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Touch me

I’m here. In here. 
not body or soul
but both – Both
skin and nerves
sewn to love and fears
touch me, please
so you can touch me

We are neither angel nor animal.
We can live for days as if our minds are the endless, beautiful, infinite space of creativity and spirituality. We can live for days as if our bodies are the magnetic, focused, sensory playgrounds of indulgence and physical exertion. We can choose to live on either side of the divide, but only so long as we can keep up the illusion that there IS a divide.
We cannot live long or well without realizing the mental effect of our physical actions.
We cannot live long or well without realizing the physical needs and effects of our mental obsessions.
You are imagination and skin.
The goal of this series is to remind you and me, everyday, that every part of us is made well … and not just made well, but somehow precious and important.
Skin is holy. Spirit is holy.
If we are living for the day that we are finally done with this body and can be the spirit we were always meant to be, we are missing the goodness and holiness in Life. It is in and through our bodies that we love and are loved.
 
*****
Last night, my littlest daughter asked me to cuddle with her. She loves when I gently run my hands up and down her legs as she lays in bed. Her soft body glides under my warm hands and I pray for her as I slowly make contact with each inch of her tired skin. Being alive is exhausting, especially when you are doing it well. So, I pray for her health and for her legs – that they would be strong and sure. I […]

By |October 2nd, 2015|Beauty SOS47, Love and Making It, Uncategorized, Write 31 Days|2 Comments|
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Boudoir Pictures Story

Why take boudoir pictures?
How to make taking boudoir pictures great?
What to look for in a great photographer?
*****
Boudoir Pictures. Why take them?
There are lots of reasons people do the things they do… but why on earth would an ordinary, smart person dress up in lingerie and try to be sexy for a professional photographer?
It’s similar to why people run marathons.
You could just run, you know. You don’t have to pay anyone to let you run 26.2 miles. You can do that stuff for free! Running is free!
People sign up for marathons because it is a measurable goal (and it’s kinda cool to run in the middle of an empty street). More importantly, it’s a powerful experience to work hard and do something that scares you AND have other people helping and cheering you on.
well… in regards to boudoir photos…it’s kinda the same thing.
You can be naked or even partially naked for FREE! You get that body for free! (well, most people do)
You don’t even have to pay anyone to take pictures of you. You probably have a phone with a selfie camera. You can hold that sucker just right and get a pretty good shot of your booty or smile or cleavage. It can be pretty powerful to take a picture and find your face or body attractive – especially when it is not an easy, natural decision for you to be in pictures.
I know, we’ve all seen so many women’s ridiculous selfies that we are pretty turned off to the idea, BUT you could take pictures of yourself and feel empowered and beautiful. It’s possible.
Don’t let other people’s drama reduce your story.
*****

(keep reading, I think this part is kinda helpful)
So, on a personal level, why […]

By |May 1st, 2015|Beauty SOS47, Love and Making It, Uncategorized|0 Comments|
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Passionals Newsletter Sign Up Now

Love and Making It
is about to start a new season
Hey, my friend! It’s time for us to start something new together. 
At one point or another you’ve read the blog, seen me speak live, or taken an ecourse and I want to THANK YOU for that. Thank you for joining me here. Thank you for being brave enough to even start reading and thinking about how to make your life better, braver, and more beautiful … even IN bed.  This is my passion = helping you find your passion.  
*****
I am floored by the good work I’ve been lucky enough to see some of you do. You’ve been brave. You’ve literally changed your marriages and lives by engaging with the heart and soul of LOVE AND MAKING IT. Thank you for letting me share in a little of your awesomeness!
*****
I am reminded that we all need this place… even when we are busy, actually, because we are busy. We need reminders everyday to take good care of our love-lives, because it’s a strong current pulling us back to confusion, ambivalence, fear, dislike, and exhaustion.
There are so many forces pushing us away from healthy sex lives.  Health is a constant practice, we can’t work out one day and expect to be fit forever. We can’t read one good article about sex and expect our sex lives to be healthy. This is a practice. 
And so here we are, about to start a new season.  This year I have more content and more bravery of my own and I am excited to share it all with you, but you know it’s more than just the content here – it’s about action and new ways of training our thinking about our bodies. 
My goal this […]

By |February 5th, 2015|Beauty SOS47, Love and Making It, Uncategorized|0 Comments|
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3 Ways to Celebrate Your Birthday

