I used to think I knew about courage. I would often write and talk about it as a defining attribute that allowed you to explore and wonder about your life. And referred to it as the backbone of what gives relationships the strength to evolve. Those things are true, but in a more fundamental way for more people than I probably ever recognized before this massive loss, our capacity for courage is actually proportional to our will to keep living.

I lost my son Ian and life has become a deep haze of grief. Time is meaningless except for the vast swaths of the future that is lost to us. All the plans, all that was saved and counted on dissolving like salt in a watery broth of tears. And the inability to reconcile reality – the immediacy and permanence of death seems impossible for my beautiful 26-year-old boy.

Many relationships suffer from a lack of self-esteem. A relationship’s self-esteem is connected to that of the partner’s, but it also has a life of its own. Genuine esteem is founded in the courage to see oneself truly, both the positive and negative aspects of who we are and how we function and malfunction in the world.

I remember one of the fathers of a little girl on a soccer team I was coaching years ago who came out to me and told me he was going to go through a transgender process. We were friends, so I was able to ask him about his motivations to go through the painful and expensive process. He said he wanted to finally look how he felt. 

 

"We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard, or just think it's going to get on by itself. You gotta keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it." -John Lennon

“The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle:  Me Too.”  Brene Brown

The word is on the street. No one is alone anymore. Millions of women are coming forward acknowledging the burdens of silence they have been carrying around whether from single traumatic events or years of unwanted sexual advances to full on sexual assault and discrimination. Here we are: a force to be reckoned with. And...

“..that a boy is, in large part, hard wired to be who he is.  We can’t change who he is.  We can teach him how to develop who he is with confidence, and toward a direction that contributes to our world.” Michael Gurian

There is a surprising truth to the unique love that girls have for their fathers and that boys hold for their mothers. And it is through witnessing this generational love that my...

“Sex that works depends on our being able to trust ourselves, and our ability to trust ourselves depends on understanding who we are and how we relate to the people around us.”  Wendy Strgar, Sex That Works.

It bodes well for my new book, Sex that Works, to launch on the first day of Pride month. For nearly 5 decades, the LGBT community has commemorated the Stonewall Inn Protest of 1969 each June....

Women’s health is at the center of what we do at Good Clean Love. From our Bio-Match patented technology to extensive healthcare sampling program, our company is known for going above and beyond for women. That’s why joining the Change for Women Collective was an easy decision for our founder, Wendy Strgar. It just made sense. As a woman-owned B Corporation, Good Clean Love fits right in with the...

Walking into your bedroom should make your heart rate slow down. It should be the place where you sigh deeply and your whole body relaxes. The bedroom is your nest. A singular space that both regenerates you on a cellular level every night as you sleep and provides the environment and impetus for physical intimacy. As the place where we love deeply, procreate our next generation and regenerate...

Yesterday in our article,Because Women’s Health Matters, we mentioned that gynecology clinics and universities are the two most common sources of sample requests. Today we wanted to highlight one of our favorite sample recipients, Praxis Clinical- an unlikely combination of the two. Alexandra Duncan, the founder of Praxis, takes female reproductive health into her own hands. Literally. “I use my...