Mary Martin

“You've heard of people calling in sick. You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well?

It'd go like this: You'd get the boss on the line and say, "Listen, I've been sick ever since I started working here, but today I'm well and I won't be in anymore." Call in well.”

For 24 hours a day, if we’re upset about something, we can reach out and have our feelings validated,” says Laestadius. “That has an incredible risk of dependency.”

We can use the shadow imagination as a mechanism for uncovering our future power. When we’re introduced to how bad things could get, we’re at a choice point. We can turn away, we can dive into the waters of the worst-case scenario and allow them to drown us, or we can touch the suffering that’s possible and remind ourselves of our own abilities. We... See more

At its most basic interpretation, then,

the concept of rights for other animals entails a right to bodily integrity, autonomy, and life.

If an AI companion becomes someone’s most consistent emotional presence, the right question isn’t “how do we stop this?” It’s “what does that say about the world around them?” Technological relationships are not new. What’s new is how effective they’ve become; and how clearly they mirror the gaps we’ve refused to address.

We’ve tried prohibition... See more

Many bad things happened in 2023. You already know them. Many tragic events were so terrible we will never forget them and we shouldn’t. You can easily find them all over the news. But the good things that happened are much harder to encounter, and it is easy to get the impression nothing good happened at all. In order to keep struggling to make... See more

the very challenges that make relationships difficult are also what make them meaningful. It’s in moments of discomfort—when we navigate misunderstandings or repair after conflict—that intimacy grows. These experiences, whether with therapists, friends, or partners, teach us how to trust and connect on a deeper level. If we stop practicing these... See more