Category: Blogs

By MATTHEW HOLT It’s JPM week. That means a ton of startup bros wandering around San Francisco wondering who all the biotech guys and investment banker greyhairs are and why they’re still wearing suits. Unlikely to be wearing suits are the digital health kids and the VCs they are trying to hunt down. The glory days are long gone. Athenahealth and Venrock are no longer having competing parties (or parties at all) and most of the starving startup kids looking for free booze and food are trying to scrounge invites to law firms who are still charging $1500 an hour for associate time before their clients notice that ChatGPT will do the same for $20 a month. But venture in digital health continues on, even if much of it is subtexting cramdown M&A, such as last week’s General Catalyst deal funding Transcarent’s takeover of Accolade. But I’m not really here to talk about the digital health VC market per se.  What I do want to talk about is who is getting VC. This was prompted (to my slow Small Language Model) by a female friend who has been a CEO and was once a star at a fast growing digital health company. She told me that being female was now an active hindrance to raising money. Every time some tech bro on LinkedIn says how they raised $XXm in 12 minutes with no pitch deck, you’ll see lots of female CEOs explode in anger. You don’t need me to repeat the numbers. Women & minorities find it hard to raise money. First time founders get a massive run around. Even when things were crazy in 2020-2022 the survey of startups I ran showed that it was very hard for early stage companies to raise money. Now it’s the apocalypse. That’s not to say some female CEOs aren’t raising. Just last week Nema Health run by former Health 2.0 star intern (and now practicing Psychiatrist–which may be more relevant!) Sofia Noori raised $14m Series A to expand its amazing PTSD cure program. Maven’s Kate Ryder raised another $125m late last year to keep expanding their women’s health program, and must be viewing that elusive IPO sooner or later. And at a JPM party I ran into some of Joanna Strober’s team, reminding me that I thought Midi Health had perhaps raised too much money when it pulled down another $60m last year–but apparently it is going gangbusters. There’s also Equip for eating disorders with Kristina Saffran & Erin Parks at the helm (over $95m in so far) and doubtless a few more I’m forgetting. But in general they are the exceptions. What’s not the exception is the tech bros raising for AI. Obviously the big players here are OpenAI, Anthropic et al pulling down billions to build their AI infrastructure. Anyone with a 401K is probably hoping that all works out given how much of the value of Nvidia, Tesla, Google, Meta, Microsoft & Apple seems to be based on a perhaps mythical AI abundant future. But there’s plenty in health care. Just this week Innovaccer ($275m), Qventus ($105m) & Truveta ($320m) all backed up the truck, all to combine data, AI and hope it will solve some of health care’s troubles.Those CEOs are men. But that’s not what I am complaining about. You can also be a man and get away with a lot more. Hippocratic AI’s CEO Manjul Shah ran his last company HealthIQ into the ground. He screwed over suppliers, employees and customers to at least the tune of $17m in unpaid bills according to Katie Jennings at Forbes, then took another $170k personally out of the bankrupt company after he’d left. Was he a pariah to the investors who’s lost over $200m? Not in the least. The same investors A16Z and General Catalyst gave him another $50m right away to build an AI nurse chatbot company, and apparently health systems are lining up to buy it according to a podcast he was on with Julie Yoo of A16Z last week. This week Kleiner Perkins (and more) kicked in another $141m. You might also have noticed that Ali Parsa who went through over $1 billion and crucified all his public market investors too when Babylon Health cratered is also back. His new company – an AI assistant launched with some famous doctors including Shafi Ahmed – is called Quadrivia AI. Funding isn’t clear but Sifted found some filings that indicate a Swedish VC is behind it.There’s also more than a little controversy about whether Babylon’s demise was just a series of bad business decisions or Parsa was lying about the tech. (I had Parsa on a couple of panels and always found him deferential and charming, but you can google Sergei Polevikov’s opinion!) Look, unlike Lisa Bari at The Health Tech Talk Show, I love the idea of getting AI to answer patients’ questions, call them with information and generally use bots to add “abundance” to the health care workforce. I mean it’s just an extension of what Alex Drane and Eliza (and Silverlink & others) were doing 15 years ago. And there is huge possibility in using AI to actually diagnose and treat. I’m sure Parsa’s new AI bot also has the potential to improve physician care.  But should it be that easy for guys like Shah and Parsa to immediately get back in the game given the chaos they left in their wake? Shouldn’t VCs have some qualms about anointing as saviours the very people who just screwed over their previous customers, partners, employees and investors? But I guess we have our answer already. Adrian Aoun took a big swing with Forward and closed it after losing $650m and leaving patients in the lurch with no notice and 200 people unemployed. He was back on a podcast days later saying his investors wanted to give him more to start again. And the biggest loser, chaos agent and conman of recent years, Adam Nuemann of WeWork

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts I used to think that stability was the key to happiness. Stay in one place, build a career, nurture long-term relationships—these were the pillars of a successful life, or so I believed. My life was a carefully constructed fortress of routine and familiarity. Wake up at 6 a.m., commute to the same office I’d worked at for a decade, come home to the same apartment I’d lived in since college, rinse and repeat. It was safe. It was predictable. It was slowly suffocating me. As I approached my fortieth birthday, I found myself increasingly restless. The walls of my comfortable life felt more like a prison than a sanctuary. I’d scroll through social media, seeing friends and acquaintances embarking on new adventures, changing careers, and moving to new cities, and I’d feel a pang of envy mixed with fear. “I wish I could do that,” I’d think, quickly followed by, “But what if it all goes wrong?” It was during one of these late-night