I wrote a post a few months ago, Redeeming Men, talking about how my goal is to not screw my son up.

So, a friend of mine emailed me and said, “Do you know any good, kind, compassionate men? Your anger is coming out in your writing. It’s emotionally destructive to you.”

Duh. Hate that.

Angry writing on a women’s website. It’s just too easy. It reaches a certain audience, (other angry women for sure), but I have too much respect for my craft. I’m too ambitious.

Also, I just got bored. With the anger itself and with talking about the anger. It’s futile. It’s unproductive. It’s not getting me what I want. I want to move forward.

I knew there was something, or a multitude of somethings, a string of pasts, that I was holding onto.

My friend, Jennifer, invited me to a Discovery Training in Dallas this weekend. God usually puts what I need right in front of my face.

I won’t give you all the details. Because you might decide to go one day (you should) and I wouldn’t want to ruin all the beautiful, delicious and glorious surprises. I’m hoping to pack my sweet husband off to a training next month so we can get on the same page.

But, I will shout out to every single man in that room.

THANK YOU!!!!

Thanks for showing up for me. I’ve been wondering where all the heros were. Frankly, I was getting a little worried for humanity as a whole.

But, this weekend you showed up for me – for women, for your wives, girlfriends, mothers, and daughters – and I don’t feel like I have to do your job anymore.

After this weekend, I know the quality of my mothering a son is going to be different – much better. I’m going to be a different kind of wife.

I’m going to establish some boundaries, and I think I can do that without anger now.

The quality of my writing is going to be better.

You were right, my friend, it’s time to get over it.

I’m so totally over it. Look who’s been waiting for me. Blessings come in such perfect packages.

Post from: Blisstree

Get Over It!

Very cynical. But, is it true?

Post from: Blisstree

Honest Wedding

For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.

For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual “mission creep” of how pornography—and now Internet pornography—has lowered their sense of their own sexual value and their actual sexual value.

Because its harder to connect than to tune into some image. So much of our media sexual images come not from experiences with our lover, but experiences that don’t even happen to us – they happen in advertisements and television and on the Internet.

Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.

But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated?

Personally, I think its lowered people’s – men’s and women’s – real sexual pleasure. As Oprah and the sexologist said last week on the sex show: Sex is everywhere – but not many people seem to be having a really fulfilling sex life.

I’m 35 and I’m just barely getting its affect on how I experience sexual pleasure. Personally, I think its lowered people’s – men’s and women’s – real sexual pleasure.

Post from: Blisstree

Porn Killed Sex

One of the things that finally clued me in – aside from denouncing all the popular culture myths of what love is – is Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now.

It always breaks my heart a little when people get a divorce. Even celebrities. It’s worth mourning.

It occurs to me when others divorce, or when I have considered ending my own marriage, that the people trying to escape are never, ever going to escape. They will find temporary relief from the pain.

They will either live alone and long for someone or they will find someone new with similar issues and problems, who touch on the exact same nerves and sore spots.

Because the issue isn’t with your current spouse. It’s with you. His issue is his issue and yours is yours. You think you’ll escape yours when you leave him, but God/The Universe will hand it right back to you in the shape and form of someone else equally dysfunctional. Because we all are. Dysfunctional, I mean. Until we wake up and get a spiritual clue.

Eckhart Tolle says it like this,

Humaninty is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as the are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born in this world. For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion and madness.

Post from: Blisstree

True Love, Right Now

Did you see 20/20 about the book Why Him?/Why Her? by Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist?

My husband, Jeremy and I agree, now that we’re out of the insanity of the hormone-driven mating phase that it’s communication skills and not passion or spark that keep a marriage together.

We found it interesting that 60% of the people in the world are in arranged marriages. And the success-rate is quite high in that few arranged marriages end in divorce. (Only 5-7% divorce in India.)

We think it’s because when it comes right down to it, what you really want in a mate CAN be put in a classified ad. I want someone who files stuff, keeps on track, does dishes, manages the children, makes a decent living and I got all that, so I’m one lucky woman. But, I’d put VERBALLY Expressive and Physically Affectionate at the top of that classified ad if I had it to do over again. He faked me out with all the hormone-driven mating passion in the beginning. I just wasn’t prepared for the silence.

For our date night we sat side-by-side with our laptops and took the test to determining which of the four biological types were are: Explorer, Builder, Negotiator or Director.

I’m a Negotiator/Explorer and need a Director/Explorer.

He’s a Builder/Director and needs a Builder/Negotiator.

See, so we’re not the ideal match. But, it’s what you get when you have a whorl-wind romance and move to NYC for romance and adventure and then rush headlong and insanely into marriage and immediately take on parenthood.

