered inventing a ghost just for the Airbnb reviews.)It’s indulgent, it’s intimate, and it’s the kind of place that sends you home with not just memories, but anecdotes you’ll retell at every dinner party for the next decade.The Universe Has a Sense of Humor (And It Lives in The County)On my way home, already drunk on human connection and possibly Chardonnay, I spotted PEC Wine Tours. Three women were standing outside, and because I apparently can't help myself, I stopped to chat. Within minutes, I was telling them about my day, apologizing for being "such a Chatty Cathy."One of them—silver-haired, perfect lipstick, the kind of woman who definitely has stories—looked at me and said, "You're too young to know about Chatty Cathy. That was a doll from the 1940s." Then she added, "I still have mine."She STILL HAS HERS.At some point she said something slightly pessimistic about the weather or business or who knows what, and I—because I have no filter when I'm happy—said, "Oh, stop being such a Negative Nancy."The silence. The other two women burst out laughing."Her name is Nancy," one managed to say through tears. "And that's literally what we call her. Negative Nancy."Nancy—ACTUAL NANCY—stood there grinning. "Been my nickname since forever. I'm a twin, and I was always the pessimistic one."I almost fell over. "You're a TWIN?"Here's the thing: I'm a dad of twins. And I literally—LITERALLY—call my kids Chatty Cathy and Negative Nancy when they're being, well, chatty or negative. It's our thing. They roll their eyes, I keep saying it, family tradition in the making.So here I am, a twin dad, accidentally calling an actual twin named Nancy "Negative Nancy"—which is her actual nickname—after discussing Chatty Cathy dolls from the 1940s. What are the fucking odds? In what universe does this happen?This universe. The County universe. Where coincidences aren't coincidences, they're the universe showing off.Nancy and I stood there laughing—two people connected by twins, by nicknames, by the absolute absurdity of this moment. My twins would die. They'd absolutely die. "Only you, Papa," they'd say. "Only you would accidentally stumble into this."This is when I knew The County wasn't just a place. It was some kind of vortex where the universe comes to fuck with you in the best possible way. Where a business trip turns into a series of perfect, impossible moments that make you wonder if someone up there is just having a laugh at how perfectly weird life can be.A Hundred Ways to Fall in LoveLook, I could tell you about all the wineries—and there are dozens, each with their own personality, their own purple barn or lakefront view or vegan certification. I could list every boutique, every spa, every perfectly curated shop where the owners actually give a damn about you finding exactly what you need, even if it means sending you to their competitor down the street.But that's not the point.The point is that The County offers something we've forgotten we need: genuine human connection served alongside really good wine. It's a place where business meetings turn into therapy sessions, where lunch turns into a religious experience with pizza, where three strangers will teach you about 1940s dolls and make you feel like you've known them forever.The Secret Ingredient Is Actually Giving a FuckEvery person I met in The County was genuinely interested in everyone else. Not networking-interested. Not what-can-you-do-for-me interested. Just... interested.The boutique owner who spent an hour telling me about her customers' lives—not their sizes, their LIVES. The B&B owners who had me in stitches over nothing and everything. The wine tour ladies who turned a two-minute interaction into a memory I'll carry forever.One shop owner told me, "We're all in this together here. If someone comes looking for something I don't have, I walk them down the street to someone who does. Their success is our success."When's the last time you heard that in Toronto? Or New York? Or anywhere?I thought I was going to The County to launch an app. To check boxes. To visit fifty businesses in forty-eight hours like some kind of capitalist superhero.Instead, I found myself sitting in my car, eating the world's most perfect croissant, thinking about Catherine at POA who really saw me, about the Merrill House women who made me laugh until I cried, about three strangers who gave me a history lesson wrapped in a moment of pure joy.This is what we've lost. This is what we're all scrolling through our phones trying to find. Connection. Presence. The radical act of slowing the fuck down long enough to learn about a doll from the 1940s.Your Permission Slip to Give a DamnThe County doesn't ask you to care more. It just creates space for you to care differently. To care slower. To care with wine in your hand and someone actually listening to your answer when they ask how you are.You don't go to Prince Edward County to escape your life. You go to remember what life feels