Monthly Archives: August 2024

Tomorrow Is Not Promised.

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“The tumor has shrunk.”

It was the best news I could possibly get on my 51st birthday on Friday, from one of my best friends. Diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer some months ago, their future is now forever altered from what we had assumed and taken for granted.

Another classmate, teammate, and amazing human has terminal brain cancer, dammit.

I write this from my happiest and most contented place on Earth, the Colorado Rockies. For five days I get to hike, read, write, and be. Having received so many messages of love and connection on my birthday, starting the moment I woke up, it was clear that the only way for me to move through this long weekend is in deep gratitude.

Framing everything this way makes my perceptions of and reactions to any and all life occurrences different and better–more tolerable and peaceful. On arrival, my greeting from family: “Hi. So you’ve gained a lot of weight recently, huh?” WTAF, really? –pause– Gratitude. Reframe: This encounter triggers me because it evokes my own inner fat-shame and body image issues. Long standing, multifactorial, and slowly improving, I am shown here that I have more inner work yet to do: self-compassion, self-acceptance, and self-discipline, among other things. Deep breath, forgiveness, thank you for this awareness; now I can let go and move on.

Gratitude makes me revel in my friendships–any and all opportunities to be present and attuned to the amazing humans I have the great, unearned fortune to know and love. In recent weeks I have had the opportunity to connect with my two friends above, and they humble me. Confronted with their own mortality in the prime of life, they exemplify grace. In our honest and loving conversations, they show me the absolute essence of vulnerability, courage, and perspective, and leave me in utter awe. We discuss frankly what it means and what it takes to get to peace with death. It reinforces my three take aways from Being Mortal by Atul Gawande: 1. We need to talk about death early and often, get comfortable with and accept it. 2. End of life decision making is about goals and trade-offs, and those of the dying take precedence. 3. The more peaceful the dying can feel at the end of life, the less suffering for those left behind. How lucky am I that my two friends lead by such wise and peaceful example?

We talk about grief, regrets, relationships, legacy, and meaning. We marvel together at the mind boggling advancement of cancer treatment in our lifetime, and the miracle that is the human body. We laugh, cry, and connect. I am shown starkly and in no uncertain terms that the most important thing in life is relationship, full stop.

One day, one moment, one breath at a time, my friends.

May we be present to all of it, as much as possible, in love and mindfulness, in mutual respect and humble communion. I’m sad, yes. And it’s okay. I revel in every day, every moment, every breath that my friends yet live. My highest goal and wish for them is to know how much they are loved and embraced, how they will never be forgotten, how all of us who know and love them will hold their spirits with us until we die ourselves. And that’s assuming something doesn’t take my own life before theirs end.
Tomorrow is not promised for any of us.

So knowing this, how will we choose to really live? Clarity on this visits me much more often as I age, and once again I am profoundly grateful. I get to choose love, respect, meaning, courage, and connection over resentment, disdain, judgment, and separation.

I can choose peace.

There will be time later to mourn, to grieve. Now is the time to honor, uphold, revel, and live fully in one another’s love and light.

Uninhibited

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I effuse.

Anyone who knows me will tell you so. They will describe my facial expressions, gesticulations, profanity, and hyperbole. I feel strongly and express accordingly. I posted yesterday about how it’s all elevated and amplified (though still regulated) recently: I hug stronger and longer. I praise freely. I call people ‘love’ with accelerating frequency. And I talk about love, sex, and relationships a lot more. I attribute much of this to my now two year-old romance audio immersion.

American culture is such a paradox. At the same time that we hypersexualize both men’s and women’s bodies from a young age, we also harbor a collective and insidious Puritanical streak that shames sexuality in general, and for women in particular. I thought I had overcome the latter years ago. But these two years of spicy romance consumption have shown me my blind spots, for which I am eternally grateful.

Early in my career I met a woman patient who was very open about her sex practices. She had both male and female partners, sometimes multiple at a time. I can’t remember whether her practices were protected or not, but she had no active sexually transmitted infections while I knew her. Looking back, I’m sure my words centered around health risks and relationship safety. But if I’m honest, I judged her. I was young in career and life and could not relate to her behaviors and practices. I am sure she felt my negative moral vibrations, and I regret that to this day. Somewhere along the way I let go that judgment and have since made intentional efforts to make it safe for patients to tell me anything. As long as it’s consensual, lucid, and mutually satisfying, I want you to do whatever you want and enjoy your sex life as fully as possible! There is no standard, and my wish is for all partners to feel maximally fulfilled.

Romance novels have opened my eyes to diverse practices and experiences that I did not know to consider before: polyamorous, dominant-submissive, and asexual, among others, and all of the social, emotional, and relational implications thereof. I have shared my transformations of awareness and openness with patients and friends, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Both men and women get curious and then share their own experiences–desires, inhibitions, disconnects, accommodations, sacrificies, epiphanies/discoveries, etc. These days I talk even more openly than before and with anybody about libido, erectile (dys)function, emotional and carnal connection and their intersection, menopause, penile implants, and anything else that matters to someone’s sexual health. I thought I was uninhibited before and Whoa Nelly, watch me now. Based on conversations with fellow spicy romance enthusiasts, my experience is anything but unique.

