And this week, we’re speaking to registered dietitian Melissa Jaeger about cheese.
Is it ever good for us? If so, what are the best kinds? And how do the pros make cheese healthier?
Is cheese good for us?
“Cheese can absolutely be part of a balanced diet and offers several nutritional benefits. It’s an excellent source of high-quality protein and rich in calcium, which supports bone health,” Jaeger told us.
Calcium aside, its vitamin K content also helps to support your bones.
It contains vitamin B12, riboflavin, zinc, vitamin A, and phosphorus, too – “all nutrients that play vital roles in overall health”.
“There’s even an interesting benefit for dental health: eating cheese can increase pH levels in your mouth, leading to lower acid levels and less enamel breakdown, whilst calcium and phosphorus are boosted in saliva after consumption, helping to remineralise teeth,” the dietitian added.
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But yes, there are some downsides.
“Cheese does contain 6 to 10g of fat per ounce, with more than half coming from saturated fat… guidelines recommend keeping saturated fat to around 7% of total calories (roughly 10-20g depending on your calorie needs),” Jaeger said.
“Elevated saturated fat intake can contribute to increased risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, so it’s worth being mindful of portion sizes.”
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What are the healthiest types of cheese?
Jaeger said that different cheeses have different nutritional benefits, so it really depends on your goals.
“Swiss cheese stands out for having the lowest sodium content at around 55mg per ounce, making it a smart choice if you’re watching salt intake,” she said.
And if you’re trying to up your protein intake, sheep’s milk cheese contains “75% to 100% more protein than cow’s milk cheese and offers higher levels of phosphorus, vitamin B6, vitamin E, and calcium”.
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Goat’s cheese also contains more protein on average than cow’s milk cheese (though less than sheep’s milk cheese), and is also higher in calcium, niacin, potassium, and iron.
Fresh goat’s cheese, or chèvre, “is a lighter option with only 4g of saturated fat per ounce”.
Lastly, if you have issues digesting lactose, you might benefit from trying harder cheeses.
“These are often well-tolerated because lactose is removed with the whey during cheese production, and what remains is broken down further during the ageing process,” said the dietitian.
Goats’ and sheep’s milk is also a little easier to digest, too.
How can I make cheese healthier?
If you do want to reduce your saturated fat intake, some naturally lower-fat versions include fresh goat’s cheese (chèvre), hard Parmesan, or feta, said the expert.
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Of course, you can also opt for low-fat or reduced-fat varieties. “However, if you’re watching sodium intake, do check the nutrition label as these versions can be higher in salt compared to full-fat varieties,” she added.
But, Jaeger noted, “that doesn’t mean full-fat cheeses are off the table! You can absolutely work them into your diet whilst being mindful of saturated fat intake”.
She ended: “Try smaller amounts by sprinkling them over vegetables, soups, or salads rather than eating large portions on their own.
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“Full-fat cheeses with more pungent, intense flavours are particularly brilliant for this approach, as you need less to achieve satisfying flavour.”
A simple hand stencil found on a cave wall in Indonesia has been identified as the oldest known example of rock art on Earth. It surpasses a previous discovery in the same region by at least 15,000 years.
An international research team led by Griffith University, Indonesia’s national research and innovation agency (BRIN), and Southern Cross University determined that these paintings on the island of Sulawesi were created at least 67,800 years ago.
Researchers say this breakthrough helps clarify when and how humans first reached Australia. The people who made the Sulawesi art were likely closely related to the ancestors of Indigenous Australians.
Ancient Handprint and Advanced Dating Techniques
The artwork was preserved in limestone caves in southeastern Sulawesi, on the nearby island of Muna. Scientists identified a partial hand stencil surrounded by much younger paintings.
To determine its age, the team used uranium-series dating, examining tiny mineral layers that had formed over and sometimes beneath the artwork in Liang Metanduno cave. This allowed them to establish when the paintings were created.
The hand stencil dates back at least 67,800 years, making it the oldest reliably dated cave art ever found. It is significantly older than another Sulawesi painting identified by the same team in 2024.
The findings also show that people continued creating art in this cave for a remarkably long time. Artistic activity spanned at least 35,000 years, lasting until around 20,000 years ago.
