NEW YORK (AP) — The moment I knew I had to get serious about work-life balance came without warning. I was writing a high-profile news story during the pandemic when my heart began pounding like a jackhammer.
I took a quick, deep breath and held it, hoping to calm the arrhythmia. It was a technique I’d learned to relieve occasional palpitations caused by my rare congenital heart defect. But this time was different. The room went dark. I couldn’t see. Then, just as quickly, my vision returned.
In the days that followed, I learned I needed to have a defibrillator surgically implanted as soon as possible. My cardiologist told me: it’s time to reduce stress. That was a prescription I, like many Americans, didn’t know how to fill, especially as the parent of a young child.
But the health scare and a cancer diagnosis that followed meant I had to try. Now, as I continue this journey, I’m launching a series called “Working Well.” While exploring ways to improve my own well-being at work, I’ll share experts' insights and tips with readers who hope to do the same.
We’ve been through a lot the past few years: A global pandemic took loved ones' lives and left parents juggling full-time jobs with no childcare. College graduates navigated their first professional jobs without lunch buddies or in-person mentors. Elections and wars divided families and places of work. It's no surprise workers feel burned-out.
But along with these challenges came a growing sense that we could choose to build our professional lives in a different, healthier way. Companies experimented with hybrid work models. Younger generations talked more proactively about mental health. Employers looking to retain workers launched in-house yoga and stress-reduction programs.
The Associated Press wants to contribute to the conversation about workplace wellness. In the coming months, we plan to interview doctors, therapists, executives and coaches about the changes they recommend or have made to improve employees’ lives — ones you may want to consider, too.
The topic is personal for me. After I received my defibrillator, I took steps to find that elusive work-life balance. I experimented with a four-day workweek. That helped me find time to exercise, cook healthy meals and occasionally pause.
Just as I was getting into a groove, a routine mammogram revealed breast cancer. There would be surgery. I was given frightening handouts and bluntly told about procedures that would make me feel like a piece of meat. There would be months of chemotherapy. Thirty rounds of radiation. My heart condition complicated every treatment plan.
With the life-threatening diagnosis also came lessons in healing. For the first time in my life, I was forced to slow down enough that I could listen to my body. When I was tired in the afternoon, instead of having chocolate or coffee, I took a nap. I timed my chemotherapy appointments so I'd be well enough to walk to the bus stop on my son’s first day of kindergarten, celebrate his birthday and walk house-to-house on Halloween.
My oncologist encouraged me to exercise through chemotherapy. I swam laps at the town pool, under the green leaves of the oak trees, swapping my wig or turban for a swim cap discreetly. I tried yin yoga. I took walks. When I felt lightheaded, I rested. When I felt stronger, I rode on my stationary bike and did crunches.
I began acupuncture. I finally tried meditation. I learned that for this disease, unlike with my heart condition, there was a raft of support networks available. Social workers contacted me at every turn.
At one point I had three therapists. One taught me a calming technique that I used on the way to my PET scan. In the car, inching through thick traffic with my husband driving, I began feeling dizzy, my fingers tingling, as I imagined the radiologist finding inoperable tumors all over my body. I remembered the therapist’s advice: Name five things you can see. Four things you can hear. Three things you can feel. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste. I tried it. The panic subsided.
Eventually, my body healed enough that I could return to work. But I was altered. I still had brain fog and fatigue, side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. How would I perform? Was it possible to maintain my health and thrive in my career?
Coming back, I wanted to continue the wellness habits that cancer, after thrusting me off the track that had been my life, gave me the time to begin. Writing stories that help others, including this series, is a way to do that.
In Working Well, I’ll share stories about inspiring workers who have overcome challenges and actively improved their health. I’ll tackle topics from how to negotiate a new schedule to navigating the workplace with health challenges.
I want to hear your experiences as well. Have you surmounted a big obstacle at work? Adopted new habits? Found balance, or not, as a working parent? Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at cbussewitz@ap.org. Together, let’s be well at work.
(AP Illustration/Annie Ng)
A series of rocket barrages from Lebanon struck northern Israel on Thursday, killing a total of seven people, including four foreign workers. The attacks marked the deadliest strikes to hit Israel since its military invaded southern Lebanon earlier this month.
