Sitting with discomfort. Finding a way to navigate the unknown—the lack of certainty. Is it trust? Not in others, no. I think it ultimately comes down to an unshakeable faith in ourselves, the one person we can always rely on no matter what.

Everyone else will fail you. Disappoint you. Leave you. That’s not meant to be some sort of misanthropic gloom and doom statement. But it’s true. People will fail to meet our needs and expectations, as we will fail to meet theirs. People will leave. They’ll move away, their schedules or priorities will change, they’ll even die.

You are the one thing in life you can control, to paraphrase a line from Hamilton. So the comfort, the certainty, has to come from knowing that no matter what happens, no matter how much it hurts or how lonely you feel, that you’ll be okay. You’ve got you.

You are the secure adult attachment figure you always craved. Not your family, not your friends, and certainly not your partner. And holy fuck, does that suck sometimes. It’s lonely and frustrating because you want to outsource that role SO BADLY. But I’m here to tell you buckaroos, it’s an inside job. And if you can stand steady in that inner knowing and inner faith in yourself, your relationships will be stronger for it. You’ll be a better friend and a much better partner. The unknown will remain unknown, but it becomes less scary when you trust yourself to withstand and even thrive no matter what life throws at you. Don’t abandon yourself. You are all you have.

If you missed it, I’m teaching a class on Zoom tonight (8/27) called Awesome Anal for Receivers. It’s at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern and it will be recorded if you can’t make it live. As always, my Substack readers save 15% if you register using this link: https://quiet-paper-9608.kit.com/products/awesome-a-for-receivers?promo=SUBSTACK

Also! I’m in Toronto for at least the next month or so and I’m teaching a live demo Anal class at Oasis Aqualounge downtown on 9/9. Come see me! Tickets here.

“Réservation?” the hostess replied.

Judging by the look on my face, she probably knew the answer before I managed to stumble through it. I must have looked somewhere between hopeful and panicked because her expression softened immediately. She smiled, wheeled over a small table, shuffled a few chairs out of the way, and within moments had created a cozy little spot just for me.

My server asked if I’d like him to explain the day’s formule (like a prix fixe menu) in English or French.

“English,” I admitted, grateful he offered instead of assuming.

He described a chilled cauliflower cream soup topped with crème fraîche followed by a veal stew that had spent more than three hours slowly cooking on the stove. I was sold before he finished the sentence.

The soup arrived in a large terrine, and I was able to serve myself. Every bite was rich, comforting, and unlike anything I’d tasted before. Then came the veal. I almost never order veal, but this was impossibly tender, swimming in a velvety broth that clung to every bite.

Every few minutes I’d catch myself smiling.

Not just because I couldn’t believe how good the food was, although it certainly was. I kept smiling because I couldn’t believe I was finally here. After decades of imagining Paris, I was sitting alone in a tiny neighborhood restaurant having one of the best meals of my life, and it felt every bit as magical as I’d hoped it would.

I’d heard all the clichés about rude Parisian waiters before my trip. My experience couldn’t have been more different. Everywhere I went, people were patient with my enthusiastic but imperfect French and quick to switch to English when I needed help. The hostess at Les Papilles could have turned me away for not having a reservation. Instead, she made room for me.

By the end of lunch, I was too full to even consider dessert. As I thanked my server, I looked at him and said, “Je pleure de joie.” He smiled.

To understand why a €35 lunch had me fighting back tears, I have to go back a couple of decades.

I started taking French in eighth grade and never really stopped. I took it throughout high school, somehow ended up serving as president of French Club (yes, that was absolutely a thing), and even squeezed in two more semesters in university. Long before I had the means to travel internationally, Paris had become this almost mythical place in my imagination.

I remember watching Beauty and the Beast and trying to perfect my accent while singing Belle’s opening number. In graduate school, I immersed myself in French existentialism and imagined what it would feel like to sip a hot chocolate at Les Deux Magots, where Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir spent countless hours writing and debating. Paris existed in books, films, history, and daydreams long before it existed on my passport.

Before I left, I told a friend that every place I visit seems to reveal a different facet of who I am. I was curious to meet Ashley in France.

The trip itself began in a way I never could have anticipated. Just hours before boarding my overnight flight, I was at Nick’s mom’s funeral in Ontario. It was an emotionally strange way to begin a journey I’d looked forward to for most of my life, but grief rarely checks the calendar before it arrives.

Paris wasn’t actually my first stop. I spent several days teaching at a Skirt Club retreat in the French countryside before finally taking the train back into the city for my twenty-eight hours on my own.

Twenty-four hours isn’t enough time to “do Paris.” I wasn’t going to make it through the Louvre, Versailles, Notre-Dame, and the Eiffel Tower. Rather than trying to cram every landmark into a day, I decided to prioritize something else entirely. I wanted memorable meals, beautiful neighborhoods, and enough unstructured time to wander wherever the streets happened to take me.

That’s how I ended up booking a little hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

I wanted to stay somewhere I could experience the rhythm of the neighborhood instead of spending half my trip on the Metro. I wanted cafés, boulangeries, bookstores, and streets where people were living their everyday lives. It turned out to be exactly the right decision. I could leave the hotel with only a vague destination in mind and trust that I’d discover something worth stopping for along the way.

One afternoon that turned into a tiny bookstore filled almost entirely with Japanese art books. Another time it was a bakery that smelled so good I abandoned whatever plan I’d had and went inside. And one of my favorite discoveries happened completely by accident when I realized I’d booked my hotel just a few minutes from Terra Nera, the restaurant that stands in as Gabriel’s restaurant in Emily in Paris. I had no idea when I made the reservation. Since I’ve been home and restarted the series, I keep catching glimpses of that same stretch of street and thinking, “I’ve walked there.”

The evening before my unforgettable lunch at Les Papilles, I met with a coaching client in her apartment. Calling it an apartment hardly seems fair. With soaring ceilings, ornate moldings, and impossibly tall windows overlooking the street, it felt like stepping into a tiny piece of Versailles.

We spent ninety minutes together in a Pussy Whisperer session, and afterward she casually mentioned that she was a fashion designer and asked if I’d like to try on some of her pieces. I expected to leave with a meaningful conversation. I did not expect to spend the next hour laughing as she dressed me in one stunning outfit after another.

Naturally, I wore one of her designs to dinner that evening at Le Procope, where we shared French onion soup, escargots, and beef cheek over fresh pasta. It was the first of two spectacular meals in less than twenty-four hours where I found myself too full for dessert. If you know me, you understand the significance of that sentence.

The next afternoon, after lingering over lunch at Les Papilles longer than I’d intended, I realized I wasn’t going to make it all the way to Notre-Dame before I had to get on the Metro to the airport. Instead, I wandered into Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont beside the Panthéon.

I hadn’t planned on visiting the church, and I certainly hadn’t planned on walking through the doors just as the organ began to play. Inside I found the shrine of Saint Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, along with the remaining stone fragments of her tomb. It made me think back to Nick’s mom’s funeral a few days earlier.

Leaving a funeral for the airport had felt surreal, as though I hadn’t had time to fully process one experience before beginning another. Standing in that church, thousands of miles from home, it felt right to light a candle for her.

After leaving the church, I ducked into a café nearby for one last chocolat viennois before heading back to my hotel. Out of habit, I ordered it to go, the way I’d order a coffee at Starbucks back home. The server smiled and politely reminded me that in Paris, people don’t really take their coffee or hot chocolate to go. They sit and enjoy it. So I did.

It was about 95 degrees outside, which made my decision to order hot chocolate objectively questionable, but I’d been dreaming about French hot chocolate for far too long to let a little summer heat get in the way. I settled into my seat, took my time, and savored every sip of thick, velvety chocolate topped with a cloud of whipped cream.

Afterward, I walked back through Saint-Germain one last time, picked up my bags, and made my way to Charles de Gaulle on the Metro (which was impressively easy to navigate). At the airport, I made one last spontaneous decision and upgraded myself to business class. Before boarding, I took a shower in the Air France lounge and changed into clean clothes. It was such a simple thing, but after a week of traveling it felt unexpectedly luxurious. I settled into my seat refreshed, enjoyed another leisurely multi-course meal, and found myself smiling all over again. Paris, it seemed, wasn't quite finished taking care of me.

I had been curious to meet Ashley in France. I discovered she’s a little less concerned with getting to the next thing than I expected. She’ll happily lose track of time over lunch, wander without much of a plan, and order hot chocolate even when it’s far too warm outside. She’ll even spring for the business class upgrade if it means ending the trip feeling just as cared for as it began. After waiting more than twenty-five years to meet Paris, she's already looking forward to the next bonjour.

Reminder: I recently launched my new website, The Pussy Whisperer, and I’m in the process of developing a Pussy Whisperer online course. If you’re interested in being the first to hear about the course when it launches, visit the new website and sign up for my email list. If you’re interested in working with me in a coaching capacity, either in person or virtually via Zoom, the application can also be found there.

Upcoming Travel:

July 29-31: Hollywood Beach, FL

July 31-Aug 8: Phillipsburg, NJ

Aug 8-19: Philadelphia, PA

Aug 19-23: Harrisburg, PA

Aug 23-Sept 23: Toronto, ON

It’s an ADHD nightmare for me, from both an attention and mobility perspective.

Attention is up first. I cannot multitask and expect to either give or receive with any real presence or proficiency. I’m trying to lick and suck and please a penis while also being hindered in that task by the uncontrolled moaning from the pleasure I’m receiving. One could make the argument that you could moan onto the cock and thus have a humming-like effect, which might feel good for the receiver. Fair. Technically possible.

But my receptive pleasure noises also contain a lot of “oh fuck!” and “oh my god yes!” and I was taught it’s rude to talk with your mouth full. Also, I don’t love what my teeth are doing when I’m making those exclamations. Risky. Very risky.

Moving on to mobility, my poor cervical spine starts to cramp just thinking about holding whatever position I would need to be in to suck a dick while I’m getting devoured.

On bottom, my head is tilted at a very unpleasant angle and I have little control over the depth of penetration. Climbing on top creates a different set of problems. Now I’m balancing and trying to shift my weight so I don’t smother my partner while also either pinching my neck to one side or the other, or doing some sort of weird sphinx pose to suck the dick head-on, so to speak.

Then there’s the problem of matching both heads to both genitals. I’m 5’3. My boyfriend is six freaking feet tall. I have a short torso and big tits. There’s just no way we’re going to sync up our bodies in a way that feels good for both of us without involving a chiropractor.

Presence is the next issue. I cannot be fully in my body, regulating my breath, arching my hips, and staying attuned to my own needs and preferences while I am also focusing on someone else’s pleasure. Can’t do it. I am a one-at-a-time kind of lover. I go, you go. There is no sexual merit badge for simultaneous stimulation. (That’s it, that’s the tweet).

