When Beth Macy told our Journalism class about divisions

within her family about politics and returning to her home-
town to find everything changed, I knew what she meant.

The Herald interviewed Macy, an American journalist, non-fiction writer,
and Democratic candidate for Congress, who recently published a book
called Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America.
I got to thinking about my own experiences having severed ties with
family over politics and religion and asked her if she had given up trying to
connect with her family. I told her about the severed ties between my dad
and uncle. I am not sure who is, and to what extent anybody is at fault.
“This book grew out of a newspaper piece that I wrote for The New York

Times,” Macy said.” It was about my mom’s deathbed. . . . It was the Satur-
day after the election when Biden was elected.

“And we’re sitting there, mom’s had a stroke, she’s literally dying, and I’m
sitting there with my evangelical sister that’s probably like your uncle. And
we had never really talked about politics before. And the hospice nurse’s
phone rings and she goes, ‘ah, they’re calling it for Biden.’
“And my sister, who had never spoken about politics before. ‘No! You
wait. It’s fraudulent. He won’t win.’ And literally, I’m not exaggerating.

“Our mother is laying in bed not needing anything like this. Any mo-
ment, it could be her last. Are you kidding?”

Macy went on to recount how she wrote an Op-Ed in the New York
Times about that moment in late 2020.
“What’s even left of my family after this?” she asked. “Because mom was
the glue. My mom was hilarious and spicy, funny, really hard-working and

took no guff. And very much like this family, you know, she was just every-
thing. And so I wrote this piece, and hundreds of people wrote in, similar

stories, like your dad’s and mine.”
More questions than answers
I have been asking my own questions: At what point do you let a person
(even someone you love) share opinions that hurt both you and feel
harmful to those around you? How far do you go to try and maintain
relationships that seem to drain more out of you than they even come close
to fixing? At what point do you throw in the towel and say for my personal
wellbeing I can’t maintain a relationship with this person anymore?
And I believe that if anybody were to come to this conclusion - that’s
okay. However, before saying something you’ll regret or severing a tie that
can’t be repaired, you should deeply consider the implications (good or bad)
of your actions (well or ill-intentioned) before letting go of a relationship
that can’t be won back.
My family is no stranger to disagreements.

Over the years religion has been a substantially divisive topic, the pan-
demic didn’t make it better as my parents are both doctors and felt strongly

(with strong evidence) that vaccines were a good choice that saved countless
lives and not receiving them could cause detrimental effects to an individual
and those they come in contact with.
An interview with a student aligns with ample published research
I asked one student and one adult about their experiences regarding the
growing divides within their relationships. They agreed to speak as long as
their identities remained hidden.
“Most of my close relationships do have the same views but when I see
someone I don’t know as well post something... that I am like oh, I don’t
agree with that, I didn’t know that that’s what they thought. It makes me
think about them differently and it makes me kind of create an opinion
about a person that I didn’t really know very well rather than being able to
talk to them and get to know them. It just like immediately puts them in a
box in my head.”
I asked if they ever thought about not having a relationship with a person
Relating to Macy’s tale of family discord
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who had different views than they had.
“I think for certain things that I feel very strongly about,” they said it
would not work. “But I also know that a lot of people make up their minds

about things based on what their parents tell them or whatever their house-
hold is. So you can’t really judge them too hard because you know that

might be all that they know... but I think when you get to a certain age, or
when you get to the point when you have the ability to research your own

information and kind of form your own opinion, that’s when it would be-
come more like - they’re not going to change their minds so I’m not going

to be able to get close with them.”
An adult voice echoes the student I interviewed
The second interviewee had a similar experience to the relationships
described in articles I read in The Guardian, on the Huffington Post and in
Time magazine.
“My parents at the moment and most of my siblings and their families are
just not really part of my family’s life,” they said. “Which is a bummer and
it’s not solely about that (politics) but there are certain beliefs and attitudes
and I would say their refusal to reckon or admit some of the very immoral
things that Trump and his administration have done [is part of it].”

Time’s article, “How Estrangement Has Become an Epidemic in Ameri-
ca,” published in 2024, provides alarming statistics about growing fractions

in relationships.

“People in my family have become more brazen,” they said in my inter-
view, “and okay with saying things that are extremely prejudiced or not

having problems with certain prejudiced policies being enacted.”
Another survey done by the Cornell Family Reconciliation Project and

found in the Huffington Post in 2024 found that over one-quarter of Amer-
icans were estranged from a family member and that in the years since Don-
ald Trump first took office in 2016 Americans are “increasingly subscribing

to a kind of political tribalism.” My interview echoed that issue.

