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Forbes
a day ago
- Health
- Forbes
Female Founders Solve Silent Epidemics Sabotaging Women
You're not crazy. Your body, your skin, your brain—they're not lying to you. But if you're a woman in America, chances are you've been told for decades that your symptoms are "just stress," your pain is "normal," and your trauma is "in the past." That misdiagnosis doesn't just cost confidence. It costs time, money, health, and in many cases, hope. But a growing grassroots movement, led by women who've been failed by the system themselves, is shining a light on what institutions have long ignored: the silent, invisible epidemics that sabotage women's lives from childhood through adulthood. "We're not taught how the female brain learns, heals, or reacts to trauma. We're taught to adapt to systems that were never designed for us," says Dr. Rebecca Troy, founder of Retrain the Dyslexic Brain. Although her mission didn't begin with her daughter, her life's work has certainly been driven by her daughter. She remembers watching her daughter cry tears of frustration trying to sound out words. Despite being a bright and creative child, she struggled to read and write, risking being labeled 'lazy' or 'behind' by teachers. What educators didn't realize was that her daughter, like 1 in 5 children in America, was dyslexic, undiagnosed, unsupported, and slipping through the cracks. Drawing on decades of rigorous research into neuroscience and literacy development, combined with thousands of clinical hours observing real changes in children's behavior, Dr. Troy turned her findings into a program now used by thousands of parents globally. The results? Children improving 30 to 50 percentile points in reading within months, using 10-minute daily exercises led by parents. 'It's not a learning disability, it's a learning difference,' says Dr. Troy. 'But the system is designed for one kind of learner. And that learner usually isn't female.' Dyslexia is one of the most common neurodevelopmental conditions in children, yet studies have shown a persistent gender gap in diagnosis and intervention. Yet girls are far less likely than boys to be referred for reading support, even when they demonstrate the same level of difficulty. Researchers suggest this stems from the fact that boys often externalize frustration while girls internalize it, leading to fewer referrals and missed diagnoses. Dr. Troy believes this pattern reflects a broader societal blind spot: 'Girls aren't 'disruptive' when they struggle. They internalize it. So the suffering goes underground until it erupts as anxiety, low self-worth, or depression.' She's seen this cycle again and again: young girls adapting, coping, hiding and then hitting a wall in adulthood, often when their own children begin to struggle. That's exactly what happened in her own home. After seeing similar struggles and patterns in her young daughter, she turned to neuroscience for answers. What she discovered was that targeted, daily brain exercises could dramatically improve reading outcomes, not in years, but in months. She has also personally implemented the methods with her son, who'd also shown risk signs for reading delay. Within months, he jumped from completely unable to connect letters and sounds to confidently picking up books. 'It was groundbreaking to see how malleable the brain could be,' she says. 'I wanted to create a tool to help children overcome reading challenges, not just cope with them.' 'We've been waiting on the school system to change,' Troy says. 'But what if moms could be the intervention?' This pattern of quiet suffering, masked symptoms, and misdiagnosis extends far beyond the classroom. In the world of skincare, similar dynamics are playing out, especially for women navigating persistent skin conditions without answers. 'I was dismissed for years,' shares Dawn Jett, a licensed esthetician and founder of Spruce Micro. 'Doctors didn't explain anything. They just handed me products and suggested ineffective treatments that actually made the pigment worse.' Jett experienced chronic inflammation and hyperpigmentation, conditions often labeled 'cosmetic' by healthcare providers. But their impact goes far deeper. 'Hyperpigmentation isn't just about melanin. It's inflammation. It's trauma,' she says. 'And when you're not given answers, it creates deep psychological scars.' Her clients often carry years of shame and confusion, having been oversold with treatments and products that underdeliver and often make the pigment worse. Dawn's approach is different: she educates clients on the biology behind their symptoms and develops personalized skincare protocols to restore not just skin, but confidence. 'When you don't recognize yourself in the mirror,' Jett says, 'it's not about vanity. It's about identity.' Meanwhile, in the world of mental health and personal development, Dr. Danisha Keating has made it her mission to help women heal from invisible wounds. As someone who aged out of foster care and navigated homelessness from 18-24 years old and raised her siblings while earning her PhD, Keating understands the toll of unresolved trauma. Her work focuses on emotional regulation and breaking generational cycles for women who grew up in instability. 'Healing doesn't happen through mindset alone,' she says. 'It happens through structure.' Her programs offer practical systems to help women stop recreating chaos in their lives and build safety through routine, consistency, and community support. Her message aligns with a growing body of research that emphasizes the unique ways women internalize stress and trauma. A 2018 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that women are more likely to experience interpersonal traumas, such as sexual abuse, and to develop internalizing disorders like anxiety and depression in response. 'Women are constantly told how to show up but rarely asked how they want to be seen,' says Celeste Moore, a luxury image strategist who has spent nearly two decades helping high-performing women align their presence with their identity, authority, and goals. 'Too often, they wake up one day and realize their wardrobe no longer reflects who they've become.' Many of Moore's clients, founders, executives, and speakers were taught to downplay their visual presence. In classrooms, corporate offices, and even healthcare settings, they learned to play it safe, to dress for approval rather than alignment. The cost? Missed opportunities, diluted authority, and an unspoken disconnect between their expertise and the way they're perceived. 