This Blog Is Archived

This blog, known as Leahpeah at the time, is an archive of my writing from October 19, 2002 through Sept 22, 2022.

I have added my newsletters from Patreon, Dec. 2019-Oct. 2021 and Substack, from Feb. 2024- Feb.2025, all with a “previously posted” at the bottom. My current (and I hope last) newsletter service is Buttondown and you can sign up here.

Many of the older posts have broken image links due to no longer having a Flickr account. Someday, I might have the time to hunt those images down and fix them.

The best way to interact with me now is by joining my community, Blooms in the Garden, where I share daily about my health and creative projects. I’d love to see you there!

The Time Is Always Right*

(Sign up for my newsletter here on Buttondown!)

I’ll be transparent: I’m just here to invite you to my Garden

As I referenced in my last newsletter, the platform I’m using to reach out to you on is one I’d like to divest from. I’ll be moving my newsletter to Buttondown and I’ll be sending you an email to see if you’d like to join me there. If you’re a paying reader (bless you), I’ll make sure you continue uninterrupted through your year. You don’t need to do anything right now. I’ll let you know when the move is happening.

In my Garden we are Body Doubling for two hours twice a week to kick ass and get work done, and we’re Doodling (or generally being creative) for an hour twice a week because it’s so good for us! We’ve also got a book club (we just read The House in the Cerulean Sea) once a month. Most importantly we are building community with each other. You’re invited! I want to see your photo of the day and hear about your projects. I want to know your heart. <3 ** X

Ethical Living

I often wonder what it would be like to truly, fully, live in ways that align with my morals, values, and ethics. What would it take? I hate knowingly contributing to and supporting organizations headed by folks who are trying to exterminate me and my queer family or who represent misogyny, ethnic cleansing, racism, bigotry, or capitalism like it’s a religion.

I love the earth. I’m captivated by nature. I want it to be healthy. I want to be a part of the healthy ecosystem that is our world. I love people. I want to support systems that help people, that aren’t just out for profit, greed, and amassing power and wealth.

The problem is that it’s all one big spaghetti noodle pile now. We’ve bought in, over and over, in the last few decades and now we are deep and drowning in the dense sauce of connected apps and services. (I’m looking at you, Google.)

I feel overwhelmed when I think about all the ways I’d need to change to live as ethically as I’d like to. I want to move towards feeling more excited and like it’s possible.

Here is an incomplete list of things I want to change for myself:

Some of these things I can do now.
Some of these things I don’t know how to do.
Some of these things I can do during a time of more energy and health, but other times, I may need to rely on systems that are in place to conserve energy according to my ability.

Here’s that list again with the score I’m giving myself:
0 haven’t started working on this
1 researching how
2 taking steps
3 solid in some steps
4 solid in many steps
5 living ethically in this area.

  • 1. 2/5 Less or no more fast fashion: make my own clothes or buy ethically made and/or thrift
  • 2. 2/3 Reducing or less plastic waste
  • 3. 3/5 Recycling products for other uses and buying second-hand
  • 4. 0/5 Buying foods only in recyclable containers
  • 5. 1/5 Stop using products with microplastics
  • 6. 1/5 Lowering my carbon footprint around travel
  • 7. 3/5 Spending more time in my local natural environment to remember that I’m a part of the earth
  • 8. 2/5 Only sourcing from safer, ethical, and minority owned or smaller businesses for consumer products
  • 9. 2/5 Removing Amazon purchases completely and boycotting other corporations who support my extinction
  • 10. 1/5 Eating less of or not eating animal products unless I raise them or they come from a farm I know
  • 11. 2/5 Eating locally produced foods
  • 12. 3/5 Reducing food waste
  • 13. 0/5 Volunteering for political campaigns in my local area
  • 14. 2/5 Creating friendships within my local communities
  • 15. 0/5 Create my living will and set up my death with a green cemetery

What have I missed that you’d add? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

*Title is a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The time is always right to do what is right.”

**My mom asked me once decades ago why I always signed off with a sideways two-scoop ice cream cone. Still makes me laugh <3

-Previously posted on Substack

There Is A Small Piece Of Corn Chip Lodged Under My F Key

(“I miss good social media community,” he whispered to no one…)

That is not an euphemism, kids. It’s just real, and the crunching sound of the frito when I press down is very satisfying.

I had a birthday! And when you turn 54, the world lights on fire because it’s too many candles. Just kidding, but also, sort of totally real. We were supposed to go to Los Angeles to see the kids and grands for my birthday but Los Angeles was literally burning, so we postponed. I feel incredibly lucky that my kids are all safe, when so many lost so much. It’s been a devastating season in a variety of ways.

I’m really hoping we get to fly out on Thursday, because we’re finally getting colder weather here in the PNW and the roads might be too icy. If that happens, mark my words, I will cry.

This winter weather is trying to kill us humans and I don’t blame it.

I’ve been researching cults for my next book. In simple terms, a cult is a group of people who all have the same religious belief or devotion to something. Most(ly) harmless cults are like collective sports or musician fans. The worst kind of cults are where they have decided their way is the right way and then try to remove, dehumanize/shame, or kill everyone who doesn’t think the same way as them, like the current U.S. presidential administration.

Cults are everywhere. We live in cults inside a cult inside a cult inside a cult like a Bloomin Onion, only much more disgusting. (I actually have eaten a fair amount of Bloomin Onions and love them because of their disgustingness. If we have to live in cults, we might as well get to eat deep-fried foods that give us indigestion regret almost immediately. It’s called freedom, okay?) Although I haven’t had one in a very long time and that’s ok because deep fried onion is on the list of All The Foods I Cannot Eat, a little zine I wrote and illustrated about a decade ago and Joe is currently hosting among his lovely Smorgasbord.

The cults I willingly belong to are (in a very *particular* order):

  • People Who Only Wear Comfortable Shoes, One Style of Blue Jeans, and Chunky Cable Knit Sweaters with High Necks Sporting 70s-Style Fake Wooden Toggles
  • Tree, Cloud, Flower, and Bird Worshippers (we mostly incessantly keep pointing and exclaiming until the people around us *must*, at the very least, glance over and offer a weak, “yeah…cool…”)
  • And, of course, Box Hoarders, which is self-explanatory, but if you must know more, I have two large boxes, one in my studio and one in our storage unit, that both contain smaller boxes that I absolutely, totally need, Brandelyn.

The cults I unwillingly belong to are (in no particular order): literally everything else including money & credit reports, college & advanced degrees from expensive gate-keeping institutions, medical insurance, self-checkouts, coupons, TSA & CLEAR (I mean, wtf), clothing sizing, societal beauty standards, current social media, and also, if I’m honest, Box Hoarders (because it’s not always a choice. Sorry, Brandelyn).

I’m going to focus on social media, because it’s top of mind as these dillweeds continue to ruin everything as quickly as they possibly can.

Memory Lane

My first foray into social media was a little chat called ICQ in 1999. I can still hear the sound it chimed when you got a new message. I was a Limewire user in 2000 (please don’t tell the federal government) and downloaded Goo Goo Dolls and Bjork (which I pronounced Ba-Jork). I had a Livejournal (or was it a DeadJournal?) for about a year that I updated twice. From there, it was an easy transition to WordPress in 2001 (thank you, Joe ) which meant I no longer had to hand-code my original one page website with my custom domain: passepartout.com (which is currently available and you could make it your very own for the reasonable price of $350,000!)(I kicked it right out of the park in choosing a relevant, easy to spell domain name first try!!)**. The rss website feeds of that time, which are, for me, The Good Old Days, have doodled hearts all over them in my mind. I joined Flickr in 2004, Twitter in 2006, Tumblr in 2007, which I mistakenly thought was dead, and then we make a leap in years to Instagram in early 2011. That was quickly followed by Pinterest which I remember I have about every five months or so, and then mean to go visit, but hardly ever do.

I joined Patreon in 2017, trying to support creators and also be a creator to varying degrees of success, searching for a spot I could do sex education and talk about power dynamics without living in fear of getting bounced. And that, my friends, is where I stopped collecting platforms, feeling much too old in 2018 when TikTok came out to want to start making endless dance videos. (I have a trick knee!)

Most all of those platform have gone by the wayside, either by shutting down, becoming intolerable, or being sold and THEN becoming intolerable. With the exception of maybe Pinterest? I still need to go check it out again. (And I know I’ve missed a dozen or so others, but either I’m intentionally not naming them because that is how much I dislike them, or I’ve forgotten, and we’ll never know which is which.)

I credit early social media apps as being one of the best things in my life. They connected me to close friends I still have 20 years later. I felt less alone and found community, which was huge for me after growing up in rural Utah, labeled the Black Sheep by the entire town. I got business opportunities, like speaking at blogging and mental health conferences. I traveled the world to shoot photos and once met Juan Valdez! (And if you follow that link, you’ll see how many broken photo links are in my website archive because of losing Flickr, which means you’re missing me standing next to the God of Coffee and his burro in Colombia. Sorry.) I got opportunities to write essays for books and I interviewed amazing people for magazines.

Community

But most importantly, for me, it was about community. I connected with folks who also had mental health issues or chronic health issues. I felt chosen and cared about, thought of and loved. That is everything to a queer, genderfluid, nonbinary trans, neurodivergent human who won’t know anything about any of those things for another decade! I found my people. I felt connected. Supported! And then, slowly, over time, I began to lose them.

