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12 Days of Girly Juice 2016: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

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April 11th

So here’s what I learned from this break-up:

Firstly, sex and feminism are two hugely important issues for me and they need to be ironed out with a partner before we get serious, put labels on each other, make promises, etc. I can’t date someone who denies or perpetuates the patriarchy, and I can’t date someone who’s not as libidinous, sexually adventurous, and communicative as I need them to be.

Secondly, I need to stop rushing into things. I jumped on this opportunity because I desperately wanted a boyfriend and S___ seemed (through my rose-colored glasses) to fit the bill. My mind filled in the blanks and paved over some problems to round him up to boyfriend-worthy material, when he is so clearly not a good match for me. In future I should give people a trial run of at least a month before we jump to labels and/or commitments, because that’s how much time I need to get a sense of compatibility and problem areas.

Thirdly, like many people in our sex-shaming culture, I have internalized the notion that sex problems aren’t a “good enough” reason to break up with someone. As if sexual resentments don’t bleed into the rest of the relationship. As if sex isn’t an important mode of expressing affection, attraction and adoration. As if sex isn’t vital to my career, my community, my identity, my happiness. I should not let anyone bully or slut-shame me into de-prioritizing sex, because it is important to me and that is not a bad or unreasonable thing.

Fourthly, maybe I am not as desperate for an emotionally committed partnership as I thought I was. Being emotionally intimate with someone is work and it requires time, effort, emotional labor, and vulnerability. I will be ready to go there again when I meet the right person and when my mental health steadies a bit more, but at the time being, I’d kind of rather my sex life be primarily fun and flirty and light and breezy, rather than weighed down with partners’ feelings and baggage. (Cruel, perhaps, but true.)

Fifthly: my friends and family’s opinions on my beaux are of great importance to me and color how I perceive said beaux. For the most part this is good, because they have my best interests at heart. But I should be careful not to introduce beaux to the other people in my life too early; it makes it even harder to end things if I need to. They feel so entangled in my life.

 

August 20th

This morning C___ and I talked over a Sneaky Dee’s breakfast about how I think I have to break up with B___. I lamented to C___ that I fear I’m too picky – I never seem to stick with anyone lately, no one’s good enough for me – but he told me that a lot of unhappy marriages and nasty divorces could be avoided if folks were pickier. He also said (I’m paraphrasing hugely) that every relationship has a cost attached to it – time, energy, etc. – and if it doesn’t replenish/uplift you, then the cost may not be worth it.

It’s amazing how C___ can be such a wise mentor to me at times, despite often being a key source of my emotional distress. I started to feel nauseously heavy and sad while discussing B___ with him and it was partly because of the words at the back of my throat that I couldn’t say: “No one is as good for me as you. I’m scared that no one ever will be as good for me as you. I’m sad that you still don’t want me.”

The way in which I like him is dumb and all-consuming.

 

August 31st

I am constantly and newly amazed by the ongoing discovery that the way I think about a thing – the words I use to describe it, the mental categories I sort it into, and so on – can have such a huge effect on my perception of that thing. See, for example, how drastically my opinion of blowjobs changed when I sort of just decided I liked them. See, too, how these past couple days I’ve sort of just decided that C___ isn’t my crush anymore, and it seems to be working.

Granted, things may be different when I see him in person again. But I’ve been so good. I haven’t looked at his tweets. I haven’t texted or sexted or snapped him, though I’ve wanted to. When songs of his have come up on shuffle, I’ve shouted “NOPE!” and skipped them. The times he’s crossed my mind, I’ve felt less smitten and more annoyed, disillusioned.

And interestingly, I’ve felt sane, even lacking the anchor of a central focus on this man. I’ve been reflecting on how, for a literal year, this crush has felt like the biggest thing in my life. Nothing else has received so much gossipy dissection, creative unpacking and mental energy, so many tears, journal entries and hopeful daydreams. A year is a long time to be that singularly focused on something that was never going to lead to anything. It feels like I’ve – at least for the moment – broken the spell, escaped the thrall, untangled the web and stepped out of it. It feels like such a relief. It feels like I have so much more love to give and so much more emotional energy at my disposal now that I’m not actively spending it on some insensitive dingus who doesn’t deserve it.

