Love is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. We use it to tell someone how we feel about them and to indicate we deeply enjoy an experience. We say that only love can heal, that all we need is love*, and we believe that certain kinds of love are more desirable or superior to others (say, valuing romantic …
The other day I was confronted by the truth of who I am at my worst in relationship. It was an ugly mirror to gaze into. The shame was immediate and deep. I was sitting in a relationship therapy training program, and we were talking about self-esteem and boundaries, examining the behaviors that are driven by being walled off or …
Pleasure can be a tricky thing.We are taught that pleasure is wonderful, something to aspire to, something to indulge in…But not too much, too often, or in the “wrong” ways.Oh, and pleasure is only for people who have earned it – either by being born rich/powerful or by working hard and achieving that right to claim it.Pleasure for folks who …
I’ve been sitting in some tough places and reflecting on what it means to actually experience the messiness of life. It’s one thing to talk about feelings, to learn skills for managing and navigating feelings, and it’s another entirely to actually be in the thick of them – struggling not to capsize from the grief, the heartbreak, the sorrow, the …
For all the ways you’ve broken your own heart, or told yourself you aren’t enough, or failed someone special, can you find a way to forgive yourself?
Brene Brown calls shame the master emotion. Knowing how shame works won’t save you from the crushing darkness. How can you break free once you’re trapped?
Sometimes healing trauma can take us amazing and unexpected places. What happened when I saw a sacred intimate (somatic sex educator) for healing work.
Hi you, This week, I wanted to sit down and write a little love note – from me to you. Maybe it’s because we’re coming out of Mercury in retrograde or because everything seems to be moving so damn fast all the time, but I’m feeling tender this morning, a little raw, a little unsure, and in need of something gentle. I …
I am a survivor of multiple sexual assaults and rapes. I wasn’t planning on talking about this on the blog just yet, but there’s a reason I share this now. Several months ago I did an interview with a podcast called Ending the Sexual Dark Age. One of their listeners wrote in saying she’d been raped and was asking for …
I don’t know how you feel about your body, but the relationship that I have with my body is deep, complex, and not at all consistent. Over the years, I’ve been quite mean to both my body and myself. In fact, there was a time when I believed myself to be so undesirable that I almost cried when a lover …