And honestly, I think this is where 69 gets oversold. It sounds so reciprocal. Look at us, two generous lovers giving and receiving at the same time. Delightfully egalitarian in theory.

In practice, it often means two people are half-receiving and half-performing, with neither person fully dropping in. You’re trying to enjoy yourself, but not too much, because you still have a job to do. You’re trying to give pleasure, but not with your full attention, because someone is also doing deeply distracting work between your legs. It’s like trying to read a book while someone gives you a shoulder massage and also asks you to parallel park.

Could some people love that? Absolutely. Some people thrive in chaos. Others can text, cook, listen to a podcast, and smoke a joint at the same time. Gosh I love that for them.

For me, 69 is one of those sex acts that feels more hype than hell yes. It looks hot in theory. It has an iconic little number. Efficiency is part of the promise, which is always a little sus in an erotic context. But for my money, I’d rather take turns. Let me fully receive for a while, without trying to prove that I am also being useful. Then I will happily return the favor with the focus and enthusiasm.

If 69 works for you, rock on. I’ll be over here taking turns like a sensible slut.

What are your thoughts on 69?

PS - I actually don’t give oral anymore. (Seriously. Like ever.) So this is never a thing for me anyway, but once upon a time before I realized that I could categorically say no to sex acts I didn’t enjoy, I had many underwhelming 69 experiences. And I’m just bummed National Sex Day is saddled to such a boring sex act. Why not like, 9/9 which kinda looks like spooning? Or 4/2 because 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything (kinda like sex!) What date would you pick instead?

PPS - I launched my new website! It’s still under construction but I’d love to hear your thoughts: www.pussywhisperer.coach

“As I navigate perimenopause, I’m coming into an entirely new relationship with my body, and it’s freaking me out. It’s unpredictable. My desire is more mercurial. My orgasms are more elusive. I feel broken and scared and inadequate. Sex used to be my superpower and now it feels like something I have to work at to get even half of what I used to access effortlessly.”

That sentence landed in my chest with an awful little thud because it’s true. Sex has been one of the places I felt most fluent. Certainly not immune to the regular human nonsense of insecurity, comparison, tenderness, ego, and the occasional deeply humbling moment involving hip and knee fatigue. But I knew my body. I knew what turned me on. I knew how to find pleasure, follow sensation, and how to help people feel less at odds with their bodies.

Then my own body started acting like it had changed the password and neglected to tell me.

Arousal takes so much longer now. Orgasm is more complicated. Fantasy doesn’t always open the same door. My body needs more: warmup, patience, precision, nervous system regulation, lube, hormonal support…basically everything. I know my body deserves patience. I also hate that pleasure now takes this much effort. I miss the familiar ease. Being able to drop in quickly and trust that my body would meet me there.

This is the part I don’t see enough people talk about: the grief.

Losing easy access to a version of yourself you’ve known most of your life is disorienting. What once felt effortless now needs a fuck ton of effort. The body that carried me through lust, heartbreak, healing, teaching, love, trauma, ecstasy, and countless “oh wow, I didn’t know I could feel that” moments suddenly feels unfamiliar.

I know that sounds dramatic. Fine. It is dramatic. Being in a body is dramatic. Especially when that body starts changing the rules in the middle of the game.

And yes, before anyone gently reminds me, I know the sexologist answers.

Bodies change. Hormones are real. Pain changes desire. Perimenopause can mess with arousal, sleep, mood, tissue integrity, lubrication, orgasm, and the nervous system. Expectations are the enemy of pleasure. Responsive desire is valid. Erotic self-trust can be rebuilt.

I know ALL of that.

I also live in a hypermobile body, which means stability has never been automatic. My muscles, joints, pelvic floor, and nervous system have always required more active support than people can see from the outside. Add hormonal volatility, disrupted sleep, scar tissue, and a body that already has a complicated relationship with tension and release, and pleasure starts requiring the cooperation of my whole system. I can want sex and still need a very particular constellation of conditions: the right music, low light, soft fabric against my skin, privacy, spaciousness, safety, energy, and enough trust in my body to actually soften.

Then there is the ADHD of it all. My brain has never been especially fond of transitions, delayed gratification, inconsistent feedback, or tasks that require twenty invisible steps before the reward shows up. Perimenopause has made that harder. The signal feels fuzzier. The static is louder. My capacity to focus, drop in, stay with sensation, and not spiral into analysis is more fragile than it used to be.

So yes, I know the answers.

I know the language. I know the frameworks. I know the studies, the scripts, the nervous system tools, the lube recommendations, the pelvic floor referrals, the compassionate reframe. I preach the gospel of vaginal estrogen.

Knowing the answers does not make this less scary. That might be the truest thing I can tell you.

The sexologist can know the map, have the tools, understand the research, and still sit in the car crying because her body feels like a stranger.

I have a new website! It’s still in beta so let me know if you have any feedback. You can check it out here: PussyWhisperer.coach

Given my life, my work, and my general erotic résumé, you might think the thing I crave most would be more elaborate. Taboo. Theatrical even. And listen, my Daddy/girl fantasy is still alive and well. That one has tenure. It is still the thing I reach for when I want to get off quickly due to it being so reliable and effective.

But when I want something deeper…when I want a truly satisfying, full-bodied, emotionally nourishing orgasmic experience, what I want most is him. My boyfriend Nick. The man I love. That beautiful romantic bubble we create together. He touches me like there is nowhere else he would rather be. He kisses me like he can’t get enough. His strength makes me feel protected. His attunement gives my body permission to actually let go.

I have some shame around how much this does it for me because it feels boring. Vanilla. Basic. A little embarrassing, honestly. When he asks me what fantasy or desire I want to explore, this is the most truthful and authentic answer. After all this exploration and education and professional devotion to the vast complexity of human sexuality, my body has apparently decided that its current favorite fantasy is “loving boyfriend makes me feel safe and adored.”

Rude, honestly.

He’s willing to go to the most unhinged and adventurous places imaginable when we fantasize together. Multiple cocks at once? Public play? Fluids? Kink? Toys? Drugs? Aliens? Anything I could possibly conceive of to request, he’s game.

But the body wants what it wants. And right now, my body wants devotion. I love the eroticism of being chosen consistently. I crave kind of sex that starts before anyone is naked because the safety is already there. I’m driven wild by warmth, presence, familiarity, emotional depth, and the particular kind of surrender that becomes accessible when I am not bracing for impact.

That does not mean I have stopped enjoying other fantasies. I still love diving into erotic rabbit holes with him, exploring power, stretching the bounds of our imaginations, and the delicious psychological charge of a well-worn fantasy. But when I ask myself what I really crave, what I dream about, what feels most satisfying in the deepest part of me, the answer right now is almost annoyingly simple.

It is him.

Waking up next to him. Kissing him before I fall asleep. Feeling his hand on me and knowing I do not have to perform to be wanted. The ordinary intimacy of being loved in real life, by a real person, in a real relationship that includes tenderness, annoyance, laughter, repair, desire, and showing up again. Right now, my soft places want him.

And maybe that is part of why it feels so vulnerable. Fantasy can be easier to control. Real love asks to touch the places that are less curated. It brings up all the tender, inconvenient stuff: longing, fear, trust, need, and the fervent hope that maybe this time it really is safe to open.

So yes, apparently romance is my current kink. Making love to my boyfriend is the thing that gets me there the deepest. I reserve the right to become a completely different erotic creature next month, because bodies are weird and desire is a moving target. But for now, this is the truth.

My fantasy is him.

In case you missed it, my last piece was about the CNN “rape academy” article and my thoughts on that and the social media backlash as both a survivor and a trauma-trained professional. I didn’t send it out via email because I wanted people to be able to opt-in to reading it rather than having it shoved into their inboxes, but here it is if you have the bandwidth to check it out:

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I’m a survivor of multiple rapes, all of which were by people I knew. Two of them happened while I was intoxicated. I’m also a certified rape crisis counselor and a former victim advocate in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. I was the Sexual and Relationship Violence Prevention Coordinator at West Chester University in grad school. I’ve given hundreds of sexual violence prevention presentations at schools and universities across the US.

So when I say this CNN investigation made me sick to my stomach, I’m not saying that from a safe distance. I know how real sexual violence is. I know how often it gets minimized, misunderstood, or dismissed entirely. I also know that once a story like this starts ricocheting across the internet, precision matters.

In March, CNN reported that a porn site called Motherless.com hosts more than 20,000 videos of so-called “sleep” content, much of it tagged in ways that strongly suggest unconsciousness, sedation, or both. The article also describes comment sections on these videos that link to chat spaces, including a now-defunct Telegram group called “Zzz” with roughly 1,000 members. According to CNN, men in that group shared advice about drugging their partners, talked about dosing, sold substances they claimed would render women unconscious, and in some cases advertised paid livestreams of abuse.

CNN also quoted Sandrine Josso, a French lawmaker who has campaigned to raise awareness about drug-facilitated sexual abuse after she says she was drugged by a former French senator.

She called the groups “schools of violence.”

That’s where the “rape academy” CNN headline came from.

That phrase came from a source in the article. The article also notes that in February 2026, Motherless.com had 62 million visits to the website. This was not evidence that 62 million men were enrolled in, visiting, or actively participating in a single organized training space.

CNN was irresponsible in the way it framed this story. The reporting pulled together several serious but separate threads: Motherless.com hosting “sleep sex” videos, with no clarity around how many of which were filmed non-consensually; user-generated comments on those videos pointing people toward off-platform spaces; a Telegram group of roughly 1,000 men allegedly sharing tactics for drugging and violating partners; the Gisèle Pelicot case; and the accounts of real survivors harmed by people they trusted.

Each of those issues matters. Each one deserves attention. But the headline and framing blurred them together in a way that made panic, distortion, and viral misinformation much more likely. That is not a small editorial failure. When a news organization takes an already horrific story and packages it in the most inflammatory possible way, it does damage twice: first by muddying the facts, then by making the resulting backlash easier to dismiss. Survivors of sexual violence do not need sensationalism. They need accuracy, seriousness, and reporting that can withstand scrutiny.

What stands out to me, from an impact and advocacy perspective, is what happens after a story like this hits social media. People get activated, disgusted, furious, terrified, and the version that spreads fastest is usually the one that hits the nervous system hardest. That is how exaggeration takes over. It is also why media literacy matters. If we care about this issue, we need to care about what the article actually says, because the truth is already horrific. “62 million men visited an online rape academy in one month” is not what the article says, and it is not what the headline says either.

