Her husband was away on business, and her sons, 9 and 11, were sleeping down the hall in the family’s otherwise cozy suburban home. But Chavez’s heart thumped “violently” in her chest, and she couldn’t calm her breaths. She thought she might die.

As Chavez, 44, writes in her new memoir, “Everyone But Myself” (Zibby Books, 240 pages) she was having a classic panic attack. She was convinced she would go into anaphylactic shock due to an allergic reaction; earlier in the day, she had been exposed to pollen at her son’s baseball game.

Even though some part of Chavez knew her fears were irrational, she couldn’t stop the racing thoughts. She managed to survive the night without going into the dreaded respiratory distress but woke the next morning realizing she desperately needed help.

Somehow, she had developed a major anxiety disorder, as she had tried to achieve “a perfectly happy life.” Proud of her confidence and competence, she had a good marriage, thriving kids and a nice home. She also kept busy with a fulfilling job and volunteering. Her therapist later told her she was having a “mid-mom crisis,” common to working mothers who find themselves massively over-extended.

Chavez’s book is an account of her search for relief and what she learned in the process. Among other things, she shed the misconceptions that mental health disorders don’t strike someone like her, and that a panic attack is just something you “get over.” Chavez, who moved to the Bay Area in 2014, also found new ways to communicate with her husband, Mando, and to adjust her expectations about being a parent. She hasn’t had such an attack since, but that’s because she’s become attuned to triggers and managing stress as it arises.

Here she talks about her journey.

Q: Had you had issues with anxiety or depression before? You mentioned that when you were in high school in Colorado you had a bad breakup that sent you into a spiral and you took Zoloft, an antidepressant.

A: After my first son was born, I (also) had a really hard time. (But) I don’t think I ever experienced the generalized anxiety that happened when the events in the book took place.

Q: You trace your panic attack to five months earlier when you had a reaction to standard allergy shots. You had to go back to the doctor’s office to get shots of epinephrine and prednisone to alleviate a rash, but those drugs really amped you up and made you feel almost out of control. Can you talk about that?

A: That really was a traumatic experience for me in terms of my chief fear — that something would happen to me that would leave my boys and my family without me. So the combination of the allergy shots and the physical experience of this systemic reaction to the medications — those combined left me feeling like things were precarious. What I didn’t do was deal with that experience. I kept moving forward and put more on my to-do list.

Q: After that, the anxiety receded into the background for a few months. How did it return when you were at your son’s baseball game and escalate into a full-blown panic attack?

A: I’m sitting under these trees that are raining pollen and petals. I started to sneeze and get itchy eyes. These are normal seasonal allergies and something that’s happened to me since I was a child. But since I was in this burned-out, depleted place, I wondered: Did I mess up my system by getting these shots? The thought that I had over-sensitized my system and that this would lead to another potential anaphylaxis was just enough for me to go into a panic and not be able to stop that spiral.

Q: You describe what was going on in your brain and body as being as if some kind of switch got turned on and there’s no way you can turn it off.

A: Correct: The switch analogy. I understood the mental part of it. I had never felt that full-body sensation of anxiety. It really did feel like something was different inside my body that I couldn’t discern.

Q: Did it add to your stress that you knew that your fear about anaphylaxis was irrational but you still had the fear?

A: If I know this to be true, cognitively and intellectually, that this is not a possibility, then why am I still captive by it? It does add to that out-of-control feeling.

Q: It sounds like the principal of the elementary school where you worked was very understanding, especially after you received some advice from a doctor to just quit your job if you felt so overwhelmed.

A: (The principal) was wonderful. She called it a “working-mom meltdown.” She said this is a thing that happens when you go back to work. She did what I needed at the time, which was to validate that experience and say, you’re not crazy. The second thing she did was to give me the space to not make a decision (about quitting my job). By slowing me down and saying, let’s not make a decision today, she was giving me permission to actually figure myself out. (If I had quit) I wouldn’t have gotten that job back, necessarily.

Q: After that, you found a good therapist, Kim, and you had a great visit with Tim, an amazing physician’s assistant who works for your primary care physician. He put you back on Zoloft.

A: I went to see Kim first and things initially started to get a little bit worse. Once you open your Pandora’s box, when you haven’t been feeling things for a while, they come back with a vengeance. But from that point on, I really felt like I had the basic tools in place.

Q: Can you talk about the challenges you and your husband faced over that summer, especially with communication?

A: My husband and I are generally a happy couple. When I was in the dark place, as I affectionately call it, I didn’t have the words to communicate that to him. He didn’t have an ability to understand it, because he hadn’t experienced it. Until you’ve experienced anxiety and depression, you really do have a hard time not assigning some sort of responsibility to the person who is struggling. I should also say, I was out of practice expressing how I was feeling.

And, we had gotten into those really busy years, of our life with kids. It’s like a logistics Olympics that you’re engaged in every day. (Since then), I think it’s informed the way we talk to each other now, the way we talk to our kids.

Q: What can you say about learning to take care of yourself? You mentioned easing up on the volunteering and doing jigsaw puzzles, reading again, getting into yoga, exercising on a Peloton bike.

A: The way back to myself was paved with very small steps that ended up being powerful. The first was the medication and going into therapy. Exercise, going to yoga, doing the puzzles, reading: They represented time for myself and a slowing down. They allowed me to tolerate stillness and to slowly build those muscles back up. Eventually, they allowed me to reconnect to the joy of things. The puzzles are interesting. Every time I finished a puzzle, I took a picture of it. It was creating evidence for myself that I was taking time for myself. It was a project that had a discrete beginning and end, so I could feel a sense of completion.

Q: When the new school year came, you returned to work and your kids went back to school. You tell a really good story about how your oldest son came home from his first day of middle school to say that you all had missed the note about coming prepared with notebooks and other supplies. What was your reaction, and how was it different than what it would have been the year before?

A: (The year before) I probably would have left right then to buy school supplies. I would have felt embarrassed. This year, I laughed, and his dad took him the next day. And it worked out. I had learned that perfection strangles joy. And, the reality is that I care about loving my boys to the best of my ability, but sometimes that gets confused with doing things for them to the best of my ability, and those are different. It was a huge moment, where I thought, “Oh well. Mistakes help you improve.” For me to be that kind and good to myself, to be a friend to myself, instead of a critic, was a lesson that I still really treasure.

Q: How did you and your family fare during COVID lockdown? And, given your fear of shots, how did you do with vaccines?

A: Thankfully, we had learned better ways to communicate with each other. (With the vaccine), Mando was not able to go with me for my first shot. I took a friend. (Before) I would have been embarrassed to say I was scared to go and get a shot. Now I ask for what I need. That’s the worst part for me of anxiety and depression. Those voices will say you are alone. You are not alone. Finding that support is a gift.

During an interview on the “Today” show Monday, Retton, 55, revealed that she couldn’t afford insurance before she was hospitalized. The retired gold-medal gymnast explained that it was simply too expensive for her to buy insurance as a newly single woman with a history of surgeries.

“When COVID hit and after my divorce and all my pre-existing (conditions) — I mean, I’ve had over 30 operations of orthopedic stuff — I couldn’t afford it… That’s the bottom line: I couldn’t afford it,” Retton told “Today” host Hoda Kotb.

“But who would even know that this was going to happen to me?” said Retton, who also explained that she is now “all set” with insurance.

Because of her lack of coverage when she was checked into an unnamed Houston hospital, Shayla Schrepfer, the oldest of Retton’s four daughters, said the family had to start a crowdfunding campaign to help cover the bill for her treatment. Over the next few weeks, the Spotfund campaign raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Retton, a star medalist at the 1984 Olympics. As of Monday, the campaign had raised a total of $459,000.

Retton’s hospital bill probably was massive. She revealed Monday that she spent a month in the hospital, much of that time in the intensive-care unit. At one point, she said, her situation became so dire that doctors considered putting her on life support and her four daughters said goodbye to her.

Among people on social media, the idea that Retton’s family needed to ask strangers to pay for what was expected to be an enormous hospital bill incited a range of questions and reactions in October. At the top of the list: Why didn’t Retton have health insurance? And, what kind of country is the United States if even a legendary sports figure like Retton — once dubbed “America’s sweetheart” — can’t pay for an emergency hospital stay?

When Retton’s daughters refused to comment on their mother’s lack of insurance, “out of respect for her and her privacy,” people online were left to speculate on whether the retired athlete chose to forego health insurance, or if she somehow lost coverage or wasn’t able to obtain coverage.

They also noted that she had recently been living in a Houston mansion, citing a May 2022 report that she was selling her “luxury” 9,000-square-foot Houston home, which boasted six bedrooms, six bathrooms and a swimming pool.

During Monday’s interview, Retton revealed that she had been staying with her daughter, Shayla Schrepfer, since leaving the hospital. Schrepfer also joined her mother for the interview.

When Kotb pointed out that many people assumed that Retton could afford health insurance, the gymnast replied that “life goes on and things happen” in a person’s life that could make it suddenly difficult for someone like her unable to afford insurance. One of the things that happened is that she split from her husband of 27 years, as she revealed in a 2018 interview.

It was also noted during the interview that it had been almost 40 years since the won the Olympic gold medal. The bottom line: Retton said she could not afford it.

