What has become clear in recent days is that the rights of all oppressed and marginalized people – whether by race or sexual identity – have always been inextricably linked. We are one people and our ideals of freedom are honored only when they become universal. Sharing in this year's Pride Month celebrations is recognizing and celebrating the most precious human right of all: the freedom to live and love as we choose.

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is one of the leading vaginal infections amongst reproductive aged women in the United States. While up to 29.2 million cases are recorded annually according to the CDC, the percentages by race vary widely. 

Ever had one of those days as a vagina owner where you wake up and something feels off? Maybe you’re slightly itchy down there, maybe your skin is irritated, or maybe it burns a bit when you urinate. Maybe you even notice a weird discharge. It happens to most of us. In fact, up to 75% of women will experience some form of vaginitis, or vaginal inflammation, at some point of their lives. Vaginitis can have many different causes, and some forms are more serious than others.

When most people teach about safe sex, they are often focusing on preventing infection and promoting birth control. Yet, there is another, overlooked aspect of safety in sex that can have as far reaching an impact as any physical one – that is the importance of developing an emotional safety net to protect your evolving erotic self. 

Recognizing the miracles in the everyday begins with how we think, which creates our focus. Opening to seeing bigger is the next crucial step in developing resilient and reliable skills for self love. For the last couple of weeks, we have been focused on noticing the negative thinking patterns in our lives. By pausing in those moments and noticing the repetitive thoughts, perhaps by using the bracelet technique, you create a space where new kinds of thinking can emerge.

For those of you out there who have been looking for more activity oriented projects, this is not one to miss. Putting together a visual that wakes up joy, wonder and curiosity and then having it as a reference point for your daily thinking is a powerful launch pad to pushing your life in the direction of your best self.

Love is an action verb with a specific skill set that is developmental – which means that we can learn it, practice it and get better at it. That said, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the efforts of keeping our loving relationships vital, and to lose sight of the many emotional and physical benefits we experience from loving over time.

Our habits become us. Our lives are arguably the net sum of the behaviors that we repeatedly do. One could even argue that our personalities are molded over time out of the habitual ways we behave influenced most strongly by the thoughts we think. This is partly due to our dedication to the known and familiar which helps us manage the overwhelming busyness of life, and evidenced by the fact that although our brain receives thousands of sensory signals every day, it can only process dozens. In the same way, of the thousands of random thoughts passing through our mind every day, over 90 percent of them are repetitive and for most of us, 80 percent of those thoughts are more negative than positive. 

This month marks the 25th anniversary of National Masturbation Month, launched in 1995 by Good Vibrations to protest the firing of the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, appointed by President Clinton. Dr. Elders was fired for responding to questions regarding safe sex by saying that “Masturbation is something that perhaps should be taught.” Conservative members of the administration were not pleased.

The most important lesson I have learned throughout all my spiritual searching and study is how many forms of healing occur within prayers of gratitude. Unlike the thank you notes that follow a gift exchange, these prayers to feel into gratitude are entirely visceral. Prayer is often misunderstood as a kind of asking for something you do not already have, when in truth prayerful gratitude is a deep recognition of all that we have already been given. Feeling into this kind of gratitude in the body is how we sense our belonging; not only to ourselves, but more essentially to all that makes every breath possible. It is the kind of deep remembering of just how many things are working on your behalf all the time. It is how you feel when you look to the sky and really see the blueness of it.