“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” — Oprah Winfrey
1. You will never be able to thrive until you take proper care of yourself.
You can survive, but thriving requires recovery.
You cannot operate on low battery mode forever. You have incredible potential, but it cannot be met when you are always in a state of energy-deficiency. Your days on this Earth are numbered.
Don’t waste them operating at a fraction of your true potential.
2. You are the only one responsible for your actions.
Don’t allow yourself to become dependent on someone else for your recovery.
This means that, while having a medical care team (potentially including a psychiatrist, therapist, and medical doctor) is immensely beneficial, it is easy to fall into the trap of expecting them to push you to recover.
Ultimately…
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” ― Malcolm X
- The people that surround us have a dramatic impact on our mental health and well-being.
According to neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett:
“If you are stressed over and over and over again without much opportunity to recover, the effects can be . . . grave.”
This was clearly the case for Meghan Markle, who was not only discriminated against because of her race, but also prevented from seeking mental health treatment at a time when she desperately needed it.
Racism, and oppression of any kind, have serious consequences, a fact highlighted by Dr. Barrett:
“Over time, anything that contributes to…
Why losing your period is no small matter.
Many young female athletes fail to understand the extent to which a loss of menstruation, or hypothalamic amenorrhea, impacts their health. We may consider our missed periods to be a normal part of an athletic lifestyle, when the reality is that amenorrhea is a warning sign that something is going wrong in the body.
Actually, hypothalamic amenorrhea is a sign that there are a number of things that are going wrong in the body.
We just don’t realize this, because, unfortunately, most athletes, regardless of their gender or age, aren’t educated about the consequences of undereating and/or overtraining.
We aren’t…
58 years later, we have failed to turn MLK’s dream into a reality.
On April 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his notable “I Have a Dream” speech. He described that, despite Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation a century earlier, America still oppressed its African American population:
“One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” speech
In spite of the fact that Dr. King’s speech was given 58 years ago, segregation’s impacts still plague America.
While some may argue that America no longer has…
And there is no Mockingjay.
The day Donald Trump was elected was a very strange day.
The world was fine. I took a nap. I woke up. And suddenly, everything was no longer fine.
Because President Snow had won.
When Trump became president, I was still a teenager, a teenager who loved to read fantasy novels.
And in my mind, it was very clear what had happened: Trump was a mirror image of Snow, and our world was about to erupt into that of the Hunger Games. I expected riots and rebellion, demands for Trump to be replaced. I expected a mockingjay to arise.
Unfortunately…
Because we could all use a bit more joy in our lives.
1. Start a photo journal.
Take a photo every day of something that made you smile or filled you with awe. If you do this consistently, by the end of the year you will have 365 photos of people, places, or things that inspired you and/or made you happy. In dark days like these, having visual reminders of joyful moments is a powerful way to create positivity in your life.
2. Have a “minute of silence.”
We are surrounded by noise and stimulation all the time. So, decide to devote at least one minute a day for complete silence. Don’t call it meditation, don’t set a timer (you can estimate a…
Identity matters.
As the race for a COVID-19 vaccine heats up, the front runner appears to be the one developed by Pfizer/BioNTech.
It is already set to be used in the U.K. next week, after receiving governmental approval.
The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer/BioNTech was 95% effective amongst 44,000 volunteers, and didn’t cause any serious side effects.
This COVID-19 vaccine could be the answer we have all been waiting for.
I would just like to call attention to a small detail that the media has largely ignored: the identity of the scientist who devised the idea for the vaccine itself.
A Turkish-German…
The sound of laughter caught me off guard.
It was coming from the kitchen.
Whatever went down must have been truly hilarious, because they were all laughing — my parents and my three sisters — at the same time. That didn’t happen often. Not anymore.
Something stirred inside me. A bittersweet sensation coursed through me — a surge of sadness laced with the contagious joy and warmth of carefree laughter.
It took me a few seconds to identify that strange fluttering in my heart; I was lonely. I missed my family. I missed laughing with them. …
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela
Tomorrow. I will start eating more tomorrow, I tell myself.
A flood of relief washes over me as I scurry out of the kitchen and back to the safe haven of my room.
For years, this was the pattern of my life.
I would decide that I wanted to stop being the isolated, self-absorbed, anxiety-filled shell of a human being that anorexia had reduced me to. But every time it came to doing the hard work — eating more, exercising less, and allowing my body and mind to just rest — I backed out.
I wanted to recover in theory…
We cannot expect deep-rooted racism, centuries in the making, to disappear in a matter of months.
In September of 2015, a photograph of a young boy shocked the world.
A three-year-old little boy lay lifeless on a beach, his small head facedown in the water.
His name was Alan Kurdi.
His family — Alan, his brother, and his mother and father — were refugees, fleeing the Syrian civil war. They were trying to reach Kos, a Greek island, when the feeble boat they were in capsized, causing Alan, his mother, and his five-year-old brother to drown.
Alan’s tiny black sneakers remain on his feet; his red shirt and navy shorts make him appear to be sleeping.
