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Spotlight
Spotlight – Illuminating Modern Voices, Trends, and Stories Welcome to Spotlight — the place where we shine a light on the innovative ideas, cultural movements, and inspiring people shaping our world today. Think of this section as your front-row seat to exclusive features, community stories, and trendsetting voices that deserve to be heard. From groundbreaking artists to grassroots innovators, Spotlight celebrates creativity, diversity, and progress. Our goal is simple: to uncover and share the stories that spark curiosity, encourage dialogue, and inspire positive change. Each feature goes beyond surface-level reporting — we dig deeper into the why behind cultural shifts and the who driving meaningful progress. What You’ll Find in Spotlight 1. In-Depth Profiles We bring you closer to the trailblazers — the thinkers, creators, and leaders redefining what’s possible. From musicians breaking industry molds to entrepreneurs using technology for social good, our profiles capture their journeys, challenges, and visions for the future. 2. Emerging Trends in Culture & Lifestyle Culture is always evolving. Spotlight tracks the pulse of what’s new — from digital art and sustainability in fashion to the rise of wellness movements and social media storytelling. We don’t just report trends; we analyze them, explain their roots, and explore how they shape our communities and daily lives. 3. Community Highlights Global change often starts locally. That’s why we highlight community leaders, grassroots initiatives, and local changemakers who are creating impact on the ground. These stories celebrate resilience, innovation, and collaboration — reminding us that transformation can start in any neighborhood. 4. Exclusive Interviews Spotlight offers you conversations you won’t find anywhere else. Our interviews with visionary thinkers, creators, and influencers reveal fresh perspectives, untold stories, and insider insights. Whether it’s an artist explaining their creative process or a social activist sharing their mission, you’ll get authentic voices — unfiltered and powerful. 5. Cultural Movements & Social Change From global protests to grassroots campaigns, we explore the cultural movements redefining society. Our coverage brings clarity to complex issues, balancing analysis with human stories that show why these movements matter. Why Spotlight Matters In a world overflowing with information, it’s easy for important stories to get lost. Spotlight was created to cut through the noise and amplify the voices and ideas shaping tomorrow. Here’s what sets us apart: Authenticity – We feature real people, genuine stories, and diverse voices. No fluff, just impact. Relevance – We focus on issues, ideas, and trends that matter now — and will matter tomorrow. Diversity & Inclusion – We believe creativity and progress thrive on diversity. Our features highlight stories across cultures, communities, and perspectives. Connection – Through storytelling, we bridge gaps between people, communities, and ideas, sparking dialogue and building understanding.
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Latest Articles in Spotlight
Lesley Aljishi
Spotlight
Energy. Elegance. Elevation. Inside the Akillis x Gómez & Molina Collaboration — Where Paris Meets Marbella
There are events, and then there are moments that shift a city’s pulse.On a warm July night at Villa Royale, the French jeweller Akillis joined forces with Marbella’s legendary Gómez & Molina for an evening that was less about showing off diamonds and more about transmitting energy. It was art, light, and legacy wrapped in gold — a night where beauty didn’t just sparkle, it vibrated.The invitation promised an evening of “energy, elegance, and sensory elevation,” and it delivered on every word. Guests drifted into the candlelit villa dressed in bohemian white chic, each one carrying a hint of curiosity — and in some cases, their own stones, ready to be “energetically charged.” This wasn’t your standard jewelry launch. This was a ritual in couture.The Eye That Sees BeyondAt the center of it all: a new creation born from collaboration — an Eye motif designed between Akillis Joaillerie Paris and Gómez & Molina Joyeros.It’s more than ornament. The Eye, crafted in mother-of-pearl, gold, and diamonds, symbolizes intuition and protection — an emblem that watches, guards, and gleams. It’s both Parisian precision and Andalusian soul, fused into one singular, hypnotic design.When you hold it, you can feel the intention. It’s not about status. It’s about energy — the kind that hums quietly against your skin, reminding you that jewelry, at its best, is wearable emotion.Two Houses, One VisionThis partnership wasn’t accidental.Akillis, known for its rebellious elegance and architectural lines, brings that bold French edge — luxury with bite.Gómez & Molina, a Marbella institution for over five decades, brings heritage — the kind that carries stories in every facet and setting.Together, they’ve created something rare: a collaboration that doesn’t dilute identity, but amplifies it. Paris brings the pulse, Marbella brings the soul, and between them, something magnetic happens.As one guest whispered that night, “This feels like more than jewelry — it feels like energy translated into gold.”The Night That GlowedUnder the Andalusian stars, surrounded by flickering candles and the hum of champagne-fueled laughter, guests found themselves not at a product launch but inside an experience — one that blurred the line between spirituality and style.At one point, a quiet ritual unfolded. Guests were invited to place their personal stones — crystals, talismans, heirlooms — onto a marble table. Each piece was blessed, recharged, and returned, transformed by intention.The message was clear: energy is the true luxury.A Marbella MomentIn a world that often mistakes noise for impact, Gómez & Molina and Akillis reminded us that power can be silent — and that true beauty doesn’t shout, it resonates.Marbella has always attracted the dreamers, the designers, the doers — people who chase sunlight and create meaning from it. On this night, that spirit shone through every reflection, every smile, every diamond that caught the light.Because in the end, luxury isn’t what you wear — it’s what you feel.Quote Sidebar“This collaboration isn’t about adornment — it’s about energy, elegance, and the emotion we carry through art.”— Marina Gómez Molina
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
Webster & Co: The Little Real Estate Office That Quietly Became Marbella’s Gatekeeper
Marbella loves a reinvention story. The ones that start small—two desks, a phone that never stops ringing—and end with someone holding the invisible keys to the city. That’s the Webster & Co arc. Once a modest real estate agency, today they’re the first number the upscale crowd calls when Marbella is more than a vacation and less than a mystery. Need a villa with a view that doesn’t appear on portals? A discreet architect who actually listens? A florist who understands restraint, a private chef who understands boundaries, an interior designer who can do quiet luxury without shouting price? Somehow, it’s Webster & Co.At the center is Albert—the founder whose superpower isn’t just deal-making; it’s connection. “He started as a young guy wanting to work,” Leslie told me, “and now his network is basically all over Marbella.” You feel that when you talk to him: zero flash, full focus. The kind of person who introduces you to the person behind the person—and then follows up to make sure the meeting turned into momentum.Beyond Listings, They Built a MapReal estate is the door. Culture is the corridor. Community is the room you end up in. Webster & Co figured that out early. They still broker property—beautiful, sun-glossed homes with the Mediterranean as their backyard—but that’s only page one. The rest reads like a concierge’s private Rolodex fused with a cultural calendar. Events, launches, dinners, trunk shows, art previews, fundraisers—the magnetic center where “people who make things happen” quietly orbit.Any high-net-worth newcomer landing in Málaga with questions about where to live, who to know, and which spaces actually matter eventually hears the same advice: “Call Webster & Co.” Not because they’ll sell you a house. Because they’ll sell you on a life.The Family ThreadMarbella is built on two currencies: sun and trust. Albert’s is generational. His mother—an accomplished lawyer—handles legal affairs for people like us, which means Webster & Co deals aren’t just charming; they’re clean. There’s a steadiness to that mother-son axis: the handshake has a paper trail, the paper trail holds up.Next week we’re sitting down for a family dinner—Albert, his fiancée, his mother. Not a boardroom. A table. Because here, relationships aren’t simply “managed”; they’re fed. And in this town, breaking bread is the due diligence that matters most.How a Boutique Shop Became the Upscale HubWhen people say Webster & Co “isn’t just a real estate agent anymore,” what they mean is they’ve become Marbella’s unofficial quality filter. A small office grew into a tastemaker brand by staying allergic to noise, delivering consistently, and knowing when to say no. They host and co-host the kinds of gatherings that feel intimate even when the guest list is intimidating—rooms where property, design, hospitality, and philanthropy mingle without fighting for the spotlight.It’s not spectacle. It’s curation.A designer introduction on a Tuesday that quietly transforms a client’s vision by Friday.A private dinner where two families realize they want the same school, the same street, the same quiet.A last-minute legal complication that doesn’t become a crisis because someone’s mother is also the lawyer—calm, precise, already ahead of the paperwork.The result: those “only in Marbella” moments that seem effortless because someone else did the sweating.Why They Matter to Our ReadersBetween the Covers is launching in Marbella with the same ethos we built in Canada: real stories, real community, no performative gloss. Webster & Co is that in business form. They reflect a Marbella that’s grown up—less flashbulb, more foundation. They signal where the city is going: toward a networked, high-standard ecosystem where service is human, introductions are intentional, and everyone remembers your kid’s name (and your preferred granite finish).For women leading families, careers, and their own lives across borders, trusted hubs like Webster & Co are not “nice to have.” They’re how you land without losing months to guesswork or missteps. They shorten the distance between “We’re thinking about it” and “We live here now.”Power in the MessThe theme of this issue is Power in the Mess—and let’s be honest: moving countries, setting up a home, finding the right school, doctors, trades, clubs, and community…it’s a glamorous mess. The power comes from who stands with you inside it. Albert’s gift is standing right there—shoulder-to-shoulder, sleeves rolled, phone in hand—until the chaos organizes itself into a life that feels like yours.The Business Case (Because We’re Builders, Too)We’re frank about scale and strategy. Our Marbella launch isn’t a pamphlet; it’s an ecosystem—print, app, and community—plugging into a city that already pulses with the kind of audience we serve. Webster & Co sits in the middle of that pulse. Cross-market stories that resonate in Canada will live here; Marbella-born pieces will travel back to our Canadian readers. That bidirectional current is by design. When we say “subscribe,” we mean to a life where your worlds talk to each other.What You Can Expect NextA Webster & Co City Guide (Quiet Luxury Edition): Designers, galleries, fitness, florists, and restaurants that don’t need a sign to have a waitlist.Behind the Build: A before-and-after series following one international family’s relocation with Webster & Co—legal, design, schooling, and the tiny decisions that make a house feel inevitable.Intimate Salons: Small, invite-only evenings where property meets culture—because the best questions are asked off-mic.A Final Word on TrustIn a place where anyone can look expensive for an afternoon, Webster & Co plays the long game. They’ve become Marbella’s recommended first call not by being everywhere, but by being the right where—reliably. From a tidy storefront to a citywide switchboard, they earned it one introduction at a time.Marbella doesn’t give you power. It lends it, then watches what you do. Webster & Co used theirs to build a community that protects your time, your taste, and your peace. That’s the kind of gatekeeping we can get behind.Editor’s note: Next week I’m meeting Albert—plus his fiancée and mother—over dinner to talk interiors, community, and the quiet logistics that make a life here actually work. I’ll bring back the good stuff: the names, the nooks, the shortcuts. Until then, if you’re landing soon and need a soft place to start, you already know who to call.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
New York Fashion Week: The Good, The Meh, and The What-The-Actual-Fuck
When the Fashion Capital Serves You Dreams, Disappointments, and One Designer Who Needs a Reality CheckBy: Joseph TitoThere's something about New York that makes you feel alive even when it smells like hot garbage and betrayal. Maybe it's the way the concrete seems to pulse with ambition, or how even the pigeons strut like they're on a runway. I went to Fashion Week expecting to see the future of fashion. What I got was a masterclass in both how to do it right—and a stomach-turning lesson in how catastrophically wrong it can go.Let me start with the good, because Runway 7 deserves their flowers before I burn down someone else's garden.The Organization That Actually Gives a DamnIn a world where fashion events often feel like you're crashing a party where nobody wants you there, Runway 7 was different. Three women in particular made magic happen: Diane Vara—the PR & Marketing Director who, despite handling all PR and managing a team of marketers, still took a second to make you feel welcomed with a simple, genuine smile; Christina Kovacs, Director of Brand & Sponsorships who refreshingly didn't know how she could help but still tried; and one more angel whose name I'm tracking down because my notes app crashed—fashion week, am I right?This matters more than you think. When you're surrounded by people who look like they subsist on green juice and contempt, having someone treat you like an actual human being feels revolutionary.The Designers Who Understood the AssignmentLet's talk about Melissa Crisostomo from Unique Custom Threads. This woman gets it. Every piece that walked down that runway was a one-of-a-kind statement that made you stop mid-scroll and actually look. She's been at this for three and a half years, self-taught, originally a fine artist—and it shows. There's something about designers who come to fashion from other art forms. They're not trying to recreate what's already been done. They're creating what doesn't exist yet."Every time I approach a fashion collection, I try and create something new," Melissa told me backstage, and honey, she wasn't lying. That back-open number? Even the straight guys were taking notes.The models themselves were a revelation. Karan Fernandes, 29 but looking like she could play a high schooler on Netflix, flew in from Boston just for visibility—no hotel, no payment, just pure hustle and hope. Levana, a women's-only personal trainer who teaches self-defense on the side, strutted that runway like she was teaching it a lesson about power. These weren't just pretty faces; they were stories on legs.When New York Felt Like New YorkThere were moments when Fashion Week lived up to its promise. The energy backstage—"boobs, makeup, lashes, everything flying everywhere," as Levana perfectly put it. The grandmother from Alabama watching her 10-year-old granddaughter work the runway with equal parts pride and protective terror. The writer and her plus-one BFF who dressed like she was the main character (because honestly, she was).Even the city itself played its part. That particular New York magic where just walking the streets makes you feel like you're part of something bigger, even when you're dodging mysterious puddles and men who think "hey beautiful" is a conversation starter.But Then Came Rhinestone Sugar CoutureAnd this is where I need you to put down your coffee and pay attention.I had to walk out of a fashion show. Me. The person who sat through an entire experimental theater piece about sentient tampons. But this? This broke me.Picture this: Seven, eight, nine-year-old girls. High heels. Makeup that would make a Vegas showgirl blush. Outfits that—and I'm going to be very careful with my words here—made them look like miniature versions of something no child should ever be asked to embody.I'm a dad of six-year-old twin girls. Progressive as hell. No filter. Judge-free zone, usually. But when I looked over at two bodyguards watching that runway and saw something in their eyes that made my skin crawl? When a 62-year-old photographer from Brooklyn—a woman who's probably seen everything—put down her camera and whispered, "This feels like child trafficking"?That's not fashion. That's not art. That's exploitation wrapped in sequins and sold as empowerment.The Uncomfortable Truth About Dreams and DangerHere's what kills me: I don't blame the kids. They're kids. I don't even fully blame the moms, sitting there with stars in their eyes, dreaming of their daughters' names in lights. We all want our children to shine. But there's a difference between letting your child shine and putting them on display like that.The designer—whose name I won't give the dignity of printing—chose to put those children on that runway in that way. In an industry already riddled with predators and problems, she chose to serve up vulnerability on a silver platter and call it fashion.One grandmother I interviewed put it perfectly: "I'm happy and I'm a little scared... I think about the times we're in and what could happen." She was talking about her granddaughter doing regular pageants, fully clothed, age-appropriate. Imagine how the parents of those Rhinestone Sugar girls should feel.What Fashion Week Should BeFashion Week should be about innovation, not exploitation. It should be about Brianna from Bri Romi, marketing her brand through social media and refusing to believe she needs traditional runways to be successful. It should be about models like Anya Patel, whose mom is in the front row being her "biggest fan," fixing her hair and taking pictures. It should be about designers who understand that making people feel something doesn't mean making them feel sick.The truth is, for all its pretension and $25 cocktails, Fashion Week at its best is about dreams taking shape. It's about self-taught designers getting their shot. It's about models from Brazil and Boston and Alabama converging on Sony Hall to walk for visibility, not pay, because they believe in something bigger.The VerdictRunway 7 did something beautiful. They created a space where emerging designers could show their work, where models could build their portfolios, where fashion felt accessible and exciting. They treated people like humans. They made magic happen on a budget and determination.But they also hosted Rhinestone Sugar Couture. And that's a stain that no amount of sequins can cover.Fashion Week is supposed to be the dream factory, the place where art meets commerce meets culture. When it works, it's transcendent. When it fails, it fails spectacularly. And when it crosses the line from fashion into exploitation?That's when we need to stop clapping and start calling it out.Because those little girls deserved better. We all did.Did you attend NYFW this year? Did you see something that made you walk out—or something that made you believe in fashion again? Drop us a line at letters@betweenthecovers.com. We're listening, and unlike those bodyguards at the Rhinestone Sugar show, we're watching for the right reasons.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
Built to Break Her: How Melissa Grelo Wins Anyway
In a system designed for working mothers to fail, she's rewriting the rules — and teaching her daughter to do the same.THE NOTE WAS WAITING IN HER HOTEL ROOM.Melissa Grelo was about to kick off the biggest professional risk of her life — a wellness retreat based on her Aging Powerfully platform, the passion project she'd been building while hosting a daily talk show, running a podcast, and raising an 11-year-old. Her daughter Marquesa had slipped a notebook into her bag with instructions: You cannot read it until you get to the retreat.When Melissa finally opened it, alone in her hotel room before facing a room of women who'd paid to learn from her, her daughter's words stared back at her: I am so proud of you."It was a very long letter," Melissa tells me now, her voice catching slightly. "She's a very prolific writer. Her vocabulary is fabulous."That letter wasn't guilt. It wasn't longing. It was validation. It was a daughter saying: Go. Do this. I'm good. I'm proud.This is what winning looks like when you refuse to play by rules designed to make you lose.THE GAME IS RIGGED. SHE PLAYS IT ANYWAYAbout a year and a half after Marquesa was born, Melissa was doing two full-time shows: Your Morning and The Social. A 4 a.m. wake-up call, hours of live television, then rushing to the next studio, then home to a toddler who didn't care that mommy had just interviewed world leaders.Two jobs. One child. Zero systemic support.On a flight to Calgary, her body issued a warning about the impossible workload. Dizziness. Racing heart. The sensation of dying. They laid her on the galley floor. Doctors checked her vitals."Your blood pressure is perfect," the doctor said.Translation: This is anxiety. Not failure. This is what happens when the system demands the impossible."I'm very bad at resting," she admits. "I've always been foot-to-the-floor."But that's not a flaw. That's survival in a system built for men.Melissa made the adjustments the system should have built in from the start. She found a therapist, negotiated a later call time, and kept building. She didn't slow down — she strategically recalibrated."I learned my lessons hard. But I also learned that I'm capable of more than the system ever expected me to be."WHEN THE BODY BLOWS THE WHISTLE.Let's be clear from the start: Melissa Grelo has not unraveled. She has not broken. She has not collapsed under the weight of motherhood and ambition.What she has done is navigate a system that actively works against women like her — women who want both family and career, who refuse to choose, who insist on building empires while still braiding hair at 7 a.m.The system is the chaos. Not Melissa.School ends at 3 p.m. Most jobs end at 5 or 6. Childcare costs rival rent. Maternity leave is a patchwork. The workplace still assumes the “default parent” is mom.And if you're a woman in media? Add ageism, public scrutiny, and the expectation that you perform perfection on camera while your body and brain are still unspooling postpartum.Melissa went back to work 11 weeks after giving birth — not because she wanted to, but because The Social, her show, had just launched. The system expected her to perform at 100% while her body was still postpartum, while she was learning to navigate new motherhood on no sleep."I went back to work really fast after I had her," she says calmly. No apology. No shame. Just fact.Men call this “dedication.” Women call it “balance.” The question itself reveals who the system expects to sacrifice.THE MATH NO ONE PREPARES YOU FORMelissa had Marquesa at 36. I had my twins at 39. We both do the math — the quiet, late-night math parents do when they have kids later in life."Always, always, always," she says. "Everybody does the math."But here's what the math doesn't consider: wisdom. Experience. A fully formed self."What we feel like we might be behind in or losing in age, we've gained in wisdom," she says. "We're bringing a whole different self to parenting."Her daughter gets the version of Melissa who knows who she is. Who lived a full life first. Who built a career and collected stories and mistakes and victories before motherhood.This Melissa doesn't crumble when the culture whispers that she's "aging out." She launches a podcast called Aging Powerfully and fills a retreat with women who want what she's modeling: strength without shame."I'm going to be the youngest version of my age at every step of the way."THE CHOICE SOCIETY LOVES TO JUDGEAfter years of fertility struggles — four years, two clinics — Melissa conceived Marquesa naturally, the same summer The Social was greenlit.When they discussed a second child, Melissa didn't play the script women are taught to play."I'm not slowing down," she told her husband, Ryan. "If we're going to have another, lead caregiving will fall on you."He had his own ambitions. So they made a strategic, mutual decision: one child.This is where society leans in, waiting for the guilt."The guilt today is, I'm trying to do the impossible," she says. "Have a full family life and a full career. And fight this idea that as an aging woman, I'm supposed to be done."But Melissa isn't apologizing. She's naming the truth: the system isn't built for women to thrive. And she has anyway."I'm very proud of how I've navigated the challenges."RAISING A DAUGHTER WHO KNOWS SHE ISN'T THE PROBLEMThe question people ask ambitious mothers — “How do you teach your daughter she can have it all?” — is the wrong question.The real question is: How do you teach your daughter the system is broken, not her, when she struggles?For Melissa, the answer is radical honesty."There are no secrets in our family," she says. "Just living life."Marquesa knows about the fertility journey. The anxiety attack. The wild twenties. The truth of what ambition costs and gives.And she has something her mother didn't have at her age: boundaries."She has boundaries very clear in a way I didn't figure out until my mid- or late 30s," Melissa says. "When my daughter sees me killing myself because I don't have good boundaries, she already does."This is generational evolution in real time.At bedtime, Melissa asks: "What makes you feel loved?" "What moments matter most?"Marquesa says: mom braiding her hair. Cuddling on the couch. The tiny rituals that become memory.Melissa laughs because sometimes she's rushing through the hair routine thinking, I don't have time for this. But her daughter feels it as care.Presence over perfection. Consistency over performance. Love in the mundane.THE COSTUME AND THE TRUTHEvery day, Melissa puts on the costume: makeup, hair extensions, polished wardrobe. And every night, she takes it off."This is who I am," she tells Marquesa, sitting in sweatpants on the couch. "Work-Mommy is a costume."Her daughter prefers her bare-faced.Melissa launched MARQ, a gender-neutral clothing line named after Marquesa, because she refused to let the world assign pink and passivity to her newborn daughter."I'm not throwing gender expectations on a child who still has placenta on her," she says. Classic Melissa.She uses RuPaul's Drag Race and Love Island as teaching tools about beauty vs. character."There are beautiful people who are rotten inside," she tells Marquesa. "Looks mean nothing."Her father is baffled by this approach, but Melissa isn't raising a daughter who ties worth to appearance."What's more important than being pretty?" Melissa asks.And Marquesa knows the answer: being smart. Being kind.THE SYSTEM WANTS HER TO CHOOSE. SHE REFUSES.Men have careers and families without moral debate. Women are expected to justify ambition.Melissa refuses.She does the morning show. The talk show. The podcast. The retreat. The parenting. The school calls. The hair braiding. The emotional labour.She's not superhuman. She's strategic in a system built to break her.And yes, she has moments of doubt — moments where she wonders if Marquesa deserves a mother less stretched.But then her daughter writes her a letter that says: I see you. I'm proud of you.Not I wish you were home more."She sees her parents living their full, authentic selves," Melissa says. "You see it, you want it, you go for it."THE GIRL WHO WALKED AWAYAt 25, Melissa walked away from a safe teaching job because she felt destiny pulling her somewhere bigger.If that young woman could see her now — the broadcaster, the mother, the creator, the leader — what would she think?"She'd be so freaking proud," Melissa says. "She'd say: you did it. You outdid your wildest dreams."Her parents came to Canada with nothing. They didn't get to dream. They survived so their children could soar."It's my biggest honor to succeed," she says. "That's how I say thank you."WINNING LOOKS DIFFERENT THAN THEY TOLD USThe train pulls into the station. Melissa has to go. Her husband is on pickup duty. Tomorrow she'll do it all again — the shows, the work, the purpose, the pace.But tonight, she'll braid Marquesa's hair. She'll ask bedtime questions. She'll take off the costume.Not the unraveled version.Not the broken version.Not the version the system expects to fail.The version that refused to choose.The version rewriting the rules.The version showing her daughter exactly what's possible.And someday, when her daughter writes another letter, it won't say I miss you.It will say:I see you. And I'm proud.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The Fire That Forged Her: The Unbreakable Power of Lesley Al-Jishi
