Blink, a new documentary from NatGeo, is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
It’s December, and we’re all currently in the thick of it: Wrapping presents, baking cookies, and scouring the toy aisles for that must-have gift of the season. But in the middle of all the holiday chaos, it’s easy to lose sight on what the season is really about: making meaningful memories with our loved ones.
From volunteering to building a bucket list to watching maybe the most uplifting documentary we’ve ever seen, we’ve put together five simple and wholesome activities that will leave you and the entire family a little more connected and a whole lot happier. Ready to make memories that last? Let’s dive in.
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A 2023 analysis from the journal Frontiers in Psychology showed that people who regularly volunteered in their communities had greater self-esteem, more self-reported happiness, and a greater sense of personal fulfillment. (Um, yes, please.) If that sounds like something you want to experience as well, then you're in luck: There's no better time to lend a helping hand than during the holiday season. You could shovel a neighbor's driveway, buy presents for kids in need, or—who knows? You might want to be super ambitious, like setting up a food pantry or volunteering as an "interim parent" like this woman, who cares for babies and young children while their adoptions are being finalized. The sky is the limit.
Get the tissues ready: This is maybe the most uplifting documentary you’re ever going to see. The film, “Blink,” follows a family with four children, three of whom have a rare genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa (RP). With RP, the cells of the retina slowly die off, leaving a person with tunnel vision that shrinks until they are nearly—or totally—blind.
The parents, Edith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier, decide to gift their children with incredible sights and experiences so that they can treasure them forever, even after their sight is gone. The film follows the Pelletier family as they make a bucket list and set out on a year-long journey across 24 countries to make some incredible memories.
For some seriously wholesome holiday goodness, stream "Blink," now on Disney+ and Hulu.
person writing bucket list on bookPhoto by Glenn Carstens-Peters on UnsplashTo fulfill their dreams, the Pelletier family in the National Geographic documentary "Blink" created a bucket list with every kind of memory they wanted to fulfill, from seeing a sunrise on a mountain to "drink[ing] juice on a camel." (Because, sure. Why not?) Spend some time thinking of your own dreams you'd like to fufill. This is the perfect activity if you're looking for something creative and family-friendly—just gather the kids around for a brainstorming sesh and let the ideas fly. You might not actually complete all of these items (or any of them), but dreaming them up and spending time together is half the fun.
Whatever your family’s ages and interests, there are a thousand different ways to spread holiday cheer this season, whether you’re singing Christmas carols door-to-door or just exchanging a warm holiday greeting. If you need inspiration, look no further than John Reichart, 74, who (just like the Pelletier kids) wants to create new memories for his family while he's still able to. Following his wife Joan’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Reichart set out to decorate every house in their neighborhood with lights and decorations purchased out of his own pocket. Simply inspirational.
I need this goober in my life.
byu/kenistod inMadeMeSmile
The holiday season is all about giving and togetherness, but let’s be real, it’s no easy feat. Sometimes we can get stressed, overwhelmed, and exhausted. One surefire way to make this world a better place is to think of ways to make someone’s life just a little easier, like this mom who picks up her teenager’s bedroom every morning after he goes to school. You could even send a note of encouragement to someone who needs it, or bake some treats and leave them out for a hangry delivery driver.
It’s probably easier than you think to spread the love and leave the world a little happier than you found it.
Dynzell Sigers was sick of being small. At 27-years-old and just 5' 5" tall, he decided to undergo an excruciating — and incredibly expensive — limb-lengthening surgery to become, as Skee Lo would say, a little bit taller. In December of 2022, Sigers underwent the first of what would be many surgeries.
Limb-lengthening is not for the squeamish. First, surgeons will cut one of your major leg bones (the femur or tibia) clean in two. Next, a metal rod will be inserted deep into the two sections of bone, connecting them again. Once you've healed from the surgery, you'll extend the rod very slightly with a rotator every couple of months. This slowly forces the body to stretch and grow the leg gradually. As you can imagine, it's a grueling process that involves a lot of physical therapy and dedication, and finally, another surgery to remove the device once the desired growth is achieved.
