https://www.facebook.com/114608068280327/

Rise and Thrive, new delhi, Delhi (2026)

20/05/2026

She parked her car on one of the most famous streets in the world and stepped out. One step forward and she was gone.

Donike Gocaj was 56 years old, a mother of two and a grandmother. On Monday night at 11:20 p.m., she stepped out of her Mercedes-Benz SUV outside the Cartier store at 52nd Street and Fifth Avenue in the heart of New York City and fell ten feet through an open manhole. There were no cones around it. No warning signs. No barriers. Her daughter-in-law told reporters there was nothing to signal any danger at all.

A witness described it as watching her take one step forward and simply disappear. Another witness, Carlton Wood, said he heard Donike screaming from inside the hole. She was not distracted. She did not wander onto a construction site. She parked her car, stepped out, and dropped straight in.

Con Edison, which owns the manhole, later reviewed surveillance footage and concluded that a passing truck had dislodged the cover roughly twelve minutes before Donike parked nearby. In those twelve minutes, no one closed it off. No one put up a single cone. Donike had no way of knowing it was there.

First responders rushed her to New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, where she passed away from her injuries. Her family visited the scene the following morning, trying to make sense of something that cannot be made sense of.

Con Edison said it is investigating. The Mayor's office said every question must be asked and answered. Donike's family is left carrying a loss that should never have happened.

She stepped out of her car. That was all. And it cost her everything.

Do you think Con Edison should be held fully responsible for what happened to Donike?

20/05/2026

He showed up to work Monday morning the same way he had for more than a decade, and he never made it home.

Amin Abdullah was a security guard at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California. He was also a father of eight. For over ten years he had shown up to protect the people inside that building, the worshippers, the staff, and the children attending the school on the grounds. On Monday, when two armed attackers arrived, Amin ran toward the danger. His response was immediate. His actions drew the suspects away and pushed them to flee. One hundred and forty children inside that school walked out safely. Amin did not.

Two other men at the center also lost their lives that day. They too had drawn the attention of the attackers, protecting others in the process. The three of them gave everything they had in a moment that asked everything of them. The two suspects were later found dead of self-inflicted wounds. Investigators seized more than thirty fi****ms from locations connected to them, along with writings outlining racial and religious hatred. The attack is being investigated as a hate crime.

San Diego's mayor said the three men who were killed represent the city far more than the people who came to harm it ever could. A fundraiser established for the families of the three victims has raised more than 2.9 million dollars.

Amin leaves behind eight children who will grow up knowing their father died protecting others.

What would you want those 140 children to understand about the man who made sure they went home that day?

20/05/2026

For two days, crews searched. On Tuesday evening, they found him.

Jeremiah Gamble was 25 years old and from Tallassee, Alabama. On Sunday, May 17, around 1:23 in the afternoon, he was out on a pontoon boat near Goat Island on Lake Guntersville in Marshall County when he fell overboard and went below the surface. He did not come back up.

Underwater grass and heavy vegetation in the shallower parts of the lake made the search difficult from the start, hindering sonar equipment and forcing crews to comb the bottom manually. The search was suspended Sunday night and resumed Monday morning. Over the course of two days, multiple agencies worked the water together, the Guntersville Fire Department, Guntersville Rescue Squad, Marshall County Sheriff's Office Marine Unit, Cherokee County Rescue Squad, and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency's Aviation and Marine Patrol divisions, among others.

On Tuesday evening, around 5:29 p.m., Jeremiah's body was located near the Honeycomb Campground area.

He was 25 years old. He had his whole life ahead of him.

Please keep Jeremiah's family in your prayers as they face the days ahead. Share this so his community knows the world is with them.

20/05/2026

Her mom posted the graduation photos with five words of pride on Sunday. By that night, Ashlin was gone.

Ashlin Knuth was 18 years old and had just crossed the stage at Ottumwa High School in Iowa as part of the Class of 2026. She had earned her diploma, taken the pictures, and made the kind of memories that were supposed to last a lifetime. Hours after the ceremony, at 9:19 p.m., authorities responded to a two-vehicle crash at a highway intersection in Ottumwa. A northbound truck struck the driver's side of Ashlin's car. She and her boyfriend were both rushed to the hospital. He survived. Ashlin did not.

Her mother had spent the day celebrating. She went to sleep that night not knowing the photos she had just shared would be among the last she would ever post of her daughter alive.

The Ottumwa Community School District released a statement acknowledging the loss, saying the Bulldog family was hurting alongside Ashlin's classmates, teachers, coaches, and everyone who loved her. A community that had spent the weekend celebrating its graduates was now standing still, trying to make sense of something that does not make sense.