I’ve known Lesley Al-Jishi long enough to say this with absolute certainty — she doesn’t just survive things. She transforms them.We met years ago in Bahrain, long before hashtags and hero narratives made resilience fashionable. Back then, the world was shifting under our feet. Women were finally being allowed to drive, and the Gulf was pulsing with a quiet revolution — change moving in whispers, not shouts.Lesley was already ahead of it. She wasn’t waiting for permission; she was building her own road.We built one of the first performing arts schools in Bahrain together — something that sounds simple now, but at the time felt radical. It wasn’t just about music or movement. It was about freedom. About giving young people — especially girls — a place to be seen, to move, to speak without fear.Lesley understood that before anyone else. While most people saw risk, she saw necessity. She was — and still is — the kind of woman who walks straight into resistance and says, “Fine. Watch me.”The Weight of LegacyLesley comes from a family whose name carries weight. The Al-Jishi legacy runs through hospitals, medical fields, generations of service and innovation. But don’t mistake inheritance for ease.Lesley didn’t sit back and coast on family prestige. She expanded it. Reimagined it. Made it hers. In a landscape that still measures women by how quietly they move, she made sure her footsteps echoed.Her power isn’t loud — it’s disciplined. It’s the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself because it’s already in motion. The kind that sits at a boardroom table and changes the entire temperature of the room with one sentence.When the World StoppedAnd then — the unthinkable.Her son, Baddar, passed away.Even now, writing that sentence feels impossible. Because as a father, I can’t even begin to comprehend it. I don’t want to.I was there for her then — at least I thought I was. I showed up, I tried to comfort, I tried to hold space. But I realize now, I didn’t truly understand. Not until I became a parent myself.Back then, I saw the grief from the outside — the strength, the composure, the way she held everything together when her entire world was breaking.Now, I understand that you don’t carry that kind of pain — it becomes part of you. It never leaves. It shapes every breath, every choice, every silence.Lesley didn’t “move on.” She learned to move with it.And that’s where her power comes from — not from grace or endurance, but from the sheer will to keep showing up in a world that took everything from her and still demanded more.There’s strength you perform for others — and then there’s the kind that lives in your bones. Leslie’s is the latter.The RebirthOut of that darkness, she rebuilt. Not just herself, but the lives and futures around her.Today, Lesley Al-Jishi is a woman who can walk into any room — in Riyadh, in London, in Marbella — and command it without saying a word. There’s something magnetic about her energy: calm, assured, unflinching.She’s evolved from a regional powerhouse into a global force — a connector, a creator, a quiet architect of progress.You don’t see her name splashed across headlines or trending hashtags — because she’s too busy doing the work. The kind of work that outlives applause.What Power Really Looks LikeWhen people talk about “strong women,” they often picture loudness — defiance, bravado, Instagram quotes in gold cursive. Lesley’s power doesn’t look like that. It’s quieter. More dangerous. It’s the kind that doesn’t ask to be seen — but once you do see it, you can’t look away.She is, quite simply, a woman who will stop at nothing for what she believes in. Whether it’s culture, art, education, healthcare, or justice — she doesn’t just join the cause; she becomes the pulse of it.And through it all, she remains deeply human. Warm. Grounded. The kind of woman who will hold your hand in silence because she knows words aren’t enough.Lesley Al-Jishi doesn’t live in the past, but she carries it with her — like a compass. Every choice she makes honors the boy she lost, the man she’s raising (yes, Yousif — Amm Joseph is talking about you!), the women who came before her, and the countless ones who’ll come after.She is proof that grief can be both an anchor and a set of wings.I’ve seen powerful people fall apart over far less. But Leslie — she rose, again and again, until the ashes became her armor.And maybe that’s the secret: she never set out to inspire anyone. She just refused to stop moving.From Saudi roots to Bahraini milestones to Marbella’s sun-soaked coastlines, Lesley Al-Jishi remains what she’s always been — unstoppable, unshakable, and utterly unforgettable.This is Lesley Al-Jishi: the fire that forged itself.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
Winning Her Way: How Melissa Grelo Redefines Success
THE NOTE WAITING IN HER HOTEL ROOMMelissa Grelo was on the brink of one of the boldest moves of her career - a wellness retreat built on her Aging Powerfully platform, the passion project she’s nurtured alongside running a podcast, parenting an 11-year-old, and hosting The Social, Canada’s most-watched daytime talk show. Her daughter, Marquesa, had tucked a note into her bag with strict instructions: Don’t open until you get there.Alone in her hotel room, minutes before leading a room full of women who’d come to learn from her and the group of experts she had curated, Melissa finally opened it. On the first page, in her daughter’s unmistakably confident handwriting:I am so proud of you.“It was a very long letter,” Melissa laughs now. “She’s a very prolific writer. Her vocabulary is fabulous.”But the message was simple: Go. Do this. I’m good. I’m cheering for you.This is what it looks like when a woman builds a life that supports her joy - and raises a daughter who sees and celebrates it.THE GAME IS RIGGED. SHE PLAYS IT ANYWAY.Let’s get something straight: Melissa Grelo hasn’t come undone. She’s building a life, a career, and a rhythm that reflect her strengths, not society’s expectations. What she has done is thrive in an industry where women, especially those on camera, still face extra layers of scrutiny: age, appearance, composure, perfection. Viewers often expect media personalities to be flawless, polished, and ever-present, even when their lives are evolving behind the scenes.And still, Melissa moves forward with clarity and confidence.When The Social finally premiered, it wasn’t just another show for her. It was something she had dreamed up, pitched, and championed for years. So even though she was only 11 weeks postpartum, she chose to be there - excited, grateful, and fully aware of the significance of stepping into a project she had helped bring to life.“I went back to work really fast after I had her,” she says calmly. Not apologizing. Not justifying. Simply acknowledging that the moment mattered to her. She wanted to show up for something she had helped build.Men call this dedication. Women are often told it’s “balance.” But the truth is simpler: Melissa followed her ambition and trusted herself.WHEN HER BODY HIT PAUSE, SHE HIT RESETA year and a half after Marquesa was born, Melissa was hosting Your Morning and The Social. Early mornings, long days, big interviews, and two live shows that demanded focus and energy. Her career was expanding quickly, and she was embracing every opportunity that came with it. Mid-flight to Calgary, her body signaled it was time to calibrate - dizziness, racing heart, the kind of symptoms that demand attention. Doctors checked her vitals: all perfect.The lesson wasn’t “slow down,” it was “support yourself.”She did exactly that. Therapy. A later call time. And a more intentional approach to her already full life.“I’m very bad at resting,” she admits with a smile. “I’ve always been foot-to-the-floor.”But instead of pushing harder, she adjusted smarter. She didn’t crumble; she evolved.THE MATH OF MODERN PARENTHOODMelissa had Marquesa at 36, and like many parents who have children later in life, she occasionally does the quiet calculations – how old she’ll be at major milestones, how life stages might line up. “Always, always,” she says. “Everybody does the math.”But here's what the math doesn't consider: wisdom. Experience. A fully formed self."What we feel like we might be behind in or losing in age, we've gained in wisdom," she says. "We're bringing a whole different self to parenting."Her daughter gets the version of Melissa who knows who she is. Who lived a full life first. Who built a career and collected stories and mistakes and victories before motherhood.This Melissa doesn't crumble when the culture whispers that she's "aging out." She launches a podcast called Aging Powerfully and fills a retreat with women who want what she's modeling: strength without shame."I'm going to be the youngest version of my age at every step of the way."CHOOSING A FAMILY PLAN THAT FITS THEIR LIFEAfter four years of fertility treatment and two clinics, Melissa conceived naturally the very summer The Social was greenlit.Later, when she and her husband Ryan discussed having a second child, they communicated honestly and without pressure.“I’m not slowing down,” she told him. “If we have another, lead caregiving will fall on you.”They talked it through. They both had ambitions. They chose one child. A thoughtful, mutual decision.No guilt. No external expectations. Just a family designing a life that makes sense for them.“I’m very proud of how I’ve navigated the challenges,” she says, recognizing her own growth and the strength in choosing intentionally.RAISING A DAUGHTER WHO KNOWS SHE BELONGSPeople often ask ambitious mothers how they teach their daughters that they can “have it all,” but Melissa reframes the question. For her, the focus is helping her daughter understand that when challenges arise, the issue isn’t her, it’s the world she’s moving through.The approach in their household is simple and open. “There are no secrets in our family,” she says. “Just living life.”Marquesa knows the real stories behind Melissa’s journey - the fertility challenges, the anxiety attack, and the truth of what ambition can cost and give. She also sees something her mother developed later in life: strong boundaries.“She has boundaries very clear in a way I didn’t figure out until my mid or late 30s,” Melissa says. “When my daughter sees me pushing myself too hard because I don’t have good boundaries, she already does.”Their connection is built in everyday moments. At bedtime, Melissa asks: “What makes you feel loved?” and “What moments matter most?” And the answers are always the same - braiding her hair, cuddling on the couch, the rituals that make her feel safe and seen.It’s presence over perfection. Consistency over performance. Love woven into the ordinary parts of life.THE COSTUME AND THE TRUTHEvery morning, Melissa puts on the polished on-air version of herself. Every night, she settles into sweatpants on the couch.“This is who I am,” she tells her daughter. “Work-Mommy is a costume.”Marquesa prefers the no-makeup version.Melissa even built a clothing line - MARQ, named after her daughter, because she wanted kids to feel free before the world labels them.“I’m not throwing gender expectations on a child who still has placenta on her,” she jokes.Their house uses RuPaul’s Drag Race and Love Island as jumping-off points for conversations about character and confidence.“What’s more important than being pretty?” Melissa asks.Marquesa never hesitates: Being smart. Being kind.CHOOSING A FAMILY PLAN THAT FITS THEIR LIFEAfter four years of fertility treatment and two clinics, Melissa conceived naturally the very summer The Social was greenlit.Later, when she and her husband Ryan discussed having a second child, they communicated honestly and without pressure.“I’m not slowing down,” she told him. “If we have another, lead caregiving will fall on you.”They talked it through. They both had ambitions. They chose one child. A thoughtful, mutual decision.No guilt. No external expectations. Just a family designing a life that makes sense for them.“I’m very proud of how I’ve navigated the challenges,” she says, recognizing her own growth and the strength in choosing intentionally.RAISING A DAUGHTER WHO KNOWS SHE BELONGSPeople often ask ambitious mothers how they teach their daughters that they can “have it all,” but Melissa reframes the question. For her, the focus is helping her daughter understand that when challenges arise, the issue isn’t her, it’s the world she’s moving through.The approach in their household is simple and open. “There are no secrets in our family,” she says. “Just living life.”Marquesa knows the real stories behind Melissa’s journey - the fertility challenges, the anxiety attack, and the truth of what ambition can cost and give. She also sees something her mother developed later in life: strong boundaries.“She has boundaries very clear in a way I didn’t figure out until my mid or late 30s,” Melissa says. “When my daughter sees me pushing myself too hard because I don’t have good boundaries, she already does.”Their connection is built in everyday moments. At bedtime, Melissa asks: “What makes you feel loved?” and “What moments matter most?” And the answers are always the same - braiding her hair, cuddling on the couch, the rituals that make her feel safe and seen.It’s presence over perfection. Consistency over performance. Love woven into the ordinary parts of life.THE COSTUME AND THE TRUTHEvery morning, Melissa puts on the polished on-air version of herself. Every night, she settles into sweatpants on the couch.“This is who I am,” she tells her daughter. “Work-Mommy is a costume.”Marquesa prefers the no-makeup version.Melissa even built a clothing line - MARQ, named after her daughter, because she wanted kids to feel free before the world labels them.“I’m not throwing gender expectations on a child who still has placenta on her,” she jokes.Their house uses RuPaul’s Drag Race and Love Island as jumping-off points for conversations about character and confidence.“What’s more important than being pretty?” Melissa asks.Marquesa never hesitates: Being smart. Being kind.WINNING LOOKS DIFFERENT THAN THEY TOLD USOur interview took place on Melissa’s train ride home, a quiet moment in her busy day. As the train pulls into the station, Melissa gathers her things. Ryan is on pickup duty. Tomorrow she’ll do it all again, the work she loves, the routines she cherishes, a life she’s built intentionally.Tonight, she’ll braid Marquesa’s hair. She’ll ask the questions that matter. She’ll settle into the couch as her real self.The version that is fully present.The version that embraces every part of her life with intention.The version showing her daughter what’s possible when you follow your own path.And someday, when another letter comes, it won’t say I miss you.It will say:I see you. And I’m proud.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
THE LAST PAGE YOU'LL READ (BEFORE THE WORLD GETS BIGGER)
I didn't plan this.Between the Covers was supposed to stay in Canada. That was the vision. That was safe. Build something here, serve the women who need it, keep it honest, keep it real, keep it manageable.And then my best friend called.Lesley. The same Lesley I opened the first-ever performing arts school in the Middle East with, back when we were young and stupid and thought we could change the world with tap shoes and determination. She moved to Marbella a few years ago, and now she's opening a culture hall there — because of course she is. Lesley doesn't do small.She saw what we were building with BTC. The raw storytelling. The refusal to sanitize women's lives. The whole "let's talk about the shit no one else wants to talk about" energy.And she said: "This needs to be in Marbella."I laughed. I think I said something like, "That's insane."And then I thought about it.And I couldn't stop thinking about it.Here's the thing: I spent ten years of my life in the Middle East. I know what it's like to live between cultures, to code-switch, to exist in spaces where people make assumptions about you before you even open your mouth. I know what it's like to be misunderstood. To be exoticized. To be reduced to someone else's limited imagination of what your life must be like.And I've watched the same thing happen to women — everywhere.In Canada, we assume women in the Middle East are oppressed and silent. In the Middle East, they assume Western women are lost and morally bankrupt. In Europe, everyone's got an opinion about everyone else. And meanwhile, the actual women — the ones living these lives — are navigating the same shit: identity, reinvention, motherhood, ambition, heartbreak, aging, starting over, trying to find themselves in the mess.Different languages. Different streets. Different coffee orders.Same story.And I thought: What if we could create a space where those women could actually see each other?Not as stereotypes. Not as ideas. But as real, complicated, brilliant, messy humans.What if Between the Covers could be the bridge?So Marbella happened.And it wasn't some polished, strategic "expansion plan." It was me and Lesley on a video call, probably drinking wine, saying, "Let's just do it and see what happens."And what happened was… magic.Women showed up. Entrepreneurs, mothers, women reinventing themselves in their 40s, 50s, 60s. Women who needed to hear that their story mattered now — not when life calms down, not when the kids grow up, not when they finally have their shit together.The energy was different. The sun was different. The stories were different. But the core? The heartbeat? Exactly the same.And I realized: this works. This travels.So we're going to Dubai next.Because if Marbella taught me that women everywhere are hungry for the same honesty, Dubai is going to prove that culture, religion, and geography don't change what we need from each other: truth, connection, and a reminder that we're not alone in this.Dubai will bring its own flavor — women leading companies, building legacies, navigating impossible expectations, rewriting the rules while everyone watches. But underneath all that glamour and ambition? The same questions. The same fears. The same fire.Here's what I'm trying to build — and I need you to understand, this terrifies me as much as it excites me:One app. Every edition. Every city. One global community.You subscribe to Between the Covers, and you don't just get Canada. You get Marbella. You get Dubai. You get every city we land in next — because once we start, I don't think we'll be able to stop.You get the stories no one else is telling. The topics no one else wants to touch. Menopause, rage, reinvention, sex, identity, burnout, boundaries, joy, heartbreak — all of it, everywhere.And yeah, you get perks. Real ones. Not the bullshit "10% off a thing you don't need" kind. I'm talking: exclusive events in every city we touch. Curated experiences. Hidden gems and vetted spots recommended by women who actually live there, not influencers who got paid to post about them. A global passport to connection — people, places, culture, community.Whether you're traveling or dreaming about traveling, the app becomes your way in. To real life. To real women. To the parts of the world you thought you understood but probably don't.This isn't about building an empire.It's about building a table. A big one. With chairs for everyone.Because I've been around the world. I've lived in the Middle East, modeled in Europe, survived more airports than I can count. And the one thing I know for sure is this:We are not as different as they want us to believe.The borders, the stereotypes, the assumptions — they're all designed to keep us separate. To keep us small. To make us think our struggles are ours alone.But they're not.And Between the Covers is becoming the space where we stop pretending they are.I'm not going to beg you to subscribe. I'm not going to promise you'll "join a movement" or "find your tribe" or whatever corporate buzzwords make people feel warm and fuzzy.What I will say is this:If you've ever felt unseen, unheard, or misunderstood — in your city, your culture, your life — this is for you.If you've ever wondered what it's really like to live in Marbella, Dubai, Toronto, or anywhere else without the Instagram filter — this is for you.If you've ever wanted to connect with women who get it, who live it, who don't need you to have your shit together to deserve a seat at the table — this is for you.Between the Covers isn't just a magazine anymore.It's becoming a world.And I have no idea where this goes next. But I know it's going to be honest. It's going to be messy. It's going to be real.And I really hope you come with me.Because the world is big. But the stories? The stories make it feel like home.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
Patrizia Del Zotto: The Woman Who Closed a Deal in Lahore While Eating Breakfast in Istanbul
