Embracing the Dark Side

A man approached me on a recent evening as I was getting into my car. He told me a variation on a familiar story: he had run out of gas and had with him neither money nor a credit card. His car was a couple blocks away, and his wife and kids were waiting for him there. They were all waiting take his wife's broken laptop to a store a couple miles away where they could get it fixed. Read More

Single adults are a growing demographic as people now marry later and divorce more frequently than in previous times. Women owe it to the feminist movement that we now have more freedom to make choices in our love lives, including the choice to remain single. Read More

It is popular these days to explain depression as a medical problem caused by chemistry: an imbalance of serotonin and other neurotransmitters. Many mental health care providers favor this explanation of depression's causes, supposedly because it destigmatizes the illness and shifts blame away from the patient. Read More

In the eponymous fairytale, Sleeping Beauty's parents throw a joyous party to celebrate her long-awaited birth. They only have twelve place settings, so they invite twelve of the kingdom's thirteen wise women. The thirteenth wise woman, who is ill-tempered and lives in a remote corner of the kingdom, is not invited to the party. The way that the parents treated the thirteenth sister is the way many of us treat sadness and other negative emotions. Read More