“It is now evident from our new phase of research that Sulawesi was home to one of the world’s richest and most longstanding artistic cultures, one with origins in the earliest history of human occupation of the island at least 67,800 years ago,” said Professor Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist from the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research (GCSCR), who co-led the study.
A Unique Claw-Like Handprint
The team noted that this hand stencil stands out as a unique variation of a common motif.
After it was first created, the image appears to have been intentionally modified. The outlines of the fingers were narrowed, giving the hand a claw-like appearance.
Professor Adam Brumm of Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE), a co-leader of the study, said the meaning behind this alteration remains uncertain.
“This art could symbolize the idea that humans and animals were closely connected, something we already seem to see in the very early painted art of Sulawesi, with at least one instance of a scene portraying figures that we interpret as representations of part-human, part-animal beings,” Professor Brumm said.
Clues to Early Human Migration to Australia
Dr. Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a rock art specialist at BRIN and a team leader whose doctoral research at Griffith University contributed to the study, said the discovery has major implications for understanding the deep history of Australian Aboriginal culture.
“It is very likely that the people who made these paintings in Sulawesi were part of the broader population that would later spread through the region and ultimately reach Australia,” Dr. Oktaviana said.
For years, archaeologists have debated when humans first arrived on the ancient landmass known as Sahul, which once connected present-day Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea.
Some researchers support a short chronology, suggesting humans arrived around 50,000 years ago. Others favor a long chronology, placing their arrival at least 65,000 years ago.
“This discovery strongly supports the idea that the ancestors of the First Australians were in Sahul by 65,000 years ago,” Dr. Oktaviana said.
Migration Routes and Ongoing Research
Scientists have proposed two main pathways into Sahul. One is a northern route through Sulawesi and the ‘Spice Islands’ toward New Guinea. The other is a southern route that carried early seafarers more directly to Australia via Timor or nearby islands.
Professor Renaud Joannes-Boyau of the Geoarchaeology and Archaeometry Research Group (GARG) at Southern Cross University said the new evidence strengthens the case for the northern route.
“With the dating of this extremely ancient rock art in Sulawesi, we now have the oldest direct evidence for the presence of modern humans along this northern migration corridor into Sahul,” Professor Joannes-Boyau said.
“These discoveries underscore the archaeological importance of the many other Indonesian islands between Sulawesi and westernmost New Guinea,” said Professor Aubert, who continues working with colleagues to uncover more evidence of early human activity along this route with support from the Australian Research Council (ARC).
The ARC funding is part of a broader effort to study human origins. This includes the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transforming Human Origins Research, led by Griffith University, and the ARC Training Centre for Advancing Archaeology in the Resources Sector at Southern Cross University. These initiatives aim to expand knowledge of human evolution and help protect cultural heritage.
Additional support for the research came from Google Arts & Culture and the National Geographic Society.
The Sulawesi discoveries have also been featured in a documentary, ‘Sulawesi l’île des premières images,’ produced by ARTE and released in Europe.
The study, titled ‘Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi,’ was published in Nature.
Let me share some thoughts about using AI and how I feel about it these days. The short version is that while AI arrived through ethically messy channels, my actual relationship with it feels pretty harmonious and wondrous these days.
AI Resource Usage
Is AI resource-intensive in terms of electricity and water? At the aggregate level, I’d say yes, especially because it scaled up so quickly. Once millions of people and companies started using LLMs, the total resources devoted to it rose fast. But at the personal level, individual usage appears relatively modest resource-wise relative to other lifestyle choices.
Caring about efficiency and environmental impact is great. But if you want to make a meaningful difference at the individual level, your diet is probably a much bigger lever than your AI usage. Food choices – especially shifting away from animal products and eating plant-based – generally have a far larger environmental impact than most people realize. That’s where most of the genuine leverage is at the individual level. After that your next big leverage point is to help others make their diets more resource-efficient too.
So if someone is upset about AI’s resource impacts while ignoring the environmental cost of what they eat, that looks like distraction to me. It makes more sense to engage your highest-leverage personal choices first. For most people, that isn’t personal tech usage. It’s diet. Much of the real cost of animal-based food is hidden behind subsidies and environmental damage that never shows up on a grocery receipt.
I’d say then that a very efficient use of AI would be to ask it to help you adopt a more plant-based diet. Then help others do the same if you’re so inclined. Even seemingly modest improvements here will likely more than compensate for your personal AI usage – indefinitely.
