Whistleblowers are afraid because those you expose attack what you care about. While whistleblowers are often praised after the fact for being courageous, few talk about how frightening it is to take this role. Dorothy Suskind writes that “whistleblowers place themselves in the path of an oncoming train in an effort to force a reckoning.”…
Research shows that whistleblowers don’t leap onto the path guns blazing. No. Whistleblowers try everything they can to solve the problem internally so as not to rock the boat, expose wrongdoers, cause trouble. That said, for whistleblowers, exposing injustice is an obligation, not a choice. I tried to address the crisis at the school in…
Guess what? Infertility makes you blue. It’s official. Baby-making is fun for maybe three months. Six at a pinch. Sex gets a tad less spontaneous. Excitement fades pretty damn fast. Niggling doubts, worry and plain old icy fear. Once the ‘f’ word leaps out of the bedroom and onto the doctor’s couch there’s no stopping it. Next thing…
Dry mouth, shaky voice, pounding heart and crampy gut are sure signs of anxiety. When you need to feel better in a hurry use these 6 ways to calm down quickly! The Vagus (wandering) nerve is where the magic unfolds. Starting in the brain it wanders down the neck to the voice box and on to…
Only Child Abuse Could Make Me Speak Up I am an unlikely whistleblower, but where I find courage is when I hear directly from children they’re being abused. Only child abuse could make me speak up. I know what it’s like to be an unwilling bystander and a self-protective sheeple, but the only thing that…
If little girls are made of sugar and spice, and little boys puppy dogs’ tails, how do you frontload your fertility to get your family started? The real nitty gritty of having babies comes down to how well our bodies are working and often what’s going on in our heads too. So, where do we begin with…
Miscarriage hurts, and is often misunderstood. Síle Seoige’s groundbreaking TG4 documentary ‘Deireadh Tochta’ follows her journey, shares stories, explores research, finds help. I’m delighted to have been part of her healing to a rainbow pregnancy. I was a ‘rainbow’ baby, born after my mother’s fourth miscarriage. She felt each of her pregnancy losses all her…
Collision of Consciousness and Circumstance I had always been a believer in education, justice, and government in my country. Cut to the collision between consciousness and circumstance: five years I watched how school administrators handled abuse reports about the one teacher, who was ultimately fired, showed me a coverup-culture at work, but belief-systems constructed through childhood…
Why do Your Eggs Age Before the Rest of Your Fertility Does? Hitting forty, trying to conceive and fearful of your fertility? Cue furrowed brows and quizzical head tilts. Sure, you look and feel about 25 – but just try telling that to your eggs or your doctor. Aging eggs with a fail-grade AMH put the…
School Culture that Looked the Other Way I was an “unwilling bystander” in a school culture that looked the other way when abuse was occurring. This was before I stepped into the whistleblower role. I knew about an abusive teacher, but my attempts to stop his harmful treatment got me nowhere. Instead, I encountered all…