As an intense romantic, I love nothing more than reading a compelling love story – and when the story is true, that’s even better!  One of my favorite stories chronicled…

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Among all the various inner qualities we need right now, patience probably ranks right up there near the top. I know I need it.

We can feel impatient about a host of things today, from the boredom of sheltering-in-place to being unable to freely pursue all the things we value. We could be impatient or unhappy with how the pandemic itself has been dealt with. We can impatiently miss our loved ones, our social lives, our work and our usual recreation, among the many dissatisfactions available to us at the moment. 

The Baha’i teachings call on each of us to develop the virtue of patience: “O Son of Man! For everything there is a sign. The sign of love is fortitude under My decree and patience under My trials.” – Baha’u’llah, The Hidden Words

So, to try and work through my own impatient pandemic frustrations I have taken to reading about and studying the lives of some very admirable people, who had it much, much worse.  

Let me tell you about a woman whose long life of patience and perseverance has to rank among the most enduring and noble examples ever – Bahiyyih Khanum, the daughter of Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith. 

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Born in Iran in 1846, Bahiyyih Khanum was raised by Baha’u’llah and his wife Navvab in one of the wealthier families of Tehran. She spent the early years of her childhood playing in beautiful gardens with her older brother Abdu’l-Baha, and going to school where she learned Arabic, Persian and Turkish, receiving a formal education unlike most other girls during that time. She also grew up in a tradition of helping and serving others, influenced by her parents’ well-known devotion to society’s most disadvantaged people, indicated by their informal titles, “Mother and Father of the Poor.” 

The years immediately preceding and following her birth were also the first years of the Babi Faith, the millennial spiritual movement that took Persia by storm in the 1840s. Her father Baha’u’llah involved himself in that movement from the beginning through correspondence with the Bab, its founder.  

The Bab’s progressive teachings soon stirred up the entire nation, alarming the orthodox clerical leaders and the government. With their ties to power the clerics sought to extinguish this revolution of thought and faith. A wave of oppression soon washed over everyone associated with the Bab, so extreme in its violent implementation that accounts reached the chronicles of the West, especially after the Bab himself was martyred by a government firing squad in 1850. 

Because he was identified as a Babi leader, the Persian authorities imprisoned Baha’u’llah in Tehran’s notorious, “black pit,” called the Siyah-Chal, in 1852. At the same time his family was stripped of their riches and properties. Baha’u’llah’s wife and children became homeless in a single day. They did not know from one moment to the next whether Baha’u’llah would be executed, the fate so many other Babis had already faced. After four months of torturous confinement, Baha’u’llah was released and exiled to Baghdad. The family, with insufficient attire and few possessions, made the long journey on foot and by mule in the winter over snow-topped mountains to Iraq.  

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Thus began the 80 years of Bahiyyih Khanum’s remaining life, living in exile, poverty, and imprisonment. After a number of years in Baghdad, it became evident to many close to him that Baha’u’llah was the messenger of God as foretold by the Bab. His children, all under 10, recognized Baha’u’llah’s station and declared their loyalty and devotion to him. 

In 1863 Baha’u’llah announced his new Faith publicly. As his reputation for deep spiritual insight and wisdom grew and his teachings spread, people of all kinds flocked to him and adopted the progressive principles of his Faith. Despite the danger of persecution, thousands became Baha’is. Once more the Faith grew rapidly, at an alarming rate to the enemies of the Faith, who thought they had sufficiently suppressed it. Again the unfounded fears of the Persian and Turkish governments incited by the religious authorities caused them to further banish Baha’u’llah, his family and some core believers, to try to crush the Baha’i Faith. 

From Baghdad they were exiled and imprisoned three more times, the last to the prison city of Akka, in Palestine (now Israel). Considered the worst prison in the world at the time, its inhabitants were not expected to live more than a year, which made it a death sentence. His family, imprisoned with him, suffered severe hardships. However, Baha’u’llah lived 24 years there, before passing away in 1892. 

Bahiyyih Khanum and her beloved brother Abdu’l-Baha, survived as well, to be freed in their later years when the Ottoman Empire fell apart. Abdu’l-Baha, named by Baha’u’llah as his successor, became the head of his father’s Faith for the next 29 years, until his passing in 1921.

