Weaponized healing spaces and how to recognize them A friend sent me an article recently that made my blood boil. It was reporting from The Cut about OneTaste, a neo-tantric organization now facing federal charges. The organization operated for years. It attracted intelligent, curious, seeking people who wanted genuine healing. And it systematically exploited them….
In the last few weeks I’ve had a handful of conversations with friends, and an ongoing one with my son, that have all echoed each other in ways I’m still sitting with. Different people, different situations, same wall hit at the same place. We were all talking about autonomy. About making real choices. About being…
My very first death doula client came to me through a neighbor of mine. The neighbor thought this woman could use a death doula, and made the introduction. I’ll call her Sassypants here, the name I teasingly used for her, which tells you most of what you need to know about her. In our first…
The origin story of my work as a Taboo Doula begins, like most real stories, at a kitchen sink. I was doing Z’s dishes when she told me her only regret. She was in her 90s, living in a senior community. Her family had originally reached out to me, but she was the one who…
May is a tricky month for grief and me. My mom died in 2007. May was her birth month. It’s also Mother’s Day. And my maternal grandmother, Grandma Becky, died in May two years before my mom did. So every year, May arrives and it’s not just spring. It’s like a carnival funhouse, laughter around…
I still feel every pet I’ve ever lost in my heart, and I still grieve each one. Thunder was the first. She was all black with a white spot on her belly, and I loved her fiercely. She was the first pet that chose me as her own, and she died when I was nine….
Self-pleasure is one of the most powerful tools you have for knowing yourself, healing yourself, and transforming your inner landscape. And yet most of us were taught to treat it like something to be ashamed of, rushed through, or never spoken about in polite company.
What does pleasure actually look like when we stop performing it for someone else? Join us Friday at 6pm for Sex Café: Pleasure Anatomy for All Bodies. All genders, sexualities, and relationship configurations welcome. Free will donation.
Here’s something you might need to hear today: love and rage can coexist.
You can show up with tenderness and still want to scream in your car afterward. You can be devoted and still feel trapped. You can be doing your best and still be angry that this is your life right now.
That doesn’t make you a bad caregiver. It makes you a caregiver who’s telling the truth.
A Sex Café is not a hookup space. It’s a guided, consent-forward conversation circle for honest, human talk about bodies, desire, shame, boundaries, and belonging. Our first gathering is Friday, Jan 16.