Of
Teacups and Thunderclouds

Navigating Life's Stories

Welcome. This is the place where my stories finally have a home. For years they lived in notebooks, Word documents, and half-formed memories that surfaced during early morning runs or in the quiet hours when sleep slipped out of reach. Here they can sit side by side, in the same way the pieces of a life eventually learn to make room for one another.

These essays travel through the landscapes that shaped me: a childhood in Apartheid-era South Africa, the long shadow of early loss, the strange education of grief, and the unexpected resilience that followed. Some stories trace the uneasy path from daughter to immigrant to physician. Others explore running as both discipline and refuge. There are braided essays that mingle the political with the deeply personal. And there are lighter pieces too: funny, ordinary moments that insist on being remembered.

Threaded throughout is the question of belonging. What does home mean when your first home holds history you cannot quite inhabit, and the place you chose still feels borrowed? Many of these essays circle that tension, searching for footing in a new country, new cities, new versions of myself.

You’ll also find stories about caregiving, art, marriage, travel, addiction, and survival. Stories about what remains after the people who shaped us are gone. Stories that sit at the intersection of sorrow and humor, where memory does its most honest work.

Thank you for reading. I hope you find something here that resonates, whether it’s a familiar feeling, a shared truth, or simply the comfort of knowing someone else has walked a path not unlike your own.

Contact Me: lrt@teacupsandthunderclouds.com