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September 2nd

Reflecting a lot lately on the patriarchal myth that the romantic and sexual attention of men is a scarce resource for which women should clamber and compete. It’s such bullshit. “Dick is abundant and low value,” as Alana Massey would say – and also, the abundance (or lack thereof) of dick in my life is not a reflection of my worth as a human being.

This past year, a year of sluttiness, has taught me many things, including that I am more than capable of attracting dudes – and now that I know that, I can kind of relax. I don’t have to constantly prove my desirability to myself or to the world. I can be pickier in my romantic and sexual decisions because I know I have options. Good dick isn’t a resource I have to desperately grasp at whenever scant handfuls of it appear ephemerally in my vicinity; it’s a free-flowing river, and I can dip into the constant cascade any damn time I want.

 

September 4th

T___ was flirting with me on Twitter last night, and I was into it, and it made me ponder my own (limited) gayness. I still don’t really have a sense of how much of my vagina-reticence is an actual lack of attraction and how much is just anxiety and uncertainty. After all, there was a time, just a few short years ago, when the idea of sex with dudes held very little appeal for me, because it scared me – and now I’m like, GIVE ME ALL THE DICKS! So I wonder if I would take to pussy like a fish in water if I were to dive in and try it out already. Frankly T___ is a total babe and I would be DOWN. Hmm.

What I’d really like is a situation I briefly talked about with C___ earlier this summer: I want the two of us to threesome with a pretty lady (N___ or T___, ideally) and for him to watch over me and give me advice/direction as I do stuff to her. I don’t know what it says about my kinks or my “daddy issues” or my concept of C___ that I want him to play a watchful-mentor role in my sexytimes, but to me that just sounds so lovely and comforting.

(I know, I’m not supposed to be writing about him or thinking about him, etc. but this is in a mentor capacity and not a person-I’m-in-love-with capacity, soooo…)

 

October 24th

So, I don’t feel especially romantic or sexual toward C___ anymore, but I do still feel emotionally fixated on him, and it’s weird to parse and process that distinction. Every moment I spend with him feels critically important and worth memorizing, and once I say goodbye to him, I typically enter into a mini-depressive episode that lasts 12-48 hours or so. I keep trying to figure this out. I think it’s for two reasons:

1. My brain is just used to responding to him in this way, like how alcoholics probably get a little boost of dopamine when they see or smell booze. Habit and conditioning and all that. Bex compared this to how my iPhone thinks I mean “duck” when I type “fuck”; there’s nothing for it but to keep gently correcting its mistake until it learns. And likewise, I just have to keep gently reminding my brain that C___ is not the perfect, everlasting source of comfort, happiness and rightness that I once believed him to be.

2. We have almost the exact same sense of humor; he is really funny and smart in a way that just jives with my brain – that’s not my dumb crush talking, that’s just factually true, unfortunately (?) – so the emotional “drop” after that intense level of joy and amusement can be rough. But I guess I just have to reorient my thinking around that. When I go see an improv show that makes me laugh a lot, I don’t mope around afterward because the show is over and I’ll never get to see it again; I just appreciate that I DID get to see it, and I pursue yet more things that will make me happy. Life is a processional; you can’t stop or look back. It doesn’t work. You trip and fall and get trampled and hurt yourself. Keep walking, ya dummo.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2016: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

It’s the 21st century, so our lives are documented most vividly in hastily-snapped smartphone selfies. Flipping through the selfies folder on my phone is an emotional journey: big smiles, momentous days, fond memories. It was hard to choose just seven selfies to tell the story of my year, but I think these are the best ones to do that.

img_1329In April, I went on a road trip to Minneapolis by way of Chicago, with Bex, Taylor, and Caitlin. There were some long, long days of driving – days when we’d be on the road for 10 or 11 hours at a time. We rarely got bored, because we had each other’s company and our phones to keep us entertained (except when Bug Tussel fucked up our cell service briefly), but at one point the road became so monotonous to me that I began sexting a fuckbuddy back home out of sheer desperation. He politely requested a boob selfie from me and Bex, and we reminded him, “Subs respond better to direct orders!” The reply came back, “Okay: topless pic. Now.” In the middle of a rainstorm on a highway somewhere in Wisconsin, we whipped our tits out and snapped this silly shot (with Caitlin in the background). “That was like the boss fight of nudes!” Bex declared afterward.

