Have You Heard About 'Girl Talk,' the Podcast?

I started a podcast last fall called “Girl Talk, Women, Aging and Sexuality.” It’s a 20-minute romp through all things related to women, health, aging, and sexuality, not necessarily all at the same time or in that order.

What a wonderful learning curve this has been! And thank goodness for my awesome sound engineers, who make me sound halfway decent (and know how to delete those pesky “ums”). Give a listen to my latest, featuring NYT bestselling author Gail Hudson. And while you’re there, check out earlier episodes with such luminaries as philanthropist Eva Haller, psychologist (and my co-author of Unmasked) Kathleen Barry; professor and author of Becoming Clitorate Laurie Mintz, hormone expert Dr. Erika Thost, and others. I am having a blast getting to know them and also bringing these important topics to you. Please subscribe and consider sponsoring the podcast. (Here is the interview with Gail.) And do tell me what you think!

A Wedding Wish

A little over a week ago, the daughter of my dear friends Tom and Joan Bolton was married, and they asked me to speak at the wedding. I thought I'd share with you what I said.

I was so honored and delighted to be asked to speak today. Watching Laura, in fact all of our kids, grow up has been a richly satisfying experience, even through the inevitable ups and downs of adolescence. Our families spent a lot of time together when the kids were younger, and for many years did a family camping trip to Fiqueroa Mountain every spring. I have an especially fond and vivid memory of all three – Laura, Tim, and my daughter, Kendall, who is a year younger than Tim – splashing through a nearby creek, hunting for pollywogs.

As parents, we have so many hopes for our children. That they will grow up happy and whole, that they will find meaning in their lives and have opportunities to learn and express their creativity, that they will find love. I am so happy that Laura has done all of these things.

As I was thinking about what I wanted to say today, I remembered a William Butler Yeats’ poem, called “Prayer for My Daughter.” I won’t recite the whole thing, because it is long, but I want to share a few stanzas that I thought were particularly apropos to the occasion today.

In the poem, there is a raging storm outside, and Yeats is in his infant daughter’s room, gazing at her in her crib, and listening to the rain beating against the windows. In the poem he mentions a linnet, which is a small bird in the finch family. He writes:

May she be granted beauty and yet not

Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,

Or hers before a looking glass, for such,

Being made beautiful overmuch,

Consider beauty a sufficient end,

Lose natural kindness and maybe

The heart-revealing intimacy

That chooses right, and never find a friend.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree

That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,

And have no business but dispensing round

Their magnanimities of sound,

Nor but in merriment begin a chase,

Nor but in merriment a quarrel.

O, may she live like some green laurel

Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,

The sort of beauty that I have approved,

Prosper but little, has dried up of late,

Yet knows that to be choked with hate

May well be of all evil chances chief.

If there’s no hatred in a mind

Assault and battery of the wind

Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

We all hope our children will never be torn from the foundations we build for them, and here I will betray my own feminist leanings and say, yes, we especially want to protect our daughters from the world and its vagaries. We ardently hope they will find someone to love who cherishes them beyond their own selves, and who will be partners who allow our daughters to continue to grow and create and become the women they are meant to be. I believe Laura has found that person in Rick, and I am so happy for both of them.         

Congratulations,  and may you enjoy many wonderful years together.

Write Your Way to a Stronger Marriage

Many thanks to Dr. Stephen Frueh and Shannon Sanford at WTBQ New York for a fun and informative talk about marriage and writing this morning on Dr. Frueh's monthly show, "The Marriage Conversation." We had a wonderful time discussing how writing can be an effective tool for keeping lines of communication open in any kind of partnership, including marriage.

One of the tools I suggested couples can use to deepen their relationship and improve communication is to write a "Love Letter." It's an effective guide to exploring and expressing feelings and thoughts devised by Chris Pringer many years ago. Here is the template, if you'd like to try it. You can visit Chris' website here.

Journaling is another very powerful way to discover yourself and your feelings. I spend at least 15 minutes with my journal every morning. It doesn't have to be a work of art. In fact, you're more likely to discover feelings and thoughts by allowing yourself just to write without thinking. Natalie Goldberg's books Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, and Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way provide instruction and prompts to get you started. Anyone can write. You just have to have a willingness to explore, and be vulnerable and open to what comes up.