CNN published this investigation on March 26. The large social media backlash seems to have picked up in mid-April, and much of it centered on the same misquoted statistic being repeated from post to post. Snopes has now published a fact check debunking that claim. That matters because the second the facts get distorted, people looking for a reason to dismiss the story get one. They do not have to grapple with the abuse CNN actually documented. They get to point to the inaccurate version, say “Snopes debunked that,” and move on as if the entire underlying story falls apart with it. Then the conversation shifts from sexual violence to whether a viral claim was overstated, and the real harm slips out of focus.

There is another cost to this exaggeration. For survivors scrolling social media, it can make an already horrifying story feel even bigger, murkier, and more impossible to process. To be clear, any number more than zero is WAY TOO FUCKING MANY. The truth is already enough to crack you open. We do not need to turn it into something even more sprawling and shapeless in order to take it seriously. It’s fucking serious.

If you are reading this and feeling sick, enraged, or helpless, that makes sense. The question is what to do with that feeling besides feeding it back into the algorithm.

You can support the people already doing survivor-centered work. Donate to national rape crisis organizations or, even better, your local rape crisis center. Volunteer if you have the capacity for crisis line work, hospital accompaniment, prevention education, or advocacy. Pay attention to laws around non-consensual intimate media, drug-facilitated sexual assault, and platform accountability. Call your representatives. Write the email. Sign the petition. Support the impactful work, not just the public outrage.

And if social media starts to feel like a trauma swamp, step away. You do not have to absorb every detail of a horrible story to prove you care. Reading hundreds of comments will not make you wiser. Fighting with strangers whose brains are running on adrenaline and fury will not help survivors. Mute what you need to mute. Close the app. Text someone who cares about you. Eat something. Go outside. Let your body move through the stress response cycle.

For the men witnessing this, believe survivors. Do not use factual corrections as an excuse to minimize the harm. Call out your friends, colleagues, and strangers when they do problematic shit. Step up.

The facts published in this article are horrific. They are already enough to justify outrage, grief, and action. We need to stay clear about what is factually accurate, because that is how people get supported, how policy gets sharper, and how calls for accountability get directed where they belong. We also need to hold media companies to a high standard when they publish reports of this nature. There is no room for sensationalized, sloppy framing around subjects that are already this highly charged.

For further context, there was a fantastic podcast episode on ICYMI with Kate Lindsay that explains the facts thoroughly.

Here’s a really nuanced conversation between Taylor Lorenz and Kat Tenbarge about the misinformation that went viral and its impact. (There are plenty of valid critiques of Taylor in the world but this episode was solid).

Resources:

RAINN.org (Rape Abuse Incest National Network) which has free anonymous hotlines and peer support text chats for survivors

NSVRC.org (National Sexual Violence Resource Center) which has lots of free resources for survivors, friends, and advocates

For porn literacy and ethical consumption, Ethical Porn for Dicks was written by sex therapist and research Dr. David Ley

SWOPLA (Sex Workers Outreach Project) which has resources and advocacy for consensual sex workers and adult performers

I’m sure part of this has to do with the phenomenon of Millenials not aging in the same ways that our Boomer parents did. Especially those of us who don’t have kids. Vogue published an entire social commentary about this phenomenon that is far more eloquent than anything I might write about it.

I turned 40 on April 21st. I don’t own a home, I lease my car, I don’t have kids, I don’t have pets. I have about 50k of outstanding school loans, no 401k, and minimal savings. Everything I thought 40 meant, in terms of life accomplishments (of the white picket fence variety) and corporate career milestones, doesn’t really apply to me.

So what becomes important when the traditional hallmarks of adulthood aren’t applicable to the life I’ve created? Well, I love to travel and I do a lot of it. So far this year I’ve been in Canada, Jamaica, and Mexico and visited California twice. In June I leave for three weeks in Toronto followed by a couple weeks on the East Coast visiting family and chosen family. At the end of July I’m flying to Florida for a speaking gig. August and September are still not fully settled but there’s a chance I’ll be going to Europe. October I’m flying to El Salvador to teach for Naughty Gym. December I’ll be back in Canada either full time (crossing fingers) or for the holidays and January 2027 I’ll be back in Jamaica again. I love seeing the world. I haven’t seen nearly enough of it yet. Having relatively inexpensive rent and a fully mobile business means it’s easier for me to be gone for weeks at a time. If I’m living out of a suitcase, there’s usually not a ton of extra room for shoes and handbags so I’m less into fashion and more into capsule wardrobes. I’m not acquiring art and expensive furniture for my apartment because I’m not in it long enough to enjoy it and I move a lot. I don’t have pets for the same reason. I love animals but I love being mobile more. I don’t want to have to spend my travel budget on unexpected vet bills or pet sitters. I’ll spend money on massages or spa days because travel is harder on my 40 year old body than it was on my 29 year old body.

I have a hummingbird-like energy when it comes to community so I don’t feel like I have to be in any one place for very long and I can dip in and out of various communities around North America when I get a hankering for a specific type of vibe. I can pop into a cannabis event or sound bath when I’m in LA, or drop by an all women’s play party in SF, or go to a broadway rave in Toronto, or hit a conscious networking event while I’m in Austin.

I have a long distance primary partner (love you Nick!) and we will be transitioning to a nesting partnership later this year when I move to Toronto. I’m looking forward to sharing the responsibilities of household management, cooking, cleaning, running errands etc. and also falling asleep together in our bed at the end of the day. I’ve been flying solo for so long it’s a huge relief to think about being in a mutually supportive living situation with my beloved partner. To be able to take care of each other when one of us is sick. To plan trips together. To be a family.

I’m more aware of mortality than I was in my 20s. Back then many of us felt like we had our whole lives ahead of us. 60+ more years to go! These days, I know that nothing is guaranteed. My best friend Joanne passed away from ovarian cancer at 35. She never gets to be 40. My friend Dean passed away from pancreatic cancer last year at 59. He only got another 19 years after 40. We live in a chaotic and dangerous time. Car accidents, mass shootings, random murders, plane crashes, bombings…sometimes it seems safer to stay inside and lock the doors. But I can’t see the world from my living room. So there’s an element of risk every time I go somewhere. I want to live to 91 like my mentor Betty Dodson. Or 100 like Dick Van Dyke. I want to grow old and die peacefully in my bed surrounded by loved ones. But that feels like less of a certainty these days. It makes me want to do things now, while I can, while my legs and back and arms work. While I’m mostly healthy (other than chronic pain from my hypermobile body).

When I think about dying, I’m overwhelmed by the thought, “not yet! I still have more to do!” So I want to do more of those things sooner so that I feel like if I don’t get the great gift of growing old, at least I’ll know that I did most of the things I wanted to before I checked out of this body. Admittedly, I am a witch and a hippie and I believe in the immortal soul. I think we get multiple lifetimes to learn lessons and have experiences. But we don’t usually remember them lifetime to lifetime, and this is the only go-round I get in this body. So I want to make the most of it. In an Akashic record reading with my friend Dani, she told me that this is Nick’s and my seventh lifetime together. I love that we keep finding each other. I want to find each other many more times in future lifetimes. But in this one, I’ve only had three precious years with him. I waited my whole life to find this man that I am head over heels in love with who actually loves me back and I want another 40+ years with him in this life, in this body.

I don’t know how much of this makes sense. I’m pretty much just jotting down thoughts as they come to me.

I am immensely grateful for my friends and chosen family and loved ones. I am grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had to travel. I am grateful for the notoriety and positive regard I’ve gained in my career. I am grateful to do work that feels deeply meaningful to me.

I’m ready for my work to feel more like a business that reliably makes money and less sporadic the way it has been. To that end, I’m raising my coaching prices and I’m putting more effort into high value client acquisition. As much as I love teaching, it has never been my primary income source and I mostly see it as supplemental income. I’m also planning to put some effort into non-sex ed related business ventures, like hypnosis or getting trained as a sound bath practitioner. I need to be able to get merchant accounts and advertise online without being suppressed or shut down entirely, especially when I move to Canada. This blog is a great way to support my work if coaching isn’t feasible for you. You could also refer clients to me, which is the way I currently get most of my coaching clients (and I am SO grateful for every referral!)

I’m trying to be better to my body, committing to a consistent movement practice and working on building strength and flexibility. Nick gave me an Apple Watch for Christmas so I’ve been watching my activity more acutely and trying to be more intentional about movement. I don’t live in a particularly walkable area, but I’m making the best of it. I’m looking into local yoga or pilates studios because that has always felt more appealing to me than a gym—although I know that strength training is an essential part of mobility in the 40+ years.

I don’t have a tidy ending to this. There wasn’t a grand point. I just wanted to share what’s real for me as I enter this new decade and chapter of my life. I’m in Texas for at least the next 6 months and after that I’m getting out of the US to create a new life for myself with Nick in Canada (and very possibly Bosnia but that’s another story).

I appreciate your support, your love, and your well wishes. I’m still accepting donations for my Italy trip that I’m hoping to schedule in August. I found a language school in Tuscany that offers a program for adults (not just university students) and includes a cooking class component—my dream! The program is $1700 for four weeks not including travel, lodging, or food, so I’m putting all birthday gifts and donations toward that. Here’s my Venmo.

Yep. That.

Because most of us have met that guy. He lets you know he’s Dominant early, often proudly, and usually with the energy of someone who thinks he just handed you backstage passes. Then, almost immediately, he starts listing what he wants to do to your body. Choke you. Slap you. Spit on you. Pin you down. Call you filthy names. “Use” you. “Ruin” you. “Wreck” you.

And I’m sitting there thinking: sir, this is not an erotic identity. This is a list of behaviors.

Maybe some of those behaviors are hot in the right context. Maybe some of them are very hot. That is not the issue. The issue is the way so many men present them as proof of sexual depth, when what they’re often revealing is entitlement, poor relational skills, and a deeply undercooked understanding of power.

Because actual dominance in a BDSM context has very little to do with barging in and declaring what you want to do to somebody. It has to do with what you can hold, track, and negotiate. What responsibility you’re willing to take for the person placing trust in your hands.

That is a very different conversation.

A lot of heterosexual men have picked up the language of BDSM and strapped it onto some pretty old-school misogyny. Same shitty script, shinier branding. Now instead of simply centering their own pleasure, they get to call it being “Dominant,” which sounds much sexier and more evolved than “I expect a woman’s body to accommodate my impulses.”

You can probably hear my eye twitch from here.

And to be clear, I am not clutching pearls over rough sex, sadism, or porn. As a sexologist, I am extremely aware that many people enjoy pain, force play, degradation, objectification, restraint, fear, impact, and all kinds of consensual intensity. Human sexuality is weird as hell. Thank God. I’m not interested in sanding off the edges so everyone can pretend they only want candlelight, eye contact, and tasteful orgasms.

What I am interested in is precision.

Sadism is a thing. Dominance is a thing. Misogyny is also a thing. These are not interchangeable.

