At first thought, consent might seem like an overwhelmingly adult topic — and that’s probably because for a long time, consent was an overwhelmingly absent topic. After the #MeToo movement shone a light on the dark reality of a world that normalized sexual harassment, abuse, and assault for far too long, many of us began to look closer at how often consent was missing from the moments where it mattered most.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruption to nearly every aspect of our lives. From work, to education, and social life, the lives of millions of Americans and their families were upended in the spring of 2020 and have not found any sense of normalcy since then.
Today’s employee pool is growing more and more diverse, and many companies are currently overseeing five generations of employees at once.
Schools around the nation are facing a second round of closures due to the Omicron variant sweeping across the country. This recent variant of the COVID-19 virus has caused the number of daily COVID cases to balloon into the hundreds of thousands. Over half a million children were diagnosed with COVID in the first week of January alone and unlike past variants, Omicron has hospitalized many children who were once seen as being immune to the virus.
The “new year, new me” mentality makes the month of January prime time for talk of dieting, new workout regimes, and a push towards convincing us that we need to think about optimizing our bodies to start the year off right. Though these messages might seem to be in the spirit of self-improvement, they’re pretty toxic — they over-emphasize the importance of appearance and can lead to negative body image and unhealthy habits around food and exercise. And unfortunately, our kids aren’t immune from these messages, either.
Mental health support in the workplace has undeniably been a huge part of recent efforts to help employees thrive: in the past few years, many companies have started training managers on how to recognize signs of poor mental health, offering employees more mental health days, and reducing out-of-pocket costs for getting mental health care. For parent employees, however, focusing just on their own mental health misses out on a large part of the overall picture in ensuring their success: providing support and resources to care for their children’s mental health, too.
It’s a beautiful thing that we can pass down music, traditions, recipes, and stories to our kids. But, sometimes, the things we’ve learned, habits we’ve inherited and media influences that impacted us are not worth sharing with the next generation. Our childhoods shape us in many ways — positive and negative. For a lot of us, we picked up some really unhealthy habits when it comes to self love and body image. If you fall in this camp, keep reading.
As the new year rolls around and we’re surrounded by talk of setting personal goals and resolutions, many of us may be seizing the opportunity to form new habits or explore new passions. Maybe you’ve always wanted to run a half-marathon, try making pottery, or learn a different language. Stepping out of your comfort zone to try something new can be incredibly rewarding, but when you’re just beginning to do something you’ve never tried before, you’ll inevitably run into a few challenges.
