As an Indian-American school social worker, adjunct professor, and mom of two girls who will inherit whatever world we leave them, my 2025 started with the words of Tricia Hersey ringing in my ears:

"You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community, to practice, to experiment, to create, to have space, to dream, and to connect."

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Before winter break, I sent her Nap Ministry video to my social work students –a gentle nudge to slow down. But the reminder kept circling back to me. In her book Rest is Resistance, Tricia Hersey teaches that rest is a form of resistance –a radical reclaiming of ourselves from systems that were never built with our healing in mind. As a social worker, who sees how challenging life can be, these words awoke something in my spirit.

My dream has always been to raise culturally curious kids. I believe that cultural curiosity and belonging, the feeling of interconnectedness, are deeply connected –and that curiosity can be sparked anywhere –near or far. So, when my husband said he'd have the whole summer free, I
jumped and said: let’s go! I wanted my girls to feel what I felt when I stepped into a new culture– that the world is big, beautiful and full of different ways of living. That our shared humanity is worth protecting. That every family, every culture, every people who has ever tended this earth has a story worth asking about.

That’s when I found Boundless Life. Or maybe Boundless Life found me. It promised slow travel –and that's exactly what I yearned for. Tricia Hersey reminds us that rest and abundance can be accessed anywhere. And in that rest, I found the power of cultural curiosity.
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The Summer

My family and I spent the summer under the Tuscan sun. Their Pistoia location offered stunning architecture, a warm and safe community, and more adventure than we could fit into one summer.

My girls were busy with Boundless' summer camp activities, laughing with their new friends and running along the family-friendly streets in full excitement of their daily gelato. Every day they were energized to go to camp with their Italian teachers and begged to play after, singing their new favorite melody: “Best fri-ends for- e-e-ver, And e-e-ver, Ellie donut, Jiya donut, Kennedy donut, Vivian donut, Maya donut, Brooklyn donut, Paxton donut, YAY!” The words made no sense to us parents, but the hand motions that came along made us all giggle with glee.

My husband was also deeply happy –fresh pizza, good wine, nowhere to be. He joined the local gym, found a group of dad friends, and read books at one of the many cafes in town.

For me, this was like living in a slow dream, our normal daily routine without the hustle. My heart was calm, grounded, and –for the first time in a long time –re-energized. I met the most incredible families –people I never would have found in ordinary life. We traveled through Tuscan vineyards, lingered over impromptu lunches, and dreamed out loud about the world we wanted to create. A world where everyone's story was worth asking about.

That summer, I felt Tricia Hersey’s words find me –in the slowness of it, in the stillness, in the way a quiet mind opens up something bigger than yourself. She writes that rest provides "a portal to imagine, invent, and heal." Pistoia was that portal for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but now I see it clearly.
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The Revelation

Surrounded by open-hearted, globally minded families, the same conversation kept surfacing for me. More than a dozen times that summer, I found myself chatting about diversity and raising culturally curious kids.

Everyone cared. Nobody knew exactly where to start.

And I understood why. In the U.S. no one teaches parents how to do this. Diversity education often begins by teaching children that everyone is different and that these differences should be celebrated – and that's a beautiful lesson. But there's a first step that most parents never get shown. A deeper layer. A foundation that makes belonging not just possible, but natural.

So I shared what I do with my own kids and my students. I told them about the moment that
changed everything for me.

My eldest was five years old. We ran into a coworker of mine – a fellow school social worker. My daughter looked up at her and asked, "Where are you from?" My coworker smiled and said, "From here!" Without missing a beat, my five-year-old replied, "Oh cool! You're Native American?"

What followed was a beautiful moment. My coworker shared her family story – German roots, a move from the East Coast to the West Coast. It made perfect sense to my daughter, who went right back to playing as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

Later, my coworker pulled me aside and said: "Jalpa, what a beautiful way to view our world – we ALL have a story."

In that statement, I saw the lesson come alive.

Tell your children: Indigenous peoples are the first caretakers of this land and continue to care for it today. Over time, families have come from many places, each bringing their own stories, cultures, and heritage. When children understand this, something shifts. Instead of asking "Where are you from?" they begin asking "What's your family's story?"

That one question changes everything.

My own girls move through the world with an openness that I work hard to protect –because I know how fragile it is. I know what it feels like to be in a room and wonder if you belong there. And I know that cultural curiosity –real, practiced, daily cultural curiosity – is one of the most
powerful antidotes to that feeling. It is, in its own quiet way, an act of resistance.

One morning in Pistoia, after a lunch-time conversation with a new friend, Brent, about how I teach culture, I woke up and started typing into my phone. A joyful little story about a girl who asks: "Where are all my friends from?" That story became Wizzy the Worldly Tree: A Tale of Cultural Curiosity.

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What Abundance Can Do

From that one quiet morning in Italy, everything unfolded. I found an extraordinary publisher – Soul Sparks Press, a name so perfect it could only have been meant for this book. I connected with the most joyful illustrator, Maria Rein, who told me when we first spoke that she had already been drawing a tree. I wrote articles for parenting, education, and social work magazines. I booked podcast interviews and submitted workshop proposals to national conferences.

All of it grew from one summer of slowing down.

As author Arundhati Roy writes: "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On aquiet day I can hear her breathing."

That quiet day, for me, was in Pistoia. And what I heard breathing was Wizzy.

Just the other day, I was texting my Boundless Life friend Danielle. She wrote: "I'm having lunch by myself at this really cute Mediterranean/California vibe place. I wish you were here."

I wrote back: "I know! It's so hard to find friends with the same energy in real life."

I quickly added: "Maybe we should go do Boundless again this summer!"

That's the magic of a Boundless experience. Your life expands in ways you never expected. New friendships, new ideas, new stories –and an entirely new sense of what's possible. Travel is a privilege and, if paired with intention, can gift our children a new lens to change the world.

When we give children – and ourselves –the language to shift from asking "Where are you from?" to "What's your family's story?" we open the doorway to deeper connection and collective belonging.

That is the world I am working toward. One story at a time.

For me, that abundance began with one Boundless Life summer. And now, that belongs to every
child who picks up Wizzy.