I would have been happy my whole life with Flickr the way it was. As a photographer, the database of amazing photos and other photographers I got to meet all over the world was really fun. I would also have been totally happy with early-days Instagram. The algorithm feed made sense back then and I got to hang out with all my friends. I looked forward to opening the app to see what everyone had posted. Photo groups and monthly challenges! A feed that showed you the people you actually followed!

Instagram rewarded all of us loyal early users by systematically killing off everything we loved and then punishing us for wanting to be able to see what we wanted to see. All the main social apps out there, including the ones I haven’t named, and including this platform I’m connecting with you on now, have leadership who leave a whole fucking lot to be desired. (I’m trying BlueSky and my fingers are crossed so hard it hurts.)

Blooms In The Garden

I miss community. I miss making real friendships that last years. I miss a place that welcomes me, makes me feel like I could stay awhile, and doesn’t make me jump through hoops to try to see what’s going on with my friends or push an agenda on me. In the current climate, I’m not sure where to find that, so I created my own little spot called Blooms In The Garden.

The Garden is a community for people who want to use community and creativity to support their health. I’m a Spoonie who uses creative endeavors like painting, fiber arts, playing instruments, and writing every day. It’s how I clear my mind, hold my heart, and process grief and trauma. I use different types of creativity on different days, depending on my physical abilities. As someone who has a neurodivergent sparkly brain, I use tools like body doubling to get work done. I also need/love to learn new things pretty regularly for all the sweet dopamine.

So basically, I’ve created a community where we do all the things that are good for me. If you think it might be good for you, too, I hope you’ll join.

I guess it’s my own small cult. But, not like those other cults! We’re a cool cult!

In conclusion, the frito under the F key has been masticated to smithereens by all this typing and I will now go back to my regular ASMR program of watching and listening to this person use a palette knife to mix colored sand together on that particular platform as long as I possibly can.

**Did you notice these back-to-back parentheticals? I don’t wanna brag, but yes, I wrote that!

– Previously posted on Substack

September, wait, October? Holy Moly It’s 2025!

Or, why I’m crying at the library

I’ve been chatting with my aunt over email. A few months back, I’d contacted her to find out the history of some roving fiber I’d ended up with, which originated from her, hungry to find out how it might be part of the fabric of my family, wondering if it had been in the hands of my grandmother before she died.

There was a span of time when my maternal grandmother learned how to work with fibers, the same way she’d learned to do most things during her life – she simply decided to. She took classes and learned to shear, card, spin, weave, and knit. (I have a few small skeins of dark brown wool and a tiny bit of cream she spun that I’ve saved for years in my stash.) My woodworking grandfather made her a loom and a spinning wheel, as well as sets of the same for his four daughters. It can’t be overstated that time spent with my grandparents, and the way I felt loved by them, were some of the warmest times of my life.

My aunt writes to me about the time she went on a family trip years ago through central Texas, where she took her kids to visit a wool processing plant and an angora goat farm. This is the trip where she charmed the wholesaler into letting her leave with some delightful, glistening mohair, which she simply had to have, some of which I now hold in my hands.

My aunt, who, my entire life, has signed each card and letter to me (and every one of my 50+ cousins), “from your favorite aunt,” asked what kind of art I’ve been doing, guessing, correctly, that I was learning something new, just like my grandma always was.

My grandmother was an artist and I spent weeks during the summer with her going on walks, clutching my pencil with a little sketch book under my arm, where she would point out a tree and ask, “what colors do you see,” to which I’d reply, “green,” and she’d say, “and what else,” over and over, until she’d pointed out all the purple undertones and the yellow highlights and the red shadows. She helped me see texture and nuance and that black isn’t really black and white isn’t really white. In my mind, I can see her sensible sandals crunching the groundcover, hear the cicadas in the trees, and smell citrus and honey hanging in the dry air of Arizona.

I email my (favorite) aunt and show her the doodles I create while I’m talking to clients for hours on a workday. Watercolors and dots. Lots of dots, dots turning into hearts and flowers. She enthusiastically raves about my notebook doodles, telling me they are beautiful and moving. I didn’t realize until reading her email how starved I’ve been for family love and interest from a parental figure, and my heart hurts while at the same time feeling full. I sit down to have a cup of tea with these realizations and cry for the family I’ve lost.

She writes again and tells me about a trip she once took to Colorado’s Estes Park Wool Market with her sister (another one of my favorite aunts) where they took a spinning class, after which she spun many different weights and styles while enjoying the process immensely. My aunt offers to send me the odds and ends of those yarns all these years later. To say I’m excited to get the box is an understatement. It feels like a package full of love coming to me, which I suppose it is.

When the box comes, each ziplock bag is labeled with things like “Black Kambolett 2 ply,” and “Wool/Angora Blend.” I open each one, touch the different fibers to see how they feel, press in a few cedar balls, and place the bags on the shelf next to my other fibers waiting for the moment when I have enough space cleared in my studio to be able to think in texture, which, as it turns out, is a bit harder for me than thinking/feeling in the many hued paints lining the wall, even with stacks of books on the floor right next to the canvases.

Maybe I forgot to mention – I’ve taken up weaving. A love of mine took me to a Saori weaving class for my birthday (now last year!) and I had more fun there than I’ve ever had trying to do something so difficult. The Saori looms have pedals! You press down with your foot, watch the warp threads do-se-do, and whirrrzoohm you shoot the weft threads through on the boat shuttle, before pushing down the other pedal and zooming it back. Over and over and over, changing out fibers to your heart’s content, but without all the anxiety I’m prone to when trying to do something without making a mistake, because Saori weaving style doesn’t concern itself with those kinds of silly things, like the perception of mistakes. Apparently, it’s perfect as is.

As a neuro-sparkly individual who wants to make sure I’m not wrong, how many times would you guess I asked the instructor, who peeked over our shoulders in the studio she keeps on the top floor of her Salish Sea private home, if I was doing it right? I’m sure the weavers next to me lost count. I kept asking in different ways, just in case I’d get a different answer, like, what do you do with the ends, and, what about when you start a new fiber in the middle, and, how do you make sure it looks good, and, how will this totally different type of fiber feel being next to this one, and she patiently kept repeating the same thing – do what you feel and it’ll be good. It’s perfect. Whatever you do, it’s perfect. It took me most of the class to get to that zen place, but when I finally did, it was lovely.

I’ve begun taking photos with an eye to weaving the image. A few months later, we went to the coast and I stared at the sea, drinking in the colors, the textures, the gradients, the smells, and fingering in my mind the types of yarns and fibers that would do it justice. It’s an exciting way for my brain to think about old skills in a new way. I’ve now got a folder on my phone with about 100 images in it waiting to be woven.

I also may have forgotten to mention that my aunt asked, as payment for the package of her old stash (of love), that I send her a 5X7 of one of my doodles in pinks and maroon. After getting pneumonia and a virus and making her wait about a month, I finally sent her two, which was risky, because the second had streaks and blushes of orangey creamsicle in it, but I thought it looked so nice with the other one, that I decided to go ahead.

When she got them, she sent an email filled with exclamation points, raving about my work. I cried.

A few days later, my aunt sends me a photo of my two doodles in the frame she chose for her bedroom wall. It has three windows cut into the matting, the center one being empty. “Would you please send me a headshot of yourself so I can insert it between your doodles? I would really appreciate it,” she writes.

I screenshot the email and send it to Brandelyn, who is at that moment working just on the other side of the sliding glass doors that separate my work studio from the living room, which has doubled as her office since the beginning of the pandemic. “She wants a photo,” I text. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. She wouldn’t even recognize me.

I don’t need to explain to Brandelyn the feeling of dread that’s begun spreading in the pit of my stomach. She knows that right now I’m struggling to put into words just how jarring it is to suddenly remember that how I look on the outside matters so much to others, especially the members of my family who watched me grow up and delighted in the ways I reminded them of my grandma, with my high cheekbones and my smile. At my grandma’s funeral I was stopped by a dozen friends and family, all telling me how much I reminded them of Muriel. I loved that they saw her in me. And I don’t feel any different on the inside now; I’m still just me. But when I’m suddenly reminded that what others see on the outside is not what they expected, it can be really disorienting to be a nonbinary trans person. I’m suddenly so sad about how disappointed my aunt will feel because of how I look.

The sliding glass doors open. (shwoosh) Brandelyn pokes her nose through. “Hi, baby,” she says as she makes eye contact. “What if,” she continues, carefully walking closer to me in my recliner, as if to avoid startling a wild animal, “what if we just believed your aunt. Maybe she has heard through the grapevine (I snort) that you look different and that’s ok with her. Let’s assume she won’t be disgusted or disappointed. You could even send her a photo of the two of us if that feels safer. She probably hasn’t seen our engagement photos.”

I stare at her blankly while my brain tries to process what she’s saying. Is there really a possibility where my aunt understands what she’s asking for and it’s ok with her? Is it possible she won’t be saddened by the changes HRT has made to how my body looks and recoil, wishing she hadn’t spent so much time emailing with me? I will feel heartbroken if she does.

Ok,” I simply say. “I’ll try.”

I find a photo of Brandelyn and I standing under some trees along the side of a barn where Claren goes to ride horses in the summer. It was a fun afternoon. We’re smiling. We’re obviously happy. And the sides of my head are shaved in an unmistakably very queer haircut. There are whiskers on my chin. My neck is thicker, my jawline changed into a more masculine form. Now I feel almost as vulnerable as if I was naked in the photo.

