sarahdrewer

I’m currently training to extend my therapeutic work to adolescents, and spending more time thinking about what it means to be a girl growing up now. There is something I have been noticing that I find both fascinating and uncomfortable. Girls quite rightly are taught that they should look after one another. We talk about sisterhood, solidarity, having each other’s backs and, increasingly, about girl code. These are beautiful and important ideas. But I wonder what happens when a moral code...

There’s something I’ve been noticing more and more lately—in my work, in conversations, in my own life and in the quiet spaces in between. So many people are holding a lot. These times are trying. On the surface, life carries on. People are showing up, functioning, doing what needs to be done. But underneath, there’s often a very different experience—one that isn’t always shared or spoken about. A kind of silent pressure. A sense of barely holding it together. Listening to James Blake's...

"If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick everyday." — Leonard Cohen There is something about this killer line that lands quietly and then keeps unfolding when I listen to it . It speaks to the human tendency to hold on tightly — to identities, roles, beliefs, and stories about who we are and how life should be. And it speaks to the cost of that holding. In therapy, I often meet people at the point where the holding has become exhausting. They are trying very hard to be a certain...