After Jessica Allen gave birth to two healthy sons, she decided to become a surrogate mom. With a five-year-old and a six-month baby at home, it was a good way to earn money (as in $30,000) while being a stay-at-home mother and helping someone else have children of their own. So she carried a baby...

Sarah Biren
Food Journalist
Sarah is a baker, cook, author, and blogger living in Toronto. She believes that food is the best method of healing and a classic way of bringing people together. In her spare time, Sarah does yoga, reads cookbooks, writes stories, and finds ways to make any type of food in her blender.
Divorce is a difficult and draining phase of life for anyone to pass through, but what’s even harder is learning to co-parent amicably after separating. The transition from couple to divorced co-parents is not always as seamless as we assume it to be. Endless negotiations, mediation, blurred lines about the children’s future, and antagonistic emotions...
Do you think mom’s today are too nice? While we don’t need malicious parenting, are some parents forgetting the importance of teaching tough love? Many new age parents are taking on opposite parenting traits that they were raised with. It’s likely that if you grew up with strict parents who were unreasonable, made you complete...
Mishka Peart was driving through a hectic intersection in Queens when she noticed a 6-year-old girl wandering alone. She clutched two bags filled with her clothes. A surgical mask covered her face when Peart pulled over to investigate. She was shocked to learn a mother had decided to abandon her daughter. “I asked her where she was...
Gen Z and Boomer finally agree on something: Millennials are the worst. Millennials have learned to ignore Boomer retorts about how “lazy and entitled” their generation is. Not to mention the “they’ll be able to buy a house if they’d stop with their avocado toast and expensive coffees.” Not to mention the “you kids have...
Arabella Gibbons, 22, has grown up with half-siblings. With her firsthand experiences, she believes that people should not undervalue half-sibling relationships, according to her interview with the Guardian. “I remember telling a story about my brother in school when I was eight, and the teacher said, ‘Now tell the truth, he’s not your brother, he’s...
“Never accept rides from strangers” used to be a common safety hack. But with rideshare apps, riding with strangers has become normal nowadays. That doesn’t mean it’s entirely safe. In July 2022, Uber made headlines for being the subject of 550 sexual assault and attack allegations. Misconduct, assault, rape, and even murder have occurred through...
Willie Mae Truesdale heard a loud explosion coming from her kitchen. When she went to investigate, she found her glass oven door in pieces all over the floor. “It was shocking and you had to really see it to believe it,” she explained. “It was like what in the world. Glass shattered, glass was out...
The exhausted and beleaguered parents of a newborn are practically a cliche at this point. Many expecting mothers may receive jokes about how they “better sleep now because you won’t after the baby is born.” As it turns out, they may not get a good night’s sleep for longer than they think. A 2019 study...
Many people prefer to sleep with the bedroom door open. After all, it ensures better air regulation and lets parents hear if their kids wake up during the night. However, a closed-door can help the occupants survive a house fire, according to 10 years of research by UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI). However, this...
Cleaning can be stressful. No matter how often you mop, the floor gets dirty. You suddenly can’t remember the last time you changed the sheets. You used the wrong type of cleaning agent, and now the counters have a strange sheen. Everyone wants to have a neat home, but cleaning it is a whole other...
Remember the run on toilet paper during the outbreak of Covid-19? This might have played out differently if everyone had turned to reusable toilet paper. They are essentially the same concept as cloth diapers or reusable menstrual pads. Many people use it as the cheaper and more eco-friendly alternative to regular toilet paper. However, this...