I hit send and there it goes to my aunt, who may or may not know I’m queer nonbinary trans, who may or may not be disgusted or disappointed, and who I won’t ever ask to call me Leoh or by different pronouns because my gender fluidity gives me an easy out. Besides, I tell myself, I do love being called both Leoh he/they and Leah she/her. (It’s when I hear only one for a long time that it starts to feel wrong.)

My aunt replies an hour later with, “That’s a good picture of the two of you, but do you have any singles? A selfie?” I die.

Now in full panic mode, I send a screenshot to Brandelyn. “I absolutely cannot send her a photo of just me,” I text.

A few seconds later, the sliding glass doors open. (shwoosh) Brandelyn pokes her nose through. “Baby,” she says softly and firmly, in that way that is a complete sentence. “Let’s believe your aunt really wants a photo of you with your paintings.”

I gesture, filled with anxiety, completely out of words. I send two choices and wait.

SIDEBAR (With More Parentheticals)

A client told me yesterday (in the middle of last September!) she feels like she’s going crazy because her friends keep doing things that exclude her and hurt her feelings, but they keep saying they love her and that everything is good between them. I ask her, “Let’s say they do really love you and this is how they show it. How does their love feel? Do you want to be loved like that?” (And Reader, I listened to my own advice that day.)

Two days earlier (in the middle of last September!), a sibling I had been in the process of very slowly reconnecting with (since the fall of 2023), emailed to tell me they realized it’s too psychologically distressing for them to stay in contact with me. They can’t see or hear the “real” me in the me I am now. I have sympathy for how that must be for them, to have me look and sound like a stranger, but hearing that who they love is a version of me that doesn’t exist is still painful. They have “put me in a box on the shelf” until later (when is later and why would later come?).

My sibling ends their email with, “love you forever,” which I believe they genuinely mean and it reminds me of the other last words I’ve heard from family in the past few years. “Don’t contact me. I still love you, though,” and, “I love you, but, yeah, I need space,” and, “You keep changing and I love you, but it’s too much.” There is a graveyard of family and friend relationships in the wake of my coming out.

That kind of being loved doesn’t feel like love to me, even when I understand the Why. I’m understanding more and more why trying to love myself has always been a herculean uphill battle for me, when the action of showing love to me, by them, is so conditional. I’m 54 (in a handful of days) and I’m just now, in the last couple of years, knowing how to actually Love Me, beyond saying that I do, which is a really important initial step in itself.

You’ve Been Framed!

The email “You’ve Been Framed!” arrives as I’m sitting in the library, working on some aggravating WordPress bug on my website, while Claren is engrossed, meticulously looking at her favorite books, row by row. I open it, curious (and dreading)(and hopeful) to see what my aunt has done, what she’ll say. And there is a photo of me with my doodles. And the file name is “Leohframed.” I screenshot it and send it to Brandelyn.

I start to cry, right there in the library, (which frankly, I could do more often). Such a simple acknowledgement hits me in all the tender places. The dichotomy between the love these two family members are shown me is vast. The contrast is unmissable.

Over the next few weeks, I make a hat out of the yarn my aunt sent. It’s the first successful hat I’ve made using knit, knit, purl for the ribbing, and that’s after 17 tries. But, I did it, and I’m proud that I did it. I’m keeping the hat for myself, but as a thank you, I send my aunt a little woven Christmas ornament based on a photo I took of one of my favorite spots along the Washington Coast.

Sometimes, someone loves you so obviously that you can’t miss it or mistake it for anything else. You don’t have to wonder. You just know. I want to love others that way. I’m so thankful for the example.

-Previously posted on Substack

Don’t Expect Too Much Of Tapioca Pudding

Please do not let go of the hand of your buddy or you might get lost.

My 30 Days of Anything right now is reading (list at the end of this newsletter) (please buckle up: this newsletter contains parentheticals inside parentheticals, as well as links to some of my favorite childhood books along the way and also lots of legitimate angsty pain about the balcony with photo proof!)

The rules I set are 15 minutes of reading anything that is an actual book or at least not scrolling on Instagram. It’s not hard, in that there are approximately 187 books I’m really excited about in my To Be Read pile, but it’s really hard, in that it takes a lot of inertia to pick up and open a physical book (or raise my arm, shakily extend a boney finger to touch an app on my iPad *boop*) when my resting state is currently that of tapioca pudding. And it takes a lot of attention and non-foggy brain energy, which I may or may not have (I don’t have), to make sense of the little lines and squiggles that make up the English language. Words. Sentences, blast it. Abstract ideas!! Tapioca pudding has no index fingers nor thumbs, let alone brains (although of all the puddings, it might be the closest to resembling brains). It’s important not to expect too much of tapioca pudding.

I’ve got lots of time to (try to) think (too much) about pudding types while I’m recovering from a pneumonia+virus situation. No one really wants to read that tapioca pudding looks the most like the human brain out of all the puddings. Not even me, and I thought of it and then actually wrote it (sorry). But when one’s pneumon-affliction(s) have taken one back to the middle 1800s and all one can do is gently convalesce (cough cough) in front of the fireplace (in the photo above on the bottom left) (it’s electric and has a push-on heater option that auto-shuts-off after 90 minutes – courtesy of my partner’s partner, Erin, who gets me! and also got me a green velvet wingback chair that feels very decadent! where I can sit and wonder about tesseracts!) and wait for Jo March to bring a hot water bottle, some tea, and a shawl to keep one cozy (it’s actually Brandelyn, a heating pad, Throat Coat Tea, and fweaters= foot sweaters, right) one has to be content with what one’s brain (which resembles tapioca) can muster.

Before I launch into this next part of our story, friends, look at how gorgeous the balcony looks. I mean.

So now you’ll understand why, as I rested in my chair this last week, something terrible happened that has cut me to my core. The building came and cleaned out the balcony planter again and I had a front row seat (cough cough).

Some of you might remember my severely maudlin, emo-etic missive (actually a pathetic fallacy monologue assigning feelings to inanimate objects to move you to join me in tears) last time they stripped the planter of everything, even its dirt. If you missed it (probably better if you did), I compared the watering system, broken and left behind in the bottom, now devoid of its soil body, to the bones of a carcass, exposed, blanched, and “forlorn in the heat.” (I’m sorry I can’t link to that entry so you can read it in its entirety, but after four and a half hours of clicking down Instagram memory lane looking for it, I had to call it quits. I’ve been on IG a very long time and they have a terrible indexing system.)

One of the best things about this apartment is its giant balcony, which has been shrouded around the perimeter with long vines, (which are actually ground cover runners draping down from the balcony planter of the apartment above) since the day I moved in, in March, 2020. (They actually existed before I moved in, but in true Elizabeth Bennet (best portrayed by Keira Knightly because Matthew Macfadyen plays opposite her and EVERYONE KNOWS he is the one, true Mr. Darcy) style, I’m the protagonist of this story and time begins when I arrived?) These vines have been documented numerous times by me since then in photos that serve as love letters. I do love a beautiful setting.

Come, look at the vines with me, captive reader. First, look how adorable the vines look through the studio window. Look how they set off the skies while I’m working.

Look how the vine tendrils romantically frame the fiery sunset glow!

Look at these blue skies! Cute clouds! In every one, vines are a huge part of the beauty.

Where, now, am I going to hold coffee and demonstrate how high my hair got over night with the exact same, small smile on my face every morning?

Where will I stand wearing different mostly blue clothes, knowing the vines look spectacular behind me, again, with the same small smile?

Look how the hummingbird feeder looks with the vines! Look!

I haven’t even started on how the vines looked in shadow against the shades. Biting-my-knuckles sexy.

The filtered, dappled light coming through invited so much basking. I’m part wild animal and basking is in my nature. Bonus points for prism-rainbow-basking!! Behold.

Oh, basking? I’ll show you basking when you take is as seriously as you should!

I mean, look at how pleased as punch this mothereffer is to be basking in dappled vine light! This is the highest level of bask!

I have loved these vines so dearly, not just for the opportunity to bask and brood, or because of their tiny white flowers, or because the hummingbirds make their nests there every spring, but mostly because of their ability to make one feel like one is ensconced in a secret garden, deep in shade, surrounded by beauty, which is hard to do in an apartment building on the third floor in any busy downtown in America.

Brandelyn has gone to bat for me more than once to save our beloved vines when the gardeners come round to tidy every year. Two years ago, I looked up from my client on my iPad screen, to see her not exactly yelling, because she doesn’t yell, but speaking heatedly while gesturing passionately and motioning to her phone, offering to take it up with the higher-ups if, for god’s sake, they’d just! stop! chopping! The balcony got bangs that spring, but Brandelyn did manage to save 75% of our vines.

This past year, Bryan, the main handyperson, has been inundated with building water leaks, a couple of which have been in our very own apartment, and as fun as it is to have a pair of giant, extremely loud floor fans going for a week at a time to dry out the carpet every few months, when we learned it was the roots of our very own vines (nay, our upstairs neighborses!) that had grown into the water pipes to survive (because they turned off the water years ago! Forlorn, exposed, blanched carcass bones! Thirsty! Woe!) that were causing the leaks, we “agreed” to let them destroy our beautiful, secret garden in exchange for a coupla hundred bucks to put something pretty out there. I’m looking forward to enjoying the one quarter of a miniature lemon tree that will purchase.

The vine bangs, which I joked about, but secretly loved with all my heart, are really good and gone, and along with them, they just shaved off all the rest of it right as a heat wave hit the west coast. It is barren. Lo, look and behold.