A 2022 Kaiser Family Foundation study shows that roughly 10.2% of Americans under the age of 65 don’t have health insurance; Retton could qualify for Medicare, federal health insurance, when she turns 65. The study said that the number of uninsured in the United States actually decreased by about 1.5 million people from 2019 to 2021, mainly due to policies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The policies were designed to help low-income people gain and maintain coverage during the pandemic, and they included enhanced subsidies in the marketplace and the requirement that states maintain continuous enrollment for people on Medicaid, which provides insurance to low-income people.

Most of America’s uninsured are people in low-income families in which at least one family member is working, the study said. Generally, people of color are at higher risk of being uninsured. Some 64 percent of adults surveyed said they don’t get insurance because the cost of coverage is too high, even with policy efforts to make coverage more affordable.

That may sound daunting, but Oakland entrepreneur Sanchali Pal said it is within people’s power to make meaningful choices in their own lives. Her free new app, Commons, helps people track and reduce their carbon footprint — the total amount of carbon dioxide and other emissions they generate — by tracking how they spend money on food, utilities, clothes, furniture or travel.

“Basically, I wanted to make it easier for people to make sustainable choices,” Pal said. “I knew, as a consumer myself, how hard it was, how much work it took to get the information required to actually make progress and measurably lower emissions.”

The Boston-reared Pal was first inspired to track her own carbon footprint during college at Princeton. She subsequently lived and worked in India and Ethiopia, where she saw how people’s daily lives were increasingly compromised by rising temperatures, drought, floods or access to water.  After monitoring her own activities in an Excel spreadsheet for six years, she lowered her own emissions by 30% and saved about $2,000 a year.

With the Commons app, users input basic lifestyle information, including the size of their homes, how often they fly and how often they eat meat; meat production is known to require large amounts of land and involve the destruction of forests. If users choose to connect the app to their credit or debit cards, it automatically estimates the emissions of each purchase to provide a real-time update. The app also provides rewards, which users can take in cash, donate to an organization or redeem for carbon offsetting.

“To have a sustainable lifestyle, it doesn’t have to be extreme,” Pal said. “You don’t have to be vegan, you don’t have to stop flying, but you can make a lot of important progress towards reducing emissions with choices that are better for you, too.”

Q. What prompted your interest in this?

A. During my senior year at Princeton, I was taking a sustainable economics class and saw the documentary, “Food Inc.” After tracking my carbon footprint in an Excel spreadsheet, I thought, if people lowered their emissions even 5 or 10%, and hundreds of thousands of people were making these choices, that would matter a lot.

Q. What changes really surprised you?

A. I was eating about 12 meals with meat per week. By cutting that down to two, I calculated I was taking half a car off the road every year. I didn’t have to go fully vegetarian. What if my entire dining hall of 250 people at Princeton did that? That would be taking 125 cars off the road each year.I now eat meat once a week. I still fly, but I think about whether the trip is worth it and whether it fits into my carbon budget.

Q. With people tracking their carbon footprints, does that put too much onus on individuals? A 2017 study showed that major corporations have created the majority of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.

A. Yes, climate change was set in motion by decisions that governments and companies have been making over hundreds of years. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to make a difference. Households influence over 65% of global emissions through their spending choices, how we heat and power our homes, whether we buy clothes new, the food we buy, how we travel. We have the ability to send a signal to companies about the world we want to live in with our spending choices.

Q. How does linking your spending to the app track your emissions?

A. Say, you spent $50 on gasoline at Shell, and you live in Oakland. The price of gasoline here is $5 a gallon, which means you bought 10 gallons of gasoline — then the carbon footprint is 100kg of CO2. Meanwhile, maybe you made a separate purchase of $50 at a local thrift store. The app assigns that a zero-footprint because buying clothes that already exist is a sustainable purchase. We show you a real-time feed of emissions and which purchases are sustainable.

Even if you don’t link your spending to the app, you can access our whole library of content, which includes guides on everything from how to switch to community solar, if you’re a renter, to building a planet-friendly wardrobe.

If you choose to offset your footprint, we evaluate and curate offsetting projects. Not all offset projects are created equal, and many don’t have the impact intended. We take about a 20% fee to evaluate these projects, and that’s how we make money.

Q. Speaking of offsetting, let’s talk about the concern that it’s used by large companies or very wealthy people, including celebrities who claim to be environmentalists, to justify using private planes or making other unsustainable choices by saying, “I’m offsetting.”

A. Among the ultra-rich, flying is really a big part of their carbon footprints. Higher incomes are associated with higher-emission lifestyles. That’s why the United States has a higher carbon footprint per capita than, say, India, or why the top 10% of wealthiest households globally are responsible for over half the emissions.

Offsets are tools we have to address the emissions we can’t reduce in our own lives. In that way, offsets play an important role. They provide much needed financing for projects that are reducing our carbon around the world. (But) offsets cannot be a license to pollute. I think there’s a big role for us as consumers to call out folks who use a disproportionate amount of emissions in a way that is not responsible.

Q. In looking at your app, I have to admit, I never thought about why flying economy is better for the environment.

A. One of our investors is (“Game of Thrones” actor) Maisie Williams. She doesn’t fly private, and she doesn’t fly very much. When she does, she flies economy. Her carbon footprint was actually just a little bit higher than mine. She aims to be climate neutral. When fewer people fly first or business class, more seats can be put on a plane, and we’ll have fewer planes flying.

Q. What are other choices people may not have thought about?

A. They could think about which banks they use. Relatively new research shows that a lot of major banks lend money to fossil fuel companies or finance fossil fuel projects.

Q. Are you scared or hopeful about the future?

A. I’m definitely scared but also hopeful. We don’t have much time. It’s the end of 2023, and the US has pledged to cut its emissions by half by 2030. But I wouldn’t be doing this work, if I didn’t think we had a chance.

I went to a talk the other day by a climate economist and heard something inspiring. Recent reports said, we might be too far gone to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. But, he said, five decades ago, we were shooting at 9 degrees warming, and then we were shooting at 4 degrees warming. Now, we’re at 1.5 to 2 degrees. U.S. emissions also have gone down significantly over the last decade. For the average American, it used to be 20 metric tons a year, now it’s 15 metric tons a year. That’s huge progress.

ABOUT SANCHALI PAL

Age: 33

Title: Founder & CEO at Commons

Home town: Oakland

Education: A.B. in economics from Princeton, MBA from Harvard

FIVE THINGS

Pal loves to cook and explore Bay Area restaurants, especially in Oakland; Mela Bistro and Lion Dance Cafe are favorites.While she isn’t fully vegetarian, Pal has lowered her food footprint by about 85%.Pal was featured in Time Magazine for her work on Commons.She lived and worked in India and Ethiopia for several years.Her standard coffee order is a cortado with oat milk – less milk than a cappuccino, but more than a macchiato.

Alas, there were a number of celebrity couples who presumably went through “sheer agony” in 2023. And, maybe one of the partners retreated to a glamorous resort destination to “suffer for a couple weeks.”

Were there more celebrity break-ups in 2023 than in years past?  It sure seems like it, given that a number of these splits felt genuinely shocking and dominated headlines for days, weeks, even months. Some involved A-list stars in seemingly happy unions. Others were particularly messy and litigious. In two notable cases, the shock came from the world learning that these long-term couples had separated years earlier but had yet to divorce.

Here’s a roundup of some of the painful celebrity uncouplings.

Hugh Jackman & Deborra-Lee Furness

‘Our journey is now shifting’

Rumors always swirled around this amiable Australian duo: Jackman was younger than Furness by 13 years and so very handsome, charming and into musical theater.

Furness often laughed off the rumors that Jackman was gay, and the couple stuck it out for 27 years, long enough to lead many to conclude that theirs couldn’t be a marriage of convenience. They also had two children and always appeared to be loving and in synch when they appeared together in public.

So, news of their separation came as a genuine shock. They continued to show their love by describing their separation as the result of two people who simply grew apart. One could say that their breakup was a textbook “gray divorce.”

“Our journey now is shifting,” Jackson and Furness said in a statement. “We undertake this next chapter with gratitude, love, and kindness.”

Joe Jonas & Sophie Turner

Mom-shaming and transatlantic litigiousness until Taylor Swift swoops in

Joe Jonas, or his people, learned the hard way that you don’t try to bad-mouth the Queen of the North, especially when she has a powerful friend like Taylor Swift.

Stunning news came in early September that the singer and the “Game of Thrones” star were headed for divorce after just four years of marriage. Things quickly turned ugly as Jonas filed for divorce in Miami, while Turner was in her native U.K. working on a TV series. People in Jonas’ orbit apparently leaked the idea that she was hard-partying 27-year-old and absentee mother who had left the doting father to take care of their young daughters while he and his brothers were on tour.

Turner hit back, filing a federal lawsuit, stating that she was the girls’ primary caregiver and alleging that her estranged American husband was “wrongfully” keeping their two young daughters in the United States.

By early October, temperatures had cooled, with the spouses reaching a temporary agreement to share equal time with the girls through the end of the year. Turner notably would be allowed to have the girls with her in England for the holidays. In a joint statement, the estranged couple said they looked “forward to being great co-parents.”

We’ll probably never know what prompted Jonas, especially, to back down. But perhaps Taylor Swift, whom he once briefly dated, had something to do with it. The most famous woman on the planet swooped in and anointed Turner her new BFF, let her stay at her New York townhouse and invited her to publicized power dinners with other famous women. Swifties were only too happy to rally for Turner and try to bury Jonas’ reputation on social media, reminding him that he probably was the inspiration for Swift’s lacerating song about a “casually cruel” boyfriend called “Mr. Perfectly Fine.”

