Thrive

editor

Don’t you wish our pets could live as long as we do? To never have to say goodbye, to not have to deal with the debilitating grief afterwards, then perhaps go through the process of replacing them with another little puppy, kitten or, in my case, calf? As I’m writing this, we have just had a man with a gun at our place to take our cow Betty to a better place. I have written before about how she never thrived after being pushed off the teat by her twin, and how I spent months feeding her buckets of milk and then weaning her onto grains and fruit and grass. I fed her every natural tonic I could find to improve her gut health and to give her a boost, and…

this month

My own MOWER At my place, I am slowly trying to phase out lawns by planting flax and other natives in the spaces we would usually have to mow. But that still leaves some flat areas which the two people I live with (my dad and my husband, Paul) like to keep as lawn. Dad used to love getting on his ride-on to mow the lawns, but at 88 that’s not happening any more, so Paul has been using his trusty mower to do most of the work. But I like mowing lawns too. And I don’t like having to learn the intricacies of how to start Paul’s mower, which seems to involve waving a magic wand, turning three circles to the left and one to the right and only then…

get active

HELP Buy a poppy for you and a friend this Anzac Day on April 25. Every family in New Zealand has someone they loved and lost in a war and this is our way of honouring their bravery and thinking of them. Make sure you stop and buy a poppy or two on Anzac Day and take a moment to think of those brave soldiers who went offto war to protect Aotearoa. READ Her Say: Survivors of domestic abuse tell their own stories, by Jackie Clark and the Aunties (Penguin $35) This powerful book features the stories of a number of very difffferent New Zealand women who share their stories and offffer insight into the complexities of domestic violence in New Zealand. Domestic violence is the leading cause of death by homicide for women.…

‘learning to love myself’

“The hardest thing is loving myself,” says musician, broadcaster and television presenter Anika Moa. “Waking up and saying, ‘You’re not a shitty person, you’re not a shitty mother, you’re not a shitty wife, you’re not a shitty singer.’” I know a lot of women will relate to this. “Now I wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m so proud of you, Neeks. I’m so proud that you lasted another night without drinking, you were present with your kids, you’re working hard for your family.’” These are the words of a woman who has spent the past 18 months getting healthy in mind and body. She has been sober for 100 days, running for more than a year (including two half-marathons) and doing the hard work of therapy. ‘I have had hundreds of…

why do we dream?

If your ambition is to become an expert on dreams, like Professor Robert Stickgold of Harvard University, then he has some advice: don’t tell anyone. “At parties I’ve learnt to say I study sleep,” he says on the phone from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “If I say I study dreams, the next six words out of their mouth are invariably: ‘I had the most amazing dream.’” You see, Robert doesn’t really care that you dreamt that all your teeth fell out. What he cares about is what exactly the brain is doing when we’re asleep and why. Dreams are a part of that and much of the rest is still a mystery. Things have improved enormously since another Harvard professor joked 20 years ago that the only known function of sleep…

what do your dreams say about you?

The pandemic is doing odd things to our nights. Recently, Google reported record numbers of people searching for dream and sleep-related subjects, while numerous studies have found a surge in people reporting strange dreams. In the first lockdown, in a survey of 2,254 UK residents by King’s College London and Ipsos Mori, two in five people reported having had more vivid dreams than usual, with those who were stressed about coronavirus being twice as likely to experience them. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Helsinki have reported an increase in nightmares and dreams with Covid-related themes (in particular, anxiety over social distancing) and the Museum of London has announced plans to collect dream tales from volunteers for its Guardians of Sleep project. Decoding your dreams Did lockdown keep you up? You’re not alone.…