Health. Well-being. Personal development

Beloved Britney

 

I became a fan of Britney Spears when I was 12 years old and saw the music video of “Baby one more time” on my tv. So many of you can relate, right? I bought the album soon after and played it often. Britney was my company, a friend that brightened my days and make life better with her music. I listened to her before my math tests which caused me a lot of nerves (I always had to make a lot of effort to have positive grades), I danced, I dreamed and learned english at the same time.

“Baby one more time” was like the perfect adolescence for me. It was not very relatable because I was going through a lot of pain (bullying, rejection, the death of my grandparents) but Britney was supremely magnetic, her wide smile and talent granting her a global acceptance.

As she tried to advance her career, the press started to dig into her privacy and everything from her body to her personal relationships seemed to be fair game. It was like she was just a product, a commodity, not a human being.

When I was 19 years old I have my first nervous breakdown (which had many causes and I won’t try to explain as this is about Britney, not me). When I started feeling better I asked my older sister why nobody in the world seemed to be helping Britney Spears, to which my sister replied “Britney is so rich. I’m sure she is being helped”. I felt like having bright flashes from cameras everyday on her face must had been a nightmare, along with everything else that unraveled.

I always felt connected to Britney and prayed for her well being. It made me sad to see her work so hard and not being able to have control of the money she made. She was explored to the bone. I experienced the other side of the equation, being treated well most of the times but having difficulty in earning money.

At the end of 2021 I was hospitalized in a psychiatric yard for my bipolar disorder and anxiety. When I’m discharged on 12th November, I learned that the conservatorship that Britney had endured for so long was over. I was so glad.

About Britney’s use of Instagram I think most of the times she is just having fun and using her independence. Sure she can dance better than just doing circles but maybe she is just gaining confidence again in her own body (she had her knee injuries and I read reports of damages on her nerves). She has been processing a lot emotionally since her freedom, such as her miscarriage, and seeing other people try again and again to profit on her story must be infuriating. She says she feels liberated when she posts revealing pictures and her content is not curated to make her look like her past self. This is Britney now. I remember an interview for an Israeli outlet where Britney said if she had a hair strand out of place she would experience overwhelming anxiety. So yeah, I enjoy seeing Britney act carefree, almost childlike because at least she seems joyful.

As a fan what I would like for Britney? That apart from an cd, book or other business ventures, she continued where she left in The letters of truth, to show her soul bravery to the world. She mentioned writing a ghost story, she has the creativity and imagination for that. I hope she continues healing in any way possible by prayer, art, loving relationships and so much more. All emotions are valid as long as you express them properly. She is beautiful and has an extremely sensitive heart (let’s not forget how Britney composed “Everytime” on piano, for instances). She deserves to be treated better. We’ve been failing her for more than 14 years!

Bottom line is: Britney was there for us when we needed her the most.

No one in the world has been more criticized, judged, punished for the state of her mental health than Britney Spears. Let that sink in, truly. And please, the next time you see her face show more empathy. Not pity because she doesn’t need it, but try to understand everything she has been through and how she came back stronger, just reclaiming now a sense of normalcy and showing the real fighter that she is. Long live Britney!

The velvet rope

 

That we live in a world full of dichotomies, it’s not a surprise for anyone. Whist some of us live very luxurious lives, the majority struggles to get a roof under their hands, pay the bills, bring food to the table and so on. Oftentimes we fall into narratives like work harder to earn harder and never mind the rest. Quality of life takes the backseat, and we will pay the cost in terms of heath sooner or later.

It’s not easy to navigate so many stimuli, so much information, so many images of cruelty and violence that pop in our screens daily. What can we do to avoid falling in the same pitfalls of previous generations, how can we make the world a better place, a place where we can thrive and feel fully alive?Read more

“How we manage anxiety” with Becky G, Normani, Christina Milian and Rhonda Richards-Smith

 

We all go through problems, obstacles and challenges that may cause us some degree of anxiety. In a Facebook Audio Room event from last month, three artists and a psychotherapist meet to discuss mental health and the pressures of life, of living in this world.

Becky G, an american singer and actress of mexican descent, starts by saying how when she slows down from work and is triggered “things catch up to me that I thought I overcame”.Read more

The gift of empathy

 

We often say we would like to help other people, make a difference and change the world. We set these ambitious goals for ourselves and our work. It’s a common saying that we live troubling, challenging and complicated times. But I’ve been asking myself how much of my daily life is really difficult and what is the percentage that I’ve been making complicated myself.

