For some women di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer, surgery is the first thing they fear. The prospect of los­ing a breast can be so over­whelm­ing that they de­lay seek­ing med­ical at­ten­tion, even as a tu­mour grows.

For Seanalee Lazara, her spir­i­tu­al heal­ing was en­hanced by her phys­i­cal heal­ing fol­low­ing an ac­ci­dent nine years ago that left her tem­porar­i­ly bedrid­den.

On any giv­en school morn­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, class­rooms burst with the fa­mil­iar rhythm of Caribbean life—chil­dren laugh­ing, set­tling in­to lessons and greet­ing their teach­ers with bright en­er­gy. Yet be­neath that vi­bran­cy, a qui­eter cri­sis is un­fold­ing. More of our na­tion’s chil­dren are liv­ing with emo­tion­al dis­tress than ever be­fore, nav­i­gat­ing fear, anx­i­ety, sad­ness and un­cer­tain­ty long be­fore they have the words to de­scribe what they feel.

George Thoro­good and the De­stroy­ers made Bad to the Bone sound like an ex­cel­lent con­di­tion in their 1982 clas­sic. In med­i­cine, be­ing bad to the bone can mean a wrist bro­ken on a pave­ment, a ver­te­bra crushed while lift­ing a shop­ping bag, or a hip frac­ture that leads to a fa­tal blood clot, an in­fec­tion caused by im­mo­bil­i­sa­tion, or death.

The full term for mol­lus­cum is an­oth­er of those scary med­ical names: mol­lus­cum con­ta­gio­sum (MC), sug­gest­ing that it is high­ly con­ta­gious and has some­thing to do with mol­luscs (snails, slugs, conchs, oys­ters, clams, mus­sels, oc­to­pus­es, etc.). Well, the ill­ness does have some­what of a re­la­tion­ship with wa­ter.

When Ann-Marie See­baran was di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer 22 years ago, the path to re­cov­ery felt in­sur­mount­able. As a sin­gle moth­er, the or­deal test­ed her spir­it to its ab­solute lim­its, ul­ti­mate­ly re­defin­ing how she viewed life it­self.

The Hosay Ri­ots was a bloody in­ci­dent that oc­curred in San Fer­nan­do. Nu­mer­ous la­bels have been at­tached to the hor­rif­ic event in­volv­ing the cold-blood­ed killing of par­tic­i­pants.

Tony and his friends joked as they trekked up the steep hill, try­ing to take their minds off their aching feet. They had been walk­ing for close to two hours since the ride-share dri­ver had dropped them off at dawn at the foot of the trail that led to Lu­cid Pond, a se­clud­ed riv­er none of them had ever vis­it­ed. But the pho­tos they had seen had sealed the deal.

Few artistes have shaped Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al con­scious­ness as pro­found­ly as El­la An­dall. Singer, song­writer, ac­tress, sto­ry­teller, cul­tur­al ac­tivist, ed­u­ca­tor and spir­i­tu­al leader, An­dall has spent more than four decades us­ing her voice to cel­e­brate African her­itage, af­firm iden­ti­ty and in­spire gen­er­a­tions of Caribbean peo­ple. To­day, she stands not on­ly as one of the coun­try’s most re­spect­ed per­form­ers but al­so as one of its most im­por­tant cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors.

South­ern Trinidad’s for­got­ten his­to­ry is be­ing brought to light through ar­chae­o­log­i­cal re­search that is un­cov­er­ing ev­i­dence of the lives of In­dige­nous peo­ple, in­den­tured labour­ers and the com­mu­ni­ties they built, while train­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of lo­cal re­searchers to pre­serve the coun­try’s her­itage.

Imag­ine tak­ing time off work, wait­ing in a long line, and pay­ing for your ve­hi­cle’s manda­to­ry bi-an­nu­al ve­hi­cle in­spec­tion, on­ly to be flat­ly turned away be­fore the in­spec­tor even looks at your brakes. It is a high­ly frus­trat­ing re­al­i­ty for many dri­vers in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and it usu­al­ly comes down to a sin­gle, tiny ty­po on their pa­per­work: con­fus­ing the num­ber “1” for the let­ter “I”, or the num­ber “0” for the let­ter “O”.

The East Gates Mall atri­um will be trans­formed in­to a run­way on No­vem­ber 14 for lo­cal fash­ion en­tre­pre­neur Yosi­a­ha Fletch­er’s up­com­ing fash­ion show. Ti­tled The 212 Run­way, it promis­es to cel­e­brate “all bod­ies” and “all beau­ty.”