However, it’s important to know why you’re writing about specific sexual experiences. Is it to process trauma? To share the meaning to you of a profoundly satisfying sexual experience? To portray accurately that part of a love relationship and how wonderful or disappointing it was at a particular moment? To highlight the politics and power of sex and how that plays out at the individual level?

Ask yourself these questions when thinking about writing sexual experiences in memoir:

1. Why is it important for you to include this sexual material in your memoir? What is essential about it for you or a person you are portraying?

2. How do you keep worry at bay regarding who might read this material and how that person would feel about it? Your mother, or a sexual partner you had or a sexual abuser you experienced and what consequences may occur when you reveal that.

3. What do you want the reader to take away from what you’ve written? It may be to feel validated, to feel seen, to be more self-accepting or empowered. It may be to hear things rarely said and know that how they function sexually is acceptable too.

4. How can you reassure yourself that what many people think should be kept private is important to reveal? That sexuality is an essential part of life, and in our culture often too hidden, so that we don’t have enough language to discuss it.

5. What kind of language best suits your purposes? Do you want to use correct, anatomical words? Slang words that are in more frequent use and have a certain power or edge? Explicit description of what happened vs. more elliptical and artful language? Each choice offers something different to the reader, and gives a different message.

6. How will you choose which aspects of sexual experience are important to include in order to portray the personal story you wish to tell? Would that story be diminished and less interesting it if it left out important sexual details?

Thinking carefully about these issues can help you refine what you wish to show in your story and why. Then it’s important to be brave in sharing sexual details because without them some of the power of your story will be diminished. It’s a gift to readers to learn that so much of what they thought was their own private and perhaps shameful experience is in fact often universal and we can’t know that without someone else being willing to speak it.

May the comfort of learning you’re perfectly acceptable stay with you.

My friend, Liz Scott, has written a great book about death—funny, fascinating and smart (You’re Going to Die But Not Me) and it has gotten me thinking about my own death, which in my age category reads “any time now…”.

Who knows? I could live another 10 to 15 years, or I could look the wrong way on a busy street and be killed by a speeding car. At this moment I’m alive and well. That’s all I know about my future fate. Which brings me to my topic: How do you embrace the moment? How do you make the most of every day, even if it’s deciding to do nothing except savor a ripe peach while watching a rerun of Seinfeld?

Here’s something I learned from my husband, who was hilarious and who celebrated the absurd: laughing is essential to a good life. That is him in the photo—a man in a dog suit because when I met him, he was producing and acting in a Saturday morning kids’ show on CBS.

I discovered right at the beginning of our 33-year marriage that laughter isn’t the frosting on a cake. It’s the very engine that creates perspective and joy. Bob, who sadly died too soon, used humor to get through the tough times in his life. His humor had insight and truth, and a way of softening anger in others. Many was the time I was angry with him, and he would say something so funny that I let go of whatever was bothering me.

That is inspirational. When I think about the countless hours I spent on analysts’ couches (read plural—3 different analysts adding up to 13 years) what did I take away from all of it that was worth the time and expense? Well, there’s one life-changing thing:

When I was 32 and in therapy with analyst #3, I met Bob. Although I was immediately enchanted with him, there were issues. Our sexual styles were not a great fit. I worried that because he was in show business his income would be erratic. He was a casual, small-town boy and I was a big city girl. He wanted diners and I wanted gourmet restaurants.

After listening carefully to all my worries and complaints about Bob, analyst #3 said, “You’re telling me he’s great in many ways. But you keep holding out for perfection. And you want a child.” He paused and let the silence linger. Then he said, “You don’t have decades to keep searching.”

I listened hard to that. Finally, I made the leap. Bob was so charming and hilarious that I knew I’d never find that again. His humor was irresistible, and his warmth and honesty and insight irreplaceable. So, despite significant sexual issues between us, I chose him. He was off the charts great in most things that mattered to me.

Could I have known what lay ahead? Fights over where to live, fights over sex, and sadly, significant illness? No. But there were things I could count on: Bob would be honest. He would stay committed to our marriage. He would bring joy and fun and daily laughing into our shared life. He taught me how much humor gives perspective to everything.

My analyst did me a great service in reminding me that the ephemeral nature of existence is our constant companion. Every day we’re reminded of how unpredictable life is, how you can be walking down the street and suddenly you’re flat on your face on concrete. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, car wrecks, friends with cancer---the news of how fragile our lives are swirls around us daily.