like when you're actually living it. When you're not performing it for Instagram or optimizing it for productivity or apologizing for taking up space in it.You go to eat pizza that makes you question everything. To laugh with strangers who become friends. To buy bread that's so good you eat it in your car like a secret. To learn about Chatty Cathy dolls and realize that the best moments are the ones you never planned.Two days. Fifty businesses on my list. Twelve actual visits. One bathroom break from laughing too hard. Three women who schooled me on vintage dolls. And a County full of people who haven't forgotten that the best luxury isn't what you can buy—it's how you feel when someone genuinely gives a damn.So go. Book any of the dozens of places to stay—Victorian B&Bs, Nordic cabins, boutique hotels, they're all good because the people are good. Eat the pizza. Buy the bread. Try all the wine—there are more wineries than you can hit in a week, each one different, each one worth it. Talk to strangers. Learn about dolls. Laugh until you need the bathroom.The County is calling. Answer with your whole heart.And maybe your credit card. Those croissants really are fucking incredible.Between the Covers traveled to Prince Edward County in September to launch the BTC App with local businesses. We stayed longer than planned. We regret nothing.
Home Alone (Abroad) for the Holidays Solo Travel as Self-Care
I made a promise to my mother when I was fifteen, standing in Pearson Airport with a modeling contract in my backpack and terror in my chest. She drove me there herself, gripping my hands in the departure lounge before I boarded my flight to Milan.“No matter where in the world you go,” she said, “you come home for Christmas. Promise me.”I promised.And for twenty years, I kept that promise. Shoots in Seoul that ran until December 23rd, fashion weeks that bled into the holidays, heartbreaks in Rome, even a stint in the Middle East—I always found my way back to Richmond Hill, Ontario. Back to my mother’s house, where the tree went up by December 11th, the smell of sauce hit you before you opened the door, and enough food to feed all of Woodbridge magically appeared.But one Christmas, at thirty-five, I broke that promise. And it might have been the best decision I ever made.The Annual Interrogation BeginsSix months earlier, the family group chat had already begun its annual assault. "What time should we expect you?" "Should I make the guest room ready?" "Your cousin Sarah is bringing her new boyfriend—you'll love him!" Each message felt like a tiny papercut, accumulating into something that made me want to throw my phone into the nearest body of water.The subtext, as always, was deafening. At 35, I was still single, still "figuring things out," still deflecting questions about when I was going to "settle down and give us some grandchildren." In my Italian-Canadian family, being unmarried at my age wasn't just unusual—it was practically a medical condition requiring intervention.What made it worse was the delicate dance I'd been performing for years. Some family members knew I was gay. Others lived in blissful denial. And still others—like my 89-year-old nonna who still lit candles for my "future wife"—existed in a space where I couldn't bear to shatter their carefully constructed hopes.The holidays had become an elaborate performance where I played the role of "Joseph, the world traveler who just hasn't found the right girl yet." I'd developed an entire repertoire of responses: "I'm focusing on my career," "The right person will come along," and my personal favorite, "I'm too picky"—which always got a knowing laugh from the aunts who assumed this was somehow a virtue.But this year felt different. Maybe it was turning 35. Maybe it was watching my younger cousins get married and have babies while I was still explaining why I didn't have a plus-one. Or maybe it was just exhaustion—the bone-deep weariness that comes from hiding pieces of yourself for the sake of other people's comfort.The Great Escape ArtistDon't get me wrong—I love my family. But somewhere between my mother's casual updates about other people's kids, my automatic relegation to the children's table, and the general assumption that my life was somehow less complete or important because it didn't include a spouse and 2.5 children, I realized something had to give.The breaking point came during a particularly painful family dinner in October. We were all gathered for my nephew's birthday, and as usual, the adults were seated at the main table discussing grown-up things—mortgages, school choices, vacation plans that revolved around children's schedules. And there I was, squeezed between my eleven-year-old niece and my teenage nephew, helping cut cake and wiping frosting off faces."Joseph doesn't mind," my aunt said when someone questioned the seating arrangement. "He's used to it."I smiled and nodded, but something inside me cracked. Used to it. As if