Some people genuinely enjoy giving pain. Some people genuinely enjoy receiving it. Some people want power exchange with no pain at all. Some want pain with no ongoing power dynamic. Some want both. Some want one on Tuesdays and the other when Mercury is in retrograde. Fine. Gorgeous. Love that for everybody.

Still, if a man says he’s Dominant and can only talk about what he wants to do to women’s bodies, I get suspicious fast.

Because where is the rest of it?

Where is the negotiation?

Where is the curiosity about what the other person likes, wants, fears, fantasizes about, or absolutely does not want?

Where is the understanding that submission is not just being a body for someone to act out their fantasies on?

Where is the sense of stewardship?

And yes, I mean stewardship. If someone is entrusting you with power, your job is not to treat that like a vanity project. Your job is to handle it with care.

Any Dominant worth a damn knows how to have a conversation before anything happens. They know how to ask questions that go beyond “what are you into?” They know how to listen for nuance. They know the difference between a fantasy someone likes talking about and an experience they want in their actual nervous system. They understand pacing. They pay attention to breath, facial expression, tension, hesitation, arousal, overwhelm, dissociation, fawning, shutdown. They know that a yes can carry layers. They know that trust is precious.

That kind of dominance takes skill.

It also takes restraint, which is not nearly as flashy as swagger, but a hell of a lot more impressive.

And then there’s aftercare, the part a lot of faux Doms seem to regard as optional. But aftercare matters. Not because every scene needs to end with a blanket burrito and a juice box, though honestly I support both. It matters because intensity has effects. Bodies respond. Nervous systems respond. Emotions show up late sometimes. A person who has just taken someone somewhere deep deserves care on the other side of that experience.

Care might look like cuddling. It might look like water, silence, reassurance, tending to marks, helping someone come back into their body, checking in the next day, owning it if something landed badly, or giving space with intention instead of disappearing into the night. The specifics vary. The responsibility does not.

That is why this faux-Dom phenomenon irritates me so much.

Too many straight men want the title without the labor. They want the aura without the ethics. They want to feel powerful, sexually exceptional, maybe even a little dangerous, while skipping the parts that require humility, emotional maturity, and actual reverence for the person in front of them.

And yes, porn illiteracy is part of the problem.

Again, I am not anti-porn. I am anti watching porn like it is raw field footage of how women naturally behave when a man is doing sex correctly. Porn is performance. Fantasy. Entertainment. Sometimes art. Sometimes education-adjacent if you are discerning and bring a functioning brain to the experience. What it is not is a turnkey user manual for human sexuality.

Too many men consume porn with zero critical thinking, absorb the aesthetics of roughness and control, and then march into real life assuming women will be impressed by their willingness to narrate their own sexual aggression. Meanwhile they have no idea how to build safety, read a body, negotiate a scene, or care for someone after intensity. That is like watching a cooking show and declaring yourself a chef because you own salt.

And beneath all of this, there is often a very old and very boring belief system humming away in the background: male desire as directive, female body as terrain.

BDSM can do something far more interesting than that. It can make power visible. It can make desire explicit. It can create containers where people say the quiet parts out loud and build something intentional together. It can be intimate as hell. Sacred, even. Filthy too, obviously. Ideally both.

Which is why I hate seeing it flattened into some dipshit announcing that he is Dominant and therefore entitled to a woman’s body as a canvas for his unexamined impulses.

No thank you.

If you tell me you’re Dominant and your next move is a monologue about what you like doing to women, I’m already taking notes. Not because I’m a prude. Because I’m paying attention.

And the men who actually understand power rarely need to sell it so hard.

If you want to learn more about real kink dynamics that are rooted in authenticity and integrity, check out kink educators like Luna Matatas, Midori, Sunny Megatron and Ken Melvoin-Berg, Lee Harrington, and Mollena Lee Williams-Haas.

If you’re looking for 1:1 coaching, email me and let’s discuss how I can support your sexual growth journey.

I also have a pre-recorded online intro to power dynamics workshop you can access here. As always, Substack readers save 15%!

Usually that “somewhere” is orgasm.

Preferably on cue. Preferably in a way that is obvious enough to count. Preferably during penetration.

As a sexologist, I think this framework has shaped people’s relationship to pleasure more than most of us realize. It trains us to evaluate sex by outcome rather than by the quality of the experience. Did you cum? Did they cum? How many times? How fast?

Even the language gives it away. We talk about ‘finishing.’ We talk about whether someone could ‘get there.’ We talk about ‘making’ orgasm happen.

This way of thinking is so normalized that most people do not even recognize it as a philosophy. It is a teleological model of sex, meaning sex is organized around an end goal. In mainstream culture, orgasm usually gets cast as the goal that matters most.

That mindset has consequences.

People start having sex while mentally hovering above themselves, monitoring, performing, anticipating, worrying. They chase the ending so hard that they lose contact with the middle. They miss the texture of what is actually unfolding because they are busy managing the result.

I see this all the time. People who feel defective because desire does not appear on command. People who assume penetration is the centerpiece and everything else is a prelude. People who feel embarrassed if they do not climax, or if they need more time, or if their body responds in ways that do not fit the script. Couples who think they have a major sexual issue when what they really have is a cramped, overly narrow idea of what “good sex” is supposed to look like.

Emily Nagoski’s work has been incredibly useful here because she helps translate sex science into something people can actually use in real life. Her framework around accelerators and brakes highlights a basic truth that a lot of sexual culture ignores: arousal is shaped not only by what turns you on, but by what shuts you down. Stress, distraction, resentment, exhaustion, body shame, pressure, fear, unresolved conflict, all of that matters. She also popularized the concept of responsive desire, which helps explain why many people do not feel spontaneous desire first and then proceed toward arousal in a tidy straight line. For a lot of people, desire emerges in response to context, touch, safety, affection, erotic stimulation, and the feeling of having enough room to arrive in their own body.

That shift changes the conversation in a useful way. Instead of asking, “Why am I not instantly turned on?” people can start asking, “What helps my body open?” That question tends to lead somewhere far more holistic. It brings in context. It brings in nervous system state. It brings in the reality that bodies are not vending machines where the right sequence of buttons guarantees a predictable payout.

Peggy Kleinplatz’s research on optimal sexuality deserves way more attention in these conversations. In one study based on interviews with people who reported having experienced “great sex,” the major components that emerged included being present, connection, deep erotic intimacy, extraordinary communication, risk-taking and exploration, authenticity, vulnerability, and transcendence.

Orgasm, intense physical sensation, lust, and chemistry showed up too, though in a much smaller role. The study also notes that participants viewed orgasm as neither necessary nor sufficient for great sex, and that “great sex” had very little to do with physiological markers like erections, lubrication, intercourse, or orgasm alone.

That finding matters because it names something many people already know in their bones but have not always had language for. The most meaningful sexual experiences often have a different texture than the one sold to us by mainstream scripts. Presence matters. Feeling met matters. Feeling safe enough to risk honesty matters. Play matters. Curiosity matters. Surrender matters. There is a reason some people remember a deeply connected encounter for years, even if it did not contain the biggest orgasm of their life. There is also a reason some people have technically successful sex that leaves them feeling flat, disconnected, or weirdly absent.

Barbara Carrellas expands the frame in a way I appreciate too. Her Urban Tantra work invites people into a broader erotic vocabulary, one that includes breath, sound, energy, sensation, intention, emotion, fantasy, movement, and expanded states of awareness. Her approach is explicitly inclusive across gender, age, sexual preferences, and abilities, and she describes Urban Tantra as a practice for an expanded community that includes trans and gender nonconforming people, asexuals and aromantics, BDSM practitioners, solo explorers, and people interested in everything from erotic massage to consciously structured quickies.

That kind of expansion matters because goal-oriented sex shrinks the erotic field. It funnels people toward a tiny set of approved markers and then quietly teaches them to disregard huge swaths of experience that may be rich, pleasurable, connective, healing, funny, surprising, or profound.

I want more people asking different questions:

What feels good right now?

What helps me stay present?

What kind of touch feels welcome in this moment?

What am I noticing in my body?

Do I want tenderness, intensity, slowness, taboo, comfort, silliness, reverence, novelty?

What would leave me feeling more connected to myself and to the person with me?

Those questions make room for discovery.

When orgasm becomes the only meaningful metric, the whole encounter can start to feel like a test you’re not prepared for. That pressure does not make people more erotic. It usually makes them more vigilant. And vigilance is rarely the doorway to deep pleasure.

None of this means orgasm is irrelevant. Orgasm is delightful. I support her. Deeply. Enthusiastically. I would simply prefer that orgasm remain part of the landscape instead of becoming a tyrant that rules the entire experience.

Sex gets far more interesting when people stop organizing it around one correct ending.

Then there is room for sex that is playful, connected, hot, tender, surprising, healing, messy, reverent, funny, experimental, or deeply intimate. There is room for pauses. There is room for changing course. There is room for a body that takes time. There is room for one person orgasming, both people orgasming, or nobody orgasming while everyone still feels nourished by what happened.

That, to me, reflects a more mature erotic framework. More honest, too.

Bodies vary. Desire varies. Arousal varies. Relationships vary. Great sex has always been bigger than a scoreboard. The research supports that and clinical experience supports that. Plus plenty of people’s lived experience echos that too.

If you have spent years judging your sex life by whether everybody crossed the finish line, there is another way to relate to pleasure. In my coaching and online workshops, I help people untangle shame, pressure, and inherited sexual scripts so they can build erotic lives with more ease, more honesty, and far more possibility.

But here’s the thing. When we people please, we shapeshift into a version of ourselves we believe is more acceptable, loveable, worthy. We don’t show our true, flawed selves. We create a version of us that we think is least likely to be rejected. And real connection is hard to access that way, because no one is actually connecting with you.

I’ve identified as a people pleaser most of my life. As the eldest daughter of a narcissist alcoholic, shapeshifting into whatever I needed to be to avoid conflict was a tried and true survival strategy. When I started studying complex PTSD, I learned it had another name: fawning. Therapist Pete Walker describes it this way: “Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs, and demands of others. They act as if they unconsciously believe that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences, and boundaries.”

Yeah. That’s me.

So I’ve been working on it. I spent most of my thirties in therapy, plant medicine ceremonies, doing re-parenting work and inner child healing. I thought I’d made real progress. Maybe I had. Then perimenopause pushed me off a hormonal cliff and onto a roller coaster of anxiety, irritability, brain fog, fatigue, and chronic body aches. An identity level shift in my bandwidth. Career questions. And the overwhelm cracked me open in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

I used to believe the markers of trauma healing were straightforward: activation happens less frequently, less intensely, you catch it and recover faster. But I’d missed one—what you default to when your system is completely swamped. Because it turns out that when I’m feeling disconnected from myself and running on fumes, I fall straight back into fawning. And it hits the people closest to me hardest.

