About
EVER SINCE I WAS LITTLE, i’ve been drawn to maps. I’ve always felt they hold a kind of magic.
My parents used to have a globe, one of those old-fashioned ones that had a textured surface—sunken where the earth was shallow and raised where mountains rose. As a kid, I remember spinning the globe on its axis, in awe of all those tiny names etched on its surface. Each name held stories that felt like secrets, and I wanted to get lost in them. I wanted to taste the world, rich with people and places and things. I wanted to experience the world in its wild fullness, to see those names come to life.
At first, I read books—fairy tales and fables that let me travel to far away places in my mind. Later, I immersed myself in world history, learning about the ancient Mayans and Egyptians and Greeks. As I got older, I began traveling to the corners of the world I had read about. Names like Marrakesh and Istanbul and Lisbon began to take shape. They began to contain stories—my stories.
The more I traveled and read, the more I found myself writing down my thoughts and experiences—collecting them like seashells in a jar to inspect and marvel at later. I’d find a place or a passage in a book, and I’d feel that hot spark in my chest, that moment of recognition of finding a small piece of myself in the world. It was a new discovery and a coming home, all at once.
I began to realize that the process of becoming is as much about our experiences in the world as it is our interpretation of it all unfolding. It’s how we process our experiences—in their full, messy, raw humanness—that give them shape. That give us shape. Words help us alchemize our experiences into something meaningful, something tangible that we can look at, examine, and dissect. Over time these stories we tell ourselves, these fragmented pieces of a puzzle, become woven into our personal fabric. And we begin to see the contours of a larger story take shape.
That’s what this blog is all about: exploring both our inner and outer worlds as a means of growing, of becoming. It’s about discovering ourselves through words and through travel—gleaning bits and pieces that bring us a little closer to understanding who we are. ink + atlas explores the moments we find beautiful, the ones we wrestle with, and the ones that cause us to burn in wonder. It examines life’s milestones, and more importantly, all the messy connective tissue in between.
Perhaps that’s why, after all this time, maps haven’t lost their magic for me. There’s a kind of miracle that happens in the process of peeling back the layers and uncovering what’s hidden beneath the surface. Because in the end, it’s what a map doesn’t tell us that reveals the most—its beauty and scars, its mountains and valleys. Its infinite names.