So Bahiyyih Khanum only had six years of childhood, of what we would consider a normal life. She endured her remaining eighty years while facing the greatest imaginable difficulties with a universally-acknowledged nobility, dignity and calmness. In spite of the deplorable living conditions, the frequent lack of potable water, a poverty sometimes so acute her mother had to give her a handful of flour as her sole daily sustenance, and the constant persecution by the authorities, Bahiyyih Khanum persisted patiently. She prevailed through the constant threats on Baha’u’llah’s life and the several unsuccessful attempts that were actually made. She faced the tragic death of her beloved younger brother, Mirza Midhi, while the family was imprisoned. All these and more were her lot in life.

“The Greatest Holy Leaf,” the title given to his daughter Bahiyyih Khanum by Baha’u’llah, exemplified her uncommon attitude about patience. That rare quality, developed through dire tests and trials, can best be described by reading her own advice on the subject:

“… We ought to never be known to complain or lament. It is not that we would “make the best of things” but that we may find in everything, even in calamity, the gems of enduring wisdom. We ought never be impatient. We ought be as incapable of impatience as one would be of revolt. This not being so much long-suffering as quiet awareness of the forces that operate in the hours of dark or years of waiting and inactivity. Always we ought to move with the larger rhythm, the wider sweep, towards our ultimate goal, in that complete acquiescence, that perfect chord which underlies the spirit of the Faith itself.” – Bahiyyih Khanum

I leave it to you to contemplate these powerful thoughts, and hope they give you, as they have given me, a light on how to live under difficulties.

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‘Corsets and Romance: Rediscover Passion, and Master the Art of Attracting Love’ is set for a new marketing campaign

HALIFAX, NS, Oct. 3, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Lynn Sorge, PhD, wants to help those who become so unhappy in their relationship that even if they do recognize the cause, they have no idea of how to repair it, and where to begin. She also wants to help those who do not have a soul mate or loving partner in their lives, and are suffering from loneliness by laying out the means to find a partner without going online at all, instead drawing upon everyday occurrences to meet and get to know that someone special.

In “Corsets and Romance: Rediscover Passion, and Master the Art of Attracting Love”(published by Balboa Press in August 2022), Sorge presents a two-part story and guide that helps couples rediscover passion and romance, and leads singles of all ages to find lasting love. This book is divided into two parts. The first is a fictional account of a married couple who have lost their passion for each other, the problems within their relationship which this has caused, and the extreme lengths to which one of them goes to solve the problem. The second, non-fiction, is a step-by-step guide aimed at those who have not been successful at finding a loving partner, and succinctly lays out the steps one can take to find that special someone without using a dating site.

“Currently, we are living in a fragmented society where many of us live and communicate mainly online. In-person relationships appear to be becoming a thing of the past, and consequently, it is easy to become lonely and to feel isolated. Many of us miss touching and being touched by another human, and have become so accepting of our aloneness that we do not even realize something is missing from our lives,” Sorge says. “This book is intended to be an antidote to our solitude and sense of isolation. It is all encompassing in that it lays out and provides a practical and immediate solution to those in relationships where the passion that once existed has gone missing, while also providing a plan, including its practical application, for finding someone anew with whom to fall in love.”

When asked what she wants readers to take away from the book, Sorge answered, “I want them to realize that, regardless of how hopeless they feel their situation might be, there is always a solution to whatever challenge they might be facing. With a bit of creativity, honest communication, and the will to succeed, problems arising within an already-existing relationship can be solved. For those who have been unsuccessful at finding love, there is every possibility that employing suggestions from the tried and true blueprint offered in the book will very likely lead them to finding love and happiness with the person of their dreams. I also want them to understand that applying many of the concepts outlined in the book are applicable not only to their love lives, but also to many unrelated challenges they might face in their lives.” For more details about the book, please visit https://www.balboapress.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/813771-corsets-and-romance

“Corsets and Romance: Rediscover Passion, and Master the Art of Attracting Love”
By Lynn Sorge, PhD
Hardcover | 5.5 x 8.5in | 142 pages | ISBN 9781982272722
Softcover | 5.5 x 8.5in | 142 pages | ISBN 9781982272708
E-Book | 142 pages | ISBN 9781982272715
Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author
Lynn Sorge, PhD, earned a BA from Dalhousie University, an MA from New York University, and a doctorate from Oxford Brookes University. She had a tenured position at Dalhousie University in the costume studies program for four decades, followed by an adjunct position in the faculty of graduate studies. This is her second book.