Taylor Swift & Joe Alwyn

Making room for Travis Kelce

Not a whole lot to say that hasn’t already been said, but Swift surprisingly ditched her very English boyfriend Alwyn after six years of dating, and, after a dalliance with another skinny Brit — singer Matty Healy — propelled herself into the arms of Kelce, a robust, 6-foot-5-inch American football hero. With the two-time Super Bowl winner, the billionaire pop mega-star and Time Person of the Year is poised to conquer new territory: The world of the celebrity super couple.

Kevin Costner & Christine Baumgartner

Life-styles of the rich, famous and acquisitive

When Christine Baumgartner, the “Yellowstone” star’s wife of nearly 19 years, filed for divorce in May, no one could have predicted that their divorce would get so messy, costly and embarrassing.

During the nearly six-month court battle, Costner, Baumgartner and their high-priced attorneys battled over property, child support, legal fees, a prenuptial agreement and her avowed need to keep their three, teenage children in a lifestyle “to which they had become accustomed” — which included private-jet travel and resort vacations.

In the beginning of the mess, Costner had to get a judge to order Baumgartner to leave their $145 million Pacific Ocean-front estate near Santa Barbara, citing the prenuptial they signed before the 2004 wedding. She re-located to a $40,000-per-month rental home in Montecito, with a pool, jacuzzi and manicured gardens. But it still didn’t quite meet her specifications, as she revealed in court. She tearfully testified that her children wouldn’t be able to live on the water and enjoy Costner’s beach-club estate when they stayed with her in Montecito.

When she initially demanded $248,000 a month in child support, Costner’s team hit back with accusations that she’d use some of that money for a personal trainer and cosmetic surgery. Baumgartner at one point also asked for Costner to cover her $855,000 in legal fees and revealed he had a net worth of $400 million. Things got especially petty when the estranged spouses squabbled over exactly which pots, pans and other items she could remove from the house.

In mid-September, Costner and Baumgartner reached a settlement under terms which were not disclosed. But it’s understood that she’ll get around on $63,000 a month in child support — far less than she was asking — but more than the $1 million settlement outlined in the prenup.

Britney Spears & Sam Asghari

More amicable than you’d expect 

When Britney Spears and Sam Asghari announced they were separating after one year of marriage, the tabloids went into overdrive looking for dirt, hoping to confirm that their doomed relationship represented yet another sad and upsetting chapter in the singer’s sad and upsetting life.

Spears and Asghari didn’t exactly have the healthiest start. They began dating under under the specter of her 13-year conservatorship, which was imposed after she suffered a mental breakdown. Spears’ father, Jamie, controlled pretty much all aspects of her personal and professional life. Asghari proposed when the conservatorship was still in force, though they were able to wed in June 2022, seven months after it was dissolved.

Some speculated that Spears had suffered trauma during the conservatorship and was perhaps worse off without its oversight, Vox reported. The media wrote that her behavior was growing increasingly erratic, even as Asghari was portrayed as her “rock.” But soon, reports spread that Spears and Asghari were getting into frequent screaming fights and that she frequently “got physical” with him.

When TMZ broke the news in August that Spears and Asghari were separating, the outlet also reported that he thought the singer was cheating on him. Page Six claimed that Asghari threatened “to go public with extraordinarily embarrassing information about Britney,” unless she agreed to renegotiate the terms of their prenuptial agreement so that he would get more money.

Since then, Asghari hasn’t been moved to spill secrets. On the contrary, the exes seem to be on OK terms. In Spears’ memoir, “The Woman in Me,” she portrayed him as “a gift from God” who took care of her and helped her find the courage to fight her conservatorship. Asghari told TMZ in October that he was really moved and “freaking proud” that she wrote her best-seller. “I hope she takes over the world,” he said.

Cardi B & Offset

Breakup in the making? Again?

Every few months, something flares up in the roller-coaster marriage of Cardi B and Offset, which began in secret in 2017 and which has seen its share of cheating rumors, breakups and reconciliations.

The latest flare-up? The hip-hop couple recently unfollowed each other on Instagram, People reported. And you know what that means in celebrity world. The “Say My Grace” rapper also posted some cryptic messages on Instagram stories, including, “You know when you just out grow relationships.” She also said, “I’m of protecting peoples feelings…I GOTTA PUT MYSELF FIRST!”

Stay tuned.

Ariana Grande & Dalton Gomez

By way of a married Broadway actor few heard of 

It wasn’t that earth-shaking when Ariana Grande and her husband, Dalton Gomez, announced in July that they had separated after two years of marriage. Grande, after all, is known for cycling through relationships, and her marriage to the Los Angeles-based realtor carried that whiff of pandemic romance.

The shock came when rumors began to circulate that she had gotten herself into some kind of entanglement with Ethan Slater, a Broadway actor who is her co-star in the film version of “Wicked.” Reports said that Grande and Slater met on the set and began dating — even though Slater was married to Lilly Jay, the mother of his 1-year-old son. “It was obvious on the set from early on … they were very sweet to each other,” a source told People.

Insiders close to Grande insisted that she and Slater only got romantic after they had separated from their respective spouses. But after Slater filed for divorce, his estranged wife gave an angry interview to Page Six, in which she implied she was blindsided by the affair. She said, “My family is just collateral damage.” She reportedly said she later regretted making those remarks.

In September, sources said that the new couple were trying to quietly and “respectfully” navigate their relationship with each other and with “all parties involved.” In October, Us Weekly reported that Grande and Slater were living together in New York City. People also reported that Grande, who got her first break on Broadway, attended opening night for Slater’s new show, a revival of “Spamalot.”  A People source offered a reason that Grande could find Slater alluring: “She’s a theater kid at her core, so you see she really feels at peace being around Broadway.”

Jada Pinkett Smith & Will Smith

Jada Pinkett Smith made headlines and probably sold more copies of her memoir, “Worthy,” when she made the bombshell announcement in October that she and her megastar husband had been secretly separated for seven years.

That means that she and Smith were leading separate lives all those times they made a public show of being an emotionally evolved couple who had triumphed over challenges in their much-gossiped-about marriage — and when the actor plunged his career and family into turmoil by walking up on stage at the Academy Awards in 2022 and slapping Chris Rock. Jada Pinkett Smith added to people’s curiosity about her marital dynamic when she revealed they had no plans to divorce. “We love each other,” she told the Associated Press. “There’s no, ‘we’re going to get divorced.’ I’m not giving up on that dude. And he’s not giving up on me.”

A short time later, Meryl Streep confirmed that she, too, was in a similar, long-term separation arrangement from Don Gummer, her husband of 45 years. People reported that they had ended “the romantic nature” of their relationship six years earlier.

Streep’s personal life never generated much speculation, as it was assumed that the three-time Oscar winner was happily married to Gummer, a sculptor and the father of her four children. But as with the Smiths, people soon became curious about Streep’s marital dynamic. Her representative mysteriously shared with the media: “While they will always care for each other, they have chosen lives apart.”

Reese Witherspoon & Jim Toth

… And a “nefarious narrative” 

Reese Witherspoon reportedly never saw herself getting another divorce. But in March, she and second husband, former Hollywood agent Jim Toth, announced that they were divorcing after nearly 12 years together.

A narrative, which some observers called “nefarious,” soon emerged in the celebrity press: The marriage couldn’t accommodate Witherspoon’s overachieving ways. As the actor, producer and entrepreneur’s career took off in exciting and lucrative new directions in the 2010s, Toth’s “remained flat,” reports said. “She’s become so much more powerful than she was when they married and has expanded her areas of interest in so many ways,” a source told Page Six. Other reports pointed to a difference in temperaments: “Reese is headstrong and focused” while Toth “is more laidback.”

“The Morning Show” star may have married Toth in 2011 because he seemed like a “solid, dependable and stable guy,” offering a contrast to the turbulence she experienced in her marriage to Ryan Phillippe, Page Six said. But over time, the “spark” between Witherspoon and Toth faded. Meanwhile, friends insisted that there was “no drama” between them. In a statement, Witherspoon and Toth said: “We have enjoyed so many wonderful years together and are moving forward with deep love, kindness and mutual respect for everything we have created together.”

Joshua Jackson & Jodie Turner-Smith

How did Lupita Nyong’o come into this?

When Jodie Turner-Smith filed for divorce on Oct. 2 after four years of marriage, Joshua Jackson was “caught off guard” and left “baffled,” Us Weekly reported.

The “Dawson’s Creek” star knew they had their “issues,” but he didn’t think things had gotten “bad” enough to split. But to Turner-Smith, the relationship had become “unhealthy” and “she decided that she is done,” People reported.

As much as Jackson reportedly wasn’t ready to end his marriage, he seemed to move on pretty quickly. Some two weeks after Turner-Smith filed the paperwork, he was spotted at Janelle Monáe’s concert in Los Angeles, “standing close to” Lupita Nyong’o. The Oscar winner had just shared that she, too, was newly single. On Instagram, she said she was suffering “a season of heartbreak” after some kind of “deception” led to her split from TV host Selema Masekela, BuzzFeed News said. Turner-Smith also had some things to say on Instagram, sharing a cryptic message about how a “healed” person understands that the “actions of others have nothing do to with them.”