'Appearance is a language,' Moore explains. 'When it's out of sync with who you are or where you're going, it creates a kind of silent tension, one that erodes confidence over time.' But when a woman's image is in full alignment, it becomes a strategic asset. It supports her nervous system, sharpens her presence, and restores her command over how she engages in high-stakes spaces. 'Personal style isn't just clothing. It's how you communicate without words, how you self-regulate, how you re-enter a room after life has tested you,' she says. Through precision body architecture analysis, color strategy, wardrobe refinement, and custom tailoring, Moore equips her clients to reclaim not just their aesthetic—but their agency. 'When a woman wears something that fits who she is physically, emotionally, and energetically her entire nervous system exhales,' Moore adds. 'That shift changes how she negotiates, leads, and moves through the world.' What links all four of these issues, dyslexia, hyperpigmentation, trauma, and identity through appearance, is not just that they disproportionately affect women. It's that they're chronic, compounding, and largely invisible until they spiral into crisis. 'We think of trauma as one big event,' Dr. Troy explains. 'But for many women, it's years of microtraumas: being told you're not trying hard enough, being dismissed by a doctor, feeling like your body is broken because it doesn't respond like someone else's.' Rather than waiting for institutional systems to catch up, these women are creating new frameworks. What sets them apart is not just their professional credentials, but their lived experience. They built what they needed when they couldn't find it. In Dr. Troy's case, the answer was empowering parents, especially mothers, with neuroscience-based tools they can use at home. Her 10- to 15-minute daily exercises don't require special training, just consistency. And the results speak for themselves: percentile gains of 30 to 50 points, improved confidence, and parents who go from helpless to hopeful. 'When parents understand what's going on in their child's brain,' she says, 'they stop blaming themselves. And they stop blaming their kids. They become the hero instead of the bystander.' Across learning, skin, mental health, and even self-image, there's a shared undercurrent: women taking control of their healing, their identities, and their futures. 'Most of the solutions out there aren't designed for us,' Troy says. 'But when women create their own systems? That's when things change.' The systems may still be catching up, but the revolution has already begun, quietly, in homes, clinics, and communities. Led not by institutions, but by the very women those systems overlooked. And this time, the epidemics won't stay silent.
CTV News
5 days ago
- General
- CTV News
Meet the guerrilla gardeners transforming Vancouver's urban landscape
Keegan Morrison is working to transform Vancouver's urban streets with projects of both the professional and guerrilla variety. 'Oh, so you're the flower guy,' a shopkeeper exclaimed after finding Keegan Morrison tending to the blooms in front of his Vancouver store, a site once barren and boring. Morrison, like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime, was busted. Just weeks prior, the self-professed nature fanatic had taken to the streets armed with a spice jar crammed with native wildflower seeds. He is one of a growing group of renegade gardeners revamping Vancouver's urban landscape through guerrilla gardening, a grassroots movement planting flowers, greenery and edible plants in neglected or abandoned areas throughout the city. 'I'm kind of obsessed with flowers and native vegetation,' says Morrison. 'For me, it just makes a lot of sense to go around and add some color and some ecological function to the areas that I think are being underutilized.' Morrison, who runs Vancouver landscape company Wild Spaces Land Care, was looking for ways to repurpose leftover seeds when the thought to start guerrilla gardening first arose. 'As I was driving around from project to project, I'd see all these areas that were abandoned or not being used. I just started sprinkling seeds as I was travelling around, and it wasn't long before I started seeing the results,' he says. His covert endeavours might yield charming results, but Morrison says the beautification of the neighbourhood is more of a byproduct of actions than their end goal. Morrison's primary objective is to provide a safe space for pollinators, local birds, and the wildlife that would have once thrived undisturbed on Vancouver's land, he says. 'We've taken so much away from nature. We've taken the native plants, and with it so much beauty and ecological function, and we've just replaced what was once there with ecologically useless vegetation spaces,' he says. When Morrison filled shakers with rice husks and flower seeds and listed them on his website as a 'weapon for transforming urban landscapes,' he was surprised when they sold out instantly. One eager buyer, a local florist and friend of Morrison's, even bought some in bulk to sell on to her own guerrilla gardening-curious clientele. He realized he had joined a community that was already thriving with people who were taking it upon themselves to beautify derelict spaces not just in Vancouver, but in other major cities across the world. Sometimes legally, oftentimes not. Vancouver author David Tracy published a book on the matter, titled Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto, almost 10 years ago. Like Morrison, his exploits had stemmed from having a surplus of seeds that simply needed getting rid of. Tracy had been volunteering at a community garden in the Strathcona neighbourhood when an organic nursery, due to go out of business, generously donated over 50 heritage apple tree saplings. 'We had no room for all these apple trees, and so somehow it began a discussion within the community of whether or not we should just put them onto the street,' he says, describing how the mission had begun with Hawks Avenue, a 'problem street' that had needed some TLC for quite some time. Tracy says the guerilla gardening community is typically split into two camps. There are the people who prefer to rally as an army so knowledge, tips and tricks can be shared, and for the social aspect of it. Hobbies are typically enjoyed more when embarked on with others, Tracy says, especially operations such as this one. 