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Tuesday, 30 June 2026
On this day of your life
I believe God wants you to know ...
... that this is not a day for remembering violence, but for
memorializing your decision to heal every wound that
could cause it.
There is one question that no one will ask of those who use
violence to make their point: What hurts you so bad that
you feel you have to hurt me in order to heal it?
This does not condone violence, but it can help us to
understand it -- and to understand how to stop it.
CWG says, "No one does anything inappropriate, given their
model of the world."
Embracing the wisdom in those
eleven words could change the course of human history.
Speaking Your Truth (OM)
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How we Accidentally Turn Children into Insecure Adults.
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*Editor’s Note: This piece is part of a series. Read the second part here.
When I was pregnant with my boy, people frequently asked me if I was going to become the next big “parenting” writer.
My answer was always a solid no.
Although I have a ton to say about parenting and children, I just can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want to make any parents out there feel guilty or inadequate.
As a parent, I understand we’re all doing the best we can with what we have. And, I know that reading unsolicited advice online could bring to the surface many deep-seated emotions that may not ring true.
So when I say “mistakes,” I don’t mean anything malicious or wrong. Because the truth is we can never be perfect parents. Despite our best efforts to be flawless, the truth is we are only human.
Your mistakes as parents are inevitable. Even with all the resources and information we have, I constantly worry that my son will carry wounds from me or his father that we never meant to cause.
That’s why I emphasize the word “accidentally”—because most parents don’t intentionally hurt their children. Parenthood is a long, arduous journey that has many ups and downs. Having said that, any resulting mistakes might stem from oversight, a lack of resources, burnout, or conditioned behavioral patterns.
But it’s never too late to learn something new. It’s never too late to change. Personally, I was robbed of my self-esteem when I was a child. Because I’ve spent most of my adulthood rebuilding my own self-worth, I know how crucial it is to raise confident, independent children.
A confident child will turn into an adult who makes independent decisions that feel right. This adult will know what he/she deserves and won’t settle for less. This will dramatically reduce the chances of being in an unhealthy environment, a toxic relationship, or a controlling friendship.
Adults who know their worth are resilient.
For them, challenges are opportunities—not hindrances. They stand up for themselves, ask the right questions, and aren’t afraid to be themselves.
Shaping an adult like this from scratch might sound challenging. As a fellow parent, I know you think you are already doing that (and maybe you are, which is great). But maybe you’re (accidentally) not.
If you would like to dive deeper into this topic, I’m here to tell you that, as parents, it is our responsibility to shape that adult. When raising our children, we often see them exactly as they are: just kids. We forget that someday they will be adults, just like us.
To raise confident children, we must first have the courage to imagine who they will become. We often react impulsively to chaotic or upsetting situations with our children, overlooking how our reaction might be shaping the adult within them.
So, in stressful moments, we need to pause and check in with ourselves before reacting. How will my reaction impact my child in the future? Is my reaction or behavior helping him/her become a confident adult?
I can see clearly now the unintentional errors that happened during my own childhood. With commitment and a staggering amount of confidence, I’m breaking the cycle with my son. Parenting doesn’t come with an instruction manual—and our parents didn’t know any better.
But, maybe, we do. We live in a time where we are much more conscious of generational trauma and how it impacts us. So, yes, we can do better. We can transform the word “accidentally” into “intentionally” and replace “mistakes” with “outcomes.”
To switch from accidental mistakes to intentional outcomes, we need to recognize the very first barrier:
Overprotection.
More to come in part two.
~
author: Elyane Youssef
I’m on an Island (But I’m Not Really Here).
*Author’s note: this is dedicated to the men, women, and children of Palestine.
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Paradise, is what some people would call this.
The palm trees swaying with the wind. The gentle roar of the ocean.
A swing crafted by hand rocks back and forth in solitude, waiting for its next visitor.
The sun hides away, its rays peeking through the dark and stormy clouds of the tropics.
A mosquito lands on my leg as I swat it away; it hovers around in opportunity.
Small talk surrounds me, as I nod and smile…my body here, but my mind a million miles away, pondering the universe, the world, whilst I hear talk about the weather, work, and more holidays away.
Images of what I’ve seen and witnessed the past few years flash up as a movie montage.
But I’m in Paradise
I shake my head out of my reverie and rejoin the conversation holding my chai latte, the sweet taste lingering on my lips.
I stare out into the pristine water again as conversations fade into the background. I don’t know how to do small talk anymore, I say to myself.
I’ve seen too much.