Fast-forward to this week. Jackson and Nyong’o were spotted grocery shopping Monday in Los Angeles but tried to hide the fact that they were together and a couple, TMZ said. But the next day in Joshua Tree, the two either were unaware the paparazzi were following, or they didn’t care. Photos shared by TMZ show the new lovebirds, holding hands and smiling while on a stroll through the desert town.

Sofia Vergara & Joe Manganiello

Who got Bubbles? 

No one expected that the surprise divorce announcement by Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello in July would get messy. But there was one issue over which tears might be shed: Who would get custody of Bubbles?

The 10-year-old dog, a Chihuahua/Pomeranian mix, initially was supposed to be Vergara’s pet. The “Modern Family” star brought Bubbles home shortly after their 2015 wedding. But Vergara herself admitted that Bubbles took an instant liking to Manganiello and always preferred his company. She described Bubbles as Manganiello’s “little daughter.” In turn, the “Magic Mike: XXL” star showered Bubbles with affection and often featured her in his social media posts.

Fortunately, the estranged spouses kept things friendly, and Vergara reportedly decided to let Manganiello have Bubbles. A source told Page Six: “Neither one of them is bitter or out for revenge, and Sofía loves Bubbles and wants her to be happy, which is precisely why she’s letting Joe have custody.”

Bijou Phillips & Danny Masterson

30 years to life and Scientology reportedly make it tough 

News that Bijou Phillips filed for divorce from Danny Masterson in September came as a shock to many, even though he had just been sentenced to 30 years to life in prison after he was convicted of two counts of rape. Still, Phillips publicly stood by her husband through his arrest on multiple rape charges, attended every day of his two trials and let out an anguished sob when a jury in the second trial found him guilty of rape.

Some legal experts speculated that the divorce filing was less a statement about Phillips’ feelings for the father of her 9-year-old daughter and more about the couple’s need to protect their assets in any civil court actions.

But a Daily Mail report in October cited a former member of the Church of Scientology, who said that Phillips’ decision may have been influenced by the Church of Scientology, of which she and Masterson were prominent long-time members. The Daily Mail said Masterson reportedly was expelled from the church after his sentencing and labeled a “suppressive person,” which means that other Scientolologists, including Phillips, need to cut ties with him.

Keke Palmer & Darius Jackson

Saying no to abuse and controlling behavior 

The first sign that Keke Palmer was in an unhealthy relationship with Darius Jackson was in July, after her boyfriend of two years publicly shamed her for wearing an outfit that he thought was too revealing for the mother of his son.

Jackson, who has an unspecified career in fitness and entertainment, made the comments after the “Nope” actor wore a black bodysuit to an Usher concert in Las Vegas. He doubled-down after social media backlash, writing: “This is my family & my representation! have standards & morals to what I believe.”

For the next four months, Palmer wouldn’t respond to reporters’ questions about the status of their relationship. But in November, she revealed the torment she said she had been living under. In a court filing, seeking a restraining order and full custody of their 10-month-old son, Leo, Palmer accused Jackson  of abusing her multiple times during their relationship.

In the “many instances of physical violence,” Palmer said Jackson destroyed her personal property, including her diaries and eyeglasses, and took her car keys to prevent her from driving away. She also said he hit her in front of their son, spewed profanities about her to their baby and threatened to kill himself with a gun if she left him.

“It is because of our son, Leo, that I was finally able to end my relationship with Darius once and for all and escape the abuse,” Palmer wrote in court documents, Page Six reported. “He needs and deserves to be safe and grow up in an environment free from violence.”

Shannen Doherty & Kurt Iswarienko

Divorce in the time of cancer 

The “Beverly Hills, 90210” alum and cancer advocate recently revealed that she learned her husband of 11 years had been cheating on her — just before she had to undergo surgery in January to remove a tumor from her brain.

“I went into that surgery early in the morning, and I went in after I found out that my marriage was essentially over, that my husband had been carrying on an affair for two years,” Doherty said this week in an episode of her new podcast. She said Iswarienko wanted to be at the hospital with her, but she told him no. “I couldn’t go into that surgery with him there. I felt so betrayed.”

After Doherty’s surgery, she and the photographer separated. Four months later, Doherty filed for divorce. This would be her third divorce, and the blow comes as she continues to receive treatment for cancer. Doherty was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, then revealed in 2020 that she had been diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. She has subsequently said that the cancer has spread to her brain and to her bones.

Even with her cancer struggles, Doherty said: “I don’t think I’m going to be single forever I have to love myself and reckon with the past, really, before I can move forward, and now I’m pretty sure I’ll meet somebody — hopefully soon.”

Before psychologist Eric FitzMedrud donned a pink tie and joined his wife for a date night to see the summer blockbuster movie “Barbie,” he was all too familiar with the anxiety that the character of Ken feels about his place in the world and in Barbie’s life.

FitzMedrud specializes in counseling individuals and couples on relationships and sexual issues and is set to publish a book, “The Better Man: A Guide to Consent, Stronger Relationships, and Hotter Sex” (Wonderwell, 2023), in September. The book offers men advice on how to get past the conflicting messages they receive about how to be “enough.” On one hand, he writes, men are told that they can’t be masculine enough unless they reject feminism and embrace the “abject misogyny” of certain cultural figures. Or, they worry about how to enter into relationships and sex, with a post-#MeToo awareness about consent.

All along, FitzMedrud says they’ve grown up in a patriarchal society that pushes entitlement, control and performance but hurts them emotionally by not allowing them to show vulnerability. “You want to be a good man, but what does that even mean, when the definition of ‘good man’ keeps changing,” FitzMedrud asks in his book.

FitzMedrud agrees that Ken, winningly played by Ryan Gosling in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” struggles with his what it means to be “a good man.” Sure, Ken isn’t human, but a fictional doll who doesn’t have genitals or testosterone. Still, there’s a reason that Ken’s plight with “blonde fragility” has resonated with audiences and sparked national conversation. FitzMedrud offers some reasons why.

Q: What do you think of pundits who have taken offense at “Barbie” and call it “anti-men?”  

A: Any pundit who thinks it is anti-men has confused pro-women for anti-men. I never felt threatened watching it. The closest to that was when Ken said, “Men run the world.” I know that a lot of men on the bottom side of our economic system will feel their experience is not reflected in the absolute statement. Then I remembered this is a movie about Barbie and women, not a movie about men’s liberation. The twinge lasted about 1 second.

Q: Why do you think the film has become such a phenomenon?  

A: One thing making this movie so powerful is the skillful blend of feminist perspectives and accessible humor. I imagine that it is tapping into a sense among women and genderqueer folk that despite generational gains, the victory of feminism is not complete, as evidenced by the need for a #MeToo movement, the rise of misogyny and the fall of abortion rights. The movie also appeals to men who know we need to move forward with feminism.

Q: In your book, you talk about how the patriarchy doesn’t just hurt women, but men as well. Do you want to say more about that? 

A: Some men have a hard time opening up to feminism because the first messages we hear about it are that we are privileged or we are the problem. We are privileged. But we are also damaged and hurt by patriarchy. The patriarchal lie to men is that if we sacrifice our emotions, human connection, and health to work and (to succeed), we will deserve respect, love, and admiration. … Women have articulated many new ways to be a woman. Men have yet to embrace a multifaceted model of manhood.

Q: In the movie, Ken accompanies Barbie to “the real world” and discovers a place where men are in charge. But after Ken brings the patriarchy back to Barbie Land, do you think he’s really happy? 

A: As a man, the most important thing about this part of the movie is that Ken was still unhappy. He still wanted Stereotypical Barbie to want him. When she didn’t, he tried to hurt her feelings and even rubbed it in contemptuously, “Now, how does that feel?” But it is all a sham. When he sees how hurt she feels, we see a flicker in his chauvinistic façade. It hurt him to hurt her this way.

Q: In putting Ken and his journey in the context of your book, I was thinking that the Ken we meet at the start of the movie is wounded. He’s been programmed to believe that he has no purpose other than to serve Barbie.  

A: Yes, Ken is wounded.  He lacks the ability to enjoy the beauty of the present moment on his beach and has no self-confidence. It isn’t just that he needs Barbie’s glances to feel worthy. He’s also ready to Beach Off with the other Kens to cover for feelings of inadequacy. He recklessly hurts himself trying to gain admiration. Ken had a problem before Barbie ever entered the picture. Maybe a manosphere influencer has been playing with Ken in the real world.

Q: Ken also gets rejected when he tells Barbie he wants to spend the night. She tells him it’s girls’ night and that he can leave. What would be a healthy way for Ken to deal with this situation? 

A: I don’t think Barbie rejected Ken. Barbie held her boundaries about what the relationship could and couldn’t be. Ken feels rejected because he is struggling to accept her boundaries, to change his expectations, and to create a fulfilling life separate from Barbie. My prescription for Ken is a five-step process:

1. Build awareness of the feeling of rejection in his body and observe its root in his false beliefs about the world and how it works.
2. Soothe his feelings of rejection and anger. Deepening his friendship with Alan or the other Kens could help by normalizing his experience and focusing him on what is in his control (hint: it isn’t Barbie).
3. He needs to change his expectations and accept reality. Barbie isn’t rejecting him. She’s open to friendship. If he can accept that, he’ll have a new friend. If he can’t, he’ll have to search for a connection elsewhere.
4. Build self-confidence. To do this, he could engage in meaningful acts of service to Barbie Land and/or its other residents.
5. Seek reciprocal relationships with a Barbie that is interested in the same kind of relationship with him. I hear Weird Barbie thinks he’s pretty hot.

