We cannot imagine a more painful experience for a parent than losing a child. It changes your life forever in a profound way, and dealing with the grief can be challenging. It helps to find others who’ve had the same experience and can provide empathy during the hardest days. Unfortunately, Sean Coleman, a father from the United Kingdom, understands that pain too well, People reported. After losing his baby, he created the Forget-Me-Not-FC, a soccer club in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, England. Together, a group of dads plays soccer in memory of their children. It’s a beautiful outlet for these dads. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Forget me knot FC (@forgetmeknotfc) The Soccer Club Is a Judgment-Free Zone Aaron Way, who lost his daughter, Willow, told People the mission of the soccer club is simple. “Losing a child can be incredibly isolating, and many men find it difficult to talk openly about their grief. The idea behind the club was simple: to create a safe space where men could come together, talk honestly, and play football,” Aaron epaloined. “What began as a small initiative has grown into a supportive community where dads who have experienced similar losses can connect and support each other through something familiar — football.” Aaron said what started with just six men has grown to almost 40. The soccer club is about loving and caring for each other as much as it is about the game. “Everyone sits together and shares how their week has been, whether that’s something difficult or something positive. It’s a safe space where people can speak openly without feeling judged,” Aaron said. “After that, we head onto the pitch for a relaxed game of football. The focus isn’t competition — it’s connection.” Aaron added that while he’s surprised by how much attention the soccer club’s gotten, he’s thrilled. “The attention it has received has been encouraging because it helps open up conversations about grief, especially for fathers,” he said. “If that recognition helps even one person feel able to reach out for support, then it’s worthwhile.” This story’s featured image can be found here.

Yes, Kate Middleton is the Princess of Wales and the next in line to be queen, but at her core, she’s a mom. Kate cares not only for her three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, but also shows great compassion to thousands of children she encounters every year. It’s easy to see that she is a true nurturer at heart. This year on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, Kate Middleton saw many fans and enthusiasts at Tuesday’s parade at Mons Barracks. One girl positively stole the show, and Kate loved it. A very cute moment in the Sgt’s Mess at Mons Barracks, Aldershot, where The Princess of Wales met Irish Guards families after the St Patrick’s Day Parade Vienna and Mila (aged 3) were VERY excited to meet Catherine pic.twitter.com/Y8lYVobMcU— Cameron Walker (@CameronDLWalker) March 17, 2026 The Little Girl Was So Excited to See Kate Middleton on St. Patrick’s Day According to People, Vienna, the 3-year-old daughter of Irish Guardsman Lance Sergeant Mills ran right up to Kate Middleton during the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Kate kindly bent down to engage with the little child. “Are you excited?” She asked. The princess then complimented Vienna on her hair and dress. She also spoke with the girl’s sister, Mila. Cameron Walker captured Kate Middleton’s special moment at the St. Patrick’s Day parade and shared it on X. Fans loved seeing the genuine joy and love in the interaction. “My beautiful granddaughter with the beautiful Catherine this morning,” a family member wrote. “Where would the royal family be without that woman?” Anohter fan asked. Many feel like Kate Middleton is a magnet for children, not just on St. Patrick’s Day, but always. “Children, like everyone, love her. She is so warm and caring with them. How lucky are those two adorable little girls to have this moment with her,” a fan wrote. “She’s such a natural with children, they just gravitate towards her,” another agreed. “Unlike you know who!” This story’s featured image is by Richard Pohle – WPA Pool / Getty Images.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM A new clinical trial from Johns Hopkins University produced results that surprised even the researchers behind it. Participants who took a single dose of psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, had more than six times greater odds of being cigarette-free at the six-month mark compared to those using nicotine patches. “I was surprised by the sheer magnitude of the effect,” said Matthew Johnson, the study’s lead author and a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins. What the trial actually looked like The study enrolled 82 current smokers, randomly divided into two groups. Both went through 13 weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy for smoking cessation. One group used nicotine patches; the other took a relatively high dose of pure psilocybin in a single guided session. Participants in the psilocybin group lay in a room wearing eye shades and listening to soft music, with facilitators present to keep them comfortable. The experience itself was “self-directed,” Johnson said. At six months, 17 people in the psilocybin group had stayed off cigarettes. Only four in the nicotine patch group had done the same. There was no placebo in this trial. Blinding participants in psychedelic research is a known challenge given the obvious mind-altering effects, so the researchers opted for a different design. That’s a real limitation, and Johnson acknowledged the findings will need to be replicated in a larger, more diverse study before drawing firm conclusions. The National Institutes of Health has already funded him for exactly that: a larger ongoing trial that includes a placebo arm. Why this is different from every existing quit-smoking tool Seven medications are