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Meet Natali Simmonds
Natali Juste Simmonds is a fiction author, lecturer and creative brand consultant.
Her fantasy trilogy The Path Keeper, Son of Secrets, and Children of Shadows (N J Simmonds) was shortlisted for the 2022 RNA Fantasy Award, she co-writes paranormal romance as Caedis Knight, and her debut, feminist thriller, Good Girls Die Last (Natali Simmonds) is out June 2023.
As a busy mother who writes, paints and has spent twenty-five years working creatively with the world's leading brands, Natali is passionate about the arts and maintaining mental clarity and balance while creating. Born and raised a Londoner, she now divides her time between her homes in Spain and the Netherlands with her husband and two daughters.
Articles
The Victors Write History: How Title IX Gives Perpetrators the Last Word
Writing is a privilege, not a punishment. Prose, essays, and stories are vehicles for truth and influence–reflecting a means to bridge individuals and contribute our voice to the vast human experience. Despite the responsibility of academic institutions to uphold the legacy of the written word, Title IX allows American Universities to dole out disciplinary actions in the form of a three-page essay in exchange for a clean slate, demonstrating just how much American universitie
Anonymous
1 day ago6 min read
Living In-Between: What Recurrent Loss Taught Me About Carrying Grief
When I first wrote about losing our baby in October 2024, I thought the hardest part would be the miscarriage itself. In many ways, it was. At the time, grief felt enormous. Overwhelming. It filled every room, every conversation, every quiet moment. But it wasn’t always going to stay that way. It might not disappear, but it changes shape, and settles into the everyday. That kind of grief becomes something I carry in my bones alongside everything else — work, relationships, bi
Tassia O'Callaghan
2 days ago5 min read
The Cornell 7: Shocking, Disturbing, Yet All Too Familiar
As a mental health research assistant, writer and editor for Inspire the Mind, this is not the first time I have written about sexual violence, and I fear it will not be the last. Sexual violence is not new, nor is the outrage that follows it. For decades, women have shared their stories, challenged harmful attitudes and demanded greater accountability. Yet, despite these efforts, allegations of sexual violence continue to emerge, each a painful reminder of how much remains u
Camila Ribeiro
3 days ago5 min read
Can Hypnosis Help Actors Become Their Characters?
At first glance, acting and hypnosis may seem like very different worlds. But both raise a surprisingly similar question: how can the mind make an imagined reality feel real enough to change what we experience? This question has followed me for years. My name is Tiago Garcia, and my background in Film Studies first made me interested in how actors build characters.
Tiago Garcia
4 days ago5 min read
Idling High: Anxiety, Obsession, and Persistence
This is how I think about myself today: I’m a retired 63-year-old man, happily married, in excellent health, very comfortable. And yet, I idle high. I just accept that this is part of my makeup. I have brown eyes; I’m 5’- 9”; I weigh 170 pounds. I idle high. Idling high is not a clinical term and it won’t be found in any psychology context of which I am aware. It is just the way I have come to identify with certain characteristics of my life.
John Sergio
5 days ago5 min read
When My Son Ran Away, My Boyfriend’s Daughter Mended My Broken Heart
It happened out of nowhere, on a Tuesday night. My firstborn, "my sunshine," as I always called him, was making me proud...or so I thought. My son had difficulty with impulse control in the past, but he was in counselling and seemed to be on the right track. At 17, he had secured a well-paying job and planned diligently for his future. He had always been a bright child, excelling in school, so I had high hopes that he would go to college and secure a successful career.
Samantha Ortega
Oct 95 min read
Reimagining Our Understanding of Self-Harm in Young People
I am currently a visiting researcher at Imperial College London as part of the Mood Instability Research group. I am particularly interested in applying computational approaches, such as machine learning to complex data, to better understand mental health. Machine learning is a computational approach that can examine multiple factors simultaneously and identify patterns in data sets, that may not be apparent when using traditional statistical approaches.
Elixandra Dawa
Oct 85 min read
The Village We Lost: Parenting, Isolation in a Mobile World
Close your eyes. Imagine you could live anywhere in the world. Money isn’t a consideration, logistics? No problem. Whatever you fancy is available…
Got it?
Let me guess what you got… a golden sandy beach? Sun rays warming your face? A sangria in one hand with a cabana boy fanning you from the side?
Bingo.
This is what I envisioned when I decided to move to the South of France with my, at the time, 9-month-old bundle of joy (baby, not a puppy, just to clarify).
Robyn Doolan
Oct 74 min read
14 Months on a Sub-Antarctic Island: A Laboratory for Earth and Mind
Imagine sailing through the most chaotic latitudes of Earth: the so-called Roaring 40s and furious 50’s, uncharted southern seas where your ship, the Marion Dufresne II, is the sole vessel carving a path through these distant waves. After 20 days, you reach a remote island where you’ll spend a whole year with 28 strangers, surrounded by albatrosses, subantarctic fur seals, southern elephant seals, orcas, and penguins. 29 humans. No one else.
Virgile Legendre
Oct 65 min read
What Resident Evil Reveals About Fear, Avoidance, and Courage
When we first meet Bryan, the main character of the new movie Resident Evil, his biggest problems have nothing to do with zombies. He’s a regular guy, working as a medical courier, rushing to finish his final delivery of the night so he can finally go home.
Melisa Kose
Oct 56 min read
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