I think both Brandelyn and I are trying to focus on what’s good about what’s left and figuring out where to put our resources for maximum enjoyment. She’s mentioned an umbrella and a chaise, for my delicate constitution in the heat of the afternoons, you see (cough cough). Possibly we’ll add a crimson rug, and yes, why not, tea and quilted slippers (end of chapter 15). But right now, it looks stark and naked (and I can see clearly into all the apartments across the way where people are starkly naked at all hours of the day).

If you’ve read this far, I’m sorry? Just kidding, what I mean is THANK YOU. And here is a list of all the books I’m currently reading in my 30 Days of Anything Challenge, along with links where you can find out more about them.

I’ll be back (when my brain is no longer tapioca pudding).

xLeoh

Ps. As a bonus, here is a photo of one of the three neighborhood crows walking awkwardly, talons gripping the glass retaining wall, grip-slide, grip-slide, surrounded by, yes, beautiful vines that no longer exist. (I never laughed at the crow. I laughed with him. Crow, don’t you know you can fly?)

Leoh Blooms Reading List 2024

How To Win Friends and Influence Fungi by Dr. Chris Balakrishnan and Matt Wasowski

He/She/They by Schuyler Bailer

Who’s Afraid Of Gender? by Judith Butler

Leading With Joy by Akaya Windwood & Rajasvini Bhansali

The Creaky Knees Guide by Seabury Blair Jr.

Disjointed Navigating the Diagnosis and Management of Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders Edited by Diana Jovin

Pacific Coasting by Danielle Kroll

Street Trees of Seattle by Taha Ebrahimi

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

Pacific Coast Tide Pools by Marni Fylling

Chinatown Pretty by Andria Lo & Valerie Luu

Secrets of the Octopus by Sy Montgomery

Ace by Angela Chen

When We Were by Diana Elliot Graham

Forager by Michelle Dowd

Comfortable With Uncertainty by Pema Chodron

Hypermobility Without Tears by Jeannie Di Bon

Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford

No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwarts

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson

Why We Revolt by Victor Montori

Before And After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum (Her substack is great.)

Don’t Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen

Healing The Soul Wound by Eduardo Duran

Polywise, A Deeper Dive Into Navigating Open Relationships by Jessica Fern, David Cooley

An N of 1*

Peeking at how hEDS and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder fit into my life

CW: Images of bruises, talk of self-harm, dissociation, pain, medical situations


I balk, nervously shift my weight back and forth in my boots, as I feel a lone bead of sweat begin to make its way down my back, followed quickly by a dozen others in quick pursuit. The incline felt like nothing, even without my cane, when I walked up to the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center for the spectacular Spring Native Art Market, but looking back down the street at where I left the car, parallel-parked poorly with the right back half literally in the trees, I know this is gunna hurt.

I take a deep breath and begin descending the slight decline in stilted six-inch increments, a spitty rain cresting on my thinning hair, highlighting the areas where my hairline has begun to imitate the curves of a sandy beach along the shore at low tide. A short shuffle forward with my left leg, my cushioned sole grabbing at the uneven asphalt, a sharp pain in my left knee, a salty word under my breath, a quick stuttered step with my right leg and unyielding right ankle which simply will! not! bend!, and the increasing awareness that this is going to take me a very long time. Also, I’m in the way of people behind me who are hoping to stay out of the center of the street and I must look ridiculous.

A child of about four or five casually strolls past me, holding onto their parent’s hand, eating a jagged wedge of authentic fry bread, with cinnamon and sugar coating their chin. I smile at them and offer what I mean to be a friendly and totally casual hello, which instead comes out as a grunt. I envy their new, strong legs that work (and also the fry bread) and whisper my curse words more quietly. They wave their dough-filled-fist in my direction and I watch them disappear into the distance. I’ve gone approximately three feet.

~

I’m laying with my back against the padded table at physical therapy wearing my slightly staticky basketball shorts (which my nesting partner, Brandelyn, says, “do it for her???”). Dr. G. firmly holds my left calf against his side while pressing his right thumb, deeply and maddeningly slowly, along the tendons and muscles just above my knee.

My knee popped out of joint again last summer, just like dozens of times before, but this time it’s not getting any better. I’ve babied it, waiting for the pain to lessen so I can work out on the rower in the gym again, but it’s been nine months and my body just keeps getting weaker and more out of shape. I’m tired of limping.

We’re working on the top of my leg today because the bottom of my leg is still bruised. He tries to keep me talking while he hurts me, trying to make sure I can still speak. My voice will suddenly pause as I catch my breath from the intensity of the pain and I hear him say, “I’ll back off just a little here,” The path he scores into my leg will show up in lines of purple bruises by tonight. “You’re going to want to ice that,” he says.

The bruises on my thigh turn shades of angry, smashed blackberries and over-ripe plums and stay that way. When I go to PT the next week and then the next, they are still there, almost as mad-looking as at the start. (They stay that way so long that even when they do finally go away, they leave bruise scars.) Dr. G. frowns as he inspects my skin, palpating underneath them as I wince. “Are you aware that your body heals rather slowly?” he asks.

And so begins a conversation wherein I learn many things he’s noticed about my body, including that my kneecaps aren’t where they are supposed to be, but are too high (patella alta). My knees make the terrible creaking and popping sounds because I have Crepitus (are you effin kidding me rn that is a terribly insulting name!). My muscles are atrophied in some areas and my tendons are too tight. Yet, at the same time, my ligaments are too loose, which is why my left knee has slid out since I was a kid and both hips pop out every so often (mostly when I’m having sex in certain positions, but this is not something I say to Dr. G.). I have places around my knee where the sports tape not only caused a rash, but ripped my skin clean off. The scars from my self-harm-gone-wrong trip to the ER two decades ago healed in the shape of canoes instead of straight lines. My nails are weak and wavy. I have substantial stretch marks, in some places inconsistent with weight gain. Some of my stretch marks have stretch marks. The parts of my thighs where they ache the most feel doughy (lipedema).

I listen to him list off this litany of attributes, occasionally saying, no, I didn’t notice that, or, yes, I knew that, but doesn’t everyone?, which would be met with a sober shake of his head while describing a bell curve and pointing to a spot in the air (which is me) almost too far away on the left to see.

Dr. G. asks me to talk to my rheumatologist about a condition called hEDS.

I like Dr. G., the only physical therapist I’ve ever had, who helped me raise my arms using these same techniques two years ago when my biceps burned and froze. He’s about the same age as my son, which is fine, but underlines this new trend of being older than all my doctors. He has a solid, practiced, confident professional work voice and does his best to not be shocked when I joke through gritted teeth, “this is not my kind of kink,” and one time said he knew what a Pro Dom was, but I’m pretty sure he was talking about Lucha Libre.

I tried to explain to Dr. G. that my relationship to feeling pain in my body is fraught at best, and although he nodded his head and made low, affirmative tones out of his 33-year-old chiropractic throat, I could tell he had little to no idea what I was talking about when I brought up how childhood trauma and dissociation can create a delayed pain sensory experience.

~

I’m sitting in my studio recliner, listening to my client tell me about their attempts at being embodied. They ask me why one might intentionally choose to be embodied, when the state of embodiment feels so terrible when you have chronic pain.

I understand intimately what they’re saying and hear myself answering, “If you don’t find a way to be in conversation with the pain your body is experiencing, your body will have to find other ways to get your attention, if not now, then later. And, when the pain is too much, thank god you have dissociation as a beautiful coping mechanism to save your life. Both things are true.”

My words find their way to my own ears and set up camp for acknowledgement later, as is so often the case in my practice. What I say to them is also for me.

Since the age of four, I’ve had the ability to not feel physical pain to varying degrees. Everything from lines of safety pins embedded in the soles of my feet as a child, to accidentally spilling a carafe of boiling water on my naked belly a few years ago, which resulted in the skin peeling. Self-harm coping strategies (the former) and being an easy, nomadic houseguest who forgets to have any needs and won’t make any problems (the latter) have value when your Fight/Flight/Fawn/Freeze system gets activated. But, in the long term, both have literally taught my body to not react to pain and confused the ways I’ve tried to get my body to trust me.

The neuropathy and fibromyalgia I experience tell the same story but in a different language. I’m so sensitive to touch that some fabrics feel like fire or needles. A soft touch on some areas of my body can feel like bruising. A gentle massage can make me weep in discomfort, which makes the lotion massage portions of a mani-pedi unendurable.

My body has been trying to get my attention for decades. ~

I’m at the dentist recommended to me by my friend. He is giving me a second opinion because the first dentist I went to after a pandemic-stretch absence told me I needed “five, maybe six crowns,” in the most casual way, you’d think she’d been talking about her lunch salad. When asked to clarify, she waved my surprise and concern away, saying, “you want to keep your teeth, don’t you?” as my stomach took a dive.

My new dentist, Dr. D., takes photos of my teeth with a pen camera, which I get to see in real time on a screen above my head, (including the small piece of blackberry my flosser missed which is wedged between my top left molars). He points to several bruised corners of my gums and demonstrates a way to floss that won’t hurt me (he targets the blackberry). He studiously examines my teeth, telling me what he thinks each needs and suggests, “you need one crown, one tiny new filling, and a replacement of an old amalgam.” I love Dr. D.

I refrain from kissing him in relief and gratitude (he’s wearing a mask) and instead dive into a scary-to-me subject at the dentist: I’m anesthesia resistant. Previous dentists have called me a liar, not believed me when I reported feeling pain after a numbing shot, rolled their eyes at me after a second numbing shot which didn’t work, and one refused to work on me that day or ever again when I told them I could feel everything from the cold water to the drill.

