Writing                                                                                                                                                                                               Photography

From Thought Catalog:
     "Last night, I was particularly exhausted – both mentally and physically. I was trying to figure out why I was feeling so down, when it hit me. I’m right where I need to be, after everything my heart and I have been through in the past month. I’m in the place I should be after the breakup of a relationship that I really enjoyed, but that I also knew was probably not meant to last: happy it happened and looking forward to the future, but still solidly in a mourning period. I’m not ready to move on just yet.
     I need to take a minute to talk about heartbreak.
     I’ve been feeling it lately, in the worst possible way. I’ve cried on the subway. I’ve been listening to all my sad-song-playlists. Things I see remind me of the love I’ve lost; Halloween has been particularly hard, with everyone wearing so much orange…
     The 2014 Kansas City Royals took their fans on the emotional roller coaster of a lifetime this October. I’m talking Nicholas Sparks-style ups and downs. All of us fell in love with the Boys in Blue again and again this year, and I, for one, felt like I had finally found the love I’d been waiting for literally my entire life.
From my blog:
  • Community, March 13, 2014 - reflecting on my time living in intentional community as a Jesuit Volunteer
     "There are six of us in this house. Six unique, strange, beautiful people who came to each other as full-grown humans, with pasts and futures that don’t necessarily fit together perfectly. But our presents do. We fit together now, perfectly, in that old Bed-Stuy brownstone that holds ten years of previous groups who also came together like puzzle pieces for one year, like we have. 
     Now, when I say we fit together perfectly, I don’t mean that we never argue, that everything is simple and easy. It’s not. Some things are more difficult than I can even explain. Our house holds confusion, heartbreak, heartfixing, anger, frustration, and doubt. We deal with them together, because we could not deal with them alone. Our house also holds happiness, love, laughter, goofiness, smiles, hugs, and the feeling you get (that has no name) when you are perfectly content to just be in the place where you are in the moment you happen to be there. Our house holds that a lot."

From The Marquette Tribune (now Marquette Wire):
"I, like most Catholics, live far from Rome and see that if the Church wants to survive as a global institution, the pope must be someone who is willing to truly serve its people. I want a pope who is unafraid to visit Catholics all over the world and genuinely try to connect with them and understand how Catholicism applies to their lives. I believe the Church should not be afraid to grow and change in the coming weeks, years and decades to continue to uphold the faith it has taught for the last two millennia.""We’ve all been there. It’s late. We’re sitting alone in our rooms, the only light is the bluish glow of the computer screen (super healthy for your eyes, of course). Staring at Facebook, something completely idiotic pops up in our newsfeed: “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with him. Happy one week anniversary, sweetheart,” or a rant about politics that makes absolutely no sense. 0R aN eNt!r3 $taTU$ TyP3D l!k3 Th!$. That’s the worst. You read it and begin losing faith in your fellow humans.
     Last night, this was me. And, as I clicked the “hide” option, my eyes wandered down the pop up menu to the “unfriend” button. Will this person really miss me as a Facebook friend, I wondered? They had more than 1,500 friends, so most likely not. Now they have 1,499. However, I then glanced at my own friend count and was appalled to see a number dangerously close to the 1,000 mark."
"Because of the importance of newspapers in society, journalists have learned to defend their right and responsibility to their readers. Journalists have long been a steadfast bunch.
     Right now, all over the world, there are journalists who literally risk their lives in order to do their jobs and bring important, accurate information to the general public. In December, CNN.com reported that 2012 was the deadliest year for journalists since Reporters Without Borders began monitoring reporter deaths in 1995. Most of the 2012 deaths occurred in Somalia, Pakistan and Syria, where journalist and Marquette alum James Foley went missing in November."