The Israeli military warned people to evacuate from more areas of southern Lebanon as airstrikes across the country killed at least eight. Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon at the beginning of October. Some 1.2 million people have been displaced since Israel’s escalation, according to government estimates.
Lebanon’s Heath Ministry said more than 2,800 people have been killed and 12,900 wounded since Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation. Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon at the beginning of October.
The developments come as mediators are ramping up efforts to halt the wars in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, circulating new proposals to wind down the regional conflict.
The death toll from more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has passed 43,000, Palestinian officials reported Monday, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants. The war began after Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.
Here’s the latest:
NUR SHAMS REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — The offices of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees were heavily damaged during an Israeli raid in a West Bank refugee camp on Thursday. The official Palestinian news agency alleged Israeli military bulldozers had partially demolished the building.
Associated Press video of the scene showed the outer cement wall of the UNRWA office had been destroyed, with large piles of sand and dirt dug up in the yard. The main office building had minor damage and an adjacent temporary hall was flattened, covered with dirt, its corrugated roof knocked over.
The Israeli military denied it damaged the building in the Nur Shams refugee camp. It said militants had planted explosives nearby and set them off to attack Israeli troops and that the blast “likely caused damage to the building.”
The cause of the damage could not be independently confirmed but appeared consistent with previous Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes and buildings in the occupied West Bank, and AP journalists saw Israeli military bulldozers on the perimeter of the Nur Shams camp during the operation.
Israeli troops raided the camp overnight, saying they were battling militants in the area. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Thursday that two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire. The Israeli military said it killed a Hamas militant.
The damage to the office comes after Israel’s parliament this week passed laws that would effectively ban UNRWA’s operations in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Israel accuses the agency of turning a blind eye to militants among its staff, a claim UNRWA denies. The law comes into effect in three months.
JERUSALEM — The director of the World Health Organization said Thursday that Israeli fire again hit one of the only hospitals still partially-functional in Gaza’s north, wounding staff and destroying much-needed supplies that agency had delivered to the embattled facility.
Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned the hit to Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, which he said occurred Thursday morning. He said it damaged a storeroom with supplies WHO had brought to the hospital during “complex missions,” as well as the hospital’s desalination station and water tanks on the roof. The hospital was raided last week by Israeli troops.
“The hospital has been barely functioning since the most recent raid,” he said. “The latest attack is putting patients’ lives at great risk.”
The hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said in a recorded video statement posted to social media Thursday that heavy Israeli gunfire targeted the facility beginning at 1 a.m. Thursday night, striking the surgical ward and the storage facility — holding supplies delivered days earlier by WHO — and setting a fire that damaged the hospital’s dialysis department. The fire injured four staff members as they worked to extinguish it.
The Israeli military said it was “unaware” of a strike on Kamal Adwan Hospital but would review the allegation. In recent days, it has said it assisted WHO humanitarian missions bringing supplies and evacuating patients from the hospital.
Around 120 patients remain in the hospital, with more arriving every day, injured by Israeli strikes on north Gaza. Supplies are nearly at zero and there are only two doctors left in the facility to treat the waves of war-wounded, according to Abu Safiya, after the Israeli raid last week arrested 100 people from the hospital, including much of the remaining medical staff.
Israel’s military says it raided the hospital to root out Hamas militants sheltering there, and following the raid released photos of several firearms, a magazine, and RPGs found at the facility.
BEIRUT — The U.N. children’s agency is calling for an immediate cease-fire, saying that at least one child has been killed in Lebanon each day this month and at least 10 have been wounded.
“The ongoing war in Lebanon is upending children’s lives, and in many cases, inflicting severe physical wounds and deep emotional scars,” UNICEF said in a statement Thursday.
Lebanon’s health ministry says 166 children have been killed and at least 1,168 children have been wounded since the conflict began last year.
“This devastating tally grows by the day,” UNICEF said.
The agency says that thousands children who have survived bombings and attacks are displaying alarming signs of emotional, behavioral and physical distress, such as disrupted sleep, loss of appetite, overwhelming fear, increased anxiety, aggression and difficulty concentrating.
UNICEF said it has reached thousands of children and caregivers with psychological first aid and support since the escalation began last month.