imageRemember that time I met one of my lifelong heroes, Kidder Kaper, while visiting his hometown in the midwest? Remember how he drove me back to my Airbnb and then asked me if I wanted to kiss?! Remember how, immediately after that kiss, we got out of the car and took a bunch of goofy selfies together? I will treasure these shots forever, I’m sure. This one, in particular, makes me smile. Kidder looks as impassioned as ever, and my facial expression is the exact blend of delight and astonishment I was feeling about the whole situation.

img_2890My friend Brent is one of my favorite people on earth. We connected on Twitter by chance last year when I started listening to his podcast and tweeting at him. Then we met in person when he spent some time in Toronto developing Use Your Words, and instantly bonded over a shared love of showtunes, good booze, and bad puns. (Plus he understands that I am the Queen of Wands.) We took a fair number of selfies together this year, at various shindigs, but this one is my favorite. That glowy, giggly grin on my face? That is how happy this dude makes me, with his jokes, his songs, and his friendship. (Sorry-not-sorry fer gettin’ all sappy on you.)

img_1790It was pretty freakin’ momentous for me to meet Gala Darling in person this year; she’s been my hero since I was 15. She was preternaturally kind and encouraging, at a time in my life when I needed her exact brand of tough-love mentorship even more than usual. We snapped this selfie together on an East Village side street while waiting for Gala’s astrologer friend to come meet up with us. It’s cliché to say I felt like I was dreaming, but I did: how else could I possibly be in New York City with my role model/spirit mama?!

imageI was stoked as hell to meet porn legend Nina Hartley at the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit. She was a total sweetheart and I now have bragging rights for the rest of time. But what I think about, when I look at this photo, is the minutes that led up to it. I’d told Bex I wanted to meet Nina but was too nervous to go and talk to her. Bex, ever an encourager of my dreams, calmly told me that I was going to go talk to Nina; there were no two ways about it. Bex grabbed my hand, led me over to Nina, and introduced me to her. I feel so blessed to have friends who care about me enough to give me tough love when my anxiety is being an idiot. If not for Bex, I never would’ve gotten to tell Nina about that time my first boyfriend quoted one of her videos when going down on me!

When I was targeted by a bunch of misogynist trolls in July, one of them wrote a blog post about me and gleefully linked to this photo of me in my Aslan Nicki harness as if it were some horrible, disgusting thing that could not ever be unseen. I had to laugh when I clicked through and saw which photo he’d linked to. It wasn’t anything I’d consider ugly or embarrassing; in fact, I look babely as hell in this picture. I felt hot that night and wanted to celebrate it, commemorate it. That’s why I took this shot; that’s why I take most of the selfies I take. Never let anyone shame you for expressing your glorious, gorgeous self in a reverential self-portrait; you deserve to be immortalized in this way.

img_3453The night this was taken, my friend Cadence had invited me over to catch up, which amounted to me basically crying at her about boys all night. We ordered sushi, drank a lot of whiskey, and I told her about the rejections, break-ups and betrayals I’d been through recently. Getting that all off my chest, and laughing with my oldest friend, made my problems seem surmountable for the first time in a long while. I ducked into her bathroom, glanced in the mirror, and saw a foxy babe staring back at me, instead of just a hollow, depressed shell of a girl. So I pulled my shirt down, fluffed up my hair, and snapped this shot. I felt powerful, defiant, and uncharacteristically capable. I felt like things were going to be okay.

What are your favorite selfies you took this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2016: 8 Classic Tweets

Kate Sloan

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Increasingly, I document my life in tweets. When doing year-end summaries and round-ups, I used to look at my journals; now I mostly look at my tweets. They’re wee little in-the-moment expressions of excitement, devastation, contentment, rage. They’re bite-sized emotional journeys. Or sometimes they’re just dumb jokes.

Here are 8 of my favorite things I’ve tweeted this year. It was really impossible to pick the 8 best ones, because I’ve tweeted thousands upon thousands of times this year. But here’s a few that I think are pretty good.

My Twitter followers have come to expect goofy puns and portmanteaux from me – I’ve coined terms like femcouragement, Tindirge, sexthaustion, dilgrimage, and cumedian. “Cocktimism” was one of my favorites this year, though. I just think it’s a nice idea. (The opposite, incase you were wondering, is – of course – pessijism.)

I’ve had this thought so many times. The BJ thirst is real, y’all.