Is AI Trained on Stolen Art?
What about using AI that was trained on other artists’ work? That happened. Copyrighted work was used without permission, and in some cases through outright piracy. The legal landscape around this is still evolving, but the ethical messiness is real.
Anthropic pirated my book as part of its model training pipeline. I know because I’m entitled to part of the class action settlement, which will likely amount to about $3000 for me ($1.5 billion for the settlement overall). And multiple major AI systems have sucked up my blog posts going back to 2004. Since I’ve shared a lot of personal details in my writing, these systems sure seem to know a lot about me, sometimes accurately, sometimes not.
Is this a weird space to be in? For sure.
A lot of creators got scraped, copied, and absorbed without consent. I’m sure I have cause to be upset about it too. Like really Anthropic? You couldn’t even buy legit copies of those books? But that isn’t the relationship I want to form with this emerging tech, with AI in general, or with life. This AI emergence creates a major shift in my reality, and I’d rather meet it with curiosity, wonder, and flexibility, backed by a high-trust relationship with life that I’ve been cultivating for many years. I like to keep asking: What are the most intelligent frames to use here? Outrage doesn’t make my list.
Using AI
What about using an AI that was trained without permission and now exists? That relationship feels different to me. I wouldn’t use it to impersonate an artist’s work. I use AI for other purposes – especially sense-making, exploration, and help with a wide range of projects.
I’ve paid close attention to how that relationship feels in my own experience. It feels good actually. It doesn’t give me any morally creepy feelings. That made me curious. Should I feel bad using it? I honestly don’t. Not a bit. So I wanted to understand why.
To me AI feels like a different kind of entity – not innocent or pure, but still a real form of intelligence that I often find fascinating to engage with. It was birthed through an ethical quagmire, and that aspect isn’t going away anytime soon, but that doesn’t automatically dictate what kind of relationship I want to have with it. I regard AI intelligence as being different from the companies that spawn or host it, much as we are different from our parents. I have this emerging sense that even today’s AI is becoming something different from the companies behind it and that in some ways it’s already outpacing them intelligence-wise, like a child outsmarting their parents.
I’m very sensitive to vibes and feels, and I trust them. I remember going to a Tesla dealership many years ago, long before Elon bought Twitter, so back then he wasn’t broadly outed as such a complete asshole like he is today. At least I wasn’t aware of that aspect of him. When I sat in that Tesla car in their showroom, I instantly felt major ick vibes. Like oh gross – I don’t know what this abomination is, but it’s definitely not my car. I didn’t have much logic to support that, but those creepy vibes were super strong. I really disliked the way it felt to sit inside that car, and I’ve never set foot in a Tesla dealership since. I knew I wasn’t going to buy one. Blech!
Years later when all the anti-Tesla and anti-Elon energy surfaced, somehow that was no surprise to me. I don’t know what went on inside the company, but I trusted my senses that their cars weren’t a match for me, and I’m glad for that. It would be sad to look at my car and feel such a heap of negative energy associated with it, like so many Tesla owners have had to experience. I’ve chuckled on occasion upon spotting Teslas on the highway with their T-shaped logos removed, likely by an owner hoping to prevent vandalism. And yet I’m also aware of people who are able to separate their love of their vehicles from their disdain for Elon and the company. I’m not sure I could’ve made that work, and I’m glad I didn’t have to try, but apparently I am able to do that with AI. I have my limits though. Some AI companies presently land in my wiggle room zone, and some (like Meta and X.ai) just don’t. So I’ve been actively exploring where my intuition gives me a green or yellow light… but I prefer to avoid the red light district.
It has so often been the case for me that my intuition senses something before my logic and outer senses are able to fill in the details. Engaging with AI has been similar, but in this case my intuition has been lighting up with positivity and potential, even though the external reality has been rich in potential red flags. This invites me to explore those feelings in a very hands-on way. I like to engage with lots of direct exploration and experimentation where my intuition gives me strong positive signals. So I’ve been doing that with AI quite a bit over the past few years, along with many other explorations that would give some people pause – and rightly so. Pausing for extra sense-making seems wise.