“But true healing can only begin when the violence ends," the agency said.
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s rescue service said projectiles fired from Lebanon killed two more people in northern Israel on Thursday, just hours after the deadliest rocket barrage to hit the country since the Israeli military’s invasion of southern Lebanon killed five.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization, said its medics confirmed the deaths of a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman in a suburb of the northern city of Haifa. They also treated two other people who suffered mild injuries and were hospitalized.
The Israeli military said that roughly 25 rockets crossed into Israel from Lebanon as part of the volley that struck an olive grove where people had gathered for the harvest.
The deadly attack came just hours after officials in Metula, in northern Israel, said that five people were killed, including four foreign workers, in a rocket barrage Thursday that struck an Israeli agricultural area.
The back-to-back attacks made Thursday one of the deadliest days for civilians in Israel since the Israeli military invaded southern Lebanon on Oct. 1 as part of a widening campaign against the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group.
Hezbollah began firing on Israel in October 2023 in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The conflict escalated from a regular but restrained exchange of cross-border fire into an Israeli military ground operation and airstrikes inside Lebanon. The Israeli campaign over the past year has killed over 2,800 people in Lebanon, according to the country’s health authorities.
LONDON — Ireland’s military says a base for Irish peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon was hit by a rocket fired towards Israel. No one was injured.
Lt. Gen. Sean Clancy, chief of staff of Ireland’s defense forces, said the Katyusha rocket landed in an unoccupied area of Camp Shamrock on Wednesday, causing “minimal damage.”
He said the rocket was travelling towards Israel, and it was unclear whether it fell or was taken down by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
About 350 Irish soldiers are currently deployed as peacekeepers with the United Nations mission Lebanon known as UNIFIL.
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris described the incident as “extremely serious” and said not enough was being done to protect peacekeeping troops amid the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
“I really reiterate my call in relation to the need for people to respect international law and respect the specific protections that are provided to peacekeepers in relation to that,” he said.
JERUSALEM -- Israel’s military said Thursday that it struck Hezbollah weapons depots and bases in Syria.
According to a military statement, the air force hit targets near Qusair, a city in western Syria along the border with Lebanon. The military claims Hezbollah recently began storing weapons along the Syrian-Lebanese border in an attempt to smuggle arms into Lebanon.
Since the start of Israel’s ground invasion into Lebanon, the military has struck border crossings between Lebanon and Syria multiple times, claiming they served as arms-smuggling routes. The strikes, humanitarian groups say, intensified an already severe humanitarian crisis by blocking key routes for supplies and impeding access for those fleeing to safety.
Three of the six official border crossings between the two countries have closed as a result of airstrikes, forcing people fleeing from Lebanon to take long detours or cross on foot.
DEIR AL-AHMAR, Lebanon — Thousands of Lebanese have flocked to a Christian area in the eastern Bekaa Valley after Israel warned civilians to leave the city of Baalbek and surrounding areas ahead of airstrikes this week.
Jean Fakhry, head of the Union of Municipalities of the area of Deir al-Ahmar, described a “massive human influx” in the wake of the warning, with the road turning "into a parking lot.”
"This is the first time we’ve witnessed such a major disaster,” Fakhry said.
About 12,000 displaced people are now staying in the area — about 2,500 of them in shelters and the rest hosted in private homes, he said.
At one of the shelters, displaced families were still arriving toting luggage on Thursday while women cooked and tidied up mattresses and blankets.
“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village of Bouday. “We came with nothing — no clothes or anything else — and took shelter here.”
Fadwa Qasim from the village of Douris said, her family came with their neighbors.
“We hope the situation calms down so we can return to our homes, if we still have homes,” she said. "My children are scattered, each in a different area.”
Lebanese officials estimate that 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon as a result of the ongoing war.
JERUSALEM — Projectiles fired from Lebanon into northern Israel killed five people on Thursday, including four foreign workers, authorities said. It was the deadliest such attack since Israeli troops invaded Lebanon earlier this month to battle the Hezbollah militant group.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel for more than a year, drawing retaliatory strikes. Sixty-eight people have been killed in rocket attacks in northern Israel since the conflict began last year.
The Metula regional council reported the attack. The nationalities of the workers were not immediately known.