And yet, it is that very fact that gives us such a profound appreciation of life. Knowing that each of us will eventually lose everything makes all of it precious. Bob died after our 33 years together, but I feel fortunate to have been with him that long because over the years he taught me by example that often the only and best thing we can do is laugh. Laugh about the absurdity of it all, about the temporary nature of everything, about the contrast between our ambitions and the result, laugh most of all at ourselves, because laughing is the grace that soothes everything.

Here is another one of his card captions that always brings a smile to my face:

May you seek and find laughter every day.

And may small comforts like that carry you.

Lately this card has taken on new meaning for me:

For years I worked on my memoir, Staying Married is the Hardest Part, and in June 2025 it was published by She Writes Press. I was delighted that SWP saw value in my work, but having had my first novel published by Simon & Schuster decades ago, I came to this new endeavor with little understanding of what is required of an author these days.

Now, whether you’re published by one of the Big Five, by smaller or hybrid presses, or self-published, an author must create publicity through podcasts, social media, a website, interviews, submissions of essays for online and print magazines, public appearances on radio/TV, participation in panels or in-person book signings, networking with other authors. The list goes on and on.

And so does the competition. Google tells me that 4.2 million books were published in the U.S. in 2025. In 2005, twenty years ago, only 282,500 were published in the U.S.

Imagine, that’s over 80,700 books released every week.

How is anyone to rise above so many voices and be heard?

My marriage memoir was published by an excellent hybrid press. I had a PR firm, a marketing firm, and a social media expert working like crazy to help me get the word out about my book. Yet I still felt like a person in the massive crowd of runners at the starting line of the Boston Marathon.

Which brings me to Lenny, the world’s smartest dog…

Just like Lenny I didn’t think my performance was good enough. My poise in public speaking sometimes failed me. I had no experience at selling anything. My cohort of authors each seemed to be doing better than I was.

Perspective failed me. I thought my marketing skills, my ability to entertain and charm, and my capacity to show people what I offered just wasn’t good enough.

Most of us have grappled with competition since childhood. Whether it’s comparisons to siblings, school mates, athletes, intellectuals or competitors for love and acceptance and resources, when are we good enough?

In any endeavor, there’s always a pecking order and competition for the highest rank. It’s as young as “Hey, my brother got more presents than I did!” or as life changing as, “We regret to inform you that our university is unable to offer you admission at this time.”

One of the great tasks of maturation is solidifying a decent sense of self-esteem---ways you can feel good about yourself and compete while accepting that wherever you fall on the continuum there will always be someone who outranks you in one way or another, including the thousand ways luck can bless you or shortchange you.

Finally, now, a year since my publication date, my feelings about my book have shifted.

I now know I did my best. I went on an amazing journey from being a psychologist in private practice to shouting to the world, “Here’s my book! You’ll find it worth your time!”

Yet although I did my best, I measured my performance by book sales. I compared myself to other authors and their rankings. I didn’t notice along the way that I had accomplished other intangibles: I grew, I learned many new skills, I made new friends, and some people read my work and found it of value.

To support other authors and deepen my appreciation for good writing, I’ve read more books in this last year than I have in the last five. And I’m reminded that I come from a family of readers who have always treasured a good book. I’ve learned more about the kind of writing that moves me, teaches me and sometimes creates magic, and that has been one of the greatest rewards of this strenuous journey.

Most importantly I’ve learned what Lenny’s feeling of failure has taught me---that the answer to the question “When are you good enough?” is arbitrary. Book sales are only an external measure of “success.” You must decide when what you’ve accomplished is good enough. The most effective measuring stick is not an external measure of success, but rather how you think of your value, what matters most to you, and how to make your peace with your book’s performance wherever it lands.

So regarding writing I say:

Cultivate gratitude for what you’ve accomplished. Celebrate those who have risen above you. The combination of factors that must coalesce to make a book wildly successful is out of your control. Yes, you can offer your best writing, and it can be excellent. You can offer profound wisdom, brave sharing, charm or humor and you can be smart about marketing.

But you also need luck. If an important book influencer finds and likes your book, there’s a huge boost for you in publicity. If you’ve written about being sexually abused by a high school coach, and the week of your book release, a professional coach is suddenly charged with sexual exploitation, you may be asked by the media to comment on it. If the release of your historical fiction on fashion designers of the 1930s happens to coincide with a new costume exhibit at the Met, your book may be referenced.