Q: Do you think it also would have helped Ken and Barbie to have an honest conversation at some point – about how each sees their relationship?

A: I thought Barbie was pretty honest after Ken’s awkward attempt at a kiss. Ken didn’t accept her clarification that her house was her Dream House, not his, he wasn’t going to be invited to spend the night, and she didn’t want more from him. He didn’t just have unrequited feelings that caused disappointment. He created more suffering for himself by continuing to focus on what he couldn’t have. Barbie was honest with Ken. Ken wasn’t honest with himself. Nothing Barbie could do would have improved that until Ken grew.

Q: Any final thoughts or advice for Ken? Can Ken be OK? 

A: By the end of the movie, Ken has grown. When his attempted power grab fails, he finally feels his pain, sadness and vulnerability. This allows Barbie to see and connect to him for the first time. He admits that he has a derived sense of self-worth when he says, “I don’t know who I am without you.” Ken realizes his individuality, accepts the relationship with Barbie that has been available and turns his attention to defining himself from there. He’s more than OK. He’s Kenough.

Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” amassed a staggering $1 billion globally, in record time. But its most surprising achievement, arguably, comes from its soundtrack — “I’m Just Ken” has become a Billboard 100 single and is a serious contender for meme of the summer. https://t.co/XnZ2oouEFy

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 18, 2023

Q: Even if “Barbie” is a movie and Barbie and Ken’s struggles are presented as comedy, do you think there are lessons all viewers can take from what the film says about relationships, or on how men can be OK? 

A: There are four lessons we can take about relationships from the film. First, your feelings are about you. The other person may not feel the same way. This also means that just because you’re hurting doesn’t necessarily mean the other person hurt you. Second, to be a good friend, community member, and potential partner, you must live your best life. Third, the only thing that creates connection is vulnerability.

Fourth, my interpretation, the movie ends by saying the Kens can share power in Barbie Land when women share power with men in the real world. But the Kens were hurt to be told they couldn’t share power. If we want our relationships to improve, we need to dismantle the power structures that create systemic inequality. Relationships are damaged by the winner-loser model in either world.

A retired Stanford history professor and one of Oppenheimer’s biographers are among the group of historians who are speaking up about the famed scientist’s “secret” party membership, as Christopher Nolan’s film, “Oppenheimer,” renews debate about his legacy and shows him facing post-World War II persecution for his left-wing politics and for having friends, family members and an ex-girlfriend who belonged to the Communist Party.

Barton Bernstein, a Stanford University history professor emeritus, and Gregg Herken, author of the 2002 book “Brotherhood of the Bomb,” agree that Oppenheimer was a victim of McCarthy-era excesses. They also say there’s no evidence that “the father of the atomic bomb” ever spied for the Soviet Union or that he wasn’t loyal to the United States.

But Bernstein and Herken dispute a central argument of Nolan’s film and of “American Prometheus,” the 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning book on which it’s based. These works insist that Oppenheimer never joined the party in the 1930s, with “American Prometheus” authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin concluding that Oppenheimer was a “classic fellow-traveling New Deal progressive who admired the party’s opposition to fascism in Europe and its championing of labor rights at home.”

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According to Bernstein and Herken, evidence of Oppenheimer’s party membership has become available over the past two decades since the book was written. The evidence includes a “smoking gun” excerpt of an ex-party member’s unpublished memoir, KGB intelligence documents released after the collapse of the USSR and the accounts of others who were active in Bay Area Communist circles.

“Oppenheimer repeatedly lied during and after World War II to the U.S. government,” Bernstein wrote in an essay published shortly before the July 21 release of “Oppenheimer.” “The evidence of such CP membership is overwhelming, and that means he also committed perjury on at least a few occasions over a number of years.”

Herken, also an emeritus professor of American diplomatic history at UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz, said Oppenheimer was a member of a secret “closed unit” of the party’s professional section in Berkeley, from 1937 to early 1942. According to the former party member, historian Gordon Griffiths, this unit wasn’t involved in espionage. It allowed members to share views on international events and to receive occasional briefings by senior party officials.

Neither Herken nor Bernstein believe that calling attention to Oppenheimer’s party membership in 2023 is “latter-day McCarthyism.” Instead, they said that raising the issue shows the true complexity of this brilliant but conflicted man’s situation, as well as the impact that toxic Cold War politics had on this country.

If Oppenheimer hid this secret, it could explain why he, “a forceful, charismatic” person, “fell apart” when confronted about his part membership in a hostile 1954 hearing before the Atomic Energy Commission, Bernstein told this news organization. It could also explain why he thereafter retreated from policy debates about protecting the world from the nuclear weapons he and the United States helped to create.

“It’s important that the history gets Oppenheimer right,” Herken told this news organization. Given what Oppenheimer faced at the height of McCarthyism — when FBI director J. Edgar Hoover equated communism with treason — Herken said, “I can understand why he felt he had to lie about that, and to even lie under oath.”

Oppenheimer first denied being a party member in the summer of 1943, as he was applying for a a security clearance to direct the bomb-development efforts in Los Alamos. Oppenheimer again denied his membership to FBI agents in 1946 and during the 1954 hearing, at the end of which he was stripped of his security clearance.

Bernstein said it’s not clear whether Oppenheimer kept quiet about his party membership in 1943 because it could have disqualified him from the Manhattan Project. But after that, “he had to stick to his story because he had signed affidavits repeatedly that he had not been a communist,” Bernstein said.

“If he claimed otherwise, that would be evidence of perjury, so he had to keep lying,” continued Bernstein, who has published extensively on Oppenheimer’s 1954 hearing.

Bernstein and Herken said their views on Oppenheimer’s party membership have evolved over time. Bernstein said he long minimized the possibility, while Herken said he offered a “Rashomon”-like approach to the question in his 2002 book. But they have since concluded otherwise.

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A key source for Oppenheimer’s alleged party membership has been Haakon Chevalier, a professor of French literature at Berkeley who was Oppenheimer’s close friend. Chevalier also was a Communist, and “the Chevalier affair” became the focus of the case against Oppenheimer in his 1954 hearing. In Nolan’s film, Chevalier is seen approaching Oppenheimer in the kitchen of Oppenheimer’s Berkeley home and saying he knows a way to share information about his work with scientists in Russia, who are presumed to be allies. Oppenheimer reportedly replied, “That’s treason.”

According to Chevalier’s private writings, which Herken shares on his book’s website, the French scholar said that Oppenheimer was in the secret closed unit and wrote two 1940 pamphlets on behalf of the UC Berkeley faculty committee of the Communist Party.  In her diary, Chevalier’s ex-wife, Barbara, confirmed his account of Oppenheimer’s CP membership. She said the physicist joined the party after reading Marx on a cross-country train ride, but said his membership was “very secret indeed.”

Herken also interviewed the late physicist Philip Morrison, who had been one of Oppenheimer’s graduate students and a party member. Morrison told Herken in 2000 that Oppenheimer penned another Party-line pamphlet that he delivered to the printer on his behalf. Meanwhile, KGB archival documents, which became available in 2009, show that Oppenheimer was identified as a potential intelligence source on the basis of his Community Party membership, historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr wrote in their 2012 article, “J Robert Oppenheimer: A Spy? No. But a Communist Once? Yes.” Haynes and Kleher said the Soviets lost interest in Oppenheimer after learning that he left the party in 1942, while Herken also said that efforts to recruit him as a spy failed.

For Herken, the “smoking gun” is Griffiths’ unpublished memoir. The University of Washington historian, who died in 2001, was the Communist Party liaison to the Berkeley unit. He wrote that the unit met twice a month at Chevalier or Oppenheimer’s home to discuss international events, review party literature or craft unsigned reports to faculty colleagues. No one in this unit carried a card, and Oppenheimer didn’t pay dues like rank-and-file members because he was independently wealthy, so his more generous donations went through “a special channel.”

Griffiths said there was nothing “subversive or treasonable” about their meetings and they didn’t talk about “exciting developments in theoretical physics,” according to an excerpt available on Herken’s website. But he agreed that the record needed to be set straight about Oppenheimer and lamented that “well-intentioned liberals” tried to defend him by downplaying his party membership.

The thumbnail version of Tatlock’s life is that she was J. Robert Oppenheimer’s troubled mistress. She also may have been his “truest love,” but her activism in the Bay Area Communist Party in the 1930s threatened his career, both when he was the science director at the top-secret laboratory in Los Alamos, and in the 1950s, when anti-Communist fervor was at its heights and he endured a humiliating grilling by the Atomic Energy Commission and loss of his security clearance.

Tatlock, a Stanford-trained psychiatrist, died tragically by suicide at the age of 29 – some seven months after Oppenheimer drew the alarm of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover by flying back to San Francisco in June 1943 to meet her and spend one final night with her in her Telegraph Hill apartment.

In fact, this final meeting provides a dramatic rendering of Tatlock in Christopher Nolan’s film, though with some details changed. As the original FBI report recounted in cinematic detail, Tatlock met Oppenheimer at the train station in San Francisco. He “rushed” to kiss Tatlock, who was described as slim, dark-haired and attractive. She took his arm and led him to her car. The couple appeared “very affectionate and intimate” as they drove to a Mexican cafe on Broadway for dinner and drinks, then retreated to her top-floor apartment beneath Coit Tower. “At 11:30 p.m. lights went out.”