This is not a joke; I really do think that if you’re sexually active, you should consider keeping a Magic Wand on hand, just incase. As I’ve told you before, I greatly appreciate past partners who’ve handed me a Hitachi mid-bang, purely to increase my pleasure. What angels!

This is a sick burn that you can feel free to use, the next time a man slides into your DMs demanding free nudes with the shameless entitlement of a cartoon Donald Trump on steroids.

This tweet is utterly emblematic of my transforming attitude on blowjobs. Where there was once reluctance, there is now only extreme enthusiasm. Funny what a good dick can do.

I think I tweeted this while drunk, because I don’t remember writing it. I just know that every time I stumble across it again, I burst out laughing.

As someone who has met most of my sexual and romantic partners online, I have a lot of feelings about “modern romance.” I get nostalgic about MSN Messenger, sappy about Twitter avatars, and precious about Spotify playlists. Read receipts make my heartbeat quicken; Snapchat notifications light up my smile. Internet-era dating is just gonna get weirder as time goes on, folks, and I am 100% okay with that.

This happened after I’d given two BJs in a 24-hour period and then gone to a dentist appointment, so, needless to say, it really threw me for a loop. I don’t think my dad had the slightest clue why I laughed so damn hard.

What were your favorite tweets of 2016?

A Year With the Double Trouble (+ Win My Favorite Toy!)

Kate Sloan

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November. I creep to the post office with a harried desperation in my step. Once there, I slink to the service counter and slide my “missed delivery” notice toward the clerk, hoping she won’t ask me what’s inside the package she fetches for me. She doesn’t. I clutch it to my chest the whole way home, protecting it from the world and the prying eyes of others, like it’s my baby. It kind of is.

imageDecember. I’m enthusing about my new toy – the Fucking Sculptures Double Trouble – to an equally new fuckbuddy. “Why don’t you marry it?!” he jibes, and I think through this scenario like it’s an actual possibility. Already, the Dub Trubz has given me more orgasms than this fuckpal has, so it seems like a decent contender for spousal consideration.

A few weeks into fucking me on the regs, my FWB’s getting frustrated that he hasn’t been able to make me come. It’s not his fault, I tell him; it takes me a while to warm up to new partners, and for them to learn what I like. “Show me how to get you off,” he texts, and I come over to his house with my Double Trouble and Tango crammed into my bag.

Post-makeouts and foreplay, I lube up my favorite side of the D-Trub – the slightly thinner, longer side – and push it inside myself. I let him grasp the other side and take the reins, but I offer a running commentary of directions to help him along: “Tilt the handle down so the tip hits my A-spot better. Move it in small in-and-out motions. A little deeper, please. Harder. Just a liiiittle faster. There. Yes. Like that. Right there.” It doesn’t take long. I fall to pieces in front of him, the Tango handily handling my clit while he strokes the DT over my spot again and again. He finally got to see me come. He’s thrilled.

imageJanuary. I masturbate constantly with my not-so-new-anymore treasure. It’s like the honeymoon phase in a relationship; I just can’t see anything wrong with it, nor do I want to. It makes me squirt, it makes me giggle, it makes me come and come and come. I take it in the bath, to fuckbuddies’ houses, to coffee-dates with friends so I can show them my fave toy. Sometimes I’m lying in bed and I catch sight of it on my nightstand, and I have to use it immediately. It’s that good.

February. Planning my first anal sex experience, I’m sexting with a handsome hookup who loves using toys on me. “Any particular toys you want me to bring?” I ask him, nervous and excited. The hotel room is booked; this is really happening.

image“It’s about what you like,” he replies. “Even if I’m having a good dick night, that’s gonna be three rounds, max, with variable stamina. But if you want to get rammed with a toy for another 20 minutes, bring that. ;)” My heart quickens and I slide the Double Trouble into the toy bag I’ve already packed well beyond its capacity.

When the moment for toy-ramming actually arrives, there are really only two choices worth considering, and they’re both on the nightstand of our hotel room. “It’s up to you,” I tell him when we’re trying to decide which one should be the one to get me off. “The Eleven is more G-spotty, and the Double Trouble is more A-spotty.”

