Sacks was referring to specific points in the past, which we may cite as examples of nostalgia. But his comment reveals something deeper, which applies to obsessiveness, broadly, and perfectionism, specifically. Both often entail a preoccupation with a lost past, but one that substantially differs from anything resembling reality. While nostalgia romanticizes the past, it, at least, captures some part of it. With perfectionism, the longing is often for the possibilities of one's past, rather than for the past itself.
Poetry is traditionally taught - at least it was taught to me - as a kind of thing you have to endure in English class; there's no sense of it applying to your life. But poetry, good poetry, is the stuff of life. Poetry asks us to slow down and to think about what we're reading, but also to experience it.
Grief doesn't follow a script. Whether you've lost someone suddenly or are navigating the slow unraveling that follows a major life change, it can be hard to find space for your emotions, let alone make sense of them. That's where journaling comes in. This commonly therapist-recommended tool has been shown to ease stress, clarify emotions, and support long-term healing. And, no, it doesn't have to be done daily to make a difference.
In 2023, I lost my soul dog, Chubbs. He had been with me for 14 years through every apartment, every move, and even a cross-country relocation from Texas to New York. When he passed, it felt like someone had pulled the anchor from my life. I didn't just lose my dog; I lost my sense of safety and the steady presence that had guided every chapter of my adult life. The grief felt overwhelming.
Seeing that V was struggling both physically - being sick - and emotionally - being so close to the anniversary of Bon's death - Sandy gives her a charter off and sends her to recuperate at a hotel, knowing that V would never ask for the time off herself. It's a kind gesture that is spurred, in part, by Nathan, who notices that V is not getting better and alerts the captain.
I do have tremendous amounts of peace and acceptance around what happened because of how we were able to make it for her. Winslet's eldest son, Joe, was then 13. For him as a child, seeing that love poured into this moment was huge. And then he discovered through conversations with friends that that's so rarely the case. Six years later, in 2023, Joe decided to turn the experience into a screenplay.
Mom worked for almost two decades after her divorce, but could not financially make up for the years she spent as a housewife. The low-paying jobs she had while married - cleaner, waitress, and such - counteracted her higher income as an administrative assistant. She ended up grossing $575.00 a month from social security, despite the fact that she could have drawn against my father's social security allotment for more than double that amount.
Landman, at its best, is an occupational hazard drama about one of the most dangerous industries in America. We might pal around with an oil company's president all day by following the life of Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), but Landman's most engaging stories cover what happens when you run a business that reports zero days without an accident every single day. It's not just reenacting drilling explosions and gas leaksit's exploring the grief that comes with losing your loved ones on the job.
When the Norris family meets up with T.L. before the funeral, we get a glimpse of the charmer he once was. Or maybe that's just the power of Sam Elliott, whose palpable charisma rubs off on his screen partners. He's full of praise for Angela, Ainsley, and especially Ariana, with whom he forms a quick kinship based on a shared history of loss.
After the day of meetings, dinner, socializing, and after-dinner drinks, I found myself in the hotel room. On the surface, the day had been a nice departure from the stress of the prior weeks. But it was quiet, I was alone, exhausted, and felt numb. I stepped into the shower and, without warning, the floodgates of emotion burst forth, and I cried harder than I had cried in the weeks and months prior.
Birthdays are usually depicted as happy celebrations with loved ones gathered, a cake, gifts, laughter, and, if it's a child's birthday, games and balloons. Even when resources are low, as they are for many people these days, something-no matter how minimal-is often done. If you look on social media, you see all the photos of these eventsl, with everyone smiling and close.
It started young for me. I didn't really have anyone to talk with. My father was a sulky, silent brute and I couldn't risk getting yelled at or hit by speaking up. My mother preferred not to hear about turmoil and always told me to think happy thoughts, even as my older sister urged me to image the worst so that whatever did happen to me wouldn't be as bad as I imagined.
Can you believe it took this show seven whole episodes to finally dabble in necrophilia? As we saw last week, Dina Standish's husband, Doug, has died, and rather than calling the morgue and making arrangements, she simply gets ready for bed and goes to sleep next to the body. What could initially be seen as a relatable, albeit extreme, bit of procrastinating is soon revealed to be a reluctance to part with the body that lasts for days on end.
I've been getting close to a man for the past year and a half, and the other day we had a big blow-up. I didn't like the lax way that he was responding to me, and I wrote him a note saying as much. He got angry and accused me of speaking to him like he was my child. When I attempted to address the issue at hand namely, his unresponsiveness he got madder.
Since my wife died, I've reconnected with my sexuality. I've realised that my fantasies are actually available to me, not just something I live out through porn. And when I met Sophie, I discovered there's been a sexual revolution going on and I'd been missing out. In the early days, Sophie would wake me up in the middle of the night to have sex and we'd whisper fantasies to each other.
Over 600 pages this memoir of sorts ranges from her childhood growing up in the Canadian backwoods to her grief at the death of her partner of 48 years, the writer Graeme Gibson, in 2019, with many friendships, the occasional spat and more than 50 books (including Cat's Eye, Alias Grace and the Booker prizewinning The Blind Assassin and The Testaments) in between.
You shouldn't have to convince your husband to follow through on your dream vacation. He should have consulted you before inviting your son and telling him he will be included in everything. You wrote that you scrimped and saved for years to afford this vacation. How does he intend to pay for all those extra expenses for a third person?
There's always something of a melancholy tinge to Thanksgiving, an unspoken, primal awareness not only that this is one final bacchanal before the privations of winter set in, but that gratitude can't really exist without the experience of grief. The things and the people we feel most thankful for are too often the ones that are no longer with us. Perhaps that helps explain why several new films this Thanksgiving season center on loss and how to move on from it.
I am an only child. My father was killed in a car accident when I was 14 and my mother was 47. We were really tightly bonded after that. She worked at a university and was an artist: she painted and carved birds. She was a wonderful person, who lit up a room and was someone everyone wanted to be around. She was very giving. Later in life, she developed dementia. I left my teaching position to stay home and look after her.
We wanted to have four, Kirk said. And I was praying to God that I was pregnant when he got murdered. Oh, wow. I thought of that once, Kelly said. Whether it was meant to be or whether we'd get news like that. I know, Kirk said while dabbing her eyes. I was like, oh, goodness, that was going to be the ultimate blessing out of this catastrophe.
With the season of Thanksgiving upon us, many of us instinctively reach for gratitude. We make lists, we gather with family, and we remind ourselves to appreciate what is good. But in recent years, gratitude feels harder to cultivate. And we are not imagining it. Psychologically, emotionally, and culturally, we are living through an unusually heavy time. We carry political conflicts that divide communities and family tables.
Have you ever tried to make sense of something t hat doesn't make sense and yet you keep trying because you think it will provide some tiny amount of relief, connecting all the dots, explaining the unexplainable, like that somehow will make the excruciating pain go away, knowing that nothing can ever take the pain away? It's sort of a crazy feedback loop,
