I’ve often wondered why I am so comfortable around people in the LGBTQ+ community. I was raised in a family where Republican Catholic ideals were the norm, so I certainly didn’t learn it from my upbringing. I’m a heterosexual, cisgender woman, but I’m a very strong ally. When I re-entered the dating market in my late 30s, I was frustrated that I wasn’t bisexual or pansexual so that I would have a wider number of dating prospects. I couldn’t figure out why I was so open-minded about others’ genders and sexuality, and yet my own gender and sexuality were rigidly stuck at one end of the spectrums. Then I fell deeply in love with a man who was bisexual (and also labeled himself as queer). Suddenly it all made a lot more sense: I am such a strong ally in this life so that I was able to be with him.

That bisexual boyfriend taught me about biphobia-- the fear of bisexual people. I had no idea how often it came into play in our society, but once he pointed it out to me, I couldn’t not see it. Even among my most liberal friends, many were very alarmed when I started dating someone who was openly bisexual. They were confusing bisexuality with polyamory. They didn’t understand how I could be monogamous and dating someone bisexual. I educated them on the difference between the two. Just because someone is bisexual doesn’t mean they are non-monogamous, and just because someone is bisexual doesn’t mean they are going to cheat on their monogamous partner in order to be with someone with different genitals.

One day, my bisexual boyfriend looked at me out of the blue and said, “You’re queer adjacent.” I was a bit taken back by this pronouncement, but I approached it with open-mindedness. I asked him what it meant to him because I was unfamiliar with the term. He replied, “You’re as queer as you can be with out actually being queer.” I laughed and thanked him. To me, that is a compliment. I am grateful that he gave me that designation.

In some ways, I’ve often felt more comfortable with people who were somewhere under the queer umbrella than I am with others who are straight and cisgender. So many of my friends, former roommates and clients are LGTBQ+ and/or polyamorous that I often feel like the unusual one for being straight, cisgender and monogamous. Yet I finally realized not long ago that part of that comfort is from being among others who are minorities in our society. Even though we are different minorities, we all understand what it feels like to be an outsider. As someone who is disabled with chronic illness and who is a psychic, I often am outside of the center of the societal bell curve.

I went to a happy hour last week for mental health professionals who are queer and queer-allied. I always feel so comfortable with that crowd. I am grateful that they allow me in their space with open arms. I made a very conscious choice when I began my business to make sure it was LGBTQ+ friendly as I would rather lose the business of those who are prejudiced and gain the business of those who are in the margins. For me, there really was no choice. I support those who are in need of support. I want to be there for those who are often excluded from other businesses.

​©2022 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I can’t tell you how many times clients have said to me, “This may be TMI [too much information], but…” and then they share something they feel is mortifying or shameful or just very intimate about their bodies. Almost none of the time is it TMI.

Quite often the details that clients are worried about discussing involve bodily functions. Please know there is no way to give me TMI about your body. To start with, I’ve shared my home with dogs. Any pet lover can regale you with gross stories of the things their pets have eaten, vomited, pooped or disemboweled. It just goes with the territory of loving pets. They are furry, cute, wonderful, and sometimes downright disgusting.

Furthermore, I am a mother. Many parents who have had young children can tell you of a point where they were discussing diaper contents with peers and wondering, “Really? This is what my life is now?” Being a parent has infinite rewards, but it can get pretty darn challenging some days, too. Asides from all the fun with my kids as they grew up, I’ve gone through genital surgeries with two male partners. I’ve had a fully functional female body all my life. You aren’t going to gross me out by discussing what your body has decided to do in a fit of creativity or dysfunction (depending on how you want to frame it). Our society may teach us that talking about our bodies is improper, but that’s not true when you’re working with me. We need to talk about what your body is doing so we can heal it!

Outside of the realm of the human body, I have clients who are anywhere and everywhere on the gender and sexual spectrums. I have clients who are polyamorous. I have clients who are very kinky. I have clients who are having extra-marital affairs. I have clients who use illicit drugs. I have clients who are trying to break addictions and others who have succeeded. All of these clients are special to me, and none of what they tell me about their identities or their life choices makes me think less of them.

Unfortunately, I also have clients who have suffered a great deal of trauma. At least 75% of my clients have been sexually abused at some point in their lives. Many have been physically and emotionally abused. Others also have experienced medical trauma. I definitely fall into all of those categories myself. While the victim feels a great deal shame around the abuse they endured, I don’t view my clients with pity or shame. I see them as humans who need to be accepted, heard, loved, and helped to heal. Whatever they need to share is part of the healing process, and it's not TMI.

I recently told a client at the end of a session, “I don’t think I’ve ever said the word ‘vagina’ so much in one session.” It wasn’t a problem at all for me to be talking about her vagina as we worked on healing the issues at hand. I just had said the word far more than I have before in such short a period of time. And that’s ok! Sometimes we just have to step back and laugh at the absurdity of things when we’re working on healing deep and painful issues.

​Know that it is really hard to present me with TMI, and no matter what you share with me, I won’t judge you for it. Instead, I’ll help you come to terms with that “TMI” and heal it as best I can.

©2021 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Wow.

Just wow.

By the time I was 50% of the way through The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed, I was in complete awe of this amazing book. While billed as a young adult book that focuses on a group of high school girls, there is still much in the book for adults as we all are facing a society that is finally recognizing how large of a problem sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and rape are in our culture. 

The Nowhere Girls starts with the beginning of the school year as Grace, a liberal minister's daughter who is new to town becomes friends with Rosina, a Hispanic lesbian outsider at the high school, and Erin who has Asperger's disease and a hidden history others at the school know nothing about. Grace has moved into the home of Lucy, a girl who was raped by three boys from the high school last year. Unfortunately, Lucy was not believed by the community and was shunned by her peers. Her family left town in disgrace.

Now Grace wants to find justice for Lucy. As she learns about the rape, Grace convinces Rosina and Erin to help her form "the Nowhere Girls," a group devoted to bringing about change around the rape culture in their small town. While there are great doubts among the girls as to whether the group will do any good, slowly but surely its numbers and its effectiveness grow. Soon the establishment of the town is fighting back, forcing the principal to suspend any members involved in the Nowhere Girls for daring to accuse the boys of the town of inappropriate behavior.

Midway through the book, a group of 31 girls clandestinely meet and have an incredible discussion. Among the topics they broach are virginity, sexuality, pleasure, and what they owe boys. The girls begin to realize that they don't owe boys or men anything in terms of sex. They have a right to make choices about their own bodies. They realize they need to start supporting each other regardless of whether they are virgins or sexually active. They speak out against the slut shaming that happens in our culture wherein boys can be sexually promiscuous but girls are not allowed to be. As I read this discussion, I began wishing that The Nowhere Girls was mandatory reading for all high schoolers, though I can see the religious right screaming in terror at such radical ideas being promoted to impressionable youth.
​
Mixed in with the primary themes of rape and sexual activity are also discussions of what it means to be accepting of others. Current topics that are part of the national discourse such as community activism, immigration issues, racial issues and transgender acceptance are all part of the book. The Nowhere Girls was published in October 2017 just as the #MeToo movement was beginning to emerge, but the book is very much in line with all that has happened since.

Without spoiling the ending, I will say that I was left choked up in very good tears at the end of the book. Amy Reed powerfully engages readers' emotions, especially those of us who have dealt with the same fears, struggles and obstacles that her heroines face. For young people facing these same issues as they come of age, The Nowhere Girls can give hope that things are changing in our world for the better.

​©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., GreenHeartGuidance.com

(Content Warning: Childhood sexual abuse mentioned in passing)

For quite a while, I have recommended the City of Austin Sexually Transmitted Diseases Clinic to people who were looking for affordable STI (sexually transmitted infections) testing whether because they had high co-pays or no insurance. However, I had never been there myself. I had not been tested since my last sex partner and needed to do so before my next relationship, so I recently took myself there to experience their services.

The first challenge is getting an appointment. They can only book for the same day or next day, and they fill up quickly. If you want an appointment, you must call at 8 in the morning. I called when my cell phone said 8:00 a.m. one morning, and by the time they got to me, they were fully booked for that day and only had three appointment times for the next day. Luckily one of the times I worked for me or I would have had to keep calling every morning until I got one that worked. You can also show up at 8 a.m. for a walk-in appointment, but you are taking your chances on how long you’ll be there and if there will be availability.

I arrived 10 minutes before my appointment as requested. I was processed quickly at the intake desk and then buzzed through a locked door to pay my $20 fee (credit cards accepted). I then walked down a very long hall to another waiting room. The Ellen Show was playing silently on the TV with closed captions displaying the dialog. About eight other people of all sexes and ethnicities were in the waiting room. Most were in their 20s to 40s.

Playing on my phone, I waited for a few minutes, and then a phlebotomist called me back to get my blood drawn for HIV and syphilis testing. As I sat down in the chair, I let her know that I am allergic to latex to make sure she didn’t use anything dangerous on me though most blood labs only use nitrile supplies now. However, she panicked as she told me, “I only have latex band-aids.” I reassured her that I don’t need a band-aid (not even bringing up my reactions to adhesives) because I stop bleeding quickly after a draw.

The phlebotomist proceeded to do her job and said to me, “That sucks to be allergic to latex. Non-latex condoms are more expensive.” I told her that it wasn’t too bad, and that AIDS Services of Austin will send you 50 free condoms per quarter (including non-latex) if you live in one of five local counties.  Both she and the other phlebotomist in the room stopped what they were doing and stared at me. “Did you not know this?” I asked. Both of them said no. I began wondering why was I doing the safer sex resources education at the STI testing clinic. However, my phlebotomist, having noted that they had free non-latex condoms they kept hidden (with the latex ones on the counter for anyone to grab), proceeded to give me a handful of free samples to take with me.

I returned to the lobby and waited for the nurse practitioner to call me back to her room. She asked for basic medical information since I was new to the clinic, and then asked what my concerns were. When I told her that I had none and that I was doing routine testing before having a new partner, her facial reaction told me that she barely comprehended this concept. Clearly many people she saw were worried about an STI and were being tested for that reason. She continued by asking me if I had ever had an STI, and I said no. She looked completely shocked and said, “Not even syphilis?” When I told her no again, her expression was total disbelief, as if it is impossible to get to the ripe old age of 44 without experiencing syphilis. To reassure her I wasn’t making up information, I told her I had been in a 22 year monogamous relationship, and that seemed to lessen her disbelief.

The nurse practitioner then asked when I had last had sex. As I told her that information, I jokingly mentioned, “It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get lucky.” She proceeded to comment, “A lot of women would consider themselves lucky not to have had sex with a man in that long.” Again, I was shocked. Flabbergasted, actually. Here I was, in an STI testing clinic, and I was experiencing very negative attitudes around sex.

I live a very sex positive life. I believe that sex is a natural and normal part of adult life. As long as people are able to give consent and practice safer sex, I consider sex a healthy thing. However, our society does not. We live in a society that promotes abstinence only sex education. Many mainstream religions condemn sex before marriage. We shun people who have affairs even though huge numbers of people have them. Parts of society still don’t believe homosexuality is natural or that there are more than two genders. As a result, many people don’t get STI testing done as often as they should because of the shame they carry around sex. Since I am surrounded by friends who don’t hold these attitudes, I sometimes forget they even exist. However, I was especially shocked to encounter a “lie back and think of England” attitude from a nurse practitioner who works in a STI related health clinic!

As the nurse practitioner continued talking to me, she asked where my new/future partner was. I told her that he had gotten testing done through his general practitioner the previous day. The look she gave me was clearly one of, “And you believed that, honey?” She then continued to grill me about why he hadn’t come with me. I refrained from saying, “Because I’m a big girl who doesn’t need someone to hold my hand while I get my blood drawn and pee in a cup.” While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with bringing a support person if you are nervous about blood draws or STI testing, it’s also perfectly acceptable for a 44 year old woman to take herself to a clinic for the same. Still, the nurse practitioner was clearly judging my new partner as being unsupportive because he went to work rather than coming with me (even though I didn’t ask him to accompany me). All men were obviously very low on her list of people who could be trusted, and I found that very sad.

