Your soul does not need habits. Your soul needs play and imagination and pleasure!

Enter in what I hope to persuade you into reading more of: smut. You may have heard of smut because it’s a growing category of popularity in the Bookstagram and #BookTok areas of the internet.

Sessions can be more affordable, but the level of savings is not proportional to the rate cut for providers. So when you pay for therapy, although you’re paying less, your money is going toward the company BetterHelp—its advertising, parent company investors, and overall profit, not toward paying your therapist. This will undoubtedly impact the therapeutic relationship, which is “at least as vital to a positive outcome as using the right treatment method” according to the American Psychological Association.

Welcome beginners to sex toys!! This blog is meant to be a non-judgmental and cozy invitation for you to begin to explore sex toys with a partner. I’ll go over ways to introduce toys, some things that are not specifically toys that can be helpful, and then a few recommendations at the end to get started!

Being with those who are grieving is one of the most powerless feelings…If you haven’t experienced loss yourself (or even if you have!), it can be hard to know how to support others who are grieving their own losses. Read on for tips on how to support a loved one who’s navigating loss.

Job loss can really mess with our sense of self. This blog will discuss why job loss is so impactful, how job loss connects back to identity, and approaches to help you re-engage with your emotional and relational self after losing a job. In our present American culture, our job is a standard place for measuring value and worth.

Similar to the Sunday Scaries, the Sunday Angries is a series of judgmental thoughts and perfectionism around having wasted time. Read this blog from a therapist about combating perfectionism with a practice of beginning again.

Loss is extraordinarily painful and real. There is no pain quite like that of losing someone you love. It’s a pain you cannot know until you do, and then you can’t un-know it, no matter how badly you might want to. In western culture, the depth of pain one feels in loss is also uncomfortable and unwelcome—people just don’t want to think about it. It’s unyielding weight is very quickly considered impolite, and our cultural push toward collective denial can be so painful for those in the midst of a loss who can no longer deny its existence.

If you grew up similarly to how I did, I’m sure you can recall a lot of cheesy, poorly-produced shows and movies about white, straight, high schoolers being the outcasts of their friend groups because they “chose God instead of earthly desires.” But here, there were two real teenagers (well, I think both actors are in their 30s, but regardless), sharing their desires to be accepted by the church—not by their friends. Eric and Abbi had many friends, but it was their churches (those places that preach “love your neighbor as yourself”) that could not accept them.

Did you know that: Having frequent interactions with dogs (not even just our own, so don’t worry if you don’t have a dog) has, in a number of studies, been found to be significantly associated with positive psychological outcomes across the lifespan? Read on for more info about why dogs are great for promoting mental health!