Social

Lucy is an 8-year-old girl who has a range of interests broader than that of an ordinary adult. She is enrolled in an international school, where classes are taught in French by native speakers. Her classmates are children of expats from different cultures, which amuses her nanny, who, when picking her up from school, says that she "took her from the children's UN."

"I was wrong. I'm sorry"—these words can have a magical effect on a struggling relationship. But if we fail to show empathy, the apology will sound fake or hurt the offended person even more.

Daily stress is a good excuse to avoid other people's needs, but this choice is a double loss. The kindness we display to make other people's days better is a very strong antidote to the high level of stress we experience daily.

Elspeth Muir’s brother, Alexander, died from drowning. It was 2009, and he had just turned 21. He died from drowning, but his death “was not foreshadowed by his love of water except that it explains why he was near a river, alone, with a blood-alcohol content of almost 0.25. My brother died because he was drunk, and because the drink made him stupid.”

She is an old age pensioner living across the street from my house. But I very rarely meet her. For years she has stayed in her house because of the many serious health problems she has been struggling with.

Many families who feared that the new coronavirus would affect their health ended up dreading its effect on something seemingly even more difficult to protect: the well-being of their relationship.

"Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

One night, thousands of miles apart, two young women of the same age made a decision—a seemingly trivial one, but one that would seal the fate of one of them.

Talking to your children about death can be an act of love. You can't take away their pain with a simple conversation, but you can give them something just as important: truth wrapped in gentleness, the reassurance and relief that they are not alone in their grief, and even the hope that sees beyond the loss.

Romantic love is easily hurt and somewhat pretentious, especially when faced with direct honesty. Friendship is more solid.

“We shrivel when we are not able to interact. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are” (Desmond Tutu).

A week before he left for college, megachurch pastor Steven Furtick’s oldest son asked him, “Out of everything you’ve taught me, what’s the best advice you can give me right now?” 

Nine years ago, as my then-fiancé and I were deep in the throes of folding paper flowers, painting glass bottles, and designing and making our own wedding stationery, the question popped up fairly regularly: Why don’t we just elope?

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" (Blaise Pascal).

Many years ago, while I was still in high school, our Romanian language and literature teacher assigned us the task of writing a framed story, complete with characters and a plot of our choosing.