At one point, she asked if I had been molested as a child because it was part of the intake paperwork. I said that I had been, and she just looked sad. I informed her that it was very common, and the good thing about the #MeToo movement is that more people are talking about sexual abuse which is helping in prevention and healing. She seemed to agree it was probably a good thing that people were talking though she seemed a bit hesitant about it. Later in the appointment she asked if I had ever tried therapy about the molesting because she had heard it helps. I reassured her that I most definitely had seen a therapist and that I now do healing work helping others recovering from trauma. She seemed surprised but stated that there’s a lot of trauma out there, not just sexual, that needs healing.

After peeing in a cup (no help needed!), I returned to the nurse practitioner’s room where she told me my blood tests were negative. My urine test results for gonorrhea and chlamydia would be available online two days later through a patient portal. She gave me a piece of paperwork to hand to the front desk and sent me on my way. Fifty-five minutes after I arrived, I was on my way out the door, an amazingly good time for a public clinic or even a private doctor’s office.

I debated writing this blog post to share my experience, but after attending Bedpost Confessions this week and being reminded by one of the producers about how important it is that we talk about body functions and sexual health, I decided it would be good for me to put my experience out there. If it can help someone else feel more comfortable about what to expect when going to the local STI clinic, then I am happy to share what I went through. However, to anyone going there or anywhere for testing, I hope you remember that sex is a positive thing if practiced safely and consensually. Having it as often as you want with whomever you choose is a completely wonderful thing. Don’t let sex-negative attitudes impact your sex life!

©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., GreenHeartGuidance.com

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
 
I recently read a post about recommended new releases for feminists. On that list was Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships by Juno Roche. The blurb for the book sounded great, and the recommendation was incredibly enthusiastic. Although I’m a heterosexual cisgender woman and ally, I want to learn more about experiences outside of my own around sexuality and gender so I located an advance copy of the book.
 
I quickly discovered I was not really part of the target audience for Queer Sex. Roche wrote this book as a way of working through her own issues around sex after having had bottom surgery in the UK. She was struggling with dating and what sex and relationships “should” be for her, so she turned to journaling and interviewing others. Those journal entries and interviews are then compiled into an awkward volume. Roche hoped that her book would serve to help others also struggling with the same issues. This is an incredibly important goal, and one that obviously needs far more exploration.
 
However, the result is that there is often not enough basic education for readers like me who came to the book with very little knowledge about the process of transitioning or the intricacies of surgery. For example, Roche begins talking about dilation after her surgery. To me, gynecological dilation is the cervix opening for a baby to be born. Obviously, that wasn’t what she was talking about, so I had to go do some research. Likewise, Roche interviews someone who talks about chemsex. Roche herself says she doesn’t know the terms involved with chemsex, but I didn’t even know what chemsex is. These are the types of concepts that a well-written and well-edited guide book would have made clear through a few sentences or a footnote.
 
Queer Sex clearly demonstrates that there is a huge gap in the NHS in the UK for helping individuals dealing with issues around their gender and sexuality. Unfortunately, Roche doesn’t explain how the process of gender surgery happens in the UK, so those of us who live elsewhere (including me in the US) can be confused by what she discusses. To me as an outsider, it seems truly unethical that the system would provide her with the changes to align her body with her identity but then not help support her in the emotional transitions and experiences that happen as well. Of course, I realize things are probably not much better for those in the US, but it left me wondering why this gap in support exists and how it could be fixed.
 
Roche clearly struggles with low self-esteem, and this comes through very clearly in her writing. While there is a time and place for exploring low self-esteem, a “guide” to queer sex doesn’t seem to be the appropriate place for it. Roche’s lead-in to the first interview is self-disparaging, and while she means it to be humorous, the result is actually painful to read as Roche’s account of herself comes across as self-loathing. So often throughout the book I just wanted to hug Roche and tell her to believe in herself, something she clearly struggles to do. To me, it felt as though Roche really needed to be working intensely with a sex therapist rather than writing a book. Her journaling from this time could easily be edited and integrated and included in a future work once she was grounded enough in herself to write a coherent narrative.
 
Amid all the missing information and poorly integrated personal emotion is some very important and very fascinating content that should have been the focus of the book. During the transcribed interviews in the book, Roche and her interviewees explore what it means to be trans and/or non-binary. These people are trying to understand their own bodies, both pre- and post-op, their sex drives, their attractions, and their orgasms. They discuss generational differences between transwomen and what’s expected of transwomen, how trans people define themselves, and how others define them. The book explores whether genital surgery is normative and whether or not being trans is still defined by a binary system (which most agree it is). They ask questions such as “Do you have to have female genitals to be a transwoman?” These issues are the heart of the book, but because they are only discussed in the transcribed interviews, they are not fully explored.
 
Overall, Queer Sex reads like the combination of a journal and series of interviews that hasn’t been well-integrated or well-edited into a unified work. The text is repetitious in places and very self-indulgent in others. Roche’s vulnerability and exploring her experience is wonderful, but her writing needed to be edited for coherence. Her prose is absolutely gorgeous at times, such as when she discusses interviewing Kuchenga who “has a strange little triangular house, with triangular rooms, on the edge of the roundabout. As I enter her domain, I feel instantly like we are in a story full of content. And as soon as she starts to unfurl her works, I remain almost spellbound for the next two hours or so. Unfurl her words she does with a kind of languid confidence that is sonically beautiful.” However, her writing isn’t able to shine because of the poor organization and editing. Queer Sex really feels like it was only half-done and rushed to press rather than taking the time to make it into the stellar book it could have been.
 
Queer Sex contains some very important content about issues that we all should be discussing. We are all sexual (or asexual) beings, and our society’s views on sexuality and gender are changing rapidly. Even as a heterosexual cisgender woman, I recognized issues that I personally have struggled with in the dating world that Roche touches upon. I hope in her future works, Roche spends more time integrating, exploring, and editing these important topics.
 
©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., GreenHeartGuidance.com

​I attract engineers. It’s just a fact of my life that I have come to accept. For 40 of my 43 years, I have lived with engineers or future engineers. I’m the daughter, ex-wife and mother of engineers. Over half of the men I have dated have been engineers. I don’t go looking for them, but yet somehow engineers find me or I find them unintentionally. When I mentioned to a friend that a man I was newly dating was an engineer, she replied, “Of course he is. What else would he be?” I suspect that it might be quicker when talking to men about their careers if I just asked them what type of engineer they are rather than inquiring them what they do for a living. Chances are that they are an engineer.

Engineers are a unique group of people with brains that function in a way that is somewhat different from many others in society. While comics like Dilbert make fun of this engineer’s mindset, I am so accustomed to it that I find men who aren’t engineers to be the ones who are different thinking. Perhaps this is why I attract engineers: I know how to be at peace with their general mindset.

Thus, when a local intimacy coach mentioned that she was reading and absolutely loving Heart in Gear: An Engineer’s Erotic Journey to Freedom by Christopher Hoffman, I immediately purchased the book. I quickly read through it, fascinated by Hoffman’s story and amazed by his deep insights and his life growth. The book was far more than I had expected or hoped for.

Like many people, Hoffman found himself in a completely unsatisfying marriage after 20 years. Having been unable to improve the relationship through counseling, Hoffman reached a crossroads. With the encouragement of friends, he left his dysfunctional marriage, began rebuilding his life and found his deepest self. Heart in Gear details how Hoffman’s life evolves professionally, psychologically, and sexually as he worked to become a happier person.

Hoffman’s journey is filled with many fun and very sexy moments that he details explicitly, but he also encounters pain along the way. As he notes, “I learned not to be afraid of big emotions. Feeling pain was just a sign that what I was encountering mattered” (146). Through exploring that pain, Hoffman finds some of the deeper truths about himself and life. One of his first steps in the journey was discovering, “There are people trying to reach us, but they can’t penetrate into our hearts—not because we aren’t listening to them, but because we aren’t listening to ourselves” (53).

Once Hoffman realizes that he has to be accountable for his own emotions, desires, and behaviors rather than depending on others to shape him, he is able to enter relationships that are more soul-empowering. Rather than trying to fix everything and everyone around him (a very male and very engineer approach to life), Hoffman discovered that the healthier approach is to accept others as they are and to appreciate them for their genuine selves. Through this full acceptance of others, Hoffman found that his sexual connection with others became far more intimate and powerful than ever before. In his words, “I unplugged my cock from my ego and plugged it into my heart” (108).

I recommend Heart in Gear for any man (but especially engineers and their partners) who is wanting to learn more about himself, to heal his wounds and to be a better romantic partner. For a short and very easy to read book, Heart in Gear is filled with some very deep and powerful insights that have the potential to open up new worlds to its readers.
​
©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

In October 2016, football player Earl Thomas was so excited about a scoring a touchdown that he expressed his joy by hugging a referee. In response, the referee flagged him. Many people felt this was an overreaction on the part of the referee, but was it? Did Thomas have a right to hug anyone in his exuberant moment?

This isn’t the only hugging incident in the media in recent months. Pop star Kesha had a hug refused by comedian Jerry Seinfeld who didn’t recognize her. According to CNN, “[Seinfeld] denied her three times and even stepped away from her when she tried to touch him.” In response, Seinfeld stated, “`I don't hug a total stranger. I have to meet someone, say hello. I gotta start somewhere.’” That seems like a more than reasonable position for anyone nonetheless a famous individual who has to deal with a lot of fans without appropriate boundaries.
​
In my opinion, it’s very common for men to try to hug women without their consent. Recently Marco Rubio went to hug Ivanka Trump who stiffly refused his advances. Back during the preparation for debates for the 2016 Presidential election, Hillary Rodham Clinton actually practiced evading a hug from her stand-in for Donald Trump. The video of the rehearsal is actually quite funny. As amusing as the parody was, the reality behind it is not. A very high-power woman who has been one of our nation’s leaders was rehearsing an encounter with another now prominent politician. Part of that rehearsal was intentionally trying to make sure this man, one who has admitted on video to having sexually assaulted women, did not violate Clinton's boundaries by trying to hug her. Her aide got rather into the roleplaying and went a tad overboard creating the humor. Had he not been someone she was close to, this video wouldn’t be funny at all. However, the message behind it is powerful: Even women who are world leaders have to work hard to avoid being manhandled in hugs that they don’t want.
​
It's not just women, though. James Comey admitted to trying to hide in the White House curtains to avoid encountering Donald Trump who then tried to hug Comey despite Comey making the first gesture towards a handshake only. Trump is someone who is very aware of the power of dictating physical boundaries with those around him. He shows this not only through his unwanted hugs but through his ridiculous handshake politics.

Hugging is a very strange thing in our culture. I grew up in a family where hugging was not a part of the family dynamics. I don’t remember my parents ever hugging me. When I was in high school, I joined a youth group where hugging was a part of the culture. We all hugged each other as a greeting just as most would say hello or goodbye. I discovered I really liked hugging my friends. As I have gone forward in life, I have raised my children in a home where hugging is a daily occurrence. Their parents hug them, and they hug each other. I am very comfortable with hugging among those I’m close to.

However, with strangers, I don’t always feel that comfort. Once I entered the dating world in my post-divorce life, I began experiencing what I dubbed as “the consolation hug.” After a date which was suboptimal, men would give me a hug after declining to have any further dates with me. To me, the consolation hug was unwanted and unwarranted. It felt like the men were implicitly saying to me, “I know I just hurt you, and I feel bad about it. However, I am not aware enough to think about how hugging you might feel to you. I’m just trying to console myself into thinking I’m a decent guy by hugging you to show there are no hard feelings. Whether you want to be hugged or not is irrelevant to my thought process. I just need to feel better about how I just treated you, and hugging you will make me feel better about myself.” I began loathing the consolation hug though I never got very good at evading it.

At one point I went to a Meetup where I ran into a man whom I had previous interactions with. He knew I was attracted to him, but he was not attracted to me. We were both clear on where things stood between us, and despite our history, we managed to have a great conversation together throughout the meal. When we walked out together, he very unexpectedly gave me what felt like another consolation hug. I fumed internally about that hug for quite a while, and then I finally sent an angry email to him very unjustly accusing him of doing something that was demeaning to me. He was understandably clueless as to why I was upset because he looked at that hug in a very different way than I did. He explained to me that he had been raised as a Southern gentleman, and the appropriate social custom was to shake men’s hands when saying goodbye and to hug women. He meant nothing beyond that.

