Author: Overcoming Adversity | Buteau’s Odyssey

Imagine a family where both parents manage demanding careers, shuttle kids between school and activities, and keep a spotless home—yet at dinner, no one has the energy to really connect. High-performing families excel across work, home, education, and extracurriculars, often appearing composed and in control. But beneath this polished exterior, daily life can feel reactive, with emotional energy conserved and choices driven more by obligation than intention. Over time, this hidden strain can quietly erode relationships, leaving families disconnected even when everything seems “fine.” To better understand this dynamic, I spoke with wellness expert and best-selling author Temi Ayodeji, who…

This new year, eldest daughters deserve an intentional change in their lives and can find it using the three Cs approach: call it, calibrate it, change it. Call it what it is: Control One of the hardest truths for eldest daughters to accept is that what they believe looks like generosity is often masking the need for control. When you’re the one who organizes the family vacation, calls the plumber for your parents, and coordinates every Mother’s Day gift, it’s easy to feel resentful that nobody else is stepping up to help. Often, the eldest daughter is the one who…

This year, for the first time, she didn’t make the family calendar. And she could already see what was coming. In a few months, her mom would text and ask who’s hosting the Easter holiday or what’s the plan for a Memorial Day weekend get-together. And she’d smile and text back, “I’m not sure—I haven’t checked with anyone.” How would it go? She wasn’t sure yet, but it feels like a good start. The world was not going to collapse if she failed to coordinate every holiday. Plans will be made somehow, by someone, probably. But it won’t be her,…

The contents of this article are a pragmatic, simplified, and adapted version of John Austin’s (1962) work on speech act theory (SAT), first presented at Oxford University between 1951 and 1954 and at Harvard University in 1955, and later developed by John Searle (1979). SAT treats speaking as a set of rules that govern social behaviour, in which people make claims, issue orders, ask questions, make promises, and so on, through utterances. Three Main Types of Language As humans, we are essentially linguistic beings. Yet the distinctions between speech acts and their deliberate and effective use remain elusive to many.…

The top 25 rankings are important for understanding just who is killing it in college basketball, but we can go deeper — all the way to the bubble and beyond.The NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, is a rankings system used in Division I basketball to help figure out which teams are going to participate in March Madness. As the NCAA puts it, NET “takes into account game results, strength of schedule, game location, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses,” the latter of which is determined by placing every Division I matchup into different quadrants, ranked…

Writing this at the end of the year (as one does with year-end lists), and while 2025 has largely been pretty sucky, it has been pretty damn good when it comes to horror. So many amazing films have been released this year. Some of them even dominated the box office and were subjected to outsiders once again asking the question, “Is horror back?” As if it could possibly have gone anywhere. You and I know that horror is always part of the conversation. You just need to know where to look. And this year, there were box office sensations and…

Most people believe that self-awareness is important. Self-awareness partly involves recognizing that there are limits to our knowledge and understanding of things, making us open to considering alternatives to what we believe. Of course, it’s troublesome to admit that we are not wholly knowledgeable. Sometimes, the more self-aware we think we are, the less self-aware we actually are. Philosophy has always emphasized cultivating intellectual humility so that we can revise our views when we have reason to think they are mistaken. Plato’s well-known allegory of the cave—one of the first things many students learn in their introductory philosophy classes—illustrates this…

This post is Part 1 of a series. In my previous post, I discussed the conundrum we face regarding artificial intelligence (AI) today: On one hand, we’re told to use it or get left behind; on the other, we’re warned about the “cognitive diminishment” that can result from that very use. I suggested the solution wasn’t an uncritical embrace, nor an outright rejection. Yes, we need to learn to use AI. But the dilemma of cognitive decay remains. While claims that AI can boost creativity are common, there is little instruction on specific ways to use it that minimize the…

Huge Pain Relief Last February, I got a brand new spinal cord stimulator that offers me a huge amount of pain relief. I could suddenly work all day. I could go to my kid’s graduation. I could feel the outsides of my feet! But in my heart of hearts, what I really wanted was to stop seeing my pain doc. Before I go on, I want to acknowledge two things: 1) It took years to find a pain doc who trusts me as a reporter of my own experience, and it was mostly luck that got me there; and 2)…

Gray divorce is the name researchers coined for adults aged 50 and older ending their marriage. They found that gray divorce doubled between 1990 and 2010. Currently, 36% of U.S. adults getting divorced are aged 50 or older. Gray divorce couples may have minor children, adult children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. The shock waves can reverberate through four generations, destabilizing the permanence and family relationships everyone assumed would last a lifetime. Family members touched by gray divorce often report feelings of loss, shock, disbelief, destabilization, overwhelm, aloneness, sadness, loneliness, and grief. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison’s depiction of grief encompasses…