'You're doing something clandestine. Something that's a little bit subversive, maybe even illegal. It's good to have allies in that.' Then there are the others, he explains, the lone operative types. 'They see that little patch that used to be barren or garbage strewn, and now it's got sunflowers and daisies growing in it. That's just one small bit of appreciation for a job well done that they don't share with anybody, which somehow makes it even more … appealing,' he says. As far as legalities go, the City of Vancouver has assured it is on board with the community pruning public land, providing the gardener follows the city's bylaws and the planting meets its requirements. Unauthorized gardening can be considered encroachment for a number of reasons. If it alters city land without approval, for example, or if it creates safety risks or conflicts with upcoming development plans. The additions also shouldn't harm the ecosystem, or interfere with the current landscaping taking place in parks and natural areas. 'The City of Vancouver appreciates the creativity and community spirit behind guerrilla gardening,' said spokesperson Doug Thomas. 'We share residents' interest in greening urban spaces and encourage safe, sustainable ways to do so.' Morrison says the shopkeepers who gathered around him that summer afternoon were 'super excited' to see and meet him, because they had long wondered about the mysterious man behind the flourishing secret garden. They wanted to thank him, he says, for beautifying a spot that few had had the patience, wherewithal, guts or knowledge to tackle before. For anyone who has the urge to get involved themselves, Morrison recommends conducting research to better understand the plants that will grow best together and will sprout up successfully even with little care. The next step is simple, he says. 'Just get out there, and start dropping seeds.'
Fox News
10-08-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Bernie Sanders addresses whether he'll run in 2028
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., addressed whether he will run for president again in 2028 during an interview that aired Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." "Let's not worry about that," he told host Dana Bash. "I am going to be 84 years of age next month, as a matter of fact. I think that speaks for itself." Sanders said that "what is more important" is educating, organizing and giving "working-class people an agenda" to understand that "we can, in fact, provide a decent standard of living for all our people." Bash suggested to Sanders that without leadership, a "very hungry, energized base with an idea of what they want" will not evoke change. The senator remained steadfast that "strong grassroots movements will bring forth the appropriate leadership." He did not want to name anyone he supports politically to "take up" what Bash called "the Bernie Sanders mantel." Sanders ran for president during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. He has been conducting a "Fighting Oligarchy Tour" around the U.S. for much of this year. On Sunday, Sanders is in Asheville, North Carolina. The venue for the tour stop had to be changed from one that holds 2,400 to one that seats about 7,200, Blue Ridge Public Radio reported.
Irish Times
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Three arrested at Dublin rally over Government's attitude to immigration and homelessness
Three men were arrested at a rally outside the GPO in Dublin city centre on Wednesday afternoon. Organisers of the gathering were protesting what they described as the Government's attitude to immigration and homelessness . The three men, who were aged between their late teens and late 50s, were taken to a Garda station in Dublin. They were subsequently charged and will appear before the courts at a later date. An Garda Síochána said investigations into the incident, which took place at 1.30pm, are ongoing. The group of approximately 50 people moved from the GPO to Kildare Street, near Leinster House, where they set up camps behind barricades. READ MORE One of the protesters, John, a 63-year-old man who lives in Co Donegal, sadi he organised the rally as a 'non-political grassroots movement' to protest against the Government's attitude to homelessness and immigration. He said the group was formed because of the record levels of homelessness recorded in the State this year. [ Homelessness: Number of people in emergency accommodation rises to new high of 15,747 Opens in new window ] John said he is not opposed to immigrants per se; 'We're not saying they are the problem, we're saying the Government is the problem. There's immigrants coming in here and on a humanitarian level alone it's wrong because they're put into tents along the canals. They don't want that, we certainly don't want to see them suffering. But we don't want to see the Irish suffering. 'House the Irish. House the immigrants, but house the Irish first,' he said. Several participants who did not want to be identified said they were also homeless, or had experienced homelessness in the past. One young man said his time being homeless was 'not a nice experience, to know that my Government doesn't really give a toss about us'. The participants connected online on social media, YouTube and through word of mouth. 16/07/2025 - A Large Garda operation in place for an anti immigration protest which started at Dublins GPO before heading for the Merrion Square side of the Dail and Government Buildings. Photograph: Alan Betson / The Irish Times As rebel ballads played over a speaker amid a sea of Tricolour flags, a young man with a megaphone said: 'The youth have no future, the youth will never be able to live in this country and we will emigrate off.' The group is planning to continue the rally overnight and into Thursday morning to highlight the homelessness crisis for 'Irish people'. Several tents with cookout stoves were erected in the afternoon.
CBC
11-06-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Is Ford's government conservative enough? One group says no
Doug Ford is facing a fresh call from within his party to be more fiscally conservative. As CBC's Mike Crawley explains, this comes from an anonymous group describing itself as a grassroots movement of conservatives who want change in the province.