I have purposefully dissociated from dental pain when possible, but it’s particularly hard to sustain dissociation during mouth interactions which combine simultaneous factors like temperature, sound, smell, sensation, close proximity, and pain without completely mentally checking out, and then who is going to drive the car home? And also, I don’t want to tune out my physical pain anymore, so I fumble over my words, trying to get this nice dentist to understand.

Dr. D. listens quietly to my long, warbly tale, and then simply says, “I will believe you if you tell me you’re feeling pain and we will work together to find a solution,” and I silently weep in privacy behind the orange-tinted glasses they gave me to protect me from harsh lights.
~


It’s a Sunday in spring and I’m watching the hummingbirds from my studio. It looks perfect outside, but the truth is that the pollen turns me into a stuffed up, itchy, painful mess. I insist on going outside anyway and have taken allergy medication around the clock for weeks.

I’m thinking about the frenzy of new specialists and doctor appointments I’ve made and all the hours of detailed paperwork I’ve completed for each one (there has to be a better way to share all the same information with multiple doctors instead of putting the weight of all that work on exhausted, unwell people when we, as a species, have enough time on our hands to invent things like Kranch SaucySauce).

Learning about hEDS and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (get this book!) has answered a lot of questions. It will also change many things, including my expectations around what my body can and can’t do.

I roll that around in my mouth like a marble. I’ve been living in the future when it comes to my body’s abilities. I’m very aspirational when I think about taking hikes or being able to jump or even walk without a (very cool, of course) walking stick. I’m waking up every morning and telling myself a story about sometime soon, if I just figure out how, I’m going to open my eyes and not be in so much pain, that I’ll be able to get up and out of bed quickly, after this secret I’m going to figure out of course, and then my legs and arms will work well as I stretch them up high and long, and I’ll take a deep breath, kick my heels up, pound on my chest, and grab the world, taking a hefty bite right out of the center.

My little dream makes it ok that I’m actually hobbling to the bathroom, wincing at every shuffling step, using the counter to help me sit down on the toilet and then using both the floor and edge of the bathtub to help me slowly get back up, hoping I left the soap close to the front edge of the counter because it’s so hard for my lower back when I reach forward this early to wash my hands.

It’s what has kept me going, this futuristic, pain-free (or at least much less pain!) world in my head where I can feel strong and virile in the future, after I figure out this puzzle.

How do I let it go? How do I make friends with the idea that I am in a slow but persistent decline of abilities (but isn’t everyone?) and that is the reality for the rest of my life? How will this change my Pro Dom practice? There won’t actually be a “getting stronger phase.” There will only be a maintaining-if-I’m-lucky phase. And I hate that.

The words I said to another client a few weeks ago come flooding back. They shared that they spend hours at the end of the day hating that they didn’t do so many things they had planned to do, that they wanted to do, that they should have been able to do, and it sucks and they end their days feeling defeated. They told me it’s been like that for years.

Make space for what’s real,” I told them, “Stop telling yourself you can do all of those things. Who said you get to have, or get to do, any of it? Be painfully honest with yourself. You’re hurting your own feelings over and over again. Time to grieve what you aren’t going to get, that you’ve wished you could have, and instead appreciate what you’ve got that’s right in front of you. Appreciate what’s real, so you don’t miss all the joy in your actual life.”

~

My partner, Psyche, and I travel along the Oregon coast. (Over the course of five days, she hauls everything into the car, into the yurt, out of the yurt back into the car, into the hotel (up three flights of stairs), out of the hotel (down three flights of stairs), back into the car, and finally into her apartment.) We stop at Manzanita Beach where the beach is littered with thousands of dead By-the-wind sailors. I hobble through them, leaning on my cane, trying to avoid adding insult to injury by not smashing them as we weave through.

The inky blue color of them, translucent in the sunlight, is beautiful. They look like (my) connective tissue: shapeless and dying.

The trip is good for getting me out of my head for the most part and the flowers, trees, and birds are beautiful. There is evidence of spring everywhere, especially where the trees have suddenly plooped their blossoms underneath themselves in rivers. I’m so glad I came and so lucky Psyche made it possible.

~

I’m watching an episode of The Amazing Race with Brandelyn. I’ve never seen it before and I’m pretty sure I won’t love it, but I’m hoping I will at least tolerate it alright, because I love the act of snuggling up with her in the evening with my head in her lap, hugging her entire stretched out left leg on the couch like a body pillow, while she strokes my hair. (Spoiler alert – I end up loving that show.) This particular episode includes a woman trying to use a medieval slingshot to fling a watermelon that must hit a suit of armor to the ground. Instead, the watermelon comes back and hits her full speed in the face. I feel the instant pang of sympathy pain deep in my gut as I screw my eyes shut and try not to cry. It’s been this way since I was a kid – I can’t watch other people being hurt because I feel it in my own body. I can’t watch violence in movies because it replays over and over in my head. And yet, I’ve built a career in which it is partly my literal job to create a kink scene wherein my clients are receiving physical pain they ask for, which I deliver to the smallest detail. I show them how to harness their own pain response to understand it better.

In trying to untangle this body pain complexity, I marvel at my ability to have so much sympathetic pain for others and still struggle with how to feel my own pain in ways that make sense and represent reality. I consider how this aspect has created a lifetime feedback loop of misunderstanding body pain and second guessing when and how things are supposed to hurt me so I can ask my body if it actually hurts that much or try to decide if I’m being too dramatic.

The neuropathy pain I experience totally messes with reality, making it seem like there is a fire running down my arm or needles in my wrists. I wonder how I can learn to be gentle with myself without embarrassment when things seem to hurt me more than other people, like with massage, or why I feel silly if I don’t allow myself to be physically bruised past the point of healing, when it’s obvious my body can’t and isn’t healing from it. I wonder why a doctor has to point it out to me three weeks later when I’m living in my body every day.

What it all boils down to, is if I can’t trust that I feel pain to the degree I think I feel it, how do I accurately represent my needs, even to myself?

~

My friend, Jenni, comes over a few times a month to put together jigsaw puzzles. (Charley Harper art is a particular favorite.) We talk quietly about work and family, or often don’t talk about anything at all while we puzzle, except if we’ve got the piece the other is looking for. Sorting by color and pattern is relaxing and I feel myself unwind from the day as we sit at one corner of the table on chairs with ass-comfort donut cushions under our butts, floating above the hard wood seats, finagling the lamp for optimal table coverage, fingering through greens and blues, pushing pieces that have faces or dots into a special pile, and enjoying simply being.

On the evening when the world is all aflutter over the solar storm that might bring the aurora borealis further south and make it visible in Seattle, I text her to see if she’s heard about it but stop short of asking her if she wants to go hunt for it together. As so often is the case, the idea of doing the thing sounds so much easier than actually figuring out how to do the thing. (When I try my luck alone the next night, I get a really clear photo of absolutely nothing unusual.)

One day she invites me to go to a concert (of someone I’ve never heard of) with her, explaining that it starts early so I won’t be out too late, the parking is close by, the venue has places I can sit, it’s not too big so I probably won’t get overwhelmed, there are snacks if I need them, the drive is under an hour, and that she’ll be the driver. I’m touched by her thoughtfulness and attention to my needs. I hate that I have so many things someone has to consider, but that feeling is less intense than the appreciation I feel. I tell her I will plan to go but because it’s on Mother’s Day, I hope she understands if I’m too exhausted after family brunch on the patio. She assures me she understands completely.

On the afternoon of the concert, I let her know I actually feel pretty great (!!!) and I’m looking forward to seeing her! Jenni replies that she has a migraine and won’t be able to go, after all. She worries I’m being let down and asks if I want the tickets for myself. I decline. “Don’t worry,” I say, “I understand completely.”

I’m equally disappointed and relieved to stay home that night and I guess you can’t get more balanced than that.

~

There are so many new things I’m learning about my body right now. It’s like a crash course of a graduate level in college. The magnitude of what has to change both inside me around my expectations, and also outside me in accommodations for my new normal, is extremely uncomfortable. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel unable to get my head back above water. In that space, where I feel danger lurking if I stay too long, I see my reflection in the water around me and make the choice, daily, multiple times, to kick away from there and seek out the light on the surface.

Each morning, before my eyes are fully open, I extend my arm to the nightstand and grope for my phone to send Brandelyn a purple heart that alerts her I’m awake. She’s usually been awake for at least an hour, but if at all possible, stops whatever she’s doing to come climb in bed with me.

The utter gorgeousness of her blinds me, brilliant sun in my morning. I keep my eyes shut, feeling the warmth of her on my skin. Brandelyn gently runs her hands over my thighs and tells them what a good job they do every day trying to hold me up. She lightly rubs my biceps and tells them she loves them for all the ways they try to show up for me. She whispers things to my belly and back that I don’t even get to hear, but I know she’s telling them she loves them and she’s sorry they hurt so much. She pats my heart and says, “hello in there! I love you!” and then grabs my face and tells me how happy she is that I’m in her life and how lucky she feels to get to love me and be loved by me. And I’m reminded again and again that I am so very lucky here in this life, where I actually live.

~

I’m a mentor! A recent client said this: [Leoh] has helped me gain a deeper understanding & appreciation of my brain, my body, my relationships, my past and present. Leoh’s wisdom & whimsy has led me to tools, and discoveries I would have never been able to access without working with them. I am so grateful. ~A.N.

