Category: healing

addressing violence against women via an ally with male privilege: jackson katz

i was moved by the authenticity and care of katz’ energy, presentation, and way of discussing these issues. he even acknowledges right away in the beginning of the talk, the misplaced acknowledgement and affirmation men will get over women when standing up and addressing these issues. i tip my hat to his sensitivity, strength, and passion in addressing what he suggests is a “male issue” rather than a “female issue” of violence against women (and girls and boys).

if you are a human on this earth who has any women, girls, or boys in your life for whom you care deeply, please watch this, and sit with the messiness of the truth he is speaking.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/KTvSfeCRxe8]

dear wayne: meditations on humiliation

a dear friend of mine bought wayne koestenbaum’s book “humiliation” while we were together in winnipeg, this winter. we decided a fur background felt most fitting for some reason for an impromptu photo shoot…

20140806-214300-78180013.jpg

it is a pretty fascinating and on point read, from the excerpts i have read. then i found out about a youtube series of “dear wayne” dillemnas… if nothing else, wayne poses some interesting situational decisions…

not knowing

sometimes i begin writing a post for this blog, and am overwhelmed by the knowledge of how tiny my “knowledge” is… how inadequate. i really only know about a few things that resonate or work for me. and i know a lot of things that don’t work for me. and i keep moving forward in life trying and failing to establish more balance, clearer knowledge of myself and my responses, and sharing what i can when it feels right.

this seems a weak basis from which to speak the truth from my western paradigm of backing up arguments with facts and numbers. my little brother would rip this apart with sound logic and facts. a new love of mine would tell me to just hold space for this. i am slowly learning what it means to hold space in real ways. how to hold space for my not-knowingness. how to hold space for multiple truths that may be in conflict with each other. how to hold space for not understanding. how to read communication for the need(s) that it is trying to convey.

to really live being present seems to me to involve dropping all artifice of “knowing” and fundamentally accepting experience in this moment for whatever it is. this is impossibly difficult for most of us… and perhaps often we discover that the stillness is ultimately a trigger for us, setting off feelings and emotions we would prefer not to feel.

returnings

i have taken an unexpected hiatus the past couple months… i said goodbye to a dear lover two weeks ago, and my thoughts and energy have been heavily with him the past months, as i have processed and worked to let go. i have never had to say goodbye to someone like this before. it’s fascinating to observe myself and the (emotional/psychological) phases through which i have gone… it’s difficult, relieving, troubling, un-grounding, grounding, surreal in varying moments. what a wild and interesting journey life is. what an immensely beautiful privilege to love someone and be loved, however transient the experience is.

in the meantime i have been thinking of many things i wanted to address here, and am looking forward to jumping back in. i have ideas about online dating (many thoughts on this…), masturbation practices, sex toys, making home sex videos, and the energetics of sexual encounters, to name a few…

so, dear readers and followers, please forgive my absence, and i am so happy to be blogging again! please stay tuned for lots of titillating excitement this summer and, as always, please send me a note if you’d like me to address something in particular or if you’d just like to say hi!

xoxo

bone-melting love

i was perusing elephant journal this morning and came across this rebecca lammersen article on making unknowable love. i felt the excitement of finding connection– finding someone who has described something of my experience. it’s a beautiful article and description of deeply connected, magical love-making… the kind of experiences i’ve finally found after years of searching.

a perfect sunday morning read. xo

a note to my lover

if i weren’t afraid of being sappy, i would tell you about how i feel right now. the mellow, slow swirling of your energy still moving all through my limbs and torso and pelvis. the way i still feel your delightful skin touching every inch of me. how delicious it felt to slide my naked body up against your sleeping warmth after my shower this morning, and how deeply loved i feel by you. 

vulnerability is my greatest strength and weakness. you receive my love so beautifully. trusting you to not use this to your own ends, as so many have done (wittingly and unwittingly), feels alternately elating and terrifying. but i have chosen to make trust and vulnerability a practice. and i have chosen you. 

i have chosen you.

xoxo

poly-what?

i have two lovers. i see them both regularly. i love and am loved by them both. they are both interesting, intelligent, loving, creative people and are very dear to me. they offer me similarly delightful yet entirely unique experiences of being loved and nurtured. my heart overflows with gratitude for each of them every day. i have rarely, if ever in my life, felt such bountiful love, pleasure, and delight. i feel like the luckiest woman alive.

this experience is also very challenging. i am not so keen these days on labeling myself, and don’t prefer the varying “poly” labels that many use to define their love/life choices. i don’t feel i owe an explanation to anyone, but as there is a tendency to assume that unconventional choices warrant explanation, i generally don’t share this part of my life. i have to remember which love i told which people about to minimize questions. i am getting better at being cagey.

i am meeting more and more people like me. people who reject conventional models of relating and are interested in moving into new ways of being. as we see the old models breaking down, it seems natural to me to reach for something different, something that suites us better. with the vast array of human diversity, everyone wanting (or needing) the same model of relationship is as unlikely as everyone having precisely the same nose, or experiencing music in exactly the same way. there is far too much (beautiful!) inherent variety within our species to ever achieve organic similitude.

daunting a task as it is to break down our social programming, i do believe it is key to being a happy and self-actualized person in this world. and considering the precarious state our world is in today, on so many levels, it is perhaps more critical to survival than ever before, to continuously and gently question our foundational values and beliefs, holding them with compassion and letting them go if they are no longer serving us.

bdsm practitioners more psychologically evolved than their vanilla counterparts?

i’ve been curious for some time about the potentially healing benefits of bdsm (“BDSM is a variety of erotic practices involving dominance and submission, role-playing, restraint, and other interpersonal dynamics.” –wikipedia) i continue to be fascinated by the potential to enact our darkest ingrained dysfunctions in a healthy, loving space… how empowering it can be to recreate a powerless space by choice, choosing to re-enter the trauma space; except this time with full power. as so interestingly shown by guy maddin in my winnipeg, when he hires his childhood home and actors to literally re-enact scenes from his childhood.

People in the BDSM scene reported higher levels of happiness in the past two weeks than people outside it, and they said they felt more secure in their relationships.

ironically, bdsm is still listed in most countries as a mental disorder.

my suspicion is that all of us have some kind of deep, dark fantasies. but it takes work and intention and self-awareness to find them. i consider discovering my fantasies and kinks as mile markers on my journey of self-discovery.

cheers to self-discovery… whatever path that might take.

20140401-201921.jpg