Play: A Serious Tool for Transition

/
Play: A Serious Tool for Transition

There’s a peculiar kind of panic that arrives in adulthood when life stops making sense in the neat, linear way we were promised it would. You know the feeling. Your boss retires. Your industry shifts. Your marriage changes. Your children leave home. You lose your job. Or perhaps nothing catastrophic happens at all. You simply wake up one Tuesday morning, stare into your coffee, and realize the life you carefully built no longer fits. 

If that’s you, you are probably not sitting on a swing smiling at—who is she smiling at?—while you journal your dreams for the next phase of your life. And the idea of play feels as useful as being told to "follow your passion" by someone with a trust fund.

Read More

Psychotherapy Doesn’t (Always) Have to be Pserious

/
Psychotherapy Doesn’t (Always) Have to be Pserious

After a recent Zoom workshop featuring several MAPPsters, that is, alumni of Penn’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program, I was asked to write this piece due to my being an addiction counselor and my “strengths of humor and playfulness.” I quickly said yes, a habit I’m trying to break, because it felt good to be asked. I briefly regretted saying yes when the guidelines were sent because they stipulated APA citations and references, which made me wish I had a pricing structure that said I’ll write anything for free unless it requires APA—in which case I charge $250,000.

Read More

Let’s Play! A Conversation with Stuart Brown, MD

/
Let’s Play! A Conversation with Stuart Brown, MD

When we think about play, many of us may think of childhood—of running around a playground, of a backyard sprinkler in the summertime, of toy trains and made-up stories of adventure. Few of us may even consider play’s pertinence in adulthood, but research indicates that play is not just a hallmark of childhood. It’s a necessity for well-being throughout our lives.

Read More

The Autonomy of the Heart

/
The Autonomy of the Heart

Western culture has been running a masterclass in romantic passivity for roughly five centuries. The idiom ‘falling in love’ is charming, ancient, and almost certainly making you worse at it. It traces its passive roots to at least the sixteenth century, though the underlying logic is considerably older. Medieval Europeans were helplessly fatalistic about most things—plagues, harvests, the general capriciousness of God, and love was no exception. Fortune's Wheel, that great spinning metaphor borrowed cheerfully from the Roman goddess Fortuna, captured the essential worldview: You do not steer; you are turned. You do not choose your position on the wheel; you simply hold on and hope the spin is kind. Love, in this cosmology, was something that happened to you in the same category as the weather, taxation, your next meal, or even the Black Death.

Read More

How to Feel Loved: A conversation with Harry Reis, PhD

/
How to Feel Loved: A conversation with Harry Reis, PhD

What is love? And what’s its role in the good life? Alongside three MAPP alumni authors and two subject matter experts, we invite you to join us as we unpack the poetry and practice of choosing, sharing, and feeling love. In this issue, we explore the power of its presence, the impact of its absence, and the multitudes of its expressions. How love can light the way when we’ve lost ourselves. And how we can find ourselves—even when we’ve lost love.   

To begin, we spoke with co-author of the recently released book, How to Feel Loved, relationship researcher and teacher, Harry Reis, PhD.

Read More

After Love: The Science and Sorrow of Letting Go

/
After Love: The Science and Sorrow of Letting Go

For someone who has been in love with love throughout life, it surprised me that I never truly got into bed with heartbreak, not in the way it slides into your ribs uninvited and refuses to leave. I believed I had felt it before. It is clear now that I had only flirted with it. Heartbreak arrived not as betrayal or verdict, but as raw intimacy followed by the unbearable absence of it. No villains. No dramatic exit. Just the merciless unmaking of everything that had already begun to feel like home. So I did what any reasonably undone person does: I pulled up a chair and let it have me. Not to romanticize the pain. Not to justify it. But to understand it. To come out alive.

Read More

Love as a Healing Force

/
Love as a Healing Force

That morning, when I opened my eyes, my body was no longer mine. It was as if I had lost the last bit of control over it. My limbs and my head felt incredibly heavy. I told my husband, “I don’t think I can work today,” with tears streaming down my face. I asked for sick leave. After sleeping for hours, I finally gained the strength to get out of bed. I tried to walk to the bathroom and found that I needed to lean against the wall, taking slow, careful steps just to get there. Little did I know that this would be my reality for the next few months.

Read More

Making Love Legible: A conversation with Jacqueline Mattis, PhD

/
Making Love Legible: A conversation with Jacqueline Mattis, PhD

As Zerish Mattis-Easton taught her daughter, love lives in the spaces we hold and the stories we tell. It lives in our labor and the hours between shifts. It lives in a pot of soup for a neighbor who needs it, in the questions we ask, and the grace that we give. Love is catalytic and transformative. It’s transcendent.

Anyone who has spent time with her can attest, Zerish’s daughter Jacqueline Mattis, PhD embodies both the expansiveness and everydayness of love. And in a field that has largely overlooked love in urban contexts, Jacquie Mattis is helping to make love legible. To close this issue on the science of love, we’re pleased to share our conversation.

Read More

Grief Does Not Need a Pep Talk; It Needs Presence

/
Grief Does Not Need a Pep Talk; It Needs Presence

Grief is a universal experience. At some point, each of us will grieve a loss, not only the loss of a loved one, but likely the loss of relationships, identity, health, home, imagined futures, or the worlds we thought we were living in. And yet, Western culture remains profoundly ill-equipped to hold grief, especially when the loss is traumatic or out of order.

Read More

Yes, and Yet: When Joy and Loss Learn to Cohabitate

/
Yes, and Yet: When Joy and Loss Learn to Cohabitate

On January 5, 2012, I sustained a spinal cord injury. In a matter of seconds, I lost the ability to control my legs with my brain—a traumatic loss that made me struggle for years. The loss of our bodies and the way they have always worked is comparable to the loss of an intimate partner, as we are changed forever (Clifton, 2014).