Most people are able to add about 2-3 inches to each limb lengthened (it can be done on your arms, too!), but Sigers decided to go back and have the procedure done all over again and was able to grow a whopping 7 inches taller. In the end, the surgeries and recovery cost him over $80,000.
After years of watching him work in the gym, attend rigorous physical therapy sessions, and struggle to regain range of motion, strength, and athleticism, we're all wondering the same thing:
Was it worth it?
@ntkdagreatest My proportions after surgery #limblengthening #fitnessmodel #fitnessmotivation
Sigers says people he meets notice a difference in him right away, and the transformation has felt amazing.
"You just ooze confidence," he says a woman stopped to tell him one day. "Your smile and you just like, radiate confidence."
"That's the first time I've ever heard that in my life, and I've always considered myself a confident guy, like always," he told LADBible.
The numbers are in, and they are not kind for our short kings. Taller men have been shown to make more money (and so have tall women, actually), get more dates, are perceived as more confident and masculine, and can even be flat-out happier overall!
Being short can also make you be viewed as less successful and attractive, even when by most other objective measures, you're not. Brutal!
Studies have also shown an intense link between height and masculinity. Shorter men who 'believe' in masculine norms are more likely to be dissatisfied with their height than those who don't. In other words, being short can make you feel like less of a man, likely due to all the societal stigmas attached to height.
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"In my teens, I was once rejected by a girl I had a huge crush on and although she found me attractive, her reasoning was that I was too short and too young for her.”
He tried wearing tall shoes, daily stretching, and other techniques for growing or appearing taller. Nothing was enough to move the needle. Since the surgeries, he's noticed an increase in the interest he gets from women — but it could just as well be from his dramatic boost in confidence, self-esteem, and outlook on life.
"All my life I struggled with viewing myself as a small person and no matter what I did to change it I always felt the same,” he told The New York Post. “Limb lengthening gave me the opportunity to change my life and the way I perceive life as a whole. I have no regrets and decided to share my journey with the world to let other men who feel the same know that there is another option for them.”
Limb-lengthening won't be an option for most people who are unhappy with their stature. It's controversial in some medical communities as it's extremely invasive and, technically, unnecessary in many cases. Outside of that, the process is unimaginably expensive and requires 1-2 years of dedicated physical recovery.
But its rising popularity should give us a lot of pause about how society values, or overvalues, height; especially in men.
In the meantime, Sigers says the $80,000 was money well spent.
“I feel like a new man and as though I was able to get a second chance at life.”
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was the first to discover that stars were primarily hydrogen and helium.
If you asked an average person to name influential astronomers in history, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin likely wouldn't be among them. But there's an argument to be made that she should be a household name. She's the reason we know what stars are made of, but gender bias nearly kept the astrophysicist from gaining the recognition she deserved.
When 25-year-old Cecilia Payne put forth her thesis saying that stars were mostly hydrogen and helium in 1925, it went against the scientific consensus that stars were composed of the same elements as planets. Her breakthrough research proved that hydrogen, the simplest atom, was one of the most fundamental building blocks of the entire cosmos—a foundational fact that informs space research to this day. So why isn't she more familiar to us?
Payne-Gaposchkin proved to be a gifted scientist from an early age, and her parents made sure she had the best science education they could provide in her home country of England. At 19, she entered University of Cambridge on scholarship and soon fell in love with physics. But women in science were expected to study botany, and she soon found herself being humiliated as the only woman in a physics class taught by Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford, a renowned pioneer in atomic and nuclear studies. “At every lecture [Rutherford] would gaze at me pointedly…and would begin in his stentorian voice: 'Ladies and gentlemen,'" she wrote in her autobiography. "All the boys regularly greeted this witticism with thunderous applause [and] stamping with their feet…at every lecture I wished I could sink into the earth. To this day I instinctively take my place as far back as possible in a lecture room.”
She found a more supportive mentor in astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, but even he told her she wouldn't have opportunities in England as a female astronomer after she finished at Cambridge. He did, however, offer her a glowing recommendation to work with Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory, who was starting up a graduate studies program. In 1923, Payne moved to the U.S. to continue her studies at Harvard.
