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Life on the line

Former Samaritans helpline volunteer Katy Georgiou recalls the desperate voices she heard during her night shifts, and those whose isolation she helped to alleviate.

How writing helps me manage schizophrenia

Don’t call me a strong Black woman

Her upbringing taught Jaydee Seaforth that she could never show pain or weakness, even when her internal distress was extreme. Find out how she learned to listen to her body.

Searching for a place to call home

Wherever she’s lived, Tanya Perdikou has rarely felt at home, and numerous moves have perpetuated a sense of disconnection. But signs from nature offer powerful moments of connection.

The conditional child

Deanna Fei asks what it means to sustain a life, drawing on her own experience of having a premature baby as well as an 18th-century essay.

What is hysteria?

Hysteria has long been associated with fanciful myths, but its history reveals how it has been used to control women’s behaviour and bodies

Having children as a fat woman

When she sought fertility advice, and at antenatal appointments, Ellie Levenson found that medics were openly anti-fat. Only years later can she evaluate the true repercussions of their words and actions.

The sum of my parts

Testing positive for a rogue gene meant Jessica Furseth was more susceptible to cancer. After the years of anger and dissociation from her body that followed, she began to pick up the pieces.

Caring for our Disabled daughter in lockdown

Jane Holmes talks about the challenges of caring for her Disabled daughter while working and trying to stay safe during the pandemic.

Love, grief and assisted dying

In this deeply affecting story, Michelle Elliot explores the events and emotions around the time of her mother’s medically assisted death in Canada, where the practice is legal.

The meaning of trauma is wound

Daisy Johnson recalls her difficult journey to being diagnosed with vaginismus, and why women are so good at turning bad things into a joke.

The unearthly children of science fiction’s Cold War

In the 1950s a new figure emerged in British novels, film and television: a disturbing young alien that revealed postwar society’s fear of the unruly power of teenagers.