When Theresa MacPhail was four, her brother was killed in an accident. When she was 14, her mother died in a car crash. And when she was 24, her father died from anaphylactic shock after a bee flew in through the open window of his truck and stung him in the neck. For anyone else, these devastating experiences would almost certainly have been psychologically catastrophic. “I have several friends who are psychology professors, and they’re always saying, ‘No offence but, by rights, you should be a drug addict, or have severe emotional issues,’” she says, smiling, over Zoom from her home in New York, wearing a cheerful sweatshirt covered in luminous kittens.