scrolling sessions that I came across a quote from Alan Watts that would change everything: “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” I stared at those words, feeling as if they were speaking directly to my soul. What if, instead of fearing change, I embraced it? The next morning, I woke up with a sense of purpose I hadn’t felt in years. I decided to make a change—not a small one, but a seismic shift that would challenge everything I thought I knew about myself and my life. I was going to quit my job, sell most of my possessions, and travel the world for a year. The moment I made this decision, I felt a mix of exhilaration and sheer terror. What about my career? My apartment? My relationships? The questions swirled in my mind, threatening to overwhelm me. But beneath the fear, there was a spark of excitement that I couldn’t ignore. I gave myself six months to prepare. Those months were a whirlwind of planning, saving, and facing the reactions of friends and family. Some were supportive; others thought I was having a midlife crisis. My parents were particularly worried. “But what about your future?” they asked, echoing the same concerns they’d had when I switched majors in college. As the departure date drew closer, my anxiety grew. There were moments when I seriously considered calling the whole thing off. What if I was making a horrible mistake? What if I couldn’t handle the uncertainty? It was during one of these moments of doubt that I realized something important: The fear I was feeling wasn’t just about this trip. It was the same fear that had kept me trapped in a life that no longer fulfilled me. If I gave in to it now, I might never break free. So, I pushed forward. I boarded that plane with a backpack, a one-way ticket, and a heart full of both terror and hope. The first few weeks were challenging. I felt lost, not just geographically but existentially. Who was I without my job title, my routine, my familiar surroundings? But slowly, something magical began to happen. As I navigated new cities, tried new foods, and met people from all walks of life, I felt layers of my old self peeling away. I discovered a resilience I never knew I had. Problems that would have sent me into a tailspin back home became adventures and challenges to solve. I learned to trust my instincts, to find joy in the unexpected, and to embrace the unknown. One particularly transformative moment came three months into my journey. I was hiking in the mountains of Peru, struggling with altitude sickness and questioning my decision to attempt this trek. As I sat on a rock, catching my breath and fighting back tears, an elderly local woman passed by. She smiled at me and said something in Quechua that I didn’t understand. But her smile and the gentle pat she gave my shoulder spoke volumes. In that moment, I realized that kindness and human connection transcend language and culture. I also realized that I was stronger than I ever gave myself credit for. As the months passed, I found myself changing in ways I never expected. I became more open, more curious, more willing to try new things. I learned to live with less and appreciate more. The constant movement and change became not just tolerable but exhilarating. I was, as Alan Watts had said, joining the dance of change. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. There were days of loneliness, moments of doubt, and times when I missed the comfort of my old life. I learned that embracing change doesn’t mean you never feel fear or uncertainty. It means you feel those things and move forward anyway. As my year of travel neared its end, I faced a new challenge: what next? The thought of returning to my old life felt impossible. I was no longer the person who had left a year ago. But the idea of continuing to travel indefinitely didn’t feel right either. I realized I was craving a new kind of stability—one built on the foundation of flexibility and growth I’d cultivated during my travels. I decided to move to a new city, one I’d fallen in love with during my travels. I found a job that allowed me to use my old skills in new ways, with the flexibility to continue exploring the world. I made new friends who shared my love of adventure and personal growth. I created a life that embraced change rather than feared it. Looking back on this journey, I’m amazed at how far I’ve come. The person who was once paralyzed by the idea of change now seeks it out as

Hi friend! As you might recall, last fall I shared an empowering five-day meditation and writing challenge from Tiny Buddha contributor Nadia Colburn. This month, she’s back with another free meditation and writing challenge, designed for the new year, focused on transformation, and I can’t recommend it enough! Founder of the online creative writing school Align Your Story, Nadia is a poet, memoirist, and yogi who has a talent for helping people create inner calm and access their most authentic voice. That’s what I love about her challenges—they allow us to turn down the mental noise that creates stress and confusion and tune into the gold of our intuition and creative genius. Each day’s fifteen-minute recording includes a short meditation, an evocative poem, and a prompt-based writing exercise inspired by that day’s piece. Though the meditation practices all vary, they all gave me quick access to increased calm and focus. And the poems and prompts are all perfect for this season of transformation, when so many of us are looking to get unstuck and create positive change. Like last time, I recognized common themes in my writing—blocks I need to address, fears I need to face, beliefs I need to challenge, and truths I need to accept. Life has been particularly overwhelming in recent months, due to significant challenges in every area of my life, and I’ve often felt lost in the haze of my own mind. Each day’s challenge elicited a new aha moment for me, giving me hope that greater clarity is coming. You don’t need to even think of yourself as a writer to enjoy and get something out of this challenge. It’s for anyone who wants to connect with themselves more deeply and perhaps find some of the answers they’ve been seeking externally within the quiet of their own mind. Some of Nadia’s past participants have noted how easily their writing flowed after meditation and how the prompts brought them unexpected insights. If you decide to give this challenge a try, I have a feeling it could do the same for you. You can access it for free here. Happy writing! About Lori Deschene Lori Deschene is the founder of Tiny Buddha. She started the site after struggling with depression, bulimia, c-PTSD, and toxic shame so she could recycle her former pain into something useful and inspire others do the same. She recently created the Breaking Barriers to Self-Care eCourse to help people overcome internal blocks to meeting their needs—so they can feel their best, be their best, and live their best possible life. If you’re ready to start thriving instead of merely surviving, you can learn more and get instant access here. See a typo or inaccuracy? Please contact us so we can fix it! https://cdn.tinybuddha.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Tiny-Buddha-Graphic-Nadia-Colburn-640-x-427-px-1.png 2025-01-14 03:36:43

