COMMENT: Last week was one of those times when you sensed how thin the membrane is between the functioning intact life and its total destruction.

COMMENT: This morning I got up, meditated for five minutes, staring fixedly at a lemon, and then thought "I know, I'll write a column about Brexit".

COMMENT: After Stanford University rape case, like many of you, I've been thinking about what we can do to eradicate what has been called "rape culture".

COMMENT: Getting rid of these surplus mental activities. So the following mental topics are going in the landfill to free up brainpower.

COMMENT: In the interests of not being such a drip, I have decided I could take some pointers from Donald Trump.

COMMENT: Kids are being taught they can just google anything. There was no Google when I was at school. But here is what I wish I had learnt.

COMMENT: Facebook is simply millions of lighted-up houses to peer into. But you can't go home to all of them, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

COMMENT: You need to do more than just tell people to be less sexist, because it simply doesn't work, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

COMMENT: I have made a solemn promise to myself and my children that there is one rule I will now follow. I will never text in the car again.

COMMENT: Hey kids, you really don't need to exit through the gift shop. An experience can be just as good even if you don't get to buy something.

COMMENT: We may be better at talking about depression, but there is still deep shame in being honest about other forms of mental illness, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

I wish Facebook had introduced a chin-stroking emoji ... or an 'I'll get back to you on that' button, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

COMMENT: Sharing a room was possibly the best thing that ever happened to me. So give your room-mate a chance. You never know, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

Government's dismissive attitude to those who don't fit in reflects poorly on NZ, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

They are many and they are powerful - we all use defence mechanisms, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

Feel-good soap can't fix back-to-school challenges, so it's up to us now, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

We are not brains-on-sticks, and a simple idea could revolutionise the way we unlock our potential, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

The self-plagiarist tries to take undeserved credit for the work as new and original when they know the material was derived from a previous source, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

My therapist has gone away and since my last appointment I have already gone off the rails and drunk too much and ended up ringing the one person I should never contact, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

Last year about this time I wrote a list of 30 random things I had learnt, writes Deborah Hill Cone. Guess what? Twelve months on and turns out all I've done is learn all the same darn things all over again.

All those colouring books do not work for everyone, writes Deborah Hill Cone. I've started doing this thing where you just pause and write down five random things you notice around you.

Deborah Hill Cone crashes her car into a shiny new Audi and has a revelation about her life. My head resting on the steering wheel, I heard a loud inner ding. I realised something important.

So far my explanation has been pretty pathetic, writes Deborah Hill Cone. Extremists, fundamentalists, blah blah, crazy people, no, of course it's not going to happen here!

I'm not sure I should be writing this. There are others - colleagues, family - who are far better placed to do it.

I never knew there was such a thing as a distance violation; it's when you have valid grounds to expect someone to be there for you and they are gone, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

I am a terrible cook, writes Deborah Hill Cone. So I don't know what possessed me to invite people for dinner. I had a revelation this week about why I'm so useless at everything after reading a book

We don't need more people like me, writes Deborah Hill Cone. We don't need more introspective bloggers or writers noodling on about personal crises and cupcakes.

Both my kids have a mean perfectionist streak; I sometimes fear they are going to fire me, writes Deborah Hill Cone. We need to remember that mistakes are okay.

The poet W.H. Auden said about suffering: it takes place while someone is eating or just walking dully along or doing a Pump class, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

I don't find it so easy to feel gentle towards supermodels having a hard Fashion Week or kind to bestselling gurus with their own problems, writes Deborah Hill Cone. This is even though I know absolutely no one has an easy life.