Dear Straight Moms, I get it. We don’t look the same. In fact, I probably resemble and dress like your 12 year old son, but unlike him, I actually want to connect with you. When I smile and ask questions about your toddler, it’s because I also have one, and I’m looking for a non-threatening...
I’m a therapist. My job, amongst other things, is to hold space for others. To offer a safe, nonjudgemental place for clients to cry, grieve, and process. I sit as empathic as possible, being reflective and supportive, without judgement. But today was different. Today, I threw out everything I’ve learned in grad school. We are...
Yesterday I was in a session with a client who was very upset over reactions she’s received over a recent tattoo. My client, who has several tattoos, showed her most recent tattoo to several people in her life. All of them, she reported with tears in her eyes, judged her newest work. Reactions varied from...
I recently was having a discussion with someone about his sexual identity. He reported that he struggles to come out to his mother (despite him being middle aged) because she seems to over-sexualize everything, and yet isn’t comfortable discussing sex at all. She is, as we deemed her, “sex-negative”. He was able to realize, through...
Dear Porter, I was just on a very arduous run, when it occurred to me that I absolutely had to write you a letter. The fact that I wrote most of this in my head while pushing myself to exhaustion will become important, but I will not give it the power to overshadow the rest...
Over the course of my time as a therapist, one particular issue has peaked my interested more than any other: This notion that lesbians, more than any other “type of gay (or straight) person”, struggle to find what “type” they are. In other words, I have seen numerous clients come in to therapy, trying to...
As I sit here, preparing to write my first blog, I think about how ironic it is that social media provides me with such a sense of (false) comfort and security. Every day I see stories on the news about teens, for example, who take a racy picture of themselves, text it to a romantic...