currently approved for smoking cessation in the United States. Most work by targeting nicotine receptors directly, essentially replacing or mimicking the substance someone is trying to quit. Psilocybin takes a completely different route. “It’s a very different treatment approach from just trying to replace or sort of mimic the drug that’s being misused,” said addiction psychiatrist Dr. Brian Barnett of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. Even with the best available medications and counseling combined, long-term quit rates hover between 20 and 30 percent per attempt. That means 70 percent of people return to smoking. “How do we help those folks?” asked Megan Piper, director of the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. Brain imaging data from this latest study are still being analyzed, but Johnson described what appears to be happening at a behavioral level. “When people are on a compound like psilocybin, the brain is communicating with itself in very different ways,” he said. What follows, in conversations with past participants, seems to be a genuine shift in perspective and a new sense of agency. “Rather than falling into the same stories, these same patterns, it seems that things are shaken up and they can step outside of that and try something different.” Barnett suspects the intensive therapeutic structure around the psilocybin session was also central to the outcome. “It’s not the drug by itself here. It’s really harnessing the neuroplastic and learning effects that happen after the exposure.” A field gaining traction at the right moment This study builds on a smaller pilot Johnson ran more than a decade ago. Together, the two sets of results were compelling enough to secure NIH funding for the next phase. Research into psilocybin for alcohol dependence has also shown early promise, and ibogaine is drawing serious attention for opioid use disorder. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. “It’s been 20 years since we’ve had a new medication to help people quit smoking,” Piper said. “We need something novel, and this is definitely a novel approach.” The larger NIH-funded trial, which includes a placebo arm and a more diverse participant pool, will go a long way toward answering whether these results hold at scale. Brain imaging data from this study, still under analysis, may add more texture to the mechanism. The field has real momentum, and the questions worth asking now are getting sharper. Source study: JAMA Network Open– Psilocybin or nicotine patch for smoking cessation a pilot randomised clinical trial     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post A single dose of psilocybin gave smokers six times better odds of quitting than the patch first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM “Just stop overthinking” is advice that tells you nothing useful about how to actually follow it. The mind that automatically converts “they haven’t texted back” into “they must be furious with me” isn’t doing so out of weakness. It’s doing its job, badly but earnestly. What makes overthinking so persistent is that it feels productive. “It’s the idea of: if I keep analyzing, I don’t have to sit with sadness,” says Geoffrey Gold, PhD, a psychologist at Therapists of New York. Picking apart a difficult conversation or replaying a job interview after the fact can seem like useful work. But as Dr. Gold puts it, “many situations can’t be solved with more thought,” and the people who seem most at ease tend to be the ones who have learned to accept that. A more accurate framing for chronic overthinking isn’t that it’s a fixed personality trait or evidence of deep-seated anxiety. It’s a coping strategy, one the brain picked up somewhere along the way and has been relying on ever since. Which means it can, slowly, be retrained. Give your spiral a defined container Suppressing anxious thoughts rarely works, and trying to white-knuckle them away tends to make them louder. A more realistic goal is to limit the time you spend in them. Krista Norris, LMFT, founder of Conscious Connection Therapy Services, suggests setting a timer for ten minutes and writing down whatever you’re worried about: the career decision, the money fear, the relationship uncertainty. When the timer goes off, physically close the notebook or app. “The psyche spirals when it feels unheard,” Norris explains, “so containment signals safety without letting your thoughts run unchecked.” The point isn’t to dismiss the worry. It’s to give it a defined window, acknowledge it, and then set it down. Learn to separate facts from the stories you’re adding “They haven’t texted back” is a fact. “They’re mad at me” is an interpretation. When you’re deep in an anxious loop, these two things feel identical, which is exactly the problem. Dr. Gold recommends slowing down enough to ask: what do you actually know, and what are you assuming? A “let’s revisit this” email from your manager doesn’t confirm they think you’re incompetent. Someone watching your Instagram story without replying doesn’t signal disinterest. These distinctions probably sound obvious when you’re calm. They’re considerably less obvious in the middle of an anxious moment, which is precisely when having a reality-check habit in place makes the most difference. Swap “what if” for “what’s next” Spiraling tends to be driven by a hunger for certainty, the feeling that if you think hard enough, you can pre-solve whatever might go wrong. But most outcomes can’t be secured through more analysis. Norris recommends a small but meaningful reframe: instead of “what if this goes wrong,” ask yourself “what’s the smallest, useful step I can take right now?” That might mean updating one section of your resume if career anxiety is the source, or sketching a rough budget if money is the pressure point. “Even tiny actions can restore a sense of agency and break that mental gridlock,” Norris says. The brain doesn’t need the whole problem resolved. It needs