Balboa Press, a division of Hay House, Inc. – a leading provider in publishing products that specialize in self-help and the mind, body, and spirit genres. Through an alliance with the worldwide self-publishing leader Author Solutions, LLC, authors benefit from the leadership of Hay House Publishing and the speed-to-market advantages of the self-publishing model. For more information, visit balboapress.com. To start publishing your book with Balboa Press, call 844-682-1282 today.

Media Contact

Marketing Services, BalboaPress, 844-682-1282, [email protected], www.balboapress.com

SOURCE Balboa Press

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Ames Police officers are not ashamed to talk about their struggles with mental health. And they say you shouldn’t be ashamed either.

Several officers appear on camera in a promotional video for the Sept. 25 Story County Mental Health Expo to talk about their mental health diagnoses.

Ames Police Commander Jason Tuttle is among the personnel featured. As an early responder to the June 2, 2022, shooting at Ames’ Cornerstone Church, which left three people dead, Tuttle experienced physical and mental symptoms in the wake of the tragedy.

With his wife’s and fellow officers’ support, he sought professional help, which has made a difference.

“I’ve been in therapy for the last year,” Tuttle said in the video. “I feel much healthier, both physically and emotionally today.”

He shared his story so others wouldn’t feel alone in their struggles.

“It’s okay to not be okay,” he said.

More: Cornerstone Church first responder receives city’s highest honor with Award of Valor

Story County Mental Health Expo is free

The Story County Mental Health expo is entering its eighth year, which has grown annually. About 400 people attended in 2022, said Ames Police Department mental health advocate Julie Saxton.

“It’s free. It’s always free — admission, parking, food, everything,” she said. “We’ll have more than 35 vendors and keynote speaker Kai Roberts.”

The event runs from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 25 in the Great Room at the Iowa State Memorial Union.

Kai Roberts

Kai Roberts will perform “Mental Health Through Music” at 7 p.m. The Pennsylvania-based mental health advocate uses hip-hop to share how he has dealt with anxiety and panic attacks.

“We always have such amazing keynote speakers from different backgrounds, with different experience,” Saxton said. “I think Kai will really relate with college students, but also with all ages. I think we can all relate to having anxiety.”

Youth suicide numbers are ‘astronomical’

The annual Mental Health Expo is held in conjunction with suicide awareness month.

The number of people in mental health crises is overwhelming, Saxton said. Last year, she received 2,800 mental health calls for service and responded to 2,500.

“Twenty percent of those calls were people who were actively suicidal,” she said.

At least one person in her daily call log is suicidal, and it’s often more than one.

“The number of youth that have died by suicide in Story County is astronomical,” Saxton said. “And the numbers are higher than even reported, because sometimes the family members don’t want to admit that’s what it was.”

More: Iowa’s gender-affirming care ban is chasing transgender kids out of state for medical care

Saxton’s figures don’t include calls to Iowa State police, medical providers or social service organizations.

“There are many more people struggling that we don’t know about,” Saxton said. “Every therapist is full, the waiting lists are longer, especially if you’re a new patient.

“We’re also lacking medication providers, like psychiatrists — that’s countywide, statewide and nationwide.”

People on Medicaid take even longer to get treatment because “a lot of agencies and clinicians just don’t want to have to deal with it,” she said.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s no different than being treated for a broken bone, going into the emergency room and being treated immediately,” Saxton said. “But it’s not at all the same for people who are struggling with mental health.”

Social media contributes to mental health issues

A combination of factors have contributed to the rise in mental illness, Saxton said.

The coronavirus pandemic forced many people to isolate, specifically having an effect on youth development.

“Our students don’t have coping skills and they are not resilient,” she said.

Social media can also play a role, which often is the root of anxiety and depression, Saxton said.

“We collectively are saying it’s okay to have a culture of hate. What I mean by that is: every community has a social media page, like Ames People,” Saxton said. “And if you are even looking at it, you are contributing to that.”

