Social

On the morning of the 15 November 2016, I awoke in a hospital bed, with no memory of how I got there. My favourite pyjamas had been torn from my body, and I lay in a hospital gown, a piercing pain in my head, impaling my brain. I was barely able to think and incapable of speech. I was scared, though this was...

Humans have been telling stories ever since the dawn of civilisation. What stories do we tell about ourselves and how do they affect our identity?

Amy Ainsworth is the mother of 5-year-old twin girls, whose appearance is both surprising and fascinating – how could it be any other way when you see a pair of big green eyes showing off from behind the brown curls of one of the girls, contrasting strikingly with the coffee-coloured eyes and black, straight hair of her twin sister?

I just got back from the funeral of a fifty-four-year-old mother who left behind a grieving teenager. His father told how the boy wanted to ask his mother for forgiveness, on her deathbed, for all the stubbornness typical of a seventeen-year-old. He was already forgiven.

Behind the prelude to a divorce are four major destructive behaviours which can prevent the couple from keeping their enthusiastic promise of staying together ...for better or for worse, till death us do part.

Even if half of us refer to creativity as a rare trait that only the other half has, in reality, creativity is much like a muscle: the more we use it, the more creative we become.

A seemingly endless stream of needy causes compete for our attention and money every day. Our emails, mailboxes and phones are bombarded by charities asking for generous donations to help.

Today's mothers are faced with difficult decisions: breastfeeding or formula feeding, having a career or being a stay-at-home parent, modern or traditional education—and silent pressure from the fear that any choice they make is a mistake. This constant doubt weighs more heavily on them than the choices themselves.

“What is mankind that you make so much of them, that you give them so much attention, that you examine them every morning and test them every moment?” (Job 7:17-18)

We often forget that a relationship is the sum of two people—he + she = they—and what one does inevitably affects the other. That means each person’s behaviour influences the entire dynamic. Yet, more often than not, we focus on what the other person should or could do for us or for the relationship, and rarely stop to ask: What can I do...

We log onto Facebook without any particular goal in mind. Perhaps we want to see what our friends are doing, or maybe we just want to pass the time or feel connected for a few minutes. Our feed appears as a natural succession of fragments: a family photo, an ironic comment, or an article shared by someone we know. Nothing seems forced. Nothing...

I was a young student looking for a good paying job to support my family and my studies. On that day, I found myself in the head nurse’s office at the nearby nursing home for the elderly.

When I was four years old, my younger brother was born. My parents focused on my brother and spent less time with me. It was only 40 years later that I discovered how this had affected me.

Born in 1999, Alex is on the cusp of the millennial generation. We're 12 years apart, but we have a lot in common. One is an unhappy time at school. Back in my day, it was called being an "emo": a kid who was too sensitive, too sad, too lonely, too shy, too everything.

When I was a child, I used to take a branch of locust tree and, plucking the leaves one by one, I would say: She loves me… she loves me not… she loves me… she loves me not. I cannot remember who I was thinking of when doing this; too many years have gone by since then. However, the refrain is still very...