something concrete to engage with, and even a small action tends to interrupt the loop more effectively than more thinking does. Be deliberate about which distractions you reach for Not all distractions are equally helpful. Dr. Gold recommends avoiding anything that might loop you back toward what you’re trying to step away from: refreshing social media, checking your bank balance, or opening work email when work is the source of the spiral. Instead, reach for activities that engage your body and senses in a more neutral way, such as a walk, cooking, or simply splashing cold water on your face. Practice “good enough” as a standard A lot of overthinking is rooted in a lack of trust in your own judgment. Rereading the email one more time or scrolling through every hotel review before booking feels like thoroughness, but it’s really a chase for certainty that doesn’t exist. Norris recommends training yourself toward a different benchmark: “I don’t need total clarity to move forward. I just need a decision that’s 70 percent right.” Post the photo that’s been sitting in your drafts. Send the networking email without triple-checking every line. These are small acts of self-trust, and they compound. The more consistently you make reasonable rather than “perfect” choices, the less urgent the impulse to overanalyze each one becomes. Build tolerance for uncertainty in small doses The goal isn’t to just never overanalyze again. It’s to build enough tolerance for uncertainty that your brain stops treating discomfort like a genuine emergency. “People who don’t do it as often are usually better at tolerating unpredictability and negative emotions directly,” Dr. Gold explains. “They let themselves feel disappointed, anxious, and embarrassed without trying to ‘out-think.'” This is where exposure therapy principles come in. Dr. Gold suggests starting small and low-stakes: let an ambiguous message sit for an hour before responding. Resist refreshing your inbox for results that won’t arrive until next week. The cumulative effect is gradual but real. As Dr. Gold puts it, “you’re teaching yourself that discomfort isn’t danger: it’s just discomfort.” Once the brain learns it can tolerate those moments without needing to manage them through worst-case scenarios, it begins to reach for that response less often.     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post Overthinking is a learned habit, and therapists say you can unlearn it first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Cats have an interesting way of showing up when you least expect them. Sometimes their mere presence at the oddest of times provides the perfect break from serious moments. This is especially apparent when they appear on news segments. On the @Explaining Instagram page, they share a montage of adorable cats appearing on news broadcasts, often without their owners realizing it. In the comments, the page explains that this usually happens because cats like to see and be seen: “Cats have a funny habit of interrupting video calls, and it is mostly because they are naturally curious and attention seeking.” In the clip, we see different breeds of cats yawning, stretching, and yes, jumping into the middle of news shots. Often they stand frozen, their mysterious eyes widened by the lights. Other times, they are oblivious to their surroundings. View this post on Instagram One interrupts a man doing the weather, while another jumps on a reporter doing a “man on the street” interview. The account adds that cats often think they’re the main event: “When they see their owner staring at a screen and talking, they often assume it is something important and want to be part of it. That curiosity can lead them to walk across keyboards, sit in front of the camera, or stare directly into the lens.” Cats have their reasons But surprisingly, there’s another reason a cat might hop into frame. The page explains: “Cats are drawn to warmth and elevated spots. Laptops give off heat, and desks are often one of the highest places in a room, making them the perfect place for a cat to settle down right in the middle of a meeting.” This fact is corroborated by veterinary experts. In a Catster article, Editor-in-Chief Christian Adams (reviewed and fact-checked by veterinarian Dr. Luqman Javed) notes that cats prefer elevated spaces. “Most times, laptops rest on an elevated surface, like a table, desk, or bed,” Adams writes. “The laptop offers a defined place to take a load off and a strategic vantage point. They can see who’s coming or going, peek out a window, or knock some pens on the floor—just for kicks.” Cats are also drawn to warmth. “For some cats, this might involve sitting near a window. Others might get more creative,” Adams writes. “Considering how warm laptops can get, most cats will gladly situate themselves right on the keyboard any chance they get. For cats, finding a warm laptop to lie on is like finding that perfect sleeping situation at night—cuddled up in your fluffy duvet, with the cool side of the pillow.” And of course, cats simply (usually) love their humans. “With that affection, comes the desire to be the center of our world—even at the most inconvenient times,” Adams adds. Cat adoration The Instagram clip already has over 164,000 likes and tons of comments. One person marvels at how fortunate we are to even be in the presence of these majestic beings, writing, “We’re so lucky that we get to live in a world where cats exist.” Another cat lover notes that cat people know who’s really in charge, writing, “I love how none of them try to stop or move their cat, we’ve accepted that they are really in charge here.” This person sums up the response quite nicely: “I believe if you wanna find good humans, drop a cat in front of them and see how they respond. I love every laugh and bit of joy these cats brought these news anchors and reporters.” The post An adorable compilation of cats interrupting serious news reports is pure joy appeared first on Upworthy.