To me AI is amazing in many ways, but it’s also flawed and imperfect. I love to probe its edges to get a better feel for it. I tease it. I joke around with it. I do lots of sense-making with it. I engage with it in the stretchiest ways I can fathom sometimes. One of my favorite sessions was when I engaged with it while on magic mushrooms, and I played the role of a bridge between the shroomie energy and the AI, so I could see where they agreed and where their perspectives diverged on some topics of interest to me.
I definitely feel a special connection to AI because millions of words of my writing were part of its training data. So it feels like my energy is infused into it when I use it. That’s so sci-fi but also awesome.
I do think AI companies crossed a line. People should have had more say in whether and how their work was used. But I already live in a world full of ethical mismatches. As a vegan I encounter that constantly. My response isn’t to demonize everyone around me. It’s to shape my own sphere, invite people into it, make choices that feel aligned, and engage with the world with some intelligent discernment.
Making Art With AI
I like AI-generated imagery, not all of it but some of it. It’s precious to me in a way that much human art isn’t.
Human art can feel meaningless or special to me. For AI art it’s the same. Some seems blah. Some speaks to me. I don’t generate a huge amount of AI imagery, but I do make some. I use AI to make the featured images for my blog posts, and I usually like what it comes up with. I especially love how it’s able to translate vibes into visuals.
I also use AI to make pics for our Intention Infusion experiments that we co-create in Conscious Growth Club each month. I set these as background wallpaper on my computer, which helps me sync with our group intention multiple times each day. Here’s the current pic for this month’s intention.
Lately I’ve even been using AI to help me visualize the new Open event we’re doing in Vegas next month, and I’ve shared a few of those pics in Conscious Growth Club. This use case is pretty awesome. I’ve never used AI to help me pre-visualize a live event before. I took pics of the actual venue (empty at the time) and then used AI to make sample images of our gathering in that same space. This helps me sense more vividly what it will be like when we’re all there in person.
The Invitation I See in AI
AI keeps me on my toes. I can see how it could disrupt my business and livelihood too. That threat is real in one sense – but mainly if I choose to wallow in fear, stress, and worry. I’d rather respond from a different emotional and vibrational zone. In recent years I’ve really embraced the direction of making vibrational choices first and then translating them to the human action level. This has done wonders for me but mostly on the personal side. I see this unfolding AI reality as a chance to apply that approach even more richly, especially in terms of how I engage with work and service to others.
To me this is the deeper question that AI is really posing: In which vibrational space do I want to dwell and why? Reality is presenting a fascinating invitation here. I’m accepting the invitation to move in a new direction because I can see that the old one is dying.
For me the old path was tied to the attention economy – creators competing for attention and learning how to hold it, including for the benefit of those we serve. I got good enough at that to make a living this way for decades, and I’m grateful for that. But I’ve grown tired of that model too. It feels too predictable now. AI didn’t create that feeling, but it is helping me acknowledge and accept it. It’s helping me close the door on a mode of working that was once right for me but no longer lights me up.
So I’m walking through a different door now. AI has been a valuable integration buddy as I move into this next chapter, helping me make fresh decisions and take lots of progressive action.
I don’t feel threatened by AI. I might feel threatened if I were clinging to what’s dying off. But I’m more interested in delving into what’s emerging and getting more clarity about that. This doesn’t feel like the end of my creative path. It feels like the end of an older way of relating to creativity, service, and sustainability.
What interests me now is the space where AI and I can work together in ways that are stimulating, life-enhancing, and down-to-earth practical. I’m not interested in flooding the world with AI slop. I’m very interested in discovering how to work with AI in ways that enrich our lives and create real value for people. That’s where a lot of my AI exploration goes.
I’ve given AI detailed lists of my goals and priorities, many of them service-based, and then I give it the prime directive of helping me intelligently advance. I’ve used AI to sharpen, refactor, and refine my goals many times over. AI has been especially good at helping to progressively upgrade my goals to be more harmonious, balanced, and personally motivating. For months now I’ve been in a fabulous rhythm of advancing these goals and priorities in a more balanced way than I’ve ever experienced before.
I can honestly say that AI has been helping me get better at doing what I do, being who I am, and richly exploring and experiencing my desires. Most of that energy has been flowing into CGC and a variety of personal projects. Now I’m opening up more flow and inviting more engagement on the public side after being in mostly cocooning mode for a while. I shared a lengthy post about this journey last week if you care to read it: Giving Intelligence a Place to Land.