Ashlin spent years working toward that diploma. She crossed that stage. She smiled for every photo. Her whole future was in front of her.

Graduation night is supposed to be the beginning.

What would you want Ashlin's mom to hear from a stranger today, on what should have been the morning after the best night of her daughter's life?

20/05/2026

The morning of his eighth-grade graduation, Xavier Jones looked up the directions on Google Maps, saw the distance, and made a decision most adults would not have made.

Xavier is 14 years old and lives in north St. Louis, Missouri. He was finishing up his time at Yeatman Middle School, a student who had earned a 4.0 GPA and had his sights set on a future that mattered to him. When his grandfather's car broke down that morning and there was no other ride available, he did not call the school. He did not stay home. He grabbed his brother and a friend and started walking.

The ceremony was being held at Harris-Stowe State University, 6.5 miles away. The shoes he was wearing had holes in the bottom and holes in the top. The walk took over two hours. He made it.

When Dr. LaTonia Collins Smith, the president of Harris-Stowe State University, heard what Xavier had done to get there, she walked over to him during the ceremony and offered him a full Presidential Scholarship covering four years of tuition, housing, books, and fees. Xavier wants to be a NASCAR driver one day. His mentor, Darren Seals, said he was so moved by what happened that it brought him to tears. He does not cry easily.

Xavier is set to attend Lift for Life Academy for high school, with a full ride to Harris-Stowe waiting for him on the other side.

If Xavier were your son, what would you have said to him when he walked through that door after two and a half hours on foot?

20/05/2026

Most graduates pick a nice backdrop and a good angle. Kat Daley picked a 14-foot alligator.

Kat, 22, recently graduated from McNeese State University with a degree in general studies with a concentration in natural sciences. To mark the milestone, she did what felt most natural to her. She headed to Gator Country Wildlife Rescue in Beaumont, Texas, the place she has spent her college years working alongside her fiancé Eddie, pulled on her graduation cap and gown, and posed beside a 1,000-pound alligator named Big Al. Then she kissed him on the snout.

The photos went viral almost immediately. People online reacted with a combination of admiration and pure terror. For Kat, the shoot was about something more than a memorable photo. She wanted to show people what she actually does every day and challenge the way most people think about the animals she has dedicated her life to. "I feel like reptiles are demonized in the media a lot more than they need to be," she said. Gator Country takes in roughly 250 alligators a year and is home to about 450 at any given time. Kat and her team rescue animals that would otherwise have no chance of surviving in the wild.

Photographer Laura Oglesbee, whose husband once wrestled gators at the same park, said she was not worried for a single moment during the shoot. Big Al and the other alligators used in the photos have been trained for years and work only with experienced handlers.

Kat said she already has her dream job and plans to stay right where she is.

Would you have been able to stand that close to Big Al for a photo, or is this where you draw the line?

20/05/2026

It started as a day on the water. The kind of day people look forward to all week.

George Gouldsby V, known to everyone who loved him as Cinco, passed away last week following a jet ski crash at Lake Thunderbird. The details of what happened on the water that day have left a family searching for a way to breathe through something that does not feel real yet.

The people who knew Cinco say he was the kind of person a room felt different without. He had a way of making whoever he was talking to feel seen and valued and genuinely cared for. Not in a surface way. In a way that stayed with people long after the conversation ended. Full of life. Full of kindness. A presence that those closest to him say cannot be replaced and will not be forgotten.

His family is now carrying grief and the weight of final arrangements at the same time, the way families in these moments are always asked to carry too much at once. A community that loved Cinco has already started showing up for them.

If you want to stand with his family during this time, search for "Support for Cinco's Family After Tragic Loss" on GoFundMe. Every contribution helps ease the financial burden his loved ones are facing right now. And if giving is not possible, his family is asking for prayers and for people to keep his name moving.

Cinco made people feel like they mattered. That is not a small thing to leave behind.

What would you want his family to know about the kind of mark a person leaves simply by choosing to make others feel seen?

19/05/2026

Sunday's Pre-K graduation at Hackleburg Elementary School in Alabama was everything a room full of four and five year olds deserved. Eighteen tiny graduates. Caps and excitement and the kind of joy that only little kids can fill a gymnasium with.

And in the middle of it all, a chair dressed in yellow.

Lesley McCollum was 33 years old and those 18 children were her world. She called them her little ducklings. She loved Jesus and she loved her classroom and she had been counting down to this graduation the same way her students had. On September 11th of last year, she was diagnosed with B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Six days later she started chemotherapy. She spent 33 days as an inpatient. She passed away on October 14th, 2025, one day after being discharged. She never made it to Sunday.