Romance narrator Victoria Connolly addresses American purity culture, growing up in and now healing from it. She has invited listeners to share their stories; the voluminous response reveals the prevelance of experience and the value of acknowledging and naming it. See her Instagram post and comments c. August 12, 2024: “‘It wasn’t until I started reading primarily spicy romance that I finally got fed up/brave enough to ask him if it’d be okay if I touched myself or used a vibrator during sex because I’d like to come too.’ | If your story sounds like this, you’re in the right place. | Just share the book in the comments that rewired you forever. The one that made you believe you deserved pleasure.”

I mentioned the Quinn app in my recent Women Elevating Women post. Quinn describes itself as “a mobile app and website where you can listen to audio erotica… spicy audio stories, guided masturbation, dirty talk, and more. The audios on Quinn are designed to help you get there, but they also involve fun and interesting plots.” The New York Times reports, “Apps like Dipsea and Quinn have become popular destinations, particularly for some women who find them safe spaces to explore their sexuality.” Hallelujah!
Readers of this blog know my deep admiration for romance narrator Shane East and his strong allyship of women. His second ever Quinn audio dropped two days ago and has already been played more than 3500 times. Asked, “What inspired the move to create on Quinn?” he answered, “[Quinn] came to me after hearing my work. After discussing things with them and checking things out on the site, seeing what I would like to put out there and gathering a script and audio crew to help me do that, I decided to go for it. I’m all for anything that enables women to own their sexuality without the judgment or shame that can be handed out by others. I’m here of course for everyone being free to own their sexuality and desires in a judgment free, safe and accepting way; however and with whomever they like. Speaking of women specifically though, historically they have been repressed by societal restraints and patriarchal ideology for so long that I think it’s wonderful to be part of something — be that romance books or something like Quinn— that utterly goes against that and gives women (in particular) ownership of what they want. I think it’s fantastic to have the[m] out there.”

*sigh*

This is all such a good thing, all of us embracing our whole, wonderful, beautiful, sexually awake and aware selves–every person of any gender, both individually and in community. Life is simply too short to repress such important and fundamental aspects of identity and connection. Fiction in general and romance in particular help us receive perspectives (as opposed to taking them, as David Brooks writes) other than and different from our own, and empathize with the full scope of human emotional and relational experience.

Inhibitions are not empirically harmful. Restraints can serve us sometimes. And when they outlive their usefulness, shedding them elevates us, frees our spirit, and allows our whole selves to emerge in full glory and actualization. I hope this evolution of collective openness continues. The more we can eliminate shame and empower everyone to own their sexuality, foster deep and meaningful connections fully in mind, body, and spirit, and simply embrace all that makes us our whole human selves, the better all of our lives will be.

Bit Post: Reciprocity

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We get back what we send forth.

On November 17, 2022 I posted “Liberated“:

“I feel more liberated lately to say what I think, freed to be totally honest, boobs out (figuratively), suddenly and significantly more than before…
“What am I saying/telling more?  Usually it’s observations and assessments, syntheses of conversations, how I know people, how I see them in their contexts, and of course my relationships with them.  When I see (feel) power, love, vulnerability, strength, connection, growth, evolution, light—anything that grabs my attention and moves me—I name it.  I don’t let it pass by without catching and holding it a while, showing it, shining it.  Do you see how great you are?  Do you feel your worth?  Here, let me show you, help you stand in it, own it.  I have done this for years with my close friends.  Maybe I’m just more generous with it now?”

So it’s been over two years of elevated effusion (more on this tomorrow)–amplification of an innate desire and affinity for deep, meaningful connection. I am who I am, and apparently ever more so with age.

Today I was almost tearful at realization of the reward. Speaking and acting love and appreciation BOOBS OUT, no reservations, has yielded more than I could have imagined or anticipated. Love begets love; tightening of connection brings closeness. I see you. I tell you, show you; you feel seenheardunderstoodacceptedandloved, we connect, and we are both exponentially better for it. Our conversations get deeper. We know each other better, feel each other’s experiences, empathize, relate, and settle peacefully into each other’s ethereal, transcendent embrace. I am surrounded by this energy nowadays, and the elation simply defies expression.

I do not effuse love to get it back; this is not quid pro quo. The origin of this kind of connection may be the furthest from transactional that I can imagine. I’m driven by the intuitive certainty that any expression of love simply amplifies it, strengthens it, puts that much more of it into the world for us all to revel in. Love, in all forms, saves us. Writing Smile Jar love notes lifts my spirit long before anyone else sees them. And yet, when the spark that I initiate lands, completes that arc of love energy emitted and received, it charges both our batteries and powers us all.

Effusing love can be risky. It’s vulnerable. Sometimes I get strange looks; outright rejection is always a possibility. The intrinsic and extrinsic benefits, though–oh my friends–so very worth the effort.

Wishing you all to feel this kind of deep reciprocity of love, my friends. “Agape on,” I want to say. The world needs y/our love so desperately. See if you can withhold a little less–consider it? What would that take? What could be your reward? I will hold that whatever you emit returns to you in spades, uplifts and encourages you to continue, as it has for me.
Peace, friends. xo