I hope you’ll contact me if you’d like some one-on-one support. <3 The title of this piece, “An N of 1,” refers to this.

Previously posted on Substack

“Thank you, Farty Pants!”

After my eyes are scanned and my palm gets read by a machine, Matt smiles widely and walks me to the front of the security line while asking me how I’m doing. I lie and say I’m fine, but can’t force a smile as he hands my info to the TSA officer who scrutinizes my face. I know in about five minutes I’m about to get a pat down while my unbelted jeans threaten to fall off, my arms out like a scarecrow, from an officer who is reluctant, yet insistent, in understanding the shape of my body under my clothes. Being nonbinary trans is confusing to some people.

If I really answered Matt, because I thought he had the time to care, I’d tell him I’m sad – just impossibly sad – about so many things. I’m not sure how anyone is functioning in this particular moment in time. I would tell him that my little squishy, human-creature brain can’t really comprehend our global suffering and I waffle back and forth between feeling like the best thing I can do is keep going, one step at a time, in whatever direction seems the most open, or coming to a complete halt, nestling under the pile of clean clothes waiting on the couch for me to fold them, while watching Zac Efron and Darin Olien help save baby kangaroos after a fire in Australia.

I would tell Matt that the losses in the last few years have gutted me and that I don’t choose to share about it much because everyone else is barely standing upright as well, but that has come with the cost of connection, and sometimes I feel so starkly alone I’m see-through. I’d tell him that I keep pacing myself and doing my best to stay open to connection and I also feel like I’m failing at it with most people, which triggers my people-pleasing parts into overcompensating, which sends me into an exhausted doom spiral, which I barely pull out of before spectacularly crashing (Come on, Mav, do some of that pilot shit!).

“Matt,” I would say, a hand laid easily on his shoulder, “I’m scared most of the time that I’m a terrible host to the ecosystems living in, on, and around me, but I refuse to give up, possibly because I’m stupidly stubborn, but it’s kept me alive this long, so I’m gonna keep going.” I’d give his arm a slight squeeze before walking away, turning once to look back and say, “You take care, Matt!” And, I’d mean it.

A guy deplaning passes me as I’m waiting at the gate, and turns to his friend and loudly whispers, “I hate that hair style,” while making a thumb motion towards me. His friend, swinging his bag onto a shoulder, turns to take a look, and grunts in agreement while maintaining eye contact with me for a few long seconds.

I watch them walk away until they pass around the corner from my view, leaving their turdy comment squatting next to me at gate N1.

~.~.~

The person next to me on the plane has ended up in the middle seat. I do what I can to keep my body to myself during the flight, tucked into the window as best I can, hyper-aware of each instance the cuff of my sweater falls on their side and where my elbows are at all times, leaving them the arm rest which they finally take advantage of halfway through our two hour, fifteen minute flight. We don’t say a single word to each other, but by the end I’ve learned that they are learning Spanish (Grito!), that they have a younger sibling who will pick them up from the airport, that they have a Pinterest board with dark wood paneled dream rooms, filled with kitsch in hues of blues and greens, they prefer diet soda over regular, they are gluten-free, and they have a habit of intermittently jacking their left knee up and down at a frantic pace and yanking on the strings of their sweater when they are nervous. They get nervous a lot. I think about offering them one of the dozen fidgeters I have in my possession, but decide not to because I would have to actually talk to them and that seems too hard.

I wonder what they might have learned about me on the flight as I slowly exit the plane behind them, my backpack hitting the seats as I walk down the aisle, sardined between someone I know, but didn’t meet, and someone nipping my heels, who sees me as something standing between them and freedom. I wonder if they learned nothing about me because they weren’t conditioned to situationally be hyper-aware. I wonder if they noticed that I tried to not encroach on their middle-seat-space. I wonder if I’ll ever feel safe enough to take up space without guilt. I wonder if I will always be a people-pleaser, unconsciously hoping to soothe myself with positive feedback to feel like I’m good.

~.~.~

My son and I are at the bowling alley slash arcade. He’s walking around with the 5-year-old collecting tickets for future prizes. I’ve been following the 3-year-old around watching him slam his tiny fist down on buttons with flashing lights and carnival music. We don’t need money for these machines. He’s happy just to have free rein of the place and access to any machine he wants.

After awhile, we corral the grands to a booth on the far side of the cavernous room for lunch. They are perfectly wonderful, these two. The older one did Legos with me for several hours the day before. He’s got the precision, dexterity, and patience of an older child and can do the age 10+ Lego sets by himself. But, he humors me so I can feel included and allows me to find the upcoming blocks for him, setting them just so on the pictures in the instruction manual, before completing the entire page all at once. He is meticulous with the creative brain of a builder. He forges entirely new games, complete with multi-step rules, on the spot. He also (almost) always wins them.

The younger one has dandelion-puff, blond curls all over his head and the smile of an angel. He has sparkly eyes. He spontaneously comes up to you to tell you he likes the color of your shirt or that he loves you. Your heart has no choice but to burst in joy, basking in his sweet gaze.

The intensity of living with both of them among all these gorgeous, cherished moments would be too much to experience for mere humans. The Universe knows this, so along with the love note handed to me on brightly-colored, crumpled construction paper and the “heart” made out of fuzzy pipe cleaners wadded into a ball lovingly tucked into my backpack pocket, and all the snuggles and hugs, they have both been delightedly egging each other on to increasingly higher levels of potty mouth.


My son and his wife have tried ignoring, scolding, and explaining, but it’s a too-compelling rush for the 3-5-year-old set to refer to everything as “Farty Pants.” So there has been a lot of Farty Pants-ing by this duo the last couple of days. Levels their parents could not imagine nor ignore. As a grandparent, I have a backseat to the drama, so I got to walk around, bemused, as this adorable baby cheerfully yelled, “Farty Pants!” while pounding repeatedly as hard as he could on bright, red START buttons that do not start, while feeling a bit envious of his ability to unabashedly do what he wanted.

My son gets the boys to sit still long enough on the vinyl booth seats to remind them that we don’t say Farty Pants in public if we want to have our tablets later. He gets them both to acknowledge what he’s saying and they sagely nod and say, “Yes, Dad,” in unison. We order something called Liquid Death that turns out to be canned water, sporting the font and flames from a Hot Topic button-up from the 1990s worn by Guy Fieri, and chicken nuggets and fries, which are two of the only foods the older one eats, along with a side of ranch, which the younger one will delightfully shotgun by the end of the meal, leaving a giant smear of ranch across the bridge of his nose.

The waitress says, “I’ll get that right out to you.” And my grandson looks at her with his big, sweet smile and says, “Thank you, Farty Pants!

~.~.~

The flight home feels shorter. I have the row to myself so instead of worrying about how I’m being perceived, I watch stupid streaming shows on my phone instead of the news, but the news catches up to me about fifteen minutes before we land when the voice over the speakers tells us that a Pro-Palestine protest shut down the freeway near the airport and we might be delayed getting picked up. I support the protest and I’m glad it happened. Being slightly delayed being picked up feels like an incredibly small price to pay compared to the genocide thats happening. Not everyone on my flight agrees with me and I quickly learn that several people in the rows near me have a very different view of what’s happening in Gaza.

One of the most vocal people is a brunette woman directly across the aisle from me, who begins making loud phone calls as soon as the wheels touch the ground, to a parade of people we can’t hear. By the tone of her half of the conversations, they must all be as outraged as she is. I roll my eyes to myself when she says for the fourth time, to the fourth person, “if this makes me late for the dinner with Scott tonight I’m going to be furious.

People jump up when we roll up to the gate to stand awkwardly in the isles, heads tilted to the side to avoid getting banged by the opening overhead compartments. When it gets to be my turn, I stand up at the same time as the very vocal woman. She sticks a leg into the aisle, then stops short as I hoist my backpack over my shoulder, impatiently gesturing that I could go first. I shake my head, also gesturing, and say, “No, you go.” I know my knees need to unfold after a couple of hours of being cramped and walking will be painful and slow. The last thing I want is an impatient, rude, and annoyed person pushing at the rear.

She exasperatedly throws both hands up and says, “Ok,” grabbing her bags and hustling out.

But, thank you,” I throw after her, which she does not acknowledge or maybe even hear, and under my breath I add, “Farty Pants.

Previously posted on Substack

We Are Mostly Air

99.9% Of You Is Literally Made For Expansiveness

Multiple things are always true at the same time. Understanding this, possibly more than any other single thing, has had the greatest impact on my life. We are earth creatures made of muscle, blood, sinew, and bone. We are 99.9% air. 

I’ve tried many varieties of therapy over the years, starting at age 16. I think most of them did me some good. At the very least, almost all those therapists had a sympathetic shoulder for me to lean on when I felt miserable, and at best, I learned a few things about myself.

I’m still a person who has a therapist now, and I’m damn glad and privileged to have that option. 

The thing I was missing then, is what might be missing from your life now – the tools for changing things and moving forward. I felt stuck. 

After about two decades of traditional therapy, I was tired of someone simply listening. I wanted – craved, tools. 

I didn’t want to just talk about the past. I wanted to feel empowered to make real changes. I wanted to feel better, not just have someone understand why I felt badly. 

I started looking into every therapy type and healing modality I could find and doing some comparisons between what they all offered. Over the course of a decade, I spent about four years and thousands of dollars getting certified in a few different health coaching programs, plus another three years becoming a Reiki master* (I’m not advocating white people do this, please see footnote), even more years taking classes in energy medicine, reflexology, spirituality and religion, learning about essential oils and supplements, chakras and meridians, crystals and spells. 

