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How ‘being yourself’ became another performance. Ever notice how the harder you try to be authentic, the more artificial it feels? There’s something deeply ironic about the amount of effort that goes into “just being yourself.” We’re told to live our truth, show up authentically, and stop pretending to be someone we’re not—but what happens…
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Why affirmations and bubble baths aren’t enough Have you ever walked through the self-help section of a bookstore and felt slightly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of products promising to help you love yourself? There are books about falling in love with yourself in 30days, guides to radical self-acceptance, and approximately seventeen different versions of…
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The problem with our obsession with emotional resilience I used to think emotional resilience meant bouncing back quickly from difficult things, like one of those inflatable punching bags that pops right back up no matter how hard you hit it. I thought resilient people were the ones who could experience loss, trauma, or disappointment and…
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The toxic positivity epidemic and authentic emotional processing I was having coffee with a friend last week, telling her about a difficult period I’d been going through—work stress, family drama, the general weight of existing in the world right now—when she interrupted me mid-sentence with a bright smile and said, “Have you tried just thinking…
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How Mary Elizabeth Braddon invented sensation fiction and got erased from the literary canon I was scrolling through a list of Victorian bestsellers when I came across a name that stopped me: Mary Elizabeth Braddon. According to the article, her novel Lady Audley’s Secret was one of the most popular books of the 1860s, outselling…
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I haven’t talked to my high-school best friends in since graduation, and it’s nobody’s fault. We didn’t have a fight. There was no dramatic falling out, no harsh words exchanged. we just…drifted. Slowly, quietly, like continents moving apart over geological time. One day I looked up and realized we’d become strangers who share a history.…
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For highly sensitive people who absorb everyone’s emotions I was sitting in the coffee shop last Tuesday, minding my own business and trying to write, when the woman at the table next to me got a phone call. I couldn’t hear the words, but I could feel the tension radiating from her body like heat…
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I once agreed to help someone move on the same weekend that I was already committed to attending a wedding, a work deadline, and what I like to call “recovery time” (which is really just me lying on my couch questioning my life choices). Why? Because when they asked if I was free Saturday morning,…
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I’ve been meditating consistently for about three months now, and I need to tell you something: it still feels like trying to wrangle a caffeinated squirrel most days. Despite what the Instagram wellness gurus might say, my mind hasn’t transformed into some Zen Garden of perpetual calm. If anything, sitting still has made me aware…
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I was procrastinating my own deadline when I stumbled across Eva Asprakis’s bio. By the time her first book was published, she’d accumulated four surnames: her mother’s French-Canadian name, the one on her British passport, her Cypriot family name from her stepfather’s adoption, and her married name. As someone who’s spent years thinking about narrative…
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Kat McAdaragh 