Good Clean Reads

“Service is the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of our life, and not something you do in your spare time.” Marian Wright Edelman

I make my home in Oregon, a hidden gem of Northwest Pacific Wonderland among our 50 states. Today hundreds of thousands of our beautiful forests are on fire. Half of all the firefighters out working are trying to quell the ravaging burn amidst scorching...

If someone close to you asked you to describe your ideal sexual experience, what kind of encounter would you describe? How would it begin? Who (and what) would be involved? Where would it take place? Most importantly, how would it feel?For some, the answers to these questions may be easy to articulate. For others, not so much. Being able to voice our deepest personal needs and desires is not always an easy thing to do - especially when it comes to sex.

“It’s not like consent is this big mystery. It’s not about controlling young people… it begins with a sense of responsibility about our own sexual needs that does not hurt or compromise anyone else’s.” – Wendy Strgar

I remember last summer sitting in a room full of 20-something kids, many of whom I had known since middle school. We were working on a project that has since evolved into our Make It...

“The real vulnerability is not from taking off our clothes together, but in baring our hearts to one another…”  Wendy Strgar, Sex that Works

“A consent culture is a society that values and promotes consensual sex, condemns rape and supports survivors of sexual violence…” – Siobhan Donovan, Building a Consent Culture

Almost every interview request I get these days begins with questions about consent; both what it means to say yes to sexual contact and what happens when initial consent goes away. The first thing that I say in these...

Growing into our sexual selves is a lifelong process, much like growing up in general. But because we don’t have a lot of language for our sexual life, we somehow erroneously expect that sex is something we are born knowing how to do. Like any other physical and emotional skill, our sexual empowerment to both give and receive pleasure increases with our education and practice. Understanding how to develop your sexuality is key to this journey. Generally we wake up to our emerging erotic consciousness in our early adolescence. This awakening process of sexual empowerment is mostly subconscious, as our maturing brain connects the powerful arousal mechanism to historic and unresolved painful events and relationships.

I spent last weekend with hundreds of new mothers and their babies at the Mommycon Chicago conference. I was invited to talk about Sex that Works, my new book about sex after pregnancy and the intimacy problems involved. I was greeted by over 50 mothers and just about as many babies. The conference was geared towards the practice of attachment parenting, an ancient practice the world over where...

Didn’t have the Valentine’s Day you hoped for? Here’s 3 Rules for not making it worse.

Post Valentine’s Day can sometimes be a rocky relational transition. When we don’t feel seen or appreciated in the ways we hoped for, it is easy to slip into behaviors that silently undermine all the heartfelt efforts that we have worked at for so long. So here are a few practices that have helped me time and...

“More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity.” -Francois Gautier

While we all want pleasure, most of us don’t understand why our pleasure response gets blocked or even how to ignite it. So here are four steps to turn on your libido, enlarge your experience of sex and trust the intelligence of your heart.

1. Start with an Empty Mind

If you can’t clear your mind when you are...