being treated like a perpetual child was just my lot in life because I hadn't followed the prescribed path of marriage and reproduction. Later that night, I found myself googling flights to anywhere that wasn't home for Christmas.A third of Americans don't even count holiday family visits as a "vacation," and 71% say they need a separate trip to unwind afterward. I was tired of being a statistic. More than that, I was tired of being a lie.So I did what any rational 35-year-old man who'd spent two decades traveling the world would do. I booked a flight to Buenos Aires and told my family I was "exploring new holiday traditions."The responses were swift and brutal. My mother cried. Actually cried. "But you promised," she said, and I could hear twenty years of Christmas mornings in her voice. "You always come home."My father was quieter but somehow more devastating. "I don't understand, Joseph. We're your family. What's more important than family?"The guilt was crushing. But not enough to make me cancel the flight.Deck the Halls with Guilt and Existential CrisisThe first 48 hours in Buenos Aires were a special kind of hell. Christmas Eve morning, I woke up in my hotel in Palermo to a barrage of family photos flooding my phone. Everyone looked so goddamn happy, gathered around our family table where my empty chair stood like an accusation.My mother had texted me a photo of the place setting she'd made anyway—my grandmother's china, the napkin folded just so, a small wrapped gift beside the plate. "In case you change your mind," she wrote.I threw my phone across the room and immediately regretted it, rushing to check if the screen had cracked. It hadn't, but something in me had.The guilt was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. In Italian families, abandoning Christmas isn't just disappointing—it's practically sacrilege. I could practically hear my ancestors rolling in their graves, muttering about ungrateful children who don't understand the meaning of famiglia.But then something strange happened. I left my hotel and walked into the summer heat of an Argentine December, and for the first time in months, I could breathe.Finding My People (And Myself)Christmas Eve in Buenos Aires is nothing like Christmas Eve in Richmond Hill. The city pulses with life—families grilling asado in the parks, couples strolling along the river, street musicians playing tangos that make your chest ache in the best way.I found myself at a small café in San Telmo, feeling conspicuously alone among all the families and couples. But then I noticed him—another solo diner, maybe my age, reading a book and occasionally glancing up at the street life with the same mixture of curiosity and melancholy I felt."American?" he asked when I accidentally caught his eye."Canadian, actually," I said. "You?""Dutch. But living in Berlin now." He gestured to the empty chair at his table. "I'm Erik. And I'm guessing you're also running away from something."We talked for three hours. About families who love you but don't really know you. About the exhaustion of performing versions of yourself that keep other people comfortable. About what it means to choose yourself when everyone you love expects you to choose them instead.Erik was spending Christmas alone because he'd recently come out to his very traditional Catholic family, and the resulting fallout had made the holidays feel more like a hostage situation than a celebration. "I figured," he said, "that being alone and honest was better than being surrounded by people and lying."I nearly choked on my wine. "Fuck," I said. "Are we the same person?"The Tango Between Truth and TraditionChristmas Day proper was when the real magic happened. Buenos Aires on Christmas is like a city that's decided to throw its own party instead of following the rules. Everything feels possible, untethered from the weight of tradition and expectation.I spent the morning at a milonga—a tango gathering in a community center where dancers of all ages came to move and connect. I'd never tangoed in my life, but something about the music, the heat, the complete anonymity of it all made me say yes when an older woman asked me to dance."First time?" she asked in accented English as we stumbled through the basic steps."At tango, yes. At a lot of things, apparently."She laughed. "Sometimes we must travel very far to find what was always inside us."Later, eating empanadas in a park while watching families celebrate around me, I realized she was right. I wasn't running away from my family—I was running toward myself. The self I'd been hiding under layers of careful performance and calculated omissions.I called my mother that evening. It was 2 AM in Richmond Hill, but I knew she'd be awake—she never slept well when one of her children was missing."Ma," I said, and I could hear her sharp intake of breath."Are you okay? Are you safe?""I'm safe," I said. "Just know that I love you."The Real Holiday SpiritHere’s what I learned