However, she faced limitations due to her sex there as well. Women played a significant role at Harvard, largely in the role of human computers. In analyzing spectral data that Harvard computers had painstakingly collected and organized, Payne-Gaposchkin discovered that spectra from ionized atoms, like those in the hot outer atmosphere of stars, differed from neutral atoms of the same kind. Combining what she gleaned from her data analysis with a previously untested theory from Indian physicist Meghnad Saha, she produced her thesis, Stellar Atmospheres.
Cecilia Payne (top row, second from the left) with other women working at Harvard in 1925Harvard University Archives
Part of her thesis was well-received, but the part in which she discovered helium was 1000 times more abundant and hydrogen was 1,000,000 times more abundant in the stars than previously thought hit a bump. Princeton Observatory director Henry Russell, an outside examiner of her thesis, thought the idea that the Sun was made almost entirely of hydrogen simply couldn't be true. "It is clearly impossible that hydrogen should be a million times more abundant than the metals,” he wrote to her. She would not be able to have her thesis accepted without Russell signing off on it, so she did was she felt she must. In her final draft, she wrote, “The enormous abundance derived for [hydrogen and helium] is almost certainly not real,” essentially disowning that part of her research result.
Ironically, Russell himself would prove her right just a few years later. In 1929, Russell published his own research, which had the same conclusion as Payne-Gaposhckin's but by a different method. He cited Payne-Gaposchkin’s work, noting that his results agreed with hers. However, he did not state that he had originally rejected her (correct) thesis. Later, Payne-Gaposhckin expressed regret at waffling on her findings. "I was to blame for not having pressed my point," she wrote in her autobiography. "I had given in to Authority when I believed I was right…I note it here as a warning to the young. If you are sure of your facts, you should defend your position.”
Payne-Gaposhckin continued research work and taught graduate courses, though she wasn't given the title of "professor" or even "instructor." Officially, she was Shapley's "technical assistant." When Shapley approached the dean and president of Harvard to have that changed, both refused. The president, Abbot Lawrence Lowell, said that Miss Payne “would never have a position in the University as long as he was alive."
The biases against Payne-Gaposhckin as a woman stymied her again and again, but she persevered in her life's work. She technically earned the first Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard, but it was officially awarded by Radcliffe, the women's college because Harvard's physics department chair refused to accept a woman candidate. She was paid poorly for her work and wasn't given any titles or positions that a man of her ability and qualifications would have been given. When Shapley launched the full department of astronomy at Harvard, he wanted Payne-Gaposchkin—his best researcher—to serve as its first chair, but he knew Lowell wouldn't allow it, so she was passed over for a male astronomer.
Despite teaching and researching, writing books and hundreds of papers, it would be three decades before Payne-Gaposchkin's contributions to astrophysics were recognized. She basically had to wait for the men with strong anti-woman biases to step down or retire and for men who saw and honored her brilliance to give her the recognition she had rightfully earned.
On June 21, 1956, The New York Times reported, “Harvard University announced today the appointment of Dr. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin as Professor of Astronomy. She is the first woman to attain full professorship at Harvard through regular faculty promotion.” A few months later, she also became the first woman to head a department at Harvard as she became chair of the astronomy department. And a few years later, in 1960, distinguished astronomer Otto Struve referred to Payne-Gaposchkin's Stellar Atmospheres as “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”
The sun and other stars are primarily made of hydrogen and helium.Photo credit: Canva
Perhaps most impressive is that, through all of her hard work and continuous road blocks due to her gender, Payne-Gaposchkin managed to marry a fellow astronomer and raise three children. As physicist and author Sidney Perkowitz writes in Physics World writes in Physics World:
"In some sense, one might say she 'had it all' in combining science with family and children, but getting there was unnecessarily difficult and gruelling because of bias against women. She became a full professor only at age 56, much later than a man with similar achievements would have reached that status, and after being passed over for advancement, which must have taken a psychological toll. Only a person with exceptional drive and persistence, along with scientific ability, could have endured until final recognition."
In 1976, three years before she died, the American Astronomical Society awarded Payne-Gaposchkin the prestigious Henry Norris Russell Prize. In her acceptance lecture, she said, “The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something.”
Thank you, Dr. Payne-Gaposchkin, for not only being the first person on Earth to see what stars are made of, but for doing so in the face of all the obstacles unnecessarily placed in your path.
