We live in a culture that talks endlessly about happiness. Get the right job and the right relationship into place, and the feeling will follow. And yet, for many people, the feeling doesn't follow. Or it arrives briefly and then slips away, leaving something harder to name underneath. Writer and researcher Emily Esfahani Smith spent years exploring why. Drawing on psychology and philosophy alongside interviews with hundreds of people, what she found is that happiness and mea

A wooden star-shaped puzzle with interlocking pieces, representing the idea of a brain or mind that fits together differently. There's a particular kind of relief that comes from being in a room, or on a call, with someone who doesn't need you to mask. Who isn't quietly waiting for you to communicate in a way that feels easier for them. Who understands, without a lengthy explanation, why certain things feel impossibly hard while others that seem simple to everyone else come n

diverse group of people holding hands If you've ever sat in a therapist's room and felt like you had to explain yourself before you could even begin — justify who you are, translate your experience, soften the edges of your identity to make it easier for someone else to hold — you'll know how exhausting that is. And how much it gets in the way of the actual work. Inclusive counselling starts from a different place. It begins with the assumption that you are the expert on your

Relationships between neurodivergent and neurotypical partners can be incredibly rich, supportive and meaningful — but they can also come with unique challenges that neither person has been taught how to navigate. When two brains process information, emotions and sensory experiences differently, misunderstandings can arise even when both partners care deeply. This doesn’t mean the relationship is “wrong” or “too difficult.” More often, it means the couple needs better languag