Last year, I spent six months living and working in Japan. I worked at the World Expo, a role that allowed me to meet people from a wide range of backgrounds.  It was an experience that stayed with me long after I left, not because it was extreme or overwhelming, but because it quietly changed how I understand belonging and mental health. Being in a place where I didn’t fully fit in made me more aware of how much our sense of well-being is shaped by whether we feel connected

Community building has become something of a trend, especially over the past year. The more I scroll through social media, the more events I see. While I enjoy seeing people come together, it can also feel overwhelming to be flooded with Instagram posts and WhatsApp groups promoting countless events and gatherings. Traditionally, communities are formed by groups of people connected through shared spaces or common interests, religion, culture, ethnicity, or values.

When I was studying in high school, I came across a quote by Karl Popper, a philosopher and academic, that really caught my attention. He once said: “Avoiding mistakes is a narrow-minded ideal. If we don’t dare face those challenges that are so difficult as to make the error almost inevitable, knowledge will not be developed. It is from our more daring theories, including those that are wrong, that we learn the most. No one can avoid making mistakes, but the important thing i

I've been curious all my life—from collecting samples for my microscope as a kid to investigating psychiatric biomarkers as a PhD student now—but for me, this curiosity didn't belong in the same box as dresses and pink. I was never girly. I put up a fight against my mother whenever she tried to put me in dresses when I was a toddler. Throughout my childhood, my wardrobe mostly consisted of my brother’s hand-me-downs, and even now in my late twenties, it’s a sea of black, blu

Pregnancy is expected to be a “one size fits all” phenomenon. Every stereotype of a pregnant person involves peeing on a stick, sharing the happy news with your partner, throwing up every morning, and having a straightforward delivery where you’re screaming out in pain until the miracle of life is pushed out of your body.

How nostalgia makes us yearn for our own memories. Time moves forward whether we follow it or not. Nostalgia, however, waits.It lingers in old songs, in familiar streets, in the scent of a season or a person we thought we had forgotten. And when it finally returns, it pulls us gently, and sometimes painfully, back into a moment we can no longer touch.

Some things in life you never expect to lose. Your orgasm is one of them.

And there we have it. As of October 2025, boyfriends have become embarrassing, according to Vogue.   An article published on 25th October talks about boyfriends being embarrassing, and about  women being uncool or losers because they have romantic partners. This controversial piece has been discussed all over social media, and on popular news outlets, with Instagram celebrities sharing their opinions, either agreeing, or disagreeing with the piece.     I came across the p

Image Source: cottonbro studio on Pexels I’ve never found Mondays particularly stressful. Over time, I’ve learned to manage my energy more intentionally, and as a freelance journalist, I’ve picked up strategies that work for me. For instance, if I work over the weekend, I try to keep my Mondays lighter, a way to ease back into the week and protect my mental balance. But if I worked in a company or had an office role with fixed hours, that kind of adjustment would be much hard