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"Loneliness irritates me like a broken nail," says a line in a Romanian poem. The truth is, loneliness stings, pulls apart, and resembles the coffee dregs left at the bottom of the pot in which joy and love once brewed. Although the fear of loneliness is natural, we can choose to see solitude as something more than a "flowering wilderness" and embrace it...

When strangers give you a helping hand after your friends have forgotten about you, the world suddenly seems a little more beautiful. This was the experience of PJ Robins when a crowd of strangers suddenly arrived at the party for his autistic little girl, which no one else had wanted to attend.

“We all feel stronger if we are part of a tapestry. One thread alone is weak, but, woven into something larger, surrounded by other threads, it is more difficult to unravel,” says family therapist Stefan Walters, summarising the benefits of understanding the history of the family we come from.

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?

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” said Nietzsche in one of his essays back in 1889. Easier said than done when you’re facing unemployment, illness, rejection, or a blank exam paper. We tend to see these as things we need to get rid of. This can’t possibly be the life we wanted.

I never cease to marvel at those who help, in an organized manner, troubled children, abandoned elderly or victims of violence. However, the general need for such heroic saviours reveals the failure of the social group that is apt to address these situations: the family.

"Since you are precious and honoured in my sight, and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life." (Isaiah 43:4)

The wisdom of friendship consists in finding those who do not require a price, or ask you to change.

We think we know what a good life is, but what is a "good death", if it exists? When incurable diseases ravage the body and death becomes an imminent reality, the question takes on painful outlines, especially in a society open to arranging the circumstances of death according to the will of its protagonist.

In a society that does not place great value on sensitivity, raising orchid children—children who are hypersensitive to environmental conditions—can be an overwhelming experience for parents. At least, until they realize the vital role they can play in unleashing the extraordinary potential that such children have.

Every day, we are surrounded by the resilience of developing characters and it’s almost impossible not to be touched by their beauty and fragility.

Procrastination is self-harm, psychologist Piers Steel says. A kind of self-harm that we can become addicted to if we do not detect the reasons behind it and especially the effective strategies to counter it.

Happy couples are not spared from marital conflict, but the crucial thing is that they have simple but effective tools to strengthen their relationship in a way that does not allow the conflict to destroy the emotional connection between them.

Money is essential in our Western world. It allows us to purchase the necessities of life—food and shelter, for instance. It pays the bills for heating and cooling. There may even be enough for some luxuries.

For some people, suffering is temporary. For others, life itself can be a long series of painful blows. However, experience shows that recovery is possible even when people seem to be at the end of their tether.