But, It’s working out since we started learning some skills.

Besides, we learned tonight that we’d both be into adopting a kid while we are taking the quiz.

Me, cause I like the idea of big families, but I’m 35 and not into being pregnant, breast-feeding or caring for an infant anymore. (And there’s the vasectomy.)

He, because he was really upset about that slavery story we talked about a while back and was intrigued by my idea that we couldn’t save the whole world (we hate that limitation) – but we could save somebody. We could save one slave and raise them as our kid for $50. I like that he’s still thinking about that.

Take the quiz.

Post from: Blisstree

True Love Arranged

What married person can’t relate to having the same conversation over and over and over? UGH!

Just trying to stir up some funny in the hopes that people will come to the couples event at our church.

Post from: Blisstree

“2001″ 12 Great Dates

I’ve been reading Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now.

He introduces the idea of a Pain Body. The Pain Body is also discussed in great detail in his other book A New Earth.

Basically, he says that one part of the human condition is a pain body. We have personal pain bodies that result from things that happen specifically to us. But, we also have collective pain bodies that come from being members of a group – women, for instance.

Tolle says that because of several thousand years of oppression, repression, violence, rape, battery, harassment, slavery and sexism baby girls are born with a collective pain body associated with being female. Carl Jung spoke of a collective consciousness, a similar idea.

PMS and menstruation is when women tend to identify with or lose ourselves in our pain body, Tolle says. This results in physical symptoms like cramps or headaches for some women, but also in bad attitudes, negativity, anger or frustration in many women.

In other words – one explanation of PMS would be psychic pain for all crimes against femininity throughout history – starting with Eve. There’s a great deal to be pissed about.

The degree to which this affects women is determined by how much they identify with the collective pain body of women or being a woman.

Feminists, for example, might identify with the pain body deeper because their identity as women is stronger and they are aware of and focus on crimes against women in general. Feminists identify strongly with “what men have done to us” and the resulting pain.

Likewise, a “submissive wife” would feel a high degree of the feminine pain body as she associates a large part of her identity with “the curse of Eve” and taking care not to step out of her “proper role.”

Both are a version of a “victim identity” and keep women in bondage to the past. But, there is true power and peace available to women in the present moment, says Tolle.

The cure for PMS and identification of the Collective Feminine Pain Body, Tolle says, is to stay present during our PMS or our menstruation cycles and recognize our bad attitudes, cramps, emotional roller-coaster as “just the pain body” and try to dissolve and “transmute” the anger, pain, unforgiveness into forgiveness, love and peace for the crimes against womanhood historically.

Thus transforming our psychic pain into true psychic and spiritual power.

Post from: Blisstree

PMS = Women’s Collective Pain Body

My husband and I made a commercial to advertise an upcoming Marriage Mingle we’re going to lead at our church.

I love what I can do with a Mac, iLife and YouTube. Technology is fun once you get past the learning curve and the frustration.

What do you think?

Post from: Blisstree

Marriage Commercial

He’s redeemed the whole male gender.

Until he graced the planet I wasn’t sure the rest of them were worth dealing with.

Now, I think men might be all right since he’s joined the ranks.

Not sure what happened to bleep up some men – but, my clear goal is to NOT SCREW THIS ONE UP.

He’s a good one. Inherently good. Abnormally compassionate, sweet, loving, open and kind. Tough. Funny. Smart. No baggage, no grudges.

Did all men start like this? What the hell happened?

Photo Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me.

Post from: Blisstree

Redeeming Men

Watch this awesome cartoon where Bat Girl sues Bat Man because he’s been paying Robin more than she for the same work.

To all you Republicans out there – It SHOULDN’T take an Act of Congress to get women Equal Pay.

But, evidently it does.

You’ve only had like one hundred years to let “the market” correct itself in regards to paying women less than men for equal work.

Hell, I’ve done far better work and been paid less than my saunter-in-at 10-am-and-write-one-article-a-week-lied-about-his-college-degree-and-still-get-paid-$15,000-a-year-more male counterpart.

One recent study found that over the course of a lifetime women lose approximately $434,000, on average, over a 40-year period because of the gender wage, with single moms making the least (source: Momsrising.org, where you can send a letter to Congress now).

It’s a shame “the market” is such a resistant and slow learner. Now, its going to Congress and some of you are going to court.

And if the United States Chamber of Congress fears that it will open up the floodgates to past grievances with previous employers and even open up the court system to other family members adversely affected by discriminatory pay, as in their letter urging Congress not to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

It’s a shame that it just barely occurred to corporations that paying women less would adversely affect family members and that might come back to bite them in the ass.

What was that your mother always told you, YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED THE FIRST TIME!

Photo source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

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Fair Pay – Duh.