What is it absolutely necessary and non-negotiable to start changing the world, I ask? I think the answer is, without a doubt, empathy. There is no way we can be aware of other’s people reality and suffering, if we don’t, in someway, understand in our hearts what they are going through, if put it more plainly, if we don’t walk in their shoes. Read more

For anyone being bullied

 

“When they go low, we go high” famously said former First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama about the attacks she and Barack Obama were facing at the time. The phrase stuck because it not only embodies resistance to pain and frustration but also a hope in bettering what we are individually and as a community.

Bullying was always a problem in society, even when the term wasn’t coined yet and with the social networks it seems to escalate in ways no one has seen coming. We feel unsafe in the virtual world, in the same form or even more so, than we would in a dangerous street. Critical voices can cut like a sharp knife, criticizing our weight, haircut, our words, everything. The effects of bullying are being studied and it’s very difficult to unpack the discourses of discrimination and hurtful insults.Read more

How to overcome roadblocks in life

 

This year has been quite challenging for our mental health and well being and the problems, delays and canceled plans only seemed to add up. It’s easy to get frustrated and sad when things don’t go exactly our way and 2020 had a lot of these moments. How can we remain hopeful in the middle of a global pandemic, so much brutality and shattered dreams? It looks like an impossible task at first. But, as in everything in life, everything is impossible until you make it happen. So although we all have bad days good things happen when we decide to remain positive despite diring circumstances and make an effort to look at the silver lining of our days.

When we are facing roadblocks, obstacles that make us stop in our tracks and wonder when we’ll be able to continue to go our own way, there are a few helpful things that we can keep in mind to make the most of even an unfortunate situation.Read more

Five tips to live a happy life from Aisha Chaudhary

 

Aisha Chaudhary was an indian author and motivational speaker that amassed a lot of knowledge and insights in her short life period. Born with severe combine immune deficiency (SCID), she underwent a bone marrow transplant in London when she was only six months old, beating the odds that gave her only one year to live.

Over time, Aisha developped pulmonary fibrosis, a hardening of the lungs, a side effect from the aggresive treatments she had been through as a baby. This brought her a lot of challenges, difficulty to breathe and ups and downs.Read more

A must read: The yellow wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

 

“The yellow wallpaper” is a short story that can be easily be read in one sitting. Despite having been written in the 19th century it’s striking to see how touching it is and for how long mental health stigmas have been prevailing in our society. In this case,  it’s the isolation of a woman who has a mental health crisis after giving birth.

Published in January 1892 by american writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it is seen as seminal work in feminism literature in the way it depicts the treatment of women at the time it was written. Narrated in the first person, thie story is a collection of journal entries written by her.

She is alone on her old colonial masion that her physician husband rented for the Summer, just having for ocasional company of her servant. After what her husband calls a temporary nervous depression with slight hysterical tendency, he imposes on her a rest cure, where she is confined to an upstairs nursery with barred windows and is forbidden from work and encouraged to just eat and sleep.

With little to none distractions besides her writing, the narrator becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in the room, believing it changes in a very intriguing way. Soon, she sees what she believes to be a woman trapped in the wallpaper.

I widely recommend this piece of literature and I think it enhances our ability to understand others, our overall compassion and empathy.

 

Paula Gouveia

Being a woman

 

Yesterday was International Women’s Day, a date that arised from the necessity of implementing equal rights  such as the female vote. How much has changed and not changed during this time? Biogically we know men and women are wired differently and tend to be raised and treated also differently in social environments.

Should we expect to be able to correct salary gaps and blatant sexism ideology in the short or even medium term? It’s common place to say our world is still patriachal, that aggressive energy is male and passive energy is female. What can do we do about it?Read more

Hayley Williams Sanctuary of Self Love 2020

 

We know Hayley Williams from her musical career as the lead singer of the band Paramore and now as a solo artist, having recently released the EP “Petals for Armor I”.  In the last years, Hayley has been very vocal about her struggles with depression and traumas. “My dog is the reason I’m alive”, was one of the soundbytes of a radio interview interview earlier this year.

One of the things that helped Hayley overcome those dark periods was film and tv series like “Peppermint” and “Handmaid’s tale” and visualization theraphy, which is a tool that can be an important cognitive tool to access our imagination and analyze all prisms of a situation or outcomes.

Besides using this technique for herself,  Hayley also  envisioned a place that could benefit other people in their health jorney to have improve mental, emotional and spiritual well being. And that’s how her plaza Sanctuary of Self Love in the Bonaroo Music & Arts Festival, in Tennessee (USA) was born.Read more