AN OPEN LETTER
As a kid, my only professional goal was to join the X Men.
Seriously.
Other kids wanted to grow up and be princesses and pop stars. I wanted to grow up and live freely and fully as a mutant.
I saw there was a lot of pain in the world, and I wanted a way to make a difference. I spent elementary school reading about telekinesis and attempting risky stunts to encourage my powers to manifest. As I got older and my powers didn't materialize in the ways that I had hoped, I realized I needed to find another way to help bring ease to people’s suffering. Becoming a licensed psychotherapist was the closest alternative I had to becoming a superhero. I wanted people to know that they aren't alone. I wanted to help them feel better.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve come to recognize that the pain I saw in the world as a child wasn’t just “out there”, it was also inside of me. I felt things, things that happened to me, but also the things that were happening to others around me. We are wired for connection, drawn to community and interdependence the way flowers tilt towards the sun. The best and most challenging parts of our lives are feelings. As we shift our relationship to how we feel, we shift the trajectory of our entire lives. But most of us weren’t taught that feelings were okay. For some of us, feelings were bad, messy, shameful, wrong, or just not important.
In the early days, my work was about creating the support that I had needed. Truthfully, it felt more fulfilling than only supporting folks who could afford therapy and get onto my clinical schedule. I started to write, and teach, and facilitate trainings and workshops on what I was learning in the clinical office, and in my life. And after giving presentations across the world that helped people feel seen and heard and understood, my biggest lesson of all was that empathy is powerful. Maybe even a superpower.
(This was later confirmed by Marvel, which was a transformative moment of affirmation for me.)
My focus has been on sex and relationships because…well, why not? They are everywhere: in our music, our textbooks, in advertisements, our daydreams, our politics. They are sources of joy and anguish, grief and celebration, trauma and growth. Inevitably my work has expanded into considerations of justice and equity - it felt superficial to try and help people reach their goals without considering the context of the world we live in. Sex and justice seem to be two sides of a very coveted coin.
I believe that our greatest strengths come from our vulnerability, and our profound resilience comes when we push through the hardness of the world to return to our tender cores.
I leave this note as an open permission slip for you to feel your feelings. I hope you will treat yourself with kindness and compassion on your journey inwards, and that you will remember that we have an unwavering ability to heal, and we don’t have to do it alone.
Wishing you peace and pleasure,