My White Rabbit

Alice In Wonderland — Part 1: Curiosity

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When I was little my dad was physically and mentally abusive toward my mother.

He was gone most of the time and when he was home he was violent, up and down, and made terrible — sometimes illegal — decisions. He had a volatile temper that would erupt without warning. In public. At home. Anywhere.

We lived in the mountains — 25 to 30 minutes from town — with no friends or family in this country. No support system. No one to call. The bus was often our only way to get anywhere because he would take the car. It took at least an hour when it didn’t break down on the windy mountain roads.

Early every morning my mom would leave for work and I was responsible for getting myself ready and walking 20 minutes each way to the bus stop. Most days after school my dad would forget to pick me up. I would have to go back to the school and the person in the office would wait with me until her bus came up the mountain and I could get on with her the rest of the way home.

On the nights the fighting was really bad I would hide and read. Books were my escape. A way to block out the noise. Or — in the quiet moments — a door into a completely different world.

That was one gift my dad gave me — he loved books. He would take me to the bookstore or the library near the bus station — places we both loved — and tell me to wait while he looked around. And then he would disappear. I would end up waiting for hours not sure when or if he was coming back. The panic would set in first. And then survival would take over. I would open a book and block it all out. Read until my mom’s face appeared in the doorway on her transfer between work and home.

Those places we both loved created such a divide. Magic and abandonment living in the same building.

I was left. Often.

But I always had a book.

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I don’t remember exactly when I first read Alice in Wonderland. But I remember what it gave me.

For a few hours at a time I wasn’t trying to make sense of what was happening at home. I was just curious. About what came next. About where Alice was going.

In the story a bored Alice sees the White Rabbit run across her path — clearly distressed, muttering to himself, late for something. And instead of looking away she chooses to follow him. Chooses curiosity. What comes next is wonder, delight, chaos and adventure.

It was the first time I remember feeling that. Pure uncomplicated curiosity. No weight attached to it. Just — what happens next?

In Alice’s world — unlike mine — curiosity was safe. It didn’t lead to trouble or unpredictability or fear. It led somewhere. Somewhere exciting. Full of challenges she could actually navigate. Full of outcomes that were wild and strange but never truly dangerous.

For a little girl whose real world outcomes were anything but safe — that was everything.

Alice was a girl in a world that didn’t much care what she thought. She questioned everything anyway. She followed the White Rabbit into the complete unknown because she had a childlike curiosity she simply couldn’t suppress.

I got that. I really got that.

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I was naturally curious as a kid. Always asking why. Always wanting to understand things. But somewhere between that little girl hiding with her books and high school — curiosity became less and less important.

It was more important to pretend I didn’t care. To fit in. It was not cool to ask questions — it was cool to just go with it. Whatever it was.

And so curiosity didn’t disappear. It got crowded out. Replaced. By pressure. By the noise of just trying to keep up. A slow drift away from the part of me that used to want to know what was around the corner.

There are so many versions of this story. So many reasons why curious children change. Whatever the reason — most of us reach a point where life fills in all the space that curiosity used to live in.

And we stop following the White Rabbit.

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But here is what I’ve learned.

The White Rabbit is curiosity trying to grab your attention before time runs out. That small spark of interest that appears out of nowhere. The thing that pulls you toward something you can’t fully explain. The nudge to take a chance. To try something unfamiliar. To step toward the adventure even when you can’t see where it leads.

I had a really tough first year in college and had a decision to make — which I will talk about in another post. I ended up choosing the route that required me to find some kind of joy — or at least peace — with education and knowledge. I found my White Rabbit again in the Sonoma State Library. Quietly. Slowly.

My grades started climbing. My professors started noticing me. And I started realizing something I hadn’t felt in a long time. That behind every answer there was more context. More depth. More to understand. That knowledge wasn’t just a grade — it was a door. And the more I opened it the more people saw something in me that I had stopped seeing in myself.

The White Rabbit was back. In the margins of a textbook. In a professor’s eyes when I asked a question nobody else had thought to ask.

Curiosity was taking me somewhere. One question at a time.

And I thought — oh. This is what I’ve been missing.

Curiosity isn’t just a feeling. It’s a practice. Something you can lose and find and lose and find again. Something that compounds when you feed it. Something that opens doors you didn’t even know were there.

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My entire life seems wondrous to me — like I imagine Alice’s journeys. Hard, exciting, boring, crazy and everything in between. But I am constantly in awe. Constantly in wonderment at what has occurred — and more so at what is still to come.

Curiosity isn’t just about your own growth. It’s about staying awake to the world. Choosing to find new adventures instead of waiting for them to find you.

But I know that being curious takes practice. It’s uncomfortable. It requires you to move toward the unfamiliar when every instinct says stay put. So at the beginning of this year I decided to make it simple. Every week I try one new thing and write it down in my planner. That’s it

Some weeks it’s genuinely small. A different coffee order. A new walking route. A podcast I’d been putting off.

Some weeks it surprises me in ways I didn’t see coming.

And this last week — the new thing I tried was launching Unceiled. Something I had been thinking about for a long time. Something that scared me. Something that required me to follow my own White Rabbit and trust that it would take me somewhere worth going.

It always does.

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This is the first post in a series. It’s my origin story — told through the lens of Alice in Wonderland. Not because it’s a clever metaphor. Because that book was genuinely there for me when not much else was. And the things Alice goes through — the curiosity, the jump, the falling, the awakening — they map to my life in ways I’m still unpacking.

Over the coming weeks I’ll move from this beginning into the specific chapters of Alice’s journey and my own. Drawing the connections. Sharing the lessons. Getting into the real stuff.

But I want to leave you with this.

This week — try one new thing. Write it down somewhere. Your planner, your notes app, a Post-it on your fridge. Just capture it. Write down as little or as much as you want.

And then try again next week. Pretty sure you may find yourself seeking out new adventures in no time.

— Monisha