The Essays

There are two of you: the one who chose this life and the one who was trained to perform it. The Covenant with Self decides which one finishes.

There is a word in Ekegusii, my mother tongue, the language of the Gusii people of Kisii County, Kenya, that I did not understand the full weight of…

A cardiologist on what heart failure reveals about high-functioning burnout, and how the most composed and productive people can be closest to collapse.

She called at 11:14 on a Wednesday night. My phone buzzed on the counter while I was finishing a patient note, and I answered without looking at the name.

Gokoora: to finish without flinching. The Ekegusii word from a Kisii childhood that became the name of the flagship, and why the mother tongue had the answer.

The heart fails in small vessels before it fails on the angiogram. So does a life. A cardiologist on the microvascular damage of a thousand tiny self-betrayals.