while eating empanadas on Christmas in Buenos Aires: sometimes the most loving thing you can do—for yourself and for your family—is stop performing and start being real.The holidays aren’t meant to be an endurance test. They’re not meant to suffocate you under everyone else’s expectations. And if yours do? Book the damn flight.That Christmas in Buenos Aires was ten years ago. I’m forty-five now. Married. A father of twin girls who already know more about honesty than I did at their age. And every December, when we sit around the tree in King City, Ontario—with my husband passing plates, my daughters tearing into presents, my mother sneaking them extra cookies—I think about that night. The fireworks. The empanadas. The relief of finally telling the truth.The empanadas were delicious. But the real meal was the truth. And now, when my daughters crawl into my lap in their pajamas on Christmas morning, I know I’ve given them something better than tradition: permission to always show up as themselves.And maybe that’s the permission you need too. To remember the girl you were before the questions and the expectations and the constant chorus of “when are you going to…?” To remember the dream you once had of Paris, or Bali, or Buenos Aires—not as a family trip, but as a declaration that your life was yours.Take the trip. Even if it’s just a weekend in a city you’ve never walked alone. Even if your family doesn’t understand. Even if it makes you “selfish” for a season. Because sometimes disappearing for a little while is the only way to come home to yourself.And one day, whether it’s your kids, your nieces, or just the people who look up to you—they’ll see you. And they’ll know the greatest gift you gave them wasn’t a wrapped box under a tree. It was proof that you never stopped choosing your own story.
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Elements Cottages: Where I Found My Fire (Literally)
Here’s the thing about deadlines: they don’t care. They don’t care that you’re tired, that the kids are feral, or that your brain is basically held together with coffee and wishful thinking. Deadlines are like toddlers—they want what they want, and they want it now.So when I met Kelly—the owner of Elements Cottages—in a hot yoga class (because apparently nearly cooking yourself alive counts as self-care), she takes one look at me, mid-downward-dog, clearly stressed out of my mind, and just goes: “Girl, you need to go up north.”And listen, Kelly isn’t just the owner. She’s the spirit of the place. Woman-owned, woman-led, and built out of her vision to give people—especially those who might never think Muskoka was for them—a chance to disconnect from the noise and reconnect with themselves through nature. She’s a doll, the kind of woman you meet once and instantly want in your circle.So I went. And here’s what happened.By day, I did the thing. Laptop out, papers everywhere, tapping away at the big dining table with the forest literally wrapping around me through floor-to-ceiling windows. I hit my deadline, and for the first time in forever, I didn’t feel like I’d sacrificed my soul to do it.By night? Different story. That firepit. My God. I’d step outside, sink into one of those Adirondack chairs, and just let myself burn with it. Staring into those flames, I remembered what stillness felt like. No phone. No scrolling. Just me and the fire, and a peace I didn’t realize I’d been starving for. I lost myself out there more than once, and it was the kind of losing where you actually find yourself again.And let me tell you—the girls would’ve loved it. Five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a chef’s kitchen that practically begs for wine-fueled grazing boards, a hot tub, and a sauna? This place is built for a girls’ weekend. Loud laughter, late-night confessions, snacks everywhere—Elements is the backdrop for all of it.But it’s also perfect if you’re running on fumes and need a solo reset. The hiking trails, the calm of the water just steps away, the way the cottage itself almost dares you to stop performing and just be—it all works like medicine. And the best part? It’s luxury without the pressure to “be luxury.” You can wear pajamas until 2 p.m. and no one cares. That’s my kind of cottage.Here’s the truth: Elements isn’t about escaping life—it’s about remembering yourself inside it. Kelly designed it that way. She wants everyone, from first-time cottage-goers to seasoned Muskoka people, to have that exposure, that permission to breathe. And she nailed it.I left with my work done, but more importantly, I left with something I didn’t know I needed: stillness. And yes, I’m already planning to go back—this time with the girls, the wine, and way less guilt.Because sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is exactly what Kelly told me after yoga: disconnect from the everyday, and reconnect with yourself.And trust me—there’s no better place to do it than by that fire at Elements Cottages.