“We rescue people from their responsibilities. We take care of people’s responsibilities for them. Later we get mad at them for what we’ve done. Then we feel used and sorry for ourselves. That is the pattern, the triangle.” ~ Melody Beattie I first uncovered codependency and how it was ruining my relationships back in 2019 after ending my relationship of four years. At the time, I didn’t know the first thing about myself—except that I didn’t know myself at all. I had no idea what I needed or desired. All I knew was that I hated being alone and longed for someone to come in and save me from myself. Little did I know, I was deep in the grip of my codependency patterns. Without anyone to validate or console me, I was forced to confront the uncomfortable truth about my role in the relationship’s dysfunction. For so long, I had blamed my partner for everything that was “wrong”—the lack of connection, the emotional exhaustion, and the resentment that weighed me down. I felt drained, unappreciated, and frustrated, but in my mind, they were the problem. I believed that if they just changed, everything would be better. It wasn’t until I started looking inward that the truth began to unfold. I saw how my codependent behaviors were fueling the very issues I was complaining about. I had been pouring so much of myself into trying to fix them and the relationship that I had neglected my own needs, boundaries, and well-being. Once I became aware of these patterns, everything started to shift. I began showing up differently—not just for them, but for myself. That awareness was the key to turning the relationship around. When we got back together, everything was like night and day. The dynamics had completely shifted. Instead of feeling drained and frustrated, we were both able to show up more fully and authentically in the relationship. I created a unique framework that bridges shadow work and inner child healing, and I now use it in my relationship whenever I’m triggered or blaming my partner. After recently celebrating ten-plus years together, our relationship is now based on mutual respect, healthy boundaries, and emotional safety—creating something stronger and more fulfilling than we ever had before. But here’s the thing—before I could create that shift, I first had to become aware of the hidden ways codependency was sabotaging my relationship. These behaviors are sneaky and often disguised as care or concern, but they can have a destructive impact on how we show up in our relationships. If you’re wondering how codependency might be negatively impacting your relationship, here are some of the ways it can show up. 1. You need to be needed. I learned that my sense of worthiness was dependent on how much other people needed me. When we’re codependent, our purpose, self-worth, and good feelings about ourselves become dependent on how much another person needs us. This makes sense, since many of us watched mothers who were self-sacrificing, as though the sacrifice equated to love. This pattern satisfies the person with codependency because it can soothe their fear of abandonment and rejection. If the other person in the relationship becomes dependent on me to take care of their needs, they think, then they won’t leave me. (Spoiler alert: This often leads to resentment in the long run.) 2. You struggle with identifying your own needs and feelings. I realized that I had a difficult time recognizing and identifying my own needs and feelings because I was constantly perceiving the needs and feelings of others and making choices based on my desire to be liked. This behavior can show up as people-pleasing and doing what you think other people want you to do. It stems from a lack of safety, likely originating in childhood, that tells you that perceiving the needs and feelings of others will protect you from pain. Unfortunately, this can leave you with a lost sense of self, leading to an inability to name your own needs and feelings, which contributes to them feeling unmet in your adult relationships. 3. You have constant anxiety. For months, I was waking up in the middle of the night with extreme pain in my chest. My anxiety had gotten so bad that I was waking with painful panic attacks that felt like heart attacks, so much so that I ended up in the ER. I had constant anxiety because I was always trying to make other people happy, but I didn’t realize that it was at the expense of my own well-being. The fear of betrayal or abandonment can be so debilitating, and the anxiety from that can leave you self-sacrificing in hopes of making others happy so that they don’t leave. Consequently, those of us who experience codependency will stay in relationships even if we are aware that our partners are doing harmful things because we have attached our safety and security to this person rather than sourcing that safety for ourselves. 4. You feel disrespected or not valued.  After years of being everything to my partner, I reached a point of deep resentment. I realized that I overextended myself because I had this unconscious agenda, or desire, that they would do the same for me. And every time they didn’t, I felt unappreciated, invisible, and not cared for. For people in codependent relationships, resentment often bubbles up later on, when the patterns of constantly over-giving and self-sacrificing build up. This tendency to over-give and become resentful can stem from low self-worth and self-esteem and our fears of abandonment. I learned that I was really just afraid to set healthy boundaries and ask for what I needed because I believed that they would think I was too much or selfish and then leave me. So, instead of speaking up, I continually hoped they would guess my needs and continued to be disappointed and let down. 5. You feel selfish when you take time to be with

