Heritage Homecoming

CAPITOLA. January 18, 2026 –  Sunday morning in the middle of a three-day weekend. I have nowhere to be. There’s something about the middle day, off yesterday, off tomorrow, that makes it feel like the pinnacle.

In the spirit of slowness, I open my phone and scroll through my clothes album. Not to add anything. To remove. The pink heart cardigan that seemed playful six months ago now reads as trying too hard. I delete it without ceremony. What remains should earn its place.

This album started as a practical thing. Outfits photographed in my living room mirror, backgrounds removed to white so nothing distracts from the clothes themselves. A field guide to myself. I scroll through it sometimes the way I used to scroll through Instagram, except this feed shows me something I actually want to see: evidence of who I am when I’m not performing.

For most of my life, getting dressed was a series of calculations: How visible do I want to be? How visible am I allowed to be? What story does this outfit tell, and who is it telling it to?

I grew up wanting to be a journalist, someone who made things with words. I ended up in tech instead, optimizing processes and speaking the language of logic and ROI. In conference rooms, I was the analytical one. The creative part of me learned to stay quiet.

But building an outfit? That was mine. Problem-solving and self-expression in one act! Strategy in a well-chosen silhouette. Poetry in the right texture pairing. No one had to approve it. No one had to see it as “creative” for it to be creative. Getting dressed was the one act that belonged only to me.

As a high-schooler in Saudi Arabia, I wore an abaya over everything, which meant the only real pressure was the all-girls party, when the abaya came off and what was underneath finally mattered. I had maybe five outfits at home, so school uniforms were a relief. My sisters had it worse, inheriting half of theirs from me. Even in scarcity, I had first-born privilege.

Then I came to California for college, and suddenly I could wear whatever I wanted. It was also the first time I shared classrooms with boys. They rolled in disheveled and no one blinked. I quickly learned it wasn’t cool to care too much. You wanted to look nonchalant in the late ’90s. I still had fun with it. Baggy pants. Scarf tops. Short skirts. Long Jackets (yes, like the song). All that Y2K playfulness. But even then, I was learning a new set of rules. American rules. Rules about how much to try, how much to reveal, how foreign to seem.

Then I became a young woman in corporate America, and my wardrobe learned to perform. In my twenties, the job was blending in while still being seen. Low-rise pants, fitted tops, heels that made my legs look even longer. I wanted to be taken seriously, but not so seriously that I disappeared. The careful choreography of the male gaze. In my thirties, the rules shifted. Stand out, but don’t be too feminine. Be confident, but know your place. Structured blazers. Sheath dresses. Armor disguised as polish. I dressed to say “I belong here” while making sure I didn’t threaten anyone who already did.

Around 45, time started moving differently. Less urgency. Less proving. Like me sitting here today, middle of a three-day weekend. The day belonging entirely to itself.

I work where I live now, a food company in Santa Cruz. My creative input is welcomed here, not tolerated as a quirk. “Day to night” isn’t office to happy hour anymore. It’s office to the Santa Cruz Bookshop until traffic eases. A walk along West Cliff, ocean in my lungs.

My clothes started to move with that kind of life. Not against it.

Now when I flip through this compendium, I see what actually makes me feel like myself. Fun knits. Wider pants. Flowing skirts. Olive and rust and deep plum, colors that echo my grandmother’s embroidery. The gold jewelry my parents gave me on my wedding day. A necklace with my name in Arabic, worn openly now, not tucked under my collar, not worried anymore about explaining what it means. And not a stiletto in sight. Boots and sneakers. Feet that can actually walk somewhere or nowhere in particular. There’s salt air in this wardrobe, and old libraries, and something that remembers where I come from.

Some outfits that felt like me two years ago no longer belong here. Others I once thought were too bold have become signatures. The album changes as I change.

I scroll through this album and see decades of learning the room’s rules, then unlearning them. What remains is what was always mine: the joy of getting dressed with no one to please but myself.