And other lessons from traveling with a 63-year-old beauty mogul who refuses to act her agePicture this: 8 a.m. in Istanbul. I'm barely conscious, nursing my first coffee of the day in our three-bedroom Airbnb overlooking the Bosphorus (which I found, thank you very much), when Patrizia Del Zotto—sitting across from me with perfect posture and somehow already fully operational—closes a deal in Lahore, Pakistan while simultaneously negotiating with a Turkish clinic owner about their scalp treatment protocols.Two continents. Two deals. One breakfast.I watched her switch from Italian to English to Spanish and back again, phone tucked under her chin, gesturing with her free hand like she was conducting an orchestra, all while her eggs got cold and I sat there wondering how the hell she had this much bandwidth before 9 a.m."Are you seeing this?" I wanted to ask someone. Anyone. Because this wasn't normal. This was some next-level shit that I wasn't sure I was equipped to witness on four hours of sleep.But for Patrizia? This was just Tuesday.Who She Is (Because You Need Context)Patrizia Del Zotto is 63 years old. She's the national distributor of Biancamore—a luxury Italian skincare line made with buffalo milk from Paestum (yes, buffalo milk, and yes, it's as decadent as it sounds). She's also a part-owner of Scalp Science Professional, a company that's redefining scalp care for beauty and wellness professionals.She travels constantly. She works relentlessly. She builds businesses, cultivates relationships, and negotiates deals in multiple languages across multiple continents before most people have finished their morning scroll.And the kicker? She's not doing any of this to prove a point about aging. She's doing it because she genuinely loves the work, the hustle, the chaos, the connections. She's not performing vitality—she is vital.Istanbul, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the ChaosI just spent several days with Patrizia in Turkey. Clinics. Meetings. Shopping. Late-night conversations that started as business strategy and somehow ended in philosophy and gossip and laughter that echoed through our Bosphorus-view apartment at midnight.The woman does. not. stop.I'm talking out-walking, out-talking, out-hustling people half her age. I swear she has more energy than the entire Turkish electrical grid. She packed like she was going on tour with Beyoncé—multiple outfit changes, backup shoes, a pharmacy's worth of skincare—and still managed to operate at a level of efficiency that would make a Fortune 500 CEO weep.At one point, she threatened to fight someone at baggage claim. I'm not kidding. Over a luggage cart situation that escalated faster than I could process. And somehow—somehow—she still ended up charming the guy by the time we left.That's Patrizia. Chaos with a heart of gold. Fire wrapped in Italian elegance.What the Beauty Industry Gets Wrong About Women Like HerHere's the thing the beauty industry refuses to acknowledge: Women like Patrizia aren't the exception. They're what happens when you stop telling women to shrink, slow down, and "act their age."The industry loves to talk about aging. Serums for this. Treatments for that. Products promising to turn back time, freeze your face, erase the evidence of having lived a full goddamn life.But they never showcase women who are living—actually living, not performing some sanitized version of graceful aging for the Instagram algorithm.Patrizia isn't chasing youth. She's chasing life. And that hits different.She's not the "forever 30" influencer or the "quiet luxury" mannequin. She's not pretending aging doesn't exist. She's just refusing to let it define her, limit her, or slow her down.She knows the beauty industry inside out—the chemicals, the treatments, the trends, the bullshit, the brilliance. She's built businesses in this space not by following the rules, but by understanding what actually works and being honest about it.And honestly? If the beauty industry were smart, they'd stop selling fear and start celebrating women like her—women who redefine aging by refusing to perform it politely.The Scene I Can't Stop Thinking AboutBack to that breakfast overlooking the Bosphorus.She hung up one call—something about shipment logistics in Pakistan. Took a bite of her now-lukewarm eggs. Immediately answered another—a Turkish clinic, this time in Spanish because apparently the owner was from South America. Laughed at something the person on the other end said. Made a decision that probably involved thousands of dollars. Hung up.Looked at me. "What were we talking about?"I just stared at her. "I honestly have no idea anymore."She laughed—this full-throated, unguarded laugh that I'd heard multiple times over our days together—and said something about needing more coffee.That moment crystallized something for me: This woman isn't special because she's superhuman. She's special because she's fully human. She feels everything, engages with everything, shows up for everything. She doesn't edit herself. She doesn't apologize for taking up space. She doesn't dim her intensity to make other people comfortable.For someone so larger-than-life, she sees people deeply. She listens. She gives. She remembers. She lifts others up without even realizing she's doing it.Why This MattersGetting to know Patrizia wasn't just entertaining—though it absolutely was. It was a reminder that a woman's story doesn't plateau at 40, or 50, or 60.It sharpens. It gets funnier. Wilder. Richer. More unfiltered. More true.She's not slowing down. Not now. Not ever.And honestly? Thank God for that. Because the world needs more women who refuse to shrink. Who build empires while eating breakfast. Who negotiate across three continents in three languages before 9 a.m. Who threaten to fight strangers at baggage claim and still somehow make you feel like the most important person in the room.Patrizia Del Zotto is that woman.And if you ever get the chance to travel with her, say yes. Pack light. And for the love of God, get some sleep beforehand—because you're going to need it.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
New York Fashion Week: The Good, The Meh, and The What-The-Actual-Fuck
When the Fashion Capital Serves You Dreams, Disappointments, and One Designer Who Needs a Reality CheckBy: Joseph TitoThere's something about New York that makes you feel alive even when it smells like hot garbage and betrayal. Maybe it's the way the concrete seems to pulse with ambition, or how even the pigeons strut like they're on a runway. I went to Fashion Week expecting to see the future of fashion. What I got was a masterclass in both how to do it right—and a stomach-turning lesson in how catastrophically wrong it can go.Let me start with the good, because Runway 7 deserves their flowers before I burn down someone else's garden.The Organization That Actually Gives a DamnIn a world where fashion events often feel like you're crashing a party where nobody wants you there, Runway 7 was different. Three women in particular made magic happen: Diane Vara—the PR & Marketing Director who, despite handling all PR and managing a team of marketers, still took a second to make you feel welcomed with a simple, genuine smile; Christina Kovacs, Director of Brand & Sponsorships who refreshingly didn't know how she could help but still tried; and one more angel whose name I'm tracking down because my notes app crashed—fashion week, am I right?This matters more than you think. When you're surrounded by people who look like they subsist on green juice and contempt, having someone treat you like an actual human being feels revolutionary.The Designers Who Understood the AssignmentLet's talk about Melissa Crisostomo from Unique Custom Threads. This woman gets it. Every piece that walked down that runway was a one-of-a-kind statement that made you stop mid-scroll and actually look. She's been at this for three and a half years, self-taught, originally a fine artist—and it shows. There's something about designers who come to fashion from other art forms. They're not trying to recreate what's already been done. They're creating what doesn't exist yet."Every time I approach a fashion collection, I try and create something new," Melissa told me backstage, and honey, she wasn't lying. That back-open number? Even the straight guys were taking notes.The models themselves were a revelation. Karan Fernandes, 29 but looking like she could play a high schooler on Netflix, flew in from Boston just for visibility—no hotel, no payment, just pure hustle and hope. Levana, a women's-only personal trainer who teaches self-defense on the side, strutted that runway like she was teaching it a lesson about power. These weren't just pretty faces; they were stories on legs.When New York Felt Like New YorkThere were moments when Fashion Week lived up to its promise. The energy backstage—"boobs, makeup, lashes, everything flying everywhere," as Levana perfectly put it. The grandmother from Alabama watching her 10-year-old granddaughter work the runway with equal parts pride and protective terror. The writer and her plus-one BFF who dressed like she was the main character (because honestly, she was).Even the city itself played its part. That particular New York magic where just walking the streets makes you feel like you're part of something bigger, even when you're dodging mysterious puddles and men who think "hey beautiful" is a conversation starter.But Then Came Rhinestone Sugar CoutureAnd this is where I need you to put down your coffee and pay attention.I had to walk out of a fashion show. Me. The person who sat through an entire experimental theater piece about sentient tampons. But this? This broke me.Picture this: Seven, eight, nine-year-old girls. High heels. Makeup that would make a Vegas showgirl blush. Outfits that—and I'm going to be very careful with my words here—made them look like miniature versions of something no child should ever be asked to embody.I'm a dad of six-year-old twin girls. Progressive as hell. No filter. Judge-free zone, usually. But when I looked over at two bodyguards watching that runway and saw something in their eyes that made my skin crawl? When a 62-year-old photographer from Brooklyn—a woman who's probably seen everything—put down her camera and whispered, "This feels like child trafficking"?That's not fashion. That's not art. That's exploitation wrapped in sequins and sold as empowerment.The Uncomfortable Truth About Dreams and DangerHere's what kills me: I don't blame the kids. They're kids. I don't even fully blame the moms, sitting there with stars in their eyes, dreaming of their daughters' names in lights. We all want our children to shine. But there's a difference between letting your child shine and putting them on display like that.The designer—whose name I won't give the dignity of printing—chose to put those children on that runway in that way. In an industry already riddled with predators and problems, she chose to serve up vulnerability on a silver platter and call it fashion.One grandmother I interviewed put it perfectly: "I'm happy and I'm a little scared... I think about the times we're in and what could happen." She was talking about her granddaughter doing regular pageants, fully clothed, age-appropriate. Imagine how the parents of those Rhinestone Sugar girls should feel.What Fashion Week Should BeFashion Week should be about innovation, not exploitation. It should be about Brianna from Bri Romi, marketing her brand through social media and refusing to believe she needs traditional runways to be successful. It should be about models like Anya Patel, whose mom is in the front row being her "biggest fan," fixing her hair and taking pictures. It should be about designers who understand that making people feel something doesn't mean making them feel sick.The truth is, for all its pretension and $25 cocktails, Fashion Week at its best is about dreams taking shape. It's about self-taught designers getting their shot. It's about models from Brazil and Boston and Alabama converging on Sony Hall to walk for visibility, not pay, because they believe in something bigger.The VerdictRunway 7 did something beautiful. They created a space where emerging designers could show their work, where models could build their portfolios, where fashion felt accessible and exciting. They treated people like humans. They made magic happen on a budget and determination.But they also hosted Rhinestone Sugar Couture. And that's a stain that no amount of sequins can cover.Fashion Week is supposed to be the dream factory, the place where art meets commerce meets culture. When it works, it's transcendent. When it fails, it fails spectacularly. And when it crosses the line from fashion into exploitation?That's when we need to stop clapping and start calling it out.Because those little girls deserved better. We all did.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The Woman Who Wouldn't Giggle: Elvira Caria's Four Decades of Refusing to Play Nice
After 40 years of fighting for her voice in broadcasting, Elvira Caria lost the only title that ever mattered to her: Matthew's momThere's a street named after Elvira Caria in Vaughan. She didn't pay for it, she'll tell you right away. Awards line her walls—forty years' worth of recognition for lifting up her community, for being the voice that shows up at every damn event with her phone and her genuine give-a-shit attitude.But when I meet her at The Roost Café on a grey autumn morning, she says the work that matters most is the stuff nobody sees."My real satisfactory work?" She pauses, weighing whether to trust me with this. "I help young girls escape human trafficking. You can't put that on social media."This is Elvira Caria: the woman who refused to be radio's giggling fool, who chose late-night shifts over morning show glory so she could be home when her son's school bus arrived, who now sits across from me one year after burying that same son at 25."I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the community," she says. And she means it literally.The Day She Found Her Voice by Refusing to Use ItPicture this: a young Elvira in a radio control room, told by a well-known male broadcaster that her job was to giggle. To be the pretty voice that makes him sound better."I don't do giggling fool," she says now, decades later, the Southern Italian fire still in her voice.She stopped showing up to giggle on cue. Got fired on a Friday. Instead of folding, she handed her termination papers back: "If you can find a better reason to fire me on Monday, I'll accept it. If not, I'm coming back."Monday passed. So did Tuesday. By Friday she expected another dismissal—everyone fires on Fridays. But a month later the man who told her to giggle was gone. Elvira stayed for six more years."I found my value voice," she says. "I wasn't going to bend for someone else's value."The Choice That Looked Like SacrificeAt the height of her career, being groomed for a morning show at one of Canada's top stations, Elvira walked away."Nobody quits Rock Radio," her boss said."Well, I just did."She took the shifts nobody wanted—weekends, evenings, 3 a.m. hits at Yonge and Dundas. People called it sacrifice. She calls it choice."While others were sleeping, I was talking to the people we now call homeless. Nobody wakes up saying, I want to be on the streets when I grow up. Nobody."The choice meant she was home when Matthew got off the school bus. It meant knowing his friends, his teachers, his world. For 25 years, it meant being Matthew's mom first, Elvira Caria second.The Irony That Breaks YouHere's the part that will gut you: she spent decades insisting she was more than just Matthew's mom. She was a broadcaster, a journalist, a voice for the voiceless. She built a career on authenticity when authenticity could get you fired.And then, in 2024, Matthew was gone— twenty-five years old and on the edge of everything. Suddenly all Elvira wanted was the one title that had been stripped away."Matthew never saw me as a radio announcer," she says, voice steady, eyes somewhere else. "He saw me as his mom. And that's all he cared about."The Part Where She Stops Pretending Everything's FineLet's talk about not getting out of bed. About hygiene being optional when grief is bone-deep.Her sister-in-law was the one who finally broke through: "They need you. My boys need you! You're more than their Zia." So Elvira took small steps. A shower became a victory. Coloring her hair, an achievement. Looking in the mirror and trying to recognize whoever stared back."I'm mad at God," she admits. "People say everything happens for a reason. What's the fucking reason? Why take away a kid who never did anything wrong, who was just starting his life?"The Community That Saved Her When Awards Couldn'tTen people can tell Elvira she's wonderful. One critic cuts deeper at 3 a.m. That's human.She'll admit some awards now feel hollow—accolades in a season of loss. The recognition doesn't heal the absence.But the community? They showed up in ways that mattered. The woman from her coffee shop who just sat with her, no words needed. The neighbor who mowed her lawn without asking, week after week, because grief means grass keeps growing when you can't. The radio colleague who took her shifts without question when she couldn't form words, let alone broadcast them. The mothers from Matthew's old baseball team who still text her his jersey number on game days. Or the Baseball league who named an umpire award after him."Someone left groceries at my door every Tuesday for three months," she tells me. "Never found out who. Just bags of real food—not casseroles, not sympathy lasagna—but the exact brands I buy. Someone paid attention to what was in my cart before. That's community."The vigils, the legacy fund in Matthew's name, the quiet notes slipped under her door—that's what kept her standing."The real work happens in shadows," she says. "Helping a girl escape trafficking. Watching her graduate two years later. That's when I think—okay, maybe I've done enough to meet my maker."The Wisdom of Not Giving a FuckAfter decades of answering every critic, she's learned the most radical act: indifference."You don't have to react to everything," she says. "Not everything requires an explanation."She still hates small talk, still loves a stage. The influencer economy baffles her. "People think having a phone makes them reporters. Broadcasting is an accreditation—you're trained how to interview, how to fact-check, how to smell bullshit."Who She Is NowA year later, she's still figuring it out. Still showing up at community events with her phone and her give-a-shit intact. Still ironing her underwear (yes, really) because some control is better than none.The street sign with her name stands in Vaughan, but she lives in the in-between—between public recognition and private purpose, between the veteran broadcaster and the grieving mother."The evil grows faster than good," she says. "We're always catching up."So she keeps going. Not because grief eases—it doesn't. Not because she's found a new purpose—she hasn't. But because stopping isn't her style.She refused to giggle back then. She refuses to perform now. And maybe that's the lesson: sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is keep showing up, even when you don't know why you're still here. Especially then.Elvira Caria continues to support multiple charities across the GTA while maintaining her broadcasting career. She's still mad at God, still helping girls escape trafficking, still learning who she is now. She does not need your sympathy. She might need you to know that grief has no timeline, authenticity isn't content, and sometimes the bravest thing you can do is refuse to play along.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
Crypto for Grown-Ups Who Still Can't Figure Out E-Transfers
Or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Digital Monopoly MoneyListen, I get it. When someone mentions "cryptocurrency," your brain probably does that thing where it short-circuits like a Windows 95 computer trying to run TikTok. Same energy as when your teenager explains why they need $200 sneakers or when anyone under 25 tries to teach you a new app.But here's the thing: I'm about as tech-savvy as a potato with anxiety, and even I figured this shit out. Sort of. Mostly. Look, nobody has it completely figured out, including the people who invented it, so we're all just winging it together.What Even IS Crypto? (Besides Confusing)Imagine if your money lived in the internet instead of your wallet, but instead of being controlled by banks who charge you $35 for buying a coffee when you're broke, it's controlled by... well, nobody and everybody at the same time. It's like a group project where everyone's both the slacker and the overachiever.Cryptocurrency is digital money that exists on something called a "blockchain"—which sounds fancy but is basically just a really, really long receipt that everyone can see but nobody can fake. Think of it as the world's most transparent and complicated e-transfer, except instead of splitting dinner, you're potentially making (or losing) actual money.Bitcoin is the granddaddy of crypto—the one everyone's heard of, like the Jennifer Aniston of digital currency. Then there's Ethereum, which is like the Reese Witherspoon—versatile, smart, and probably going to age better than you think.My Crypto Journey: A Study in Controlled ChaosBack in January, I was that person rolling my eyes at crypto bros on Twitter (sorry, "X"—I'm still not over that rebrand). You know the type: profile pics of laser-eyed monkeys, constantly tweeting about "diamond hands" and "going to the moon." I thought they were all either trust fund kids or people who peaked in high school math.Then my friend Sarah—the same Sarah who convinced me to try hot yoga and eat kale chips—casually mentioned she'd made enough in crypto to pay for her kid's summer camp. Sarah, who still uses Internet Explorer and thinks "the cloud" is just weather, was out here making money in the digital wild west.So I did what any rational adult does when faced with FOMO: I panic-researched for three days straight, fell down seventeen different Reddit rabbit holes, and then impulse-downloaded Coinbase at 2 AM while drinking wine and watching Love Island.The Results Will Shock You (JK, But They're Pretty Good)Here's the tea: since January, my little crypto experiment has actually grown. Not "quit your day job and buy a yacht" grown, but more like "hey, I can afford the good coffee this month" grown. And honestly? That's perfect for me.I started small—like, embarrassingly small. We're talking the financial equivalent of dipping your toe in a kiddie pool while wearing water wings and a life vest. But that's exactly what you should do, because crypto can be as unpredictable as your period and twice as emotionally exhausting.Some days my portfolio looks like it's thriving. Other days it looks like it needs therapy and a juice cleanse. The key is not checking it every five minutes like you're stalking an ex on Instagram (though let's be real, we all do both).Why You Should Consider Getting In (But Not Going All In)Look, I'm not saying crypto is going to solve all your problems. It's not going to fix your relationship with your mother or make your commute less soul-crushing. But it might help diversify your financial portfolio, which is adult-speak for "don't put all your eggs in one basket, especially if that basket is controlled by people who think charging you to access your own money is totally reasonable."The thing about crypto is that it's still relatively new, which means we're all basically early adopters. Remember when having a cell phone made you look like a drug dealer? Or when only weirdos had email addresses? Yeah, we might be living through that moment again, except with money.Plus, and hear me out on this: it's actually kind of fun. In a terrifying, "I have no idea what I'm doing but at least I'm doing something" way. It's like being on a roller coaster, but instead of screaming, you're just refreshing your phone and trying to understand what a "whale" is (spoiler: it's not the mammal).Getting Started: A Guide for Normal HumansIf you're thinking about dipping your toes into this digital insanity, here's my completely unqualified but experientially based advice:Start with Coinbase. I know, I know—everyone has opinions about which platform is "best," but Coinbase is like the Target of crypto exchanges. It's user-friendly, relatively trustworthy, and you won't feel like you need a computer science degree just to buy $20 worth of Bitcoin.The interface actually makes sense, which is saying something in the crypto world where most things look like they were designed by aliens who learned about human behavior from watching infomercials. Plus, they have educational content that doesn't make you feel like you're failing a test you didn't know you were taking.Start stupidly small. I'm talking like, money you would spend on overpriced coffee or impulse buys at Target. If losing it would stress you out, don't invest it. This isn't Vegas, but it's not a savings account either.Don't try to time the market. You know how you can never predict when you're going to get your period, even with apps and careful tracking? Yeah, crypto is like that but with money. Just buy a little bit regularly and call it a day.Ignore the noise. The crypto community can be... a lot. It's like CrossFit, veganism, and pyramid schemes had a baby and raised it on energy drinks and motivational posters. Take what's useful, ignore the rest, and definitely don't let anyone pressure you into buying something called "SafeMoonDogeCoin" or whatever.The Real TalkHere's what nobody tells you about crypto: it's equal parts boring and terrifying. Most of the time, nothing happens. Your Bitcoin just sits there, being Bitcoin, occasionally going up or down like your motivation on a Monday morning. Then suddenly, something dramatic happens and everyone loses their minds for a week before things go back to being boring again.It's also weirdly empowering to have money that exists outside the traditional banking system. Every time I get charged a "convenience fee" for paying my bills online (the audacity!), I think about my little crypto portfolio just existing peacefully in the digital ether, growing slowly but surely.Will crypto make you rich? Probably not quickly, and definitely not without some stress-induced gray hairs. But might it be a smart addition to your financial strategy? Maybe. Could it be fun in a "I'm adulting in the 21st century" kind of way? Absolutely.Your Move, GorgeousSo here's my completely biased, mildly unhinged recommendation: download Coinbase, verify your identity (yes, it's annoying, but so is every other adult responsibility), and buy like $25 worth of Bitcoin or Ethereum. Then forget about it for a month.Don't check it every day. Don't join seventeen different Discord servers. Don't start calling yourself a "crypto investor" on LinkedIn. Just let it sit there and do its thing while you go about your regularly scheduled chaos.The worst thing that happens? You lose the price of a nice dinner and have a story to tell at parties. The best thing that happens? You get to smugly tell people you were into crypto before it was cool, assuming it ever becomes universally cool and not just financially beneficial.Either way, you'll be ahead of everyone who's still scared of anything more complicated than their savings account.Welcome to the future, babes. It's weird here, but at least we're all confused together.Ready to start your own controlled financial chaos? Download Coinbase (https://coinbase.com/join/R67WJ9L?src=referral-link) and join the ranks of people who understand just enough about crypto to be dangerous. Your future self (and your portfolio) will thank you. Or curse you. Either way, it'll be an adventure.Disclaimer: This is not financial advice, just one person's messy journey shared for entertainment purposes. Between the Covers and its contributors are not responsible for your financial decisions, crypto gains, losses, or the inevitable stress-eating that may result from checking your portfolio too often. Invest responsibly, start small, and maybe talk to an actual financial advisor if you're planning to bet the farm on digital coins. We're just here for the stories and the solidarity.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The Dentist Is Between My Legs: Bif Naked on Heart Surgery, Picking Felons, and Why She's Just Getting Started at 54