Right now, my primary source of human connection is my boyfriend. He’s amazing. He’s also 1,600 miles, a time zone, and an international border away. He can’t hold me or feel the tension in my body or see the dissociation in my eyes. When we’re intimate, it’s usually over text.

Which brings me to the mistake that came to light this past weekend.

I’ve known for a long time that sexual giving is where I hide. It takes zero vulnerability to shapeshift into a partner’s fantasy. I can dirty talk the most elaborate scenario they can imagine. I can roleplay things that don’t turn me on at all and they’d never know, because I can make my voice drip with desire. I was a phone sex operator in 2013. I have an OnlyFans and a SextPanther, and I get paid to become men’s ultimate fantasy. I am genuinely skilled at becoming exactly what they want. But that skill is also a trapdoor.

When I was overwhelmed, depleted, dissociated, and barely keeping it together, my own desire felt too complicated to access. High-maintenance. Elusive. Trying to articulate what I wanted felt like an ask I couldn’t make of myself. So when my boyfriend reached out wanting to connect, I redirected. I’m not really horny right now, babe, let’s just focus on you. I told myself I was being generous. I didn’t want to leave him hanging just because my desire felt too tangled to navigate.

And then I started relying on something else. I found myself sexting with strangers on apps. It was frictionless. I didn’t care what they thought of me. They were available the moment I picked up my phone, and when I was done I could block and delete without a second thought. For the record, Nick and I have an open relationship. I wasn’t breaking any rules. But I was hollowing out the spirit of what we’d built. I was outsourcing my erotic self to strangers rather than letting my partner witness the messy, complicated truth of where I actually was.

Nick noticed quickly. He knows me well. He called it out, lovingly but directly. He didn’t want performative intimacy. He wanted the real thing.

I hadn’t meant to push him away. It felt like being so depleted you’re hungry but too exhausted to cook. You grab some junk food, it dulls the ache, lets you go numb again, but doesn’t actually fill you up.

That realization hit like cold water. Because that’s the cruelest part of fawning in an erotic context. It’s not just self-erasure. It creates a false intimacy. The person who loves you is pouring themselves into a performance. They’re being intimate with an erotic chameleon you made, not with you. And you’re somewhere behind it, alone.

I deleted the apps. More importantly, I recommitted to telling the truth.

Not some grand perfect truth, beautifully packaged and ready for consumption. Just the truth. The halting, inconvenient, mid-process truth. The truth that says, “I don’t know exactly what I want yet, but I want to find it with you.” The truth that says, “My desire feels elusive right now and I need patience, specificity, and room to feel my way into it.” The truth that says, “Sometimes I’d rather perform than be witnessed, because performing is easier and being witnessed is vulnerable as fuck.”

Once I admitted that, something shifted.

The haze started to lift. I stopped treating my desire like a problem I needed to solve privately before bringing it to him. I started being more specific about what I wanted to fantasize about, what actually turned me on in the moment, what kind of pacing or dynamic helped me drop into my body. And in return, I felt more connected to him. Not because I suddenly became uncomplicated, but because I stopped hiding.

That is the real lesson here for me.

When I’m overwhelmed, my instinct is still to shapeshift. To get useful. To become easy to want. To outsource the parts of me that feel too messy, too needy, too hard to explain. But intimacy does not deepen when I make myself more digestible. It deepens when I let myself be known.

Especially then.

This feels especially timely because on 3/9, Nick joined me for a brand new workshop called “Long Distance Lust” all about how to keep things hot when you’re apart, whether temporarily (like traveling for a work trip) or because you’re in a long distance relationship. And we definitely covered how to stay in your authenticity rather than defaulting to performance. You’re still able to access this workshop through the replay video. As always, you my beloved Substack readers get 15% off using this link.

I don’t feel like making plans with friends. I don’t feel like planning my 40th birthday in April. I don’t feel like having phone sex. I don’t feel like going to the gym. I don’t feel like smiling or laughing. Nothing feels very funny right now.

If it was 2003 I’d be leaving angsty cryptic away messages on AIM. Likely Dashboard Confessional lyrics. They were always my go to.

But it’s 23 years later and now I have a Substack so I can be a bit more descriptive and direct in my sharing. So here it is. This is the realness. No sugar coating. No positive spin at the end. Shit feels hard, and I’m having a hard time. If you are too, I see you.

I want to share a workshop that I recorded back in December with Nick. It’s about creating collaborative fantasies and being able to assess and communicate your capacity for play. These skills have been serving me well as I navigate this funk I’m in. I hope they’ll serve you too. As always, y’all get 15% off as my loyal readers. Here’s the link.

That first year, when I finally arrived at the resort and checked into our room after my redeye flight I collapsed into Nick’s arms and cried. A lot. Then I took a quick shower and hauled ass to get to my first team meeting. This was my first time meeting the organizers, Scott and April, and the rest of the team in person (other than my dear friend and colleague Luna Matatas who I introduced to Scott and April immediately after they brought me on as an educator). I’d never been to Jamaica. I’d never been to Hedonism. I’d never been to a lifestyle resort or an event of that size. It was sooooo much new sensory input. My first workshop was the next morning and it was about one of my favorite topics, Dirty Talk. Nick, being the charismatic sales guy that he is, helped me pack the room to its capacity. And not to brag, but I knocked it out of the park. People were raving about that workshop all week. Which was amazing! I was so happy and proud of myself and grateful for the opportunity.

And. I was not prepared for the onslaught of people coming up to me to tell me how much they liked it. Or that they read my book. Or listened to my podcast. Or were excited about my keynote on sex and altered states. I was so grateful for every bit of feedback and all of the kind words. And I was utterly under-resourced and ill-equipped to handle that much sensory input every time I left our room. Imagine being a neurodivergent introvert; on a resort filled with 400+ amazing, loving, outgoing people; and a large percentage of them know who you and and want to talk to you. Nick saw me through multiple sobbing overwhelmed breakdowns in our room that week. And he was great about it—super loving and supportive. But that’s not what he thought his first vacation in a decade was going to look like and I felt bad about that too. Despite my internal struggles, I kept my shit together outwardly because I am a goddamn professional. April and Scott were happy with my performance as a facilitator, and they invited me back the following year. I gratefully accepted.

Last year was a transition year in some ways for me. It was my first time going to Hedonism without Nick, so I was adapting to being a “single girl” for the week. I definitely had a lot of incredible sexual experiences—including my first MMF kiss and double hand job! But I also spent a lot of time that week missing my boyfriend and feeling mildly bummed about solo among a bunch of lovey dovey sexy couples. It was still amazing. I had a blast, especially with my dear friend (and +1) Lotus Lain. And I proved to myself that I could enjoy the time away, connect with my colleagues and the guests, and even nail my hand job demo without my favorite demo cock. (As luck would have it, I found two excellent ones to substitute for him). Once again, I was invited back for the following year. This brings us to 2026.

This year felt different. I showed up fully resourced and regulated, after spending almost two full weeks with Nick in Toronto. I was still deeply bummed that he couldn’t come this year (work obligations got in the way) but I had already survived one year without him so I felt more equipped to do it this year. I hydrated a ton. I limited drinking. I barely smoked weed. I did one tiny mushroom microdose during the Superheroes and Villains party Thursday night and felt expansive rather than anxious (an issue I’ve been having with psychedelics for a while now). I went to bed at reasonable times most nights. I didn’t push myself past my limits. I felt cozy and comfortable with the staff because we’ve been doing this for three years now. I recognized a lot of the attendees and while they were still excited to see me and keen to share their experiences and takeaways from my events, it felt less frenzied. I wasn’t a novelty anymore, I was a fixture. There was more abundance mentality (on all sides) because we all knew I’d be back next year. My workshop and keynote weren’t until later in the week so I didn’t have as many responsibilities on the front half of the week and I was able to pace myself better. I went snorkeling. I watched the sunset. I took a nap when I needed one. I treated myself to a massage. I spent time floating in the water in the sunshine not talking to anyone. I debriefed with Luna a lot. Having someone to connect with who really understands you, how your mind works, and shares a lot of your perspectives feels deeply nourishing. I was also lucky to have invited a fabulous roommate, Mallory of Casual Swinger, who was the big sister and Hedo guru I never knew I needed. That woman has Hedo life dialed in (having been there dozens of times) allowing her to cultivate a lot of super sweet relationships with the resort staff. I learned so much from Mallory!

I went to more of the workshops than I typically do, and was delighted to see April and Scott both grow and flourish in their facilitation skills. I witnessed Luna in her genius as she gave a deeply impactful (no pun intended) keynote on taboo play in kink followed by a hot and sexy “kinky tapas” demo. (No, it had nothing to do with actual food. It’s a metaphor, people!) If you’ve never seen Luna Matatas teach, you’re missing out. She is funny, relatable, wise, practical, and nuanced. Seriously it is an absolute joy to be in her facilitated spaces. Luna and her partner DJ Raw Pulse offered a new event called “Pulse of Pleasure” where he played different songs and she offered prompts to attendees to help them practice presence, attunement, and sensual embodiment. The first song was “Closer” from Nine Inch Nails so I knew we were about to do something HOT.

I even found time for some sexy explorations. I flirted with a wildly sexy couple that I absolutely adore. I had my pussy devoured by a gorgeous woman as I sat at the edge of the nude pool while Kelis’ “My Neck, My Back” was blasted by the wildly talented DJ B Smooth. I got tied up by Luna on Fetish Night and realized that I feel so much more comfortable like that at events because then I don’t have to think about what to do with my hands. (Heyyyy ADHD brain!) I danced with a hottie until the very last song on the last night at the resort and then came back to my room and fell blissfully asleep. I can’t wait to do it all again next year. I told Nick that come hell or high water, he is coming to BBBB in 2027. Hopefully he will also make it to Naughty Gym’s El Salvador retreat with me in October!

Upcoming offerings and events:

Starting February 10th: My signature women’s online intensive, Activating Your Cosmic Pussy, is open for enrollment! This experience is designed for any woman craving more pleasure, confidence, magic, support, and sisterhood in her life. We’ll be meeting on Zoom every Tuesday at 5:30pm Pacific/8:30pm Eastern for seven weeks, plus two additional integration calls in April and May. For my beloved Substack subscribers, I’m extending the early bird $200 off discount if you use this link.

February 15th: Life Changing Pussy Massage at fwb in DTLA 2pm-4pm: ​Hands are the original luxury toy and this workshop is here to level yours up. We'll cover how to touch in a way that builds arousal, how to play with pressure, rhythm, and pacing, and how to communicate what you want without taking you out of the moment. You’ll leave with the tools to create your personal “touch map” for solo play or partnered sex, plus a handful of techniques that can work across different bodies and moods. Tickets can be found here. Use ASHLEY20 to save $20.