Although citizens have a right to free speech, she said, there are consequences. One of the consequences is a decline in mental health.

“It’s a cesspool of hate, misinformation, made up information, and that’s allowed,” Saxton said. “It’s a place for adults that are creating hate and anger, which we know as providers contributes to the decline of mental health.”

She said social media allows people to say whatever they want with no consequences, hiding behind their computer screens.

“My question to the community is, ‘Why is that okay?’” Saxton said.

The theme for the 2023 Story County Mental Health Expo is “Escape for overcoming anxiety and intrusive thoughts.”

A suicide prevention training is offered at 5:30 p.m. prior to next Monday’s expo. The hour-long class will give residents the skills to identify suicidal behavior and crisis.

As the Ames Police asks in their Mental Health Expo promo, “What’s preventing you from reaching out?”

If you or a loved one are having thoughts of suicide, call 988 or reach the 24-hour crisis line at 855-581-8111.

Ronna Faaborg is a reporter for the Ames Tribune. Reach her at rlawless@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Hip-hop artist is keynote for Story County Mental Health Expo

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Robinson, psyching down before his heat at J-Bay. Photo: Beatriz Ryder//World Surf League

Just before his matchup at the WSL Finals, the cameras panned to Jack Robinson. It was a sight surf fans had become used to. Robinson had each foot placed on the opposite thigh, eyes closed, and with thumbs touching index fingers. A few heats later on the cobbles, Griffin Colapinto adopted the Lotus position or Padmasana, attempting to drown out the noise of the 30,000 fans he had just recently whipped into a frenzy.

Over in Portugal on the same day, just before entering the water in the Final of the QS Pro Santa Cruz, Marco Mignot and Gatien Delahaye were filmed side-by-side, in the same position. Such was their concentration, I could have sworn both levitated into the lineup, rather than paddled.

It seems the love affair between surfing and meditation has finally gone mainstream. Five years ago, a typical pre-heat warm-up involved a surfer writhing on a large, inflated ball, stretching some industrial rubber bands whilst listening to loud heavy metal or rap through enlarged headphones. Now psyching down is the new psyching up.

Of course, Jack and Griff are just the latest, all be it highest profile, surfers using meditation to elevate the sport. With his 50-year-long commitment to yoga, Gerry Lopez has probably highlighted the benefits of meditation the loudest (in his own quiet way) and the longest. But Shaun Tomson, Cheyne Horan, Dave Rastovich, Dick Brewer, Tom Carroll, Greg Long and Taylor Knox, to name a few, have long used mindfulness and meditation regularly.

Knox credits the practice of Kelee meditation as life changing. After 10 years on tour, he started suffering from anxiety and depression. “Meditation prolonged my career for a decade. But the surfing was a by-product of how meditation helped my whole life,” Knox told Outside magazine at age 47. “I got to a point with training where I hit a plateau on the physical side of things. I was stagnant. So, I started learning about how the body follows the mind, and how, if you have a toxic mind frame, it doesn’t matter how much you work out. You still won’t be able to perform.”

Knox is still ripping and it could be argued that he is now the second-best 50-plus surfer in the world. He can be found running Kelee meditation and surf retreats, accompanied by Matt Griggs, Mick Fanning’s former coach.

Tom Carroll, too, embraced meditation more than 15 years ago. The two-time world champion, who came clean on his long-term drug addiction a few years ago, is a qualified, and much sought-after, Sattva meditation teacher.

“We discover that we have been reaching for resolution from external sources, which is ultimately impossible,” Tom said on his website, which offers personalized and online meditation, as well as weekly guided live-streamed sessions on his Instagram. “While it may appear that everything is okay, really, we know it is not. We begin to ask questions. The answers to these questions start to point within. This is where meditation fits in.”

Now the benefits of meditation are well established. It has been shown to improve stress resilience, reduce blood pressure, and ease anxiety. Carroll also believes surfers should be more open to meditation, and that the practice fits well with our sport.

Griffin seemed much more at ease this year. Especially in spots like this. Photo: Beatriz Ryder//World Surf League

“Nature is about constant change and that is what gives us that feeling when our attention has been on a wave and we come in from the ocean,” said Carroll. “And back on land, we feel refreshed from that experience, so it is kind of like a from meditation.”

