When the Days Get Shorter: Seasonal Affective Disorder in Fall
Fall looks cozy on Instagram—pumpkin patches, candles, weekend trips upstate. But for a lot of people, once the days get shorter, the vibe shifts. You get out of work and it’s already dark. Your energy dips, your mood feels heavier, and suddenly even answering texts back feels like a chore. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. What you might be feeling is Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)—a form of depression that shows up as the seasons change, most often in fall and winter.
The Perils of Summer Love: Love Bombing & Gaslighting
I’ve been thinking about what it means to listen. Listening is a form of active engagement which I think is different from hearing. Hearing is physiological. Hearing is a passive and automatic sensory process. If we have the privilege to hear, we don’t control it. Listening is an active and intentional process. It involves paying conscious attention to the sounds we hear, interpreting them, and understanding their meaning. Listening requires focus, cognitive engagement, and often emotional involvement. It's a deliberate action that goes beyond mere auditory perception to include processing and comprehension. We don’t have to have the physiological function to hear in order to listen.