February 15th: Sybian Social at fwb in DTLA 6pm-8pm Dome shaped and meant to be straddled, The Sybian is unlike any other toy or machine you’ve seen before. It offers unprecedented vibration from the most powerful motor on the market. People describe their orgasms as out of this world. It is literally a ride like no other. And suitable for all kinds of bodies! Let educator and expert Ashley Manta guide you through all the possibilities that the Sybian has to offer. There will be a live demo and attendees are welcome to take it for a spin. Refreshments and socializing to follow. Tickets can be found here. Use ASHLEY20 to save $20.

February 18th: Talk Dirty to Me at fwb in DTLA 7pm-9pm ​This playful and interactive workshop teaches folks how to tap into their erotic voice and persona—whether it's flirty, commanding, romantic, or downright filthy. Participants will learn how to communicate desires, boundaries, and fantasies with confidence, all while staying deeply connected to themselves and their partners. Includes guided prompts and optional exercises. No previous dirty talk experience required! Tickets can be found here. Use ASHLEY20 to save $20.

February 21st: A CannaSexual Couples Soiree 2pm-4pm at The GH Creative Studio in conjunction with The Pottery in Los Angeles. Details to follow.

But first, the gift that deserves its own paragraph: Nick went to Lush (my favorite store) by himself to buy my Christmas present. If you’ve ever been in a Lush during the holidays, you know that is an act of devotion, because it’s basically a rainbow-colored scent orgy where you can lose your sense of time and possibly your will to live. He emerged victorious with a mountain of bath bombs, and since he also has a massive soaking tub that feels like it was designed by someone who understands the spiritual importance of being submerged in hot water, it turned into the most decadent version of winter self-care I’ve had in a long time.

The rest of the trip was exactly the kind of holiday I didn’t know I was craving: the kind where you do normal life things and somehow they feel wildly romantic simply because you’re not doing them alone.

A house with two grown-ups in it

One of the quiet joys of this trip was the feeling of having two adults in the house, not in a performative “look at us being domestic” way, but in a deeply practical, satisfying way where you’re cooking and cleaning and planning and living, and you’re not holding every single detail in your brain like you’re the only person assigned to keep the household running.

I don’t think I fully appreciated how much solo adulthood trains you to be ON all the time until I was in a home where the load was shared without anyone keeping score, and it made everything feel softer, like my body could finally stop bracing for the next thing.

Extended family, and that surprisingly tender feeling of “I belong here”

This was also the trip where I met more of Nick’s extended family, the wider circle of people who shaped him and who love him, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t have an inner committee running possible social scenarios in the background beforehand, because I absolutely did.

But it went beautifully. It felt warm. It felt easy. It felt like I could be myself without needing to audition for a role.

There’s something incredibly grounding about being welcomed into someone’s world in a way that doesn’t ask you to shrink or over-function, and it gave me that specific kind of steadiness that comes from realizing this isn’t just a vacation relationship anymore, it’s a shared life that we are actively weaving together.

Crochet lessons, cookie chaos, and focaccia magic

Early in the midst of all the holiday bustle, I taught one of Nick’s sons how to crochet. It was adorable and also funny in that way where you’re trying to explain a skill that your hands understand but your mouth struggles to translate, like, “Okay, now yarn over, then pull through…no, the other loop…yes, that’s it…it’s supposed to look weird at first…welcome to fiber arts, kid.”

We baked cookies and focaccia together too, and I swear there is something about baking with a kid of the man you love that hits a very specific emotional frequency, because it’s collaborative and messy and sensory and low-stakes, and it creates this sweet little pocket of togetherness that you can actually feel in your body. Also, fresh focaccia is basically edible reassurance, and I will not be taking questions at this time.

Snow: the workout and the comedy special

There was snow, real snow, the kind that changes the sound of the world and makes everything look briefly enchanted, until you remember it also requires labor.

I helped shovel snow, which I’m filing under both exercise and character building, and I drove Nick’s SUV in the snow, which made me feel like a capable grown-up for about ten minutes before I remembered that winter roads do not care about my Pennsylvania “I’ve driven in snow before” confidence.

Still, I did it. I didn’t hit any cars or people. I’m counting it as a win.

Wicked nights: living room edition and theater edition

We watched Wicked with his older son, which felt like one of those small but meaningful bonding moments where you’re suddenly singing along to the same songs, and then later Nick took the four of us to see Wicked: For Good in the theater, which felt so sweet and wholesome.

I loved both experiences for different reasons, because the home watch had that cozy intimacy of being folded into their normal rhythm, and the theater had that collective magic of being in a room with other humans who are all feeling something at the same time, which will always get me, because I will forever be a theater kid at my core. And yes, I sobbed at the end. Again. (That was my fourth time seeing it in theaters and then I bought it for home streaming the day it was released because OF COURSE I DID).

Nick’s anniversary gift: time and attention to detail

I need to talk about Nick’s anniversary present because it genuinely wrecked me in the best way.

He gathered rocks to represent each of the visits we’ve had over the past three years and painted them by hand with dates and small details from each one, and I don’t even know how to describe what it feels like to be loved with that level of specificity, because it’s not flashy, it’s not generic, it’s not something you can click-and-ship.

It’s proof that our time together lives in him. I cried, obviously, because I’m me, and also because being remembered that precisely does something magical.

Couch snuggles, cooking together, and a full-on Game of Thrones binge

We cooked together a lot (well, he cooked a lot and I sat in the kitchen with him watching him weave ingredients into flavorful feasts for the four of us).

We also snuggled on the couch and binge-watched Game of Thrones. I’d read the books and seen the show multiple times, but this was his first real watch. It was handy because I got to be the GoT wikipedia for him, explaining characters and houses and how they’re related and drawing plot connections that a first-time watcher might otherwise miss. I live for that shit. Also we decided that Tormond Giantsbane is his alter-ego.

Dim sum, date nights, and my growing love affair with Toronto

We went for dim sum with his younger son, which felt like one of those simple moments that’s also a marker, because you’re not just spending time near someone’s kids, you’re spending time with them, creating memories that aren’t forced or performative, just ordinary, enjoyable connection.

And Toronto continues to pull me in. I love the neighborhoods. I love the food. I love how alive it feels without being frantic. I love the winter light. I love that I can feel myself expanding there, like my system is recognizing a future that fits. On New Years Eve we got to go to X Club, a lifestyle club that has a massive dance space, a pool, saunas, and even a legit glory hole. We also got to party with our good friends Mickey and Mallory of Casual Swinger and meet Jake, the owner of X Club. I’m looking forward to some cool collaborations later this year once I’m in Toronto full time.

The bigger truth is this: Canada is becoming my home sometime in late summer, and even writing that sentence still lands in my body like a warm shock, because it’s exciting and tender and a little scary in the way all real life changes are, but it also feels right.

The “nuclear generator” plot twist

Now, about that human space heater situation.

Nick has been calling me a “nuclear generator,” which, honestly, has been accurate, because I’ve been waking up hot, running hot, radiating like I’m personally responsible for heating the entire province.

Reader: it is perimenopause.

Apparently I am now in that threshold era where you’re young enough that people don’t assume it, but old enough that your hormones are like, “Surprise! We’re improvising now,” and suddenly you’re doing the mental math of “Is this a fever, or is my endocrine system going on strike?”

So yes, I’m paying attention. I’m tracking. I’m reading books. I’m adjusting. I’m slathering on vaginal estradiol. I’m also laughing, because if I don’t laugh I will start screaming at my dwindling egg reserves.

The takeaway, before I go take another post-travel nap

This trip gave me sweetness and clarity in the same breath.

It reminded me what partnership can feel like when it’s safe and easy and still alive, it showed me my place in Nick’s world with more depth, and it made the future feel less like a concept and more like a life that’s actively unfolding in front of me.

It also gifted me a new layer of self-knowledge that I did not request, but apparently needed, which is honestly the theme of being a woman in her late thirties if we’re being real.

So here’s to Christmas in Canada, to snow and bread and kids learning to crochet, to theater nights and couch nights, to love that pays attention, to a tub that deserves its own fan club, and to my hormones, who are clearly making decisions without inviting me to the meeting.

In the next couple months I’ve got a lot brewing, and the rhythm is very much “cozy family holiday” into “Ashley on the move.” After Canada I headed straight to Jamaica for a week, and that trip deserves its own post, partly because it was wild and wonderful and partly because I came home sick and have been living that glamorous cough-and-congestion lifestyle ever since. More on that soon.

Before that story drops, here’s what’s next on the calendar:

My Activating Your Cosmic Pussy intensive starts 2/3. Early bird pricing is happening now, and if you’ve been thinking about joining, this is a good moment to say yes and get yourself enrolled.

I’ll be in Los Angeles for two in-person events around Valentine’s Day organized by my friend and colleague Tristan Taormino at fwb in Downtown LA:

Sunday 2/15: Life Changing Pussy Massage (with live demo!) 2pm-4pm

Wednesday 2/18: Talk Dirty to Me 7pm-9pm

Here’s where you can register: https://luma.com/fwbsocial?k=c

Use coupon code ASHLEY20 to take $20 off.

Warm attention. Eye contact. Playful banter. Intellectual engagement. The kind of engaged presence that says, “I see you.”

Despite these seemingly obvious signals, I still felt unsure but simultaneously too nervous to ask for clarification. What if he’s just being polite and I make it awkward?

Eventually, he said it plainly: “Hey, I’m really interested in you.” Which was hot. And it made me realize I do this a lot. Especially with people I feel immediately attracted to.

My protector parts are loud. So I sat back and took stock today and identified ones that were the loudest that night:

First up: the rejection-avoidance protector. “Don’t ask. If you name it and you’re wrong, you’ll be exposed.” This part would rather live in ambiguity than risk the sting of a clear no. Uncertainty feels safer than clarity, even when it quietly drains the joy out of a moment.

Then came the mind-reading protector. “Figure it out perfectly first, then act.” A classic overfunctioner. It wants certainty before it will let me move. The problem is that flirting is, by its very nature, unclear. That’s the point.

Under both of those was a shame-sensitized part that experiences embarrassment as danger, not discomfort. For this part, getting it wrong doesn’t feel like “oops.” It feels like threat. Heat in the face, tight throat, nervous system on high alert.

And of course there was the out-of-my-league protector cameo. “If he’s too attractive, his no might feel like a verdict about my desirability.” This part is catastrophizing what it might mean about me if he’s not interested.

None of these parts are villains. They’re protective. They learned their job a long time ago. They’re just not great at reading the room in real time.

