Good Clean Reads

“Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.”  -Carlos Fuentes

The most gratifying part of my work is when people, often whom I have never met, but have somehow been introduced to this weekly column, come greet me at a tradeshow booth with a hug and sometimes tears in their eyes. A guy today walked by several times before getting up the courage to come and speak to me. One of...

“Joy rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings.  It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity.”  -Rollo May

The other day when I was out to dinner with my 17-year-old daughter, half a pizza and salad still on the table, she said “We didn’t really need the pizza.” She went on,...

“Often, it’s not about becoming a new person, but becoming the person you were meant to be, and already are, but don’t know how to be.”  -Heath Buckmaster

Jarring is the mildest descriptor I can use to describe the space that is left with the departure of my last child. I feel lost in our home with only photos to fill the spaces that were not long ago embodied with the noise and mess of growing...

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness.  Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.” -Andre Gide

Joy is, in many ways, love’s twin flame. It occurs on the receiving side of love, whether it be romantic intrigue, family relations of just the full body experience of loving life. Joy is the byproduct of feeling loved and...

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” ―Franklin D. Roosevelt

I am in one of those cycles again where things aren’t working. Most things, actually… Shipping systems don’t work and air conditioning units break down on the hottest day of the year. Seemingly routine product testing is not routine. More challenging still, is the breakdown in personal relationships at both...

“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.” –Ashley Smith

Sensory perception is a use it or lose it capacity; the less you employ your five senses, the smaller your related awareness and language becomes, effectively shrinking the known...

“Remedial: giving or intended as a remedy or cure; intended to correct or improve something.”

I was married for at least fifteen years before I finally started seeing our sex life as remedial rather than a reward. Like so many couples, I spent over a decade holding sex apart from our daily conflicts and fruitlessly waiting for the moments when my husband said just the right thing at just the...

We describe our food as having flesh, making clear its libidinal qualities–we put this flesh in our mouths, publicly take it into our bodies, make more of ourselves by its nutriment. Our food’s flesh is made of what it has digested–water, sun, minerals in the soil, other flesh. Meat has flesh; so does fruit; fruit can be “meaty,” and a well-cooked mushroom might be meaty, too. Eggplant, tomato,...

“If we could heal only one thing in the human experience and it was our relationship to our sexual selves, everything else would heal as a consequence.” -Wendy Strgar

Sex is at the beginning and end of who we are. Indeed, we are each the most profound products of the sexual act, and the more we learn about our fragile, erotic selves, the more obvious it is that this is the center around which...