Breakfast in Florence, Lunch in Rome
When I was young and living in Rome, my friends and I didn’t plan much. We declared it a day for breakfast in Florence and set off in the middle of the night because it was exciting. Someone brought a map. Someone ignored the map. Someone else promised to navigate but sang the same song on repeat instead. We took a wrong exit, argued in good fun about who missed the sign, and laughed so hard the windows fogged. We rolled into Florence as the city was waking up. Our tired faces crowded the bar for a warm cappuccino and cornetto, and we promised to be back in Rome for lunch - as if time were waiting on us.When you are young, plans are merely suggestions. When you are with your people, any ordinary Tuesday feels special no matter where you are. We didn’t need a reason. We were the reason. A song, a joke, a look across the table, and the day became an event.I have returned to Rome, the city that took me in so many years ago. It’s like a familiar song that floods my thoughts with memories. I step onto a street that knows my footsteps better than I know my plans, and there it is again: the soft clatter of cups behind a bar, a conversation about everything and nothing among locals having coffee al banco. A scooter purrs awake, and the lingering scent of warm brioche follows. I am back in a place that is no longer my home, though it still feels like one. The address changed. The belonging did not.We gather without ceremony. Someone texts two words that open a door: “Same place?” By late evening there’s a table, and chairs seem to remember us. And there is that feeling travel tries to teach but youth often learns by accident. You are not alone in the world. Your life is braided with other lives. You sit down, and the braid is visible again.Back then, travel was a verb with one action. Go. The rest wrote itself. We sat on cathedral steps with nothing urgent to say. We learned that the best stories begin with, “I was with my friends…” We learned that the small decisions you make on an ordinary morning can become a north star that follows you for years.Those silly, fast, half planned trips left a mark I still carry. Not a postcard kind of mark. A quiet one. The kind you feel when you recognize a street and a scene from a movie plays back in your mind. The kind that feeds your soul when your flight lands and a friend calls your name across the crowd. The kind you carry into boardrooms and quiet kitchens where you realize that what you miss is not the view but the people the view gathered around you.Coming back to Rome to stay for a while feels different than a quick visit with a return ticket. Now, older and hopefully a little wiser, I notice different things. The same square holds new rhythms and new stories being made. I read the city the way I read a favorite book after living more life. Lines I skimmed in my twenties now glow. The buildings did not move. I did. I bring a longer memory to the same streets, and the streets return something finer. It is not nostalgia. It is continuity.We make a night of it, and by night I mean the cozy kind that begins early because some of us get up with children and some of us get up with the sun. The conversation doesn’t need to be important to be true. Friends arrive in layers. Someone tells a story we have heard before, and we laugh in the same place as last time. Someone shares a small victory, and we celebrate as if it were our own. Someone else offers a quiet update, and the room leans in the way rooms do when love has a seat.In youth, we believed in the miracle of sudden departures. Now I believe in the miracle of arrivals. After years away, to step back into a city and find that I still fit - that I can walk into a café and be folded back into a conversation as if I had only stood up to stretch is a form of grace. A city can be a person in that way. You leave. You return. This is how home feels, even when you have been gone a while.Of course, today there are reasons not to go. We clear schedules for emergencies. We cross oceans for closure. We show up for loss. But when it is about joy, when it is about us - when it is simply about being together again - we hesitate. We say later. We say money. We say work. We say next season. I have done it too. The calendar fills with obligations, and we forget that presence is not only for grief. It is also for life. Then years pass, and we forget the taste of the first coffee in a city we love. We forget how a glance can carry the unspoken.What I remember from those early days is not my bank balance. I remember a sunrise through a windshield, a chorus on repeat and the fogged windows. I remember joy in Florence with a warm pastry in my hands, then racing back to Rome just to sit