When I took this new information about Southern social customs into consideration, I realized this man was right. Every single man who had given me a “consolation hug” was actually a Southerner. The men who did not were raised in the North. Suddenly a lot more made sense. Having lived in the South for 25 years now, though, I was clear that Southern culture very much dictates that women’s bodies are not their own. This social custom of hugging women without their consent was just one more sign of that mistreatment of women. It’s at the foundation of our rape culture. Men should not automatically have the right to hug women, yet in a culture that doesn’t respect women’s boundaries, a hug is seen as appropriate behavior for men towards women (but not towards other men). Once again, we’ve encountered a situation where we need the societal rule to be “yes means yes” rather than “no means no.” Unless people have indicated that it is ok to touch them, then it’s not ok to randomly hug them.

I recently went out to dinner with a man I had never met before. We spent a wonderful evening talking, and at the end he very respectfully asked me, “Do you hug?” These are just three simple words, but they raised my opinion of him even higher than it already was. It told me that he respected women and their boundaries. He knew that I might not want him touching me. However, I am a person who hugs when the situation feels right, and it definitely did feel right in this case. I walked away from this hug feeling appreciated rather than violated. It would be great if all hugs left people feeling the same way.

​©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

The day after the 2017 Presidential inauguration, my 16 year old daughter came downstairs and asked me, “Is it true? Did they really get rid of the LGBT pages on the White House site?” Sadly, yes, it is true. I was amazed that she was puzzled by this happening. She continued asking me, “But who did that? How can they do that?” I let her know that the Republicans were in power now, and the new Presidential staff was more than legally allowed to remove any pages they wanted from the White House website. They want to make those in the LGBTQ+ community disappear. They want to restrict rights for those who are not heterosexual. They are going to try to repeal gay marriage. This is the way the next four years are going to be.

My daughter just sat there, looking dismayed. Her reaction made me realize on a deeper level what a privileged upbringing her life has been in terms of gay rights. She has grown up in a home where all people are seen as equal regardless of their sexual preferences, orientation or identity. Her grade school principal was an out lesbian who was partnered with one of the teachers at the school. Our nuclear family has friends and extended family members who are LGBTQ+. My daughter has been raised in a world where all of that is seen as so normal and acceptable it doesn’t even need comment. In her world, people are sexual beings, and any range of consensual sexual activity and identity is fine, most especially when it stems from love.

Yet back in the real world, members of the LGBTQ+ community still face daily discrimination. Not everyone is as accepting as our nuclear family. My daughter has never really known this except in the fact that gay marriage wasn’t legal until a few years ago. She doesn’t have the memories I have of being raised Catholic and being taught that homosexuality was a sin. She doesn’t remember the shock in a community when someone “came out.” She doesn’t realize the horrible stigma that HIV/AIDS initially had as a wrongly-perceived gay disease. She doesn’t understand the history of violence that was so prevalent and still continues in many places against those who are LGBTQ+.

I hate that my daughter’s innocence is being shattered, though I know she was privileged to be able to hold on to living in a utopia for as long as she did. Now, the issues of the LGBTQ+ community are personal to her. She is a proud ally. Her best friend is transgender. When my daughter’s friend announced his transition and his new name, she accepted him without question and knew her parents and siblings would, too. Now she is having to deal with the fact that the new order wants to make her best friend disappear, just like those webpages that were suddenly gone within hours of the inauguration. Yet she, like me and so many other allies, is not ok with that. They will not make those we love disappear just by removing a webpage. We will continue to fight to make all people visible and equal. In less than two years, she will be a registered voter, and she will be doing her part to make change happen in the mid-term elections as well.

​©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Like many in this nation, I’ve been using denial as a coping technique over the past two months. I’ve been trying to believe that somehow, miraculously, the shift in power we were dreading would not happen. I was hoping that it was all a bad dream or a horrible joke. It’s not, though. Our lives are about to change drastically.

The night of the election in November 2016, my 16 year old daughter came downstairs to the family room at about 10 pm from doing homework. Her twin and I were watching the returns come in with dismay. She had just received a text from her boyfriend about the ominous news. Her only words were, “Tell me it’s not true.” I had to tell her it was. She then asked, “Can we move to Canada?” Given that we have family there, it’s not too outrageous of a request.

My daughter’s reaction left me thinking. Her boyfriend is a darker skinned racial minority whose parents were immigrants to the US. Her best friend is transgender. Her mother is disabled. She is almost a woman. Her world is going to be drastically impacted by the changes that result from the election.

My life is also going to be impacted as well; the obvious is that I am a woman and I am disabled. Both of those groups have been declared targets of hatred in the new era, and I personally have already experienced it. I fully expect large parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act to be repealed because the ADA costs money to businesses in order to make them fully accessible, and in the new order, corporate money is far more important than those with disabilities.

There are other places where the new dawn is going to impact me. Without the Affordable Care Act, I am no longer insurable due to the past 14 years of health issues. I face insurance companies refusing to cover my medical bills because of my pre-existing conditions. Healthcare is going to be the most obvious place where I will feel the change.

Other places are less obvious at first glance, but they are real threats. I have never had an abortion in this life, and I hope I never have to. However, Roe v. Wade has ensured that abortion has always been an option in my lifetime. Now I am at a point in my life where I would have to terminate any pregnancy I might unintentionally conceive because of health issues, yet I expect Roe v. Wade to either be eliminated or heavily restricted in the coming year. If that is the case, I will have to limit my sexual partners to men who have had vasectomies or are otherwise sterile. I’m a little more than angry about (primarily older white men) deciding whom I can have sex with.

There are bigger fears, too. I spent the first part of my life living with a narcissist, and having a narcissistic man who uses gaslighting as one of his primary methods of communication in national power is triggering for me and for many others. Watching someone so ill-qualified and so mentally ill about to assume command of so many life-or-death decisions is truly terrifying, especially if one knows how fickle and dangerous narcissists can be.

I’ve spoken with my spirit guides, and they have assured me that the new Narcissist in Chief will not be pushing the big red button. However, they have also affirmed my fears that we are facing an ugly uphill battle in the near future. As a friend of mine phrased it, we are facing at a decision where we as a nation have to decide if we will be governed by fear or governed by love. As things stand now, we are heading toward being a nation governed by fear.

I choose not to live my life in that way, though. For me, the first question to any decision is always “What is the healthy decision?” That question is always accompanied by other similar supporting questions: “What will bring the most love into my life and the world?” “What will bring the most compassion to me, to others, and to humanity?” “What is the right thing to do even if it is the hardest?” I will continue to strive to hold those values dear even when the world around me is leaning in the opposite direction.

So for me, January 20th, 2017 is a day of mourning. I’m dressing in black, the traditional color of mourning in our culture. I’m letting myself grieve as hard as I need to, but I also am holding my heart in a place of love rather than a place of fear. While I can’t change the national or the global situation, I can keep working to enact change around me, helping those who aren’t accepted by others. I can keep working to get compassion enacted in our society on personal and legal levels.

The final words from “Memories” from the musical Cats have been echoing my head all day, prompting me to write this post. We are facing the new day, the new dawn, but we must hold tight to the memories that bring us hope and love.

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life 
And I mustn't give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory, too
And a new day will begin
​
©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Full Disclosure: I received a free digital copy in exchange for an honest review by NetGalley. However, I also bought a paperback copy to share with the many friends whom I’d lent my copy of How Not to Fall.

We’ve all heard the saying, “The sequel is never as good as the original.” More often than not, it’s unfortunately true. We build up our hopes for something even more amazing than the story or movie which stole our heart. Unfortunately, our fantasies are often too great, and the eventual reality is disappointing. For me, this phenomenon happened with How Not to Let Go by Emily Foster. While I adored its predecessor, How Not to Fall, I was nowhere near as enthralled with the sequel. That’s not to say that How Not to Let Go wasn’t a good book: It just wasn’t as amazing as the first in the series.

How Not to Let Go continues the story of Annabelle and Charles, two lovers who met while she was a student and he was her supervisor. After her graduation, they began a torrid one month affair, ending it when she left for medical school in Massachusetts and he stayed on at his position as a post-doctoral researcher in Indiana. In the sequel, we witness the two trying to cope with their breakup, and after a year has passed, we get to join their journey as they work toward reuniting.

The story jumps back and forth between the US and England where Charles’ family of origin lives. While attending a conference, Annabelle and Charles meet for coffee but choose not to give into sexual temptation. However, when an overly convenient plot device of potential terrorist activity leads to Charles’ brother shutting down the London airports for security reasons, the two lovers spend several days at Charles’ brother’s home having abundant sex once again. Eventually, the two both end up in Massachusetts, and they continue to work through the relationship, its issues, and their individual problems.

I struggled to figure out why this sequel wasn’t as exciting for me as the first book. The process of falling in love is a powerful and wonderful one, and that first love part of Annabelle and Charles’ relationship happened in the first book. There’s no way to recreate that initial passion and romance as a relationship continues. Reunions are hot, and the sex that follows them is also quite intense, but it’s never quite the same as the beginning of a relationship. However, the sex scenes between Annabelle and Charles were still very arousing.

The means that Foster uses to push along the plot of the novel were often a bit too over the top for me. Rich geniuses (more than one in a family!), a trust fund, a potential terrorist attack, a conveniently located gorgeous home… it all just felt less real than the first novel. The more honest parts of the novel, the ones that involved family dynamics or relationship growth, were too few and far between. While often difficult to read because of how toxic the relationships were, the family scenes were the ones that kept my attention and made me want to keep reading. Unfortunately, the great family scenes were surrounded by extensive and detailed rock climbing adventures which became tedious for me.

Foster definitely writes for sapiosexuals, readers who are turned on by intelligence. In How Not to Let Go, though, the use of imagery to describe Charles’ psychological struggles becomes burdensom. Perhaps it is the kind of language and conversation that would happen between two psychiatrists, but for most of us, we don’t create such elaborate illustrations for our personal struggles.

The hardest part for me about the book was probably not due to the author or the book itself but was due to my own life. In the novel, Charles struggles with having an avoidant attachment style due to the dysfunctional family he grew up in. He’s the kind of guy who is commitment phobic as a result of having been hurt too much in the past by those he loved. However, unlike any man I’ve ever known who has an avoidant attachment style, Charles enters intensive psychotherapy to work on healing his wounds. He regularly flies across states to continue seeing the same therapist in person. He is determined to break through the psychological struggles that hold him back from having a healthy and secure attachment to Annabelle. Perhaps I was jealous of Annabelle having found a man who was willing to do this healing work for both himself and for her, but another part of me found it very unrealistic. That left me wondering how one finds a partner who have successfully done this powerful and deep healing work, because the people who have are very rare. Thus, another part of the book felt unrealistic to me, just in a way that made me feel jealous rather than bemused.

I definitely enjoyed reading How Not to Let Go, but it was a less passionate enjoyment than I felt for its predecessor. I have already recommended How Not to Let Go to a friend with an avoidant attachment style, but I probably won’t recommend it to others whom I shared the first book with. That said, I hope Foster plans to continue writing other novels which cater to sapiosexuals, which teach healthy sexual relationships, and which portray realistic sex scenes. The world of romance definitely needs books that fit this niche!
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Trigger warning: This post discusses sexual assault, rape, pedophilia and similar topics. There are no explicit depictions of any of the topics; the post is a discussion of issues around the topic of violation and consent.
 
We live in a nation where one of the major Presidential candidates has been caught on film advocating non-consensual sexual assault of women. Since this film was published in the media, many women have come forward to state that they’ve received such treatment from this candidate. Likewise, that same candidate is going to trial later in December for allegedly raping a 13 year old girl, a situation where consent can never be obtained due to the victim’s age. Despite these issues, that Presidential candidate is managing to hold a projected 40+% of the nation’s votes. What this tells us is that we live in a culture where women’s and children’s sexual rights are seen as irrelevant by far too many people.
 
