While lady hormones may wreak havoc upon women’s systems from time to time, they also provide benefits. Science backs my experience with problem resolution at the beginning of my period. Evidence in research suggests that the emotional effects on a woman by her lady hormones in the beginning of menses causes increased emotional processing in the brain. Exact hormone levels are as individual as we are, so greater investigation is required. Yet, there is a trend.

More specifically, science says this translates to exponentially greater removal of fear, strengthened amalgamation of emotional memories, and heightened emotional regulation. Ladies, can we get an amen for an evening out of some of the less pleasant menstrual symptoms that may come before or after the improved brain?

This knowledge can benefit all sexes. For women, if we are aware of this possibility, it may bring artistic inspiration besides brain benefits. It can help conflict resolution with our partners, heightened emotional peace and wisdom.

Lauren Kronisch is a nutrition nerd by day, writer by night. With degrees in history and nutritional science, when she’s not counseling clients to eat a balanced diet, you’ll find her traveling the world’s mountaintops or chomping on dark chocolate while writing poetry, creative non-fiction, and nutrition articles.

The post The Creative Power of Female Hormones appeared first on Newfound.

This was likely an attempt to control what he could. He could not control that he was physically and mentally unwell. Or perhaps what he could control of his health he had chosen not to, and to deal with the present situation, all he could do was be cantankerous.

Whenever I swayed the conversation to his well-being and offered advice about how to best take care of himself, he quickly forgot my words. He focused back on the same irritating details mentioned earlier: A lemon wedge delivered with his tea without request was to cost the facility thousands of dollars over time. This must be addressed, in his opinion. Repeated at least fifteen times.

I couldn’t bring myself to leave his company too soon, nor to chastise him too harshly.

To undergo a sex change in the ’80s (a tumultuous time of LGBTQ activism around issues like the visibility and treatment of HIV/AIDS, social equality, and more) must not have been easy. For him to feel as though he had to change himself to be himself must not have been easy, either. His face wore hardships he endured, in the soft and hard lines encompassing his eyes, and in his down-turned jowl.

Whatever the cause of his weight, something alerted me he had not had an easy life. To encounter it with him for a conversation was not as difficult as his life seemed to be.

So I listened. To the same complaints almost in a cadence. To him speak of what he could when he was truly speaking about what he could not. I made eye contact with him when it would have been easier to excuse myself. By the end of our time together, he managed a small smile and said, “I think I’ll shut up now. Please, no more lemons, though.”

Lauren Kronisch is a nutrition nerd by day, writer by night. With degrees in history and nutritional science, when she’s not counseling clients to eat a balanced diet, you’ll find her traveling the world’s mountaintops or chomping on dark chocolate while writing poetry, creative non-fiction, and nutrition articles.

The post The Thorn in the Lion’s Paw, and Listening appeared first on Newfound.

Boyer portrays a depression and fear of happiness. “Happiness always seemed the province of the idiotic and immoral,” Boyer writes. “I am not constrained to abundance, ‘happiness’ or its absence/infirmity.”

Boyer points to the many facts of modern life that may lead to depression, further saying, “There were at least two kinds of people: those who loathed the world and found themselves trapped in the terribleness of it and those who loathed themselves as foil to the world.”

Boyer’s words, “I am the dog who can never be happy because I am imagining the unhappiness of other dogs,” hints at one who martyrs her own happiness for those who cannot have it. Empathy is meant to extend outward and is not meant for martyrdom. If Boyer could afford herself the same compassion as her brethren (“There is being anxious or depressed which takes up many hours though not very much once there is no belief in mental health”), she could have it both ways.

“Garments Against Women” reveals a person bored, if not disheartened, by everyday life and familiar relationships. She discusses the banality of basic living as a battle between the economy, the inner self and the external being. “She is accounting transparently because there is a larger body which claims to know her heart: it assumes her heart is naturally a heart desiring a profit,” writes Boyer. “Yet this is not ‘nothing to hide:’ it is ‘something to show’- a performance… that she would so naturally desire profit as to want to steal it.” Her ruminations on personal relationships continues: “Two squirrels, either mating or fighting, grabbed at each others neck with teeth. It was some economy of attention, the consumer who never noticed that she had paid enough.”