Metula, Israel’s northernmost town, which is surrounded by Lebanon on three sides, has suffered heavy damage from rockets. The town’s residents evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain.
BEIRUT — The Israeli military has warned people to evacuate from more areas of southern Lebanon, including a built-up Palestinian refugee camp. Israeli airstrikes, meanwhile, killed at least eight people in different parts of the country on Thursday.
The Rashidiyeh refugee camp near the port city of Tyre is one of several dating back to the 1948 Mideast war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out of what is now Israel.
Israel invaded Lebanon at the start of October, after nearly a year of trading fire with Hezbollah. The militant group began firing rockets, missiles and drones on northern Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack triggered the war in Gaza. Iran backs both groups.
Israel has warned people to evacuate from large areas of the country, including major cities in the south and east. Over a million people have already fled their homes.
Israeli strikes killed seven people in eastern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News agency. Another strike killed a man on a motorcycle on the coastal highway between Tyre and Sidon.
The news agency also reported a strike on a car on a main highway running through the mountains outside the capital, Beirut. It said the strike closed the highway, diverting traffic through nearby villages. There was no immediate word on casualties.
JERUSALEM — Israeli police said Thursday they have arrested a couple accused of spying on Israeli intelligence sites and collecting information on an Israeli academic on behalf of Iran.
Israeli security services say they have uncovered several Iranian spy networks in recent months. The two archenemies have waged a long-running shadow war that has burst into the open since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. They exchanged fire directly for the first time in April and then again this month.
In a statement released Thursday, the police and the Shin Bet internal security agency said that the man arrested, Rafael Guliev, from the central city of Lod, had surveilled Israel’s Mossad spy headquarters for the Iranians and collected information on an academic working at the Institute for National Security Studies, a prominent Israeli think tank. It did not identify the scholar.
The statement said Guliev was also entrusted with finding an assassin, though the statement did not make clear if he had actually done so.
Guliev’s wife, Lala, assisted in the activities, the statement said.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian officials said an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank killed at least three people.
The military said its forces were targeting militants in the area of the Nur Shams refugee camp, which has seen repeated battles in recent months. The military said it eliminated a Hamas militant in the area who was involved in planning attacks on Israelis.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Thursday that two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and third by Israeli gunfire.
Israel said its forces were still in the area.
At least 763 Palestinians, including over 165 children, have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the war there, according to the Health Ministry.
Most appear to have been militants killed during army operations, but the dead also include civilian bystanders and people killed during violent protests.
Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis since the start of the war.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state. Israel has built scores of settlements there that are now home to over 500,000 Israeli settlers.
The 3 million Palestinians in the territory live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority exercising limited self-rule in population centers.
Displaced people, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, sit at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, study inside at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Palestinians pass by the rubble of the United Nations Office for helping Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, that was partly demolished during the Israeli army operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, in Tulkarem Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Hussein and Zahraa, 3, displaced Lebanese twins who fled with their parents from their village of Mais al-Jabal in south Lebanon amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play on a gun with a twisted barrel statute, symbolizing anti-violence, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
The office of the United Nations for helping Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, that was partly demolished during the Israeli army operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, in Tulkarem Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28, take the last look at his body in the morgue of a local hospital, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28 take the last look at his body in the morgue of a local hospital, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28, center, Abdulaziz Abu al-Samen, 21, right and Ahmad Fahmawi, 19, in the morgue of a local hospital, as the Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Israeli army units secure the parameter of the Nur Shams refugee camp during the ongoing army operation, after the Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
An Israeli army bulldozer operates at the parameter of the Nur Shams refugee camp during the ongoing army operation, after the Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Rescue workers use an excavator to clear the rubble of a destroyed building hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims, in Sarafand, southern Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A civil defence worker searches for victims in the rubble of a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday night, in Sarafand, southern Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People watch Hezbollah's newly named leader Naim Kassem delivering a televised speech, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
President of Cyprus Nikos Christodoulides speaks to the media after meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
Israeli soldiers mourn during the funeral of reservist Yedidia Bloch, 31, at Mevo Horon settlement, West Bank, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. Bloch died on Tuesday 29 after he was injured in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Rescue workers use excavators to remove the rubble of a destroyed building that was hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Sarafand, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