Given that we live in such times, I don’t believe it is possible to discuss sexual boundaries without discussing the issue of sexual consent. In his book Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture, Chris Donaghue attempts to do just that. The general premise of his book is that we need to break down the boundaries around sex, gender and sexuality. Donaghue doesn’t believe we should refer to ourselves as male or female, man or woman, straight or gay or even pansexual. Instead, he visualizes a utopic world where labels around sexuality are not used at all so that everyone’s sexuality is accepted.
 
As I read through beginning of the book, I kept asking myself repeatedly, “But what about consent?” By the end of the first chapter, I felt as though someone whose sexual pleasures included acting on pedophilia or rape would feel completely justified in their sexual activities and would see them as acceptable based on Donaghue’s rhetoric. By trying to break down *all* boundaries, Donaghue is doing just that: He’s getting rid of the good along with the bad. I believe that there are some very important boundaries which exist to protect us from trauma, violence, and abuse, and I believe those protective boundaries cannot ever be eliminated if our society is to become more sex positive as Donaghue hopes.
 
As I kept reading through Sex Outside the Lines, the word consent did not appear anywhere. I even stopped to look in the index to see if the word was there. It wasn’t. Finally, on page 166, Donaghue finally mentions consent in passing. He states, “As long as sex is consensual and no one is injured, then it’s all part of healthy sexual expression.” This statement, in an expanded form, needed to be at the very beginning of his book. To me, as a woman who has experienced sexual abuse and assault both as a child and as an adult, consent is an issue that cannot be ignored when discussing sexual boundaries. I wasn’t looking for an entire chapter or an entire section on consent. Instead, all I wanted was a paragraph early in the book devoted to the importance of consent as a boundary that can never be violated.
 
As my book group discussed this work, I hypothesized that Donaghue may not have had any peer readers of drafts who had endured sex abuse. Someone in the group who knows Donaghue told me that she knew for a fact that he did. Yet even under that kind of advice before publication, Donaghue still chose not to include any vital discussion of consent early in the book.
 
This issue of consent came up during Chris Donaghue’s presentation for the Southwest Sexual Health Alliance on October 8, 2016 in Austin. The SWSHA has a saying, “Don’t yuck somebody’s yum,” a phrase that was invoked before Donaghue’s presentation. In short, it means having respect for all sexual practices. What may disgust you may be the most arousing activity for someone else. We all should have respect for that difference between us. At one point, though, a therapist politely but obviously concerned asked Donaghue, “I don’t mean to yuck anybody’s yum. But what about pedophiles? What about the issue of consent?”
 
Donaghue stated that his easy-out answer is that he follows the law and advises others to do the same. He also said that healthy sex starts with compassion, and that this is the approach to work on boundaries with the clients. Donaghue noted that all of us have desires we’d never act upon, a true statement. He voiced his opinion that most people with pedophile desires know that such desires aren’t appropriate to act upon and are trying to refrain from engaging in them. I think that belief of his may be based on the population that he works with: Those who are actively working to stop from acting on non-consensual desires. I don’t believe that statement is actually true for all who violate consent, though. However, I’m viewing it from the place of a practitioner who helps those who have been violated, so my viewpoint is vastly different from his. An estimated 1 in 4 women has been sexually abused (though I believe that number is inaccurate), and an estimated 1 in 6 men (again, a number I believe is too low) have been sexually abused. Even if they are underestimates, those statistics indicate a lot of people who aren’t resisting their non-consensual urges and are harming others. Overall, the answer Donaghue gave in response to such important questions felt very unsatisfactory to me.
 
Additionally, Donaghue pounced on the therapist’s use of the word “pedophiles.” He doesn’t like the word because he believes it is a word laden with shame. He prefers to use the phrase “intergenerational sexual attraction.” On one hand, I see his point. I don’t believe in using shame the way our culture does as a disciplinary method. I’m a huge fan of Brené Brown whose work attempts to undo the damage of shame in our culture. I believe all people are capable of change though I also believe many are unwilling to do the work that is required to change and grow.
 
However, I also believe in calling a spade a spade. I’ve been in a sexual relationship with a man who is 14.5 years older than me. That is an intergenerational sexual relationship that included a lot of intergenerational sexual attraction. It was a wonderful experience for me. I’ve also been sexually abused by men who were 20-40+ years older than me when I was 3, 7 and 18 years old. Those were not intergenerational sexual relationships. Those were abuse, assault, and nonconsensual relations. They are vastly different experiences. By conflating attraction of two consenting adults to the same thing as a person attracted to and acting on pedophilia, Donaghue is helping support our culture that disregards sexual assault as a serious issue that isn’t being addressed properly. By Donaghue's logic, the term rapist should be changed to “a persuasive sexual practitioner.” However, it’s never ok to downgrade the severity of sexual abuse and assault. Language is powerful, and by rejecting language that actually names a toxic act, Donaghue is rejecting the pain and suffering of so many people whose bodies, spirits and minds have been violated.
 
I agree with Donaghue that our culture desperately needs to evolve to become a sex positive culture. In order to create that new openness towards sexuality, we must establish respect as one of the most important roots of sex positivity. We must have respect for others’ desires, for others’ bodies, and for others’ genetic predispositions, and for others’ choices. We must have respect for everything sexual about a person. Yet in order to achieve that broader respect, one must also have respect for the boundaries that are necessary to keep each person safe. Consent is a boundary that cannot ever be eliminated in a healthy sex positive culture. As we move toward a new paradigm for sexuality and gender in our lives, we must bring consent into that new culture. We need to create a world that respects everyone, especially each person’s right to say no.
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Love is where compassion prevails and kindness rules. ~my tea bag’s inspirational message this morning

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the Southwest Sexual Health Alliance’s presentation of Chris Donaghue, Ph.D., who lectured on concepts from his book Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture and an upcoming book. While I have yet to put up a book review of Sex Outside the Lines, the short version of my opinion of it is that I both loved it and hated it. It’s a work that asks readers to stretch their minds and ideas, sometimes outside the realm of reality and into a utopic society.
 
One of the things that Donaghue is very good about acknowledging is his own privilege: He knows he is a good looking, intelligent, well-educated, white male. He also recognized during the talk that he’s been recently alerted to the thin privilege he experiences. While I think his awareness of the privilege of being a fit and attractive person is a good start, I feel several of his more popular ideas continue to play directly into the overwhelming prejudice in our society against those who are not thin.

My own experience in the dating world as an obese woman is one which very much demonstrates the attitudes and prejudices in our society towards those of larger size. In the four years since I opened myself up to dating again after my separation and divorce, I’ve had very little success through either Meetups or numerous dating websites. My experience is not unique; almost every overweight person I’ve met who has tried online dating has given up because of the discrimination they faced. I can immediately name you a handful of friends and acquaintances who haven’t been on a date in years because they are seen as undateable by most of the population because of their weight. It’s not due to a lack of openness or effort on their parts.

Despite their desires that I not do it, I often call people on the difference between preference and prejudice. One of the most common things I see on dating profiles is men stating, “I don’t date fat women. I know that sounds rude, but it’s just a preference of mine.” The reality is that it’s a prejudice, not a preference. When we judge others before we even interact with them solely based on their appearances, we are discriminating. I ask people who say or write these words to replace them with a racial minority. Would they say, “I don’t date black women. I know that sounds rude, but it’s just a preference of mine”? The reality is that most of the people I interact with are aware enough to understand that to say such a thing would be incredibly rude and prejudiced. However, to them, it’s ok to have that same prejudice against those who are overweight and excuse it as “just a preference.” To say that you are not attracted to all fat people is blatant discrimination against an entire population of people without knowing them as individuals. It’s judgmental, uncompassionate, and unloving.

While Donaghue laudably argues that people should expand their boundaries and date outside of their comfort zones, he simultaneously argues both in his book and at the presentation yesterday that people should date those whom they are attracted to. Unfortunately, to most men (and probably to most people, though I don’t have the experience outside of my heterosexual experiences to verify that) that translates into being immediately attracted to others’ physical appearance. In her fabulous senior thesis Can She Really 'Play that Game Too'?, Leah Fessler describes the dating experience at Middlebury College in 2015 with a focus on the difference between men and women when it came to the “hook up culture.” One of her assertions is that a majority of men refuse to consider being with a woman if she is not immediately physically attractive to them:

I suspect a wider study of American society would find a similar pattern.   

My own experience has confirmed Fessler’s theory and expanded upon it. When I first got on dating sites, I put up professional quality pictures. When I messaged men, 95% of them did not respond. However, in my most recent round of online dating, I put up a profile with no picture; I noted at the bottom that if men had read that far, I was happy to send them a link to my picture if they were a good match for me. This time around when I messaged men, 95% of them DID respond. What I discovered is that I am very attractive on paper. Men see a woman who is highly educated, open-minded, compassionate, not looking to trap them into a marriage with babies, sex-positive, and more. I’ve had dozens of well-matched men interested me, many of them asking me out, some even providing phone numbers so we can arrange the dates. However, the moment they request and see a picture, the same men disappear into the woodwork. Only a few have the decency to send a final “thanks but no thanks” note. The overwhelming majority of men I approach have interest in me as a person until they discover I’m overweight. Suddenly the same very attractive woman is no longer appealing. That is the very definition of fat prejudice.

I also believe based on my personal experience that sexual and romantic attraction is rooted in much more than just physical appearance. Two of the three men I’ve been in love with in this life were friends before they were love interests. I was not incredibly physically attracted to either of them when we first met. Sexual attraction can develop over time once one has gotten to know the other person better. More often than not, that hot sexual attraction leads to relationships that are doomed to be short-lived. It’s nothing more than hormones speaking. While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having relationships like that, it’s also not wrong to open oneself to relationships that might develop from mutual interests rather than hormones. Sexual chemistry and connection can be very successful in a relationship even when there’s no immediate physical pull towards that person if one opens oneself up to the possibility.

Thus, when Chris Donaghue advocates that people should date those whom we are attracted to with no qualifiers attached, he’s perpetuating social dating dysfunction. Donaghue is very aware that people are highly influenced by the media and advertising. Study after study has shown how deeply advertising and media can influence our subconscious minds, changing what we think we want and what we think we are attracted to. Magazines, advertisements, tv shows, movies: They all tell us we “should” be attracted to slim people who fit a certain profile. Most people aren’t consciously aware enough to realize how media is warping their attractions in the dating world. It takes very rare and very strong people to step outside of those cultural ideals and date people who are attractive on the inside when their appearance is outside of that approved by social media. Most people don’t even recognize that their “types” are actually rooted in dysfunction, not genuine attraction.

One of Donaghue’s ideas that I’ve seen shared in numerous places is, “Experience a lot of sex/sexuality so you truly understand it.” This quote was directed towards a person who wanted to become a sex therapist and wanted Donaghue’s advice about it, but a statement like this also becomes shaming for those who daily fight fat prejudice in our society and who, despite their efforts, can’t find dates nonetheless sexual partners. Likewise, stating as he does in Sex Outside the Lines that “Working on oneself while solo is easy and lazy, and is an actual avoidance of doing the real work” also is a very shaming statement for those who are not single by choice  (101). It’s far better that individuals work on themselves when single rather than sitting around and feeling sorry for themselves. Just because they aren’t in a romantic relationship does not mean they are not in relationship with others, and just because they are working on themselves while solo doesn’t mean they are lazy.

Last weekend, I went on a generally enjoyable date with a man I’d met online. We messaged for a few days, discovering that we had a tremendous amount in common, so we decided to meet for dinner on the following weekend to see what the chemistry was like in real life. Despite having seen full-length pictures of me in advance, this man declined the opportunity to pursue anything else with me after that dinner because after seeing me in person he decided I was too fat. This is the reality of dating in modern America for those who are overweight. We aren’t fighting against attractions and preferences. We’re up against outright prejudice.

© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When I rejoined the dating world, I quickly learned the term sapiosexual: One who is attracted to intelligence. The term is an apt descriptor for me and almost always for the men who are attracted to me. We are among those who find people who use their brains to be some of the sexiest lovers in the world. We want partners who can talk smart to us before they talk sexy to us. After all, the brain is the sexiest organ in the body.

