Seriously. They do. This is going to be a post about “things I wish someone had told me a decade ago.” (Or maybe they did and I just wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Always possible.) One of the results of growing up in a dysfunctional dynamic is that it is possible to become used […]
Anxiety and Trauma
I attended a psychodrama workshop two weeks ago. It was a transformative experience for me, and I keep trying to think of a way to consolidate it here, but I can’t. Drama therapy is experiential, and reading about psychodrama myself didn’t prepare me for how powerful it would turn out to be. Long story short, […]
Relationship Anarchy Means Not Knowing How Many Partners You Have
In the four months since my most recent break up, I’ve done massive amounts of personal growth. When I first came to poly, it was because I fell in love with a friend who was already in a long-distance polyamorous relationship. I did a lot of work to learn about poly to be with her […]
Labor of Love: Thoughts on Domesticity
Perhaps for the first time in my life, I am living in a truly egalitarian household. It occurred to me today, as I was feeding the sourdough starter and making pancakes from the extras. One of my roommates had to run out the door, but said, “Please, save me one!” Three feminist femmes living together […]
Kids and Empathy
I’m teaching theatre for a local summer camp, which isn’t something I would have ever imagined I would do. And I think working with kids is giving me more empathy, not that I was lacking in that trait to begin with. But kids are just tiny humans who have big feelings and precious few skills […]
Conflict Resolution in Poly
Sometimes if a relationship implodes, you finally learn to push past your defense mechanisms in other relationships to stop the pattern in its track. Growing up in an emotionally abusive family, I have always been conflict avoidant. My sister and I would take turns keeping the peace, and my role as peacekeeper followed me into […]
What Does It Mean to be Open?
I’ve been thinking a lot about polyamory lately, and how I fit into it. I’ve been very interested in the idea of queer intimacy since I was introduced to it in graduate school. The idea that there are forms of intimacy which do not make sense to or in a capitalist heteropatriarchy. The ways which […]
Woman
This piece was originally performed for Greetings, From Queer Mountain Episode 37: Woman. I originally had a different piece prepared. I am going through a breakup and I had a breakthrough in therapy yesterday that got me thinking. I have this tendency to twist myself into a pretzel in relationships to make the other person […]
What do you need to bloom?
I’ve had a longstanding interest in gender and sexuality, and the proliferation of new terms to describe gender and sexual orientation I think is a wonderful thing. I first heard the term demisexuality a few years ago on-line, as someone who does not feel sexual attraction without the presence of an emotional bond. The definition resonated […]
On Gaslighting and Superpowers
I’m not sure why I didn’t make the connection when I was watching Jessica Jones. But I think all superhero stories are an allegory for abuse. Something really fucked up and bad happened to you. Something that should have killed you. Something that would have killed anyone else. Only it didn’t. Instead, it gave you […]