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therapist.com •

Grief, bipolar disorder, and a father’s love

I’m generally a happy, positive person when I’m not experiencing bipolar depression. I take my meds every day and I go to therapy once a week, which is the minimum I need to stay healthy. Managing my bipolar also means I stay in touch with friends and family, make plans, and follow through on my commitments. Not managing my disease means I isolate and ignore people who reach out to me; doing well means I socialize and connect.

So when my dad died last December, I was prepared. I don’t mean I wa
Plex •

Serendipity Is The Best Christmas Romance Movie

You can watch all the small-time Christmas romances you want, but I’ll sit over here and watch Serendipity. Serendipity is the best Christmas romance movie, and I’ll stand by that forever. It’s a rom-com with better actors than your Hallmark fare, and without the bedraggled city woman who needs to move to a small town to find love. In this movie, love is right where it belongs: in New York City.

Serendipity is a rom-com where the leads end up together, so me telling you the plot isn’t really go
Plex •

Love Is Blind Reunion | Why Exes Are Ex For A Reason

I’ll admit that I’ve been a fan of rerun dating. I was in an on-again/off-again relationship for most of my 30s. At the beginning, we were just dating, but he broke it off because he wanted to date someone else. A few years later, we just got together for sex, even though I wanted an actual relationship. I broke that off because he couldn’t make a commitment. About five years after that, we had an actual relationship that I thought was going somewhere. He broke it off after another woman he’d be
Plex •

Hot Fat Girl Summer

Summer 2021 is the summer we’ve been waiting for since 2020. We’ve been aching to get our faces in the sun and our feet in the grass. Everything is open, everywhere, and you need to get out there and get your best life after months of pale hibernation. If you’re carrying some extra pounds from stress eating, don’t worry. You can declare it Hot Fat Girl Summer, because “fat” is a description of your pulchritude and not a value judgment. So, get your confidence up, suit your body up, and keep the
Plex •

20 TV and Movie Outfits You'll Wear to Your First Post-COVID Vaccine Event

For the last 15 months, we’ve all been planning what we’ll do when the pandemic is over. Take all the trips. Hug all the people. Frolic and cavort at a level that the planet has never seen. But no matter where we go or what we’ll do after our COVID vaccine is fully activated, we’ll need something to wear. And after 15 months sitting in front of the computer, we might need a little help picking out something nice, and appropriate, to wear. So, here are 20 outfit ideas for your first post-vaccine
ZORA •

The Spirit Finally Moved Me

Right before I turned 45, I met Steven, a man who was more open and honest than anyone I’d ever dated. At our first meeting, my new companion told me about vulnerability and learning to feel his feelings. As he talked, I registered a fleeting thought about whether or not I could trust this person who was seemingly so transparent. On the heels of that thought, I heard a voice. To be honest, it sounded like Ving Rhames saying, “We have the meats” in an Arby’s commercial, only there was more than o
Sisters •

Why Dads Make Better Dates

I wasn’t meant to be a mother. I never really liked kids, even when I was one. I turned 45 last year with nary a pregnancy scare or marriage proposal in all my years. So, somewhere in my 30s, I resigned myself to being child-free and never gave it a second thought.

Jay was smart and funny, the way I like my men, and emotionally expressive, which I liked in general. Jay also had a son, a 24-year-old who seemed to live with his father out of genuine affection rather than laziness or convenience.
Sisters from AARP •

Our New Relationship Makes Our Parents Feel Left Out

I’ve been dating my boyfriend for 3½ months, and every time I see his mother, I’m not wearing pants. It’s not really every time, but it’s probably every time that she comes to his apartment, and that’s several times too many for me.

Let me give you some more context. My boyfriend, Rob, lives around the corner from his 85-year-old widowed mother, Mary. She has a key, and she lets herself in to drop off food, or cold medicine, or anything else a mother might give her unmarried, childless, younges
Yahoo Lifestyle •

What to do when someone you follow on social media seems like they need help

According to the CDC, suicide rates in the U.S. are up 25% since 1999. It’s a grim reality, made even more public after the very high-profile suicides of Avicii, Kate Spade, and Anthony Bourdain. While we can’t always know who is suffering or struggling, one window into people’s lives is social media — and while not everyone will use it as a tool to knowingly or unknowingly cry for help, we must always be aware in case those within our social media communities do require assistance.
Ravishly | Media Company •

What Do Interracial Relationships Really Mean To Black Women?

Black women have given interracial relationships a lot of attention in the last few weeks if think pieces and Black Twitter are to be believed. First, we lambasted Donald Glover over the audacity of releasing a racially conscious video while having had children by a white woman. Then, we changed our tune completely, welcomed self-proclaimed biracial woman Meghan Markle into the fold, and swooned over her wedding to a white man.

The shift has less to do with royalty and money and status than it
Cosmopolitan •

I Was a Single Woman Addicted to Planning My Wedding

The first time I thought about my own wedding was after I graduated business school. I’d just turned 30, and figured that I should start thinking about marriage. I had a boyfriend at the time, a nice guy who I liked a lot but didn’t love. Still, alone in my bedroom, I started visiting a wedding website to look at wedding gowns and bridesmaids dresses. It seemed like harmless fantasy, so I made an account and started to save designs that I liked. Besides, I’d never really thought about my own wed
MadameNoire •

We Know The Black Superwoman Trope Is A Myth, So Why Are We Still Suffering?

Several years ago, I wrote a few essays on the Black Superwoman myth and my own experiences with mental illness. They were inspired by a news item about Fantasia Barrino allegedly attempting suicide and how Black Twitter thought she was weak, or faking something, or an otherwise unworthy woman. Since then, much has been written about the Black Superwoman myth and why we don’t get help for our mental health issues. I, personally, have paid a good deal of lip service to the topic. If everyone seem
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