Womankind February-May 2021

Have you ever just gone with a hunch, a feeling? Something didn’t feel right about a decision, your energy had fallen, you felt edgy and disorientated, and so you just went with your ‘instinct’ or your ‘gut feeling’ as it is often called. And later, did you discover that your instinct was spot on? This wise voice within is called ‘intuition’ and it can be so powerful in making wise decisions that even the US Navy is cultivating what they call a “spidey sense”. Intuition is thought to originate from the more mysterious and silent right side of the brain, the one that doesn’t have a voice, given speech and writing are functions of the brain’s left hemisphere. Without the gift of speech, the right side of the brain tries…

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Antonia Case:  Antonia Case is Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director of Womankind, and Editorial Director of New Philosopher. She was awarded the 2016 AAP Media Professionals’ Award for excellence in the presentation of philosophy in the media. Her forthcoming book Flourish will be published by Bloomsbury Sigma. Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore: Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore is a British journalist who lives in New York. She writes for New Philosopher, The Guardian, The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Statesman, New Internationalist, The Huffington Post, and Time magazine. Jennifer Kunst: Jennifer Kunst is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, working in private practice in California. She is a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California and an adjunct associate professor at the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology. She is…

It’s the one question that we’d all like to know the answer to, so we could just get on with it - the living part, that is. If we knew what the ‘good life’ entailed then we could shun the rest, and just concentrate on the important bits. But society has a tendency to derail us. We’re repeatedly told that the good life is about making loads of money, having a successful career and buying as much as we can possibly shovel into our houses and garages. Some are convinced that they need to be famous and get their name up in lights for the good life to kick in. It’s worth remembering that the phase of flight for the Kunanyia stephaniae butterfly lasts a mere 14 days, long enough…

We all know that decisions are key to our destiny, but how do you know the choices you make are the right ones? Self-help gurus like us to write it all out - the goals, values, mission statement, the lot - on a piece of paper. Lists of ‘pros and cons’ and ‘goal sheets’ are pulled out with abandon. That way, they argue, you will know what to focus on, so when you come to a fork in the road and a big decision has to be made, you simply have to ask yourself: How will this contribute to my life’s goals? How will this connect with my values, my mission, and what I stand for? But have you ever written out a list of goals, and at the end…

Romania is geographically the same size as Texas in the United States, but for such a small country geographically, it has had a turbulent past. For four decades, beginning with its occupation by Soviet troops in 1944 until the Revolution in 1989, Romania was under communist rule, first led by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and succeeded by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who ruled the country until the Revolution in 1989. Known for its dense Transylvanian forests ringed by the Carpathian Mountains, and its haunting fortress Bran Castle, Romania is a patchwork of Transylvanian Gothic-style churches and Art Deco buildings alongside high-density functional collective housing - large concrete slabs built at great haste during the Communist era. The uprising, which led to the end of communism in Romania, was over in less than a week.…