The punk icon who found euphoria on an operating table talks death doulas, divorce gratitude, and why her failing marriage hurt more than cancerBy Joseph Tito | Between the Covers | November 2025Bif Naked is cutting up her dog's food with her hands when I ask how it feels to be a legend.She looks at me like I've asked her to explain quantum physics in Swahili. "I'm a dog mom," she says, and goes back to mincing. Her fingers work methodically, tearing dog food into smaller and smaller pieces. The woman who once spit on audiences from punk stages now performs this daily ritual of care with the focus of a surgeon.This is going to be that kind of conversation—where every expectation gets shredded like dog food.The Operating Table High"So I was wide awake," Bif says, settling into her Toronto condo couch, miniskirt riding up as she crosses her legs. She's talking about her heart surgery like most people describe a spa day. "They thread a little camera through your leg all the way to your heart, and they can see what they're doing on the screen."She leans forward, eyes bright with the memory. "The surgeon is wearing a pineapple hat—like, the surgical hat had cartoon pineapples on it. And they're listening to William Shatner singing. Have you ever heard him sing? Who knew this album existed?"This is a woman describing having a hole in her heart closed with what she calls "a little umbrella device," conscious the entire time, finding it all hilarious and profound in equal measure. Her voice gets almost reverent: "I thought, this is the coolest shit ever. How is it possible that in this lifetime, I can listen to these people talking about their day jobs, which is fixing my stupid heart?"Then comes the moment that gives this article its title. They need to inject Novocaine into her leg to make the incision. You know that heavy, aching feeling from the dentist?"I said, 'Oh! It feels like the dentist is between my legs.'"She covers her face, laughing and mortified simultaneously. "The nurses started howling. This patient is on the table, making what they think is dirty talk. But I just meant—" she gestures helplessly "—the Novocaine!"Her whole body shakes with laughter now. "Of course that's what I said. How fucking funny is that?"God's Rejection and Other Love Stories"God is not going to choose me for whatever reason," she says, the laughter suddenly gone. "I'm going to stay here on earth and have to deal with it. Because I'm not learning my lessons yet."The shift in energy is palpable. She's talking about her pattern now—the violent men, the criminal boyfriends, the marriages to liars. "If there's a wrong guy, send him my way. If he is a criminal, if he's a violent felon, send him my way. I'm going to fall in love with that idiot every time."She delivers this like a weather report, no self-pity, just fact. When I ask why she got divorced, she doesn't hesitate: "Because I married liars." Then, catching herself: "But I have to look at what my fault was."She discovered what healthy relationships actually look like at 54. Fifty-four. After two failed marriages, cancer, and enough medical trauma to kill most people twice. "I had no idea relationships were supposed to be healthy," she says, and the wonderment in her voice is genuine. "I think that I've always been chasing true love. I'll never give up on love, ever."The contradiction sits there between us: the woman who picks monsters still believes in fairy tales."My emotional crisis of my failing marriage trumped my cancer experience."She says this so matter-of-factly that I almost miss it. The dissolution of her marriage during treatment hurt more than the actual cancer. Her hands, which had been still, start moving again—straightening pillows, adjusting her jewelry."Which was good," she adds quickly, "because it forced me to throw myself into volunteering."The man who married a rock star got a cancer patient instead, couldn't handle the plot twist. Now she trains as a death doula, works in palliative care. "If I was told tomorrow that I could not be a performer anymore," she says, her voice steady, "I think I would go into hospital administration."The Stage She Was Always SeekingBefore Bif Naked existed, there was a theatre kid at the University of Winnipeg who'd taken ballet for 13 years. She demonstrates a position, her leg extending with muscle memory from decades ago. "I wanted to be an actress and a ballet star."Then a drummer named Brett needed a singer. Suddenly she had a vehicle for all her poetry, all her rage about El Salvador and Indigenous treatment and misogyny. Whether it was ballet slippers or combat boots, she was always searching for a stage—just took her a while to find the right one."I got to stand up there. I got to spit on the audience. I got to say, fuck you, you can't objectify me." Her voice rises with the memory, that old fire flickering. "I didn't even have to sing very well. And believe me, I could not. I sounded like a dying cat."She pauses, grins. "And I don't mean the band Garbage."They opened for DOA. NoMeansNo. Bad Religion. She dropped out of university, and here's the kicker—"I'm still waiting to go back to school," she laughs, thirty-something years later, like she might actually do it.The same rage that fueled her screaming about El Salvador now targets Doug Ford's Ontario. "I couldn't figure out why I moved here," she says. "Then Ford got elected and I thought, 'Oh. I'm here to use my big mouth.'"The Children She'll Never Have (Or Will She?)When she cuts up that dog food with such maternal precision, I have to ask about kids. Her whole body language shifts—shoulders dropping, a softness creeping in."My ovaries were taken out at 36. So breast cancer didn't just cut up my tit." She says this with the same directness she uses for everything else, but her hand unconsciously moves to her stomach. "I've been in menopause since I was 36 years of age."People ask about adoption—she is, after all, adopted herself. The sarcasm returns, protective: "Oh yeah, let me get right on that. Let me turn around as a divorcee who's working nonstop as a self-employed artist in Canada and get right on the adoption train."But then, unexpectedly: "Now in my mid-50s? Yeah, I suppose I am ready."The possibility hangs there. Not this year. But the door isn't closed.Tina Turner's Miniskirt Ministry"I look to women like Tina Turner," she says, smoothing her miniskirt with deliberate intention. "Tina Turner didn't start playing stadiums till she was in her 50s."At 54, she genuinely believes she's just getting started. The documentary premiering across Canada this month (November 12 in Toronto, November 4 in Vancouver). The album finally released after she shelved it during the George Floyd protests because "the world didn't need a fucking Bif Naked record" during that summer of unrest."The sky is the limit," she says, and means it.When I ask who she's fighting for now, what her voice stands for at 54, she barely breathes before answering."When I was singing 'Tell On You' on my first record, I wasn't the only girl who was sexually assaulted," she says, her voice dropping to something harder, older. "I was the only girl with a microphone."The room goes quiet. Even the dog stops moving.She calls herself "a square" now—no cocaine, no partying. "I can be thoughtful and intelligent. I can try very hard to be a voice for the voiceless."But square doesn't mean silent. She's angrier about politics than ever, advocating for animals, healthcare inequality, LGBTQ+ rights rollbacks."Unfortunately," she says with a grin that's pure punk rock, "I'm still the one holding the mic."What's Next Is What She WantsThey're making a feature film about her life. The documentary's touring. When I ask what's next, she almost defaults to "that's a Peter question"—her manager's domain—then catches herself, takes ownership."We're working on the feature film based on the book."But really, what's next is whatever the fuck she wants. She's earned that.I ask what she'd tell a young girl starting out in music today. She thinks, really thinks, her face cycling through decades of memory."Never take it personally. Never take anything personally, no matter what."Then she says something that makes me stop writing: "There's room for everybody."This from a woman who had to claw for every inch of space. Who quit drinking partly to avoid being "misinterpreted" by men who'd use any excuse to discredit her. Who's been assaulted, dismissed, divorced, nearly killed."Anybody can make music on their computer, anybody can learn piano on YouTube, anybody can upload a song and send it to their nona," she continues, and she means it. "That's actually a gift."As I'm leaving, she's back to cutting up dog food, this ritualistic care that anchors her. I think about what she said about God not choosing her yet, about having to stay here and deal with it.But watching her hands work—the same hands that punched stage divers, that held microphones during cancer treatment, that reached for violent men who couldn't love her back—I realize something.She keeps saying she hasn't learned her lessons. But maybe she has. Maybe the lesson is you can marry liars and still believe in love. You can lose your ovaries at 36 and mother the whole world anyway. You can tell your surgical team the dentist is between your legs and still become a legend.She looks up from the dog bowl, catches me staring."I wasn't the only girl who was sexually assaulted," she says again, quieter this time but somehow louder. "I was the only girl with a microphone."Bif Naked's documentary tours Canada this month. Her album "Champion" is available now. She still wears miniskirts and heels. She's just getting started.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The Magnificence Revolution How Susan Howson Transforms Summer Chaos Into Sacred Connection
When Summer Dreams Meet RealityWe've all been there. Pinterest boards filled with perfect family activities, camp registration forms promising "magical experiences," and that nagging feeling that somehow, we're failing at summer before July even arrives. The gap between our summer expectations and reality feels wider than ever — and Rev. Susan Howson knows exactly why."People think vacation means everything gets easier," Susan tells me during our conversation, her voice carrying the warmth of someone who's seen thousands of families navigate this exact struggle. "But what happens is everybody gets in each other's face 24/7, and all the stuff you haven't dealt with gets amplified."As the founder of Kids Coaching Connection and creator of the internationally acclaimed "Manifest Your Magnificence" affirmation cards, Susan has spent over two decades pioneering what she calls "magnificence coaching" — a revolutionary approach that transforms how families, camp counselors, and educators show up for the beautiful chaos of being human.And she's about to change everything you think you know about surviving summer.“I used to think my job was to fix the mess. Now I know my power is in how I sit with it.”The Teacher Who Changed EverythingSusan's journey to becoming what colleagues call "the magnificence whisperer" began with profound loss and an unexpected gift. When grief threatened to consume her after losing her grandmother, a teacher appeared who understood something most adults miss: authentic presence matters more than perfect solutions."That teacher didn't try to fix me or push me toward false positivity," Susan reflects. "He just created space for all of me — the grief, the anger, the confusion — and somehow that made room for my resilience to grow too."This early experience of someone truly showing up became the blueprint for her life's work. Today, Susan holds multiple coaching certifications (MA, PCC, CPCC, CHBC), and has earned the prestigious ICF PRISM award for her groundbreaking program development.But her real credential? Twenty years of helping people discover what she learned in that classroom: you don't have to be perfect to be magnificent."You don’t need a script to parent. You need the courage to return—again and again."The Camp Counselor's Secret WeaponEvery summer, something interesting happens in camps across North America. Counselors start with enthusiasm, kids arrive with expectations, and by week three, everyone's wondering why this "fun" thing feels so hard.Enter Susan's Kids Coaching Connection Camp Training (KCCCT), a program that's revolutionizing how camps handle the inevitable challenges of putting humans together intensively."We design every relationship," Susan explains, "and that includes how we want to be with each other when we forget, when it doesn't work, when our emotions go up — because they will."Her approach trains counselors not to avoid conflict, but to navigate it authentically. Instead of maintaining constant cheerfulness (which research shows actually undermines resilience), counselors learn to model emotional agility — showing kids how to work through disappointment, negotiate differences, and return to connection.The results speak for themselves: camps report decreased staff burnout, improved camper behavior, and something harder to measure but impossible to miss — genuine joy replacing performed happiness.The Affirmation Revolution That Started It AllTwenty years ago, when Susan created her first set of affirmation cards, the positive psychology movement was barely a whisper. Today, affirmation cards flood the market — but Susan's remain different, and the reason reveals everything about her approach."I get kids in Brazil and Mexico," she tells me, pulling out a card that reads "I am a Shining Star." "I give a kid this card and they go, 'Is that really me?' They're crying, holding it, asking 'Can I believe this?'"The difference lies in what's on the back: "I maka a positive difference in the world.""It's not about ego," Susan explains. "It's not about standing up and saying 'I'm a shining star and you're a f***ing idiot.' It's 'I'm a shining star and so are you. How are you going to take being a shining star and put that into the world?'TThis distinction — between healthy self-regard and narcissistic inflation — guides everything Susan teaches. Her cards don't create entitled kids; they create empowered ones who understand their magnificence comes with responsibility.The Words That Wound (And How to Heal Them)During our conversation, I confess to Susan about the casual cruelty that slips out during parenting stress: "What are you wearing? You look ridiculous." Simple words that stick longer than we ever intended.Susan's response is both gentle and revolutionary: "Buckminster Fuller stopped talking for three years after his words failed his son. Then he started writing about the power of our words, our intentions, our expressions. It's about the awareness of impact that most people aren't aware of."She shares the story of the brilliant inventor who, drunk on victory after a soccer match, forgot to bring his dying son the promised pennant. When the child died, Fuller's guilt drove him to three years of silence, followed by decades of writing about the power of intentional communication."We want to be the best version of ourselves," Susan says, "and that's different than the belief that we need to be perfect."This philosophy permeates her Kids Coaching Connection program, which teaches adults to catch themselves mid-mistake, course-correct with grace, and model the kind of authentic repair that builds trust rather than shame.The Next Generation ChallengeTwenty years into her work, Susan has identified something that would sound like science fiction if it weren't so demonstrably true: the children being born now are different."They're more intuitive, more in tune. They'll answer your question before you ask it, and it freaks parents out," she laughs. "It's because they're quantumly connected. You're communicating without language."Her observation extends beyond metaphysics into practical parenting reality. Today's children are "more sensitive to what's happening in the world, more sensitive to what's happening with themselves and with others. Because they're kids, they just don't know how to navigate that."This heightened sensitivity requires what Susan calls "a deeper awareness of who our kids are as well as who we are as parents." Her programs now address not just traditional behavioral challenges, but the unique needs of children whose emotional and intuitive intelligence often exceeds their developmental capacity to manage it.The 50 Million Kids MissionSusan's goal sounds audacious: "Increasing the self-esteem of 50 million kids in 5 years." But when you consider her track record — international programs, bestselling books, award-winning training systems — it starts feeling inevitable rather than impossible."I think we need to increase that number now," she admits during our interview. "People are understanding the importance of self-esteem, self-awareness, and self-efficacy. Not ego—honoring the gifts and talents you have."The distinction matters crucially. Susan's work doesn't create participation-trophy culture; it builds genuine confidence based on authentic self-knowledge and contribution to others."When are we more successful — when we feel really shitty about ourselves or when we feel really good about ourselves?" she asks. "But it's not about giving every kid a gold medal just for showing up. We have to work toward what is true."The Summer Survival StrategySo how do we actually implement Susan's wisdom during the intensity of summer family time? Her approach is both practical and profound:Design Your Relationships ConsciouslyBefore the chaos hits, have the conversation: How do we want to be with each other when someone gets overwhelmed? What do we do when expectations clash with reality? How do we return to connection after conflict?Embrace the Mess"Show up authentically in the human-ness and the human mess," Susan advises. "Honor who you are, honor whoever you're working with. Don't judge the judgments — learn from them."Focus on Internal ReinforcementInstead of constant external praise ("That's the most brilliant picture ever!"), ask questions that build internal awareness: "Tell me about the colors. What was your thought process? How do you feel about it?"Practice Repair, Not Perfection"We're going to make mistakes," Susan acknowledges. "It's about going back and saying, 'Let's talk about this.' That unconditional love — regardless of anything — that's what research shows matters most.""You are the lesson they’re learning—every single day."The Transformation She's Really AfterWhen I ask Susan about her ultimate vision, her answer transcends summer camps and family dynamics:"For every single person on earth to understand their magnificence. The person sweeping the street, the person going into space, everyone in between. When we understand our magnificence and why we were put here, and we support each other to do that, we are happier and healthier and make the world a better place — it's not about competition, it's about collaboration.”This vision drives her remarkable generosity. When other coaches want to create affirmation cards, Susan shares her process freely. "There's how many billion people in the world? If mine doesn't reach them, theirs might. Good — we need more positivity."Your Summer InvitationAs our conversation winds down, I'm struck by how Susan's approach offers something our performance-driven culture desperately needs: permission to be human while pursuing excellence.For parents facing the summer stretch ahead, her message is both simple and revolutionary: You don't have to be perfect to be magnificent. Your struggles don't disqualify you from greatness — they're where greatness gets forged. "What I see, " Susan tells me when I ask about stressed-out parents trying to do it all, “is someone wanting to do the best they can for themselves and the people in their lives. It’s not about trying to do it all. It’s about honouring yourself too. Take time to just be and celebrate each other. We don't celebrate each other enough just for the sake of celebrating. There’s nothing that needs to be done to celebrate. We're already doing it. We're together.”This summer, instead of chasing the Instagram-perfect family experience, what if we practiced Susan's invitation to show up authentically for whatever emerges?What if we designed our relationships consciously, embraced our beautiful mess, and trusted that our magnificence — and our children's — doesn't depend on getting everything right?In Susan Howson's world, that's not just enough. That's everything.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
THE BEAT OF TRANSFORMATION How One Italian-Canadian DJ Is Teaching Women to Reclaim Their Power Through Music
From Toronto housewife expectations to Miami healerThere's something magnetic about Carmelinda Di Manno that transcends the typical DJ persona. Maybe it's the way she rubs her gold cross when talking about finding clarity through meditation and prayer. Maybe it's how she lights up describing a 50-year-old mother from King City who flew to Miami just to learn how to DJ. Or maybe it's the simple truth that radiates from every word: sometimes the most beautiful transformations happen when life completely falls apart."Those moments of what felt like complete devastation," she tells me from her Miami home, her voice carrying the weight of lived experience, "were pivotal in the development of my character. My life just got better after every kind of crisis. Honestly, it did."This isn't your typical success story. This is something rawer, more honest—a testament to what happens when an Italian-Canadian woman refuses to shrink into the life everyone else planned for her.THE UNRAVELING THAT LED TO EVERYTHINGBorn and raised in North York's Wilson Heights, Carmelinda grew up in that perfect 50-50 balance of Italian and Jewish culture that shaped so many Toronto kids. Her parents, immigrants from Italian families, had done what immigrants do: they built safety through traditional structures. Marriage. Stability. The kind of life that looks good on paper.For seventeen years, Carmelinda played that part. Then divorce. Then another long-term relationship that felt like building toward forever—until it ended "in a very surprising way.""I was invited to come to the United States again," she recalls, referring to the third time life offered her a different path. From what started with a“go with the -flow and give it a chance scenario” she came to realize quite quickly that “there is a use for me here” and tremendous opportunity and a feeling of unity with the community and culture.That was almost three years ago. What started as temporary became permanent when she realized something profound: "There's a use for me here."FROM CRISIS TO CALLINGThe path from event planner to yoga teacher to DJ wasn't linear—it was survival. Ten years ago, feeling her marriage dissolve and needing "another outlet, someplace to put my energy," Carmelinda posted on Facebook asking for a DJ teacher."I thought DJing was just going to be another outlet. Another creative, expressive place for me," she explains. But something deeper was happening. In the mixing, the beat-matching, the alchemy of sound, she found more than expression—she found purpose, "I developed a passion, did it as consistently as possible to get better and better at it." Because she'd worked in Toronto's nightclub industry before, opportunities flowed. But this wasn't about parties. This was about transformation.THE PHONE CALLS THAT CHANGED EVERYTHINGHere's where Carmelinda's story becomes something bigger than personal reinvention. Women started calling. Not twenty-somethings looking for weekend fun. Mothers. Wives. Women who'd spent decades caring for everyone else."I have had a number of women that have been housewives and moms for 30 years or 20 some odd years that call me and say, 'Please, can you help me learn how to DJ? Because I haven't done anything for myself.'"One woman traveled from King City to Miami. King City to Miami. Let that sink in."Now their kids are a little bit older, they're feeling more liberated," Carmelinda continues. "The world is a bit more gentle on the subject, and they're feeling like it's time for them to finally explore something for themselves."She's not just teaching women to DJ. She's teaching them She's not just teaching women to DJ. She's teaching them to reclaim parts of themselves they'd buried under years of everyone else's needs.SOUL REVIVAL IN ACTIONThis is where the healing happens. Carmelinda's "Soul Revival Prana Parties" aren't your typical raves. They're community gatherings built around movement, music, and what she calls "activating energy.""Prana is a Sanskrit word for energy," she explains, "and I'm a huge believer that we are energy. So the title soul revival to me means like coming back to life through doing things that activate your energy."Picture this: large groups moving together to live DJs, whether poolside in Miami sun or in art galleries where culture meets beats. "There's some component of movement, music, community, and culture."It's church for the unchurched. Therapy for the skeptical. Permission to be fully alive in your body, regardless of age or how long it's been since you danced.THE AUTHENTICITY THAT HEALSWhen I ask about her latest single "On My Own," Carmelinda's guard drops completely. "It's a story about a person who recognizes finally that their ability to live well, to live happy, to be in their truth is possible without whatever they thought they were attached to."She's talking about a universal truth wrapped in a personal confession: "Sometimes it takes sticky times, but I do believe, especially for women, that they always come to the awareness of what is true for them. When a woman knows her boundaries are set, she's done."The song isn't just music—it's a declaration. A love letter to every woman who's ever had to choose herself over everyone else's expectations.BREAKING THE BEAUTIFUL MESS MYTHIn a world obsessed with Instagram perfection—and Miami's notorious image culture—Carmelinda offers something radical: permission to be beautifully imperfect."A person who's holding space for themselves when they're navigating a challenging time with authenticity, doing their best to still show up for life—that's a beautiful mess to me," she says. "You don't have to be perfectly refined all the time."She produced most of her records "processing something." Pain became art. Crisis became calling. Devastation became transformation."Beautiful things come out of pain. You can use that energy and do something good with it."THE ITALIAN PARENTS WHO LEARNED TO LOVE DIFFERENTLYPerhaps the most moving part of Carmelinda's story is how her traditional Italian parents navigated their daughter's unconventional choices. The divorce was hard. The move to America was harder. But watching their daughter thrive taught them something profound."I think them seeing me healthy and happy has taught them to expand their perspective on what individuals need, and what is truly a person's purpose and destiny," she reflects. "It's not always the mainstream."She learned to see them not as parents who weren't supporting her "the way I wanted them to," but as humans. Immigrants who'd navigated impossible circumstances to build stability in a country where they didn't speak the language."They must have been in so much fear and anxiety and stress for so much of their life that of course they projected it onto me. They didn't have the resources we have."Compassion became the bridge between generations, between expectations and acceptance.WHAT SHE WANTS TO BE REMEMBERED FORWhen I ask about legacy, Carmelinda's answer is immediate and heartfelt: "That people felt like they could really be themselves around me, and that they feel seen and heard."It's not about the music, the parties, or even the transformation. It's about presence. About creating space for people to exist fully, messily, authentically."You don't need a stage to leave a mark," she adds. "Everyone has the opportunity to influence the way other people feel, and the way other people feel about themselves."THE MUSIC THAT MOVES SOULSCarmelinda's sound is impossible to box into one genre—and that's exactly the point. Her latest tracks blend Afro rhythms with soulful vocals, house beats with spiritual undertones. It's music that doesn't just make you dance; it makes you remember who you are when nobody's watching."I love all of it," she says about her influences, rattling off everyone from Bob Marley to Fleetwood Mac to Pearl Jam. "Some of my favorite sets are when DJs are playing a kick-ass tech house song, and then all of a sudden they'll bring in some freestyle. I genuinely go off to that."You can hear this eclectic foundation in her work—tracks that take you on journeys through different emotional landscapes, never predictable, always authentic. Whether she's playing poolside in Miami or in an intimate art gallery setting, Carmelinda creates sonic experiences that activate what she calls "prana"—pure energy.Her music isn't background noise for your Instagram story. It's foreground feeling for your actual life.