Robinson started of young with a keen interest in healthy food and diet, taught by his parents. By age 18, he was practicing yoga, which led to breathing exercises, or pranayama yoga. Meditation is a natural progression on that journey. “I initially was just trying to be a better athlete, but it just translates into everyday life. I couldn’t imagine life without it,” Robinson told The Inertia.

Colapinto has been a more recent convert, leaning heavily into Eastern philosophies of meditation and mindfulness. In a recent Instagram post just before the Finals, he wrote, “I’m deciding to let go of the attachment to an expected feeling. What’s most important is focusing on the little tiny details of our day right now. To practice Sadhana; a spiritual practice of life. Every moment is an opportunity to become closer to awareness. Awareness of what we are feeling, thinking, speaking, and so on.”

Colapinto said that he was not so much interested in the results and had decided to let go of the attachment to an expected feeling. That was perhaps helpful when he lost his first WSL Finals heat and with it the chance of a first world title. Robinson too failed at the first hurdle at Trestles and will no doubt have since meditated on what he could have done differently. And yet the pair of deep breathers won three CT events in 2023, finished in the top five and qualified for the Olympics. They showed how meditation has been a constant source of strength and stability. And how it can make you surf better.

“Surfing can be a path of happiness and when practiced together with yoga, it can bring great, long-term benefits,” said Lopez, in his latest movie, The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez. “Keep paddling, breathing through your nose and living with the Aloha spirit.”

Yes, there are much worse ways to live.

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September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and to commemorate that, the Community Arts Center hosted Kevin Hines, best selling author, mental health advocate and suicide survivor with the support of NAMI North Central Pa. and the Doherty and Kelley family.

“I had heard about him through the grapevine and then I thought, ‘this is one,’ and he was so excited to come to our community. He said he’d been here before, which is also kind of, you know, that helps seal the deal.”

Hines attempted suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge in September 2000.

Roughly, 95% of people who have jumped die on impact, and less than 35 people total have survived, according to Bridge Rail Foundation.

“The millisecond my hands left that rail, I felt instantaneous regret for my actions and the absolute recognition I just made the greatest mistake of my life, and it was likely too late,” Hines said of the exact moment he leapt from the bridge.

Though a heavy-handed subject such as suicide is a difficult one, Hines portrayed poise and courage, along with a strong dose of humor throughout his speech.

Kevin’s early childhood is one of heartbreak, as he recounts two biological parents who loved him and his brother dearly but were unable to care for him, and his brother who tragically died of bronchitis, immediately leaving Hines with what he calls “a severe detachment disorder from reality, and abandonment issues that follow me until right now.”

But, his luck would turn around at nine months old, when he was adopted by Peter and Deborah Hines.

“The fact that the Hines took me in, and they made me their son, it was the greatest gift anyone had ever given me,” Kevin said.

While he was successful in school, football and was on both the debate and swim teams, for a very short amount of time, by his own, humorous admission, he was struggling mentally.

“I had been unraveling mentally for some time. I’d been having things like hallucinations, auditory and visual,” said Hines, who had also been suffering from paranoid delusions and wild swings from mania to depression.

After an episode on stage during a high school performance, during which he was overtaken by an unshakable belief that the entire audience wanted to kill him, he was taken to one of the best psychiatrists in the San Francisco area.

Not long after, Kevin’s theater instructor and his first psychiatrist lost their respective battles with substance abuse.

Peter stressed to his son that he had a loving family and people who cared about him, and to never consider such an act on himself. Kevin agreed at the time, knowing he would never want to hurt his family in such a way.

But, with mounting mental anguish, it started to become too much.

“I couldn’t take it. My back was breaking, my body was bending. I was being destroyed from the inside out,” he said.

Kevin’s struggles mounted following his parents’ divorce, leading him to the bridge the day of his attempt.

Standing on the bridge that day in tears, he was approached by a lady with a big smile. He thought this would be the person to save his life by asking if he was alright.

In reality, she simply wanted her picture taken and walked away. Feeling that no one cared, Kevin jumped.