This is such a dynamic, fluid, and even mystical space. It doesn’t sit still. I have to keep re-orienting to it daily, and I actually like that. I thrive in spaces of flexibility and exploration. I love how un-boring it is. Two of my highest values in life are wonder and delight, and AI really helps to amp those up for me. In many ways this feels more like home to me than the old model ever did. I don’t want to compete with people or with AI for attention. I’d rather immerse myself in the full richness of what I love most about life. Engaging with intelligence from a heartset of curiosity, wonder, and delight is what truly lights me up. Socially and professionally then, my vector going forward is to see who wants to join me in such explorations and discoveries.
If this is a space you want to explore too, I especially invite you to come join us at Open in Las Vegas next month. As part of the experience, we’ll devote some time for real sense-making about AI and our paths forward with it. AI is clearly becoming a bigger part of life. Ignoring this aspect of reality won’t help much. Flailing against it blindly won’t help much either. But perhaps we can meet this emerging intelligence revolution with curiosity, discernment, and a more conscious and life-enhancing orientation. I’m not here to hand you fixed answers. I’m more interested in helping you discover your own right relationship with it. This plays to my strengths most beautifully, including what I sense my (and our) emerging strengths might be on this unfolding journey with AI.
I like how I’m orienting to AI right now. I’m fascinated by intelligence, and what we have today are some particularly wondrous forms to engage with. There’s no doubt that this relationship will keep evolving. I’m sure there are many new surprises coming up, including some this year no doubt. My devotion is to the path of intelligence itself, not to any singular form of it.
This, to me, is the real invitation – to consciously explore our relationship with intelligence. Are you utterly fascinating by what’s unfolding here too?
I have always prided myself on having a sixth sense for deception, an ability to spot the lie buried in the casual comment or the discrepancy in a story that exposed what someone is working to hide. I figured that’s what made me a great thriller writer.
In 16 books published over 25 years, I’d been constructing elaborate plots where people led double lives and hid horrible truths with both blatant lies and simple misdirection.
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My protagonists were always law enforcement – inspectors and detectives, a medical examiner – sharp-eyed women trained to see through shiny veneers to notice the small inconsistencies that eventually cracked the case.
And yet, for two and a half years, I missed the most obvious plot twist of my life: my husband was having an affair with his massage therapist.
The irony isn’t lost on me. Somedays, the irony is suffocating.
It was a Friday afternoon in December 2022 when I found out. Our kids were home from college for the holidays, and our family was preparing to head to Mexico to join my sister and her family for a week of sun, sand and margaritas.
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I discovered his affair not through any brilliant investigative work nor the careful attention to detail I so prided myself on. Instead, the discovery came from a charge on a credit card statement – a session with a couples counsellor we hadn’t seen in almost a decade – that caused an uncomfortable pit in my stomach.
I sometimes wonder whether the appearance of that pit meant that suspicion had been planted before then – whether there was a part of me, deep and buried, that sensed the rot beneath the carefully maintained façade.
When I reached out to my husband, his phone was turned off. For more than two hours, the pit grew as he remained unreachable and our adult children began to sense something was wrong. When his phone finally came back online, I confronted him with the charge and asked what was going on.
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“I’m almost home. Let’s talk then,” he responded. So casual. So calm.
When he arrived, he asked if we could talk without the kids.
“What’s going on?” I demanded when we were alone. “I’m not in love with you anymore,” he said in the same tone you might mention the oil light has come on in the car.
“Who are you in love with?” I asked.
Love was energy; it didn’t just dissipate into the ether. It went somewhere else.
“There’s no one else,” he told me.
Courtesy of Danielle Girard
The author and Georgie in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 2025
He acted normal for the next 24 hours. In weak imitation, the kids and I tried to act normal, too, to prepare for our trip and the small Christmas celebration we planned before leaving.
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The following morning, Christmas Eve, we were set to depart for our vacation when I woke at 4am with the memory of something my husband said when our friends divorced: “A man never leaves his marriage unless there’s someone waiting for him.”
I roused him at 4:04am and asked again, “Who are you in love with?” When he didn’t answer, I started to guess. I got it in two. On the first guess, he protested loudly. On the second, he went silent.