“You don’t need a stage to leave a mark.”THE INVITATIONAs our conversation winds down, I'm struck by how Carmelinda embodies everything Between the Covers stands for: the messy beauty of being human, the power of authentic transformation, the radical act of showing up imperfectly but wholeheartedly.She's teaching women to DJ, yes. But really, she's teaching them something more fundamental: that it's never too late to reclaim your voice, your power, your right to take up space in the world.Whether you're 25 or 75, whether you're in Toronto or Miami, whether you know the difference between house and techno or couldn't care less—Carmelinda's message is universal:Your authentic self is not a beautiful mess. Your authentic self is just beautiful. Full stop. Find Carmelinda Di Manno on Instagram, Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube. Her latest single "On My Own" is available wherever you stream music.Joseph Tito is the Editor-in-Chief of Between the Covers and author of "Random Thoughts: The Sh*t We Don't Talk About," available wherever books are sold.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
SUMMER HOSTING with Entertaining Expert Sheila Centner
Alongside her husband and business partner, Sebastien Centner, she’s made a name for herself as someone who not only knows how to throw a great party, but also how to make it look (and feel) effortless.“Hosting should never be about perfection; it should be about making your guests feel at home”says Sheila. And with her warm, polished approach to entertaining, it’s no surprise that she’s considered the ultimate source for entertaining inspiration.MEET YOUR HOSTEffortlessly stylish, endlessly creative, and always the perfect host, Sheila Centner has become one of Toronto’s most trusted voices in modern entertaining. As the co-founder of Eatertainment Events & Catering, co-founder of the lifestyle brand Seb & Sheila, and co-author of Eatertainment: Recipes & Ideas for Effortless Entertaining, Sheila has spent over two decades turning everyday gatherings into unforgettable experiences.SUMMER HOSTING HOW-TOSo, how does Sheila pull off flawless summer hosting with what seems like zero fuss? Here, she shares her favourite warm-weather entertaining tips.Set the Mood“Summer is all about colour, texture, and fun,” says Sheila. Instead of traditional linens, start with a vibrant tablecloth to anchor the look. Accent with fresh greenery or wildflowers to add a natural, unstructured feel.Serve Seasonal, No-Fuss DishesSheila’s summer menus focus on food that’s light, fresh, and mostly make-ahead. “I want to be outside with my guests, not stuck in the kitchen.” Her go-to? A cold seafood platter served with crusty bread and a chilled white wine. For dessert, grilled peaches with mascarpone and honey.Batch Your Cocktails“Individual drinks are a time-killer,” says Sheila. Her advice: pick one signature cocktail and batch it in a carafe or dispenser. Her summer favourite? A rosé sangria with citrus, mint, and a splash of elderflower liqueur. Set it out with glasses, ice, and garnishes so guests can help themselvesEmbrace ImperfectionHer biggest hosting philosophy? Don’t sweat the small stuff. “People won’t remember if the napkins were folded perfectly, they’ll remember how they felt at your table. Make it warm, welcoming, and don’t forget to pour yourself a drink too.”@sebandsheila | @sheilacentner | @eatertainment www.eatertainment.com
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The High Vibe Rebellion Luciana's Radical Invitation to Dance, Heal, and Feel It All
"I either really change my life and who I am, or I leave."How one woman's journey from suicidal depression to spiritual rebellion is creating Toronto's first alcohol-free music festival—and teaching us all to party with our soulsLuciana Santaguida was 18, sitting in her university dorm room, facing the kind of decision that splits your life into before and after. Depression, bulimia, suicidal thoughts—the darkness had compound interest, and she was drowning in it."I can't stay here like this anymore," she told herself. So she reached out to her mom and said the words that would save her life: "I need help."Today, at 32, Luciana is standing in a field of 700,000 sunflowers in Caledon, Ontario, preparing to host what she calls "a revolution of compassion"—Toronto's first alcohol-free music festival. The Sunflower Garden Festival isn't just an event; it's a spiritual intervention for a generation that's been taught to numb instead of feel.The Wound That Started It All"There's the identity part which describes the things I do and share," Luciana explains, her voice carrying the kind of presence that makes you want to lean in. "And then there's the energy part. That is just the essence that I carry."The essence she carries now—expanded, luminous, unafraid—was forged in the fire of adolescent hell. As a child, she was the one questioning everything: organized religion, corporate structures, even the news at age nine. "I was feeling misunderstood as a teen, being hyper-aware as a child, questioning the world aroundme from a very young age," she reflects. "I just didn't really have community at that age that resonated."The isolation compounded. By 15, she was getting blackout drunk every weekend, using alcohol as a "forget my pain" mechanism while watching her father struggle with his own demons. "It was such a demon activator for me," she says. "It just pulled all my darkness right up, and I wasn't more of who I am. I was actually more of whatever demon was living in me."But even in the darkness, light was breaking through. Creative energy—poetry, music, art—became her lifeline. "Having poetry, having music, having art to paint... that was what saved me."Music as Medicine, Not Background NoiseFast-forward to her early twenties, when Luciana dropped out of university to pursue music professionally. She'd found her purpose, but she quickly discovered a problem: the places where music lives—bars, clubs, venues—were filled with people too drunk to actually receive what she was offering."I'm sitting there literally pouring my life into these songs, and I would see my friends and family come to support me, but be really wasted before I even went on," she remembers. "There was a part of me that was like, 'Oh, but they're not even really remembering my performance, or hearing me, or receiving the medicine that was medicine for me.'"So she did something radical: she started creating sober spaces. This was 2015, long before "sober curious" became a wellness trend. Her NÜLOVE events fused music and wellness—house parties in venues thatstarted with yoga, entered with sound healing, and featured cacao instead of cocktails."I wanted to create a place where people could dance and enjoy the music, go out and feel great," she explains. "A place where people could presently connect, be together and have fun."The Revolutionary Act of Feeling EverythingThe Sunflower Garden Festival, happening August 23rd, is the evolution of everything Luciana has been building for a decade. It's not just alcohol-free—it's a 12-hour journey designed to rewire how we experience music, community, and our own capacity for joy."We start with an opening ceremony," she explains, "a land blessing and directions blessing by an indigenous elder, meditation, and then we're singing a song. And then we go into the first live artist."From there, it's a carefully orchestrated dance between stimulation and integration. The main stage, cut into the sunflower field itself, features predominantly female artists—a conscious correction to an industry where women are often afterthoughts. "I've been either the token woman or one of two women on a 30-40 artist lineup," Luciana says. "I got a call yesterday—literally, 'We kind of want you because there's no women on the lineup.' It's like the afterthought."But this isn't rage-fueled activism—it's something more nuanced. "The initial force forward was frustration, and there needed to be a fire. I needed to have the fire in me to move something forward with purpose," she admits. "But certainly this is rooted with purpose and not rage."The Sacred Fire and the Sacred PauseWhat makes Sunflower Garden different isn't just what it includes—it's what it intentionally creates space for. Throughout the property, integration spaces offer refuge from stimulation. A sacred fire, tended by men following indigenous tradition, provides a place for prayers, tobacco offerings, and the kind of deep rest that's impossible to find at traditional festivals."We can't know what's going on internally with ourselves if we don't pause," Luciana explains. "So the integration spaces, the wellness practices, the programming that's happening alongside the music—they're designed to help create that moment of pause, that moment of connection."In place of alcohol, she's created six proprietary botanical drinks, each designed to address different social needs. "One's going to help you find calm if you're that socially anxious person. If you sometimes drink to just get loose in your body, we'll have herbs that help you relax and get loose in the body. I've tailored them to assist with key points of why I've seen myself drink, or why I've noticed people around me drink socially."The Business of Being HumanWhen asked about charging money for wellness—$89 for early bird tickets, $249 for VIP—Luciana doesn't flinch. "I'm in two industries where people don't value art unless you're famous, and you have the entire narrative that society constructed that says 'starving artists.' It's the same in wellness."She's created subsidized tickets and volunteer opportunities, but she's also clear about the bigger picture: "There has to be a balance. For me to produce an event, I have expenses. I can't do it for free. You won't have the experience you're going to have because I won't be able to produce it for free."Her response cuts through the spiritual materialism debate with razor precision: "We deserve to be prosperous too. It's when we're living in scarcity that we have an issue paying for things, and we perpetuate the cycle... There are programs around money that are very specific to healers and very specific to artists. And it's to keep us small, because when those people have money, they change the world."What Wellness Gets WrongDespite building her career in wellness, Luciana isn't blind to its shadows. "There's a lot of lack of integrity," she says when asked what makes her want to burn the industry down. "Just like taking of people's ideas without conversation, without acknowledgment, without honoring."Coming from a lineage-based Reiki training, she values the reverence and proper transmission of knowledge. "There's just a lot of none of that here. The itch for me in the wellness space is just like there's a lot of integrity missing from some of the leaders."Dancing Through the FearFor women who feel too heavy, too self-conscious, too broken to dance—Luciana's core audience and her former self—she offers something that sounds simple but feels revolutionary: permission."You can judge yourself all you want, right? You can do that at home, in a crowd, in the yoga class. But it's just the mind stopping you from connecting," she explains. "As children, we're free of that most of us, and at some point we tell ourselves, or someone tells us something that we listen to, we take on as our truth, and it stops us from enjoying."Her advice for women feeling stuck is practical magic: gratitude lists, morning and night, for two weeks. Not surface-level gratitude, but "grateful to the level of, if you didn't have these in your life, life would not be worth living.""If you can change your energy, you can change your reality," she says. "It's step by step, though."The Legacy of LightIf Sunflower Garden was Luciana's last act on Earth, what would she want people to remember? The question stops her for a moment."The vision I keep seeing is just people so expanded, like the heart just so open. There's this bliss, there's smiles," she finally says. "I want them to take away... remembering that love and happiness and freedom they're feeling inside themselves is always there."t's about remembering what we've forgotten: "You can create that at home by throwing on your favorite song and having a dance party with yourself in the morning. You just forgot. You just forgot that you can feel like this really anytime you want."Looking back at her 16-year-old self—depressed, suicidal, blackout drunk every weekend—she sees not surprise but awe.“That I survived, and that I became the person I wanted… It’s like, ‘Whoa. We did it. We wanted to be in music—we went for it. We wanted to do yoga training—we did it. We wanted to help people heal—and now look. We’re doing it.’”Her voice softens, but the pride is unmistakable. “I’m the person I needed back then. That’s the part that gets me.”The Sunflower Garden Festival takes place August 23rd at Campbell's Cross Farms in Caledon, Ontario. Tickets and information available at sunflowergardenfestival.com. Follow Luciana at @lucianawithlove or visit lucianawithlove.com for music, wellness offerings, and proof that the most radical thing you can do is remember how to feel fully alive.In a world that profits from our numbness, dancing sober in a field of sunflowers isn't just a party—it's a revolution.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The Thousandaire's Guide to Not Being Basic: Why George Hahn Gets It
When style influencers peddle $2,000 handbags to pay rent, one man said "fuck that" and built something real.Here's what I love about George Hahn: he sold his Rolex to feed his dog.Not to fund some bullshit passion project or because minimalism was trending on Pinterest, but because the 2011 recession came for him like it came for all of us—swift, merciless, and completely indifferent to whether you had good taste or not. So he pawned his watch and decided to become what he calls a "self-made thousandaire" instead of pretending he was still swimming in champagne money.Fast-forward thirteen years, and George has quietly built one of the most honest voices in men's style without ever once telling you to "invest in yourself" or "manifest abundance." His blog, podcast "Hahn Solo," and social media read like your smartest, slightly cynical friend explaining why you don't need a $500 white t-shirt to look put-together.“I don’t wake up every day feeling great about myself. I’m not always confident. But I do know who I am. And I’ve learned that clarity of self is far more powerful than chasing someone else’s approval.”The Anti-Influencer InfluencerGeorge's origin story reads like a fever dream of every creative who moved to New York in the '90s. Theater kid from Cleveland? Check. Boston College drama major with a patchouli phase? Double check. Waiting tables at trendy spots while booking tiny roles on "Sex and the City"? Triple check—with a side of existential dread.But here's where his story diverges from the standard "I-came-I-saw-I-conquered" influencer narrative: he admits to the mess. The eighteen months as a hair salon receptionist booking appointments for "the most pulled faces in the Northern Hemisphere." The years of restaurant work. The moment when everything fell apart and he had to choose between keeping up appearances and keeping his priorities straight.That vulnerability? That's the secret sauce. In a world where every style blogger seems to live in a perfectly curated apartment they definitely can't afford, George says the quiet part out loud: most of us are just trying to look decent while not going broke.Sartorial Stealth ModeGeorge coined the term "sartorial stealth"—looking polished without screaming about it. It's the opposite of logo-heavy, status-symbol dressing that dominates men's style content. Instead, he advocates for classic pieces that work across contexts: the perfect white dress shirt with unfused collars, one good stainless steel watch that transitions from work to dinner, well-tailored basics that don't announce their price tag."Anyone with money can acquire. What's more interesting to me is when someone does something fantastic with limited resources," George writes, cutting straight to the heart of what makes his perspective so refreshing.This isn't about being cheap—it's about being smart. When The New York Times launched their Men's Style section featuring $990 jackets and $560 pants, George called it out: "The new Men's Style section of The New York Times joins the bloated legion of magazines, blogs and online influencers that equate style and refinement with spending power."His alternative? Proving that style is about proportion, fit, and understanding what works for your life—not about how much you can drop on a single item.The Realness We're All CravingWhat makes George's voice so refreshing is that he writes about style the way we actually live: imperfectly, pragmatically, with limited budgets and real priorities. His recent piece on watches is a perfect example. While every other men's blog is pushing luxury timepieces as "investment pieces," George argues you only need one good watch—and explains why a well-chosen tool watch works for everything from boardrooms to dive bars.He's also refreshingly honest about his own limitations and changes. When he moved back to Cleveland for three years, he didn't pretend it was some strategic lifestyle choice. When he returned to New York and rebuilt his following (387.8k TikTok followers and counting), he didn't frame it as some comeback story. It's just life happening, with all its messiness and course corrections.Why This Matters to UsIn a digital landscape saturated with lifestyle content that feels performative and unattainable, George represents something different: authenticity without the therapy-speak, style advice without the classism, and honesty without the martyrdom.His readers—many of whom are women—aren't just there for the menswear tips. They're there for the voice. The way he writes about New York City life, the humor he brings to everyday observations, the reminder that looking good doesn't require selling your soul to fast fashion or luxury brands.Plus, let's be real: if you're in a relationship with a man who gives a shit about how he looks, George's approach is going to make your life easier. No more explaining why he doesn't need seventeen different watches or why a well-fitted $40 shirt beats an expensive, poorly cut one every time.The Thousandaire PhilosophyGeorge's "thousandaire" identity isn't about having exactly $1,000 in the bank—it's about rejecting the millionaire mindset that dominates lifestyle content. It's about finding satisfaction in getting things right within your means, about quality over quantity, about looking intentional without looking try-hard.In an economy where we're all basically thousandaires whether we admit it or not, George's perspective feels less like lifestyle porn and more like a survival guide. How to dress well when you're not rich. How to live in a city that wants to bleed you dry. How to maintain standards without losing your mind—or your rent money.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The Feeling-Nothing Mother