As he fell, Kevin’s instant realization that he didn’t want to die led him to turn his body to land feet first, saving his life, but shattering his back, narrowly avoiding severing his spinal cord.

Since that day, Hines has devoted himself to making sure that no one ever feels alone in this world.

He worked with members of congress and local organizations to get safety nets installed on the Golden Gate Bridge to ward off would-be jumpers and advocated for mental health education starting at the fourth-grade level.

Kevin strongly advocates for family dinners every night, with electronics put away, to have an honest conversation about how each other is feeling and if they need help getting through anything they are currently struggling with.

Listening is key, as he says if there is any inclination at all that they are considering suicide, ask them directly, “are you thinking of killing yourself? Have you made plans to take your life? Do you have the means to take your life?”

“Taking the means away from the situation — putting gun locks in the home, putting the knives in places they can’t get to if they’re considering suicide — [take] all the other means that are possible out of the equation when you learn of someone’s ideation,” Kevin said.

“I will look into a mirror, and I will say to myself out loud ‘my thoughts do not have to become my actions, they can simply be my thoughts,’” Hines said. “The second thing I do is I find the closest person to me and ask for help.”

“I need you to hear me, my friends: Don’t stop asking people around you for help. I don’t care if you’re the toughest person in every room, tell the truth about your pain to one person willing to empathize.”

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift — that’s why we call it the present,” Hines says.

“Suicidal ideations are the greatest liars we know,” he said. “You don’t have to listen to them. Stop listening to them.”

“My new friends, begin in love every day. You are valued, you are loved, you are worthy. Everyone in this room matters. And you matter to me. We need you here. Keep on fighting,” Kevin said.

Following his engagement, Hines stayed in the lobby, where a line quickly formed to speak with him, get autographs and selfies.

Many were seen weeping as he warmly embraced them, as they shared stories of their own mental health struggles.

In 2022, 49,449 American deaths were attributed to suicide, a 2.6% increase over the previous year, according to the Centers For Disease Control (CDC).

Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S., with one death occurring every 11 minutes, according to Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE).

Lycoming County has seen 18 suicides in 2023, according to Charles E. Kiessling Jr., Lycoming County Coroner, “so we’re pretty consistently above the national average.”

Kelly Gordon, CASSP coordinator with NAMI North Central Pa., says anyone who is suffering a mental health crisis should reach out immediately.

“If they’re in immediate risk or facing a crisis, they should contact our Center for Community Resources. That acronym is CCR, and they are a local contracted county crisis line, at 800-950-NAMI (6264). Or they can contact the number 988.”

“NAMI also holds a Lycoming peer support group on the second Wednesday of each month from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., and that’s at the West End Christian Community Church,” Gordon added.

For more information on services provided by NAMI, please visit their website at www.nami.org/Home.

And, for more information on Kevin Hines’ story, please search @kevinhinesstory across all social media.

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It all started during the first Covid lockdown in 2020. I saw a tweet from HMP Pentonville asking for book donations for the prisoners who were stuck in their cells for 24 hours a day. I felt huge sympathy for them, having been sentenced, myself, to five years for tax fraud in 2016. It was far from easy during my jail term, but conditions were far worse during the pandemic as all visits, education and exercise were cancelled.

I called round my literary friends who had too many books on their shelves, and drove a car load to Pentonville, where they were gratefully received. Word quickly spread and I was soon delivering to a dozen jails in London and the home counties.

Prison literacy is something everyone should be concerned about, as approximately 50% of all inmates are functionally illiterate, which is a key factor in their offending. Prison librarians do an excellent job, but in these straitened times they find it difficult to keep their shelves up to date.

After my book about my time inside, A Bit of a Stretch, was published, and my scheme got welcome backing from a raft of top authors including Sathnam Sanghera, Anthony Horowitz and Deborah Moggach, I was able to procure donations from publishing houses. Soon my flat was overflowing with boxes, and I had to rent a storage locker to keep up with the flow.

I needed more hands on deck, and, as the pandemic had curtailed a lot of film production, I enlisted script guru Ben Stoll and my long-suffering cameraman Chris Smith. We spent several months stacking boxes (I put my back out several times trying to show off) and driving across the country in Chris’s camera van. We did a huge road trip over Christmas 2020, which nearly came unstuck when we posed for a selfie outside a jail wearing Santa hats: the worried officers nearly called the police.