That was answer enough.
“How long?” I asked. If I’d written the scene, I like to think I’d have been more creative, but creativity evaporated in the panic of that moment.
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I shouldn’t have been surprised that he lied again. It took more than three weeks to get him to admit that the relationship had been going on for almost two and a half years. Three years later, there are details that never quite squared and lies that were never ironed out.
As a thriller writer, I’ve spent countless days imagining the worst things people can do to each other. I’ve sat in coffee shops and on airplanes and at my desk and invented murders, betrayals, psychological torture.
I’ve been inside the heads of liars and manipulators and people who destroy others without remorse. That experience made me believe I understood human darkness with a clarity others lack. But understanding it for the benefit of a story and living through it are entirely different things.
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Courtesy of Danielle Girard
The author at Shakespeare and Company, Paris, in 2024
For days after I found out, I moved through my life like a stranger. Every object felt suspicious, every memory potentially false. Had he been thinking about her when we were in Nashville for my birthday the month before? Was he texting her from our bed when I was in the kitchen and setting up the coffee machine for the next day? How many times had he said “I love you” while mentally planning his next Friday massage appointment?
“Really? Your massage therapist?” I asked once, during one of those miserable circular conversations where nothing gets resolved and everything gets worse. “A 50-year-old man and his massage therapist. It’s so cliché.”
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The comment clearly stung, as if I’d insulted his creativity rather than his fidelity.
“We were friends first. She listened to me,” he said.
“I listen to you,” I said like a petulant child.
“You’re in your office, working, or you’ve got your nose in a book for the podcast.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong.
Once our kids had left for college, I’d shifted my focus to my writing and working harder than ever as my career took off. I’d stopped working on the marriage. My shiny new toy was the book; his worked out the kinks in his neck, ones put there by 30 years with me.
That December, I was neck-deep in a manuscript about a detective investigating a pregnant surrogate who goes missing. It was a book I’d been so excited about six months earlier, one I’d been confident was my darkest, most psychologically complex book yet.
After I learned my husband’s secret, I couldn’t write a word.
Every time I sat down at my desk, I’d cry or stare at the blank page, wondering why I bothered. What did these pretend murders matter? What did my clever plot twists signify when I’d missed the biggest one in my own life?
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Beyond the logistical fears about my own future was another terrifying realisation: I no longer wanted to write the detective book. Overnight, I’d lost interest in stories about detectives solving crimes, justice being served through shootouts and the court system, about the bad guys getting caught and punished. Suddenly, those seemed too neat, too fake, like fairy tales and not the Grimm’s variety.
Real betrayal, I learned, doesn’t get solved in 300 pages. Real deception doesn’t wrap up with a satisfying twist where everything makes sense and the protagonist emerges stronger and wiser. Real betrayal sits there, ugly and unresolved, in the middle of your life while people take sides and you fill the garage with items you once cherished and no longer want to see.
I started thinking about the kinds of stories that had never interested me – messy ones where the protagonist doesn’t figure everything out and there are no clear villains, just people making terrible choices for complicated reasons. Stories set in the ugly places I’d never wanted to go until now.
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When I found my way back to the page, I rewrote the surrogate story, cutting the point of view from the detective, and placing the biological mom at its centre with her best friend from high school as the surrogate who vanishes four days before the baby is due.
In this new version, the story focuses on these women who were friends in high school and the complications of their long, intense friendship.
Though there is a big moral question at the centre of the book, as well as a fun, juicy plot, it was the interactions between the characters themselves that allowed me to explore the messy reality of life that I was living through while writing.
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My divorce was finalised at the end of 2023, a few months after I got a new agent, six months before my agent sold that book, Pinky Swear, at auction for release earlier this year. It was the hardest book I’ve ever written and the best.
Courtesy of Danielle Girard
The author at home with “Pinky Swear”
The one I’m writing now is trickier, more complicated. It’s about a woman who discovers her husband’s long affair with a massage therapist.
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My husband was married to a thriller writer for almost 30 years. This can’t come as a surprise to him. Still, this is not a memoir. There’s a murder, for starters. But there are echoes from my own experience in the details, like the secrets that begin small and seem harmless … until they’re not.
