Lifestyle

For as long as they have known each other, lawyers Jenna Pendrell (Rachel Wilson) and Kyle Davidson (Casper Van Dien) have been the bitterest of rivals. That makes the fact that Kyle's sister Trisha (Natalie Lisinska) and Jenna's brother Jim (Noah Cappe) are a couple all the more awkward. With Christmas approaching and Trisha and Jim expecting their second child soon, Jenna and Kyle find themselves travelling to spend the holiday with their siblings. But as soon as they arrive, Trisha and Jim rush to the hospital as Trisha begins having contractions, leaving the two estranged in-laws charged with watching over their young niece Karen (Ella Ballentine).

When I was about 18 weeks pregnant, The doctor hospitalized me for a mental breakdown. See this is nothing new for me as I have battled depression all my life.

The first year after my son was born, I made it a weekly habit to write him letters documenting many of my thoughts and feelings during his first year of life.

Since as early as 1600 BC women have been experimenting and cursed with the burden of contraception, and all of the dangerous physical and mental side affects that come with it. In the Ancient World women would go to extreme lengths to avoid pregnancy, including methods using stones, sodium carbonate, honey and a flower known as ‘Queen Anne’s Lace’ (which is still used as a herbal contraceptive method today in India). Since the rise of contraception in Britain in the 19th century, millions of women have faced side effects causing heart attacks, stroke, blood clots, and liver tumours due to hormonal contraceptives.

Ever since I was young, my mother dreamed of owning a house with a white picket fence. She couldn't own one as a result of her poor credit, her score kept her from getting a lot of the things she wanted. The thing about credit score is that it excludes all the setbacks and unwanted issues that causes the score to go down. At the time, I believed that hard work and dedication would make one’s adult life easier, that my mother was only doing poorly because she wasn’t saving her money. My siblings and I couldn’t understand why my mother was struggling to make ends meet every month, why she would yell at us almost every day after work about our education, and why it’s important. Later, I found out that there was no money saved up because there was no money to save up at all. Since my mother was always working, I had limited freedom and wasn’t allowed to leave our apartment. My older brother had to take care of us at such a young age; due to my mother’s inability to pay for a babysitter. One would think that being isolated would increase productivity, but isolation felt like punishment to us.

This story is in Honor of my daughter Kynslee Anne