While reading How Not to Fall by Emily Foster, I found the perfect romance for a sapiosexual. The novel is a work of erotic fiction custom designed for a nerd, especially an intellectual who has a fondness for psychology. A far cry from so many romances which are written for the lowest common denominator, How Not to Fall seamlessly integrates psychological theories and knowledge into its text and often into the sexual foreplay of its very smart characters. Despite its intellectual content, Foster writes in a conversational tone that is accessible to all potential readers.

Building on a taboo relationship of a post-doctoral supervisor and an undergraduate student falling for each other, the book explores the month-long relationship that the two of them consummate once she has finished school and they can legitimately be together. Charles, a post-doctoral researcher, is the slightly older, more sexually experienced man who brings Annabelle, the recently graduated virgin, into a new phase of her sexuality. Aside from many vivid sex scenes, the book contains a lot of conversation, dancing scenes, and rock climbing scenes. Foster weaves all of these together in a coherent novel that feels like an excerpt from two people’s lives, not just a bunch of sex scenes thrown together surrounded by weak dialog to sell a book.​

Most important to Foster’s objectives for this romance, the relationship between Charles and Annabelle is one built on equality and respect. From the beginning, Charles refuses to cross a line where he would be taking advantage of Annabelle because of his position of academic power over her. Once they are able to freely enter into the relationship, Charles still insists on taking the relationship slowly so that Annabelle gets to have the best introduction to sexual activity he can possibly give her. Even before they enter into slightly more kinky activities, Charles makes sure he has full consent from Annabelle and verifies that she knows and remembers their safewords (a term not used in the book) so that she can always stop whatever they are doing if it no longer feels right to her. It’s a relationship built on mutual understanding, respect and trust.

From one of the earliest conversations in the book, I began to wonder if Foster had been sitting in on an event in my life. Word for word, Charles and Annabelle said almost the same words as I had exchanged with a previous love in my life. As the novel progressed, I again saw scenes from my own life unfolding on the pages in front of me. While the novel is a fantasy, it was clear to me that this was a work grounded in reality. Much of what happens during the novel could be a part of its readers' lives.

I was hoping How Not to Fall would be a romance I could share with my teenage daughter, but I think it is still a bit too explicit for her at this point in her life. In a few years, I plan to give it to her so she can have a better understanding of what romance could and probably should look like. I also will insist that she should use condoms, something that Charles and Annabelle do not do because she is on hormonal birth control. However, even with frequent STI testing, many people carry strains of HPV that they are unaware of because they aren’t tested for them. I’ve also had a partner whose one set of STI testing did not include Herpes Simplex 1 and 2 because his doctor’s office told him that he’d know if he had them, a very erroneous idea in regard to viruses that can lie dormant for a while before manifesting. Hormonal birth control offers no protection against STIs, and thus, it is in people’s best interest to use condoms when they are not in a permanent monogamous relationship.

I breezed through this sexy intellectual novel in only an afternoon, unable to put it down for very long. How Not to Fall is a fabulous read, and I’m anxiously awaiting its sequel which is due to be published in 2017. I’ve already recommended it to several feminist sapiosexual friends whom I know will enjoy it as much as I did.

© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Many years ago, I met a woman through a local internet mothering group who had been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. Doctors had given her six months to live, and she was determined to prove them wrong. She lived-- truly lived-- for another four years before her death. The woman (whom I’ll call K) entered a healing path even though she was going to be dying in the near future. She was determined to lengthen her life as much as possible. K undertook many holistic healing protocols. Among her discoveries that helped her to find more happiness and more health was facing whom she really was. After two heterosexual marriages that ended in divorce, K finally realized that she was a lesbian. By “coming out,” K found happiness that had been missing all of her adult life.

Around the same time, I was friends with a woman, C, who was in a national internet support group for people with illnesses like mine. We were in and out of each other’s lives via email for quite a while. As we both walked our healing paths, C made a personal discovery. While C identified as pansexual, she’d had many relationships that ended unhappily including a recent divorce. It wasn’t until C realized that he was actually a man named J that deeper healing began for him.

As I watched these two people find happiness as a result of the deep work that chronic illness prompted in their lives, I began to question what was holding me back in my personal healing. Given what both of these two people discovered about themselves, the first things I questioned were my gender and sexual orientation. After much introspection and internet research, I discovered that I was a heterosexual cisgender woman, exactly what I had identified as all my life. Thus, I made no amazing life changing discoveries about my sexuality as my internet friends had done.

I remained puzzled for many years about what was holding my healing back. If it wasn’t my sexuality, then what was it about myself that I needed to find? In my case, it turned out that it was my spiritual self than I needed to rediscover. I had spent the past five lifetimes trying to deny, repress and ignore my metaphysical abilities. Because I grew up in a family in and then married and divorced a man this life ​who aren’t believers in the metaphysical, it didn’t feel safe for me to be my true self. However, a major illness in this lifetime forced me to to come to terms with my metaphysical gifts and my need to use them for healing myself and others.

For many people facing chronic or terminal illness, finding oneself is one of the challenges that can help alleviate a great deal of emotional pain and suffering. Because our emotional pain often manifests as physical pain in our body, finding oneself can sometimes bring improvement or even remission of one’s physical misery. Regardless of its impact on one’s physical symptoms, being true to oneself always brings happiness that was previously unknown in this life. There is nothing comparable to being able to say, “This is whom I am. I am proud of me, and I love being me.”

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When my now ex-husband and I were in marriage therapy, our couple’s therapist would recommend books from time to time. To his surprise, I usually would read the book by the next session. One of the authors he mentioned periodically was David Deida, though he always followed it with a remark along the lines of, “DON’T read his work. I don’t want to have to spend an entire session devoted to you ranting about his views of women.” So I never read Deida while we were in joint therapy.

However, more recently I picked up his Finding God through Sex: Awakening the One of Spirit Through the Two of Flesh. When I told my individual therapist that I was reading a work of Deida’s, she replied, “How can you stand his views of women?” Clearly there is a pattern here. They both are right. I found some of his views of women downright offensive. However, if one is able to see past Deida’s erroneous thoughts around women and some of his bizarre logic, there is quite a bit of wisdom in his work. It’s rare to find a book that has so many major problems as this one does yet which really stimulates thinking and brings new and helpful ideas into one’s worldview so that the total outcome from the book is positive.

Finding God through Sex is rooted in the premise that men are seeking freedom through sex and women are seeking love. Deida believes that men use sex to escape from their responsibilities in life and to basically wear themselves out to a point of falling asleep. Women, on the other hand, use sex to connect and create intimacy. Women are trying to tune in while men are trying to tune out. Deida is proposing that both sexes can work with their natural predilections to enhance the other’s sexual experience and to connect with the great cosmic love (also known as God) that we are all part of. To create this connection with “God” in the more spiritual and cosmic sense, all people must work past their involvement in the physical and sexual details of the moment to surrender to love on a much deeper level than we are used to doing.

Deida argues that for most people, sexual awakening in a spiritual sense is often the last part of an awakening to happen. He believes most people fail to apply what they’ve learned in the rest of their lives to sexual experiences. Thus, when most people have their so-called midlife crises, what they are actually experiencing is a dissatisfaction with the shallowness of how they live their current lives. Deida argues that people should not leave their marriages but instead should work on expanding their love outward rather than focusing inward, learning to surrender to the love that is the “God” within all of us which will in turn create deeper meaning in every aspect of our lives. This love will provide the happiness and fulfill the desire that is unquenchable by anything of this world yet it will happen while remaining fully in this world. While this is a beautiful notion, it will only work if both partners are willing to explore and work towards this change in sexuality and life beliefs. For many, a partner change becomes necessary at this point to find someone who, as Deida says, matches direction in life and depth in love.

This book is a series of essays that explore wisdom and exercises that one can do to develop one’s sexual awakening. While Deida argues that the book could be practiced by someone who is celibate, it really is meant for couples in monogamous, long-term relationships. Finding God through Sex is overwhelmingly heterosexual and rooted in stereotypical ideas about male and female desire; I would not recommend it to anyone who is not a Kinsey 0. While some of Deida’s ideas are true, others are nothing more than cultural creations that Deida has locked onto. In particular, his warped idea of female sexuality includes makeup and clothing as how women can find their divine sexual selves. He fails to see that clothing and makeup are actually socially constructed ideas about what women should be, not what their deeper feminine truths are. As Deida describes his ideas of how women should explore their sexuality, he creates a fantasy girls’ night in where the women dress each other in lingerie and S&M costumes. This event resembles no girls’ night I’ve ever attended and is really nothing more than a male masterbatory fantasy. That’s not to say that Deida isn’t a great erotic writer. The beginning of each chapter starts with a very vivid and explicit recollection of sexual experiences Deida has had which leaves the reader pondering whether Deida has slept with every woman in his community. Were Deida to write a work of spiritual erotic fiction which understood women’s sexual fantasies just a bit more than this book, I suspect he would have a best seller on his hands.

It is not until the end of the book that Deida begins to explore the idea that we all have masculine and feminine sides and that there is a bit of both in each of us. His image of a river bank and the river as two lovers who shape each other is incredibly beautiful. To him, though, the gender spectrum is not very fluid, and while we might contain some of the opposing sex’s characteristics, those are just minor things to be explored and then left to be. The small amount of gender fluidity he discusses is located with his discussions of BDSM, rape fantasies, and other kinkier sexual things thus leaving the reader pondering whether he thinks that gender fluidity may just be a phase that each of us needs to explore before we come into our true heterosexual gender binary selves.

I don’t know that any woman would want to take it on, but I feel that the book could have been a five star book if Deida had co-written it with a strong and powerful woman who could have whacked Deida upside the head every time he began supplementing wisdom with his personal fantasies. The book would have benefitted greatly from a true female perspective rather than the warped one that Deida presents from this heterosexual man cave. Despite its lack of perspective at times, Finding God through Sex is a really good work about how couples can transform their sex lives into something much more powerful than they have ever experienced before.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I wrote this meditation for my Meetup group's discussion group on Sexuality and Spirituality.

Sit back in your chair as comfortably as you can. Place your feet firmly on the floor if it feels appropriate to do so. Take a deep breath in, and simply let it go. Take another breath, and as you let it go, start to release any fear, tension, or stress in your body. For the next five breaths or so, think about all of the things that are stressing you out: your job, your partner, your lack of partner, your bills … whatever it is, just acknowledge that it is a source of stress in your life… Now take a deep breath in, and on the exhale, release all of those things. They will be waiting for you again when we finish. But for now, they can wait while you focus on you, your energy and your sexuality.

As you take your next breath, find your tailbone in your body. This is the location of your base chakra, the place where safety and basic needs are met. It is where your kundalini or your life force energy rises from in your body. This chakra is often portrayed as red or black. On your next inhale, feel your tailbone, strong and secure at the base of your spine. On your exhale, visualize your tailbone shooting roots down into the ground, connecting to the Earth and all its infinite power. Feel the strength of this bond between yourself and the Earth. The Earth is steady and secure beneath your body, holding strong and supporting you in any way you need. As you continue breathing in and out, feel the pure and clean energy of the Earth entering your body as we move upward through all of our other chakras.

Slowly shift your attention to your second chakra, your sacral chakra. It is located below your belly button in your pelvis. It is a bright orange color. Take a deep breath and focus on the Earth’s energy climbing up from your tailbone into your pelvis. Feel it slowly moving around, bringing strength and vitality to your organs. Your second chakra is the home of your creativity and your reproductive abilities. It is the place of your sexuality, and for many, it is the place of abuse. Keep breathing in and out, seeing that positive Earth energy fill your pelvis. Let the energy bathe your second chakra, strengthening and calming it. We will be working extensively with this chakra tonight as we discuss our sexuality, so let it feel as strong as it can to approach this work without fear. No matter what condition your second chakra is in tonight, it is still sacred and it is still a vital part of you.