I joined a narrative therapists practice group, researched the body/mind connection, learned how our body’s responses to our environment, foods, and hormones affect everything, taught art therapy, and held groups on a variety of health subjects like our parasympathetic nervous system and being Highly Sensitive, (which was my intro into neurodiversity and understanding my own neurospiciness because of shared traits) out of my wellness center in San Diego, CA. 

The tail end of that incredibly verdant part of my life was filled with understanding kink and the body’s pain response and reward system, along with our need to reparent ourselves, which led me to offering optional Pro Dom kink services and teaching kink as a healing art. 

I learned a lot during that decade and did my best to keep sharing with others through workshops, speaking at conferences, and writing. 

My own physical health has its ups and downs. There’s no perfect tool kit that will permanently keep you from ever being ill or needing to rest or needing to grieve. There is no “healed” place you reach where you’re done healing and the rest of your life is perfect. And there’s no magic secret that you’ll learn that will be the answer to everything you’re hoping to change about yourself. You can spend your entire adult life searching, putting off actually living and being happy “until then,” but I promise you, it’s a big waste of time and energy and keeps you from being embodied, in the present moment. 

The rewilding you might have heard about is a way to see all of you, not just the parts of you that are socially acceptable, the parts of you that have been forced to comply and play along and perform, putting the parts of you that are sad or sick away because they need to be hidden. You were taught to live this way by your parents, who learned it from their parents, and so on, all in an attempt to live without being picked out of the group as a troublemaker. Being a member of the group in good standing, or, “normal,” is safer. The pressure to be just like everyone else is super real and it’s built into us from when we’re tiny. It’s a safety feature to belong to the pack and teaching you to be this way was how your parents loved you.
 

The truth is that the messy, inconvenient, shadowy, loud, sick, angry, and persistent parts of you are why you’ve survived this long on this trauma-filled planet. That obstinate, crass, sullen teen part of you that you pretend doesn’t exist? They deserve your gratitude (and maybe a break).  The whimsy and fun you long for? Your younger parts have been holding those things (hostage?) for you and you need to make space to incorporate them. 

Doing this work means that over time, you can manage what life throws at you with more capacity and grace, both for yourself and others. The big knocks come but you don’t fall down. You feel the impact, sure, but you know how to receive and process the grief – and give yourself all the time you need to do it. Or maybe you do fall down and give yourself a rest, telling yourself what a great job you’re doing instead of wishing you could be different. You feel less and less like you have to smear makeup on your face and force a smile for the benefit of others. You wear makeup only when you want to and it brings you joy.

You get a greater perspective and understanding about what’s yours and what to leave for someone else, because not only is it theirs, but trying to do their work doesn’t help them and it sure doesn’t help you. 

You will know and love your Self and system so well, that you have your own back and validate all your parts like a motherfucker, which makes you unafraid to say what’s true in any situation and to any person.

My health history involves sexual & medical trauma, DDNOS, and multiple autoimmune conditions, which is complicated and painful. I know what it’s like to live minute to minute, feeling pretty sure that you don’t want to be here tomorrow, because the only thing worse than how you feel in that moment is understanding that you have to do it again tomorrow and the day after that etc. I know what it’s like to feel nothing for months at a time. I know what it’s like to be surprised I turned another year older, again, and feel baffled that I’m going to do it all over again for another year. 

And, I also know what it’s like to have joy – real joy. I know what it’s like to build an intentional life, to feel like myself, finally, and be surrounded by people who love me for me. I could never have known how great my life would be now. I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d tried to explain it to me. I could not fathom what I didn’t believe could be true. I didn’t feel I deserved any of that for myself. I now know what it’s like to want to live through this next year, and in fact, hope I get a long life to come in this funny meatsuit I’m walking around in. 

My life is not easy, even though it is fulfilling and worthwhile. I live with chronic pain and disability which complicates things. I strive to stay in my rituals and daily schedules because it helps maintain my mental health, keeping the 3am demons at bay so they don’t take over weeks of my life. My earlier years were filled with the results of mental illness symptoms and that comes with very real casualties, even today, in the lives of those who knew me then. Like many folks in the trans community, I’ve had huge personal losses in the last few years. Some of these hits are of the magnitude of which I could not have believed I would live through, let alone still be able to feel joy after experiencing.  

This is the stuff we are made of, though. Life is contradictions, pain and pleasure. Multiple things are always true at the same time. These are the real building components, the raw ingredients, of life. We are mostly air – 99.9% of you is expansiveness. You have more bacteria cells in you than human ones, making you more of an earth alien than a human. Sadness and joy exist in you at the same time. There is beauty in the sunset you can only see over the power lines and street lights.

You are at once the most important person in the universe and also of very little consequence. 

I find those statistics to be comforting. I like science and math and magic mixed together. I think therein lies the truth, which is that we can’t know everything, but that everything knows us. 

Today more than ever, so many of the idioms we grew up with are proving to be true:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Be the leaf in the stream.

Go with the flow

Don’t become the experience, but keep your eyes open, see what it is and feel it.

Don’t be afraid, or do be afraid, and keep going. 

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”

Frederick Buechner

The clouds and the trees are just as important in my toolbox as being a witness to my big feelings. I need bubbles and prisms. I need ropes and floggers and flowers. I need a recognizable window of tolerance to give me the choice of how I want to act instead of being stuck in reaction mode. I need to be able to truly love myself and know I’m good no matter what anyone else says. I need to be able to laugh. And I need time doing absolutely nothing.
 

Sometimes I live in this Carl Sagan Quote: “Even through your hardest days, remember we are all made of stardust.”

I love you <3  xLeoh  * Please read this very clear and informative piece by Lore McSpadden-Walker about Reiki lineage and best practices. I no longer advertise Reiki as a part of what I offer and I no longer give attunements. Energy work will always be a part of what I do as a mentor and Pro Dom and I’m in the process of traveling through my own heritage to see what my roots have to share with me about where my natural gifts come from. 

PS. I’ll be back soon(?) to talk more about 30 Days Of Anything and tell you how I’m doing on moving my body. I hope it’s going ok for you and if you forgot all about it, go ahead and start again today! Why not! xo

Previously posted on Substack

It’s March First! Here goes 30 Days of Something

and I’m already mad about it

Hello friends,

This morning I realized it was March 1 and felt surprised, like it had crept up on me somehow, and I’m for sure that that’s not right, given that I had a whole extra day this year to get ready for the end of February. (Leap Day Williams, anyone?)

My new daily habit for March is “move my body,” and as fate would have it, our friend from Atlanta is in town and wanted to meet for an early coffee at a place just around the corner. “Perfect,” I thought, “look how I’m getting a jump on my habit!”

There are two workshops in March: It Starts With You: Repair After Shattering, and Get Your Kinks Out: Planning Kink Scenes: A cheat sheet. I’d love to have you join me. (Sneak peek at what’s coming up later this year right here.)

My partner and I put on jackets, took the elevator downstairs, and I grabbed her hand as we headed out of the building towards the coffee shop. I was instantly confronted with an uphill climb. You might not know that this past year I’ve lost a little more ability in my left knee. I’ve acquired a “very cool, robust” walking stick that kind of looks like a ski pole. It’s meant for hiking, but I use it for city walking knee support up/down stairs and hills, except today, because I left it at home. And then the coffee shop wasn’t where I had imagined it was – it was further up the incline. So by the time we got there, I was out of breath and in pain, feeling grumbly about my ability to walk, and totally annoyed I’d forgotten my very cool, totally virile, not-cane.

So this is day one. I’m almost done being mad.

I know moving my body every day will increase my ability to move my body every day. Know what I mean? The inertia to get the ball rolling is hardest in the beginning, and I’m feeling every bit of that today.

Activation Energy is defined as “the minimum amount of energy needed to activate or energize molecules or atoms so that they can undergo a chemical reaction or transformation.” I’m trying to find my activation energy, probably to the least degree possible, to create the beginning of the change I’m hoping to see.

We’re wired to lean towards doing things that make us feel good (brain chemical reward), secure (security system activation), and comfortable (combination of both).

We’re wired to lean towards doing things that make us feel good (brain chemical reward), secure (security system activation), and comfortable (combination of both). That means, in order to make changes a reality, we have to be aware and override some really big and important survival systems in ways we don’t usually think about.

Homeostasis, the state your body is continually trying to reach and maintain, feels threatened when we introduce new ideas and habits. Homeostasis has many jobs, like maintaining body temperature, how fast or slow your metabolism is, and other survival functions. Doing new things is going to disrupt your micro-molecular neurophysiological thermostat, aka homeostasis. You’re going to get strong impulses to just sit down and return to “normal.”

Doing your new habit at the same time every day will help your brain start to expect the change and be more open to it, keeping the activation energy needed to incorporate a new habit to a minimum. Keeping the time down to 10 minutes or less will “trick” your brain into believing it’s possible and not too big of a disruption.

30 Days of Anything Rules:

Choose one new thing that fits in your life without (too much) disruption

Make a plan to do it, and try to do it at the same time every day for max ten minutes

Choose a reward for after you succeed

Know anyone who might want to join us? Thanks for sharing! Everyone is welcome.
Previously posted on Substack

Welcome to Edgy, Wholesome + 30 Days of Anything

Here goes nothing/everything

Hello friends,

Welcome to Edgy, Wholesome, a substack newsletter series by me, your favorite edgy yet wholesome Mentor slash Pro Dom. A substack newsletter, which at this very moment, is a newborn babe with the scent of warm, yeasty bread, fresh from the oven. Delicious! Thank you for being here.

