The V-Word

"If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second" -Edward BellamyI was turning 33 the year that I could not get pregnant. My previous pregnancies were not first timers but having unprotected sex whenever we wanted made the trying more fun. But this time, by the 8th or 9th cycle we had tried everything that had worked before - herbal teas, lying in bed with my legs up the wall, recording my temperature every morning… nothing seemed to make a difference.

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”  Mohandas K. Gandhi

As I write this advice about love, I am flying over the pacific on my way home from my favorite place on earth, Hawaii. It is the only place that I have ever traveled that I never feel ready to leave. Maybe it’s because I more readily can find a slower rhythm of life here in the tropics, or because the days start so much later...

“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...

“Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.”  e.e. cummings

Days are becoming balmy, daylight lasts into evening, and the flowering trees are now awash in color. If ever there was a moment that the kiss was invented somehow I feel sure it was when the world awoke to springtime. In fact, the earliest recorded kisses date back to India in 1500 BC where early Vedic scriptures describe lovers “setting...

Do you feel comfortable saying vagina? If you paused, don’t worry. It’s not you, it’s a culture of censorship. The overt kind (such as laws criminalizing the usage of the word!) and the more subliminal type, too. Are there consequences to this type of censorship? You bet. In fact, it directly jeopardizes your health. Because we know that there is power in words, Good Clean Love has partnered with...

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...

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.

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...

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...