“The president or members of his party making just flat out bigoted state-
ments and things like that,” they said, “that has resulted in a situation where

I don’t want my children hearing their support for certain things.”
The Pew Research Center published a report in 2025 showing a growing
“rudeness” issue in the U.S. and Americans are not only being less polite
in private but also in public. We are getting more comfortable saying and
doing things that can be hurtful to those we care about.
“Because of their unwillingness not to conceal those attitudes around my

kids,” my interviewee continued, “who I don’t want hearing that stuff or be-
lieving that it is okay to talk about other kinds of people that way or believe

certain things about people just because they’re different from them.”
A poll from YouGov in 2025 in The Guardian confirms much of what I
have experienced and discovered through interviews like the following:
“We just don’t spend time together anymore,” my interviewee said. “Many
of my family members seem almost like entirely different people to me,
since becoming full supporters of Trump. So it’s really sad and it’s really
upsetting but I just don’t want those beliefs normalized for my own kids.”
For me - it is still worth fighting for that relationship, just as it is worth
ignoring something I believe to be ignorant that a friend posted online.
But I also feel strongly that if for anyone it is too detrimental to maintain
a relationship simply for the sake of maintaining it and feels it would be
best to simply try and let go and move on - that is perfectly fine too.
There are solutions that offer hope
Beth Macy and I had a very good discussion regarding ways to deal with
family and friends who have conflicting beliefs.
There are a lot of things you can do when encroaching on sensitive topics

- you could start an argument, respectfully disagree: change the subject, pre-
tend you didn’t hear them, ask politely to discuss something else and if that

is not an option or what they said or asked was inappropriate or offensive, it

is okay to tell them that.
Macy said that bonding over shared family hobbies such as fishing, pizza
and card games, worked for her.
Some tips for getting through holidays with family
The article “6 Tips for Thanksgiving with a Difficult Family,” published in

2019 by Psychology Today, offers tips on ways to get through family gather-
ings without biting your family members head off.

As Macy also suggested, the article’s number one way to deal with your
relatives on Thanksgiving is to search for things you have in common. There
is more to life than politics, find something non-political.
The one space in which my family gets along best is on a court or field
playing sports. I have the fondest memories of me, my parents, aunts,
uncles, siblings and cousins playing kickball, basketball and football - and
at least then our arguments were limited to who is the GOAT- Lebron or
Jordan (which, too, can get heated).
Recommendation two recommends the buddy system. Ask a buddy to
help you invite a disagreeable family member help with a task like dishes.

The third tip suggests engaging in “socially acceptable avoidance” like run-
ning a 5k, volunteering at a soup kitchen or checking your neighbor’s cats.

Tip five might be the best: Invite a close friend who can put up with your
family while also pressuring your family to be on their best behavior.
The weird thing about family for me is that we assume our families will
always love us, it is easy to say and do things that hurt the people we love.
But at the same time - those are the relationships that I seem to hold on to
the most. Like maybe they said something that I would never get over if it
were a friend, but somehow family is different. This is why I believe family
estrangements and even ones with friends or colleagues are such a big topic,
because we as humans value our relationships. We are persistent and try to
forge ahead even when we’ve been hurt. We don’t want to let go.

 I am overwhelmed with cuteness while spending time with my little cousins for the first time since being back in the U.S. Over summer break my family went to Maine and on our way home we stopped by my cousin Bell’s house to visit her, her husband, and their children: 3- year-old Leah and 1-year-old Raider. “I can’t wait to meet Raider and see Leah again,” I said to my parents with enthusiasm for the trip. After spending a year with my family in New Zealand, I had not seen some of my cousins, aunts and uncles in a couple years. Playing with Leah and meeting little Raider for the first time was so much fun; they are like little puppies, just as adorable and with so much energy. “I can’t wait to see them again,” I said as soon as we started to drive away from my cousin's house, “I miss them already.”
​Photo by Bell Sillsby                  ​