Publishing a book is a gamble, but what’s not a gamble is the satisfaction of doing your best, of learning and growing, and becoming part of an amazing community of writers who understand the experience and support you.

Celebrate it. You have earned it.

May small and lovely comforts reward your efforts.

Although my partner Sam (not his real name) and I have been together for 14 years, we still fight about some things that as a marital therapist I would consider normal—driving habits, standards of tidiness, property maintenance. When it comes to driving, I’ve berated him many times. Sam loves efficiency on the road, and speed when he’s at the wheel. He has complete confidence in his driving ability, his car’s agility and his traffic judgment. I sit in the passenger seat clutching my armrest and telling him he’s tailgating or that we have no plane to catch, so slow down. He fumes when I drive, because having been in 4 car accidents, none of them my fault, I’m cautious—staying sometimes in the right lane way ahead of the exit, for example.

When it comes to order inside and outside of the house, we fight about his chronic mess on the dining table because that’s Sam’s landing zone from the garage. He’s aggravated by the way I clutter the kitchen counters with things to which I want easy access. We annoy each other with our complaints.

Although Sam lives full time with me in my house, he drives 12 miles farther south to tend to his home property every other day. He likes his property and doesn’t want to sell it—the fishpond he built himself, the birdboxes where he makes sure the swallows and wrens having proper nests, the quiet of the place and the woods. I have no issue with him keeping his house and enjoying it. I don’t live in it.

Last week we drove to an unfamiliar area of town to pick up his vintage car at an auto shop. Our dog was in his crate in the back seat, and although Sam hates me driving slowly or in the right lane, I did both, and he didn’t utter a word of complaint. Unusual for him, and I appreciated it. Countless times he’s instructed me on speeding up, changing lanes, and watching how I merge. This time he said none of that.

After he retrieved his car, he told me to follow him to his country property so he could leave the repaired car in his barn and pick up his primary car. After following him, I realized he’d taken a wrong turn. We were both lost. Ten minutes later we stood next to our cars, and he asked me to locate us on my phone. Three things interfered: I didn’t accurately use the Maps app, he’d forgotten his phone, and he was driving an old car that has no navigation system.

I pushed another button on my phone. “I can’t quite pull it up,” I said. “But I think if we go straight ahead on this street we’ll get to the bridge. And by the way, I really have to pee.”

He didn’t scold me for fumbling with my Maps app. I followed him until he found the way, but instead of going to his property he led us back to my house which was a much shorter distance.

In my driveway I asked, “Why did you take us here?”

“Because I knew you had to pee.”

Wow. How thoughtful! I thanked him, used the bathroom, and then we each drove to his place. After he parked the old car in his garage, I let our dog out to wander around, and I stood next to the fish pond. It burbled sweetly but it was overgrown and needed pruning. I didn’t say that though. I did say, “OMG those fish are so beautiful!” and I meant it.

Meanwhile, our dog was drinking out of an old metal bowl full of debris. “Don’t you need a better bowl for him?” I asked.

“No. He loves it.”

Probably desperate for water, I thought, but didn’t say that. After all, Sam’s been bringing him here for years and the dog’s been drinking out of that bowl with no apparent harm.

The property needs a lot of work now because Sam’s only there a few hours a week, but I didn’t say that because he knows it.

He pointed to the sky and said, “There’s a red-tailed hawk!”

It was so high up there was no way I could identify it. With admiration I said, “I can’t believe you can identify it from so far away!”

Sam has a vast knowledge of wildlife and the natural world. He loves to fix things himself. In his workshop he repairs bird boxes and irrigation lines. He will repurpose an old set of kitchen tongs for use in his garden. He sharpens his own knives, washes and polishes his car, repairs a zipper on his jacket. Me? I call someone to do that kind of work. I love to have deep conversations with people, to cook, to write, and to fix relationships.

We have fought for years to try to make the other embrace our priorities. Slowly, we’re starting to understand and accept what matters to each other. He makes allowances for the amount of time I talk on the phone to dear friends. I watch more crime and suspense TV than I would without him. I make a point of trying to declutter the kitchen when I can. He’s using the dining table less as his landing zone.

When we arrived back from his property that day, I thanked him again for heading to my house first. “Why did you do it?” I asked, knowing he likes the fastest route.

