ANNELISA PHUONG NGUYEN
Be the change you wish to see in others
On Aging, Dignity, and the Ones We Love
Dear my future kids / June 17, 2025Dear kids, I spend the quiet Hanoi mornings playing chess with your great-grandfather. It started as something simple: a way to keep him company, to slow down my own racing thoughts. When you're young, aging feels like a distant concept - something that mostly means slowing down, forgetting things, losing sharpness. But sitting across from…
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Marriage Isn’t the Milestone
Annilusa / June 13, 2025Lately, I’ve been traveling a lot - for work, for projects, sometimes just to breathe. It’s been a season of motion, and while I’ve grown from it, I can see how, in my parents’ eyes, it signals something else: worry. I’m turning “Almost 30,” as they like to say, soon. No marriage on the horizon.…
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Try Anyway
Dear my future kids / June 4, 2025Dear kids, A few things happened last week that made me sit down and write this for you. I was in New York, carrying three bags, one iced americano, and absolutely zero dignity. I tripped over someone’s suitcase on the subway stairs, and dropped my phone screen-first onto the sidewalk. It lit up just in…
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New York #1
Random thoughts / May 27, 2025This morning in New York, the city was unusually kind - quiet corners, warm light bouncing off windows, a breeze that didn’t demand anything from me. I was sitting outside a tiny cafe in the East Village, sipping my almost-too-milky iced coffee, when I found myself deep in conversation with Professor Ron McClure (whose career…
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my kind of love
Annilusa / May 20, 2025love is such a strange, sacred thing. my little self was the kind of girl who believed in “i want it, i got it.” i thought effort and desire were enough to get anything. i thought feelings would work the same way - simple, predictable, earnable. but growing up taught me otherwise. feelings - especially…
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About love. Self-love.
Annilusa / April 26, 2025People say self-love is the foundation of everything. That you can’t love anyone until you love yourself.But when the first version of love you knew was cracked and conditional, you start to think maybe you were the problem. Maybe you were too loud. Too sensitive. Too needy. Maybe if you had done something differently, they…
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Love Isn’t Late – It Comes When You’re Ready
Random thoughts / April 26, 2025A reflection on becoming whole before becoming one... I’m 26.And if you grew up hearing what I did, and that you are in Asia, you know what that means:Married by 27.Kids by 30.Happily ever after by... right about now. The clock, it seems, has already started ticking. Louder with every family gathering, louder every time…
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To You In Case You Missed the Train
Dear my future kids / March 26, 2025Dear Little Buddies, One day, you might find yourself standing on a subway platform in New York, long after the train has pulled away. The station feels colder than usual. A distant saxophone echoes down the tunnel. People rush by, disappearing into turnstiles and lives you’ll never know. And there you are - still, quiet,…
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I Am 26, And I Am A Mom Of 8 Kids (And Still Counting)
Annilusa / March 22, 2025People always raise their eyebrows when I tell them I have 8 kids. There’s usually a pause, then a "Wait, what?" followed by some version of "How old are you?" and finally, "Are they all yours?" Yes. No. Sort of. I didn’t give birth to them. I didn’t carry them in my body. But somewhere…
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The Quiet Freedom of Nothing
Dear my future kids / March 21, 2025Dear Little Buddies, A few nights ago, I found myself tangled in one of those wine night conversations with some folks studying abroad from the US. We ended up drifting into that familiar existential “rabbit hole”: What is the meaning of all this? This - life! Somewhere between sips of wine and shared pauses, we…
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About Youth
Dear my future kids / March 21, 2025Dear Little Buddies, Youth is a fleeting, mischievous thing. When I was 18, I thought the saying "Youth is wasted on the young" was just something older people said out of envy. But now, as I start noticing backaches, I understand it differently. It’s not about resentment - it’s about the realization that youth is…
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Random #1
Random thoughts / March 20, 2025Every time I travel, I find myself looking back - not just at the places I’ve been, but at the people I’ve met, the moments I’ve lived, and the way life constantly shifts beneath my feet. Places change. People come and go. But something always remains - a thread of who I am, woven through…
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