More prisons joined our list and the scheme quickly took on a life of its own. I gave it a name, Bang Up Books, and got crucial support from a London distribution company, Parallel, which has spent the last two years sourcing and storing thousands of donations.

Chris Atkins, right, and Chris Smith delivering books to a men’s prison in Derbyshire wearing Santa hats. Photograph: Chris Atkins

Throughout 2021 and 2022 I was also writing a new book about the reoffending crisis, Time After Time. Many of the friends I made during my sentence kept going back inside, and I wanted to know why the UK has such stubbornly high rates of recidivism.

I started researching the terror attacks that took place in Fishmongers Hall in London in 2019, where two brilliant young people, Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones, tragically lost their lives. The perpetrator, Usman Khan, had offended before and was attending a conference on reoffending.

I found it remarkable that five of the heroes who tackled Khan on London Bridge were ex-offenders who had been rehabilitated (in part) through a Cambridge University scheme called Learning Together. One of them was Marc Conway, who was one of my neighbours at HMP Spring Hill, and who was also a part of Learning Together and had done an Open University degree while inside. His courage and selflessness demonstrated the hugely beneficial power of reading and education in prisons.

Through Marc I met one of Jack’s best friends, Laura Suggitt, who worked in a senior role at the Ministry of Justice. She saw the huge potential in Bang Up Books and championed it within government, and the scheme soon had the full backing of her ministry. Laura quickly solved our logistical headaches by mobilising the internal prison distribution network. Now every month a van turns up at Parallel’s warehouse in Fulham, which is driven by a serving prisoner out on day release. Ben and I load it up with about 4,000 brand-new books, and it’s driven to an open prison in the West Country, where it’s unpacked by a team of inmates.

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When I was reading I was no longer insideDan Barwell, former HMP Wandsworth inmate

It’s been fascinating to see which genres are popular inside. True crime, cookery and celebrity memoirs are always in high demand, along with self-help books, historical fiction and anything to do with sport. We often get shipments of children’s books, which we send to prison visitor centres, so that kids waiting to see their fathers and mothers have something to cheer them up.

Dan Barwell spent nine months in my old home HMP Wandsworth for drug offences, and his cell was a regular stop for the book trolley run by the prison chaplain Liz. “I read 164 books in prison, which is more than I had in my whole life before that. I got really into fantasy novels, the Wheel of Time series were over 1,000 pages each, which ate up a lot of hours,” he told me. “When I was reading I was no longer inside.”

I recently visited the open prison where our books are sorted and shipped, and spoke to some of the men working on the scheme. They understandably get first dibs on new titles as a perk of the job, and thus have hotly contested positions. One of our recruits showed me a glossy hardback of a computer game bible that he’d recently obtained, and what excited him most was that it was a brand-new copy, with all the smell, texture and feel of pages that were hot off the press. So much in prison is old, worn and tired, so there is a real joy to holding something that has never been opened before.

Last month we had more than 100,000 new books donated to prisons – more than one for every prisoner in the UK. It’s an incredible achievement for everyone involved, but we always need more books. So, I’ll be knocking on the doors of publishers for the foreseeable future, although my osteopath is begging me to stop lifting two boxes at once when I’m loading up the van.

Time After Time: Repeat Offenders – the Inside Stories by Chris Atkins is published on 7 September by Atlantic Books (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges apply

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Poet Maggie Smith was watching the clouds through an airplane window on a flight between book tour events when it occurred to her what her new memoir is truly about: “not letting myself stay small anymore.”

The bestseller “You Could Make This Place Beautiful” chronicles her divorce but also tackles common family terrain, including miscarriage, the division of domestic labor, the isolation of child rearing, and losing and finding oneself.

For a long time, Smith “made decisions, mostly for others, based on fear.” Lately, she’s decided to let her “braver self” do the talking. The universe, she’s found, seems to be rewarding her courage, showing her she’s on the right path, just as it did in 2016 when her viral poem “Good Bones,” about holding onto hope in the midst of dark moments, was dubbed “the official poem of 2016” by what was then Public Radio International.

