why we're here

a warm, warm welcome to intimate curiosities

I struggled with feelings of disconnection and dissociation for many years. Not being able to understand my emotional responses contributed to intense overwhelm that eventually became paralyzing. I split myself in shallow halves, demonizing parts that were desperate to be validated, and began to feel the tangible ways this emotional stunting translated to my physical body. Being unwilling to accept these parts of myself resulted in an overall desensitization that limited my capacity to be present. Forced to make a dramatic shift, I embarked on a journey of self-discovery that has taken me around the world and deeper into myself than I’d ever been brave enough to venture before. I learned that real strength comes from softness. Rigidity is a fragile thing, a thin layer of protection built from glass that cracks. This is how we soften.

My goal is to dismantle the hierarchy of emotions, to remove the stigma around sadness, anger and fear, by getting to know the biological and evolutionary purpose of them so we can use that as a lens to effectively navigate modern society. Resisting emotions has proven to be more taxing than feeling them and, if we welcome these feelings as important parts of the human experience, we simultaneously create more space for joy. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera says that “every height has its symmetrical depth.” By categorizing certain emotions as negative and then hiding from them, we shrink the spectrum of emotions we are able to feel. We rob ourselves of the blissful expansion that is our privilege to experience as human beings. 

As I traveled and discussed the heart of my (wip) book with people I met across the world, I learned that we’re never alone in the struggles we face. The amount of people that related to feeling dissociated from their bodies, particularly during sex, and that were also working to examine their struggles with intimacy was astounding. Since I launched my travel blog, it’s been so special to connect with readers about the ways different reflections resonated with them. It reminds me of the cosmic perspective, how we are all significant in our insignificance, connected by invisible threads of experience that we can only be aware of if they are revealed. 

So I am here to unearth the parts of myself that have been buried by shame. I want to examine existence under a microscope, yours and mine and ours together. intimate curiosities is a play on the concept of self-inquiry while paying homage to the impetus for this entire phase of exploration - more on that soon. It is a space born from the desire to hold myself accountable for introspection and to offer anybody looking for a reminder that the heaviness of this work is offset by the lightness of integration. I invite you into this space of exploration as a means of connection - to ourselves and to each other.

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