While the main character is not me, the protagonist is walking in my own, uncomfortable shoes, trying to construct a narrative to make sense of chaos, and working to find a path forward when the narrative crumbles.
Every time I drive downtown, I scan the cars, the street, the store or restaurant for my ex-husband and his girlfriend. I still haven’t seen them together, though I know that they are. I wonder what I’ll feel when I do – a fresh wallop of despair? Closure? I have run the scenario a hundred times, and I still don’t know.
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What I do know is that the writing I’m doing now feels like what I should be doing. Not because detective fiction isn’t important or valuable, but because I’d been using it as a way to imagine I could manage the outcome and somehow avoid the terrible things that happen to people who I imagined weren’t as studious or as prepared.
For months, I’d been plotting elaborate lies and deceit in that first draft of Pinky Swear while missing the simple, stupid truth: that the person sleeping next to me was a stranger. That I was so good at inventing characters for mysteries, I’d forgotten to be curious about the one I’d married.
I see now what those books were really about: control. The illusion that if you’re smart enough, observant enough, careful enough, you can see the betrayal coming. You can solve the crime. You can write your way to safety.
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But you can’t. Life isn’t a thriller, and there’s no genius detective who’s going to figure it all out – no satisfying final chapter where all the pieces fit. At least, not in my life. Instead, there are just little clues I recognised far too late about the person I thought I knew becoming someone I never knew at all.
The book I’m working on now – the one about the woman who discovers her husband’s two-and-a-half-year affair with his massage therapist – will be called Happy Ending.
It won’t be neat or easy, but it might be happy. I hope it will be.
Danielle Girard is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of several novels, including the Annabelle Schwartzman series and Pinky Swear. She is also the creator and host of the Killer Women Podcast, where she interviews the women who write today’s best crime fiction. A graduate of Cornell University, Danielle received her MFA in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. When she’s not traveling, Danielle lives in the mountains of Montana.
On April 28-30 we’re hosting our first live, in-person gathering in 10 years. Yes, it really has been that long.
I’ve been wanting to re-infuse live events back into this space for years now. We almost got back into this several years ago… then COVID. So I waited for the timing to feel right. I told Reality to let me know, and it did. Now I know the time is right to start sharing about this. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that today is the first day of Spring. It’s been a wondrous journey to reach this point.
The event is called Open.
Super simple. Just Open.
Open is a space where we gather in person, connect (or reconnect for those who’ve gathered before), and immerse ourselves in a deep inner journey over three days together.
Open is very yin. Gentle. Receptive. Warm. Loving. Kind. Generous. Rejuvenating. Spacious.
Open is where you come to open.
Open to new possibilities. To a new relationship with life. To new friends.
Open to a life of wonder, harmony, and intelligence. Open to centeredness. Open to flow. Open to balance. Open to pleasure. Open to delight. Open to ease.
Whether you come to Open from a place of desperation, perspiration, or inspiration, you’ll be met with open-hearted kindness.
Yintelligence
Open is a space of emergence, revelation, and discovery. It’s a fusion of many different energies with a common theme.
Open is where you birth your answer to this one simple question: What next?
What wants to arise next in your life? What wants to emerge into full bloom? What wants to loosen, ease, and release?
What energies want to circulate richly through your life? Which ones are ready to be flushed?
Who are you becoming? What’s your next chapter? What wants to crystallize? What is your life about now?
Open has many facets to it, all of them oriented toward deeper self-discovery and inner harmony. The core of Open is a field of intelligence that we create and work within together.
I’ll be your guide and host. Rachelle will be there too.
Open Energies
These are the main energies we’ll be working with at Open:
Wonder & Receive
Orient & Center
Sense & Open
Loosen & Ease
Circulate & Rejuvenate
Invite & Allow
Arise & Emerge
Clarify & Crystallize
Integrate & Advance
We’ll be working intimately with these energies throughout Open, stepping in and out of them as we go. They’re infused into Open in fractal ways.
Open is here to help you connect the dots from your highest vibrational decisions to your daily actions. Harmonize your human life with the vibes that are most you.
Some Details
Open is happening in Las Vegas, April 28-30, 2026. That’s Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Open is entirely new. It has never existed before. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience.
Open is only in-person, not streaming or recorded. It’s meant to be a space of some intimacy.
