The V-Word

I lost this week. After months of preparation, documents and samples changing hands, interviews scheduled and rescheduled, the grant committee at the Eileen Fischer program for Women choose five inspiring women run companies to recognize and reward with $10,000. Although we made it to the finalist round, we were not among the lucky winners. We were edged out by the Goat Patrol, a company that uses...

“The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” -Victor Hugo

Holidays magnify the best and the worst of our relationships. There may be no holiday that reflects this more...

I have been thinking about self love lately, and not just the emotional kind. I just recently learned that the month of May was recently named National Masturbation month. Certainly it is a topic that could do with a little airing out, if based only on its checkered history alone. It wasn’t all that long ago that boys were tortured with all kinds of strange contraptions to stop them from...

“…You see things as you are.” This quote from the Talmud reflects truly how we live. Our filters of life events are always clouded by how we feel, what we are thinking, how we are judging in that moment. What is the objective view? We use scientific models of double blind studies as a standard, but how in our daily lives and relationships can we see beyond ourselves?

This is a question worth...

The headline of the Eugene Register Guard today was “Battling Porn from the Pulpit“. The story was actually three stories on the many faces of pornography. The numbers are impressive no matter what side you are on… Every second $3,075 is being spent on pornography by over 28,000 users on the internet- yes, that was every second. There are over 4.2 million porn websites which makes up 12% of all...

The NPR story on the Art of Aging marks another rung on my ladder of Making Love Sustainable. According to Dr. Sherwin Nuland, a professor at Yale University’s Medical School, the three most important factors to graceful aging are: a consistent exercise program, tapping into creative impulses, and sustaining the intimate relationships that make life meaningful.

Nuland admitted he used to focus...

The question that comes up most often when I suggest that we give up this idea that we should be in the mood to engage in or respond to an invitation for intimacy is, How do you do it? So I know it is not much of a response to say, well just do it… but here’s the thing, a lot of people actually really enjoy the closeness and the sensations of intimacy once they get started. Leaping over the mental...

Making time for love is an important barometer of the commitment and sustainability of your relationship. When you consider the outrageous scheduling hoops we agree to without qualm in our work setting, or even more intensely in managing our children’s activity calendar, it makes you wonder how the idea of scheduling intimacy could still be so taboo. 

Yet, taboo it is, with an overriding belief...

"Sex has a way of softening limbs,
oiling joints and melding hearts.

We burrow in closer
wrapping arms and legs over and under each other.

Earthly blanket of sleep covers us two bodies releasing one breath.

Finding home,
coiled and tucked in each other’s sweat."

-Wendy Lee

I feel compelled to say something about having sex even when your relationship feels like it doesn’t quite deserve it.