Dominique Fray-Aitken

Many people live with a persistent sense of tiredness that rest alone does not seem to resolve. This exhaustion is not always about workload or busyness. Often, it comes from something less visible but deeply demanding: the ongoing effort of adjustment. Constant adjustment shows up in subtle ways. Monitoring how you speak. Filtering your reactions. Anticipating how others might respond. Working out, moment by moment, how to fit yourself into spaces that were not designed with you in mind. For...

The idea of “normal” carries a lot of weight. It shapes how we assess ourselves, how children are measured in schools, how adults are evaluated at work, and how difference is understood, or misunderstood, in everyday life. Often, it operates quietly in the background, setting standards that few people consciously agreed to but many feel pressured to meet. Psychologically, “normal” is not a neutral concept. It is shaped by culture, history, power, and convenience. What is considered typical or...

There is a lot of pressure placed on identity. Children are often asked who they want to be, what they enjoy, what they’re good at, and how they see themselves, sometimes before they have had the chance to simply be. Adults, too, are expected to know who they are, where they are going, and what everything they’ve lived through has “made” them. But identity is not something we arrive at and stay put in. It is something that unfolds across a lifetime. Who you are at eight is not who you are at...