Slowly allow your attention to move up into your third chakra, the solar plexus chakra. It is located above your navel, and it is associated with the color yellow. Breathe in and out of this area, slowly and deeply. See the Earth energy continuing to spread its beautiful tendrils throughout this area, calming it and bringing it light. Your third chakra is the home of your self-esteem, an area that is often damaged by negative sexual experiences and inaccurate sexual demonization by our society. Take a moment to let your third chakra and your entire self know that even if you have been hurt, even if you don’t feel good about yourself sometimes, you are still an amazing being. You are still perfect exactly as you are. Your third chakra has the power to strengthen and help you find the way to realizing your most positive sexual self.

Moving upward again, your heart chakra is located in your breastbone. It is a bright Irish green, and it is radiating with love. Let the Earth’s energy rise up into your heart and strengthen your love both for yourself and others. Feel your heartbeat in your chest, spreading your energy throughout your body with each breath you take. As you take your next deep breath, just allow yourself to spend a few moments pondering the feeling of love. Love is the emotion motivating sexual activity for many people. Your heart chakra is also the place that feels the hurt so deeply when love comes to an end. Breathing in again, feel the Earth’s energy spreading compassion for you and your loved ones, those from the past, the present, and the future. Know that the strength within your heart to keep loving will always be there, no matter how deeply you may have been hurt in the past. At the core of your being, you are love, and you are here to share that love with others. That love is a reflection of the divine in all of us.

The next stop on your body is your throat, the home of your fifth chakra. It is portrayed as being a brilliant blue. It is the root of your communication, of being heard and of speaking to others. This is the part of you that vocalizes your love and your pain that you have experienced in life. Breathe deeply, feeling the Earth’s energy coiling around your voicebox, soothing it, strengthening it. As you breathe out, send out all the frustration that may be pent up in your fifth chakra. Let go of all of the times you didn’t say what you wanted to. Let go of all the times someone didn’t tell you the words you wanted to hear. Feel the energy calming those stuck words in your throat, helping them feel as though they do matter even if they were never spoken or heard.

Slowly let the Earth’s energy rise up to your third eye, your sixth chakra, located in your brow above your eyes. Its color is either an indigo or purple depending on how you see it. This is your place of intuition. Let the Earth’s energy fill up this area, reminding you how connected your body, mind, and spirit are to all others who are a part of this world. Your intuition comes both from within and without. Take a few deep breaths, reminding yourself that you can trust your intuition. It is that voice that tells you whom you can be with and whom you should distance yourself from. Your intuition is what leads you to lovers and sexual experiences. It helps you find those whom you are meant to walk with in this world.

And finally, bring your attention to the top of your head, your crown chakra. This seventh chakra is often portrayed as a bright white light. Visualize the energy of the Earth that you have brought up from your tailbone, through your pelvis, your solar plexus, your chest, your neck and your face now reaching the top of your head. It joins with the bright white light that is shining into your body through your crown chakra. As the energies from below and above unite with the energies within, know you are a powerful and strong being who is connected to the life force around you. The power of the Earth and the beauty of the heavens come together in your creation. You are a product of a man and a woman, of divinely created sexuality. No matter the conditions of your conception, it began in the second chakra of two people who were themselves sexual beings. All the children walking the Earth now are the results of sexual genesis even if there was technological assistance involved. We are all beings who rose from sexuality, and we are all beings who live sexual lives. We are meant to embrace this sexuality as a part of the divine that resides within us.

Take a few more moments to feel the energy moving through your body. You are holy. You are filled with life force energy. You have the ability to share this powerful gift with others, both platonically and sexually. You are a gift to this world and to all of those who are lucky enough to have you in their lives. You are an amazing sexual human being. You bring the divine to everyone you meet every day. Believe in this power that you have. Even with your flaws, even with your humanity, you are still divine, and you are still perfect.

Take a few final breaths, feeling any anxiety releasing on your exhales. Prepare yourself to join us when you are ready. As you open your eyes, take a few moments to write in your journal on the topic sentence, “I am a sexual being.” You might record any thoughts, feelings, or emotions that may have come up for you as we did this meditation. You might also record any feelings you have around being a sexual being.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

J. K. Rowling once wrote, “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” She illustrates this concept so beautifully throughout the Harry Potter series as most of the characters are afraid to speak the name of "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” or “You-Know-Who,” but the brave and powerful wizard teenager of Harry Potter refuses to join in their fearmongering. Instead, Potter says the words “Lord Voldemort” loud and clear much to the dismay of many of the other characters who are afraid that just mentioning the name will bring evil upon them.

We might laugh at this example and see it as absurd, but our own mainstream culture lives in fear of certain words which it has labeled as “bad.” I was recently chided for using “the F word” by my middle school son’s principal. I then proceeded to use it again along with some other words she probably didn’t appreciate either. The absurdity of her inability to name the word that disturbed her was both annoying and amusing to me.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a “bad” word. Words have cultural connotations, but they are just words and letters. The word fuck, for instance, is both a noun and a verb. The adjective is fucking. These words contain the letters f, u, c, and k just like many other words in the English language such as futtock, firetruck, rackful, sackful, unfrock, truckful, and fullback. There is nothing inherently wrong with those letters or any way that they can be used to form words.

However, if you decide that you find the word “fuck” offensive, then it is you (along with many others in our society) who is labeling the word as bad, and it is you who has issues around the word which you need to process. The word itself is not actually bad. If you don’t know why you are afraid of that word, look to your childhood. Your parents, teachers or church probably taught you that the word was bad and that if you used that word, you were bad. Nothing could be further from the truth. The words we use are merely words. The intent behind the word is what matters. If you tell someone to “fuck off,” in most situations that person will be offended, and probably rightfully so since you are telling them that you don’t respect them or their opinions. However, if you ask your romantic partner, “Want to fuck?”, the response will likely be quite different. The fact that the word fuck is considered profane by many is rooted in a societal fear of sexuality that exists simultaneously in a culture where sexual references abound. It’s a strange bit of hypocrisy in our world.

When we continue to teach others that certain words are “bad,” then we are perpetuating misinformation and conditioning our next generations in the same way we were conditioned as children. My own kids all know every “profane” word in the book, what they mean and why people find many of them offensive. They know them because they’ve heard them come out of my mouth on many occasions! However, my children have been fortunate to have been brought up in a family where it is recognized that words are just combinations of letters, and the connotation that one puts behind the word is the true issue. I know that is not the most common way for kids to be raised, but I am so glad that they are learning how not to bow to the fearmongering around language.

It’s not just so-called profanity that our society is afraid of. Words like feminist, queer, witch, nerd and pagan become taboo words when our culture deems them to be. Yet those words are ones that friends and I use frequently for we consider them part of our identity. We have chosen to embrace the parts of ourselves that many fear. Others can’t use words such as penis and vagina that describe their reproductive organs due to conditioned shame; those body parts are definitely not inherently bad for they are involved in the creation of every human on the planet. However, our culture definitely has issues around words that represent things that we are afraid of.

Synchronicity decided to kick in last night as I was writing this blog post during commercials of the new series premiere of The Muppets. One of the skits and ongoing gags in the show was about Sam the Eagle acting as the show’s network censor to filter out words that he deemed inappropriate for the public to hear. His list during the first staff meeting of the show included “crotchety, twiddle, and gesticulate.” Clearly the show was making a point about how arbitrary our censorship of certain “profane” words really is. Later in the episode, Kermit the Frog declares in frustration with about his ex-girlfriend Miss Piggy that his “life is a bacon-wrapped Hell on Earth.” As he speaks those words, Sam the Eagle walks past to declare, “You can’t say hell.” Such is the role those who wish to censor language: Utterly annoying to those who wish to express themselves freely. While the majority of our rational society agrees that censorship of books is wrong, we still have not come to a place where we agree that censorship of language is just as inappropriate. It’s long past time for all of us to embrace our lives, our sexuality, and our language rather than living in fear of things that aren’t really fearful.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(This is a continuation of yesterday’s blog post about my college roommates.)

My second roommate (“A”) and I were good friends within a few weeks of meeting each other. We both shared a warped sense of humor that helped cement the bond. Though we were both introverts, she had a need to explore the world that I didn’t really share that point. She didn’t like going places alone, though, so she would often tell me, “Get ready. We’re leaving.” I’d ask where and she’d respond a movie, driving in the Hill Country, antiquing, or whatever she had already decided she wanted to do. I would tell her that I didn’t really want to go, and she would talk me into going with her anyway. In retrospect, I am glad A did because we went on some fun adventures that I would never have done otherwise. One night, A decided she was going to use sidewalk chalk and draw a cartoon figure of hers all over the campus sidewalks. She took me along as her lookout. That’s definitely not something I would have gotten up to otherwise!

At the end of the school year, A decided she wanted to move out of the dorms. I didn’t have a car, and so living off campus seemed daunting and inconvenient to me. I knew I only had one more year left, so I decided to stay on campus. By then, I had other friends in the dorm. One of them was losing her roommate as that woman moved off campus to live with her boyfriend, so the two of us decided to be roommates the following year.

During that second and final year of my undergraduate studies when we were no longer roommates, A and I would get together periodically to do fun activities. Things seemed off for a while between us, but I couldn’t figure out what was up. Towards the end of the school year, A finally came out as being gay. Suddenly so much about her and some of her behaviors made complete sense. My instinctive response was to be mad at her for not telling me sooner! However, I understand she was still figuring it all out herself. Once A came out, our friendship really didn’t change except that she was a much happier person now that she was able to truly be herself.

After I graduated and moved to Boston for nine months to work on my master’s degree, A and I stayed in touch via e-mail. She made plans to come to my wedding with her then-girlfriend, a woman whom I really liked. A and I watched with great amusement as one of my future brothers-in-law flirted with her girlfriend at the rehearsal dinner. At one point I asked A if we should be merciful and tell him that A and her girlfriend were a couple, but A told me, “No. I’m having way too much fun watching this!”

When I moved back to Austin in 1994, A and I continued to be friends through her final year of undergrad and beyond. When she would get together with my then-husband and me to do things, it was him who became the third wheel, not her. A and I were like the sisters neither of us had ever had. We often wouldn’t talk for weeks but then we would see each other multiple times within a short span. It was just how things worked with us. We could always pick right back up where we left off with things.

In 1998, four years after I got married and moved back to Austin, A took her turn to move to Boston for nine months. I helped her finish packing her apartment and took her to the airport with her cats. It turned out she couldn’t stand living in Boston, but while she was up there, she met a girlfriend who eventually became her life partner. When I went to visit A in Boston while I was doing dissertation research, I got to meet her partner, “J,” and liked her. When they moved back to Austin together, I was happy to have J as an additional friend though I never got to know her well.

Shortly after that, my firstborn daughter died. A called and offered to do whatever she could to help. Since she had previously worked at a photo developing store at the mall, I asked her to help me find someone whom I could trust to make enlargements of the very few photos I had of my daughter. She found someone she felt was trustworthy, and I took my negatives to him. He did a great job and was very compassionate toward us. I was incredibly grateful to A for that assistance. Her parents, whom I had met several times and been at their house outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area twice, also sent a bereavement card which really touched me.

Then, a few months later, everything changed. A and J decided to move to another state to pursue grad school and better jobs. I was sad to see them go, but I understood. However, a great silence ensued. Even before they moved, I didn’t get phone calls returned. Any attempt to make contact was thwarted. I had no idea what went wrong. Before the one year forwarding period ended, I sent a letter to her old address in hopes it would find her in the new state. In that letter, I offered apologies to her for anything I might have done and let her know I missed our friendship. More silence. As the internet blossomed, I tried to make contact with her through various social media sites, but I again was met with the stunning silence.

It took me over ten years beyond the last time I talked to her to finally let go. While she had been one of my closest friends for almost a decade, it was clear that A was unwilling to have me in her life any longer. The only possible understanding I had for why she might have cut off our relationship was if her new partner felt uncomfortable with the bizarre and close but definitely platonic relationship A and I shared. A and I both knew that there was no chance in hell of me dating a woman (or her dating a man), and we accepted that we were friends and nothing more. However, I could completely understand how a insecure partner might have been threatened by the close friendship we shared. Yet not knowing for sure was torture. This was someone for whom I had a platonic love and whom I wanted in my life no matter what the conditions were.

