Cheers to 10 Years!
celebrating 'leaning into light' and PDA
In the spring sweetness of March 2015, I started my Leaning into Light blog. I’d been writing prolifically for decades, coaching for 11 years, and after receiving an obnoxious, threatening letter from the cleaning and sanitizing company, Ecolab, I had changed my consulting business name from The Co-Lab to Leaning into Light.
But it became clear I also needed a space online to share my words — penned intimacy — with you. That’s when my blog was born, and its first piece was Why PDA Puts the Universe in Bloom (scroll down read it).
Since then I have streamed a book from the pen in my heart, through hundreds of posts expressing my passion for Love. As you’ll see in the list of categories below, most of it is evergreen, writing that continues to be relevant long past its publication.
My intent has always been for my writing to be a Love letter to humanity.
Why? I truly love all humans, even officials in high office or next door neighbors who do violent things. Though their acts are atrocious, they come from self loathing. Love doesn’t add pain to pain. My womb feels oneness.
I hope you have benefited from these posts. I hope that, in times of loneliness or despair, my words have comforted you.
Leaning into Light is here to stay. Through coaching, masterclasses, performance and writing, I will keep loving you as well as I know how. This year I’ll publish my book Making Love to Fear, and with help from brilliant soul allies, I am refining how to love you every week through these Substack posts.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for celebrating 10 years of penned intimacy, streamed from the pen in my heart.
Why PDA Puts the Universe in Bloom
March 3, 2015
Some people scowl at the sight of public displays of affection. Two people kissing, hugging for "too long," or sitting on a park bench in a long held embrace. "Get a room!" they might think.
As for me, I'm a big fan of PDA. Here's why.
When I was a kid, my aunt Irma used to pinch my cheeks. Sometimes it hurt, but she meant well. What I felt through her touch was that she loved me so much it was almost irresistible to reach out and express it with touch. I like to think I inherited my own joy with physical affection from her, and I've learned through honest feedback how to perceive other people's comfort levels with it, and to dance with that.
In college, I experienced a romance where PDA was impossible to suppress. We played frisbee on the open fields on campus, and sat holding each other afterward, seated in the grass. We weren't indecent; we were just in love.
Some people were sexually abused as children. For them the experience of physical affection may be a difficult thing. And some people simply aren't as touchy. I am somewhere in between. I like hugs and kisses, I like when someone places a gentle hand on my shoulder to express that they care for me, and I also like plenty of personal space. As long as we respect these preferences, paying attention to what works and doesn't work for each other, adjusting when we receive feedback, isn't PDA is a wonderful thing? It is. Numerous studies have shown the healing effects of touch in hospital settings, for healthy newborns and cancer patients alike.
By showing our love to each other in public, verbally and physically, we grow a more loving world. In meetings, on Facebook, on the downtown sidewalk.
The air chokes around us when we suppress the joy we feel for each other.
And just as a child watching Sesame Street shines from the inside-out when Ernie says, "You're a good friend, Bert," adults need to let that show too.