By MIKE MAGEE For those many, many millions of viewers who tuned in to the live coverage of former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral this week, they were rewarded with two hours of intriguing video images, and moving words and song, including a recounting of the beginnings of environmental advocacy as Los Angeles burns, and John Lennon’s “Imagine” performed by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood. Five former Presidents and four Vice-Presidents were in attendance. And there were notable firsts, like the first greeting and handshake between incoming President Trump and former VP Pence since January 6, 2021. But perhaps the most striking events of this carefully staged national funeral were the  two especially haunting posthumous eulogies delivered by the sons of a former president and vice-president. Presented by Steven Ford, son of former President, Gerald Ford, and Ted Mondale, son of former Vice-President Walter “Fritz” Mondale, they appeared to be directed to America itself, and its’ soon-to-be 47th president. As the speakers explained, Jimmy Carter, some years back, asked both Ford and Mondale if they would be willing to present eulogies at his funeral. Both agreed, and put pen to paper in anticipation. But as it became evident that Carter might very well outlive them, they each asked their sons, in that event, to read their remarks at his funeral. And today they did. Both President Ford and Vice-President Mondale’s words (voiced by their sons) deserve a full viewing when time allows. But in the meantime, let me share the closing remarks of each, prescient and timely now, at American democracy’s hour of need. Steven Ford, son of former President Gerald Ford (7/14/13 – 12/26/06), reciting the president’s written words posthumously: “…Now is time to say goodbye, our grief comforted with the joy and the thanksgiving of knowing this man, this beloved man, this very special man. He was given the gift of years, and the American people and the people of the world will be forever blessed by his decades of good works. Jimmy Carter’s legacy of peace and compassion will remain unique as it is timeless…As for myself, Jimmy, I’m looking forward to our reunion. We have much to catch up on. Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome home, old friend.” Ted Mondale, son of former Vice-President Walter “Fritz” Mondale (1/5/28 – 4/19/21) reciting the vice-president’s written words posthumously. Ted prefaced his reading with this sentence – “My father wrote this in 2019, and clearly he edited it a number of times since then, but here we go.” “…Two decades ago, President Carter said he believed income inequality was the biggest global issue. More recently, in a 2018 Commencement Address at Liberty University, I think now the largest global issue is the discrimination against women and girls in this world. He concluded that, ‘Until stubborn attitudes that foster discrimination against women change, the world cannot advance, and poverty and poverty and income equality cannot be solved.’ Towards the end of our time in the White House, the President and I were talking about how we might describe what we tried to accomplish in office. We came up with a sentence which remains an important summary of our work. ‘We told the truth. We obeyed the law. And we kept the peace.’ That we did, Mr. President. I will always be proud and grateful to have had the chance to work with you towards noble ends. It was then, and will always be, the most rewarding experience of my public career. Thank you.” Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex. (Grove/2020) 2025-01-10 17:43:33

“Some people are empowered by travel and some are inspired by the warmth of home. Some thrive in the spotlight and some feel called to support those who are on stage. Some people are comfortable half-dressed and cussing like sailors and others prefer modesty and gentleness. The thing is: we are all empowered and inspired in different ways, and it’s not our job to decide what that looks like for anyone else.” ~Brooke Hampton In 1992, the Olympic Games were on, and my dad was glued to the screen. He called me over to watch with him, and though I didn’t know it at the time, that moment would change my life. I remember seeing a woman in the pool, dancing in sync with music, her movements flowing effortlessly in and out of the water. It was called synchronized swimming, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I couldn’t look away. Something about her presence, the grace and joy in her movements, stirred something deep inside of me. At that moment, I knew I had to try it for myself. Swimming became my world. It brought me a joy I hadn’t known before—a feeling of connection to something outside of myself that felt complete inside. I found a piece of myself in that water, and for years, it became a constant source of fulfillment. Yet, as I reached a certain level of skill, I found myself at a crossroads. I was eighteen, faced with a choice: Should I keep swimming at an elite level, or follow a “normal” path, going to college and pursuing a “real” career like everyone else? Society made it clear which path was practical and expected, and I felt an unspoken pressure to comply. Ultimately, I chose the “safe” option. I quit swimming and studied to become a registered nurse. For a while, I felt proud of my decision. Nursing is fulfilling work, and I was recognized by others as someone with purpose, even as a “hero.” I had stability, respect, and everything I thought I was supposed to want. But there was something else there, too—a quiet emptiness that I couldn’t ignore. It was a gnawing feeling, like I’d left a piece of myself behind, a piece I couldn’t get back. Despite the appreciation I received as a nurse, I felt a deep, lingering question: Is this all there is? In the hopes of filling that gap, I decided to try something completely different. I began training in aerial arts, just for fun. But soon enough, “just for fun” grew into something more. Aerial arts opened up a part of me I had shut away—the part of me that felt fully alive. And the more I trained, the more I realized that I wanted this for real. My passion was strong enough that, in my thirties, I received a contract as a professional circus performer. For the first time since my swimming days, I felt whole. But with this new identity came new judgments and doubts. I was no longer seen as a nurse with a “real” career but as a dreamer. People couldn’t understand why I’d left a stable job with a retirement plan to fly high on silks. I began to question my purpose… again! Then, one day, I noticed something powerful. I’d grown used to seeing