Her husband Adam watched the ceremony from the front row. The chair in the center of the gymnasium was her favorite color. The hugs Lesley had planned to give were handed out by two young teachers who stepped into her classroom after she was gone, her second cousin Alley Elrod and her friend Amber Corado. They gave every hug she would have given.

Adam is back at work now. He is also preaching at Hackleburg Baptist and other churches and youth groups, carrying something Lesley asked him to carry before she was gone. She wanted young people to know about God's goodness. He starts every message with her story because he says she was the perfect example of faith.

Seven months ago she was looking forward to sending these kids to kindergarten. Sunday they went.

What would you want Adam to know about the kind of teacher his wife was to those eighteen little graduates?

19/05/2026

For three years, he showed up to the fight the same way every single time. With a smile that never left.

Dom was a student at Corner Canyon High School in Draper, Utah. He was young, and he had Ewing sarcoma, one of the rarer and more aggressive bone cancers that most commonly strikes children and young adults. Three years is a long time to carry a diagnosis like that. Three years of surgeries and treatments and hard days that would have broken most people down completely. The people who knew Dom say it never broke him. His spirit stayed intact through every season of that fight in a way that left a permanent mark on everyone around him.

The Charger Charity program at Corner Canyon rallied behind Dom and his family during his journey, raising support and keeping a light shining on a young man who deserved every prayer that came his way. His school community held him. And he, in return, held them with a strength they did not expect from someone carrying what he was carrying.

Dom has now passed away. Corner Canyon is grieving tonight in the way a school grieves when it loses someone who made the whole place feel different just by being in it.

His faith never wavered. His courage never faded. And that smile, by every account from the people who sat beside him through the hardest days, never left his face.

What do you think it does for the people around someone to watch them carry something this heavy with that kind of grace?

19/05/2026

She bumped her knee on a trash can during a workout and thought nothing of it. That small moment sent her to a doctor, and that doctor changed everything.

Simone Smith was diagnosed in 2004 with a rare form of bone cancer. When she sat in that office and heard the news, her husband was in the chair beside her. LL Cool J listened to what the doctors said and then asked them a question that stopped everyone in the room. He wanted to know if he could give her one of his own bones to help save her leg. He believed his fibula would be bigger and stronger and that it might give her a better chance.

The surgery lasted 15 hours. Recovery stretched across two and a half years. Simone went from a wheelchair to crutches, from crutches to a cane, and eventually learned to walk again from the beginning. Their youngest daughter Nina was four years old when her mother started that climb back.

Simone said she never allowed herself the option of giving up. She knew who was depending on her and she made a decision about it early. She fought because she had to. She won because she refused not to.

More than 20 years later, Simone Smith is cancer free. She and LL Cool J just celebrated 30 years of marriage. She has said that marriage is not for the weak. It is for the faithful. Looking at what this couple has walked through together, it is difficult to argue with her.

What do you think kept Simone going on the days when getting back up felt impossible?

19/05/2026

Doctors are seeing something they cannot fully explain yet, and it is showing up in women who never expected to be sitting in that chair.

Breast cancer rates in women under 50 have been climbing steadily for years. According to the American Cancer Society, overall breast cancer incidence has been rising by about 1 percent per year since 2013, but the increase in women younger than 50 is nearly double that rate. More than 27,000 women under the age of 45 were diagnosed in a single recent year. Researchers describe this as a real biological shift, not simply the result of better detection.

The reasons appear to be layered. Women today are having children later, having fewer of them, and breastfeeding less than previous generations, all of which affect hormone exposure over a lifetime. Alcohol consumption in women between 30 and 49 has also risen significantly in recent years. Researchers are also looking closely at endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment, compounds that may interfere with hormonal pathways, as a factor that could be shaping cancer biology across generations in ways that are only beginning to be understood.

Not all women are affected equally. African American women face disproportionately higher rates of a more aggressive form of the disease that is harder to treat with standard therapies.

One thing researchers say is clear: screening guidelines exist for a reason. Updated guidelines now recommend mammograms beginning at age 40, yet nearly half of women surveyed still believe screening should not start until age 50.

If you or a woman you love has ever delayed a mammogram, what finally made you decide to go?

Rise and Thrive

20/05/2026

20/05/2026

20/05/2026

20/05/2026

20/05/2026

20/05/2026

20/05/2026

19/05/2026

19/05/2026

19/05/2026

19/05/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Establishment

Shortcuts

Share