    On Nov. 12 during morning assembly, the upper school students had the privilege of having Dr. Shannon Farris, Assistant Professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion, speak about what neuroscience is and what she and her team do at the research institute. Somewhere in the middle of her speech, I remember hearing her mention the importance of sleep and its connection to both learning and retaining information effectively. This got me thinking; would I do better in school if I slept more?
As highschool students, we often face the dilemma of having too much to do and not enough hours in the day. Many students at North Cross participate in sports and other extracurricular activities on top of all their school work. Between going from school to sports or to extracurriculars and then home to do homework, scarf down a meal and take a shower, time can be scarce. This can lead to getting to bed at an ungodly hour, which will only make such a busy daily routine even more difficult for students to maintain.  
The article “Nightly Sleep is Key to Student Success” from Carnegie Mellon University talked about a study done at CMU which looked at the connection between sleep and academic performance among college students. The study found that the students on average “sleep 6.5 hours per night, but negative outcomes accumulate when students received less than six hours.” However, the article states that “sleep guidelines recommend teenagers get eight to10 hours of sleep every night.” The Center for Disease Control recommends that teenagers get eight to ten hours of sleep per night. Contrary to that information, the CDC states that a nation-wide study on high school students found that “about 7 out of 10 (72.7%) did not get enough sleep on school nights.” The CDC states that “children and adolescents who do not get enough sleep have a higher risk of obesity, diabetes, injuries, poor mental health, and problems with attention and behavior.”
The Office of Neuroscience Research at Washington University in St. Louis published the article “More sleep leads to better grades and well-being.” The article notes that in a study by Tim Bono, PhD, lecturer in psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, found that, “students who get a good night’s sleep night in and night out earn higher marks and feel a stronger sense of well-being than those with fluctuating sleep schedules.” Another study he did found that “the students who reported the most stable, consistent sleep patterns earned a GPA of 3.66, on average, while the students with the most variable sleep earned a GPA of 3.21. Students with regular sleep patterns also reported higher levels of well-being. These effects held even when controlling for SAT scores and baseline happiness.” 
Dr. Farris shared her knowledge of the connection between sleep and performance through an email she sent me.“Sleep is required for our brains to function, although the exact reasons for this are not entirely clear. There are some recent studies in rodents that give us hints as to why sleep is important for central nervous system function. Firstly, during sleep (or when under anesthesia), the fluid flow in the brain and spinal cord increases, and it’s been proposed that this increase in flow cleans the cellular debris generated throughout the day from our brains. This is consistent with why brain disorders (anxiety, depression, dementia) can be caused or exacerbated by a lack of sleep (without sleep, junk and debris build up and make brain functioning more difficult). Secondly, a very recent study showed that the more synaptic plasticity that occurs (changes in the strength of synaptic connections that is the molecular basis of memory) the more delta oscillations are generated, which are low frequency waves that promote restful sleep. Thus, the more you learn, the more your brain is driven to sleep! So, I would argue that quality and length of sleep should correlate with learning performance. However, learning has to occur—so sleep alone will not make you smarter, but sleeping after learning certainly will. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 8-10 hours of sleep for every 24 hours for teenagers.”
A possible solution to help students improve the amount of sleep they get could be by starting the school day off later. If the school day started at 8:30 or 8:45, perhaps students would do better in class having gotten more sleep. I was fortunate enough to spend a year in New Zealand and experience going to a school there. While there, I attended New Plymouth Girls’ High. It was very different, but a huge difference was that over there, school started at 8:40 am and ended at 3:20 pm. I not only got to sleep more, but I felt more energetic throughout the day. Perhaps if North Cross School followed a similar schedule, students would have better concentration and participation in class, on the sports fields, and in their extracurriculars throughout the day. 
I understand that transportation is something to consider when revising school start times. However, if parents or caregivers had to drop off students earlier in the day, the students would be able to complete their assignments in the time before school starts and catch up on sleep the night before, saving 30 minutes or so of work to do before class starts in the morning. 
A concern teachers might have due to the later start in the school day might be having to shorten classes. However, having experienced going to a school that started later, I can safely say that the 30 or so start time difference does not have a sizable impact on class at all. After all, it is a seven hour school day and I don’t think cutting out 1/14 of the school day is really going to affect the amount students learn a day. I honestly believe that a well rested student will learn more in a shorter amount of time then a tired one would learn in a longer amount of time. 
Finally, the question that may be pressing a critic’s mind; how do we know that students are using the extra time to sleep instead of scrolling the internet or goofing off. The answer; you don’t. It is up to students to be responsible and go to bed at a reasonable hour when possible. Perhaps a good idea would be to have students who have grades below the acceptable level to have to come to school earlier to study and complete late assignments until their grades go up. This way the students who are taking advantage of the later start will be able to get more sleep and those who are not will have extra time to get their work done. 
If changing school start times is not a possible solution, there are other ways for students to get their much-needed hours of sleep. For starters, if students get off the screen at the right time, they might go to bed earlier and even experience a better quality of sleep. The Sleep Foundation states that “Electronic back-lit devices like cell phones, tablets, readers, and computers emit short-wavelength enriched light, also known as blue light…. Blue light can also reduce the amount of time you spend in slow-wave and rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, two stages of the sleep cycle that are vital for cognitive functioning.”
Students could also try to increase their productivity while in the classroom so that they do not have to bring as much work home with them. However, this all comes back to the amount of sleep students get at night. If a student is not getting enough sleep at night it will be much harder to concentrate and be productive in class. This means students will end up having to take the work home and possibly lose sleep because of it, completing the detrimental circle of sleep deprivation. Whatever it is that a student does to improve their sleep routine, it is important to remember that sleep does not just affect whether or not a student comes to school with dark circles under their eyes, it affects their grades and overall well being. 

​

​Maggie Bibby ‘26 attempts to corral her little brother, or for a day, her little backpack and get him to stand still while the judges vote for the best “backpacks” brought in on Anything-But-A-Backpack Day. Meanwhile, Julia Cepfus ‘28 buckles up her books in a pretty pink stroller. On Oct. 18, students got creative. They brought in all sorts of things including traffic cones, mop buckets, tires, shopping carts, strollers and even a baby, to use as make-shift backpacks. “It was fun because it was something new,” Bibby said. “We got to do something we haven’t done before, it was more interactive.” Anything-But-A-Backpack Day is definitely different from anything NCS has done in the past for spirit week. Thankfully, Allie Kier, interim director of the Upper school, allowed the students to enjoy this very unique spirit day. Perhaps next year a student will bring in a puppy as their “backpack,” after all, there’s already been babies for backpacks.