Poem: “Bride” by Maggie Smith

Source: Simon & Schuster

Since then, a huge response to her poetry and prose, including two recent bestsellers, “Keep Moving” and “Goldenrod,” has elevated her to celebrity poet status.

Readers reach out in signing lines and through multiplatform messages to tell her how much her frank and contemplative wisdom through experience has helped them.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: You have said that writing about your divorce has turned you into “a divorce whisperer.” How so?

Maggie Smith: Writing a memoir is a real crash course in courage and vulnerability, but even before this book came out — ever since the release of “Keep Moving” — people have been sliding into my DMs to tell me about their divorce, pregnancy loss and struggles with single parenting. What these subjects all have in common is that we don’t talk enough about them, in part because they are devalued as “women’s issues” when, really, these are family issues.

Readers come to me with details of their own stories, telling me they feel seen. That connection is what first-person life writing makes possible. Being a divorce whisperer feels like a privilege.

CNN: What advice do you give?

Smith: I try to offer love and solidarity. I tell people that things will get better. It will probably always be painful, but the pain will not always be as acute. If someone is going through a breakup, I tell them to remember that they predated, and have outlasted, the relationship. The same goes for any big upheaval. You predated your job. You predated that scary diagnosis and look at you, you outlasted it! It helps to remember who we were before whatever trouble or big seismic shift and who we are now, in the aftermath.

When my marriage ended, I found myself gravitating toward music I had listened to in the ‘90s — Dinosaur Jr., the Sundays, the Cure, Liz Phair. I think I was trying to reboot myself to my factory settings so I could remember who I was in the before times. You know, press the button, and the screen goes blank before the restart.

No matter what the loss is, reconnecting with your core self, outside of the context of the loss, can help you feel whole again.

CNN: You use the image of nesting dolls to describe how our identities change. How do you conceive of the different selves that you have been over time?

Smith: I think we carry all the earlier iterations of who we’ve been inside ourselves. As I grow and change, I don’t feel like I’m replacing me from last year, or me from the year before. Like a tree’s rings, I have got all the earlier nested versions of myself folded in here.

I’ve realized recently, it’s not enough to just carry all these previous selves — we must listen to and honor them. Someone pointed out to me that there’s something tender and maternal in the notion of carrying all your previous selves inside your body. Part of my reset has been to ask: What did my younger selves want? What were my expectations for myself? What were my core values? Then I look at the answers, like drafts, against the version of me I am now. That juxtaposition helps me reconnect with that young person full of hope, with a sense of possibility for the future and clarity about who I was and how I wanted to move in the world.

CNN: How has parenting affected your sense of identity?

Smith: Becoming a mother can be a beautiful, incredibly humbling erase of ego. Like standing at the ocean, you feel so small and completely insignificant in some ways and yet also such a part of everything. But first-time parenting is also obliterating. It is the biggest existential shift I’ve ever experienced, and I lost myself for a good long time.

Writing this book has helped me reexamine what it means to be “good.” And the answer is gendered. Women are culturally rewarded for being self-sacrificing, accommodating, flexible, and not demanding or wanting too much. I had taken my templates for “wife” and “mother” from my family of origin.

While in my mind I was incredibly progressive and feminist, I parented the way I had been parented and expected from my husband what I saw my dad doing. I don’t want either my son or my daughter to think of women as service providers in the home or that men are the ones who go off to work and are less involved in their children’s lives.

Saying over and over that women are equal gets undercut if they see Mom packing every lunch, baking every treat, volunteering at the school, doing all the drop-offs, and going to all the appointments. What they see in their home matters more than what we tell them about what is possible.

Recently, I got a message from a male physician saying that reading my book prompted him to talk to his wife about the division of labor in their home, what her dreams and goals are, and how he can better support her. This book prompting that conversation was not on my bingo card!

I love the idea that this memoir can be instructive for people before they get to the point where they’re burnt out, resentful and have forgotten who they are because of their responsibilities as caregivers and spouses.

CNN: What has helped you find balance?

Smith: Now that my marriage has ended, I’m reclaiming the space to do the job that I love without needing permission or asking forgiveness. I did my last two book tours over Zoom because of the pandemic, so my kids have become accustomed to having 24/7-keycard access to Mom.