the delight on children’s faces in the audience, but as I looked closer, I saw the same spark of joy in the eyes of adults. I realized that I was offering something important, something they didn’t get to experience often. I was giving them a moment to feel wonder, to escape the weight of their daily routines. In that moment, I saw my purpose clearly—I was there to bring joy, not just to children, but to everyone watching. Years later, I married and had two beautiful children, a joy unlike any other. But as I adjusted to my new life, I found myself struggling again with that same emptiness, though now it was tinged with guilt. I had so much to be grateful for—a loving family, two amazing kids. How could I feel this way? I was thousands of miles away from my family and community, exhausted and trying to survive the challenges of motherhood. I knew I was losing myself again. I could feel it. My husband noticed the heaviness in me, and one day, he brought me a gift: a set of paintbrushes and a blank canvas. He encouraged me to try something new, to see if it might help me reconnect with myself. I hadn’t painted since childhood, and I had no idea if it would help, but I picked up the brush. That one small act rekindled something in me that I thought was gone. For the first time in years, I felt excited, inspired, and awake. Painting became my new way of following joy, and as I created art, I felt my purpose deepening. I was bringing beauty into the world, creating pieces that I could share that might spark joy in someone else. Art allowed me to process my own emotions and express my inner world, which made me feel whole again. Reflecting on this journey, I realize that joy has been my compass all along. Life can take us on unexpected paths, and sometimes, society’s expectations steer us away from our true calling. But when we listen to that inner voice, when we follow what brings us joy, we find a direction that feels right—even if it doesn’t make sense to everyone else. Here are a few insights I’ve gathered along the way: Joy can be a powerful guide. If we let it, joy can show us where we need to go, even when the path isn’t clear. It’s worth listening to that pull and letting it be our compass. Embracing change can lead to fulfillment. Choosing joy often means stepping into the unknown. It can mean letting go of what’s “practical” and taking a

“It takes strength and self-love to say goodbye to what no longer serves you.” ~Rumi I promised myself at a young age that when I got married, I was not going to get divorced, no matter what! My parents had divorced when I was five, and I knew that I didn’t want to put my kids through what I’d experienced as a child who grew up in a “broken” family. I wanted my kids to know what it was like to live in a house with both their parents present and involved in their lives. So, when I found myself seven years into my marriage, sitting in a therapist’s office wondering if my husband and I were going to make it, I had no idea what I would be facing if I had to navigate life, let alone parenthood, without my husband. How does one break free from emotional and verbal abuse without it permanently affecting who they are as a person?! All I could think about at the time was my three beautiful girls, who deserved to have happy parents in a happy home living a happy life! From the outside, our lives looked that way, but our reality was nothing of the sort. The yelling, the name-calling, the threatening, the withholding, and the verbal and emotional abuse were taking their toll on all of us until one day, after five years of trying to make it work, I had had enough. The night I will never forget, almost twelve years into my marriage, we were all sitting at the dinner table, and like every time before, with no warning, a switch flipped, and the yelling began. But this time, I packed up my things and I left. And this would be the last time I would leave; after the three attempts prior, I was lured back with promises that everything would be okay and we would make it work, but this time was different. I didn’t go back. Okay, I was out; now what?! Little did I know that leaving would be the easy part. Some of the most trying and challenging times of my life happened after I was able to finally break free. But I didn’t know that learning how to love myself again and believe that I was worthy of good things was going to be the real challenge, especially after what I’d faced. The storms that happened once my marriage was over would shake me to my core. One particular time was when my middle daughter, only thirteen at the time, was able to find her way down to Tennessee from central Wisconsin without anyone knowing where she was or if we’d be able to find her. My daughter despised me for breaking up her family and wanted to get as far away from me as she possibly could, even if it meant entrusting strangers to drive her in a car for fifteen hours while they made their way to Tennessee. Waking up the next morning after she vanished and reading the “goodbye” note she’d left on her bed, I honestly did not know if I would ever see her again. To say I was in panic mode would be an understatement for how I felt during the next twenty-four-plus hours while we—my parents, my friends, my siblings, the police, and even strangers—attempted to find my daughter. I can think of no worse feeling in the world than that of a mother who is on the verge of or has just lost her son or daughter. I wondered, “How can this be happening? Haven’t we already been through enough?” Exactly twenty-six hours after my daughter had found her way into that stranger’s vehicle, I received a phone call from a deputy in a county in Tennessee saying they had found her. Thank you, Lord, was all I could think—someone is watching over us! I realized then it was time to figure out how to love myself again and heal from my divorce so I could be more present for my daughters. Are there things I would have done differently? Absolutely! But you can’t go back and change the past; the only thing you can do is learn from it and do your best not to make the same mistakes going forward. The best thing I did for myself was sign up for a subscription that gave me access to hundreds of workout programs I could do from home (since I was the sole provider of my daughters at the time). As I completed the programs, I saw improvements in not only my body but also my frame of mind, which pushed me to want to be better and do better with each one after that—not just for me but for my girls also! Being able to push through tough workouts and seeing that I could do hard things that produced positive results helped build my confidence at a time when I needed it most! This newfound confidence boost encouraged me to keep pushing forward, even in the eye of the multitude of storms I was facing, which allowed me to start to heal. The workouts were just the beginning for me. Ultimately, they led me on a path that would help me discover how to love myself again. When I left my now ex-husband, I had no idea what I would be faced with until I was finally able to break free for good. But now that I have been out and have been able to transform my mind and love my life again, I realize just how incredibly powerful some of these lessons that I’ve learned truly are. 1. Forgiving is the first step to healing.  