Did I mention it is almost my birthday and I also have issues?
This year, I am facing it head on. My Birthday monsters will not chase me into a dark corner to hide until this sucker is over. I will stay out in the open; sword-of-generosity in my hand and shield-of-oversharing around me.
Birthdays are hard but I sure love them. For our kids, we decorate the entire house the night before their birthday with some of their favorite toys and printed pictures of their favorite things. The year they loved Minions, there was a handmade Twinkies-in-the-shape-of-Minions cake.  In order to get their presents, our kids solve puzzles and clues to complete an epic scavenger hunt that often takes them underwater and to the houses of their best friends. This year we incubated duck eggs and fostered ducklings for a month because my daughter loves ducks. All of this, to show them how loved they are and how seen and how known – that they are WORTH IT… basically to communicate all the things we hope for our children … the rich soil I deep-down believe they need in order to grow up big and strong, so they can go out as courageous adults and save the world while still feeling totally rested and loved because their childhood birthdays were so so so good.
And now it’s my birthday. And I am about to become a moving target for anyone trying to really love, know, or see me.  On other days, it’s so simple.  On my birthday, it’s so complicated. My expectations are erratic because I either change my mind about the actual thing or (really) change my mind about whether it’s ok to want the actual […]

By |January 13th, 2015|Healthy You, How Can I Help, Uncategorized|0 Comments|
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Open to me

I was asleep but my heart was awake.
A voice! My beloved was knocking:
‘Open to me, my love, my darling,
My dove, my perfect one!
For my head is drenched with dew,
My locks with the damp of the night.’
“I have taken off my dress,
How can I put it on again?
I have washed my feet,
How can I dirty them again?
“My beloved extended his hand through the opening,
And my feelings were aroused for him.
“I arose to open to my beloved;
And my hands dripped with myrrh,
And my fingers with liquid myrrh,
On the handles of the bolt.
“I opened to my beloved,
But my beloved had turned away and had gone!
-Song of Songs, Chapter 5 verses 2-6
*****
I was sleepwalking through my days and nights, but somewhere buried inside … my heart was awake. I wanted to feel alive, but mostly I just felt tired.  My heart was beating inside my chest, but my limbs and eyes could barely feel it. Life is just draining, isn’t it?
I got all ready for bed. The kids’ teeth were brushed, pajamas on, homework checked, clothes set out for tomorrow, lunches planned, and after 3 trips back into their room with forgotten stuffed animals, glasses of water, and extra hugs, I finally started winding my own self down for the night. I took a quick shower and put on my toner, serum, eye-cream and nighttime moisturizer.  I plucked a few stray hairs from some, places…There’s coconut oil on my feet inside cotton socks. My hair is braided in the hopes that the Pin I saw about beachy waves is true. Finally, I lay down with a book to relax – just for a few minutes before my eyes cross and I do that […]

By |October 12th, 2014|Love and Making It, Uncategorized|6 Comments|
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Naked Whispering Gallery

Designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built near 1700, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is a glorious piece of history and architecture.  Even more than that, it has a famous architectural anomaly halfway up the majestic dome.

Have you ever heard of a whispering gallery?
The first one ever discovered is still in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
If you climb the 257 stairs from the cathedral floor to the whispering gallery, you are met with a surprising intimacy even Sir Christopher Wren did not foresee.
The gallery is a complete circle with an intricate handrail and simple wall.

 
If you place your cheek near the surface of the wall and speak {even in a whisper}, your companions can hear you, clear and crisp – even clearer than if you were standing right next to each other – no matter how far away they are down the wall.  You can stand on opposite sides of the gallery, place your ears to the wall and whisper back and forth as if you were in bed together {but keep it clean, because there are usually lots of people around when you actually visit}.
…Which is why we are talking about whispering galleries today in our conversations about LOVE AND MAKING IT. What if we made our bedrooms into metaphorical whispering galleries?  Then you could whisper anything you wanted and your lover would hear you.
In the whispering gallery it does not matter how far apart you are, if you both agree to place your cheeks against the wall and face toward the path of the sound waves {letting the waves connect you} you WILL hear each other clearly even if you only speak in whispers.
If we set aside our bedrooms as whispering galleries, maybe the […]

By |October 10th, 2014|Love and Making It, Uncategorized|3 Comments|
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How to keep a marriage

What lights a relationship on fire?  What keeps it going after fifteen years?
What sets butterflies to flight in your stomach when your eyes make contact?
What keeps your bodies magnetized so that the pull towards each other never weakens?

The obvious answer is mutual attraction, but what is that exactly? How do we stay mutually attracted?  What’s the answer to “How to keep a marriage magnetized?”
 
People are not permanent magnets. We do not just naturally hold onto our charge in a relationship. We must keep electricity running through us so we can keep our magnetism pulling us together.
 
 An electromagnet is made from a coil of wire that acts as a magnet when an electric current passes through it but stops being a magnet when the current stops.
 
At first it seems like our relationship is more like permanent magnets than electromagnets. We are pulled together without even trying. The attraction just seems to happen and we accept it as fact, but there is a vital element available in a new attraction that wears off over time without an intentional electric current shooting through your coils.
If you want your coils to stay attracted to his or her coils for years to come, the essential electric thought you must keep flowing through your mind so that your bodies will attract is this:
I’M SO LUCKY TO HAVE YOU & YOU ARE SO LUCKY TO HAVE ME.
 
