The Privilege of Moving
I’m in the middle of moving apartments. There are boxes everywhere—and with them, a tangled web of anxiety, nostalgia, and restlessness. As I pack, sort, and sigh, I remind myself: I get to do this. I get to choose what to keep, where to go, and how to rebuild a space that feels like home.
And yet, even in that gratitude, a heaviness settles in my chest. Because while I rearrange the details of my life, my friends in Gaza—and across all of Palestine—are facing the unimaginable: forced to flee with nothing, their homes and histories turned to rubble, their futures uncertain.
Dear Reader, I’m Moving…
I’m writing this in the middle of a move. My apartment is full of boxes, half-packed piles, and the quiet chaos that always seems to come with uprooting your life—again. I’m overwhelmed. But I’m also aware of how fortunate I am to be overwhelmed by this.
I’ve moved many times in my life. It doesn’t necessarily get easier, but it does become more familiar. Still, I always feel that same emotional undertow: the ache for stability, the longing for closeness, the desire for a home that doesn’t keep shifting.
And then I pause. I remember—I’m the one in control here. I’m moving by choice. I’m taking my things with me.
I’m building, not escaping.
That awareness settles like a rock in my chest. Because at this moment, friends and family in Gaza and across Palestine are being forcibly displaced. Again. Not just losing homes—but entire neighborhoods, family members, history.
The genocide in Gaza isn’t distant to me. It’s personal. I carry the grief and rage of watching people I care about endure unspeakable loss. I think about how many times Palestinians have been made to start over. How often “home” has been taken from them. How little the world does to stop it.
After all, it didn’t start on October 7th…
What Does Home Even Mean?
For me, home is both a dream and a work in progress.
It’s not just that I’m half Palestinian, half Panamanian, and carry an American passport. It’s the reality of growing up in many cities, attending schools across continents, and making friends in different corners of the world. Each place holds a piece of me—and yet, none hold me completely.
I feel at home in so many spaces, with so many people. But those places live oceans apart. When I dream of home, it’s a blurred collage of memories that can’t coexist in one location, in one lifetime.
So I’ve learned to carry home with me. In recipes passed down. In languages layered across conversation. In the way I greet someone, the patterns I embroider, the rituals I invent. In the husband who is now my nucleus. Home has become something I assemble with care—a mosaic of people, textures, scents, and feelings I never want to forget.
And still, within all that beauty, lives a quiet grief. Because as much as I’ve mastered the art of building home wherever I go, I still ache for one that stays put. One I don’t have to piece together. One that simply is.
And I know that longing, while real, is still a privilege.
Because for many Palestinians, home is a memory wrapped in trauma, a place that exists more in longing than in reality.
Because for Palestinians in Gaza, and for so many across our homeland, home has been stolen, bombed, erased—again and again.
It’s heartbreaking to realize how different that word can feel depending on where you are—and who you are.
And yet they keep dreaming. Keep rebuilding. Keep holding onto the idea of home as something worth fighting for.
Their resilience reminds me that home is not just a place—it’s a right. And that right is worth everything.
So this letter isn’t just about moving. It’s about displacement. It’s about privilege. It’s about holding space for our own struggles while keeping our eyes wide open to others’ suffering. If you’re reading this, I hope you take a moment to reflect. And if you feel moved, I hope you act—donate, share, protest, support.
Because home should never be a privilege. It should be a right.
