Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on August 19, 2026 By the time you're reading this, I've been in Mexico for a few days. I landed in Cancún, and the first thing I felt stepping off the plane was recognition, in my body before my brain caught up. Last time I was here, my family and I were on our last mexico holiday before moving back to Switzerland. I knew my life was about to change massively. I'm here for a childhood friend's 40th birthday. There's something about childhoo

what my cosmetologist understood in ten minutes that most people never will

Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on August 4, 2026. Last week I told you about the Coan handholding studies. Hold someone you love's hand under threat, and the brain's alarm system quiets down. Not a nice idea. Something a lab could actually measure. But here's the question that sat with me after I hit send. What happens when there's no hand to hold. No partner in the next room, no friend on the other end of the phone, 2am and just you and your own nervous system. That's mo

Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on July 28, 2026. Last week we talked about how it takes your nervous system a few days into a holiday to actually start switching off, how the switch from work mode to rest mode is not automatic, no matter how much you want it to be. This week, we look at one of the fastest ways to speed that switch up, and it has nothing to do with willpower. In 2006, a researcher named James Coan put married women in an MRI scanner and threatened them wit

Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on July 21, 2026. There is a particular kind of restlessness that shows up in the first few days of a holiday. You have arrived, there is nothing to do, and yet some part of you is still wired, still scanning, still waiting for the next thing to handle. I remember this feeling on my trip to the Dominican Republic. The first few days something in me would not switch off. I was there, but my brain was not. It was somewhere around the middle of

Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on July 14, 2026. This week is also a little different, like last week. This week I (unfortunately) don't have anything new for you because I had four assignments due for University yesterday and therefore have been typing away furiously for the past few days. So instead, use this short issue as your excuse to actually get to the homework from last week's issue, if you haven't already. Back to normal next Tuesday! Big hug, Claudia ✨

Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on July 7, 2026. This week is a little different. Instead of me doing the work of writing something for you, I made something for you to do. It's been sitting on my desk for a while now and I am therefore very excited to be able to share this with you. It's called the Social Fitness Check-In. A free workbook, that came out of reading "The Good Life" by Robert Waldinger, the psychiatrist behind the longest-running happiness study in history.

Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on June 30, 2026. Not in the abstract, not in the "everyone matters" way people say to make you feel better. I mean specifically. To someone. Right now. I came across this question in Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz's book The Good Life, written on Harvard's 85 year study of adult happiness. In one chapter they write about "do I matter" as one of the most basic, and most often unasked, questions we carry. Mattering isn't the same as being l

Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on June 24, 2026. I will be honest with you: I can not stand mid-year reviews or any type of corporate performance reviews, for that matter. (Also, it is Wednesday. Tuesday Notes is one day late. I'm Latina, get over it 😉) The forced rating. The buzzwords. The carefully softened feedback. The manager who hasn't noticed you exist for six months suddenly having "structured" thoughts about your development. The whole ritual feels designed to m

Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on June 16, 2026. My Dad called me into the room to watch. I sat down, and within minutes I was crying. The spectacle was beautiful, but it wasn't just that. It was the Latino pride on one of the biggest stages in the world, unapologetic and enormous. In a world that feels increasingly divided by nationalities, religions, and borders, there is something quietly radical about watching people come together to celebrate humanity. And in a momen