with the same friends for lunch and pretend we had not crossed a region in between. Youth is a shorthand for the part of us that still says yes before the mind drafts a list of objections.Now, when I step into these streets in the fall and winter season, I practice the same word. Yes. Yes to a slow walk to watch the city put on its coat. Yes to calling people by the names that belong to our history. Yes to a long table and the day stretching out like a cat in the sun, and someone asking me to stay a little longer. Yes to laughter that lands in the same spot it always did. Yes to the new stories that begin with “I’m glad you came.”Coming full circle is not a neat loop. It is a spiral that widens with every return. Each visit holds the echo of the last and the promise of the next. A place that is not your home can hold your history like a careful librarian, ready to hand it back when you walk in. Rome, the city that took me in years before still lives in me and welcomes who I am becoming. It’s not about reclaiming my youth. I do not need to recapture the past. I only need to meet it, thank it, and bring it forward.So here is my simple advice, if advice is even the word. Take the trip. If you can go, go. Call the person. Set the table. Book the early train because the idea is a little crazy and promise yourself a foolish breakfast somewhere that is still on your map. Then come back for lunch with the people who remember you from before and let them meet who you’ve become. The paycheck will matter less in memory than the moment you showed up. The obligation you kept to yourself to live a life that gathers people will matter more.Community is not a location. It is a circle of chairs that keeps finding room for you. May there be a door that opens to your name, a city that nods in recognition, and a seat at a table where someone is already pouring you a glass of wine. May you be welcomed as the same person and a different one, and may you leave carrying forward what you found the first time you went.
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Il Dolce Far Niente: A Lost Art
My childhood summers were spent with my grandparents in a small Italian town where time stood still. Every afternoon after lunch, my grandfather would grab his wooden chair, place it under an olive tree, and sit, becoming one with the stillness of the hot summer landscape and the clicking chorus of cicadas.I waited for him to do something. He just sat there, looking at nothing in particular. "Nonno, ma che fai?" I finally asked. Granddad, what are you doing? He turned to me and answered, "Sitting."At the time I figured he didn't understand the question. I didn't understand what he was doing. Not then. Not for years.In 2019, my eight-year-old daughter and I discovered a café in Saint-Germain near the apartment we were staying at. We would go early in the morning for breakfast before starting our day in La Ville Lumière. Annalise, our server, found my daughter's obsession with pain au chocolat amusing and by day 3 she already had one warm and waiting as we walked through the door. We sat by the window and watched the city wake up—the flower vendor arranging roses, the man who always stopped to let his dog drink from the water bowl outside. On our last morning, Annalise hugged us both, pressed a parting pain au chocolat into my little girl's hands, and said she hoped to see us again soon. My daughter unexpectedly threw her arms around the young server, hugging her as if she were leaving someone she had known her whole life rather than just a week.This wasn't how I'd planned our Paris trip. It became something better.The New Luxury: TimeThere's a word for what my grandfather did under his tree: il dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. In our age of FOMO travel, we collect destinations like stamps in a passport-sized achievement book. Paris: check. Istanbul: check. Machu Picchu: check. We have every day planned out, itineraries mapped out, cooking classes scheduled, reservations booked months in advance to all those restaurants that keep popping up on our Instagram feed—oh, and don't forget the three different beaches you absolutely cannot miss according to every travel blogger who's ever existed. We are very efficient at seeing places. Terrible at actually being in them. You're exhausted. In paradise.By the time you collapse into your airplane seat for the flight home, you need a vacation from your vacation. You spend the first three days back recuperating from what was supposed to restore you, scrolling through hundreds of photos to pick the ones that will be perfect for that reel you are going to post to let everyone see how good a time you had. But did you actually enjoy any of those meticulously