RELATED: Waiting for ‘Oppenheimer?’ Here are 10 films about the bomb to watch now

In the film, Tatlock is played by the dynamic Florence Pugh, and she and Cillian Murphy, who plays Oppenheimer, filmed prolonged nude scenes to emphasize the love story. Still, Tatlock remains a supporting character in Nolan’s conflicted-great-man-of-history narrative of Oppenheimer, even as biographies of the scientist show that people also saw “greatness” in her.

When Tatlock died, she was on the threshold of a brilliant career, notes “American Prometheus,” the biography by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin on which the film is based. She was one of the few women of her era to graduate from Stanford Medical School, and she hoped to pioneer psychiatric care for troubled children at San Francisco’s Mount Zion Hospital, then the foremost center in Northern California for training mental health professionals.

In this way, she was one of the “extraordinary” American women of the first half of the 20th century — urbane college graduates who challenged traditional gender roles by having careers and becoming fully engaged in the major social movements of the time, according to Bay Area authors Patricia Klaus and Shirley Streshinsky in “An Atomic Love Story,” their book about the significant women in Oppenheimer’s life.

When Tatlock studied at Vassar in the early 1930s, her classmates included the poet Elizabeth Bishop and novelist Mary McCarthy, whose book “The Group” chronicled the lives of Vassar graduates who similarly expected to be “extraordinary.” Even in such company, Tatlock was still “the most promising girl I ever knew,” a classmate said.

Tatlock was primed for greatness by her father, John Tatlock, a renowned expert in medieval English literature, and her mother, Marjorie, a free-thinking faculty wife who encouraged her daughter’s love of poetry and theater and, later, her interest in radical politics and the burgeoning field of psychoanalysis.

John Tatlock taught at Stanford when Jean was a young girl. He then directed Harvard’s English Department during Tatlock’s early adolescence before moving back west to teach at UC Berkeley when Tatlock was in high school. Even before Tatlock met Oppenheimer in 1936, her father had become friendly with the charismatic physics professor who also possessed a wide-ranging knowledge of literature.

One of the most remarkable things about Tatlock, as revealed in “An Atomic Love Story,” is that she was a beautiful writer. Even as a young girl, she shared her thoughtfulness and intensity in letters she wrote to close girlfriends from Cambridge. The letters radiate an adolescent girl’s excitement about the mysteries of life and love and convey longing for moments of beauty and transcendence.

Some of these letters sound romantic, with Tatlock becoming particularly close to one teenage friend, for whom she confided feelings “love” and “passion.” Biographers note that Tatlock struggled with her sexuality throughout her life. While she told that friend, “I don’t think I’m lesbian,” “American Prometheus” suggests that her professional training in Freudian analysis might have taught her that homosexuality is a pathological condition to be overcome.

Tatlock’s adolescent writing also revealed extreme emotions and vivid imagery – from “ecstatic revelations to painfully beautiful awareness,” according to “An Atomic Love Story.” The language seemed to  “presage the struggles to come,” possibly manic episodes “suffused with velocity and energy until she plunged into depression and despair.”

Tatlock’s emotional turmoil may have prompted her become a psychiatrist, as well as to develop empathy for the less fortunate. Before and after graduating from Vassar in 1935, she became involved in protesting capitalism and supported striking dock workers in Oakland and San Francisco. Once back in the Bay Area, she became a “dues-paying member” of the Community Party and wrote for Western Worker, the party’s Pacific Coast outlet.

Oppenheimer arrived at Berkeley in 1929, a graduate of Harvard, Cambridge and the University of Göttingen. When he and Tatlock met in 1936, at a party hosted by his landlady in the Berkeley hills, he was 32 and a star in the world of science. She was 22 and about to start medical school at Stanford.

Mary Ellen Washburn was a socialist friend of Tatlock’s who was famous for her gatherings of intellectuals and activists. It’s easy to imagine that she nudged her friend to meet her attractive tenant, who would have been “characteristically waving his cigarette in the air as he spoke, keeping the attention of the circle around him,” Klaus and Streshinsky said. He was slender, charming, as well as rich, the son of of a prosperous Jewish immigrant from Germany who had raised him in luxury on New York’s Upper West Side.

It’s likely that Tatlock commanded Oppenheimer’s attention that night. He would been drawn to Tatlock as a “serious woman” who also was good-looking. She was the “one person in the room, whatever the circumstances, who remained unforgettable,” a friend once said.

Oppenheimer didn’t call for a date until he returned to Berkeley in the fall. But as soon as they began seeing each other, he fell fast, according to biographers. He found himself “pleasantly out of control, strangely euphoric” over his feelings for a woman, who was “lyrical, uplifting, sensitive.”

They bonded over the metaphysical poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne and a shared fascination with the potential of psychotherapy. The film also shows Tatlock asking Oppenheimer about his learning Sanskrit, to read the The Bhagavad-Gita, as a form of foreplay. He also didn’t recoil from her “deep depressions,” having survived suicidal despair when he was at Cambridge in his early 20s. “He could not believe that someone as loving and yearning and good as Jean could not be rescued,” Klaus and Streshinsky wrote.

Tatlock’s friends credit her with awakening his social conscience. While Oppenheimer never joined the Communist Party, he worked with her on championing some of the its causes, including the Republicans fighting in the Spanish Civil War. The two became a power couple in Bay Area progressive politics, though Oppenheimer’s activism drew regular warnings from his Berkeley colleague, Ernest Lawrence.

Oppenheimer twice proposed marriage, thinking that Tatlock was young enough to finish medical school and start her career before having children. But their relationship was stormy. They’d break up, and she’d disappear from his life for a time, then they’d reconcile. Friends were never clear about the relationship because they kept it private. Tatlock’s questions about her sexuality could be one reason she rejected his proposals, but Klaus and Streshinksy said she also could have feared that marriage to a prominent man would subsume her identity.

By 1939, their relationship was over. In 1940, Oppenheimer met the vivacious Katherine “Kitty” Puening, who had previously been married three times, including to a hard-core American Communist who died fighting in Spain. When Kitty found herself pregnant with Oppenheimer’s first child, he married her and they set up house in a Spanish-style villa with bay views in Kensington.

Still, he and Tatlock remained “very much involved with one another,” as he was recruited to help with the Manhattan Project. He testified at his 1954 security clearance hearing that there was “very deep feeling when we saw each other,” though he said they only met a few times between 1939 and 1943: at the hospital, at her apartment, on New Year’s Eve in 1941 and for drinks at the Top of the Mark.

After Oppenheimer moved his family to Los Alamos in March 1943, he didn’t see Tatlock before he left. He couldn’t say much about his work and knew she wouldn’t approve. When she begged to see him again, he couldn’t stay away. He said she was in psychiatric treatment, “deeply unhappy” and “still in love with me.”  After they spent their final night together, she drove him to the airport south of San Francisco, where he caught a plane back to Los Alamos.

In the film, Oppenheimer tells Tatlock he can’t see her anymore, while Hoover used their meeting to label her a potential spy and to obtain permission to wiretap her phone.

By New Year’s 1944, Tatlock had fallen into one of her “black moods.” When she failed to call her father as promised on Jan. 4, 1944, he went to her apartment the next day. The professor found his daughter’s body next to the bathtub, as well as a note, on which she had scrawled, “I am disgusted with everything.” She said she had fought “like hell” to live, but feared becoming a burden and said, “At least I could take away the burden of a paralyzed soul from a fighting world.”

John Tatlock made the unusual decision to lay her body on the couch and to rummage through her apartment and burn certain letters and photos before using her phone to summon help. It’s believed that the letters burned were personal in nature.

John Tatlock’s actions were just one of the reasons that questions endure over Tatlock’s death. Her late physician brother, Hugh, and others have wondered about the position of the body, her death by drowning and reports of a sedative found in her system. In addition, Hoover learned of her death almost immediately because of the wiretap on her phone. Her death was addressed in the 1975 Senate hearings regarding covert CIA assassination plots.

For his part, Oppenheimer seemed to accept that she was despondent enough to take her own life and was stricken by grief and guilt that he failed her. He imagined her believing that he put his ambition ahead of his love for her, in a sense making her “the first casualty” of his directorship of Los Alamos, according to “American Prometheus.” Eighteen months later, he oversaw the detonation of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. He called the test “Trinity,” with film showing that he named it for a sonnet by Donne that she loved, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God …”

This week’s opening of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” adds one more compelling chapter to the tradition. And what a compelling and extensive tradition it is. By our count, nearly 150 feature films, documentaries and series have been made that address nuclear weapons or atomic power either directly or metaphorically, and many more that use the weapon as a plot device.

And there’s no mystery as to why. Few devices or developments in science offer such a fertile mix of intrigue, wonderment and abject terror. The idea that splitting an atom – the tiny, basic compound of all matter – can trigger the end of all life as we know it can, and should, keep us all up at night.

And unlike vicious space aliens or homicidal supercomputers, this is no hypothetical boogeyman we’re talking about, but a run-of-the-mill, everyday science that we use to run our laptops and power our Pelotons.

“The Beginning or the End,” cited by many film historians as the first full-length nuclear bomb movie, debuted in 1947, just two years after the U.S. tested the first atomic bomb and then dropped two such weapons on Japan, killing more than 200,000 people.