This pattern doesn’t only show up in dating, either.

The same internal machinery can block friendships, collaborations, and professional opportunities. You don’t send the message. You don’t apply. You don’t pitch. You don’t name what you want. You wait for more proof, more certainty, more “signs” that you’re wanted.

A lot of high-achieving women know imposter syndrome in their professional lives, then feel surprised when it shows up in intimacy. We can be competent, skilled, and socially fluent, and still get wobbly about receiving desire.

Sometimes the destabilizing moment is being wanted. Being wanted makes you visible. Visibility asks for vulnerability. Protectors don’t love that.

Here’s the part that mattered: I felt the impulse to ask, directly, “Are you flirting with me?” Simple. Human. Clear. And my system tried to shut it down.

“Don’t ask.”
“Wait until you’re sure.”
“If you’re wrong you’ll look stupid.”

When he finally named his interest, I didn’t only feel relief. I felt how hard I’d been working inside myself. I was so busy trying to avoid embarrassment and “get it right” that I almost missed the actual connection.

So let’s talk about how to interrupt this pattern without turning it into another reason to shame yourself.

Name what’s happening—it’s a tool for unblending. “Rejection-avoidance is here.” “Mind-reading is online.” “Shame alarm is going off.” That tiny step creates space. You stop being the part and start noticing the part.

Acknowledge the intent. “I get what you’re trying to do.” “You’re trying to protect me.” Nervous systems soften faster when you don’t make them bad or wrong for doing their perceived job.

Downshift your body before you try to be brave. Longer exhale than inhale. Drop your shoulders. Feel your feet. Unclench your jaw. Embarrassment is a body experience, so meet it where it lives.

Replace mind-reading with a micro-ask. Keep it small, flirty, and real. “I can’t tell if you’re being charming or flirting, and I’m hoping it’s flirting.” Or, “I’m enjoying you. Are you feeling this too?” You’re inviting clarity, and practicing boldness.

Build embarrassment tolerance on purpose. If embarrassment equals danger in your system, you’ll keep choosing silence. The goal is learning that awkward won’t kill you. A simple mantra helps: “Embarrassment is a sensation and it’s only temporary.”

Have one go-to line for when you freeze. Don’t rely on your brain to improvise while your body is in threat response. Borrow a script. “I’m a little nervous, but I want to be direct.” Or, “My brain is buffering, but I like you.” Honest, disarming, and it keeps you in the game.

If you’re someone who’s used to doing things well, you might treat intimacy like a performance review. Like you have to earn desire by being perfect, polished, and unbothered. You don’t. Sometimes the most powerful move is letting yourself be a little human, then speaking anyway.

My signature online program, Activating Your Cosmic Pussy, is now open for enrollment. AYCP is a 7 week deep dive into sexual empowerment, sex magick, and sisterhood, starting in February. Payment plans are available. To learn more and secure your spot with your 20% Early Bird discount (valid until 1/10), visit this link.

Today, I’m breaking down the greatest hits: the Brazilian jiu-jitsu/martial arts comparison, the “everything is bad for you” deflection, the proud nihilist (“bring on the brain damage”), and the belief that rarity equals safety.

“But choking is really common in Brazilian jiu-jitsu”

Yes. And skydiving is common too. That doesn’t mean you and your boyfriend should jump off the roof together.

Chokeholds in BJJ happen between trained athletes in a controlled setting with coaches, mats, rules, taps, and safety protocols. Everyone knows the mechanics of what’s happening. Everyone’s sober. Everyone’s focused.

And even then, injuries still happen: cervical strains, strokes, vocal cord damage.

Now compare that to sex: dim lighting, adrenaline, bodies moving unpredictably, people trying to stay in a vibe rather than monitor each other’s neurological status. Most folks apply pressure in the wrong place anyway because porn shows hand-over-the-front-of-the-throat instead of proper martial arts techniques.

So no. The existence of skilled martial artists does not make choking safe in bed. If anything, it highlights how risky it is when you don’t have their training.

“Everything is bad for you. Social media is bad for you”

This is such a wild comparison.
You can doomscroll your way into anxiety. You cannot doomscroll your way into accidental death.

Saying “everything is bad” is just a smokescreen to avoid looking at a specific risk. It’s the conversational equivalent of shrugging and whispering, “la la la I can’t hear you.”

When someone waves it off with “everything’s dangerous,” they’re not actually debating safety. They’re dodging the part where they have to look at themselves and ask why this particular risk feels inscrutable to them.

“I don’t care, I like it. Bring on the brain damage”

This one usually comes laced with bravado. It’s a protector part pretending not to care. Underneath that is something more honest:

“It gives me intensity and power and surrender and I don’t know how to get those feelings without it.”

People don’t cling to the act. They cling to the experience they associate with the act. And the good news is that intensity, power play, and melt-you-open surrender are not exclusive to oxygen restriction.

We can get to those places without gambling with your life or brain health.

“It’s probably fine if it’s rare or only once in a while”

This is the “I only play Russian roulette on holidays” defense.

A single strong squeeze in the wrong spot can still tear a carotid artery. One moment of airway compression can still fracture cartilage. One faint can still mean a head hitting a nightstand on the way down. Frequency doesn’t change the nature of the risk.
It just spreads it out.

So what do you do instead?

If choking has been part of your erotic script, you don’t need to cut off the entire tone and texture of those scenes. You can keep the intensity without compromising your brain’s relationship with oxygen.

Here are safer, neck-respecting alternatives that create similar psychological and somatic effects:

1. Face-holding with intentional pressure

Use the cheeks and jawline instead of the throat.
This creates dominance, containment, and that “held” feeling without touching vital structures.

2. Hair control (root-level, not ponytail yanking)

Grabbing hair close to the scalp offers power dynamics and body-guiding without spinal strain.

3. Chest or shoulder pressure

A hand placed firmly on the upper chest or shoulders mimics the sensation of being “pinned” without constricting airflow or blood flow.

4. Wrist pinning or guided movement

Being physically guided or gently restrained hits the same mental circuitry around surrender and control. Watch out for that radial artery though.

5. Using verbal dominance to create intensity

Tone, pacing, and instruction can flip someone’s nervous system into the exact charged space people seek through choking.

6. Temperature play

Cold hands on the chest or warm breath near the ear can create shock, arousal spikes, and intensity without vascular risk.

7. Safe breathplay that isn’t airway or carotid restriction

Think edging someone’s breath rhythm through pacing cues: “hold,” “let go,” “breathe for me” while they control the mechanics themselves.

8. Energetic domination and surrender

For many people, the psychological rush matters more than the mechanical act. You can create the same power-exchange landscape without touching the neck at all.

None of these are risk-free, because humans aren’t risk-free machines. But these options avoid the two things most likely to cause strokes, brain injury, and death: blocking blood to the brain and blocking air to the lungs.

Bottom line

Choking became normalized fast: faster than our collective understanding of its risks. People defend it because it’s woven into their erotic templates, not because it’s physiologically sound. Your desire for intensity isn’t wrong. Your desire for surrender isn’t wrong.

Your neck, however, is not a sex toy.

And if you want the deep dive on rewiring erotic templates without losing heat or kink, that’s coming.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Nick and I sext a lot. It’s one of the cornerstones of our connection and one of my favorite ways to keep things sexy even though we live 1400 miles from each other. (For now).

I got my period yesterday, after one of the most unpleasant lead ups I can remember. I don’t get the bitchy sort of PMS. I get (extra) tired, anti-social, crampy, more prone to crying, and (most recently) full body aches. That last one is the most annoying. Two nights ago I realized that my neck and jaw were painful to the touch. I thought perhaps I slept on my neck wrong, took some ibuprofen, and went to sleep. I woke up the next day and found that same tenderness-to-touch sensation had spread from my neck and jaw to my entire head and scalp, shoulders, chest, abdomen, and hips. Baffled, I started reading up on this particular set of symptoms and quickly ran across something called “period flu.” Apparently a lot of people experience fatigue, weird body aches, and even things like nausea and GI upset leading up to their periods.

As an aside, you might be sitting here thinking “Ashley you’re a sexologist how did you not know this was a thing?” and the honest answer is, since I don’t have kids and didn’t get a period for the 13 blissful years I had IUDs, I never paid much professional attention to the reproductive portion of sexual health knowledge. I knew enough from working at Planned Parenthood to understand all the different birth control options and STI prevention tools, but if you asked me to explain the finer points of ovulation or pregnancy to you, I’m pretty useless. It was never really applicable to me personally so I didn’t spend much time focused on it professionally. Similarly, I never really focused on perimenopause or menopause because it wasn’t relevant to my life. Well now I both menstruate and am inching ever closer to the beginning of my perimenopause journey as I approach my 40s, so I’m learning more and more each day, including this bit about period flu.

Back to my main story. So here’s the context. Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my friend Dean’s death. Today is the ten year anniversary of my grandmother’s death (which was extra significant because she was my last living grandparent). The air in my periphery is heavy right now. So take that, plus the “period flu,” and add it all to my ambient stress about money and general horror at what’s going on in the US, and you find me pretty much perpetually dissociated from my body. So that’s what’s going on in the background as the following unfolds…

I woke up this morning to a lengthy message from Nick outlining his latest fantasy scenario and a second telling me he loves me. Good start. I pinged him to let him know I was awake and he asked if I’d cum yet today. I said that I had not. He asks if I’d like to. My immediate instinct is “no, I just woke up and I have way too much on my mind to try to get into that headspace” but I know how much he likes helping me cum so I shrugged to myself and typed “we can try.”

He proceeded to send me a menu of possible scenarios that might be appealing to me. I appreciated him casting a wide net and said that the thing I’d most like is just him being him and me being me. He started down a slightly different path and about eleven paragraph-long messages in, I asked him to pause. (The man is a prolific sexter. I call him the Shakespeare of sexting). But he wasn’t hitting the mark and as each text got further away from what I wanted, I started to feel a crushing weight in my chest. I was shaming myself for being critical and trying to figure out how to change directions without hurting his feelings. He had good intentions, after all, he was just not hitting the right buttons. I told him my body was not cooperating (true) and that we should just focus on him/his pleasure. To his credit, he followed up, asking if any of what he’d sent was on the right track. Moment of truth. Do I tell him that he was totally off base, or do I blame my body and move on?

As I am trying to practice what I preach as a coach, I opted to be transparent. I told him what wasn’t working for me.

His response was excellent: “I’m glad you said so. Can I try to recapture?”

We went on a bit more but then this very important thing happened:

That was big. But this was what made me cry:

Fuuuuck. The reassurance that this is what he wants. The encouragement to be a “high maintenance Barbie girlfriend who makes her boyfriend work to make her cum” was a revelation. Truly. That was the thing that made me sob.

