Meditation will cure what ails you - no really, it will
Are you feeling disconnected? Out-of-sorts? Angry? Lost? Lonely? Brandon Nappi of Copper Beech Institute explains how meditation helps center us and draw us closer to one another. It’s counterintuitive to imagine silence leading to social connection, but Brandon explains how his time leading Copper Beech has proven over and over again that awareness is the great healer.
Love will survive
Anecdotally, we keep hearing about the way the COVID pandemic has strained our relationships, but the data actually suggest otherwise. Maybe tough times cause us to cling to love? Maybe our relationships were just always great and we just didn’t know it? The Love in the Time of COVID project, led by Professor Richard Slatcher, plans to keep studying how and why relationships are staying strong despite all the challenges of 2020.
It’s not your imagination ladies, things really aren’t fair (yet)
If entering lockdown, then immediately diving into homeschooling and extra housework, all while trying to manage a career left you feeling like you were shouldering more than your fair share, you're not imagining things. Economist Kate Bahn explains how the pandemic has affected career women, and what we can do to help fix the situation for ourselves and our sisters.
Your holiday traditions aren’t set in stone
Are you having an anxiety attack just thinking about holiday baking? Shopping? Elf on a Shelf? All of it? Psychologist Dr. Markesha Miller has a clear message for us - our holiday traditions are exactly as flexible as we want them to be. What matters most is that we nurture ourselves during this time. Get through this holiday season with your well-being fully in-tact, nobody will miss the cookies.
Self-care takes many different forms
Yes, we can all benefit from time spent outside, from investments in our health, and from knowing when to give ourselves a break and slow down. But sometimes self-care looks like empowering others. And other times it looks like a puppy. The key to mental health today is knowing what you need to thrive and investing your energy there. We interviewed three incredibly smart women to learn how they were practicing self-care despite COVID, and their answers will inspire you.
The kids are (probably) alright
If you’re lucky enough to be both healthy and financially stable during this otherwise chaotic time, then the next worry we all have is, “how will COVID, and the many school closures, impact our kids long-term?” While it’s hard to gauge impact in real time, it turns out that there are genuine reasons for optimism.
Friendships are some of our most important relationships
So let’s honor these relationships and invest in our friends. It just might help us get through any darker days ahead.
The stories we tell ourselves matter
Confirmation bias is just one of the habits of mind that govern our understanding of the world, but it tends to be one of our trickier cognitive habits. Rutger Bregman breaks down how our social and cultural narratives get formed, and demonstrates how easy it is to build a counter-narrative - with evidence! We become our stories, so let’s write them well.
We can do hard things
Whether 2020 meant you faced big challenges or smaller worries, everyone has worked through some shit this year. For myself, launching Uzume, in the middle of a global pandemic, while homeschooling and still working a day job, was definitely among the more stressful things I’ve done. But if this year has convinced me of anything, it’s that we absolutely need tools like Uzume to help us find our way back to our core values when we get lost, and help us remain focused on what matters most when we get overwhelmed. At the time of writing, the app is just about ready to hit the app store, and I couldn’t be more proud or more scared.
French people really really support the right to bare breasts
Ok, honestly, this is the best. When this story broke, people all over were still getting horribly sick from COVID, there were worldwide protests of the murder of George Floyd, nobody knew if kids would safely return to school in the fall, and yet people in France still had enough bandwidth to go absolutely to the mat for the right to be topless at the beach, without shame or comment. If we don’t stay vigilant against creeping puritanism, then the patriarchy wins. Kudos to the French for holding the line.