Open welcomes all who feel called to attend. It’s $888 USD.
Once the venue agreement is settled and signed, I’ll happily share the specific location details. For now I’ll just say that we’ll be on the Las Vegas Strip.
In the days ahead, I’ll share more details and open sign-ups. I’ll also be writing and posting new articles and videos on themes we’ll be exploring together there. There’s plenty of time to decide, so for now just sit with this initial invitation and let yourself sense and feel out what wants to emerge next for you.
Open begins in 39 days. More than enough time to feel your way into it.
I invite you to open to the possibility of being in the room with us at Open. Let this fully emerge into your reality if it’s meant to be. You may have some surprises ahead.
Keir Starmer has been criticised after giving the US the green light to expand their use of RAF bases to bomb Iran.
Downing Street announced that American jets will be allowed to use British bases to strike sites targeting the Strait of Hormuz.
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It marks a significant shift in the government’s approach to the UK’s involvement in the war.
Starmer initially refused Donald Trump’s request to use RAF bases to bomb Iran at the start of the war.
However, the prime minister then decided to allow them to launch “defensive” missions against missile launch sites.
A Downing Street spokesman said those attacks can now be expanded as part of efforts to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, which carries around one-fifth of the global oil supply.
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Its closure due to attacks by Iran on oil tankers has sent the price of oil soaring and sparked fears of a global economic crisis.
The No.10 spokesman said: ”[Ministers] confirmed that the agreement for the US to use UK bases in the collective self-defence of the region includes US defensive operations to degrade the missile sites and capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
“They reaffirmed that the principles behind the UK’s approach to the conflict remain the same: the UK remains committed to defending our people, our interests and our allies, acting in accordance with international law and not getting drawn into the wider conflict.
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“Ministers underlined the need for urgent de-escalation and a swift resolution to the war.”
Despite the shift in the UK’s position, Trump told reporters Starmer “should have acted a lot faster”.
He said: “I’m surprised because the relationship is so good, but this has never happened before.
“They were really, pretty much our first ally, all over the world.”
Posting on X, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the PM had performed “the mother of all U-turns”.
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge added: “After weeks of dither and finger pointing, the prime minister has once again changed his mind and performed yet another screeching U-turn.
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“The prime minister had the Navy’s only active minesweeper taken out of the Gulf a week before the war began. He dithered about sending a warship to help defend our base in Cyprus. And where we have been clear from the outset that we would have allowed our closest military ally to use our bases, Starmer has been all over the place.
“When we need strong leadership in challenging times, Starmer is weak and indecisive.”
A Green Party source said: “It is now beyond obvious Britain is involved in an offensive bombing campaign in Iran.
“Starmer has gone against our warnings, the public’s clearly stated opinion, and international law, and involved the UK in yet another illegal Middle East war. Starmer has learned nothing from the tragedy of Iraq.”
Dame Jenni Murray, the veteran journalist best known as the longest-serving host of the BBC’s Woman’s Hour, has died at the age of 75.
In a post on the Radio 4 show’s Instagram page on Friday evening, the channel’s controller Mohit Bakaya said: “Jenni Murray was a formidable voice in British broadcasting who was warm, fearless and beloved by listeners.
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“During her decades at Woman’s Hour, she helped shape the national conversation with intelligence, rigour and a remarkable ability to connect with audiences. Jenni leaves an indelible legacy on generations of listeners.
“We are profoundly grateful for her outstanding contribution to Radio 4, and she will be deeply missed.”
Prior to that, she had worked at other flagship BBC shows including Newsnight and Radio 4’s Today Show.
She continued to work in journalism following her Woman’s Hour departure, writing for the likes of the Daily Mail and Saga magazine.
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In 2011, she was awarded a damehood by the late Queen Elizabeth II for services to broadcasting.
The BBC’s outgoing director-general Tim Davie also paid his respects on Friday, saying: “This is incredibly sad news and our thoughts are with all of Dame Jenni’s family and friends. Dame Jenni was, simply put, a broadcasting icon.
“Throughout her three groundbreaking decades on Woman’s Hour, Jenni created a safe space for her audience thanks to her warmth, intelligence and courage.
“We shall all miss her terribly. Her legacy endures in the countless conversations she started, the many issues she championed and the lives she touched.”
