Our environment isn't just a backdrop, it's a powerful force shaping our mental and emotional well-being.

A new year often brings about a wave of resolutions centered around weight loss. Body hatred has become a normalized New Year routine. What if instead of fixating on weight-centered goals, this year you that embraced a weight-neutral approach to health and wellness to honor your innate desire for change as well as the excitement of renewal? This is your invitation.

Ashlee Cowles from the Northern Express interviews two therapists and explores the need for mental health support in the post-pandemic landscape and advice for those looking for care.

The dinner table can be a healthy, happy place for families to build relationships and communication skills but if shame around body, food choices, hunger or fullness is the main course, the negatives of that experience are outweighing the positives. To get the shame off the table, it is our job as parents to deeply examine and revise our own relationships with our bodies and nourishment

We, as parents, need to stop conflating health with thinness if we want to set our children up for the best possible health outcomes. The best chance our children have for a healthy future is for us to confront our own body shame and need for weight neutrality: the shift to weight neutrality is essential for the well-being of our children — and their children. Future generations — and their health — are worth it.

Weight neutrality de-centers bodyweight as the primary marker of health. Weight centrism is not evidence-based. Weight centrism is pro-thinness and anti-health. Weight neutrality offers a path out of the dysfunction and damage caused by weight centrism to heal our relationships with body, food and movement. Weight neutrality is pro-health.

You deserve freedom from body shame.

You deserve the healthy behaviors that you long for.

And your body deserves respect, dignity and compassionate care.

What if: you deserved more than a life of restriction, hunger, and trying to shrink yourself? It’s not an easy path, but body liberation and peace await.

Our top picks for beautiful, interesting children’s books that explore emotions, empathy, inclusion and kindness!

Over the course of the pandemic, everyone in our global community has experienced tremendous stress, loss, and uncertainty. We are all struggling with the impact of a collective, prolonged trauma. Feeling uninspired, disconnected, insecure, and anxious is a trauma response - these emotional experiences are not personal failings! Remind yourself and those you love: this is not normal. You are a human having a very human response to prolonged trauma. We are surviving. Let’s be kind, let’s be patient, and let’s be gentle. To ourselves and to each other.

Being in quarantine can be challenging for anyone, especially if you live alone. For people experiencing the Stay-At-Home order alone, one of the biggest factors to feeling mentally healthy to stay connected with loved ones virtually - on a regular basis. Getting outside, moving your body, and making sure to notice your thoughts and practice self-compassion are also important tools to manage your moods and mental health right now.

This global crisis is creating collective anxiety. Meanwhile many of our typical supportive resources have been pulled out from under us. This level of stress can be toxic for a relationship. Instead of going into into self-protection mode, we need to focus our energy on turning toward each other with kindness, patience, and an understanding that this is a really hard time. Here's how.

Living through a pandemic is activating out fight or flight mode. We need to communicate our feelings with our partners, turning toward each other with kindness and patience and an understanding that this is a really hard time.