This crisis prompted us to find a new therapist, reach out to our community for support, and dive deeper into understanding the mechanics of very early attachment trauma and the dysfunctional patterns it instills. The work was made even more challenging because we both come from complex trauma ba

I co-created and co-hosted a nine-month tantra cohort for intermediate to advanced students. We met one weekend a month, intentionally deepening our intimacy with self and other—through erotic engagement, ZEGG forum, expanding our tantric tools and practices, honing our skills in a skills lab, and inevitably, bringing a lot of our shadow to the surface. It was intimate and real. And while we weren’t always equipped for what emerged, something meaningful was forged. Some of those relationships have continued—family, in a way—and became part of what exists now.

While this isn’t everyone’s path, many people I speak with feel a longing for something like this—spaces that are consistent, relational, and real. Not one-off experiences, but something we can actually belong to as we build new neural pathways of connection—chosen family and a living network of human hearts, minds, and bodies.

That same year, I envisioned and co-designed a five-day event in July called Building Erotic Community—A Participatory, Peer-Led Learning & Play Event. It was a community-based exploration of sacred sexuality—an experiment in what it might look like to practice intimacy, touch, and connection within a peer-held container. We held workshops, but more than that, we stepped fully into a collaborative field: a decentralized, self-responsible erotic community grounded in presence, care, and shared practice. It was designed to feel like a gathering of friends; of tribe. A place for experimentation, exploration, and real contact.

ckgrounds and have disorganized attachment structures. Disorganized attachment, marked by a simultaneous desire for and terror of connection and intimacy, is the most complex pattern to navigate, especially when both partners carry it.

The process forced us to face some hard tasks: unwinding the wounds of over-giving and enmeshment, committing to discerning and owning our own needs, leaning even deeper into our individual healing, and learning to interrupt negative cycles between us. It’s been profoundly humbling—immense new learning paired with the difficult but rewarding work of repatterning in real time.