And yet, if you ask me, I live a pretty good life.

Read More

Always November: A Conversation with Arik Housley

/

In this issue of MAPP Magazine, we sought to explore where positive psychology sits beside suffering. To make space at the holiday table for both celebration and lament. When you’ve lost a child or the use of your legs. . . When you’re facing a life-altering diagnosis or life-shattering heartbreak. . . When you’ve lost your way, can barely breathe, and well-meant platitudes and pep talks not only fall short but intensify your pain. . . what then? What does the best in us look like when we’re navigating the worst?

Read More

Running on Half Power: Why Women Burnout and How to Reclaim Alignment

/
Running on Half Power: Why Women Burnout and How to Reclaim Alignment

Imagine running a power plant at full capacity, day after day, no time for maintenance, no pause to refuel. The lights might stay on for a while, but eventually, even the most resilient system begins to dim. The same is true for women today. Across industries and roles, women are often the central source of energy that keeps families, teams, and communities running. Yet the systems around them rarely replenish what they take.

Read More

She Needs R.E.S.T.: A New Playbook for Women’s Well-Being in the Age of Overwhelm

/
She Needs R.E.S.T.: A New Playbook for Women’s Well-Being in the Age of Overwhelm

Women of my generation, Xennials, a micro-generation typically defined by birth years from approximately 1977 to 1983, were lied to at a very young age when we were promised that we could “have it all.” However, the data and many of our lived experiences tell a more complicated story. In 2025, signs of strain are flashing red: Women’s labor-force gains have slowed or reversed in key pockets, Black women’s unemployment has jumped, and the rollback of flexible work is squeezing caregivers hardest (Carrazana, 2025; Popera, 2025).

Read More

The True Cost of Female Entrepreneurship: How Female Founders can Flourish in a System not Built for Them

/
The True Cost of Female Entrepreneurship: How Female Founders can Flourish in a System not Built for Them

Entrepreneurship has often been described as an extreme sport, a psychologically demanding pursuit requiring endurance, courage, and recovery much like that of elite athletes (Chamorro-Premuzic & Wade, 2020). Yet for women, the climb is often steeper. Beneath the familiar headlines about funding gaps lies a quieter story—one about the psychological and emotional cost of building a business in an ecosystem that wasn’t designed with women in mind.

Read More

Financial Thriving: A Positive Pathway for Women’s Financial Well-Being

/
Financial Thriving: A Positive Pathway for Women’s Financial Well-Being

A historic transfer of wealth is underway, positioning women in a larger role within the global financial system and expanding their influence. Within the next decade, women are expected to control $34 trillion in investable assets, up from roughly $18 trillion in 2023 (Catania & Zucker, 2025). This shift has profound implications that extend well beyond the balance sheet, creating an opportunity to reconsider how changing our view of financial well-being can empower women and enhance their overall well-being.

Read More

In Memoriam: Remembering Hasan Mabry C’22

/
In Memoriam: Remembering Hasan Mabry C’22

On Saturday, May 3, 2025, 25 MAPPsters representing decades of graduating classes gathered with Yvonne Ross to remember her son, Hasan Tysheem Mabry (C’22), who died on March 18, 2025.

As a proud University of Pennsylvania graduate who attended the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hasan, our classmates, and I initially knew each other only virtually. At first Hasan seemed quiet and reserved. He joined our virtual classroom from a lowly lit room and spoke up only sometimes. We quickly learned that both his voice and his insights were deep.

Read More

Belonging to the Wild: How Nature Connection Nurtures Well-Being

/
Belonging to the Wild: How Nature Connection Nurtures Well-Being

As I would later come to study in the Master’s of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania, these experiences of nature connection are more than poetic; they’re scientifically meaningful. And small intentional interventions can offer us one path forward as we seek to reconnect to the rhythms of nature, noticing the beauty, connection, and love it offers.

Read More

The Ethics of Eudaimonia and the Anthropocene

/
The Ethics of Eudaimonia and the Anthropocene

There have likely always been fierce debates about what well-being means. When Aristotle opined on the topic a couple of millennia ago, he was writing a treatise about ethics (ca. 350 B.C.E./1994). Some say he was writing to his son, Nicomachus (Natali, 2013). Think of it as a father’s guide on how to live a good life—something worth paying attention to if your father happens to be one of the most influential thinkers in Western civilization.

Read More

On Nature and Meaning: A Conversation with Holli-Anne Passmore, PhD

/
On Nature and Meaning: A Conversation with Holli-Anne Passmore, PhD

Whether walking home from work on that first warm spring day or taking a trip to a national park, being in nature just feels right. Although environmental psychology has been around for half a century and people have mused over the feelings and experiences of being in nature for even longer, in many ways, positive psychology has only relatively recently ventured into the nature conversation. With the proposed third wave of positive psychology and Mike Steger’s (2025) call for a regenerative positive psychology, more and more of us are considering the role of nature in well-being, especially in this time of climate collapse and environmental degradation. 

Read More

Changing the Game: A Conversation with Paddy Steinfort

/
Changing the Game: A Conversation with Paddy Steinfort

Referred to by USA Today as “the game changer behind the game changers,” Paddy Steinfort (C’15) is a former professional athlete who has served as advisor and coach to world champion sports teams and MVPs, the US Army, a top emergency-medicine program, world-renown tech and finance executives, and some of the best performers and highest achievers in the world. And yet, people are people, he reminded us in our conversation with him earlier this year. Even the very best of the best can have unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that can compromise their performance.

Read More