“Oh,” he said, “Well, I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

That to me was a miracle of growth and change. It’s obvious we’re recognizing the futility of trying to change the other, and instead are working at acceptance, at love, and at kindness.

I’ve treated many married couples to help them navigate anger and disconnection. Once again, I’m astonished by how the smallest gesture—a decision not to make a critical comment, letting go of insisting on your way, or more patience in timing—can repair frustration and anger.

Yet it seems now that kindness has fallen out of favor. Instead, assertiveness, self-affirmation, and fighting for yourself are most highly valued. The idea of putting your partner’s needs before your own is now labeled “self-abandonment.” Yet most people feel seen and loved when they’re treated with kindness, and they want to be thoughtful and kind in return.

We all get irritated with a partner. But it’s worth pausing when that happens. There’s a reason why particular people are chosen to handle difficult diplomatic conversations. They’re the ones who know that showing respect for others and trying to understand their needs and psychology go further in negotiations than a combative attitude.

That’s something we can all learn to do more as we realize we’ve chosen not only a completely different Other, but also a partner shaped by a unique childhood different from our own, and each of us is deeply rooted in that past.

An act of kindness can soften even the most difficult negotiation. Kindness can go a long way in repairing a struggling relationship. That’s how both people win.

Sometimes small comforts carry us the farthest.

For the first time in 20 years, I started attending a dance class, and 16 years later I still go. I found new friends there and learned to move my body in different ways (I mean would I have intentionally walked backward three times a week if not for that?).

I had never taken a drawing class, but now with so much free time I also took a drawing class, and then a painting class, and I loved them. Here are a few of my drawings and paintings. My focus has always been on words in psychotherapy and writing, so visual art felt refreshing, an expression from a different part of me.

What might you try this year that’s new? This doesn’t have to be triggered by a life-altering event. It just requires you letting your mind roam in answer to this question:

If I could do anything I feel like trying, what would it be?

Novelty keeps you vital. It creates a life that expands rather than contracts. And it begins by deciding you’re going to try something new.

Sometimes, small comforts can carry you the farthest.

—Bonnie Comfort

May Small Comforts brighten your day.

“It’s insensible losses,” he said. “Moisture has evaporated from your body through your breath and sweat. Without you realizing it, you’ve become dehydrated.” He’s a surgeon. He knows these things.

Insensible losses in medicine refer to lost bodily fluid that is not easily measured, from breathing or sweating. I thought for a long time about how you can lose something essential to you and not realize it until it’s gone.

Some couples I’ve treated say their love slipped away without them realizing it until an incident triggered awareness, and one said to the other, “I don’t love you anymore. I don’t even like you.” Neither knew when it happened.

Muscle strength and flexibility leak away with age, and you don’t feel it happening, you just try one day to open a tight jar, and you can’t. Or you pick up a heavy suitcase and your back goes out. And when did the ability to parallel park deteriorate?

Insensible losses: The times you failed to be kind to someone you love, not realizing the silent damage being done; the whole world’s hubris in throwing out plastic, polluting the ocean and killing some of its precious sea creatures; receiving terrible medical news and suddenly being struck by the beauty of the world; the things you stopped seeing in the rush to get everything done on the to-do list.

Here’s an example from my practice: a 48-year-old married client had no idea how much he’d built an emotional fortress around himself until he went to lunch with a female colleague who reached her fork into his plate and sampled a piece of his fish. He said, “The intimacy of that gesture—from a woman I hardly knew—made me suddenly realize how much I’ve lost of my own vulnerability. It was shocking.”

Then there are clients who one day say to their partner, “I want a divorce,” and the partner is shocked. Distance was there—sleeping in separate bedrooms, spending very little time together—but the partners never thought it would come to this. Now they want to know everything, but it’s too late. My clients tried countless times to be heard, and the spouses ignored the signs and requests. Now the marriage is over.

An unexpected medical diagnosis can turn your world upside down. All your assumptions about your future are suddenly gone. If only I had known, you think, I would have made different choices.

So, what to do? Take stock at regular intervals. Some people do this on New Year’s Day as a kind of ritual, but that’s too infrequent. I think it’s better to ask frequently, “What am I not thinking about?” That’s where new insight, healing, and direction often begin. You can also ask yourself, “What is the greatest source of joy and happiness for me? Am I seeking that enough? What is the greatest source of worry for me? Am I devoting mental time to things I cannot change? What am I avoiding because it’s uncomfortable for me to think about? Is avoiding that serving me well, or is it preventing me from creating the life I really want?”