He fingered me a little, earlier in the night, so he’s bang-on when he intuits, “It seems like you’re in an A-spot kind of mood tonight.” (This is before I realize that I’m pretty much always in an A-spot kind of mood.) He fetches my Hitachi and lubes up the dildo, and I give him my same old detailed play-by-play of how to fuck me with this blue glass behemoth. He absolutely nails it. “I wish my dick was shaped like this,” he mutters, mere minutes before making me come so hard I practically black out.

March. “Some orgasms are quick, small, and barely noticeable,” I tweet. “And some orgasms involve the Double Trouble.”

April. I have a lacklustre Tinder hookup in Minneapolis. It sates my BJ craving but doesn’t get me off – one-night stands almost never do – so I wreck myself with my Dub Trubz after the dude drives me back to where I’m staying. Once again, a damn good dildo saves the day.

May. I’m on antidepressants for the first time in my life, and suspect that they might be affecting my sexual sensitivity. During a threesome with Bex and my favorite fuckbuddy, he uses his fingers and then the Double Trouble on my A-spot, and I don’t even get close to coming. That’s when I know for sure that my orgasmic capabilities have been stunted by the medication. If that dude’s fingers can’t get me off, something is wrong; if the D-Trubz can’t get me off, something is really wrong. I quit the pills the very next day.

June. I declare on Twitter that if my vagina were a polyamorous person, the Double Trouble would be its primary partner. (Truth be told, when I’m between partners, this toy feels like it’s my primary partner.)

28796671452_838a1a04bf_oJuly. I have a new kinda-boyfriend, and my fave fuckpal is in town. I have a lot of sex. No, really, a lot of sex. And a lot of it involves the Double Trouble. It’s fascinating to observe different partners’ approaches to using it on me.

One memorable afternoon, me and my fuckbuddy are gettin’ down to business in my bedroom in an Airbnb, while Bex shoots porn in the next room. While warming me up with his fingers, he reminds me in a low, vaguely dom-y tone, “We have to be really quiet.” I nod and pull a pillow over my face as a preemptive measure. He hands me my Hitachi, then lubes the Double Trouble and pushes it into me. I thought I could be quiet. Now I’m not so sure.

When we go out for dinner, I say to Bex, “You’re gonna lock the door, right?” and without missing a beat, they reply, “Duh. There’s a Double Trouble in there.”

August. I bring my Dub Trub to Woodhull so the other sex bloggers can ooh and aah over it. They do. One afternoon, horny and socially overwhelmed, I skip a session and sneak upstairs to my hotel room for an introvert break that is also a masturbation break. I work myself up with deft precision, Tango in one hand and Double Trouble in the other. It’s quick and easy. I feel instantly better.

Later in the month, I bring a new beau back to my place, and we hook up for the first time. “I want you to show me where your A-spot is,” he whispers darkly; he’s obviously been reading my tweets. I help him find it with his fingers first, and then I arm him with the DT. He picks up the necessary skillset admirably fast. After I come, he tells me, “That was hot,” and I radiate a glowy grin.

img_3885September. I’m miserable. Heartbroken over a recent romantic rejection, bitter over a couple of nasty break-ups, and as dour and depressed as I’ve been in recent memory. My genitals feel foreign to me, and most days, masturbation is too much work to contemplate. But when I need it, the Double Trouble is there. It sleuths out my A-spot. It makes me come. I don’t have to think, or try, or fantasize. Paired with the Magic Wand or Tango, it’s nearly instant. I’m unspeakably grateful for sex toys, because they make my life a little easier when it seems very, very hard.

October. I go to Malta and Italy for two weeks. Knowing I’ll be sharing a hotel room with my mom the whole time, I give minimal thought to masturbation. At the last minute, I decide to pack my Tango and G-Spoon, just incase. They end up being indispensable to me, since travel stress makes me horny as hell – but I still wish I’d brought my Double Trouble. True, I would’ve panicked the whole time that it’d get lost or stolen somewhere in an airport or a cargo hold, but nonetheless, I miss it. It’s my go-to guy.

November. I have an impromptu threesome with a handsome friend and a pretty lady. She plays with my nipples, kisses me, and tells me how cute I am, while he fucks me with the Double Trouble. He stands by the edge of the bed so he can fully harness the strength of his quads to ram me. At one point I start to get anxious and ask him, “Are you tired? Do you want to stop?” and he all but rolls his eyes, because he knows I’m prone to insecurities about taking too long to come. “You just lie back, relax, and feel good,” he instructs me. While I’m coming hard a few minutes later, he quips, “See what happens when you trust me?” and it’s one of the hottest things I’ve ever heard.

