Good Clean Reads

Lubrication is one of the simplest and most effective ways to make intimacy more enjoyable. And even though our bodies naturally produce lubrication, it isn’t always enough. Hormonal changes, stress, medication, or simply wanting a little more glide are all good reasons to reach for lube!

I have come to believe that so many relationships are so hurtful because we believe that is the love we deserve. For years after my parents’ divorce, I watched my mother have a 30- year affair with a man who would never really show up for her in the ways she needed. She would end it over and...

Seeing a pro-football player knock out his girlfriend on an elevator video captures our collective attention. The league is held responsible for not taking the violence seriously, giving the offender a two game suspension, and then, after the public outcry, they expel him indefinitely. Intimate crimes persist, in part, because we don’t want to...

To my mind, the most powerful reckoning we make in this lifetime is with our sexual selves. Rarely are we privileged to bear witness to this process in others, even our most intimate others. So, when a NY Times columnisthas the courage to disclose how an act of childhood sexual abuse slowly evolved into a...

We come into our erotic consciousness in our early adolescence. The process is mostly subconscious as the maturing brain establishes unique patterns of...

The first conscious thought I strive to have each day is a grateful one.

Lately I am awake at least a couple of times – in and out of weird, anxious dreams. So it is not unusual that my first thoughts are anxious too. It is amazing how fast a couple of errant anxious ideas can spiral down into low grade rumination. Reminding myself through mediation to first create a grateful moment changes...

“After people are clothed and fed, then they think about sex.”  -Confucius 479 BC

What does sexual wellbeing mean to you? This is the question that the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) selected for its focus on the 2^nd annual World Sexual Health Day this week on September 4^th. More than 30 countries took part by creating events to recognize the need to articulate and understand the...

“Don’t change the world, change worlds.”  -St Francis of Assisi

One of my favorite talks that I listen to over and over again by Pema Chodron is her teaching about cultivating Bodichitta, which is another word for the ‘awakened heart.’ Her advice is that we have to start where we are, recognizing the love we have to give and, more importantly, the love we can receive in this present moment. In...

I woke up crying today, listening to the soft breathing of my three kids filling the hotel room and remembering that this was the last morning in a long time that I would wake in the company of us all together. Today was the day I would drop my third child off for the beginning of his college years- a day that I saw coming from years away but still cannot believe has already arrived. When we’re...