Trainings, camps, internships, and earn-and-learn options   Summer Programs for Kids Adventures in Cardboard Build arms and armor, battle on trails as you seek out magical relics of power! contact@adventuresincardboard.com ArticultureCamp themes include art and science, hands on art history, comics and animation, and more! info@articulture.org, 612-729-5151 ArtStart Youth Art CampsArtStart presents a multicultural, interdisciplinary view of the world through art classes and special programs focusing on the connection between humans and their environment. cindy@artstart.org, 651-698-2 ..read more

Our mental health coverage in 2024 is made possible by the Minnesota Association for Children's Mental Health. Our family lost Joshua, my youngest child, on September 14, 2020. He was a film director in Los Angeles. I created a book of poems that he inspired. These are a few of them, as well as part of my introduction to the book.   The truth is we lose our children the moment they are born. We trust they will be present at least until we ourselves leave the material world. I mourned the times I said goodbye to Joshua when he would go off to school, off to overnight camp, off to live on ..read more

When I was 39,  I received a devastating diagnosis of stage 3 breast cancer. My sons were ages 3 and 6. The diagnosis of breast cancer was heart wrenching. My breasts had nurtured my two sons, defined my femininity, and then they were gone. I felt like I had been stripped of my magic powers.  How do you explain cancer to your young children while fighting the hardest physical battle you have ever faced?  I searched for a book I could read to my children, but eventually found my own words to explain what was happening. I self-published our family’s story.  “Our Mama is a Be ..read more

Badass members voted for the first annual Badass Minnesotans Awards, whose recipients were recognized at an April 13 event. The five individual and three organizational winners were selected from a collection of 2023-24 stories published on womenspress.com. We also had two honorary awards. Veronica Mendez Moore, CTUL A Conversation With Veronica Mendez Moore of CTUL Mary Moriarty, Hennepin County Attorney Talking to Mary Moriarty About Juvenile Justice Reform Sue Abderholden, NAMI Top Five Issues in Minnesota Mental Health System Ellie Krug, Human Inspiration Works Learning How to Open V ..read more

Our mental health coverage in 2024 is made possible by the Minnesota Association for Children's Mental Health. In February, the Center for Rural Policy and Development released a report titled “The Suicide Epidemic in Rural Minnesota: How we got here and how we move forward.” Researchers interviewed rural mental health care providers and state agency officials, and analyzed data to determine why suicide rates are rising faster in the rural parts of the state, and how rural residents struggle with lack of mental health services and information. Minnesota Women’s Press spoke with the report’s t ..read more

Lurline Baker-Kent, left, and Katie McWatt are two of more than 20 members of the newly organized local group Black Mothers United for Youth. “The total commitment and the total passion of women coming together for a common goal has created a strong bond among us,” Baker-Kent says. “We know what we have to do and we’re in it for the long haul.” Photo Terry Faust (1998) The following story appeared in the May 27–June 9, 1998 issue of Minnesota Women’s Press. Twice per month in 2024, MWP is uplifting select pieces from our 39-year archive with a focus on longstanding issues. In tandem with our ..read more

Dr. Rahel Nardos is developing a web-based app for an eight-week “mindfulness intervention” that will help women cope with the emotions that come from chronic pelvic and bladder pain. Photo Sarah Whiting During the winter of 2022, as the weather cooled and the sunlight lessened, Laura Preves Helgeson decided something had to change. Having first experienced urinary tract infections (UTIs) as a toddler, Helgeson had grown tired of staying silent about a disease — one that disproportionately affects women — that for years had shaped the contours of her life. She launched her website, UTI Hea ..read more

Readers responded to our May 2024 Mental Health issue prompt: Mental well-being is __. Stayci Bell Mental well-being is the ability to deal with everything life throws at you. It is exercising one’s thinking like one does their physical body; one day lifting 150 lbs., the next only five. It is thinking it doesn’t matter if one never knew one’s dad, and that after being molested as a teenager by one’s step-dad, I am alright. It is figuring out one’s way after becoming a young parent without marriage or money. It is the ability to see butterflies after one’s baby’s Sid’s death. It is the abili ..read more

The following is excerpted from Impermanence: Life and Loss on Superior’s South Shore (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) by Sue Leaf. In the memoir, Leaf shares her lifelong connection with the south shore of Lake Superior, the lake’s natural and human histories, and her experiences occupying a rustic cabin on a rapidly eroding lakeside cliff. In the following excerpt, she ponders the future of the property. A larger question remains: who does, in truth, own the beach? Who is responsible for protecting it? In a moral universe, is the beach privately owned or part of a communal trust? Wh ..read more

Lydia Moran As we continue to advance conversations and awareness around “mental health,” there is a danger of watering down the term without a clear understanding of what it really means. So I want to start by sharing how I conceptualized this issue’s theme, and how I believe the stories that emerged serve to create new understandings. The Minnesota Department of Health offers a distinction between mental health and mental illness, which are not opposite. It is possible to have poor mental health and no mental illness, which is defined as “languishing,” e.g., “socially isolated, feeling d ..read more