Oddly, it was my unrequited love for a man which actually helped me let go of A and the desperate desire to make contact with her again. That man and A reminded me of each other because of their incredibly warped but wonderful senses of humor. The friendship I had with each was similar in some odd ways. And when I finally accepted that I would never get over that man while I was still friends with him, I also reached a place of peace with no longer having A in my life either. I realized that after all that had happened in the intervening decade in my life, we might or might not have anything in common anymore. But most importantly, she had made a decision to cut me out of her life. While that hurt because I had no understanding of why it happened, I still had to respect her decision and let her go.

Today is A’s 42nd birthday. I still remember her every year and wish I could send her an email telling her to have a great day. If A were ever to show up in my life again, I would welcome her with open arms. But until the time when we meet again, if that ever happens, I have to be content with sending her good wishes in my heart. I hope that wherever she is and whomever she is with, that her life has turned out better than she ever dreamed it could.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

My graduating high school class had 51 young women in it. The school was small and Catholic; everyone knew everyone. I thought I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college, but when I visited The University of Texas at Austin as a senior in high school, I fell immediately in love. Sometimes you just know when you have found the right place.

As a National Merit Finalist, I got priority admission for the dorms at UT which always had waiting lists to get in. However, as a freshman, there was still limited availability. While I requested to be assigned to a female dorm, I was instead placed on a co-ed floor at Jester Center, a dorm that holds between 3200-3300 people. After a pre-K-12 school of less than 600, it was a massive living space that was rather intimidating for many reasons.

At that time, the only matching algorithm that UT Student Housing used was smoking or non. As you can imagine, that did not create good odds for ending up with a roommate who was a good match. I checked off non-smoking. My first roommate also checked off non-smoking even though she was a smoker because she did not want anyone smoking in the room. So right off the bat, the matching algorithm was a completely failure.

"H," my first roommate, was a from a small town outlying the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She had been at the top of her class at her small rural Texas school but she arrived totally unprepared for college. She was there to party. By contrast, I was there to get an education. H hit it off with a woman in an adjoining room. After H broke up with her steady boyfriend back home after learning that he was already sleeping around only a few weeks into their long distance relationship, H and the woman next door quickly made their way to Sixth Street with the explicit intention of getting laid. They managed to get drunk that night but somehow failed to procure willing men.

H rapidly became the roommate from hell. We were not a good match in any way. I was a morning person. She wanted to party all night. I had fairly Catholic values at that point; despite having been baptized just that summer as a born-again Christian, H's actions and values were questionable. She wanted to start smoking in the room; I refused to allow it since it was a designated non-smoking room. We had agreed to share various chores in the room, though it rapidly became clear that she was not going to do any of them, and she tore into me for asking her to do her part. Yet at the same time, she felt free to borrow my clothes when we hit a cold snap and she hadn’t brought her winter clothes down from home yet. Her only interest was herself and her needs. Once again, I had found myself living with a narcissist.

A male high school friend of hers and his roommate set up a secret competition: They were trying to see who could get her to have sex first. The friend was in our room one night giving her a backrub on her bed while I was studying on my bed. He announced, “This bra is in the way. I’ll just take it off.” My Catholic school girl self was mortified and completely unsure what to do. Were they not clear on the fact I was sitting right there? Was the proper etiquette to leave? Yet at the same time, it was my room, too, and I really didn’t want to walk across the street to the library to study. (I have no idea who actually won the competition but I’d be really surprised if one of those guys didn’t succeed by the end of the semester.)

Within a few weeks, H had decided that I was the worst roommate ever. She dragged her mattress into the woman next door’s dorm room and proceeded to live there. The smell of pot constantly waifed out of their room. H came in our formerly shared room periodically to get clothes and give me an evil eye. She was not happy that she had to live next door in order to smoke and party all the time.

After the school year was about six weeks old, another woman on the floor came knocking door to door to get information for something or another. She asked me where my roommate was, and I told her that H had moved next door because she hated me. The woman doing the survey went next door and talked to H. The next thing I knew, H was announcing to me that she and the survey woman had decided to swap roommates. I would be moving into the other woman’s room and she would be taking my space. I was given no option, but considering the current status of things, I figured it could not be much worse. We made the switch immediately, and then applied to Housing to make it official. Our resident assistant did a “counseling” session in which she tried to work out our differences which was rather amusing. Once we convinced her that there would be no positive resolution, she applied for and received the official permission to get us to switch rooms. We signed the paperwork, swapped keys officially, and moved on with our lives.

The woman I moved in with had also decided things couldn’t be any worse than what she’d experienced with her first roommate, so she was fine with me moving in. While she was a night owl and tv addict, we were able to be respectful of each other and make it work. Within a few weeks, we were great friends. Meanwhile, gossip on the floor was that H and the survey woman hated each other with a passion. I have to admit that I was amused at that given how the two of them had treated my new roommate and me. By the end of the semester, rumor had it that H was just leaving a bottle of Jim Beam on her nightstand. She left UT at the end of the semester to move back home and go to a UT branch school, but supposedly there was a notice in the dorm mailbox that she was officially on academic probation after her less than stellar performance in her first semester at UT.

Those first few weeks of college being partnered with someone I had almost nothing in common with were really rough, but the friendship I ended having with my second roommate was fabulous. Tomorrow’s blog post will talk more about that relationship.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

For years I have seen quotes and excerpts by Marianne Williamson on the web. I've always been captivated by the fluent poetic nature of her prose and her beautiful thoughts so wonderfully explained. As my mentor and I were discussing the nature of love a few weeks ago, I decided it was time for me to read some of Williamson's work once I finished off the other book I was reading at that time. I pulled Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power of Relationships off of my bookcase and proceeded to read 2/3 of it in the first sitting because it is such a smooth and easy read. The concepts contained within are deep and powerful, but Williamson explains them so clearly that it feels like reading a work of fiction.

Enchanted Love is a series of short essays, prayers and poems around finding a sacred romantic love. Along the way, Williiamson describes judgemental relationships that fall far short of a sacred ideal. She talks about sex, divorce, God, and the reflections of love on the greater world. Beneath all of her ideas are the concepts that we partner with others to work on our deepest wounds and that the love we exchange with each other is actually the love of the Divine. While strongly disagree with some of her discussions about gender in relationships, the majority of the book was powerful to read and contemplate.

As I read through the earlier part of the book, the part that discussed relationships done wrong, I saw my former marriage with my ex-husband very clearly in her words. We were judgmental of each other, we did not and in some cases could not support each other in the ways that each wanted to be supported, and we didn't help each other grow as individuals. The relationship was not one that could have ever achieved enchanted love status. Yet as I read through Williamson's statements about midlife, divorce, and sacred love, I very clearly saw the relationship I want to have with my next husband. If he hasn't read this book by the time we've met, I'm going to hand him my copy and say, "This! This is what I am looking for in a relationship!" 

I've already recommended this book to one friend as she works to heal wounds from a previous partner because I thought it would be very useful to her to understand the "why" of her relationship's demise. I also thought that the book coould greatly help her and her current partner grow in their relationship. I definitely expect to be recommending Enchanted Love to many others in the future.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Every once in a while, a pop culture reference ends up being far more spiritual for me than I think its author(s) probably intended. Such was the case as I listened to “Locked Out of Heaven” in the car one day not too long ago. Its lyrics proclaim:

While there are some pretty hefty double entendres going on in that song, one could also take the song out of context and change the melody up a bit, and it would be a powerful love song that combines the spiritual with the sexual. 

Our culture has very dysfunctional approaches to dealing with sex and sexuality. Christianity has taught us for millenia that our bodies are a source of depravity rather than seeing them as beautiful works of God/dess which can bring us closer to the divine through sacred sex. As a result, many people prefer to hide the fact that they are sexual beings. Premarital sex is shunned in many sex education courses around the nation. Yet at the same time, premarital sexual activity is estimated at over 90% in our nation. Despite participating in sexual activity, however, American society is reluctant to open to the idea common in many Eastern religions that sex can be spiritual.

Most sex in our hookup culture is anything but sacred. Instead, sex is built on one night stands and finding the prettiest partner one can for quick, theoretically meaningless, sexual experiences. These encounters are not meant to be sacred at all. They’re not even supposed to create intimacy. They merely meet a biological and emotional need to have sex. Many women and men don’t actually enjoy this new popular hookup approach to dating promoted by sites such as Tinder, but there’s no denying that it is having shockwaves on the rest of our culture as more and more people feel that one night stands based on physical appearance are what dating and/or sex is meant to be about.

I suspect in future years, many other healers and I will be working with many of these former hookup participants when they come to realize that they feel terribly empty and alone. Casual sex will have not filled their needs emotionally or spiritually. Some will go to the opposite extreme and turn to a born-again Christian approach of denying the flesh to attempt to find peace. Optimistically, the majority will realize that sex can and often should be more meaningful than the way they used it in their younger years. Once they’ve settled into relationships, hopefully they will be able to find a different kind of sex that can be truly life-changing.

So what makes some sex sacred? Intimacy is definitely part of it. There is no way to experience God (or tantric energy or whatever higher experience/power you’d like to find) through sex unless one is willing to be intimate with one’s partner. That means not just sharing bodies but sharing emotions, desires, and souls. It involves stripping away of all barriers just as clothing is shed before sex. It requires that participants be truly naked and present on all levels for their partners. Without this openness and connection, trying to find the sacred in sex can be very difficult if not impossible. While sacred sex is thoretically possible to do within the framework of casual sex, it’s far less likely than in an a serious established relationship where partners are sharing more than just their bodies with each other. My guess is that rarely if ever actually happens in hookup situations.

Metaphysical energy contributes significantly this powerful connection. On an energetic level, sexual activity allows partners’ second and fourth chakras in particular to connect and share energy. If partners have not done the healing work they need to do as individuals, they may not be able to healthily open their chakras to each other during sexual acts which will limit (but not prevent) the exchange of spiritual energy between them. The less burdens one is carrying, the easier it is to shed the ego and find the holy.

Intent is also a huge element of sacred sex. Wanting to connect to a higher power during sex is one of the first steps. From there, the more one opens oneself to intimacy, connection, energy, and emotion with one’s partner, the more likely one is to find that elusive sacred sex that American culture writes off as mythical.

As Marianne Williamson writes in Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power of Enchanted Relationships, “When two hearts join in ecstasy and rapture, an army of light ascends and the world is brought closer to heaven. Literally. The beloved’s hand on us, like a baby’s hand, holds a power that is straight from God. Heaven is, in metaphysical terms, the experience of our oneness.” Or in the words of Bruno Mars, “'Cause your sex takes me to paradise...'Cause you make me feel like I've been locked out of heaven.”

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

One of the ways in which sexual shame manifests in our culture is in how people talk about our sexual body parts. Every so often a mom with toddler children will approach a mothering list I am on with a question similar to, “What do I tell my kids to call their genitals? The proper names just don’t seem appropriate for a toddler.” In most cases, this is sexual shame rearing its ugly head. Those adults who are uncomfortable with naming body parts are often people who have grown up in homes where sexuality is shamed. The adults didn’t grow up feeling comfortable with their own bodies, and now that they have children, unless they have some intervention, they will unwittingly pass on that sexual shame to their own children.

When this question appears on the list, most of the long-time mamas will reply, “We call genitals by their proper names at our house from birth onward.” This was the way we approached body parts in my house. Children can be taught words like penis and vagina. While they may not be able to pronounce the words correctly at first, they will eventually learn them. If they are able to comfortably name their own body parts without shame, the first step in change has been made in working to undo the widespread societal shame that is shared about our bodies and our sexuality.

If you find yourself unable to talk to your young children about their body parts, it’s a great time for you to begin working on healing of your own. There are many talented life coaches and therapists who are able to assist you coming to terms with your body and your sexuality, helping normalize them and making it easier for you to teach your children a healthier belief system about their bodies. However, be wary as you select a guide as there are many unhealthy sex therapists or healers in the world. Carefully check out the websites of anyone you consider; if anything seems off to you, trust your instinct that you don’t want to work with this particular practitioner. Keep searching until you find someone who makes you feel as though you will be safe while you process the stored shame you have around sexuality. That may not be the first person you speak with. I am happy to work with those who have sexual shame to overcome, but I acknowledge that I am not the correct practitioner for every person who needs to heal.