A lot of people believe that forgiveness means you are condoning someone’s behavior, but that is not at all what you are doing when you forgive. Forgiveness is intentionally letting go of negative feelings, like resentment or anger, toward someone who has done you wrong. Choosing to forgive when you’re ready means that you are

By KIM BELLARD You may have heard about the microbiome, that collection of microorganisms that fill the world around, and in, us. You may have had some digestive tract issues after a round of antibiotics wreaked havoc with your gut microbiome. You may have read about the rafts of research that are making it clearer that our health is directly impacted by what is going on with our microbiome. You may even take probiotics to try to encourage the health of your microbiome. But you probably don’t realize how interconnected our microbiomes are. Research published in Nature by Beghini, et. al., mapped microbiomes of almost 2,000 individuals in 18 scattered Honduras villages. “We found substantial evidence of microbiome sharing happening among people who are not family and who don’t live together, even after accounting for other factors like diet, water sources, and medications,” said co-lead author Francesco Beghini, a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Human Nature Lab. “In fact, microbiome sharing was the strongest predictor of people’s social relationships in the villages we studied, beyond characteristics like wealth, religion, or education.” “Think of how different social niches form at a place like Yale,” said co-lead author Jackson Pullman. “You have friend groups centered on things like theater, or crew, or being physics majors. Our study indicates that the people composing these groups may be connected in ways we never previously thought, even through their microbiomes.” “What’s so fascinating is that we’re so interconnected,” said Mr. Pullman. “Those connections go beyond the social level to the microbial level.” Study senior author Nicholas Christakis, who directs the Human Nature Lab, explained that the research “reflects the ongoing pursuit of an idea we articulated in 2007, namely, that phenomena like obesity might spread not only by social contagion, but also by biological contagion, perhaps via the ordinary bacteria that inhabit human guts.” Other conditions, such as hypertension or depression, may also be spread by social transmission of the microbiome. Professor Christakis thinks the findings are of broad importance, telling Science Alert: “We believe our findings are of generic relevance, not bound to the specific location we did this work, shedding light on how human social interactions shape the nature and impact of the microbes in our bodies.” But, he added: “The sharing of microbes per se is neither good nor bad, but the sharing of particular microbes in particular circumstances can indeed be good or bad.” This research reminded me of 2015 research by Meadow, et. al., that suggested our microbiome doesn’t just exist in our gut, inside other parts our body, and on our skin, but that, in fact, we’re surrounded by a “personal microbial cloud.” Remember the Peanuts character Pigpen, who walked around in his personal dirt cloud? Well, that’s each of us, only instead of dirt we’re surrounded by our microbial cloud–and those clouds are easily discernable from each other. Dr. Meadow told BBC at the time: “We expected that we would be able to detect the human microbiome in the air around a person, but we were surprised to find that we could identify most of the occupants just by sampling their microbial cloud.” Those researchers predicted: While indoors, we are constantly interacting with microbes other people have left behind on the chairs in which we sit, in dust we perturb, and on every surface we touch. These human-microbial interactions are in addition to the microbes our pets leave in our houses, those that blow off of tree leaves and soils, those in the food we eat and the water we drink. It is becoming increasingly clear that we have evolved with these complex microbial interactions, and that we may depend on them for our well-being (Rook, 2013). It is now apparent, given the results presented here, that the microbes we encounter include those actively emitted by other humans, including our families, coworkers, and perfect strangers. Dr. Beghini and colleagues would agree, and further suggest that it’s not only indoors where we’re sharing microbes. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out new research which found that our brains, far from being sterile, are host to a diverse microbiome and that impacts to it may lead to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Could we catch Alzheimer’s from someone else’s personal microbiome cloud? It’s possible. Could we prevent or even cure it by careful curation of the brain (or gut) microbiome? Again, possible. The truth is that, despite decades of understanding that we have a microbiome, we still have a very limited understanding of what a healthy microbiome is, what causes it to not be healthy, what problems arise for us when it isn’t healthy, or what we can do to bring it (and us) to more optimal health. We’re still struggling to understand where besides our gut it plays a crucial role. We now know that we can “share” parts of our microbiome with those around us, but not quite what the mechanisms for that are–e.g., touch, sharing objects, or having our personal clouds intersect. We feel like we are where scientists were two hundred years ago in the early stages of the germ theory of disease. They knew germs impacted health, they even could connect some specific germs with specific diseases, they even had rudimentary interventions based on it, but much remained to be discovered. That led to vaccines, antibiotics, and other pharmaceuticals, all of which gave us “modern medicine,” but failed to anticipate the importance of the microbiome on our health. Similarly, we’re justifiably proud of the progress we’ve made in terms of understanding our genetic structure and its impacts on our health, but fall far short of recognizing the vastly larger genetic footprint of the microbiome with which we co-exist. A few years ago I called for “quantum theory of health”–not literally, but incorporating and surpassing “modern medicine” in the way that quantum physics upended classical physics. That kind of revolution would recognize that there is no health for us without our microbiome,

“Never hold yourself back from trying something new just because you’re afraid you won’t be good enough. You’ll never get the opportunity to do your best work if you’re not willing to first do your worst and then let yourself learn and grow.” ~Lori Deschene “I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked my mother for the third time during our lunch together. She sighed, put down her fork, and said something that still haunts me: “I’ve gotten used to competing with your phone for your attention.” I looked down at my phone, Instagram still glowing on the screen, and saw myself through her eyes: a twenty-nine-year-old man more invested in strangers’ lives than his own mother’s stories. I’m not alone in this struggle. Studies show the average person spends two and a half hours daily on social media, with 210 million people worldwide believed to suffer from social media addiction. But statistics didn’t matter to me until I saw how my own addiction was unraveling the fabric of my life. How My Freelance Dreams Almost Died in My Social Media Feed My freelance business was crumbling, one scroll at a time. What started as “just checking Twitter for networking” turned into a daily nightmare of missed deadlines and disappointed clients. One morning, I opened my inbox to find three separate messages from clients asking about overdue projects. Was it that I was overpromising or improperly managing my time? The truth was painful: I’d spent too much time consuming other freelancers’ “success stories” on LinkedIn, taking away from doing the work to create my own. My portfolio website sat untouched for months while I obsessed over others’ perfectly curated project showcases. A long-term client who’d promised to refer me to his network quietly stopped responding to my emails after I delivered their project a week late. Projects that should have taken three focused hours stretched into two distracted days, filled with anxiety and self-doubt. Facing the Real Person Behind the Screen After losing an important client for “not meeting expectations,” I was forced to face an uncomfortable truth: Social media wasn’t my problem—it was my symptom. I was using other freelancers’ highlight reels as a form of self-sabotage. Every “hustle harder” and “how I made $10,741 last month” post became an excuse to stay paralyzed in comparison mode. Rather than pitching new clients, I’d spend hours studying other freelancers’ portfolios. Instead of improving my skills, I’d scroll through Twitter threads promising “Ten secrets to six-figure freelancing.” The harder truth? My social media addiction was masking a deeper fear: the fear of actually putting myself out there and risking real failure. It was easier to live vicariously through others’ success stories than write my own. Every time I felt the anxiety of an approaching deadline or the uncertainty of reaching out to new clients, I’d reach for my phone. The temporary escape of scrolling had become my security blanket. My wake-up call came through numbers I couldn’t ignore: I had spent 458 hours on social media in the past three months—enough time to have completed a skills boot camp, started writing a book, or acquired several new professional certifications. Instead, I had nothing to show for those hours except an intimate knowledge of strangers’ business journeys. Building a New Foundation My initial changes were small but significant: I moved my phone to another room during work hours. I created a “fear list” documenting what I was really avoiding when I reached for social media. I set up website blockers during my designated deep work hours. I established a morning routine that began with action, not consumption. The most powerful change was implementing what I call the “Create Before Consume” rule: I wasn’t allowed to look at any social media until I’d created something of value that day—whether that was client work, improving my skills, or building my own business. Each time I felt the urge to check social media, I asked myself, “Am I using this as a tool, or am I using it as an escape?” The answer was uncomfortable but transformative. Nine times out of ten, I was avoiding something important—a challenging project, a difficult client conversation, or the nagging feeling that I wasn’t living up to my potential. The shift from passive consumer to active creator wasn’t just about productivity—it was about reclaiming my identity as a professional. Each focused hour became a small victory, each completed project a testament to what I could achieve when I stopped hiding behind my screen. The Thirty-Day Journey That Changed Everything I decided to change my relationship with social media rather than avoiding it. First, I had to rewire my brain to stop associating every free moment with reaching for my phone. Instead of mindlessly scrolling, I trained myself to pause and reflect on why I was opening an app in the first place. Was it out of boredom, habit, or genuine intention? Here’s what happened during my thirty-day detox. Week 1: The Withdrawal Was Physical I started keeping a journal of the moments I reached for my phone. One entry reads: “Reached for phone forty-seven times before noon. Feel empty, anxious. Why is sitting with my own thoughts so terrifying?” Week 2: Rediscovering Lost Connections I called my mother—actually called her, not just liked her Facebook posts. We talked for two hours. She told me stories about her childhood I’d never heard before. “This is the first real conversation we’ve had in years,” she said. Week 3: The Productivity Breakthrough After being unmotivated for a couple of weeks, I discovered I could complete work in three hours that previously took all day. My clients noticed the change. One of them even told me, “Great work! It’s clear whatever you’re doing is working—keep it up!” Hearing that feedback reaffirmed just how powerful it can be to take control of your digital habits. Week 4: Finding Real Joy in Self-Development The most profound change came when I replaced mindless scrolling with