The 1980s saw an, ahem, explosion of atom bomb-themed movies — and Cold War movies in general — as U.S./U.S.S.R. relations grew especially tense during the Reagan administration and the fear of a nuclear confrontation grew anew.

Like “The Beginning or the End” (which was a box office flop), Nolan’s new film “Oppenheimer” centers on theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his oversight of the Manhattan Project, which developed the U.S. atomic bomb. “Oppenheimer” stars Cillian Murphy in the title role, along with a deep and star-studded cast including Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh.

And in what seems a rare occurrence in the movie business these days, it is opening against another summer blockbuster, “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s movie based on the iconic doll and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. The unlikely pairing has been dubbed “Barbieheimer” and “Oppenbarbie” by movie fans — or, as one writer put it: “Armageddon now comes in pink.”

Meanwhile, if the arrival of “Oppenheimer” heightens your interest in atom bomb films, there are a great many cinematic options available to rent or stream. Here are 10 of the better-known ones (nine films and a TV series), arranged in chronological order.

“Godzilla” (1954): Most people think of Godzilla as a B-movie villain, played by an actor in a rubber dinosaur suit. But the original Japanese film about “The King of the Monsters” is a serious, black-and-white allegory of nuclear destruction, directed by  Ishirō Honda, a colleague of Akira Kurosawa. The movie opens with Japanese freighters being destroyed by an ancient sea creature that scientists theorize has been reanimated by hydrogen bomb testing – a storyline that mirrors the real-life saga of a Japanese fishing boat that was showered by radioactive fallout from the March 1954 H-bomb test at the nearby Bikini Atoll. For Godzilla’s rampage through Tokyo, Honda and his special effects team tried to mirror the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, unleashing a relentless and amoral monster that’s a symbol of a world gone wrong. Where to see it: Available via the Criterion Channel, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Max and Roku.

“Fail Safe” (1964): Henry Fonda was one of those actors capable of appearing on screen like he’d be a fine U.S. President. In this 1964 thriller directed by Sidney Lumet, he plays a president who is thrown into a seemingly impossible situation after a computer error orders a U.S. Air Force bomber squad to launch a nuclear attack on Moscow. Assuming that the U.S. is under attack by Russia, no one questions the action until it is apparent that the U.S. is about to start a war that really will end all wars. Much of “Fail Safe,” filmed in stark black and white, centers on President Fonda in the Oval Office grimly trying to scuttle the attack and conferring with his Russian counterpart, trying to forestall disaster and speculating on what can be done if the bomb mission “succeeds.” The gripping film, released at a time when Americans were still rattled by the Cuban Missile Crisis, captures U.S. fears over three related developments, the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation and growing control of technology over our lives. It received strong reviews but suffered at the box office because of the next film in this roundup. Where to see it: Available for rent on YouTube, Apple TV and Google Play. A black-and-white “broadcast play” adaptation starring George Clooney and Richard Dreyfuss debuted on CBS in 2000 and is available on iTunes and Amazon Video.

“Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964): Technically, this dark film comedy came out before “Fail Safe” but many people in hindsight understandably still mistake it for a satirical response to that drama. Such is the nature of the odd, and combative, relationship between the two post-Cuban-Missile Crisis movies. “Strangelove,” a widely revered film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers (in three roles) and George C. Scott (and featuring a memorably unhinged performance by Slim Pickens), follows what happens after an unbalanced U.S. Air Force general orders a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Russia. The film was based on the 1958 thriller novel “Red Alert” by Peter George and therein lies the connection between “Fail Safe” and “Strangelove.” Because the former bore such a strong resemblance to the storyline in “Red Alert,” Kubrick and George sued for copyright infringement. The suit was settled and resulted with Columbia Pictures owning both films, and conceding to Kubrick’s demands that his film be released first, which many historians credit for “Fail Safe’s” early box office problems. Where to see it: Available to rent on Vudu, Apple TV and Google Play.

“The China Syndrome” (1979): The tense drama about a near-disaster at a troubled nuclear power plant was at first derided by the energy industry as no more than liberal antinuke, anti-capitalist fear-mongering that had no basis in fact. Two weeks later, a real-life accident occurred at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, throwing cold water on those claims and turning “China Syndrome’ into even more of a talker. Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas star as a TV news team trying to get to the bottom of a nuclear near-disaster and Jack Lemon stars as a plant supervisor who gradually discerns that corporate cost-cutting has turned the plant into a ticking time bomb. The title comes from a phrase describing a nuclear meltdown, in which the radioactive core burns through its container and sinks deep into the ground. Where to see it: Available on YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime and Apple TV.

“Testament” (1983): The drama is both hard to watch and absolutely riveting. A mother in a Bay Area suburb (played by Jane Alexander in an Academy Award-nominated role), her three children and their neighbors (including future stars Kevin Costner and Rebecca De Mornay) slowly succumb to famine and radiation poisoning after nuclear weapons strike San Francisco and other U.S. cities. “Testament” is a tragedy about survival and humanity, asking how we’d treat one another and “how our values might stand up, in the face of an overwhelming catastrophe,” as Roger Ebert wrote. He also called the last scene, when Alexander’s mother “expresses such small optimism as is still possible, one of the most powerful movie scenes I’ve ever seen.” Where to see it: Available via Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Paramount+ and Google Play.

“The Day After” (1983): This ABC made-for-TV movie about nuclear war with Russia remains one of the most-watched shows in broadcast history. More than 100 million people tuned in on Nov. 29, 1983, to follow several families in Lawrence, Kansas, become aware of escalating tensions in Europe, then watch nuclear blasts level their neighborhoods, incinerate their loved ones and fill the air with deadly radiation. The two-hour special event was a once-in-a-generation cultural moments that sparked national conversation and controversy. Today’s viewers might find the movie’s special effects dated and some of the plot elements clunky, but they can still be moved by the performances of Jason Robards, John Lithgow, JoBeth Williams, Amy Madigan, John Cullum and Steve Guttenberg. One very important viewer was particularly moved: President Reagan confessed in his diary that “The Day After” left him “extremely depressed” and contributed to him changing his mind “about the idea of a winnable nuclear war,” as director Nicholas Meyer said. Where to see it: Available on YouTube.

“War Games” (1983): The idea of a mild-mannered high school kid (Matthew Broderick) who thinks he’s playing a video game hacking into the defense department with a dial-up modem and launching a series of nuclear attacks around the world seems pretty far-fetched today. But in 1983 …  well, it seemed pretty far-fetched back then, too, But like “Fail Safe” nearly 20 years earlier, it reminded people that an indispensable and lethal process like nuclear weaponry was controlled by an automated system largely out of our control. And at a time when some are warning that AI could bring about the end of civilization, that theme is gaining new traction. The film, cited by historians as the first mass-market film about computer hacking, was well-received and a financial success ($125 box office on a $12 budget). Where to see it: Available on Spectrum TV, Sling TV Roku Channel, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, Redbox and Apple TV.

“Black Rain” (1989): Japanese director Shohei Imamura uses the bombing of Hiroshima as his film’s starting point. Yasuko, a young woman who was hit by contaminated “black rain” after the blast, her family and neighbors grapple with the slow-developing consequences of the fallout — hair falling out, cancer, slow deaths from radiation poisoning. But the consequences go beyond the physical. When Yasuko’s uncle tries to find her a husband, families of potential suitors reject her, and not just because they worry she’s not healthy enough to have children. According to Imamura, there was a stigma to being a survivor in post-war Japan, as if someone like Yasuko was marked by defeat or impurity. Where to see it: Available via Amazon Prime.

“Fat Man and Little Boy” (1989): Trailers for “Oppenheimer” show Matt Damon chewing the scenery as Leslie Groves, the army general assigned to push J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of elite scientists to build the first atomic weapons at Los Alamos. Paul Newman plays Groves in this earlier drama about the Manhattan Project, which shows the screen legend leaning into the persona of a tough but savvy military commander. He grumbles about the “longhairs” and “prima donnas” he has to supervise, deftly spars with Oppenheimer’s liberal  wife Kitty (Bonnie Bedilia) and strokes the scientist’s ego by telling him that he’ll get “to be the one who won the war.” When Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz) voices moral conflict, Newman’s Groves lays down the law: “Conscience? You’ve got one job, doctor: Give me the bomb!” Directed by Roland Joffe, the film also showcases the early talents of John Cusack as an idealistic physicist and Laura Dern as a nurse who witnesses the horrifying results of a radiation test gone wrong. Where to see it: Available via Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Pluto TV, Google Play.

“Chernobyl” (2019): Images of Russian soldiers occupying the Chernobyl nuclear power plant at the start of the Ukraine war sparked fears that a dark moment in Cold War history would repeat itself — the 1986 spread of radioactive contaminants over a wide swath of Europe after one of the plant’s reactors exploded. That catastrophe was probably fresh in the minds of anyone who had seen “Chernobyl, HBO’s gripping five-episode miniseries, which aired three years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The series, powered by taut writing and powerful performances by Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson, unfolds as a combination of disaster movie, hospital drama and courtroom thriller. It reveals that Soviet-era incompetence and mismanagement led to the explosion and that this same culture of bureaucracy and corruption failed people in the aftermath. Back to the present-day: While Russian soldiers retreated from the still-polluted Chernobyl Exclusion Zone after a month, international concerns are now focused on the risks of an attack on the large nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, which has fallen into Russian control.  Where to see it: Available on Max and via Amazon Prime, Hulu, YouTube TV, Vudu and Google Play.

