Sweet Surrender
The concept of surrendering has been coming up for me lately. I have been dealing with a huge personal challenge. No, the voice of God/dess didn’t come through and say: “surrender!”, but it may as well have. You know when you just know you are being guided to do...
What do You Expect?
We all have expectations in relationships. Where do they come from? They come from our earliest memories of fairy tales. They come from what we learned from our parents or other primary caregivers. They come from the media- television, movies, and advertising. In...
More on S.E.X.
Last week, I wrote about Synergistic Energy Exchange, or S.E.X. It’s when two or more people work together cooperatively to create an exchange of energy. (Wait, is “work” really the right word here? Let me know if you come up with a better one.) As you may...
Sex is Not What You Think
Sex is not what you think. Have you ever really asked yourself the question of what sex is? Chances are, if you’re like most people, you just assumed it’s what our popular culture says it is. Either a man/woman, man/man, or woman/woman intertwining their naked...
Survival Strategy for the Holidays: Meditation
As a therapist and life coach, I hear many times how much people don’t like the holidays, how they find them both stressful and depressing. Below are some how-to’s to start or renew the habit of meditation, which has been shown to reduce both stress and depression....
Friends With Benefits: Are They Beneficial? (Part II)
As promised, below is the actual email I sent to my friend with benefits at the end of our time together (minus his real name- I’ll call him “Steve”). I think it is a great stand-alone statement about how friends with benefits can be so much deeper than it seems. I...
Friends With Benefits: Are They Beneficial? (Part I)
This blog is probably not about what you think it is about. I know, a lot of people out there have judgments about “friends with benefits.” They think it never works out because really we are not “supposed” to be doing that anyway. Sex without love? That’s wrong,...
To Be or Not to Be…Monogamous
Over the past year or so, I have been seriously looking at the idea that perhaps monogamy is not our natural state. In my life, I have rarely been monogamous, even when I had consciously intended to be. And it seems that the world is filled with such stories. Why are...
Animal Totems
Around the beginning of this year, I was lying in bed one night and experienced a very unsettled feeling. It was hard for me at first to put words to it. Then all of a sudden, I got an image of myself as a snake about to shed its skin. That image was no accident....
What’s the Message We’re Sending?
This summer our family welcomed the arrival of an exchange student from Spain. She is sixteen years old and, I imagine, typical in her manner of dress for teens in her country. When she unpacked her suitcase, I realized she was going to basically have to buy a new...