All for Love Coaching

Well, maybe not “you” specifically. But the vast majority of people? They have no clue. Let’s define our terms. “Sex work” is “the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation.” Prostitution is the one most people think of, but lots of different activities fall under the umbrella of sex work. Stripping, porn, camming, phone sex, all of these are forms of sex work. Sex work, most importantly, is valid work. Sex workers clock in, perform their contracted or agreed-upon services, and clock out. It is no more “selling your body” than any other physical labor we perform. Sex workers have a right to all the usual worker protections, even though in the US they are not currently granted them under the law. I have nothing but respect for those who perform sex work. I’m just not one of them. For context, I get approached to do sex work on a regular basis. Mostly by people who don’t understand the term “coaching” in the context of polyamory and kink. My coachin...

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...

I have an assignment for you, reader.  Go watch this video: RIGHT NOW It's a TED talk about the metaphors we use to discuss sexuality, namely baseball, and proposing a new paradigm of pizza. Instead of the competitive win-lose nature of baseball, thinking about sex in terms of pizza provides a more collaborative, satisfying, and ultimately healthy view of relating to sexual partners. Seriously, go watch it. It's wonderful. I saw it last night during a presentation by Pittsburgh Action Against Rape (PAAR) as part of an educational series hosted by the local community. We even did an exercise wherein we all collaborated to build a pizza and then discussed the experience. It made me realize something important. I kind of hate the word "compromise." "But Anneke!" you might say, "You're a relationship coach! Aren't relationships built on compromise?" Some, maybe. But I would argue not the good ones. Compromising holds a connotation of settling. ...

  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? Last (for now, and certainly not least) is: people. People as a value? Aren't people just... people? Yes. And no.  I define the value of "people" as: the innate worth of all ...

  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? The third value in our list is the oft-overused term, empathy. For me, empathy is simple: the capacity to understand and respect the emotions of others. That definition initially felt a li...

  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? Now for the second value of our list: peace. I define peace on a global and personal scale as: the spirit of nonviolence and avoidance of harm towards others and the self. Peace was a hard...