There are two workshops coming up in March: It Starts With You: Repair After Shattering, and Get Your Kinks Out: Planning Kink Scenes: A cheat sheet. I’d love to have you join me. (Sneak peek at what’s coming up later this year right here.)

I’ve been mentoring for fourteen years and a Pro Dom for six. In that time I’ve tried a lot of things with a lot of clients to help them break self-care into bite-sized pieces, making our work much more likely to have a long-lasting impact on their lives (and the lives of those around them). Over the years, there’s been one concept that has stuck out as a clear winner in creating forward movement in someone’s life.

Let me introduce you to 30 Days of Anything, which we’ll be starting on March 1, 2024. The concept is simple – do something, anything, for 30 days in a row. The trick is making that thing accessible and sustainable, both super important ingredients to the recipe we’re crafting. I’ve seen this concept change so many people’s lives for the better!

Watch out for making it too complicated or big. We’re in a marathon, not a sprint. Sure, you can prove to yourself that you can do something for 30 days in a row, but if that thing has displaced other important things like sleep or time for yourself and you’re “just making it work to get to the end,” then you’re maybe going to succeed at doing that thing for 30 days, but it isn’t likely to stick with you long-term. What you did was an endurance test and proved that you can do something hard, which, hey – I’m not knocking that in and of itself. Building strength that way can be beneficial. But, that’s not what I’m talking about here.

The goal of 30 Days of Anything is to add in one helpful thing that you’re missing – one habit that could be helpful to your daily flow or your mental health or how you treat your body and then commit to doing it for the entire month. Drink a glass of water when you first wake up. Stretch for ten minutes before you get in bed. Put your dirty clothes in the hamper at the end of every day. Set a ten minute timer when you begin to scroll social media. Take a photo every day of something in a theme, like the color red or flowers or patterns. Take your vitamins at lunch. Go through the mail and throw out the junk immediately into the recycling. Spend ten minutes learning a new language. Make eye contact with yourself in the mirror and say, I love you! Try a new crafty thing or a sport and be joyously bad at it when you start.

The last piece of the challenge is to pick a reward. Rewards need to be something you’re truly looking forward to that are also sustainable. Taking a cruise isn’t something that most people can do often. But taking a weekend afternoon to yourself to people watch or pick up a hobby for a day that you’ve been missing or going to a restaurant you’ve been wanting to try or basically anything you look forward to that isn’t too expensive and doesn’t take too much effort or time to accomplish, is perfect. Remember, we’re going for sustainability right now and we want some nearly-instant gratification. (We’ll get to bigger challenges and rewards in a few months!)

30 Days of Anything Rules:

  • Choose one new thing that fits in your life without (too much) disruption
  • Make a plan to do it, and try to do it at the same time every day for max ten minutes
  • Choose a reward for after you succeed

That’s it! Make it easy, make is simple. The magic that happens will surprise you. Our brains love rituals, routines, learning new things, and establishing new habits. We also love rewards, especially after doing a challenge. You will be promoting neuroplasticity in your brain, making it possible for you to be more open to other new ideas in your life, giving you a wider perspective on life in general, and also improving your memory and mood.

As for me, I’m going to choose body movement for the month of March. Ten minutes of moving my body on purpose, even if it’s just stretching on the floor. My reward is going to be a dinner out with one of my favorite people during the first week of April.

Want to join me? Sign up for the Edgy, Wholesome newsletter and (about) every week you’ll get some words of encouragement to cheer you on your way. Everyone is welcome. I’d love to hear what you’re choosing. Please leave a comment with the new habit you’re embracing for March and what your reward will be!

Upgrade to the paid version if you’d like some accountability opportunities, more support, and to hear details from my own process.

Here are some ideas that I’ve used with clients in the past: 

  1. Drink a glass of water
  2. Stretch for ten minutes
  3. Clothes in the hamper
  4. Ten minute timer for social media
  5. Take a photo in a theme
  6. Take your vitamins
  7. Throw out junk mail
  8. Learn a new language
  9. New craft
  10. New sport
  11. Gratitude log
  12. Make your bed
  13. Deep breathing
  14. Morning/Bedtime routine
  15. Brush/floss teeth
  16. Read from a paper book
  17. Eat a veggie
  18. Push up/planks
  19. Go outside
  20. Plan your day
  21. Express love to someone
  22. Clean an area

Thanks for reading! Hope to see you. xoLeoh

Previously posted on Substack

Dear Sir Blooms, Gender and Attraction

Dear Sir Blooms,

I’ve traditionally only been sexually attracted to cis-male presenting folks. Up until a few years ago I identified as a gay male but as I’ve explored my gender identity I now identify as non-binary. With that, I’ve been exploring my sexuality. I feel like being a third gender gives me more flexibility on what I view as attractive. I’d like to explore a relationship with someone else who is non-binary as well and I would like the experience to be based on the person since gender isn’t necessarily involved.

But, here’s the thing. I’m not physically attracted to breasts or vaginas. At all. How do I have the experience I want while managing my mono attraction?

Unsure in Seattle

Hello Unsure,

I appreciate how you’re trying to grow and expand. We can’t really know what’s possible until we try, but we need to start by separating gender and attraction. Understanding on an even deeper level your own gender won’t automatically lead to being attracted to new genders.

Attraction is built on so many things, many of which we don’t have the ability to immediately change, meaning, they are below our ability to choose. There’s not a button to push to say that now I’m going to start being sexually attracted differently when those things haven’t been present or part of what’s been getting your engine started all these years.

Factors like smell, body stature, the energy they put out, voice timber – these things set chemistry clicking….or not. And sometimes, over time, these drivers can be replaced by new drivers, and that can feel good or be unsettling, and can involve your senses in ways you don’t overtly agree to. This happens all the time olfactorily, like the way you remember the cologne your high school boyfriend wore. If you smelled it on someone on the street, it would turn your head and you’d be flooded with memories, one of which could be feeling attraction. Could also be like the way you used to love the smell of clam chowder but you got sick that one Christmas and now clam chowder makes you feel nauseated. (Just me?) You can’t really control that body response any more than you can decide to be attracted to certain people.

Under that, on even deeper levels, are our own attachment styles, childhood trauma, what literally built our responses to things, which are drivers of our attraction. Some of those things can (and should!) be worked on to get to healthier places in relationship, especially where codependency is concerned, but that still probably won’t create an environment where you can dictate what will get you into a state of attraction.

A fun (and life-saving) opportunity of being alive at this specific time is the ability to modify our bodies to match our true selves. I’m curious if you imagine someone you are currently in sexual attraction with changing their body to include more substantial breasts, would they become less attractive to you? Or would your attraction shift to include larger breasts because a person you’re sexually attracted to now has them? Sometimes we think it’s a body type and sometimes we just haven’t met anyone with that body type that does it for us yet. As you’re exploring non-binary attraction, you may have an opportunity to feel all kinds of levels of attraction with lots of different folks. People have entire bodies, not just traditional “sexual parts,” where you can explore what feels good, fun, exciting, and pleasurable without ever interacting with specific parts you’re worried about.

One way to think of attraction is the same way we view other things our bodies are doing, and that all cycles back to survival. Not just survival of the species, but our own personal survival. And when trauma enters the scene, it can just fuck everything up, some of those wires get crossed, and it takes a lot of work to try and unlayer what’s happening, and even then, we need to have lots of compassion for ourselves around everything related to our sexuality and recognize when shame is present and learn to double down on the empathy and compassion. Untangling safety, attachment, trauma, biological functions, environmental factors, I mean. It’s super complex. So, let’s try to simplify.

Instead of feeling like you’re doing something “less-than” when you’re in relationship with someone you deeply love in ways other than sexual, I’d invite you to think of sexually intimate relationships as just one type of a significant and tender way to be with someone. Platonic loves are so important and vital to how we relationally connect and feel secure in our place in the world. In many cases, platonic loves are what endure when other types of relationships end. Also, romance can live separately from sex and be it’s own type of pleasure.

One of the biggest gifts we can give ourselves is to be present with pleasure. The more real we can be in those moments, the more pleasure we can receive, which creates an environment where pleasure abundance spills over to the people we’re intimate with. Trying to “make yourself” feel or respond a certain way will strip that experience of true pleasure and intimacy. If we can’t be ourselves, we can’t truly be intimate.

Play is often overlooked in pleasure and intimacy because we’ve been taught to go for the orgasm. If you put orgasms in their place, which is simply a part of pleasure and sexual intimacy, and move other kinds of touch, sensations, and pleasure to the front, you might be able to find sexual attraction in new places. Play is what we need more of! Playing with new toys, new situations, new people, and new ideas will all create an environment where new things are possible. What would it look like to invite a more playful vibe to your sexual intimacy and how might that open up new possibilities for you in attraction?

My wish for you is to allow yourself to simply be how you are, allow your feelings of disappointment around not being attracted to certain gender expressions exist as long as they need to, acknowledge them, but intentionally reach for where pleasure waits for you, and to create opportunities to play. You can have plenty of non-binary relationships and experience the vast world of differences within that space where your natural attraction lives. Maybe a good place to start would be to ask yourself, what dynamics and relationships make me feel pressured to try and make myself be different and what work can I do there?

Want to send me a note? You can do that here.