Patric Gagné doesn't need her kids to love her back. She's okay with that. Are we?Patric Gagné cuts her kids' peanut butter sandwiches into stars and whales. She makes Christmas magical even though she hates it. She shows up for bedtime stories, tantrums, and bullies. But here's the kicker—she does it without the emotional fuel most of us run on. She's a diagnosed sociopath. And she's one of the most fascinating, disarming, and deeply human mothers I've ever interviewed.This isn't a hot take on TikTok psychopathy or a glorified redemption arc. This is someone telling the truth about what it's like to parent without the typical emotional wiring—and still doing the damn thing. I first reached out to Patric because her memoir Sociopath hit me in the gut. Not because I saw a monster. But because I saw a parent navigating the same chaos I was—just using a different map. What followed was one of the most honest, unfiltered conversations I've ever had with anyone."I told my kids they don't have to love me." That line stopped me cold. I asked her if she meant it literally—like, had she actually said those words to her children? "Yes," she said without hesitation. "We've had long conversations about love, and I've told them it should always be additive. You should never feel obligated to love anyone. Even me."It's not rejection. It's radical self-honesty. And it challenges every sappy Mother's Day card, every feel-good sitcom, and every sugarcoated idea we've been sold about what love between parent and child is supposed to look like. But that's the point. Gagné's entire existence challenges the mythology of motherhood—and not in a self-congratulatory way. She's not trying to shock. She's trying to survive. And raise decent humans in the process.The Baby Stage: "I wanted to leave."We talked about those early months of parenting—the dark, sleepless tunnel so many of us have barely crawled out of. I told her I was crying daily, unsure if I'd make it out in one piece. She didn't flinch. "I wanted to kill myself," she admitted. "Not because of them—but because I thought something was wrong with me for not bonding."She had hoped, deep down, that motherhood would unlock something in her. Some primal instinct. Some feral maternal love. But it didn't. And that realization broke her heart in a way she couldn't quite describe. She wasn't angry at her children. She was angry at herself for believing she could be like everyone else. "I was a fool to have thought I could have bonded that way," she said. "I should have been more realistic with myself and said, 'Hey, it's not going to be what it's like for everybody else, just like nothing in your life has been. It's going to be different. But you'll get there.'"The difference between her experience and mine? She had a partner she could tap out to. "Unlike you, I had the benefit of a partner that I could say, 'Here you go. I got to tap out.'"Parenting Without the ScriptWe don't talk enough about what happens when your kids trigger parts of you that have never fully healed. Or never existed. Patric doesn't fake maternal warmth to keep up appearances with other parents. She fakes it when her kids need it from her. "Not so much anymore—they're older," she said. "But when they were younger and needed comfort I couldn't access authentically, I gave them what they needed anyway."When I asked what it feels like to watch her kids sleep, she answered without hesitation: "Relief." Not joy. Not aching love. Relief. Because they're okay. Because she can finally rest. That answer gutted me. Not because it was cold—but because it was honest. And how many of us have felt that exact thing, but felt too guilty to say it out loud?But then she surprises you. When her older child witnessed a classmate being bullied for their sexual orientation and stood up for them, Patric had one of her proudest moments. "I told him, 'You have no idea how much that means to that kid. It really means the world to a kid who feels all alone to have another kid say, stop doing that. That's not kind. And you're being a dick.' I was really proud of him that he did that."Pride without ego. Protection without possession. It's parenting stripped of performance."I can't care about this."One of my favorite moments came when I asked her how she handles the petty day-to-day dramas that set most parents off. "I just say, 'I can't care about this,'" she said, laughing. "It started as a joke with my friends, and now my kids even say it. Like, 'Mommy, you can't care about this.' And I'm like, 'I really can't. I love you. I do not have the bandwidth for a Fortnight play-by-play. I'm a huge gamer and I actually love Fortnite, but I'm also not interested in a 30 minute rundown."It sounds harsh. But how many of us pretend to care about every scraped knee, every Pokémon card betrayal, every tantrum about the wrong color cup? Patric doesn't pretend. She just shows up with what she's got.For nightmares, she takes what she calls "the easy way out." Instead of processing the dream at 3 AM, she'll say, "That's so scary! Let's talk about it more in the morning," or "The best thing for a nightmare is to replace it with a fresh dream," and bring them into bed with her. "The middle of the night is no time to process a nightmare," she said. "If they still want to talk about it in the morning I'll tell them they have 90 seconds to identify every emotion they felt in the dream. The emotions hold the information and, let's be honest, no one is trying to hear 90 minutes of unconscious recall."Boundaries without guilt. Efficiency without cruelty. It's revolutionary, actually.The Santa Claus RebellionIf you want to understand how Patric's mind works, ask her about Santa Claus. From the time her children were conscious enough to have the conversation, she's been methodically dismantling the myth. "I think Santa Claus is crazy. This whole thing about Santa Claus is insane to me," she told them. When they protested that Santa was real, she'd respond with pure logic: "What's the truth? That a man who wears the same clothes 365 days a year comes down a chimney and leaves presents for you because you're good? So he's breaking and entering?"Her children would push back, insisting Santa arrives by sleigh. "I'm sorry, he comes on what? A sleigh?" She'd continue: "Don't talk to strangers unless it's a man in a red suit promising gifts, in which case get into his lap and whisper your secrets? We're teaching kids about stranger danger, but over here it's okay?"But here's the thing—she still makes Christmas magical. "I really work hard to make Christmas magical for them, because it's not their fault that I have a really hard time at Christmas. It's so hard every year. But I definitely do it for them."Her solution was brilliant: let her children convince her while maintaining her stance. "They would come to me with the stories, and I would say, 'That's bonkers,' and then it's on them to convince me. All along I would say, 'This is insane,' but I will tell you there is something about Christmas that is magical. I don't know what it is, but I know it's not some random guy.""I never wanted to tell them I believed in something I didn't believe in," she explains. "I'd rather my kids know they can always count on me to deal with them honestly, even if it's not as magical as they would like it to be."Radical honesty wrapped in love. It shouldn't work. But it does.When Marriage Meets LogicLiving with someone who processes emotions so differently presents unique challenges. When her Italian husband gets angry and starts raising his voice, Patric's response is clinically precise. "I say, 'You're increasing the volume of your voice, not the clarity of your communication.'" she tells me. "I don't respond to yelling. I don't allow anyone to speak to me this way, and I wouldn't allow anyone to speak to you this way, so you need to take a walk because all I see is someone who is so wrapped up in an emotion tornado I can't reach the person on the inside."It should sound cold. Instead, it sounds like the sanest relationship advice I've ever heard. Her husband, she says, thrived in the baby stage. But Patric prefers the teenage years. "People like us tend to have a much easier time with the teenage years," she explains. "So many people who thrived in the baby stage are ready to pull their hair out in the teenage years. I feel that I'm more equipped to be a teen parent because I can have those conversations—about sex, about violence in schools. I'm very direct. I don't shy away from anything."When it comes to discipline, Patric strips away the emotional drama that usually accompanies consequences. "Actions have consequences. Period," she says. "It's like being an adult—if you want to test the boundaries and get caught, you're not going to be able to have access to the things you want. It's not 'How can you do this to me?' It's more just meeting them where they are."She often lets her children choose their own consequences. "You did something, so what is the consequence? You tell me, because I can choose, but I think it's more effective if you choose your own consequence. They're usually pretty spot on." With her older child, she'll reframe situations by asking what advice he'd give his younger sibling in the same situation. "Is this what I should tell your younger sibling? Is this how you would handle this?" The answer, she says, is always the same: "No."It's accountability without shame. Consequences without manipulation. And it's working.The Boxes of MemoryIn her memoir, Patric writes about a box of stolen childhood trinkets—glasses, small objects that gave her some sense of feeling when everything else felt like nothing. I asked if she still keeps that box. "I do, but it's gotten bigger. So now I have many boxes full of things, and they're not necessarily things that have been stolen so much as they're things that I have from places that I've been where I shouldn't have been."The impulse has evolved but never disappeared. When she travels alone, she notices the old urges. "She's still there, you know. She's like, 'Hey, you wanna go? Do you want to get into it?' It's like, no, I do not want to get into it. It's a conversation that's more playful now."At a recent party, she watched a woman being "such an asshole to the people working the event" and felt the familiar pull toward chaos. "I remember thinking, I'm just gonna grab her purse and throw it in the garbage. She's gonna lose her mind. She's gonna think somebody stole it. All of her stuff's gonna be gone." Her husband intervened quickly. "He definitely interceded very quickly, like 'You're not doing that.' And I was like, 'Well, we aren't doing anything. Just go get the car, Buddy. You don't have to be a part of this.'"Instead, she kicked the woman's purse under a table three tables over. "She did lose her mind and started accusing the staff of stealing it, which just basically outed her for being an even bigger piece of shit than she was."It's vigilante justice without violence. Chaos with a moral compass. And I'm not going to lie—I kind of love it.Love, RedefinedPatric's definition of love doesn't come with fireworks. It's not desperate or possessive. It's mutualism. "Organic. Additive. Mutual homeostasis," she said. "Not transactional. Not ego-driven. Just two people benefiting from each other's presence."When her children accomplish something—good grades, first steps, small victories—she celebrates differently than most parents. "I'm happy for them. I'm proud of them. But pride is something that's egocentric, isn't it? So many people who have a lot of pride also take it as a reflection of them, like 'Look at what a good parent I am because my kid got an A.' I'm proud for them, proud of them, but it has nothing to do with me."She adds, "You can be diagnosed with secondary psychopathy and still love. You can love differently—and still make it count."Honestly? It sounds like a better kind of love than most people ever get.Of course, the part of her story that makes people recoil—the pencil-stabbing, the animal cruelty—can't be sanitized away. When I asked what those moments felt like, she said, "Relief. It was like I could finally stop masking. It was my way of saying, 'This is who I am.'" She doesn't excuse the behavior. She doesn't romanticize it. She just doesn't connect to it emotionally the way neurotypical people do. And that's what terrifies people.But that's also why this story matters. Because when we treat sociopathy like a horror movie diagnosis—something you either are or aren't, something inherently evil—we lose the nuance. We lose the opportunity for understanding. For intervention. For treatment.She's Not Asking for ForgivenessPatric doesn't want you to like her. She's not asking for redemption. She's not looking to be fixed. She's just telling the truth. "I don't need an excuse to be an asshole," she told me. "If I'm in a dark place and I act out, I act out. There should be consequences. But I don't feel guilt about it."Her diagnosis doesn't excuse harm. But it does explain how she moves through the world. And she's spent years unlearning harmful behaviors—not because she "feels bad," but because she understands what's right. There's something both terrifying and refreshing about someone who takes responsibility without the emotional theater that usually accompanies it.The Privilege to HealShe's the first to acknowledge that if she weren't white, articulate, and conventionally attractive, this story might have ended very differently. "There are thousands of kids with the same traits I had—oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder—but they don't get access to treatment. They get kicked out of school. Thrown into the system. Labeled as bad kids. But these are treatable conditions. We just don't fund the solutions."She cites staggering statistics: "Conduct disorder affects roughly 10% of girls and 16% of boys. Its symptoms, such as stealing and deliberate acts of violence, are among the most common reasons for treatment. And yet there's no testing for them or markers for them like there are for autism."This isn't abstract for her. This is the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of children are cycling through systems designed to punish rather than heal. Children who could be helped. Children who could become functional adults, partners, parents. Children who could become her.The Origin MysteryPerhaps the most significant revelation comes when Patric drops a bombshell about her condition's origins: "I was not born this way." She's discovered something about the environmental factors that shaped her—specifically, "having been exposed to psychopathic practices at a very young age." Her response to this discovery? "Relief, fury, and clinical curiosity."But she's not ready to elaborate. "I need to do more research," she says. If her research proves what she suspects, it could revolutionize how we understand and treat sociopathy. It could shift the conversation from "monster or not monster" to "how do we prevent this from happening to other children?" For now, she's keeping that discovery close to her chest. But the implications are staggering.So What Do Her Kids Think?"They've never asked why I'm different," she said. "Because I've always been honest. I've told them, 'Mommy doesn't experience emotions like that. So sometimes I won't understand what you're feeling. But that's okay. You can talk to Daddy.'"When her children heard some of the backlash against her book, their response was pure confusion. "They're like, 'I don't understand. Why are people angry? Why are they saying things like that?' They can't wrap their head around it."Her children aren't confused about their mother. The rest of us are confused about what motherhood is supposed to look like.The Uncomfortable TruthThis is not a "look how far she's come" piece. This is a "look how she lives anyway" piece. Patric Gagné isn't trying to be your role model. She's not trying to win you over. But she is asking you to consider that parenting doesn't always have to be soaked in guilt, martyrdom, and emotional exhaustion. Maybe it can also be about logic. Consistency. Showing up. Giving your kids the truth, even when it's not pretty.We love to say that "there's no one way to be a good parent." But we rarely mean it. We say it, then judge every choice that doesn't look like our own. Patric Gagné is here to remind us that the love we think is universal—that overwhelming, consuming, sometimes destructive devotion—might not be the only way to raise whole human beings.You can love differently and still make it count. And maybe that's what makes her the most honest mother of all.If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of self-harm, please reach out to a mental health professional or crisis helpline. If you suspect a child may be showing signs of conduct disorder or other behavioral concerns, early intervention can make a significant difference."I am a criminal without a record. I am a master of disguise. I have never been caught. I have rarely been sorry. I am friendly. I am responsible. I am invisible. I blend right in. I am a twenty‑first‑century sociopath."Patric Gagne’s Sociopath is one of those books that leaves you sitting in silence long after the last page—equal parts disturbed, cracked open, and weirdly comforted. She doesn’t sugar-coat a thing. From childhood violence to emotional emptiness, Gagne holds nothing back, and somehow in that void, you feel everything. It’s not a plea for pity. It’s a dissection of what it means to perform humanity when you don’t feel it—and the loneliness that comes with that mask. And while the motherhood stuff is only touched on in the epilogue, what lands is the deep, unspoken ache for connection. This book made me question what we call empathy, what we judge as broken, and who gets to heal. It’s haunting in the best way. Get your copy here.
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Joseph Tito
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That's Not What This Life Is About
How Joanna Johnson built a revolution from the wreckage of everything she thought she knewThe revolution wasn't supposed to start with TikTok dances.Joanna Johnson was lip-syncing to "Jesse's Got a Gun" in her empty house, buying guitars she couldn't play, performing for strangers on an app she didn't understand. Her friends were calling to check if she was having a breakdown. She was 44, recently divorced, trapped in lockdown, and according to every metric that had previously defined her life, completely lost."My friends were calling me, making sure I wasn't having a physical, emotional breakdown," she laughs, remembering those early pandemic days. "They kept asking, 'What is going on, Joanna?' What they were seeing—and I didn't know it then—was very much a level of authenticity."Three years later, that "breakdown" has become a movement. The Ajax, Ontario educator now has over 3 million followers who look to @unlearn16 for wisdom about identity, authenticity, and the courage to rebuild your life from scratch. Her memoir, "That's Not What This Book Is About," is a number one bestseller. She's a keynote speaker, a school vice principal, and—most surprisingly to her—someone millions of people turn to when they need permission to become who they really are.But here's what makes Joanna different from every other inspiration-peddling influencer: she's brutally honest about the fact that she's still figuring it out.The Perfect StormThe path to viral educator began with what Joanna calls "three things occurring at the moment in time to create the perfect storm: Divorce, COVID lockdown, and Charlie, my best friend's kid, persuading me to download the app."The divorce came first. After years of what she now recognizes as dimming herself—"not being the center of the room, not being the person on stage, just carrying the stuff, being in the background"—her marriage ended. But the real end, the soul moment, came later."There was a moment that I stopped being her person," she says, her voice quieting. "She would call often, especially very late at night, very upset, questioning, needing support, and there was a moment that I had the awareness to say, 'I'm not your person anymore.'"It was 3 AM. A friend had told her she was still only "75% out" of the relationship. "That was the moment I knew that if I continue trying to save you—I'm never going to be the person that I need to be. And even worse, I'm never going to—even if you wanted me to save you—I can't. One person can't save another."What's remarkable is how little of herself she had to grieve. "I had been packing away myself for a good chunk of that relationship. I'd been just dimming it, right? As soon as you have to go somewhere and be less to make them feel better..." She trails off, then adds with characteristic directness: "I wasn't being myself at all. I was limiting who I was, and by limiting who I was, I was standing still."Standing still wasn't an option during lockdown. Alone in her house with nowhere to go and no one to dim herself for, Joanna had to face who she actually was. Social media became an unlikely laboratory for authenticity."I accidentally said something about Doug Ford," she recalls. "Literally, I just blurted it out, and then people were responding. They were laughing and saying, 'Oh my God, you're so bang on!' That's when I realized people want to talk about things authentically."The platform grew because Joanna brought something radical to social media: the willingness to admit she didn't have all the answers while still standing firmly in her truth. Her approach to bigotry and hate comments reveals this perfectly."You can't talk to hate, but I assure you, ignorance can be educated," she explains. When trolls comment about her appearance or sexuality, she responds with curiosity rather than defensiveness. "People ask, 'How do you keep your cool?' I say, 'I just don't care. Here’s a guy that spelled ‘their’ wrong wrong. What do I care about this guy?'"But it's not sociopathy—it's privilege, and she knows it. "I've had the luxury of living a privileged life in the sense that it's not that I've never experienced homophobia or roadblocks, but nothing horrific. I'm not carrying trauma. So when people authentically ask, 'Are you a boy or a girl?' I can authentically have that conversation without it triggering something significant."The Teaching ParadoxHere's where it gets complicated: How do you teach kids to be authentic when you're still figuring out who the hell you are?"You lead with that, don't you?" Joanna says without hesitation. "You lead with 'I don't know.'"After 23 years of teaching, she's learned that the education system has it backwards. "I try to tell kids—do things that scare you, do things you're not good at, because those are the things that are really going to highlight when you have to dig down. If I was good at math, just taking math course after math course teaches me nothing. Being afraid but doing it anyway—that's going to teach you something."She practices what she preaches. Five years ago, after decades of refusing, she finally agreed to be in a school play. "I've never been so scared in my entire life ever," she admits. "The best part was I had students that I was teaching strategies to study history, calming me down and helping me go through a completely different skill set."The LGBTQ+ advocacy that has become central to her platform works the same way. She's not trying to convert anyone or have dramatic coming-out conversations with students. Instead, she exists openly, loudly, authentically—"a visual example of somebody living very openly, very loudly, very 'call me whatever you want, just as long as you compliment my hair'—so that they can see that when they go down their authentic road, they can have a good, happy, healthy life."When millions of people look to you for guidance, what happens when you don't feel wise?"Every day," Joanna laughs. "What happens when I don't feel wise? Every day."But here's her secret: "As soon as you know that you know nothing, I think there's a comfort in it. I think the wisdom comes from understanding you have relatively nothing on lock, but you're willing to try everything."This Socratic approach extends to her online presence, where she navigates the impossible balance between authentic and performative. "I am performative. If I wasn't, I couldn't be a teacher," she acknowledges. "You don't get the message across unless you keep somebody's attention. If I don't keep a 16-year-old's attention, I don't care—it doesn't matter what knowledge I have in my head."The difference is intention. On TikTok, every gesture is amplified because she's trying to hold attention for four or five minutes. On live streams, she's more natural because there's back-and-forth conversation. But the core message remains the same: be willing to be scared and do it anyway.Love After SupermanThe hardest comment Joanna receives isn't about her appearance or politics—it's when the right wing successfully conflates LGBTQ+ advocacy with the term "groomer.""Everybody has a guttural reaction—you want to throw up when you think about people taking advantage of or manipulating kids. And they've done such a horrifically good job at binding the two together that it makes it very hard to operate in that space."She refuses to repost such comments, even to discredit them, because "then you're adding to it." Instead, she focuses on what she can control: being an example and having authentic conversations when possible.This approach extends to her personal life. After years of playing "Superman" in her marriage—swooping in to rescue and fix—she had to learn an entirely different way to love when she met Ana."I luckily met somebody who didn't need nor want me to save them," she explains. "Ana said, 'No, no, I don't need you to do that. That's me. I'll take care of me. You take care of you.' We've had to have more than one conversation like that where I realized, 'Oh, my value doesn't come from making sure you're okay because you're making sure you're okay.'"The realization was profound: "If I would have met the wrong person, I would be in the exact same loop."What terrifies someone who has rebuilt their entire life? "Failing," Joanna says simply. But not in the way you might think.As a vice principal, she carries the weight of wanting to help every student who walks through her door. "I tend to try to think, probably sometimes with a little bit of hubris, that I can help. And I always fear that one kid that I can't."Her office reflects this philosophy—movie posters, pop culture references, things that make people feel comfortable enough to be real. "The more we can connect through those kinds of stories, the more authentic the relationship is."But success? She already feels like she's made it. "I'm good now," she says with characteristic directness. Though she has one big goal left: filling Massey Hall with people who want to have the kinds of authentic, difficult, necessary conversations that social media has proven people are hungry for.The UnlearningFor readers who feel stuck, who look at their lives and think "this isn't working but I don't know how to burn it down," Joanna has surprising advice: Don't."I don't know if I'd start with burning it down. I'd start with one thing—one thing that you want to do that you're terrified to do. It could be an acting class, it could be scuba diving, it could be writing a book. You start engaging in it in an authentic way. You don't have to burn everything down because everything else will just fall away."The key is recognizing what you've been carrying that was never yours to carry. "We need to recognize that you have to stop carrying that. You have to figure out -what can I put down? My 14-year-old can get their own lunch. I can go do the art class. We don't have to do everything together."Because here's the truth she's learned: "You can't make other people happy. You can't fulfill other people. You can't make other people feel whole and powerful. You can only do that for you. And the more you do that for you, people around you will say, 'Oh shit, I want that. I'm going to do that.'"If all of it disappeared tomorrow—the followers, the speaking engagements, the platform—what would remain of who Joanna really is?"It would all remain," she says without hesitation. "The connections that I've made, the idea that I could go into any business, shake hands with any person at this point, never feel that I was out of place, never feel that I couldn't belong—that would remain. The idea that I'll be scared but I'll do it anyway. That, I hope, stays."This is what makes Joanna's story so powerful: it's not about finding yourself through external validation. It's about finally stopping the performance of being less than you are and discovering that who you've always been is enough.Her book isn't really about the stories from her childhood, though they're there. It's not about becoming a viral sensation, though that happened. It's about the moment when you stop being who you think you should be and start being who you actually are.And sometimes, just sometimes, the world is ready for exactly that person."That's not what this book is about," she says, grinning. "But maybe that's exactly what this life is about."
