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I feel like every time I’ve tuned into the news lately, I’ve heard a story about a woman dying from intimate partner or domestic violence (DV). It is heartbreaking and sickening. 

In a society that is more concerned with form than substance, character ranks second. It is the power of the image that dictates things.

We walk into a room full of people and from the first second, we draw a conclusion about how we will feel in their company. And often what we intuited happens. How is this possible?

The sun was shining on that wonderful July Sunday when you were enjoying your summer vacation. Your parents were with you on your walks in the park and watched you ride your bike without the slightest care in the world. Their smile gave you hints of the purest parental love.

For many people, the New Year is the catalyst for making changes they didn't have time or energy for in the previous year. On 1 January, the list of resolutions grows promisingly long, but keeping them can become a real ordeal in the tangle of daily problems and deadlines. Statistics show that even before the month of snowdrops, many of the commitments made...

In 2016, I noticed advertising for a new quiz show called Hard Quiz coming to ABC TV in Australia.

If optimism helps us get rid of problems more easily, too much optimism does the exact opposite: it amplifies them. Pushed to the extreme, positive thinking prescribed as an antidote to suffering prevents us from accepting reality as it is and starting to look for solutions that can make our lives easier.

Two recent stories in Australian media shocked me to my core. Two 12-year-olds in different states took their own lives after being bullied at school. 

"If I cut off your arm, will your husband take you again?" "My husband loves me very much." So he started cutting. "There was no alternative."

“I knew her face better than my own. Still, I had to say goodbye. I had to walk away. That’s what you do when someone dies. Except this wasn’t just someone. It was Ana, my sweet girl.”

If shame were personified, its main characteristic would be its ability to creep into the darkest depths, avoiding any trace of light and any discussion of itself.

The promise to live with our loved one “until death do us part" has gradually lost its meaning. Today, it is considered unrealistic to get married with the idea that the relationship will last forever.

I open the window and breathe in the air, trying to guess the weather. Floating around, mixed, are scents and miasms alike; it's hard to decipher these intricate clues.

Life is not just a very cool gift. It is something that a person receives on loan from God. That's the conclusion of Oscar, the child hero of "Oscar and the Lady in Pink," a novel written by Franco-Belgian playwright, short story writer, and novelist Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt.

The mental load is a concept that has gained attention in the last little while. What if mental load had a baby?