Wait, hold on. You want me to be high maintenance? You want me to make you work for it? I don’t have to just be easy and agreeable and friction-free and shapeshift myself into being your fantasy girl?

The irony is, Nick has never made me feel that way. All of these beliefs and patterns pre-date him. These are old, deep wounds. And thanks to Nick, I’m starting to heal them. Also, not to toot my own horn, but naming that “the part of me that says “I’m too much work” is screaming right now” was an IFS slam dunk. I named the manager part that was protecting the exile part of me that was scared of being rejected and abandoned. Rather than speaking from the point of view of that manager part, I was able to speak FOR it from my adult brain (or what Dick Schwartz calls “the Self”).

We went on to have a hot and tender sexting conversation that was all about him as my boyfriend making sweet passionate love to me as his girlfriend and telling me he loved me and wanted me throughout, and I had an explosive 30 second long orgasm (with a few tears mixed in) that I sent him in an audio clip.

Giving is often where I hide. It’s not vulnerable for me to give. It’s terrifyingly vulnerable for me to receive. In receiving, I’m being seen and witnessed. I am asking for what I want and asking for things to be different if they’re not hitting the right buttons. I’m fully present with my own experience. I’m so grateful to finally have a partner who is willing to support me in my vulnerability and hold me in my fears, tears, and struggle. Someone who loves me more when I’m “high maintenance.”

I’d love to hear if this resonated with you. If you’ve ever “gone along to get along” or shapeshifted to try to put the focus on the other person.

If you want to work on that with a coach who is skillful at having these difficult and transformative conversations, I’d love to work with you. Email me and let’s set something up.

Let’s start with professionally. I spent a decade building and growing my brand, CannaSexual®. I even had it trademarked. At events, people wouldn’t always know my name, they’d just come up and say, “You’re CannaSexual®, right?” And I didn’t mind. I am CannaSexual®. CannaSexual® is me.

Except… not as much these days.

There are a couple of big reasons. One, I live in Texas now, so it’s much harder to get quality California product, except when I go back to visit. But the more identity-threatening reason is that my relationship with cannabis has dramatically shifted over the last few years.

I still swear by suppositories and topicals for pain, especially when I’m crampy during my cycle or sore after a heavy gym day. It still helps with sensation during playtime and reduces my pain with penetration (although it no longer eliminates it, which I’ll come back to in the personal identity section). But if I smoke more than a few puffs, or take a teeny tiny pinhead dab, or more than 5 mg of an edible, odds are good my body will feel so uncomfortable that I start having a panic attack.

Yes, me. The person who used to take a huge dab and get on stage to give a talk. The one who would pop a 50 mg edible and get on a flight. Not anymore.

And it’s not just cannabis. My relationship with psychedelics has also dramatically changed. Every time I try to have a psychedelic experience, no matter how low the dose (even a microdose), I feel so physically uncomfortable in my body that I have a panic attack. I don’t get the colors and shapes and “whoaaaa” experience like I used to, either.

Instead, I feel flushed, nauseated, dizzy, sweaty, my heart starts pounding, and next thing you know I’m just praying for it to be over. Even from a minimal dose.

True story: I had a 0.3 g microdose in Jamaica in January and had a panic attack on the beach. What the actual fuck?

I’ll be the first to admit that my anxiety maxed out during the pandemic and has never really gone back to what I’d call “manageable.” Since I don’t want to take benzos (meds like Xanax or Ativan), I’ve been forced to raw dog my way through it with grounding exercises, breathing, and cold showers.

I also have a hunch that being on GLP-1 medication has impacted the way my body reacts to things like cannabis and psychedelics, but there’s zero science to back that up.

I was talking to a good friend over the weekend and she gave me some hard-to-hear honesty:

“I don’t think anyone really knows what you DO anymore.”

Ouch. But also… maybe true?

I don’t feel like I have a cohesive “this is what I’m known for” thing anymore, other than possibly hand sex or dirty talk, and that’s not particularly niche in the sexuality professional world. I’ve been doing a lot of cool things in my coaching work, but I don’t know if people immediately think of me as a sex coach when my name comes up.

All of that, plus fewer signups for workshops and lower attendance at in-person events, has me wondering what I need to do to become relevant again.

Then there’s the personal identity crisis.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a sexual being. I started masturbating in elementary school. By middle school I was having cyber sex with strangers in chat rooms. I was sexually active all through high school after a sexual assault in 8th grade. My relationship with sex was unhealthy for a long time, but I started sorting it out in my mid-to-late 20s.

By 30, I was having amazing sex at least 2–3 times per week and growing into my personal power as a sex witch, pleasure priestess, and energetic adventurer. I wrote article after article about what I was learning from all that good sex. I was inspired by my experiences and wanted to talk about them loudly and often.

I was named “America’s High Priestess of Pleasure” when I was on the cover of Sexual Health Magazine in 2019. I was named Sexpert of the Year in 2020, the same year I published my book on sex and cannabis. I was featured on three different TV shows talking about the wonders of sex and cannabis and bragging that I was having magnificent sex for hours and hours.

The sex was amazing back then. The relationship was not.

The person I was having all that mind-blowing sex with (Ben) was detrimental to my sense of self. I was stuck in an emotionally abusive relationship with someone I couldn’t get enough of sexually, and I was afraid that if the relationship ended, I’d never have great sex again.

I was wrong about that part, thankfully.

I’m three years out of that toxic relationship and I’ve found an incredible partner (Nick) who treats me like a queen and fucks me even better than my ex. The problem is that we’ve been long distance for the entire three years we’ve been together. We make it work with regular FaceTimes, text messages, and visits every three months or so.

But only having great sex every three months is hard for me. And because I’ve always had pain with penetration due to a tense pelvic floor and a history of trauma, and Nick’s cock is legitimately massive (seriously like 6.5 inches around), AND we only see each other every three months—sex often hurts. We’re so excited to have sex after being apart for so long that we sometimes forget to go slow and do a ton of warmup, which is what I need to stretch those muscles after 12 weeks of non-use. So now even when I finally get to have sex with an incredibly talented partner, I still can’t fully enjoy it. I’m deeply grateful that Nick is so supportive and kind and really wants to honor my body and maximize my pleasure. That makes a huge difference when we’re together and in the quality of conversations we have when we’re apart.

I know that sex more often in between would help, and we’re in an open relationship so it’s fully permissible, but there’s a problem with that too. I’ve tried dating local guys, in both California and Texas, and I’ve had a series of bad experiences: two significant consent violations, one instance of stealthing, and at least half a dozen men who have wrapped their hands around my neck without my consent.

Those experiences have left me reluctant to keep going out with men from apps. The truth is, I’m honestly afraid to date at this point, because no matter how clear and direct I am about my boundaries (and I am), they keep getting disregarded.

I masturbate a lot. That helps. I’ve developed some great edging techniques when I want to extend my time in pleasure meditation. But masturbation doesn’t fulfill my touch needs. It doesn’t help me rebuild my trust in men.

And it doesn’t give me the kinds of experiences that inspire me to write and speak about my adventures.

So here I am, having an identity crisis personally and professionally. I don’t have a tidy feel-good ending to give you. This is just real, and I want to be real with you.

If you feel called to share what you think my “thing I’m known for” is, feel free to leave it in the comments below, or email me.

If this resonated with you on any level, I’d love to hear about that too.

If you want to support my work as I navigate these twists and turns, I’m offering 25% off all my online replay classes from now until Cyber Monday.

I applied the discount already so all you have to do is click the links:

Dirty Talk and Sexting

Energy Sex for the Skeptical and the Woo

Mouth Magic (BJs and Pussy Eating)

Intro to Kink and Power Play

Secrets of the Pussy Whisperer

Secret to Life Changing Hand Jobs

What NNN really teaches people

Not pleasure literacy. Not consent skills. Not how to read your body. It teaches rules. Perform the rules and you’re “good.” Break the rules and you’re weak. That kind of score-keeping pushes folks toward secrecy and anxiety, and away from embodied, ethical sexuality.

If you personally like taking a short break from porn or masturbation because it helps you notice habits, cool. Autonomy is sexy. The trouble is when a meme becomes a morality play.

What the research folks keep saying

A lot of NNN claims lean on shaky biology. You’ve probably seen the “abstinence boosts testosterone” promise. The evidence doesn’t support those sweeping claims. Clinical psychologist Dr. David Ley has written extensively about how abstinence-cures and “sex/porn addiction” frames aren’t backed by solid science and can increase shame instead of health. His books, including “The Myth of Sex Addiction” and “Ethical Porn for Dicks” are must-reads.

Dr. Eric Sprankle has a delightful post that makes the rounds this time of year:

His book, “DIY: The Wonderfully Weird History and Science of Masturbation” has an entire section devoted to the history of No Nut November. Further, Dr. Sprankle reminds us that NNN dovetails with “Movember” when men are encouraged to grow their facial hair to raise awareness about prostate cancer. The irony is that frequent ejaculation has shown to have protective properties for the prostate, so abstaining actually puts you at greater risk. A Harvard Study found “men who ejaculated 21 or more times a month enjoyed a 31% lower risk of prostate cancer.”

Why shame backfires

Shame disconnects you from your body. It narrows your erotic options to “approved” routes, which kills curiosity and communication. It also spikes your nervous system, and arousal does not love anxiety. If your sexuality feels like a test you can fail, your system will start studying for avoidance.

A better November: body, curiosity, pleasure

If you want a month-long focus, try one that nourishes you. Pick one or two from the list. Make them yours.

1) Five-percent rule
Once a day, ask: what would make my body feel 5% safer or 5% more turned on right now? Softer lighting. Slower breath. More lube. Music. A blanket. Small shifts count.

2) Breath + pelvic floor reset
Two times a day, take ten slow belly-and-rib breaths. On each exhale, imagine your pelvic floor softening. Relaxation supports arousal and orgasm.

3) Sensate dates
Ten minutes, non-genital touch only. Explore pressure, speed, and texture on scalp, neck, inner arms, calves. Notice what changes your arousal, then share about it with your partner.

4) Edging for data, not drama
If edging feels good, ride a few arousal waves and rest periods. Notice what allows you to hover pleasantly vs. what tips you into frustration. If it dysregulates you, skip it.

5) Erotic media audit
Mute shame-based sexuality content on social media. Follow educators who normalize pleasure, consent, and anatomy. Your feed shapes your beliefs as much as your friends do.

The takeaway

Your sexuality is a relationship with your body. If you want a November intention, choose one that grows curiosity, consent, and pleasure. You deserve sex that feels good and does good for your nervous system.

For more fun things to do this November, treat yourself to my recently updated Art of Dirty Talk online course. I raised the price when I updated the material, but as a Substack reader, you get access for the original price of $69.

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