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Joseph Tito
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Beautiful Chaos: Designing Spaces for Real Life
"A typical day? Oh honey, buckle up."Dr. Adele Estrela laughs as she describes her 5:30 AM reality: green juice in hand, forty-five minutes on the Peloton rower before the house wakes up—literally her only guaranteed me-time. Then the morning sprint begins: lunches packed, dogs fed, swim and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu bags ready, uniforms found in yesterday's laundry basket."My brain is like a never-ending Google Calendar with alerts I can't turn off. My Oura ring shows me the proof every morning."Balance, she's learned, isn't some impossible equation. "Now I understand it's like being part of a medical triage team with my husband—we're constantly assessing what needs immediate attention, what can wait, and who's better equipped to handle each crisis."Reset Button ArchitectureAfter a day of work calls and feeling like an Uber driver, home becomes Adele's reset button. "I put on some Bossa nova while I prep dinner, laugh and dance with Jason and the girls."Her sanctuary? One hundred percent the kitchen. "Canadian-born but Italian-raised, so it's in my DNA—everything revolves around cooking and eating here."When it came time to design their dream kitchen, Adele needed a space that could handle their intensity while still feeling warm. "The girls track in pool water and soccer cleats, but I also wanted it to feel like a place where we'd want to spend time together, not just survive together."Why We Chose LancasterWhen we first began dreaming about our new kitchen, we knew we wanted more than just a beautiful space—we wanted a kitchen that worked seamlessly for our family and stood the test of time. The research was thorough—comparing cabinet companies, quality, construction, pricing across the board.From the moment we stepped into Lancaster's warm and welcoming Vaughan, Ontario showroom, we felt at ease. "We met Santina, Lancaster's talented kitchen designer, and immediately sensed we were in capable hands," Adele recalls. "She didn't just listen—she heard us. Every detail we envisioned, every nuance of our lifestyle, was taken into account."What impressed them most was Lancaster's "white glove service"—a seamless, concierge-like experience that made the process not only stress-free, but truly enjoyable. "When I described our life—the dogs, sports gear, homework chaos—they designed something magazine-worthy that wouldn't stress us out to maintain.""I really wanted glass cabinets, and in the end they designed something just as beautiful but built for real life. The soft-close drawers are a lifesaver when everyone's rushing." The Lancaster team brought their dream kitchen to life with precision, passion, and a level of custom craftsmanship that exceeded expectations.
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Joseph Tito
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Winning Her Way: How Melissa Grelo Redefines Success
THE NOTE WAITING IN HER HOTEL ROOMMelissa Grelo was on the brink of one of the boldest moves of her career - a wellness retreat built on her Aging Powerfully platform, the passion project she’s nurtured alongside running a podcast, parenting an 11-year-old, and hosting The Social, Canada’s most-watched daytime talk show. Her daughter, Marquesa, had tucked a note into her bag with strict instructions: Don’t open until you get there.Alone in her hotel room, minutes before leading a room full of women who’d come to learn from her and the group of experts she had curated, Melissa finally opened it. On the first page, in her daughter’s unmistakably confident handwriting:I am so proud of you.“It was a very long letter,” Melissa laughs now. “She’s a very prolific writer. Her vocabulary is fabulous.”But the message was simple: Go. Do this. I’m good. I’m cheering for you.This is what it looks like when a woman builds a life that supports her joy - and raises a daughter who sees and celebrates it.THE GAME IS RIGGED. SHE PLAYS IT ANYWAY.Let’s get something straight: Melissa Grelo hasn’t come undone. She’s building a life, a career, and a rhythm that reflect her strengths, not society’s expectations. What she has done is thrive in an industry where women, especially those on camera, still face extra layers of scrutiny: age, appearance, composure, perfection. Viewers often expect media personalities to be flawless, polished, and ever-present, even when their lives are evolving behind the scenes.And still, Melissa moves forward with clarity and confidence.When The Social finally premiered, it wasn’t just another show for her. It was something she had dreamed up, pitched, and championed for years. So even though she was only 11 weeks postpartum, she chose to be there - excited, grateful, and fully aware of the significance of stepping into a project she had helped bring to life.“I went back to work really fast after I had her,” she says calmly. Not apologizing. Not justifying. Simply acknowledging that the moment mattered to her. She wanted to show up for something she had helped build.Men call this dedication. Women are often told it’s “balance.” But the truth is simpler: Melissa followed her ambition and trusted herself.WHEN HER BODY HIT PAUSE, SHE HIT RESETA year and a half after Marquesa was born, Melissa was hosting Your Morning and The Social. Early mornings, long days, big interviews, and two live shows that demanded focus and energy. Her career was expanding quickly, and she was embracing every opportunity that came with it. Mid-flight to Calgary, her body signaled it was time to calibrate - dizziness, racing heart, the kind of symptoms that demand attention. Doctors checked her vitals: all perfect.The lesson wasn’t “slow down,” it was “support yourself.”She did exactly that. Therapy. A later call time. And a more intentional approach to her already full life.“I’m very bad at resting,” she admits with a smile. “I’ve always been foot-to-the-floor.”But instead of pushing harder, she adjusted smarter. She didn’t crumble; she evolved.THE MATH OF MODERN PARENTHOODMelissa had Marquesa at 36, and like many parents who have children later in life, she occasionally does the quiet calculations – how old she’ll be at major milestones, how life stages might line up. “Always, always,” she says. “Everybody does the math.”But here's what the math doesn't consider: wisdom. Experience. A fully formed self."What we feel like we might be behind in or losing in age, we've gained in wisdom," she says. "We're bringing a whole different self to parenting."Her daughter gets the version of Melissa who knows who she is. Who lived a full life first. Who built a career and collected stories and mistakes and victories before motherhood.This Melissa doesn't crumble when the culture whispers that she's "aging out." She launches a podcast called Aging Powerfully and fills a retreat with women who want what she's modeling: strength without shame."I'm going to be the youngest version of my age at every step of the way."CHOOSING A FAMILY PLAN THAT FITS THEIR LIFEAfter four years of fertility treatment and two clinics, Melissa conceived naturally the very summer The Social was greenlit.Later, when she and her husband Ryan discussed having a second child, they communicated honestly and without pressure.“I’m not slowing down,” she told him. “If we have another, lead caregiving will fall on you.”They talked it through. They both had ambitions. They chose one child. A thoughtful, mutual decision.No guilt. No external expectations. Just a family designing a life that makes sense for them.“I’m very proud of how I’ve navigated the challenges,” she says, recognizing her own growth and the strength in choosing intentionally.RAISING A DAUGHTER WHO KNOWS SHE BELONGSPeople often ask ambitious mothers how they teach their daughters that they can “have it all,” but Melissa reframes the question. For her, the focus is helping her daughter understand that when challenges arise, the issue isn’t her, it’s the world she’s moving through.The approach in their household is simple and open. “There are no secrets in our family,” she says. “Just living life.”Marquesa knows the real stories behind Melissa’s journey - the fertility challenges, the anxiety attack, and the truth of what ambition can cost and give. She also sees something her mother developed later in life: strong boundaries.“She has boundaries very clear in a way I didn’t figure out until my mid or late 30s,” Melissa says. “When my daughter sees me pushing myself too hard because I don’t have good boundaries, she already does.”Their connection is built in everyday moments. At bedtime, Melissa asks: “What makes you feel loved?” and “What moments matter most?” And the answers are always the same - braiding her hair, cuddling on the couch, the rituals that make her feel safe and seen.It’s presence over perfection. Consistency over performance. Love woven into the ordinary parts of life.THE COSTUME AND THE TRUTHEvery morning, Melissa puts on the polished on-air version of herself. Every night, she settles into sweatpants on the couch.“This is who I am,” she tells her daughter. “Work-Mommy is a costume.”Marquesa prefers the no-makeup version.Melissa even built a clothing line - MARQ, named after her daughter, because she wanted kids to feel free before the world labels them.“I’m not throwing gender expectations on a child who still has placenta on her,” she jokes.Their house uses RuPaul’s Drag Race and Love Island as jumping-off points for conversations about character and confidence.“What’s more important than being pretty?” Melissa asks.Marquesa never hesitates: Being smart. Being kind.CHOOSING A FAMILY PLAN THAT FITS THEIR LIFEAfter four years of fertility treatment and two clinics, Melissa conceived naturally the very summer The Social was greenlit.Later, when she and her husband Ryan discussed having a second child, they communicated honestly and without pressure.“I’m not slowing down,” she told him. “If we have another, lead caregiving will fall on you.”They talked it through. They both had ambitions. They chose one child. A thoughtful, mutual decision.No guilt. No external expectations. Just a family designing a life that makes sense for them.“I’m very proud of how I’ve navigated the challenges,” she says, recognizing her own growth and the strength in choosing intentionally.RAISING A DAUGHTER WHO KNOWS SHE BELONGSPeople often ask ambitious mothers how they teach their daughters that they can “have it all,” but Melissa reframes the question. For her, the focus is helping her daughter understand that when challenges arise, the issue isn’t her, it’s the world she’s moving through.The approach in their household is simple and open. “There are no secrets in our family,” she says. “Just living life.”Marquesa knows the real stories behind Melissa’s journey - the fertility challenges, the anxiety attack, and the truth of what ambition can cost and give. She also sees something her mother developed later in life: strong boundaries.“She has boundaries very clear in a way I didn’t figure out until my mid or late 30s,” Melissa says. “When my daughter sees me pushing myself too hard because I don’t have good boundaries, she already does.”Their connection is built in everyday moments. At bedtime, Melissa asks: “What makes you feel loved?” and “What moments matter most?” And the answers are always the same - braiding her hair, cuddling on the couch, the rituals that make her feel safe and seen.It’s presence over perfection. Consistency over performance. Love woven into the ordinary parts of life.THE COSTUME AND THE TRUTHEvery morning, Melissa puts on the polished on-air version of herself. Every night, she settles into sweatpants on the couch.“This is who I am,” she tells her daughter. “Work-Mommy is a costume.”Marquesa prefers the no-makeup version.Melissa even built a clothing line - MARQ, named after her daughter, because she wanted kids to feel free before the world labels them.“I’m not throwing gender expectations on a child who still has placenta on her,” she jokes.Their house uses RuPaul’s Drag Race and Love Island as jumping-off points for conversations about character and confidence.“What’s more important than being pretty?” Melissa asks.Marquesa never hesitates: Being smart. Being kind.WINNING LOOKS DIFFERENT THAN THEY TOLD USOur interview took place on Melissa’s train ride home, a quiet moment in her busy day. As the train pulls into the station, Melissa gathers her things. Ryan is on pickup duty. Tomorrow she’ll do it all again, the work she loves, the routines she cherishes, a life she’s built intentionally.Tonight, she’ll braid Marquesa’s hair. She’ll ask the questions that matter. She’ll settle into the couch as her real self.The version that is fully present.The version that embraces every part of her life with intention.The version showing her daughter what’s possible when you follow your own path.And someday, when another letter comes, it won’t say I miss you.It will say:I see you. And I’m proud.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The Fire That Forged Her: The Unbreakable Power of Lesley Al-Jishi
I’ve known Lesley Al-Jishi long enough to say this with absolute certainty — she doesn’t just survive things. She transforms them.We met years ago in Bahrain, long before hashtags and hero narratives made resilience fashionable. Back then, the world was shifting under our feet. Women were finally being allowed to drive, and the Gulf was pulsing with a quiet revolution — change moving in whispers, not shouts.Lesley was already ahead of it. She wasn’t waiting for permission; she was building her own road.We built one of the first performing arts schools in Bahrain together — something that sounds simple now, but at the time felt radical. It wasn’t just about music or movement. It was about freedom. About giving young people — especially girls — a place to be seen, to move, to speak without fear.Lesley understood that before anyone else. While most people saw risk, she saw necessity. She was — and still is — the kind of woman who walks straight into resistance and says, “Fine. Watch me.”The Weight of LegacyLesley comes from a family whose name carries weight. The Al-Jishi legacy runs through hospitals, medical fields, generations of service and innovation. But don’t mistake inheritance for ease.Lesley didn’t sit back and coast on family prestige. She expanded it. Reimagined it. Made it hers. In a landscape that still measures women by how quietly they move, she made sure her footsteps echoed.Her power isn’t loud — it’s disciplined. It’s the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself because it’s already in motion. The kind that sits at a boardroom table and changes the entire temperature of the room with one sentence.When the World StoppedAnd then — the unthinkable.Her son, Baddar, passed away.Even now, writing that sentence feels impossible. Because as a father, I can’t even begin to comprehend it. I don’t want to.I was there for her then — at least I thought I was. I showed up, I tried to comfort, I tried to hold space. But I realize now, I didn’t truly understand. Not until I became a parent myself.Back then, I saw the grief from the outside — the strength, the composure, the way she held everything together when her entire world was breaking.Now, I understand that you don’t carry that kind of pain — it becomes part of you. It never leaves. It shapes every breath, every choice, every silence.Lesley didn’t “move on.” She learned to move with it.And that’s where her power comes from — not from grace or endurance, but from the sheer will to keep showing up in a world that took everything from her and still demanded more.There’s strength you perform for others — and then there’s the kind that lives in your bones. Leslie’s is the latter.The RebirthOut of that darkness, she rebuilt. Not just herself, but the lives and futures around her.Today, Lesley Al-Jishi is a woman who can walk into any room — in Riyadh, in London, in Marbella — and command it without saying a word. There’s something magnetic about her energy: calm, assured, unflinching.She’s evolved from a regional powerhouse into a global force — a connector, a creator, a quiet architect of progress.You don’t see her name splashed across headlines or trending hashtags — because she’s too busy doing the work. The kind of work that outlives applause.What Power Really Looks LikeWhen people talk about “strong women,” they often picture loudness — defiance, bravado, Instagram quotes in gold cursive. Lesley’s power doesn’t look like that. It’s quieter. More dangerous. It’s the kind that doesn’t ask to be seen — but once you do see it, you can’t look away.She is, quite simply, a woman who will stop at nothing for what she believes in. Whether it’s culture, art, education, healthcare, or justice — she doesn’t just join the cause; she becomes the pulse of it.And through it all, she remains deeply human. Warm. Grounded. The kind of woman who will hold your hand in silence because she knows words aren’t enough.Lesley Al-Jishi doesn’t live in the past, but she carries it with her — like a compass. Every choice she makes honors the boy she lost, the man she’s raising (yes, Yousif — Amm Joseph is talking about you!), the women who came before her, and the countless ones who’ll come after.She is proof that grief can be both an anchor and a set of wings.I’ve seen powerful people fall apart over far less. But Leslie — she rose, again and again, until the ashes became her armor.And maybe that’s the secret: she never set out to inspire anyone. She just refused to stop moving.From Saudi roots to Bahraini milestones to Marbella’s sun-soaked coastlines, Lesley Al-Jishi remains what she’s always been — unstoppable, unshakable, and utterly unforgettable.This is Lesley Al-Jishi: the fire that forged itself.
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Joseph Tito
Identity & Culture
THE DIVORCE THAT BROKE THE INTERNET
How Sheikha Mahra Al Maktoum Turned Her Broken Marriage Into a Masterclass in Modern PowerThe Instagram post lasted exactly 47 minutes before going viral worldwide."Dear Husband," Sheikha Mahra Al Maktoum typed on July 16, 2024, "As you are occupied with other companions, I hereby declare our divorce. I divorce you, I divorce you, and I divorce you. Take care. Your ex-wife."In less than 50 words, the daughter of Dubai's ruler hadn't just ended her marriage—she'd detonated a centuries-old power dynamic, invoked Islamic law through Instagram, and given roughly 3 billion women worldwide a moment of vicarious satisfaction. The post has since been deleted, but screenshots live forever, especially when they're saved by millions.Here's what most Western media missed: This wasn't just a spurned wife going rogue on social media. This was a calculated power move by someone who understands exactly how modern influence works.The SetupLet's be clear about who we're discussing. Mahra bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum isn't your average royal. Half-Greek, half-Emirati, educated between Dubai and London, she's been walking the tightrope between tradition and modernity since birth. At 30, she runs her own perfume line, commands 500K+ Instagram followers, and manages to be both a devoted mother and a social media force—all while navigating one of the world's most scrutinized royal families.Her (now ex) husband, Sheikh Mana bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is her father's advisor and technically her cousin. Their 2023 wedding was peak Dubai excess—the kind where nobody posts the budget but everyone knows it could fund a small nation's healthcare system.Less than a year later, it was over. Publicly. Brutally. Brilliantly.The Real StorySources in Dubai (who unsurprisingly prefer anonymity) paint a different picture than the "woman scorned" narrative. Mahra had been building her exit strategy for months. The perfume line? Launched weeks before the divorce announcement. The name of her first fragrance? "Divorce." I'm not making this up."She knew exactly what she was doing," says a Dubai-based luxury brand consultant who's worked with several royal family members. "The triple talaq [saying 'I divorce you' three times] is traditionally a male prerogative in Islamic law. For a woman to use it, publicly, on Instagram? That's not emotional. That's revolutionary."The timing was surgical. Posted during peak Middle East social media hours, tagged strategically, worded to go viral. Within hours, she'd transformed from "another Gulf princess" into a global feminist icon—whether she intended to or not.The Business of Being BrokenHere's where it gets interesting. While Western influencers turn divorces into reality shows, Mahra turned hers into a luxury brand. Her perfume "Divorce" sold out in Dubai within 72 hours of launch. The follow-up fragrance? "Moving On." The third? "New Beginnings."This isn't just marketing—it's alchemy. She's taken the most private pain and transformed it into the most public power.The numbers are staggering:Perfume sales up 400% post-divorce announcementInstagram engagement rates that would make Kim Kardashian weepSpeaking requests from every major women's conference globallyA reported book deal worth seven figures"She's done what no royal has done before," explains a Middle Eastern social media analyst. "She's monetized authenticity in a culture that usually pays for silence."The Marbella ConnectionWhich brings us to why Mahra matters to Marbella, beyond the obvious fact that she probably owns property here (the Al Maktoums own property everywhere that matters).Marbella has always been where Middle Eastern royalty comes to be Western—to drink champagne, wear bikinis, and pretend the rules don't apply. But Mahra represents something different: she's bringing Eastern power moves to Western platforms, using Islamic law as a feminist tool, turning tradition into disruption.She's reportedly considering a Marbella boutique for her fragrance line. But more interesting are the whispers about a potential investment in a female-only members club here—a place where divorced women can network, not commiserate. "Think Soho House meets group therapy meets venture capital fund," says someone familiar with the plans.This makes sense. Marbella isn't just where you go to escape your divorce—it's where you go to plan your next act. The Costa del Sol has always been a place for reinvention, where new money can wash away old scandals. For someone like Mahra, it's not a hideaway—it's a laboratory.The Uncomfortable TruthLet's address what everyone's thinking: Is any of this real? Is the divorce final? Does Islamic law even recognize Instagram as a valid platform for religious declarations? Is this all just performance art with a luxury goods tie-in?The answer is: it doesn't matter.What matters is that a 30-year-old woman from one of the world's most patriarchal societies just showed every woman watching that power isn't given—it's taken. And sometimes, it's taken in public, with excellent lighting and a strategic hashtag.Her father, Sheikh Mohammed, hasn't publicly commented. But sources say he's "not entirely displeased" with his daughter's business acumen. After all, Dubai wasn't built on tradition—it was built on ambitious people who understood that controversy, properly managed, is just another word for marketing.What Happens NextThe Marbella boutique, if it happens, won't just sell perfume. Sources suggest it's part of a larger play—a lifestyle brand that speaks to women navigating what she calls "conscious uncoupling with unconscious wealth." Think Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop but with actual money and fewer jade eggs.But here's the real disruption: Mahra is building a business model for modern royal women. No more suffering in silence behind palace walls. No more choosing between tradition and independence. Instead, she's showing that you can honor your heritage while hashtagging your liberation."Every wealthy woman in an unhappy marriage is watching her," says a Marbella-based divorce attorney who's seen a spike in "Mahra-inspired" inquiries. "She's proved you can leave loudly and profit from the noise."The Last WordWhen I reached out to Mahra's team for comment, they sent back a single line: "The Sheikha's fragrances speak for themselves."And maybe that's the point. In a world where every celebrity divorce comes with competing PR narratives and leaked text messages, Mahra Al Maktoum did something radical: she controlled her own story, named her own price, and literally bottled the experience for $250 per ounce.The masculine way to handle divorce? Lawyers, NDAs, and financial settlements. The feminine way? Turn your pain into a product, your breakdown into a breakthrough, and your ex-husband into a marketing strategy.She's not coming to Marbella to hide. She's coming to expand.And honestly? The Costa del Sol could use more women who understand that sometimes the best revenge isn't living well—it's living publicly, profitably, and completely on your own terms.Welcome to Marbella, Sheikha. You're going to fit right in.Joseph Tito is the Editor-in-Chief of Between the Covers and writes the magazine’s unapologetically unhinged “Bitch Fest” advice column. He is currently researching the legal validity of Instagram divorces under Islamic law and accepting early applications for his upcoming divorce-themed fragrance line, tentatively titled “Irreconcilable Differences.”
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Joseph Tito
Bitch Fest
Bitch Fest: Marbella Edition
You write it. I bitch it. We heal (sort of).🪩 Welcome to Bitch FestWelcome to Bitch Fest — Marbella’s new emotional support group disguised as a column.Think of me as your slightly judgmental best friend who always tells you the truth, even when you didn’t ask for it.Here’s how this works: you write in with your chaos, your cringe, your “did that really just happen?” moments — and I respond with brutal honesty, affection, and just enough sarcasm to sting.This isn’t therapy. It’s survival with better lighting.Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that even under the Spanish sun, the mess still shows up — it just tans better here.💌 Letter 1: “Golden Mile Ghosted”Dear Bitch Fest,I met a man at Nobu. Gorgeous. Divorced. Smelled like Tom Ford and said he splits his time between Marbella and London.He sends voice notes that sound like poetry, but every time he’s “back in London,” I don’t hear from him for a week.He told me he’s not ready for labels, but he texts me every night at 11:11.Is this a sign from the universe or a sign I’m an idiot?— Manifesting but MadDear Manifesting,Oh honey. Oh no. Oh absolutely fucking not.“Splits his time between London and Marbella” is code for “has a wife in Kensington and a coke dealer in Puerto Banús.” This man isn’t mysterious — he’s married. Or worse, emotionally constipated with a frequent flyer fetish.Let me paint you a picture: right now, while you’re checking your phone for the fifteenth time today, analyzing that 11:11 timestamp like it’s the Da Vinci Code of dick, he’s in London having missionary sex with someone named Philippa who owns horses and says “darling” like it’s a tax deduction.You know what 11:11 really means? It means he’s consistent about exactly one thing: breadcrumbing you at bedtime. That’s not divine timing — that’s a man with a Google Calendar reminder that says “text the Marbella one.”I’ve been you. I dated a man whose career was “travel.” Cool—he toured the world disappointing gay men. I spent €400 on an outfit for a dinner he canceled by WhatsApp voice note while I was already sitting there.Delete him. Block him. Sage your phone. Burn some palo santo. Hell, burn his memory. Because baby, the only thing worse than a man who won’t commit is a woman who keeps waiting for him to.The universe isn’t testing you. It’s begging you to raise your standards above “texts back sometimes.”💌 Letter 2: “Puente Romano Parenting”Dear Bitch Fest,We came to Marbella for a “family reset.” The kids are sunburned, my husband’s emailing from the cabana, and I’m hiding in the bathroom Googling “can Aperol count as hydration?”The mom at the next table is doing yoga in a bikini and I haven’t meditated since 2014.Am I failing motherhood?— Namaste-ishDear Namaste-ish,First of all, yes — Aperol is hydrating if you believe hard enough. It’s called manifesting electrolytes.Now, let’s talk about bikini yoga mom. You think she’s enlightened? She’s not. She’s disassociating. That’s not inner peace — that’s Xanax and a prayer. I guarantee she went to her car afterward and screamed into a beach towel.Here’s the truth: every “family reset” in Marbella is just rich people discovering you can’t outrun dysfunction — it just gets a tan.Your husband’s not “working remotely,” he’s remotely present.Your kids aren’t feral, they’re just honest. They know this whole charade is bullshit, and they’re acting accordingly.I watched a woman at Trocadero Beach Club yesterday FaceTime her therapist while her kids destroyed €200 worth of calamari. She kept saying, “I’m practicing presence,” while her son practiced violence on his sister. We made eye contact. We both knew.Here’s your permission slip: you don’t need to meditate. You don’t need to journal. You don’t need to pretend that family time in paradise isn’t sometimes a gold-plated nightmare.You need that Aperol, a kids’ club that doesn’t ask questions, and the number of that yoga teacher who really just lets everyone cry for an hour.You’re not failing motherhood. You’re surviving it — with a better view. The only difference between a “good” mother and a “bad” one in Marbella is the SPF level and whether you packed iPads.Pour another drink. The vitamin D will balance it out. That’s science. Probably.💌 Letter 3: “Group Chat Hell”Dear Bitch Fest,Every Marbella WhatsApp group is like emotional CrossFit.If I don’t respond within five minutes, someone adds a passive-aggressive emoji.I left the group once and got added back ten minutes later.Is there any escape?— Emoji OverloadDear Emoji,Oh God, you joined one of those groups. Let me guess the cast:Sharon, who sells “healing crystals” (it’s meth energy, not amethyst).Jennifer, who posts daily affirmations at 6 a.m. (cocaine or insomnia — place your bets).Maria, who “doesn’t do drama” but screenshots everything.That one woman who replies to every message with a voice note longer than a podcast episode.The admin who has “Founder / CEO / Spiritual Warrior” in her bio but actually just day-drinks and does damage control.These groups are where optimism goes to die. It starts with “sisterhood” and ends with someone crying about a borrowed Hermès bag that came back “with energy.”I was in one. Once. Someone asked if anyone knew a good therapist. Sixteen women recommended sound baths, and one tried to sell her a course on “womb wisdom.” I said, “maybe try an actual licensed psychologist,” and got removed for “negative vibrations.”You can’t leave gracefully. You can’t leave at all. These groups are the Hotel California of estrogen — you can check out, but your notifications never leave.Here’s what you do:Mute for 365 days.Change your profile pic to something spiritual (sunset, yoga pose, glass of wine).Never respond, but occasionally heart-react to maintain proof of life.If anyone asks where you’ve been, say “soul-searching.” They’ll assume rehab or Ibiza — both are more respectable than admitting you just couldn’t take another sunrise quote from Eckhart Tolle.And start your own group: “Women Who Understand That Sometimes Life Is Just Shit And That’s Okay.”Entry requirements: at least one public crying incident, no vision boards, and wine counts as a food group.💋 The Ugly Beautiful TruthWe all came to Marbella for the same reason — we thought geographical distance from our problems meant emotional distance too.Surprise, bitch: your issues got upgraded to first class and followed you here.After three years, two divorces (not mine, but I was heavily involved), and approximately €47,000 in “healing experiences,” I’ve realized something:We’re all just damaged goods in better lighting.And that’s perfect.Because the women who admit they’re a mess in Marbella? Those are my people.The ones crying in their G-Wagons at school pickup.The ones who brought their therapist’s number to brunch “just in case.”The ones who moved here for a fresh start and ended up fresh out of fucks to give.You know why I started this column?Because I got tired of pretending my reinvention was working.It wasn’t. Still isn’t.I’m typing this in yesterday’s dress at 3 p.m., slightly buzzed, highly caffeinated, and my biggest achievement today was not texting my ex back.Tomorrow, I’ll probably do better. Or worse.Either way, I’ll do it in paradise — with excellent bone structure and questionable judgment.That’s the Marbella way.💌 Send Me Your DamageGot a confession? A crisis? Caught your husband texting someone saved as “Gym”?Don’t text your ex. Don’t drunk-DM. Send me your damage.📧 bitchfest@btcmag.comSubject line: “Help Me, Joseph,” “Am I The Asshole?” — or just keyboard smash. I’ll understand.The Joseph Tito Guarantee:I’ll be meaner than your inner critic but kinder than your mother-in-law.I’ll tell you the truth you need to hear, wrapped in the joke you need to laugh at.And I will never — ever — suggest meditation as a solution.Because babe, if deep breathing actually fixed things, we’d all be enlightened by now instead of entitled.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The Woman Who Wouldn't Giggle: Elvira Caria's Four Decades of Refusing to Play Nice
After 40 years of fighting for her voice in broadcasting, Elvira Caria lost the only title that ever mattered to her: Matthew's momThere's a street named after Elvira Caria in Vaughan. She didn't pay for it, she'll tell you right away. Awards line her walls—forty years' worth of recognition for lifting up her community, for being the voice that shows up at every damn event with her phone and her genuine give-a-shit attitude.But when I meet her at The Roost Café on a grey autumn morning, she says the work that matters most is the stuff nobody sees."My real satisfactory work?" She pauses, weighing whether to trust me with this. "I help young girls escape human trafficking. You can't put that on social media."This is Elvira Caria: the woman who refused to be radio's giggling fool, who chose late-night shifts over morning show glory so she could be home when her son's school bus arrived, who now sits across from me one year after burying that same son at 25."I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the community," she says. And she means it literally.The Day She Found Her Voice by Refusing to Use ItPicture this: a young Elvira in a radio control room, told by a well-known male broadcaster that her job was to giggle. To be the pretty voice that makes him sound better."I don't do giggling fool," she says now, decades later, the Southern Italian fire still in her voice.She stopped showing up to giggle on cue. Got fired on a Friday. Instead of folding, she handed her termination papers back: "If you can find a better reason to fire me on Monday, I'll accept it. If not, I'm coming back."Monday passed. So did Tuesday. By Friday she expected another dismissal—everyone fires on Fridays. But a month later the man who told her to giggle was gone. Elvira stayed for six more years."I found my value voice," she says. "I wasn't going to bend for someone else's value."The Choice That Looked Like SacrificeAt the height of her career, being groomed for a morning show at one of Canada's top stations, Elvira walked away."Nobody quits Rock Radio," her boss said."Well, I just did."She took the shifts nobody wanted—weekends, evenings, 3 a.m. hits at Yonge and Dundas. People called it sacrifice. She calls it choice."While others were sleeping, I was talking to the people we now call homeless. Nobody wakes up saying, I want to be on the streets when I grow up. Nobody."The choice meant she was home when Matthew got off the school bus. It meant knowing his friends, his teachers, his world. For 25 years, it meant being Matthew's mom first, Elvira Caria second.The Irony That Breaks YouHere's the part that will gut you: she spent decades insisting she was more than just Matthew's mom. She was a broadcaster, a journalist, a voice for the voiceless. She built a career on authenticity when authenticity could get you fired.And then, in 2024, Matthew was gone— twenty-five years old and on the edge of everything. Suddenly all Elvira wanted was the one title that had been stripped away."Matthew never saw me as a radio announcer," she says, voice steady, eyes somewhere else. "He saw me as his mom. And that's all he cared about."The Part Where She Stops Pretending Everything's FineLet's talk about not getting out of bed. About hygiene being optional when grief is bone-deep.Her sister-in-law was the one who finally broke through: "They need you. My boys need you! You're more than their Zia." So Elvira took small steps. A shower became a victory. Coloring her hair, an achievement. Looking in the mirror and trying to recognize whoever stared back."I'm mad at God," she admits. "People say everything happens for a reason. What's the fucking reason? Why take away a kid who never did anything wrong, who was just starting his life?"The Community That Saved Her When Awards Couldn'tTen people can tell Elvira she's wonderful. One critic cuts deeper at 3 a.m. That's human.She'll admit some awards now feel hollow—accolades in a season of loss. The recognition doesn't heal the absence.But the community? They showed up in ways that mattered. The woman from her coffee shop who just sat with her, no words needed. The neighbor who mowed her lawn without asking, week after week, because grief means grass keeps growing when you can't. The radio colleague who took her shifts without question when she couldn't form words, let alone broadcast them. The mothers from Matthew's old baseball team who still text her his jersey number on game days. Or the Baseball league who named an umpire award after him."Someone left groceries at my door every Tuesday for three months," she tells me. "Never found out who. Just bags of real food—not casseroles, not sympathy lasagna—but the exact brands I buy. Someone paid attention to what was in my cart before. That's community."The vigils, the legacy fund in Matthew's name, the quiet notes slipped under her door—that's what kept her standing."The real work happens in shadows," she says. "Helping a girl escape trafficking. Watching her graduate two years later. That's when I think—okay, maybe I've done enough to meet my maker."The Wisdom of Not Giving a FuckAfter decades of answering every critic, she's learned the most radical act: indifference."You don't have to react to everything," she says. "Not everything requires an explanation."She still hates small talk, still loves a stage. The influencer economy baffles her. "People think having a phone makes them reporters. Broadcasting is an accreditation—you're trained how to interview, how to fact-check, how to smell bullshit."Who She Is NowA year later, she's still figuring it out. Still showing up at community events with her phone and her give-a-shit intact. Still ironing her underwear (yes, really) because some control is better than none.The street sign with her name stands in Vaughan, but she lives in the in-between—between public recognition and private purpose, between the veteran broadcaster and the grieving mother."The evil grows faster than good," she says. "We're always catching up."So she keeps going. Not because grief eases—it doesn't. Not because she's found a new purpose—she hasn't. But because stopping isn't her style.She refused to giggle back then. She refuses to perform now. And maybe that's the lesson: sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is keep showing up, even when you don't know why you're still here. Especially then.Elvira Caria continues to support multiple charities across the GTA while maintaining her broadcasting career. She's still mad at God, still helping girls escape trafficking, still learning who she is now. She does not need your sympathy. She might need you to know that grief has no timeline, authenticity isn't content, and sometimes the bravest thing you can do is refuse to play along.
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Joseph Tito
Spotlight
The Dentist Is Between My Legs: Bif Naked on Heart Surgery, Picking Felons, and Why She's Just Getting Started at 54
The punk icon who found euphoria on an operating table talks death doulas, divorce gratitude, and why her failing marriage hurt more than cancerBy Joseph Tito | Between the Covers | November 2025Bif Naked is cutting up her dog's food with her hands when I ask how it feels to be a legend.She looks at me like I've asked her to explain quantum physics in Swahili. "I'm a dog mom," she says, and goes back to mincing. Her fingers work methodically, tearing dog food into smaller and smaller pieces. The woman who once spit on audiences from punk stages now performs this daily ritual of care with the focus of a surgeon.This is going to be that kind of conversation—where every expectation gets shredded like dog food.The Operating Table High"So I was wide awake," Bif says, settling into her Toronto condo couch, miniskirt riding up as she crosses her legs. She's talking about her heart surgery like most people describe a spa day. "They thread a little camera through your leg all the way to your heart, and they can see what they're doing on the screen."She leans forward, eyes bright with the memory. "The surgeon is wearing a pineapple hat—like, the surgical hat had cartoon pineapples on it. And they're listening to William Shatner singing. Have you ever heard him sing? Who knew this album existed?"This is a woman describing having a hole in her heart closed with what she calls "a little umbrella device," conscious the entire time, finding it all hilarious and profound in equal measure. Her voice gets almost reverent: "I thought, this is the coolest shit ever. How is it possible that in this lifetime, I can listen to these people talking about their day jobs, which is fixing my stupid heart?"Then comes the moment that gives this article its title. They need to inject Novocaine into her leg to make the incision. You know that heavy, aching feeling from the dentist?"I said, 'Oh! It feels like the dentist is between my legs.'"She covers her face, laughing and mortified simultaneously. "The nurses started howling. This patient is on the table, making what they think is dirty talk. But I just meant—" she gestures helplessly "—the Novocaine!"Her whole body shakes with laughter now. "Of course that's what I said. How fucking funny is that?"God's Rejection and Other Love Stories"God is not going to choose me for whatever reason," she says, the laughter suddenly gone. "I'm going to stay here on earth and have to deal with it. Because I'm not learning my lessons yet."The shift in energy is palpable. She's talking about her pattern now—the violent men, the criminal boyfriends, the marriages to liars. "If there's a wrong guy, send him my way. If he is a criminal, if he's a violent felon, send him my way. I'm going to fall in love with that idiot every time."She delivers this like a weather report, no self-pity, just fact. When I ask why she got divorced, she doesn't hesitate: "Because I married liars." Then, catching herself: "But I have to look at what my fault was."She discovered what healthy relationships actually look like at 54. Fifty-four. After two failed marriages, cancer, and enough medical trauma to kill most people twice. "I had no idea relationships were supposed to be healthy," she says, and the wonderment in her voice is genuine. "I think that I've always been chasing true love. I'll never give up on love, ever."The contradiction sits there between us: the woman who picks monsters still believes in fairy tales."My emotional crisis of my failing marriage trumped my cancer experience."She says this so matter-of-factly that I almost miss it. The dissolution of her marriage during treatment hurt more than the actual cancer. Her hands, which had been still, start moving again—straightening pillows, adjusting her jewelry."Which was good," she adds quickly, "because it forced me to throw myself into volunteering."The man who married a rock star got a cancer patient instead, couldn't handle the plot twist. Now she trains as a death doula, works in palliative care. "If I was told tomorrow that I could not be a performer anymore," she says, her voice steady, "I think I would go into hospital administration."The Stage She Was Always SeekingBefore Bif Naked existed, there was a theatre kid at the University of Winnipeg who'd taken ballet for 13 years. She demonstrates a position, her leg extending with muscle memory from decades ago. "I wanted to be an actress and a ballet star."Then a drummer named Brett needed a singer. Suddenly she had a vehicle for all her poetry, all her rage about El Salvador and Indigenous treatment and misogyny. Whether it was ballet slippers or combat boots, she was always searching for a stage—just took her a while to find the right one."I got to stand up there. I got to spit on the audience. I got to say, fuck you, you can't objectify me." Her voice rises with the memory, that old fire flickering. "I didn't even have to sing very well. And believe me, I could not. I sounded like a dying cat."She pauses, grins. "And I don't mean the band Garbage."They opened for DOA. NoMeansNo. Bad Religion. She dropped out of university, and here's the kicker—"I'm still waiting to go back to school," she laughs, thirty-something years later, like she might actually do it.The same rage that fueled her screaming about El Salvador now targets Doug Ford's Ontario. "I couldn't figure out why I moved here," she says. "Then Ford got elected and I thought, 'Oh. I'm here to use my big mouth.'"The Children She'll Never Have (Or Will She?)When she cuts up that dog food with such maternal precision, I have to ask about kids. Her whole body language shifts—shoulders dropping, a softness creeping in."My ovaries were taken out at 36. So breast cancer didn't just cut up my tit." She says this with the same directness she uses for everything else, but her hand unconsciously moves to her stomach. "I've been in menopause since I was 36 years of age."People ask about adoption—she is, after all, adopted herself. The sarcasm returns, protective: "Oh yeah, let me get right on that. Let me turn around as a divorcee who's working nonstop as a self-employed artist in Canada and get right on the adoption train."But then, unexpectedly: "Now in my mid-50s? Yeah, I suppose I am ready."The possibility hangs there. Not this year. But the door isn't closed.Tina Turner's Miniskirt Ministry"I look to women like Tina Turner," she says, smoothing her miniskirt with deliberate intention. "Tina Turner didn't start playing stadiums till she was in her 50s."At 54, she genuinely believes she's just getting started. The documentary premiering across Canada this month (November 12 in Toronto, November 4 in Vancouver). The album finally released after she shelved it during the George Floyd protests because "the world didn't need a fucking Bif Naked record" during that summer of unrest."The sky is the limit," she says, and means it.When I ask who she's fighting for now, what her voice stands for at 54, she barely breathes before answering."When I was singing 'Tell On You' on my first record, I wasn't the only girl who was sexually assaulted," she says, her voice dropping to something harder, older. "I was the only girl with a microphone."The room goes quiet. Even the dog stops moving.She calls herself "a square" now—no cocaine, no partying. "I can be thoughtful and intelligent. I can try very hard to be a voice for the voiceless."But square doesn't mean silent. She's angrier about politics than ever, advocating for animals, healthcare inequality, LGBTQ+ rights rollbacks."Unfortunately," she says with a grin that's pure punk rock, "I'm still the one holding the mic."What's Next Is What She WantsThey're making a feature film about her life. The documentary's touring. When I ask what's next, she almost defaults to "that's a Peter question"—her manager's domain—then catches herself, takes ownership."We're working on the feature film based on the book."But really, what's next is whatever the fuck she wants. She's earned that.I ask what she'd tell a young girl starting out in music today. She thinks, really thinks, her face cycling through decades of memory."Never take it personally. Never take anything personally, no matter what."Then she says something that makes me stop writing: "There's room for everybody."This from a woman who had to claw for every inch of space. Who quit drinking partly to avoid being "misinterpreted" by men who'd use any excuse to discredit her. Who's been assaulted, dismissed, divorced, nearly killed."Anybody can make music on their computer, anybody can learn piano on YouTube, anybody can upload a song and send it to their nona," she continues, and she means it. "That's actually a gift."As I'm leaving, she's back to cutting up dog food, this ritualistic care that anchors her. I think about what she said about God not choosing her yet, about having to stay here and deal with it.But watching her hands work—the same hands that punched stage divers, that held microphones during cancer treatment, that reached for violent men who couldn't love her back—I realize something.She keeps saying she hasn't learned her lessons. But maybe she has. Maybe the lesson is you can marry liars and still believe in love. You can lose your ovaries at 36 and mother the whole world anyway. You can tell your surgical team the dentist is between your legs and still become a legend.She looks up from the dog bowl, catches me staring."I wasn't the only girl who was sexually assaulted," she says again, quieter this time but somehow louder. "I was the only girl with a microphone."Bif Naked's documentary tours Canada this month. Her album "Champion" is available now. She still wears miniskirts and heels. She's just getting started.
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