Transgender Americans have seen big changes to their health care in the last 18 months. While medical and surgical interventions for young trans patients under age 19 are now banned by the federal government, leading to policy shifts at health systems across the Commonwealth, more subtle changes to adult transgender care are surfacing, too, including […]
It took two years and four multi-day hospitalizations before Kenny Belew, 47, finally knew what left him writhing in pain, his gut raw and inflamed, his midsection almost comically distended. “I looked like I was pregnant,” says Belew, of Palmyra, recalling the moment just before he was carted off by ambulance for a nine-day hospital […]
Chardae Johnson might have a little third-trimester brain fog, but she knows one thing for sure: She’s not taking Tylenol for her aches and pains like she did while pregnant with her firstborn. “I’ve been steering clear of it just because I really don’t know what to believe,” says Johnson, 28. “Honestly, there’s a lot […]
After a 20-year love affair, Melanie Schaefer decided to branch out: to copper, brass, and bronze, that is. Silver, she says, has become too pricey for artistic monogamy. “In the last year, the price of the metal that I use has tripled, plus some,” explains Schaefer, a jewelry maker who, until 2026, has worked almost exclusively […]
With eyes closed and mouth open, I hear deer everywhere. It’s just before sundown on the day after Christmas, and we’re clustered in a hunter’s blind beside an old privy in a field flanked by woods, waiting for a deer to tiptoe into view. The forest floor, littered with dry autumn leaves, is crackling. The […]
“Don’t be a dick.” That’s the ask from Kari Anderson Miller, a former Greenbrier Elementary School teacher and Peace Corps alumna who started the nonprofit International Neighbors a decade back. Her initial intent—to tether newly resettled refugees in Charlottesville to community members who’d help them adjust—meant to ease newcomers into their first exciting, bewildering, sometimes […]