With some devoted work, eventually it is possible to succeed in changing your thoughts and emotions around your body and sexuality. Shame can be released, and you can find healing that will allow you to talk to your children and others about sexuality, body parts, and other issues without feeling as though you are talking about something “wrong” or improper. You can reach a place where sexuality is a positive and even holy thing in all its aspects.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

On Friday, I ran in Whole Foods to grab a few last minute items for my son’s birthday party this weekend. I was limited on time because of my appointment schedule, but I knew that if I didn’t get distracted, I could make it through the store with time to spare because my list was short. When I got to the checkout stands, all of them had short lines. I was torn between two, and of course, I chose the one that ended up being a far longer wait and far more frustrating for me.

A woman in front of me in line was buying all organic food. She was buying natural dog food, too. Yet despite the importance she obviously places on healthy eating, she also was wearing chemical perfume. This kind of logic drives me nuts because perfume is a horribly toxic substance that is in no way in line with organic eating. Perfume also still makes me sick if I'm around it too long. Thus, I stayed as far away from her as I could while waiting. She was wearing a cute rayon spaghetti strap top which showed off her tattoos quite well. I wouldn’t say that she was skinny; she was probably a size 10 or 12, but it was a very firm, very toned 10 or 12. I would guess she was in her late 20s. Her skin was nicely tanned as well.

The appearance of this woman was clearly too much for the cashier to handle as he began flirting with her in a less than subtle manner. She apologized for forgetting her reusable bags (no judgment on my part there… I’ve done that far more than once), but he assured her it was perfectly fine. She said she could bag the groceries since there was no available bagger at that point. He definitively protested that she didn’t need to do the bagging because he would do it for her because he was so good at it after all his experience. He kept making joking comments to her while SLOWLY scanning and bagging her groceries. Meanwhile, I was watching the clock tick by while I stood there wanting to get away from the perfume, the flirting, and the store in general.

Finally, he finished helping her, and she went on her way. No phone numbers were exchanged. He said hi to me before he started scanning my groceries. I walked to the end of the conveyer belt where I stood with my fabric bags ready to load my groceries. I had to tell him twice-- very loudly-- that I had fabric bags before I got his attention. He said, “Ok” and went back to scanning the groceries but didn’t bother to turn on the conveyer belt switch for me. So I turned on the conveyer belt from the bagging end and started bagging my 20 or so groceries. Midway through, the cashier half-heartedly thanked me for bagging. Never did he offer to me to do it for me. I paid, he said thank you, and I left. If it hadn't been for the way he treated the previous customer, I probably wouldn't have thought anything much of our interaction. However, the way I felt walking away from his lane was something that no customer should feel: that they were treated lesser than the customer in front of them based on their physical appearance. 

As I walked out of the store, I noticed no one was in line at the customer service counter where a female employee was working. I stopped and told her, “Please remind the cashiers that flirting outrageously with customers and then treating the next customers in line as less than them doesn’t feel good for the other customers.” She looked at me, obviously surprised by what I had said but she said, “I agree with you totally. Do you mind telling me which cashier you are referring to?” I handed her my receipt so she could figure out who had been “helping” me check out. When she found the name, she looked at me again, rolled her eyes, and nodded her head yes. Without words, she was able to convey to me that this wasn’t just me having this experience. Either other customers had complained about this cashier or she herself had experienced problematic behavior from this cashier.

All of us deserve equal treatment in public forums such as grocery stores. Flirting with a customer may happen on occasion, though I suspect that this cashier uses flirting as his default behavior toward any woman who is young enough and/or pretty enough to meet his personal standards. Yet this is not always appropriate, especially when it’s clear the attention isn’t returned by the recipient of the flirtation. When other customers receive treatment that is far obviously different than what the “prized” customers receive, the societal myths of beauty and acceptability continue to be promoted in subtle ways. All of us deserve to be treated equitably in public forums such as grocery stores where all of our dollars are just as valuable as others’.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

In this season’s most controversial issue on The Bachelorette, Kaitlyn Bristowe made an alcohol-induced decision to have sex with contestant Nick Viall. This was not a major surprise to the audience who had been watching Bristowe drool over Viall since he first joined the season during episode 4; the two looked ready to consummate their relationship from the start. The morning after the magical event, Bristowe began lamenting her decision nothing how guilty she felt. She realized that it was probably not a good decision on her part even if it was one made in passion. However, had Bristowe made the same decision outside of the show, I doubt she would have felt so much remorse. Her guilt was primarily arising from the fact that she was still dating many other men at the same time as she had sex with Nick; she felt guilty for having betrayed them by giving Nick special privileges. This guilt was rooted in a societally based belief system that sexual behavior should be monogamous.

All of us draw on social mores when it comes to our interpersonal behavior. In regards to sexual behavior, the rules become more complicated and more emotionally difficult. We are sexual beings from the time of our birth. Our families, our religions, and our society at large begin piling expectations, judgments, experiences and often abuse onto our experience of sexuality. These ideas and ideals about sexuality and sexual behavior become our sexual baggage before we have even begun to engage in intimate sexual relationships.

Some children are fortunate: they are raised in homes where bodies and sexuality are seen as normal, healthy parts of human life. Unfortunately, that is not the most common experience for most of us. We grow up in cultures and in families that shame sexuality and bodies. We’re taught at a young age that touching ourselves beyond necessary washing is sinful and something to be avoided. Many religious groups preach that masturbation is a terrible sin. Likewise, premarital sexuality or any sexual act outside of heterosexual married love is condemned. Children and teens hear this often growing up. It may not be on a daily basis and it may not be explicit, but these messages are made clear to us as children.

The damage of these messages we receive about sexuality as youth is greatly understated in our society. I’d argue that any religion that tries to dictate sexual behavior in its members is venturing into territory where it has potential to do a great deal of psychological harm. However, religions are allowed to define the appropriate sexual behavior of their members though most would judge that to be something a cult would do if the idea was taken out of context. These moral dictates of often conservative religions end up being very damaging for many of their members even once they begin to participate in sanctioned sexually intimate relationships.

Much of this damage doesn’t end up being discussed in our society. Sexual baggage is loaded with shame, and most of us shove it under our metaphorical rugs. We don’t want others to know our dirty secrets. We blame ourselves for having done things that our religions preach against even if we don’t agree with the religious perspective. We don’t have an objective view about our own sexuality because of the baggage we carry. When we get into relationships with others, even if they are heterosexual marriages blessed by our churches, we still bring our sexual baggage with us into the relationships. We’ve been told all our lives that our bodies and our sexuality is wrong, but now that we have a piece of paper and a blessing from a clergy member, suddenly we are supposed to be able to have healthy sexual relationships with our religiously sanctioned partners. Yet all that sexual shame we carry doesn’t magically go away during the marriage ceremony. It joins us on the honeymoon and beyond, one of the unwanted parts of our psychological dowries.

I speak from experience on this: I saw sexual baggage create major rifts in my former relationship for almost the entirety of the 22 years I was with my ex-husband. Midway through the relationship, I began to realize how much baggage I had, and I began working on it myself without the luxury of a therapist or coach to guide me. I made tremendous progress on my own, and when I began working on the issues with a therapist in later years, I found even more healing. The problem arose when my sexual healing enormously outpaced my ex-husband’s. Once we were in very different places with regard to our sexual baggage, our sexual relationship began to shatter, slowly but surely, ultimately contributing to the demise of our relationship.

The problem with sexual baggage is that it is so insidious. We are ashamed of it, and we hide it away deeply in our bodies. We avoid talking about it for fear that we will receive more judgment from those we turn to for help. Healing sexual traumas and burdens is not an easy path. However, once one is able to let go of that sexual baggage, one can find great happiness and pleasure in ways one never previously dreamed possible. Through Green Heart Guidance, I help clients release some of this sexual trauma, however and whenever they accumulated it. I work from a place of compassion having been a victim of sexual abuse and sexual harassment and someone who was raised in a conservative church that preached against natural sexual behavior. I know how hard it is to heal these wounds. I work from a place of non-judgment, encouraging clients to be themselves no matter whom that is. To promote healing, I often use energetic flower remedies, essential oils and crystals to help clients release the energy of sexual trauma that creates this baggage. When that stored energy is released, it can be much easier to work through the damage of the sexual traumas most of us have, and from there, healing is much closer than we ever believed possible. The work I do with clients can’t undo the past, but it can make for a much brighter future.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

This season, The Bachelorette has created a great deal of controversy because of the Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe’s behavior. She has definitely not been like other Bachelorettes in previous seasons for many reasons. First and foremost, she is a very self-confident woman who doesn’t put up with crap from the men who are wooing her. I completely appreciate this aspect of her. So many men haven’t even made it to the rose ceremonies (unpredictable as they are this season) because Bristowe sees through their rhetoric and behavior. She calls them out on their actions, and when her instincts prove to be true, Bristowe spares us all the trouble of keeping them around for a rose ceremony. She ejects the troublesome men as soon as she figures out their games. I commend her for following her instincts in this way.

The more controversial reason that Kaitlyn Bristowe has created talk this season is because she admitted to having slept with one of the contestants relatively early on during the course of the show. This is not a novel occurrence: Producer Mike Fleiss discusses in this Youtube video from 2010 that at that time, Bob Guiney held the record for having sex with the most women during the course of the show. Fleiss states that the average number is around three which is what one would expect given that the bachelor/ette each has three overnight “fantasy suite” dates with other contestants. However, he proudly announces that “my man” Guiney had sex with 5.5. Herein lies the difference between Bristowe having had sex with a man before the fantasy suite dates and a man like Guiney having done it. Bristowe has been vilified in the public opinion for having done this. I’ve seen her called a slut, a whore, and much more in internet articles, blog posts, and comments. Guiney was placed on a pedestal for having his sexual prowess, and Bristowe was condemned for hers.

Why does this double standard still exist in society today? Long ago, it was understandable (though still not acceptable in my opinion) that women were expected to remain celibate until marriage so that men could be assured that they would not be raising other men’s children.  However, in today’s technological advances of paternity testing, there’s no reason for me to fear that men might end up raising another man’s child. If they can’t trust their female partners, then they can always run a DNA test.

So what legitimate reason still exists for holding women to different standards of sexuality than men? The bottom line is that there are none. One could argue that sexually transmitted diseases, especially those such as HIV which can be lethal, should limit sexual activity before marriage. However, in that case, both men and women need to be careful with their sexual activity. Men are just as capable of getting and spreading STDs as women. To state that only women need to remain celibate based on an argument of STDs is a weak double standard at best.

However, our society still engages widely in what is labeled as “slut shaming.” I can’t stand that term as I think it further contributes to the disregard for women. A better and more concise explanation is that our society engages in “inequality in sexuality” judgments. Women are held to different standards than men. As women, we still fight the Madonna-whore complex that so many men (and women) carry about us. We are expected to be sexually pure and holy, yet at the same time, we are supposed to enter committed relationships with a full knowledge of sexual behavior in order to please our men.

Our society needs to move forward in this regard. By age 20, 75% of our population has had premarital sex, and by age 44, 95% has engaged in premarital sex. Clearly, people of both sexes are engaging insexual activity before marriage. So if it’s ok to have premarital sex, then we need to embrace the fact that it is ok for both men and women to do so. The judgment that Kaitlyn Bristowe has faced is symptomatic of the prejudice that all women face in their lives as sexual beings. It’s time for this belief system in our society to shift to reflect the true nature of the actions of both men and women.

I doubt Bristowe and I would be friends in real life. We lead very different lifestyles and hold very different beliefs. However, despite the differences about how we live our lives, I can still respect her as a human being who is entitled to make her own choices and her own mistakes. Even if I choose not to engage in casual sex in my life, I have no right to judge others who do. Instead, I choose to support any person’s right to choose to control their own sexual behavior regardless of their sex or gender. I look forward to a day when American society recognizes that we are all sexual beings who live sexual lives, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC