All for Love Coaching

  Recently some space opened up in my house and I’ve been setting up a craft room! …. Okay so this is clearly more exciting to me than to most of you. I’m actually writing this from the floor of the craft room, since I don’t have enough chairs and I didn’t want to stray too far from the source of inspiration. Due to a lot of the… *cough* circumstances surrounding this newfound freedom, it’s been a stressful time. There have been phone calls and paperwork and a whole lot of nonsense that have detracted from the true joy of new space. ORGANIZING! Again, I feel like I’m losing some people. I love organizing. I love spreading all of my materials out around me and finding new and interesting configurations for them. I love seeing things lined up neatly on shelves, fitting perfectly into drawers, categorized appropriately and even maybe by color… or alphabetically! My thread is lined up in DMC number order, my crafting books are first by craft and then by height, and my posters are deli...

Why I'm Abandoning My BCBA As of June 2024, I am no longer a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. That goddamn certification took me a Master’s degree, years of work, a gnarly exam, and more money than I care to disclose in a public forum.  I chose it, so why am I ditching it? This camel has been taking o n straw for a long time. I think the answer can only be found if we go all the way back. And I do mean, all the way.  All The Way Back Picture a tiny chubby ginger hellion, unable to sit still for any amount of time, communicating in high pitched squeals. Then standing next to her, a seven year old with perfect manners and an expansive vocabulary, practically a miniature adult. Both of them were me. I had rituals, rigidity, difficulty communicating, sensory seeking and sensitivity, struggles socializing with peers, the lot. If I were born today, I would have been diagnosed as autistic basically on sight by most professionals.  But I wasn’t. I was born in the 90s. And I hit ...

Yup. I have new and exciting thoughts.  Remember the concern I posted some time last year, about my mother finding my website and me getting outed involuntarily? Yeah. I forgot she follows me on Instagram. On a random Tuesday a few weeks ago, I was fighting my way through a migraine, and I woke up dazed and confused to the message, "Welllllllll I guess you just came out to your parent as kinky???" Yes, verbatim. Of course I knew exactly what had happened from her phrasing. She came across the previous post. I'm not actually proud of my knee-jerk response. I played dumb for the first message, just replying with "... What?" And then the real gem of the conversation: "Was it the purple dildo?" Reader, very long ago, in my tweenage years, I had helped my mother rearrange her bedroom. When I picked up the mattress, I uncovered a sex toy. I had forgotten the details besides fleeing the room in a typical embarrassed fluster, but clearly she had not. If I hadn...

 Welcome to this 4-part (minimum) series where I delve into the definitions and practical applications of my values list!  My four top values in no particular order are: justice, peace, empathy, and people. How did I come to those four words in particular? I worked with my own coach! How do I feel about those words? Complicated as all hell!  One thing I've learned is that words don't actually have the meaning assigned by the dictionary - they have the weight of all of our lived experiences behind them. You probably won't define these words as values the same way I will, and that's fine! More than that, that's wonderful! We might share words, but not definitions, or have the exact same values but call them wildly different things. Isn't the human experience beautifully varied? Let's jump in to my first, probably most controversial (to me) word: justice. Ah, the judicial system! Judging people's actions! An eye for an eye! Absolutely not. My definition of ...

 (this blog is cross-posted over on BoundBDSM.net) Hello world! It's good to be back. I've spent the last few weeks in talks (and texts, and Discord messages) with BoundBDSM, and finally can reveal to you all our new partnership! My coaching services are available through their website HERE . Cue me squealing and bouncing and generally being a nuisance. "But Anneke!" you shout, "Who even are you? Why should we care?" Excellent question! Let's start with the basics. What are my qualifications? I am... a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), working on becoming a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), a BA in linguistics and education, an MS in behavior analysis, and... really goddamn weird. "Okay, fair enough," you might follow up with, "but what are you doing here ?" I'm coaching! Specifically, I'm doing relationship coaching with a focus on LGBTQ+, polyamorous, and/or kinky individuals! "Huh?" Life coachi...

 I know I promised education rather than self-reflection, but I think that a quick story time can serve both goals quite handily. My first munch... was not technically my first munch. Oh god, I've now lied twice in as many blog posts. This is not a good start. Technically for my first munch, I was still in college, and a friend dragged me along because she was scared and knew I was also interested in the community. It was in a food court, I had a great time and even went out to a restaurant with a bunch of people after the mall closed down. All in all, a great success, even if I never went to another munch in that city again. My second munch was with my then-partner, during which we wandered around until someone deigned to talk to us. One particular guy was very obviously interested in me, so my ex made up an excuse that there was a server down that he had to attend to and we left. It is important to note that we were fully monogamous - had I been poly at that point I would have ha...

 Moderation is not my strong suit. As a matter of fact, I don't know where my moderation suit is at the moment. I may have left it at the dry cleaners.  I write this blog post during work hours, having stayed up until midnight brainstorming names and website layouts for coaching businesses. I spent an hour on the phone with a former coach earlier discussing marketing and genuine engagement, how to avoid sleaze, and the best and worst parts of working on the phone vs. working in person. I haven't even taken my first class yet. What is the root of this enthusiasm? What is the driving force behind my motivation to suddenly switch up everything about my life and career? It's twofold. The carrot and the stick. Firstly, the carrot. I love polyamory and I love kink.  Talking about these topics is met with rabid curiosity from people who are not involved with either. Relationship paradigms outside the mainstream are much more common than we believe, but when we don't talk about...