I grew up half Jewish and half Italian-Catholic. I made jokes about how these different identities left me mostly confused. Had Jesus risen again or not? I thought I had to choose one side rather than celebrating all the parts within myself, so I almost erased my Jewish half. I learned how to make risotto, but not matzah ball soup.  Christianity is the dominant culture in the United States and obscures the other religions. People would always say Merry Christmas to me, assuming everyone celebrated it, assuming it was the only holiday. I unconsciously accepted that and embraced my Catholic ..read more

2020 has been a difficult, heartbreaking, and tumultuous year in so many ways. The toll COVID is taking on our communities, especially the most disenfranchised among us (disproportionately poor and working-class people of color), remains heartbreakingly gut-wrenching. Governments across the globe have violated the rights of their people repeatedly, from the ongoing police murders of Black and brown people in the US to the rise of authoritarianism in Hungary, rising state-sponsored anti-Muslim violence in India, increasing evidence of oppression against Uighur Muslims rounded up and sent to for ..read more

Hi! My name is Grace, and I am a graydemi ace. I’m a what I’ve previously called an IAMsexual who has a lot of sex, just not likely the kind you’re imagining. Re-imagining sex as acts that de-center the mainstream idea of sex feels important to understanding how I navigate my relational world. Let me provide you with a scene of what my IAMsexual world of sex looks like. We are walking on the shoreline of a vast body of clear turquoise water under the warming rays of the sun and gentle whispering of humid winds. [We breathe.] It is the early part of the evening just before sunset. We walk insid ..read more

By Grace B. Freedom My name is Grace and I am a gray demisexual ace. Rewind: gray doesn’t really suit me. It doesn’t feel vibrant enough. I can be a gray demisexual as it pertains to generic understandings of asexuality, but I want to formally declare that I want a new color. Perhaps I will be a gold-flecked cyan demisexual with rich metallic hints and deep blues that flow into green, in honor of my watery, fluid, and balanced life-blooming nature. For the sake of ease, I’ll stick with gray demi ace (but now you know what my real color would be). Much of mainstream ace talk is all about w ..read more

Is your sense of power sagging? Do you see fine lines and wrinkles on your sense of self worth and value? Are you ready tone and strength your radical self-love muscle?  Then take your Radical Self Love journey from the page to the plane and join me for 5 transformative days in the gorgeous land of Aotearoa, New Zealand where we will Rest, Rejuvenate, and Reunite with our personal divinity. For 10 years I have been teaching people how to live unapologetically through the power of radical self-love. Whether they just finished the book or saw me at a live event, people inevitably say, “I ..read more

A lo largo de los años he sido objeto de muchas observaciones bifóbicas. La bifobia no es solo una expresión específica de homofobia para las personas que son “parcialmente” gays. La bifobia viene de la comunidad queer y heterosexual, y en mi experiencia, es una expresión del pensamiento y/o binario que puede ser muy destructivo para nuestro mundo en muchas maneras. Las que voy a exponer a continuación ni siquiera son las peores, solo son las más reveladoras de los perjuicios escondidos que hay contra las personas bi. Algunas personas dicen que “pansexual” es la identidad de elección si te atr ..read more

The dictionary defines loneliness as sadness because one has no friends or company, however, that definition doesn’t remotely articulate the black hole of pain and dread that we can experience when we are feeling lonely. Not to mention it is often something we feel when we are with friends, family and lovers. Research conducted in 2012 surprisingly shows that the loneliest people tend to live with other people or be married and they do not suffer from clinical depression according to Dr. Carla Perissinotto and colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco. We know that being soci ..read more

CW: health anxiety, menstruation Let me start off this article by taking you through a particular, very recent, day. I wake up with a start, fresh off a nightmare, where one of the many, many imagined scenarios that terrify me becomes a reality. I sit up, breathing shallow breaths, feeling the panic from my dream flow through me in a horrible, nauseating wave, and wonder if I will ever feel happy or safe again. I happen to be at a friend’s place. We were role-playing until late the night before, and I live quite far away. Soon after I wake up, my friend comes into the room, carrying his 6-mo ..read more

Much has been written with regards to emotional labor in the past few years. Specifically, women have been writing about the emotional labor they must bear in the world in various ways, specifically, with cis men and their own families. As a trans-femme of color with light-skinned privilege, I have had my share of emotional labor. I do become exhausted with providing emotional support with people in my circle of friends, my family, and my community. I also need to constantly assess my capacity for emotional labor because I am a therapist. Being a clinician five days a week provides me with the ..read more

Note: I am writing this article from my perspective of the holiday season, which is very Christmas-centric. Having said that, I believe that at least some of these hints can be applied to other holiday celebrations. The holidays are promoted, to an almost obnoxious level, as being a time of great joy and merriment. Families come around, delicious food is eaten, presents are exchanged, and a wonderful time is had by all. In theory. In actuality, the reality is not so clear-cut. For many of us, the holiday season is one of the most stressful times of the year, for any number of reasons. Some of ..read more