Shades readers, we took a bit of a hiatus from our weekly connections with you and it’s been an incredible few months since we last blogged. The Covid-19 pandemic has grown beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings and over the last few weeks, we are all witnessing protests to fight racial injustice and brutality in ways many of us have not seen before.  The world has changed.  We hope that your loved ones and you are safe.  We also stand strongly with those who are fighting for us to live in a world where we are all anti-racist.   Black Lives Matter and all lives cannot matter if black lives don’t. 

On June 6, we decided to do a virtual event and we wanted to tackle some topics that were on, how shall we say, the spicier side.  Sex, Intimacy & More was focused on exploring themes of loneliness, what causes a lack of intimacy in relationships and how to have more physical connections with our partners. 

We asked everyone to settle in and after introducing our topic for the evening along with some eye-opening statistics about the amount of sex and intimacy we are experiencing, we watched a TED Talk by Maureen Mcgrath who is a well known registered nurse and sexual health educator.  We then delved into a great conversation that covered why we aren’t being intimate – some reasons were that we let the grind of daily life get in the way or we let distractions like our phones take over time that could be spent connecting.  We discussed what our thoughts and attitudes are toward sex and how many of us did not learn about sex in constructive and healthy ways and the impacts of that.  Finally and most importantly, we chatted about what we can do to have a more physical connection with our partners, which in some ways, had nothing to do with physicality at all.  Oh and we had a drinking game!

Our participants were honest and open and we really appreciated everyone being so authentic.  It was a fun night with a lot of laughs and a lot of shares.  We actually went past our scheduled time and we could have chatted more.  It was definitely a topic worth discussing. 

Thank you to all of our attendees who participated in the event and we look forward to hosting more sessions to explore topics which impact us all. 

Have a great week, Shades readers.  Be safe and be kind.