Smith told the boy and his mother that he shouldn’t count on getting into Stanford, despite his good grades and vow to do whatever he could to be accepted. As Smith writes in “The Golden Ticket,” she worked in Stanford’s admissions office for four years and knew that the staff read most applications with “an eye to turning students down.” Indeed, data reported in February shows that Stanford’s acceptance rate for its class of 2026 was a record low 3.7%.

When Smith assured the boy he could still get a great education at hundreds of other universities, his mother wasn’t pleased. She shot Smith “a look of hatred” when she dismissed the idea of letting the student falsely claim that he was captain of three varsity sports. “Who’s going to know?” the mother said.

Smith tells the beleaguered boy’s story and other tales of desperation and striving in “The Golden Ticket” (256 pages, She Writes Press), which also reflects on what it means to be a parent and to have expectations for your children. The book is set in her hometown of Palo Alto, world-renowned for its population of accomplished residents. But as Smith writes, Palo Alto also is “off the charts” when it comes to parental aspirations and levels of teen stress.

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“I wrote the book to get at what a lot of people in Palo Alto, and more broadly in the Bay Area (and nationally), don’t talk about: specifically, the pressure on so many young people to be perfect in an ‘Ivy League’ way,” she said in an interview. “The truth is that only a few kids can actually pull that off.”

Smith counts her three Palo Alto-reared children as among the many who couldn’t conform to this narrow Ivy League ideal because they faced a variety learning and other challenges. Smith continues to work with some of most “tightly wound” teens in America and tries to dissuade them from the U.S. News and World Report-style hype that surrounds the “HYPS” schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford).

She wants readers of her book to know there are more than 2,500 U.S. colleges that could dispense the “golden ticket” to a happy, successful life — and most wouldn’t expect applicants to overload themselves with AP classes, extracurricular activities and unrealistic hopes.

Smith sees her job as helping teens discover “who they are in the world” so they can pen authentic essays geared to schools that are truly right for them. Perhaps because she charges $500 an hour, some parents still expect her to provide the magic formula — the right sport or the right summer project, say, working with poor people in Honduras — that will improve their kid’s chances of a HYPS admission. All too often, Smith finds herself mediating family conflicts and trying “diplomatically but firmly” to keep mothers and fathers from “destroying their children” – even as they see themselves as “helping.”

With the ninth-grader, Smith got only so far in managing his mother’s expectations. She never met with the boy again. Still, his family’s story resonates in the era of 2019 Varsity Blues scandal. Smith said she wasn’t shocked by the scandal — in which Bay Area entrepreneurs, Hollywood stars and other wealthy parents across the country allegedly paid tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to get their children fraudulently admitted to top U.S. schools. To her, it “laid bare the ugly underbelly of the need, the striving, the obsession with status and prestige” that drives the college admissions process and the hopes of many families in high-achieving communities like Palo Alto.

Unfortunately, Smith isn’t sure that the scandal has taught many families about the futility of this kind of striving and obsession, given that 57,000 students clamored to join Stanford’s Class of 2026, while Harvard, Yale and other schools continue to post acceptance rates in the low single digits.

Meanwhile, as “beguiling” as Palo Alto might be in the national imagination, it’s also built on a “bedrock of barely contained dread” and the perpetual stress of teens, Smith said. The town’s children often feel like they’re being judged by their deficits.

“Almost every parent I speak to, at work or outside of work, says that they moved here for the schools only to find that the schools stretched their children to the breaking point, that all the joy has gone from their eyes,” Smith said.

As with other recent examinations of Silicon Valley culture, including Malcolm Harris’ best-selling book “Palo Alto,” Smith mentions the clusters of teen suicides from 2009 to 2015 that ended the lives of 10 Palo Alto Unified School District students. The clusters prompted the district to make students’ mental health a top priority, as well as local and national discussions about the role of college admissions in teen stress.

Smith details how her own children weren’t immune to mental health struggles. Her oldest son has autism and survived crippling depression and contemplating suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge before receiving treatment and graduating from University of the Pacific, in Stockton. Smith said her daughter self-medicated for anxiety and depression.

In an interview, she also reveals one of her “saddest moments” as a mother: Her second son said he felt “stupid” in middle school because she and her psychiatrist husband kept telling him they wanted him to “live up to his potential.” Smith realized this is one of the worst things that seemingly well-intentioned parents say to their kids these days. Her son, who was later diagnosed with ADHD, said he felt like he wasn’t trying hard enough and asked: “How do you know I have this potential that I’m not reaching?”

Smith offers up other pieces of her personal history to show her relationship to the American dream and how people’s lives often take unexpected turns. Her parents were Russian Jews who brought her to the U.S. from the former Soviet Union in the hope of giving her a better future. Much to their dismay, Smith wasn’t the most motivated teenager to graduate from Cupertino’s Homestead High – the alma mater of “the Steves,” Wozniak and Jobs. She wore black eyeliner, hung out with the smokers, read trashy best-sellers instead of doing school work and barely got into UCLA with a 3.3 GPA.

At UCLA, Smith’s love of literature blossomed, she pursued a PhD and landed a lecturer position at Stanford, where her husband was doing a National Institute of Mental Health fellowship in psychopharmacology. But her dreams of becoming a professor got sidetracked by parenthood and she ended up in admissions. From November to March, she and colleagues pored through tens of thousands of essays to find around 2,000 students to make up the university’s next class.

“There is such an infinite variety of accomplishment, striving, and resilience that reading applications sometimes (felt) like drinking excellence through a fire hose: Students who hold patents; who teach dance to blind children; who work the evening shift in the family restaurant seven nights a week …” Smith wrote.

But pretty soon she became haunted by all the rejections she had to recommend. The vast majority of these students would not be admitted, Smith said, even if they had straight A’s, university-level courses and test scores in the 99th percentile.

She launched her business as an independent college counselor in 2008. She wanted to help students succeed in getting into college. Sometimes that means helping them realize that community college or no college at all would be a good bet until they figure out what they want to do in life. Those are paths her two younger children have taken.

“Getting into a highly selective college is, frankly, not all that interesting,” Smith writes. “There are other paths, some of them frightening, some of them tragic, some of them exhilarating. They may wind through college, or they may not.”

Certainly, the essays should be well-written and, no, they shouldn’t be the product of ChatGPT. The essays primarily should tell a good story about who the student is as a person — their personality, passions, values, unique life experiences — as Smith writes in her book, “The Golden Ticket.”

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Often, writing a good story means means abandoning the idea that a convincing personal statement should brim with self-promotion. A student can tell a more engaging narrative about failure or about the most vulnerable time in their life, Smith said. They could also write about situation that seems minor but that illustrates an important point about their interests or motivations.

When coaching her clients, Smith asks them to “mine the minutiae of their experiences, to be specific and honest and self-aware.” That minutiae, she says, forms “the texture and weave” of a narrative that could potentially compel an admissions officer to see the student as an interesting human being who would make a great addition to the school’s next freshman class. Here is other advice from Smith for penning a good college essay:

• “Failure can make a great topic for a college essay,” Smith said. “It’s much more interesting than success. No one wants to read a smug essay about you scoring a 3-point shot or winning the debate tournament.” On the other hand, Smith said it could be interesting to read how the student athlete suffered a career-ending ACL  injury and learned to adjust to watching from the sidelines, or how a star debater stumbled in a key moment and had to overcome that embarrassment.
• Think twice about writing an essay about that service trip you took to a developing country and made “meaningful eye contact with an emaciated child on the street,” Smith said. Readers of applications usually aren’t moved by essays from privileged American teens reflecting on poor people leading “simple, pure lives.” 
• Don’t be afraid to write about personal struggles — contrary to the belief that certain issues should be kept private. Smith recalls a student who was told that writing about her eating disorder would lead to an automatic no from her dream college. But her first draft, about volunteering at an eating disorders clinic, “fell flat” because it left out what motivated her to get involved in the first place, Smith said. In a more authentic and powerful revision, the girl wrote that understanding her mental health challenges was key to her recovery. Smith also coached a transgender student into connecting the risk-taking inherent in entrepreneurship with the risks he took in identifying as male. The essay also allowed the student to explain why his grades dropped during his sophomore year of high school; that was the year he had gender affirmation surgery. 
• Write about the small moments that lead to bigger conclusions. Smith recalls a community college student who wrote a fun essay about how unclogging a toilet during a Parks and Recreation job inspired an epiphany, laced with a quote from Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” during which he realized he wanted to start taking school seriously. 
• Avoid using Silicon Valley-esque style buzzwords to describe yourself. Students may think colleges want to hear they have “leadership” qualities, or showed “responsibility” or worked at the “cutting edge” during their summer internship. But Smith said those words are abstractions that don’t necessarily say much, adding that the word “thought leader makes we want to stab my eyes out.”
• Use the essay-writing process to learn about family history – parents, grandparents and other relatives – even if you don’t end up writing about them. “I think it’s helpful for students to reflect on how the people closet to them shaped them,” Smith said.
• Read drafts out loud: “It’s amazing how far that goes, both toward helping students catch awkward constructions and toward ensuring that the essay actually sounds like the student,” Smith said.