Category: Personal Stories

How Lewis Capaldi Made Me Feel Less Alone in My Mental Health Journey

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By Erin Gabriel

My sister has the biggest crush on Lewis Capaldi, the Scottish singer-songwriter who first gained attention in 2017 with his debut single and viral hit Bruises. If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know who he is (I am speaking to my 30-something millennial cousins who had no idea who he was) here is a photo for reference:

Sex icon, amiright? At this point, my sister would quote the viral TikTok sound, “That’s mine. I’ma stick beside him.” Anywho, I regress…

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Get Intimate with Intimacy Coach Beth Darling

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By Nicole Mitchell
Design by Whitney Young

After spending 15 years as a divorce lawyer—dealing with marriage counselors, understanding affairs, and finalizing relationships—Beth Darling decided it was time to change. 

When Darling’s own 20-year relationship ended, she decided her new goal was to help couples stay together and keep their love alive. “Rather than trying to make the journey of separation an amicable one,” Darling shares on her website, “I wanted to help couples stay together. I wanted to see love not only survive but thrive.”

In her new book, The 5 Kinds of Intimacy: How to Keep Your Love Alive, Darling shares a no-bullshit approach to creating a happy and satisfying relationship. Coming from the eyes of a hopeless romantic with a background in law, this book is a must-read for anyone in a relationship—whether you’re struggling to keep the passion alive or you’re still in the honeymoon phase. We did a Q&A with Darling about what she’s been up to.

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To be a woman takes guts

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By Kelcie McKenney

This poem was first published in Tessellation, a poetry and photography zine with all proceeds benefiting Barrier Babes—a Kansas City nonprofit that strives to promote inclusive and unapologetic sexual health education. Read more about the project.

To be a woman takes guts
Guts that leave blood stains on silk dresses and middle school seats
Guts that spill when you share the name of your crush at a slumber party after too much mountain dew and nail polish remover
Guts that leave a cold stain down your thigh after one missed period

To be a woman takes guts
It’s standing up for yourself after the room has spent the whole meeting talking over you
It’s learning to walk back to your car with keys between your knuckles every night
Its wiping the mascara from under your eyes and telling the reflection you can be both soft and strong

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How Caley Rose Uses Her Music as a Form of Empowerment

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By Nicole Mitchell

Caley Rose is a female empowerment pop singer of four years—and she’s just getting started. So far, her music has been in commercials, she’s been streaming her music creation, her single “GAME OVER” is on the Billboard charts, and, coming up soon, Rose will be performing at an event this Saturday in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

While Rose has been booked and busy regarding her music career recently, it wasn’t always that way. “I was always a singer,” she said. “But I got lost along the way and took some detours.” Her original end goal was to join Broadway as a performer. “However, if I was honest with myself, I really just wanted to do pop music.”

It took Rose a while into her music career to make the switch to pop. “I was working with different producers, and I wasn’t a songwriter,” she said. At the time, Rose followed the lead of what her songwriters wanted her music to sound like. “It wasn’t until four years ago that I started songwriting,” she explained. “Once I realized myself as a writer, I saw myself as a singer.”

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I am a coward.

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By Lauren Conaway

I am a coward.

When the doctor told me I was pregnant, I was dumbfounded. The room was cold. I was vulnerable in my little robe, and his words echoed for what seemed like hours.

How could this be? I was on the pill. Every month, I called Planned Parenthood. I made sure to pick up that prescription, and I took that tiny, politicized pill religiously. 4:00 p.m. on the dot, every day. I later came to find out that I’m what’s called a “fast metabolizer,” a concept I didn’t even know existed until it was too late.

I was almost two months along. I was almost 20 years old.

My periods had always been a bit irregular so the first tip-off was the constant vomiting. I was so, so sick. From the moment I woke up to the moment I put my exhausted head on the pillow, I felt like an absolute trainwreck. Unable to keep food or even water down, I lost almost 20 pounds over the course of a month. Later, as I watched Kate Middleton grapple with hyperemesis gravidarum during her first pregnancy, I felt a pang of recognition. Is that what I was experiencing so many years ago? I’ll probably never know.

At the time, I was 3 months past a PTSD-fueled nervous breakdown and the subsequent ending of my brief and dramatic college career.

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