The more time you spend counting the ways your spouse is awesome and how lucky you are to have them, the more humbly grateful you will feel for your relationship. Equally important is the time you spend realizing how awesome you are and how lucky they are to have you, because this gives you confidence.
HUMILITY + CONFIDENCE […]

By |October 8th, 2014|Love and Making It, Uncategorized|5 Comments|
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Tickets to the sex show

As far as I know, you are not having sex so other people can watch.
You do not sell tickets to the sex show in your home. 
You are not trying for any awards.
The camera is not panning across your taught abdomen as your spouse’s equally taught abs slowly lower onto you, the light languid but grateful in its luck at caressing your skin.  
When you have sex, it is not for an audience.  
So, why do we care so much what we look like while having it?  Why do we care what other people think?  And, are we so wrapped up in doing everything “for show” online that we have forgotten how to let sex be a sacred and intimate place worthwhile even in its secrecy?
Let’s discuss…
*****
First of all:
We are so accustomed to watching other people kiss and make love on screens that our own experiences are often “watched” inside our own mind’s eye rather than experienced with our whole selves…with all of our senses.  We are outside the actual experience. 
What if we focused our attention back to the present moment?  How does this feel, smell, taste? What is each part of my body experiencing right now? What am I loving?  How would I describe this sensation or moment?
It absolutely DOES NOT matter what anyone {no audience, ex, or imaginary judge} would think of how you look or perform during sex.
The only thing that matters is the connection between you and your partner. 
What would change if we believed that?
 *****
Second of all:
We are so accustomed to watching other people kiss and make love that our own bodies are measured against templates they were not meant to be measured by.
Learn to enjoy yourself and your spouse – as you are. […]

By |October 6th, 2014|Love and Making It, Uncategorized|0 Comments|
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In the Biblical Sense

Yada. Yada. Yada.
I’ve got a little sexy etymology for you.  Ready?
 
And Adam knew [yada] Eve, his wife; and she conceived.
Genesis 4:1
 

Yada is not just a fill-in word like blah-blah-blah. It’s the original nudge-nudge, wink-wink. I “know” him. 
Yada Yada Yada.
Ever see that Seinfeld episode where they start using “yada, yada, yada” to fill in the details in a story instead of saying what really happened? George asks if you can “yada, yada, yada” sex… OF COURSE you can “yada, yada, yada” sex.
“What’d you do last night?”  “Oh, you know, we had dinner and watched New Girl and yada, yada, yada.”
Actually, “yada, yada, yada” is not really an innuendo or replacement phrase at all. In the old days, this was no polite way to cover details.
This was the actual King James version of: Fornicate, Have Sex, Copulate, Do it, Business Time, Yada.
*****
Have you ever heard someone use the phrase “I know her in the Biblical sense”? 
Did you ever wonder where that came from?
I did. Today. Because I told people to think about sex and now I am thinking about sex and following rabbit trails so we can have good conversations that make all of our lives better… and I thought, “Where does that phrase about ‘knowing someone in the biblical sense’ come from?”
*****
To know someone “in the Biblical sense” is to have sex with them.
To have sex with someone in the biblical sense is to KNOW them… To YADA them.
Do you see how we have mixed this up a bit in our lives?  We’ve taken the “knowing” out of sex.  Some of the original language surrounding sex {Hebrew, specifically, here} involved not just bodies bouncing together, but actually knowing another human intimately.  Usually, […]

By |October 3rd, 2014|Love and Making It, Uncategorized|9 Comments|
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Think About Sex – Step One

Day 1: How to have good sex? = Think about sex.
I don’t mean just “think about sex” like a soda erupting; shaking it up and then shooting sticky thoughts all over the place. (Those cans are small but they manage to cover everything when they explode. The same goes for sexual thoughts.)  No, no. I mean, think about sex in very specific ways: disciplined, new, brave ways.
First of all:
Who do you want to want to have sex with? (this is not a typo)
Who do you want to want to have sex with?  You may not want to have sex at all, especially if you do not like your own self (more on that soon). You may not want to have sex if you are angry with the person you’ve agreed to have sex with otherwise OR You may want to have sex with an inappropriate person.
Who do you need to start focusing your passionate + positive mental attention on?
 *****
Try This:
Name them. Write their name down in your own handwriting. Take time to form each letter. Imagine each letter as a part of them {their person + body} that you notice and trace.
Take the name of your spouse or beloved or even yourself and write it down.
This will move the image of them in your mind…  the thought of their existence, their soul, your history together… from your mind to your hand. Write their name in the physical world.
Notice how the thoughts in your head can connect to the actions of your body.  Notice how the movements can change and go fast or slow, hard or soft.  How did you write it? How could you write it differently a second time?  What if you wrote […]

By |October 2nd, 2014|Love and Making It, Uncategorized|8 Comments|
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