I know too much.
I care too much.
I purposely chose the T-shirt I wore today. A top that has the word Freedom on it.
Freedom is one of my highest values.
Freedom for me, my friends, my family, for all.
The conversations continue…
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to contribute anymore.
Me, who used to collect friends weekly, who travelled the world extensively, visiting 30 countries with a wanderlust eye. Someone who loved getting to know people, was able to talk about anything for hours with anyone at anytime, and who used to get excited for island trips and travel.
I now sit back, sunglasses on, introverted, remotely listening, knowing the people around me haven’t seen the images I have. They do not know or understand the world like I do, nor do they hold the same care.
To them, life is normal. It’s a break from their nine-to-five schedule, a chance for celebration, for relaxation, for renewal…
But for me, nothing changes.
Except I’m on an Island
As soon as I open my apps, the images are still there, the children are still dying, and my inbox will still be loaded with more messages pleading for my help.
An injustice that has changed me forever.
I may be on an Island
But I’m not really here.
~
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Radical Self-Care for Perimenopause (or Any Life Stage that feels Extra Hard).
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The first time I got my period, I didn’t tell anyone.
I stuffed a crispy wad of school-grade toilet paper into my underpants and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. I was 11, a shy and self-conscious child.
I’d attended the requisite sex-ed assembly, girls and boys segregated to separate classrooms to watch clinical films detailing the fallopian tubes and semen. The videos probably even discussed puberty being a time of transition. But there was so much they didn’t broach. They didn’t say: you will grow hips and breasts and hair in hidden places. You are metamorphosizing; you are being revised. You will leave your child-body behind.
Now, as my own kids approach adolescence, I’m seeing our friends’ and relatives’ children stumble toward puberty. Their bodies stretch and strain, sprouting small eruptions of acne. They’re beginning to wear makeup or experiment with different clothing styles, or they’re cultivating a bored, apathetic expression like tweens have probably been doing since the Paleolithic era.
I’m stunned by how visible this transition appears from my adult vista. When I was in middle school, I had no idea that as my body changed, as I tried on different styles of clothing, makeup, and friends, my transformations must’ve been so obvious to the adults around me. I think of the kind middle school teacher who, when seeing my heavy-handed first attempts at makeup application, told me, “Your makeup looks very nice.” By contrast, a male classmate had asked me something along the line of “What happened to your face?”
How tender to discover that puberty is so apparent, the way we try on different personas, the way our bodies burst and flower. I understand why some cultures develop rituals around this change; the process is as stunning as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Perhaps we should have puberty cocoons where children could rest on their path toward adolescence, protected from prying eyes.
Maybe I feel extra tender toward those hovering in that liminal space between childhood and adolescence because I’m in the middle of my own metamorphosis. I’m in perimenopause, often referred to as “reverse puberty.” But unless you’re a member of my immediate family with a front-row ticket to my mood swings and migraines, the threshold I’m crossing is a much less obvious one.
As women leave our reproductive years behind, we tend to meld into the background, indiscernible from all the other women who impossibly young grocery cashiers refer to as “ma’am.”
We women hold so much. My responsibilities and to-do lists are more intense than ever. At the same time, my moods are erratic, my memory less reliable, my mornings often decimated by migraines.
The past few years have not been especially kind to me; they’ve brought a pandemic, my dad’s illness and death, and the health struggles of other relatives. Over and over again, I’ve had to surrender. To the reality that life is both hard and beautiful. That my bandwidth is narrower now than I’d like. That my to-do list cannot be my higher power. That no matter how much or how little we accomplish in a given day, we are worthy of love, compassion, and tenderness.
I am old enough now to understand the significance of metamorphosis. I am wise enough to realize I deserve care and gentleness. I am scared to be entering the unknown, to leave part of myself behind.
Or maybe menopause isn’t leaving ourselves behind, but the containment of all the versions of ourselves we’ve ever been: the girl, the teenager, the woman, the lover, the wife, the mother, the middle-aged woman, the old woman. Maybe we’re meant to hold all these parts lightly, lovingly.
This time, during this becoming, I will not pretend that nothing is happening. I will do for myself what I couldn’t when I was 11; I will soften. I will hold myself more gently. I will care for myself radically, unapologetically. I will talk with friends and search for rituals that might help ease us over this strange threshold, witnessed and unalone.
I will accept that some days are warrior days, days when we hold all the things, imperfectly. Other days are cocoon days, chrysalis days; days meant to be still, to soothe.
~
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