The next morning, Suz has to go home early, so it’s just me and Handsome Pal snugglin’ naked in bed. One thing leads to another, and once again, he’s got that big chunk of blue glass buried in me. “Harder,” I pant. I want more sensation. I want it to almost hurt. I want to come so hard for him. “If I go any harder, I might impale you,” he comments, “but I think you want to be impaled.” And then he presses the DT’s tip even more insistently against my A-spot, slamming the toy in and out of me faster. My yeahs and right-theres and don’t-stops coalesce into gasps and screams. The orgasm hits me like a train. I haven’t come that hard in months.

The 20th is the one-year anniversary of the Double Trouble’s arrival in my life. I decide I want to do something to mark the occasion. I ask the many-times-aforementioned friend with benefits – the person who’s handled my D-Trubz the most, other than me – for a mini-review to include in this post, and he writes back: “Fucking a partner with the Double Trouble fulfills my fantasy of having some kind of prehensile sci-fi alien penis… Recommended!” I simultaneously laugh and get turned on, a thrilling Pavlovian response. Unf.

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I have the most exciting news for you, my loves: you can win a Double Trouble!! Last week, I reached out to SheVibe and Fucking Sculptures to ask if they’d provide a gift card that one of my readers could win and potentially put towards a DT, but both companies are fuckin’ superstars and they each generously offered an actual goddamn Double Trouble for my giveaway instead. Amazing!!

If you win one, SheVibe or Fucking Sculptures will ship you the toy for free if you live within the U.S. If you’re located elsewhere, you’ll have to pay the shipping yourself (but trust me, it’s worth it).

The giveaway goes until December 1st. I’m so so happy I get to hook up two of my lovely readers with my very favorite sex toy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

What Gala Darling Taught Me About Self-Love, Mean Boys, & Magic

Kate Sloan

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When I initially discovered Gala Darling online, I thought she was self-absorbed. She was always posting outfit photos and linking incessantly to her blog, and I thought, “Wow, she really thinks highly of herself.” Hypocritical, for sure, since I was also posting outfit photos and blogging at that time. What an oaf I was.

Little did I know, this kind of snap judgment about women’s right (or lack thereof) to proudly love ourselves is exactly the kind of thinking that Gala seeks to dismantle in her work on radical self-love. And it’s exactly the kind of thinking I badly needed to dismantle in myself at that time.

At age 14, I was a surly, snotty, deeply insecure dork. I believed with certainty that I was ugly and unloveable. I felt awkward in my body, hiding away my curvy femme flair in baggy, masculine clothes. I hated most people I met, because I projected my insecurities onto them and that made me perceive them as shallow, mean, boring, and stupid. I thought I was smarter than everyone – my friends, my family, even my teachers – and that made me feel desperately alone, like no one understood me. Classic teenager, right?

Worse yet, some part of me believed this negative viewpoint made me special and unique. My bitter façade felt central to my identity. I thought my sarcastic snark was all I had to offer, because (I thought) I wasn’t pretty, sexy, or worthy of love. If I could be dark and sharp, hardened and smart, at least I’d be something.

Oh, I was “something” alright. If by “something,” I mean “miserable.”

When curiosity finally got the better of me, I clicked through to Gala Darling’s website after seeing her link to it in many an outfit photo description. And as I read page after page of her blog – first begrudgingly, then perplexedly, then rabidly – I felt something once-solid inside me start to break down and shift.

Gala wrote about positivity, love, living a celebratory life, unconventional personal style, treating people well, kissing, blogging, confidence, and embracing your inner nerd. She wrote about getting dressed up for the sheer joy of it, courting yourself like you were your own cherished lover, and making your daily life lovelier. She wrote about sex appeal, magic, and knotted pearl necklaces. I loved her, immediately and profoundly.

In the days after combing through Gala’s entire blog archive, taking fervent notes in my Moleskine the whole time, something remarkable happened to me. I found myself starting to feel happier, lighter, more self-loving and self-accepting. And to my immense surprise, that feeling didn’t go away.

