Emily Dickinson said, The soul selects her own Society. We have our biological family, and we have our logical family. We have our blood relations, and we have our Soul relations.

I think one of the reasons that the craving for more fulfilling relationships is so strong for us is because we are being rewarded by technology for valuing productivity over intimacy. We are less connected than we have ever been. We know this.

So I begin here: with Friends, Lovers, and Therapy. Here’s some of what happens in my first (eeep!) episode of LIGHT WORK…

I. Some ideas for nourishing friendships (sourced from my circle of rad friends)

• Small talk can keep us small. Ask bigger, sweeter questions like, How’s your heart? What are you excited about? So… how are you… really? My friend, Steph, is excellent at this.

• At your next birthday gathering (yours or someone else’s) do a round of “Favourite Frames”. The idea is for each person to offer up their most cherished memories of the person being celebrated. We did this for my friend. We went around as we were inspired, sharing about the time we met Kate, or the dancing we did, or that time Kate did that hilarious thing… Favourite Frames work anywhere, anytime. Deeper connection.

• Start your own Goddess Group. Here’s a script: (You can text this, email, or just say it in person.) It goes like this: Let’s get off our phucking phones and hang out. Ask a few friends to invite a few friends and show up in a living room and see what happens. Bring hummus. Or not. I’ve been meeting once a month with the same group of five weird and incredible women for ELEVEN YEARS… all because one of us did exactly that.

II. Relationship research that makes you go whoa

Read “Attached” by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. Take the test to find out your “attachment style”. You can be one of (or a mix of) three:

• Anxious: preoccupied with your relationships, and tending to worry about your partner’s ability to love you back.

• Avoidant: you may equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness. (Total drag being Avoidant… not that it’s any more fun being anxious…)

• Secure: you’re comfortable with intimacy, and are usually warm and loving. You’re a fucking unicorn, basically.

Here’s the beautiful thing: Attachment Principles can point us to our unmet needs. And once you realize that you have those needs, then you can go about getting those needs met in healthy ways. Ah, the beauty of clarity…

III. A gather ‘round the fire tale that illustrates (with scientific proof!) that we need each other to shine

The vast majority of stars are binary—they actually live in pairs. From our distance on Earth, it looks like single stars are hanging in the sky. But, through powerful telescopes, you’ll see that it’s very often a duo of stars that are huddled together. Stars require each other’s gravitational pull to coexist. And after hundreds of thousands of years, some stars will pull apart and die without each other. Proof that relationships are everything. #knewit

IV. Compelling reasons for resisting the (perfectly normal) urge to play therapist with your sweetheart

All the self help manuals, the years of therapy, the things I had taken home and put in my toolbox of Love—all the work I had done on myself to be a more conscious person… Why would I not hand that manual over to my partner, so that he could be a more conscious person too… to like, fulfill all of my neeeeeds?

When David Deida called me out in his workshop, I learned to work my feminine strengths in a way that made relating sexy again. How? Start trusting that your needs are legit. That you’re worthy of getting what you want. Start trusting the entity, i.e. the third being that is The Relationship. Trust that everything that you’ve already gone through, hard and good, will carry you through. And finally… You’ve got to trust that your person is going to meet your needs—without you drawing them a fucking map to your clit and your heart and your pain.

V. Plus…

…Tears of gratitude for my woman tribe, sexy monks, vagina talk, poetry, and general real-realness.

Listen to LIGHT WORK Episode #1 on iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.