These are important taking-stock questions. Self-awareness grows by exploring the unthought. Through psychotherapy, journaling, meditation or simple reflection, you can uncover hidden beliefs, feelings, and needs that are shaping your life.

Then to make best use of what you’ve uncovered, you can ask yourself these questions: What would I have to sacrifice to devote myself more to what matters most to me? How can I accomplish this without too much emotional or financial cost? Make a list.

The most challenging part is confronting the guilt you might feel for seeking what you want. Do you need to make peace with this? Can you inspire your loved ones to seek their desires? When is an apology warranted without giving up your goal?

Record your wants and your action plan. In a few days, study it and revise. Then commit to your action list. Perhaps it’s as simple a gratitude journal that keeps you appreciating what you already have or see. Perhaps it means daring to switch careers or seek what you want with as little damage to those you love as possible. It might mean doing some hard work on your relationships with family, friends, or partners. Embrace progress, because some things will always be a work in progress.

When it comes to insensible losses in your life, consider what you’re not thinking about and follow through on what you can do to remedy that. At the end of your life, whenever that comes, you want to feel that you noticed, treasured, and did that which mattered most to you.

Then there are infuriating big things like lying, hiding spending, having “just an emotional affair” or shutting you out by saying everything is “fine” when you know it’s not. Those things need deep repair to fix and a willingness to do the work.

There are also things that can break you. A child dies. You discover your spouse is embezzling. You get cancer and your spouse chooses that moment to go to Paris. Whether you two can come back from that depends on specific factors.

Something not quite as extreme as that happened in my marriage. I said “I do” with the unspoken assumption that we’d always live in or near Los Angeles. Our future geography was never discussed until three years into the marriage, when my husband said he wanted us to leave L.A. and move north. I loved L.A. I chose it for life. I could have written the Randy Newman song, “I Love L.A.” But my husband insisted I drive with him to Sandpoint, Idaho, to look at the lake there. I obliged, but I knew no matter how beautiful it was I would never, under any circumstances, live there.

I stood next to him in the Idaho panhandle, on a beautiful piece of raw land that was for sale next to Lake Pend Oreille. “Wouldn’t you like to live here?” he said. “So quiet, so peaceful. No traffic, no crime. Loons to listen to on the lake.”

I wrapped my arms around him, inhaled the fragrance of him, felt the warm skin of his chest against my cheek. I loved him so much. I said, “It’s very beautiful. But I will never live here.” Everybody has their absolute no, and that was mine.

Lake Pend Oreille

Aerial view in 1993

He never asked me about Lake Pend Oreille again, but for years we fought over leaving L.A., sometimes getting to the brink of divorce. Finally, I agreed to move permanently to Portland, Oregon. By then I understood two things: he couldn’t bear to live in L.A. anymore, and the many pleasures of being with him outweighed the sacrifice I was choosing to make. That kind of transition and compromise takes time.

In every long-term marriage there are adjustments each partner must make. Sometimes it’s about accepting your partner’s character, ways of coping or entrenched opinions. Sometimes it’s big, like discovering your partner has an undisclosed adult child who suddenly shows up on your doorstep or has a health problem that requires long term caregiving. These are not reversible things, but in many long-term marriages the partners manage to negotiate a way to stay together because what they enjoy with each other is worth it.

The essential question turns out to be, “Is what I have with this person more valuable to me than life without them?” and if the answer is yes, you stay. You find ways to forgive or adjust. Otherwise, you divorce, which may be best, but the more history you have together, the greater the loss.

Unless there is an egregious breach, what saves a relationship is focusing on the great things. Value your partner. Keep them in the forefront of your daily life. Actively seek things that both of you enjoy seeing/doing. Choose your battles and go to the mat over only the things that are huge in your mind and worth fighting for. Over time the edges of both of you soften.

Once, a few years before he died, I said to my husband, “I think we get along better than we used to.”

He replied, “Oh, I think we’ve just worn each other smooth, like stones in a river.”

Good enough, I thought, smiling. He always had a way with words…

For this first post, I’d like to share a brief story about an unexpected act of kindness that stayed with me long after I left the grocery store.

Has a stranger ever said something to you that stayed with you? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.