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‘My friend’s death proves we need better maternal mental health support’
I was feeding my four-month-old son when my phone lit up with the life-shattering message: ‘I don’t know how to say this and I can’t believe I’m writing this, but Sophie died this morning.’ The message was from the husband of one of my best and most brilliant friends. When I called, he confirmed that Sophie had taken her own life. Her daughter was 10 weeks old. I’d first met my curious, smart friend 20 years earlier on a plane to Moscow. We were travelling as part of a programme to teach English abroad and from those early encounters, we were inseparable. Sophie had a sense of adventure I deeply respected; her drive to explore new ideas and places was an extension of her desire to learn. Not all friendships…
Healing ancestral wounds
The sins of the fathers are visited on their descendants for many generations, or so the Bible claims. What is certain is that whether we’re aware of it or not, each of us is deeply affected by the lives of our ancestors and the choices they made. It’s a concept most therapists and geneticists understand well and one particularly core to ancestral healers such as Terry and Natalia O’Sullivan, authors of Ancestral Healing Made Easy (recently published by Hay House). The UK-based couple co-run workshops and retreats with the aim of helping people tap into their ancestry and uncover and heal matters arising from their lineage. What is it and why does it matter? Terry, also a spiritual medium and sangoma shaman (initiated in the tribal African tradition), describes ancestral…
The flirtation minefield
Flirting is terrifying. Flirting is exhilarating. If it’s neither of those things for you, then you aren’t doing it right. The scientific definition of “covert signals sent between individuals to indicate sexual interest and begin courtship” does not even scratch the surface of the alarming social high-wire performance that is flirtation. Flirting involves you stretching your metaphorical scrotal self (using scrotal in the non-gendered sensitive-privatebits sense) across the razor-sharp blade that is the opinion of another, usually a stranger. It is inherently scary, but it’s also fundamentally exciting because the rewards are equally as elevating as the downsides are desiccating. It is no wonder then, that for thousands of years, humans have studied the art and science of flirtation. Some of what has been found has been enlightening, the rest…
Back With a Vengeance
ELIMINATED A QUARTER OF A CENTURY AGO in the U.S., measles may be on track for an “unfathomable” comeback within the next two decades. This is the warning of a study led by epidemiologists from Stanford University who modeled the impact of decreasing vaccination rates on the spread of the infectious disease. Already, waning levels of immunity have led to significant outbreaks within states—such as the recent episode in Texas that saw more than 620 cases, 64 hospitalizations and the deaths of two children. “While the effects of declining vaccination won’t be immediate, we could eventually see the return of awful complications from diseases that most clinicians today have not encountered thanks to decades of successful immunization,” said Professor Nathan Lo in a statement. “With measles, we found that we’re…
Leo XIV: What an American pope can teach America
Growing up, “the only white smoke young Robert Prevost ever saw” likely billowed from steelworks chimneys on Chicago’s South Side, said Thomas Dyja in The Observer (U.K.). Last week, white smoke from the Vatican signaled that he’d been elected the first North American pope in the history of the Catholic Church. Adopting the name Leo XIV, the new pontiff addressed the crowds in St. Peter’s Square first in Italian, then in Spanish, and concluded with a traditional blessing in Latin. But make no mistake, the new leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics is a “true son of Chicago.” Known to friends as Bob, he’s a White Sox fan from the “intimate and humane” city that gave the world Barack Obama, deep-dish pizza, and Playboy magazine. The cardinals’ choice of…
The Perfect Employee
1/ An ability to manage up “I look for the ability to manage up and anticipate needs. I try to take the first in-person interview at a coffee shop, and intentionally arrive five minutes late. Theoretically, they arrive on time, and it’s interesting to see what they do with the time. Have they gotten a table? Are they pacing around outside? Have they gotten their own coffee or waited to see what I may want? We’re looking for self-motivated candidates, and you can learn a lot.” —SARAH DOGGETT EVENSON, founder, Marie Oliver 2/ Work ethic and cultural fit “I look for two things: work ethic and cultural fit. So I ask questions that aren’t just about what someone did, but why they did it. Like: ‘Tell me about a time you had to work…