20/04/2026
Dr. Laura has worked in psychology long enough to know where most of the work really starts. Not with the individual sitting across from her, but with everything that came before that moment.
The Health Gap by Sir Michael Marmot is one of the books that shaped that understanding. Marmot spent decades researching why some people carry heavier health burdens than others. His answer was not what most people expect. It is not simply about being rich or poor. It is about where you sit in the social hierarchy, how much control you have had over your own life, and what the conditions of your earliest years looked like. Every step down the social ladder, health gets a little worse. The stress of low status is itself a hazard. That pattern runs through the whole of society.
For Dr. Laura, reading this changed how she holds what she sees in sessions. So much of what arrives in a therapy room is not weakness or dysfunction. It is a rational response to conditions that were stacked against someone from the start. Understanding that does not remove personal responsibility. It makes self-compassion possible. And it makes it a lot harder to spend your life blaming yourself for things that were never entirely yours to carry.
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Maja Reads: Real books. Real reasons. The ones that actually changed how we work.
