In this episode, we speak with the founder of the Seleni Institute, Nitzia Logothetis, a New York City nonprofit devoted to maternal and family mental health, about the invisible emotional toll of infertility and the gaps in women's mental health care.

Founded in 2011, Seleni grew from the conviction that supporting children begins with supporting parents, and from Nitzia's own experience discovering she had no guaranteed parental leave while pregnant and working in a community mental health clinic. Today, Seleni runs a clinic serving up to 120 patients weekly, an online resource hub reaching 30,000 readers monthly, and national clinician trainings on perinatal mental health, grief, infertility, Black maternal mental health, and soon, perimenopause.

The conversation centers on infertility as "disenfranchised grief" — a compounding series of invisible losses that strain relationships and challenge identity, with secondary infertility carrying its own quiet devastation. Nitzia closes with advice for those beginning the journey.

Learn more, request appointments, or explore clinician trainings (including 100 annual scholarships) at seleni.org.

In this episode, Dr. Marc Brackett, author of Permission to Feel, discusses the importance of emotional self-awareness, and explains that emotional self-awareness is the ability to identify and label our emotions. This skill is essential for understanding our own emotional states and making informed decisions. He explains that it can lead to improved mental health, stronger relationships, and better decision-making. Emotionally self-aware individuals are better able to manage their emotions, resolve conflict, and build trust with others.

He further describes how the How We Feel app helps users develop emotional self-awareness. The app prompts users to label their emotions and provides feedback on their accuracy. This process helps users to become more aware of their emotional responses to different situations.

Marc is founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and professor in the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine at Yale University. As a researcher for over 20 years, Marc has focused on the role of emotions and emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. Most recently, with Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann, Marc and his team co-created the Apple award-winning app, HowWeFeel, that was designed to teach emotion skills and enhance well-being.

Marc is the lead developer of RULER, a systemic, evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning that has been adopted by over 4,500 schools across the United States and in other countries, including Australia, China, England, Italy, Mexico, and Spain. RULER, which has reached over 4 million children, infuses social and emotion learning into the immune system of schools by enhancing how school administrators lead, educators teach, students learn, and families parent.Marc is also the co-founder of Oji Life Lab, a corporate learning firm that develops innovative digital learning systems for emotional intelligence.

For more information on Dr. Brackett please visit:

https://www.marcbrackett.com/

For additional information on the How We Feel app please visit

https://howwefeel.org/