A lot of Gala’s writings about self-love resemble a framework I now recognize as cognitive-behavioral. That is to say: she addresses your tangled thoughts, in all their maladaptive disarray, and your actions, encouraging you to actually go out and do things differently.

I did a whole lot of things differently in the months after devouring Gala’s blog. I started making gratitude lists, began dressing how I actually wanted to dress, and set concrete goals for myself that I started moving toward, little by little, day by day. All of those habits are still with me today, and they’ve completely transformed my life. I honestly don’t know who I’d be right now if Gala Darling hadn’t entered my world.

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So, needless to say, I was over the moon when – after almost a decade of following Gala’s adventures like her writing was gospel – I finally got to meet her in person this past May.

I was visiting New York for a threesome, because of course I was. Gala had mentioned, on numerous occasions, her love of witchy East Village shop Enchantments, where you can buy all manner of occult treasures: incense, essential oils, herbs, tarot cards, and talismans. I tweeted about wanting to visit Enchantments while I was in town, and Gala asked if I wanted a “witchy date” to accompany me. Um, yes, I very very very much did.

We made plans, and met up on my last day in New York in the dark, cozy, half-underground front room of Enchantments. I was nervous, but I was also surprised by how easy our rapport was, right off the bat: it felt like I’d known her for years, because in some sense, I had. We hugged, and chatted about our lives, and I couldn’t stop smiling.

tumblr_o7z5xme1qq1qzigipo3_1280Enchantments’ most exciting offering, if you ask me, is their custom-made spell candles. They’re enormous pillar candles, colored and carved and anointed and blessed according to whatever specific concerns are troubling you in your life. I told the shop’s resident witches about my romantic situation at the time: a hopeless crush on someone who would never love me back, and a string of recent bad relationship decisions that probably stemmed from the distraction caused by that endless crush. They listened to my tale of woe and determined I’d be most benefited by a “Love Uncrossing” candle, which can help clear psychological blocks around love and promote clarity in that area. The witches asked me for some other details, like my name and astrological sign, and had me taste some ceremonial honey as part of the process. Then Gala and I absconded to a café to sit and chat while my candle was being prepared.

After she bought me a frozen hazelnut latte with almond milk (the yummiest, and such a sweet gesture), we sat down and talked for ages, about blogging, boys, sex, Tinder, goals, and so much more. I felt like I was in a dream – one of those dreams where you inexplicably get to sit down with your hero and ask them all the questions you’ve always wanted to ask them. It was weird and wonderful and I couldn’t believe it was real.

The aforementioned romantic situation was very much on my mind at that time, so I may have sliiiightly talked Gala’s ear off about it. But she was so gracious and kind. She told me she thought I should cut off contact with the boy whose lack of affection for me was hurting me every day, even though my poor smitten heart wanted nothing more than to be with him all the time. He was just taking up space in my life, she said, that could be better filled by people who actually would love me and treat me right.

It’s funny how you can read about a concept at length, and understand it on the theoretical level, but still suck at actually implementing it. That’s how I am with self-love, sometimes. If a friend of mine told me she was stuck on some dumb boy who didn’t like her back, and it was breaking her heart every day, I know exactly what I’d tell her. I’d tell her she deserved better, that he didn’t know what he was missing, and that her time and energy would be better spent nixing him from her life and moving on than pining and obsessing. It would be tough advice to hear, but it would be rooted only in my love for her. And of course, that’s the same advice I want to give myself, when I’m truly radiating and living self-love.

Gala is my idol, so when she told me I should phase that dude out of my life and move the fuck on, I listened. I’m not saying I cut him out of my social sphere entirely, or vowed to tell off anyone who mistreated me from then on, or announced a dating hiatus while working on my self-love; after all, I’m only human, and I’m prone to backsliding like anyone is. But Gala reminded me of what she’s been teaching me all these many years, over and over again, in so many ways: that I am worthy of love, even (and perhaps especially) when I’m the only one who’s madly in love with me.

I’m so lucky. This year I got to meet two of my heroes, two of the people who shaped me for the better at crucial times in my life: Kidder Kaper, and Gala. In both cases, they taught me things that made me want to do better, live better, and be better.

I realized recently that now, at 24, I’m as old as Gala was when I discovered her blog and it changed my goddamn life. And if that doesn’t make me want to be a beacon of light every day, writing helpfully and openheartedly for the people who need to hear what I have to say, then nothing will.