planned experiences?Then it's back to the routine—work, obligations, the mechanical rhythm of daily life, and all the while you plan your next escape from where you just escaped from.But something is shifting. Travellers are beginning to reject the crammed must-see bucket list in favor of what some now call the joy of missing out travel—though my grandfather would have simply called it living.It's harder than it sounds. We're programmed for productivity, even in paradise. That voice in your head listing all the things you should be seeing, doing, experiencing. The guilt of flying halfway around the world to sit in a café you could find in your own city.But here's what I've learned: You can spend a week in Paris and see everything while experiencing nothing. Or you can know one café, one park, one street so well that a piece of your heart stays there.The New Luxury: TimeWhen I work with clients planning trips, I try to build in what I call "free time." Entire afternoons with nothing scheduled. No reservations, just go out and discover or literally do nothing. Without fail, these spontaneous moments become their most vivid and treasured memories: the restaurant they stumbled upon, the conversation with locals at a neighborhood bar, the afternoon walking through cobblestone streets without a map.Even the travel world is catching on. Hotels are reimagining luxury as time rather than activities—slow cruises where the journey matters more than checking off ports, train routes through Tuscany where you watch landscapes change gradually with wine in hand, spa retreats where "sleep programs" make doing nothing the entire point. You're not observing local life through a bus window; you're temporarily invited to be part of a community.This pushes against everything we normally do when we travel. It asks us to be present in a new place rather than productive in it. The real test of travel isn't how many sights you've seen, but whether the place changed how you see. My grandfather, sitting under his olive tree every afternoon, understood something we've forgotten in our rush to experience everything: Presence is the ultimate luxury, whether you're in Paris or your own backyard.Creating your own Dolce Far NienteDon't get me wrong. This isn't about throwing your schedule out the window and wandering aimlessly. It's about creating space for the sweetness of life even while travelling. It's about stopping to enjoy those little moments where you lean into your chair, coffee cupped between your hands, and sit with the moment.Instead of accumulating experiences like trading cards, let's lean into what feels good, not what looks good on Instagram. Spend a week in Tuscany picking olives and having dinner with a family at the end of the day on a farm. Choose a neighborhood and learn its rhythms. Have your morning coffee at the same café. These small routines create connection and transform you from tourist to temporary resident. Walk instead of taking taxis. The in-between moments often hold the most magic.We may not always have the luxury of long stays at our destination, but even then, we can find a pocket of presence. One unhurried morning, or a meal without checking the time.But here's the real question: What happens when we return home? As we settle into fall routines—school drop-offs, work deadlines, soccer practice, parent-teacher conferences. Can we maintain this practice of presence?The answer lies not in overhauling our schedules but in finding our own versions of my grandfather's tree. It's finding those pockets of stillness. Maybe it's five minutes with your morning coffee standing outside to enjoy the silent stillness of a city stillasleep before checking emails. Perhaps it's sitting in your car for a moment before heading into the office, or simply standing at your kitchen window, watching the leaves change colour.Since Paris, my daughter now asks for "pain au chocolat mornings" at home—our code for unhurried weekend breakfasts.I never got a chance to tell my grandfather I finally understood what he was doing under that tree. But sometimes, when I manage to sit still long enough to hear my own breathing, to notice the light through the window, to feel the weight of the mug in my hands—I can almost see him there. Still sitting. Still teaching me, decades later, that the sweetness isn't in doing nothing.It's in being present enough to taste it.il dolce fare niente.Angela Marotta, CEO and founder of Marotta Travel, is a travel designer with three decades of experience in the travel industry, having spent most of her career living and working in Italy and Mexico. Her mission today is to provide uniquely tailored travel experiences with purpose.
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