Boyer discusses the state of the modern woman directly and indirectly through history (including Emma Goldman’s activist legacy), and the constraints of a culture put upon women. “A woman with any interior is trumped by a man with any exterior.” She continues by naming the traits within her: “I was a man who enjoyed the grandeur of buildings…. I was a woman who took notes.”

Yet amidst the negativity, there are hints of buoyancy. Boyer writes about her young daughter’s words, “Do you have enough dreams?” And while they discuss buying shoes, the reader is blessed with a moment of wisdom in a child, meeting an adult whose dreams have been dampened by reality. Later Boyer writes, “Dreams were the highest order of my experience,” suggesting a ray of light among her melancholy. She layers that theme with a softer self-portrayal in the latter portion of the book, where new found love and full-bodied humor momentarily lighten the collection.

And the blue doesn’t take away from her sardonic wit; it enhances it. Boyer’s depiction of current media is full of surprising farce as she writes, “I get spam from Versailles. It seems like all my life I have gotten images of hard-ons in the mail.” She further opines that, “This prize-winning novelist believed… literature preferred to live in the conscious one. This is wrong. Language prefers to live on the Internet.”

Regardless of whether readers agree with Boyer’s poetic discussions on modern life, no one can deny the honesty with which she writes of what many prefer to ignore. “Garments Against Women” is an anapestic peek into a mind  saddened by the state of present life, but one who occasionally dares to hope it can be better, too.

Lauren Kronisch is a nutrition nerd by day, writer by night. With degrees in history and nutritional science, when she’s not counseling clients to eat a balanced diet, you’ll find her traveling the world’s mountaintops or chomping on dark chocolate while writing poetry, creative non-fiction, and nutrition articles.

The post Anne Boyer’s “Garments Against Women” has Heart, Soul, and Sarcasm appeared first on Newfound.

In heavier times, the smallest gesture of courtesy or compassion can feel like a breath of fresh air. It may be what gets someone through the day, or the week, or the month. Or even the year.

Likewise, when we function optimally in a happy zone, it behooves us to observe with empathy the people around us. You can never be sure what unspoken sufferings and frustrations trouble the lives of our significant others, friends, family, coworkers, friendquaintances, or perfect strangers.

In our busy U.S. culture (especially in the Northeast, from whence I hail), we’d do better to offer one another more daily acts of simple kindness. Offer your subway seat to a pregnant woman. Help someone carry their grocery bags to their destination. Ask your depressed coworker, “How are you?” Smile at a stranger. Hold the elevator for someone. Hold the door for someone. Let a fellow driver into your lane; yes, even during rush hour. These very simple acts cultivate a culture of kindness that all can benefit from both as giver and receiver, no matter how happy or unhappy we are.

Additionally, practicing kindness opens us to the broader human experience, which better informs our creation of art. Science agrees this is good for our own selves, too. Artists, specifically writers, tend toward inwardness, and like all people, we have issues which can be somewhat alleviated by our own benevolence. Researchers at the University of British Columbia found socially anxious people felt their unquiet significantly alleviated, and an increase in  positive mood by regularly doing things for others. Altruism is for your self-preservation, conscious or not.

To get specific, psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California Riverside found that doing a kind deed once a week leads to a greater sense of overall happiness. Once a week!? And this deed can, over time, increase lifespan and life satisfaction. Sign me up. And remind me of this post mid-Winter, when I’m dragging myself around in a seasonal affective disorder slump.

Lauren Kronisch is a nutrition nerd by day, writer by night. With degrees in history and nutritional science, when she’s not counseling clients to eat a balanced diet, you’ll find her traveling the world’s mountaintops or chomping on dark chocolate while writing poetry, creative non-fiction, and nutrition articles.

The post Empathy: The Science-Backed Fortune Cookie appeared first on Newfound.