The Black Hair Tax: No Breaks for Black Women Who Want to Avoid Breakage
‘Wasted Hours and Tired Eyes’: How to Start a Digital Detox and Detach from Your Phone
After checking my social media usage, I was disgusted to find that I had spent at least 8 hours a day on social media platforms. One day in particular I spent 10 hours and 45 minutes on Instagram and TikTok alone; I couldn't remember a single post I had seen. What a waste of time. I knew I had to detach myself from it and find better ways to spend my downtime…
Living at Home in Your Thirties: The Art of Overcoming Self-Judgement and Societal Pressures to Put Your Wellbeing First
A year ago, almost to the day, I moved back home. Home-home, as in, my Mum’s house. It’s not somewhere I thought I’d be in my thirties. Due to rising rent, the cost-of-living crisis and generally navigating a post-pandemic world, many thirty-somethings have found themselves in the same position as me, living at home out of necessity. What was once a peculiarity is becoming more commonplace…
‘Nudity Allows an Openness Beyond the Physical’: Reconnecting with My Body to Lead a Richer Life
Phenomenologists say that the body is a means of knowing. Through somatic, tactile engagement with the world, we learn things that do not need to be spoken and communicate sensorially in a way that transcends codification. The immediacy and honesty of our bodies allows an openness beyond the physical. Nudity allows an openness beyond the physical…
Bullied into Silence for Not Feeling Beautiful: Experiencing Thin-Shaming, Weight Gain and Body Dysmorphia
I feel anger and resentment toward this narrative that is continuously pushed that women who fit into the traditional mould of ‘thin’ are not allowed to feel negatively about their bodies. Virtually my entire life, any time I have expressed unhappiness with my body, the responses have been overwhelmingly unsupportive…
‘Trauma Doesn’t Always Have to be Ugly. It Can be Beautiful. Decorative’: Tattoos as a Form of Power and Healing
I found a Black tattoo artist in a Black studio and went on my own to do the single most life-changing act of my late 20s. And oddly enough, what I felt during that first session wasn’t pain (it didn’t hurt that much) or regret (the experience was so affirming; I will never forget listening to old school R&B and feeling tender, careful hands trace lines of ink into the back of my calf). What I did feel was air. For the first time in a long time, I felt myself breathe…