By JEFF GOLDSMITH In late June, 2024, two economists, Zarek Brot-Goldberg and Zack Cooper, from the University of Chicago and Yale respectively, released an economic analysis arguing that hospital mergers damage local economies and result in an increase in deaths by suicide and drug overdoses in the markets where mergers occur. Funded by Arnold Ventures  their study characterizes these mergers as “rent seeking activities” by hospitals seeking to use their economic power to extort financial gains from their communities without providing any value.  The Brot-Goldberg-Cooper analysis was a spin-off of a larger study decrying the lack of federal anti-trust enforcement regarding hospital mergers. These two studies used the same economic model. The data were derived from the Healthcare Cost Institute, a repository of commercial insurance claims information from three of the four largest commercial health insurers, United Healthcare, Humana and Aetna (a subsidiary of struggling pharmacy giant CVS) plus Blue Cross/Blue Shield. HCCI’s contributors account for 28% of the commercial health insurance market. The authors use a complex econometric model to manipulate a huge, multifactorial data base comprising hospital merger activity, employer health benefits data, county level employment data and morbidity and mortality statistics. This data model enabled a raft of regression analyses attempting to ferret out “associations” between the various domains of these data. Using HCCI’s data, the authors construct what they termed a  “causal chain” leading from hospital mergers to community damage during their study period–2010 to 2015.  It looked like this: hospital mergers raise prices for private insurers-these prices are passed on to employers–who respond by laying off workers–some of whom end up killing themselves. So, according to the logic, hospital mergers kill people. Using the same methodology, the authors argued that between 2007 and 2014, hospital price increases of all sorts killed ten thousand people.  A classic problem with correlational studies of this kind is their failure to clarify the direction of causality of data elements.  The model lacked a control group–comparable communities that did not experience hospital mergers during this period–because the authors argued that mergers were so pervasive they could not locate comparable communities that did not experience them.     The model focused on a subset of 304 hospital mergers from 2010 to 2015, culled from a universe of 484 mergers nationally during the same period. The authors excluded mergers of hospitals that were further than fifty miles apart, as well as hospitals with low census. The effect of these assumptions was to exclude most rural hospitals and concentrate the mergers studied in metropolitan areas and cities. The densest cluster was in the I-95 corridor between Washington DC and Boston. See the map below: According to the model, these mergers resulted in an average increase of 1.2% in hospital prices to commercial insurers, 91% of which were passed to their employer customers in those markets. This minuscule rate increase had a curiously focused and outsized effect–a $10,584 increase in the median employer’s health spending in the merged hospitals’ market. According to the model, local employers “responded” to this cost increase by reducing their payrolls by a median amount of $17,900, all through layoffs–70% more than the alleged merger cost increase. This large overage was not explained by the authors. Moreover, the layoffs took place almost immediately, in the same year as the merger-induced increases, even though many health insurance contracts are multi-year affairs, and lock hospitals in to rates for that period. At the end of the “causal chain,” 1 in 140 laid off people in those communities for whatever reason killed themselves through suicide or drug overdoses. By extrapolation, the authors accuse the perpetrators of overall hospital rate increases of killing ten thousand people in the affected communities during seven years overlapping the study period.    Failing the Test of Real World Plausibility It is difficult to know where to begin to unravel this complex web of “associations”. The biggest puzzle is the magnification of impact of a 1.2% “shock”, as the authors term it, to health benefits cost on employers. To put this in in perspective, the 1.2% average price increase is against a health benefit that amounts to about 9%, on average,  of the sample employers’  total compensation costs.* So, 1.2% increase of a 9% cost is an exactly one tenth of 1% (.001) increase in employer’s total compensation expense. Payroll and benefits are in turn perhaps 50-70% of an employer’s total operating expense. A one-tenth of a percent increase in employment costs is a mosquito bite, not a “shock”. The authors’ inferred leap from this micro-increase in employer costs to widespread layoffs is indefensible compared to real world managerial behavior. The authors ruled out the most obvious cost response–cost-shifting to workers by raising their deductibles or copayments–on the grounds that they found no changes in Health Savings Account enrollment in the sample during the five year study period. After more than quadrupling from 2006 to 2011, growth in HSA enrollment levelled off during the last four years of the study period.  Yet employer cost shifting to workers by raising their out-of-pocket spending limits accelerated during the same period. According to Kaiser/HRET’s annual survey, from 2010 to 2015, the number of workers with deductibles and co-insurance more than $2,000 doubled. Thus, the effects of any commercial  health insurance rate increases, whatever their size, were likely shared broadly across the entire covered population in the merger-affected markets. Most employers facing economic challenges bend over backwards to avoid parting company with productive, experienced workers. And they have a wide range of options to avoid doing so: raising prices, cutting hourly workers’ hours, shifting workers from employees to contractors (dodging benefits expenses altogether), pressuring other suppliers for discounts, improving productivity, finding new customers, and “shrinkflation” in their product (e.g. a half-ounce smaller Almond Joy bar for the same price ). None of these responses were measured or controlled for in the model.  Meager Exercise of Market Power If an anti-competitive exercise of market power was the goal of the mergers, then an average 1.2% rate increase struck