Photo: Superstock)

BY KATY RAY
Tagg Magazine

It’s a new year, and for us femmes, it’s also an opportunity to form new relationships, break bad habits, and rejuvenate our hearts and minds. Whether you’re newly single or on the fast track headed down marriage lane, here are five resolutions that can benefit everyone.

1. Put your phone down at dinner.

2. Cut your ex out of your life — for good.

3. Leave the lesbian love nest at least twice a month.

4. Support your lesbian community.

5. Be a more conscientious consumer.

Read more at TaggMagazine.com

Tagg Magazine is a print and online resource for LBT women in the DC Metropolitan and Rehoboth, DE areas

The post Femme problems: Perspectives on the new year first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Adding some of this to your New Year’s list?

BY TRISH BENDIX
AfterEllen

Time to start with a clean slate, like December 31, 2013 didn’t happen at all and you can now be your best self. (Everyone else will be great, too, so don’t worry!) Here are some resolutions from our pals over at AfterEllen.

Eboni Rafus: Finish my screenplay. Expand my novella into a full-size novel. Finish my YA novel. […] Basically…write.

Jill Guccini: Write more, read more, become more proficient in Spanish and Italian, cook more, run more, feel less down on myself because of money, hike more with my dog, be kind.

Bridget McManus: To focus on being in the present moment and eat more broccoli.

Grace Chu: I plan to find the pot at the end of the rainbow and demand that it becomes legal nationwide. Actually, scratch that. I just plan to eat more greens and drink more water.

Read more at AfterEllen.com

AfterEllen is the pop culture site that plays for your team

The post Change things up: 2014 resolutions first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY REBECCA PLATTER

I believe happiness is a conscious choice. People often get upset when I say this, angrily replying, “Why would I choose to be unhappy?” My response is “because it has become a habit”. Practicing consciously choosing a more positive perspective or choosing compassion over hatred is an everyday challenge. It is not always easy. Especially on the days when things happen that may be out of your control. Feeling tired, having a sore back or the many instances where life deals you some really crappy situations, it can feel impossible to see the silver lining, but choosing to try even at your lowest gives you the strength and hope that will bring you back to the center.

We have all had a stormy cloud moment at some point. It can completely absorb our lives if we let it. Sure things can be really bad at times, but ultimately our lives are all about perspective. The perspectives that we choose to adopt largely control the ways in which we see and interact with the world.  Let go, breathe, and embrace a life where you feel grateful for the little things and the people you love. If every day you can think of at least three things you are grateful for and really focus on them, it will be easier to focus on more things in the future. The idea isn’t original, but like healthy eating and exercise, it can be something that we put off until tomorrow.

Read more at TheSeattleLesbian.com

TheSeattleLesbian online magazine reaches more than 188,000 readers per week globally

The post How to flex your happiness muscle first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Photo via QueerFatFemme.com

BY BEVIN BRANLANDINGHAM
QueerFatFemme

A few years ago a friend of mine suddenly got a girlfriend. We were besties and spent a lot of time together, so I wondered why I was feeling weird about it. I was definitely happy for her, I liked her new beau and I was excited for her to get laid. I sat with the feelings for awhile and I realized what I was feeling was fear—specifically fear of change. I knew that changes in our friendship were bound to happen. We were both single and had a lot of nights free that we spent together. Eventually that situation changes.

I parceled it out and realized that the changes were really triggering my fear of abandonment. My parents divorced when I was 18 months old and my dad was mostly out of the picture while I was growing up. That’s a pretty classic recipe for adult fear of abandonment.

Once I could label that it gave me something to do on my side of the street. I could address my fear of abandonment without blaming or getting mad at my friend just for being happy. I don’t ever want to be mad at my friends for following their hearts and being happy! I want them to be happy. This fear of abandonment is something I’ve worked diligently to remove over the last several years, and it involves a lot of embracing the velocity of change.

I’ve noticed my friends going through a ton of big changes lately. Huge new jobs—dream jobs. Sudden moves. Losses of many kinds. A lot of them have gotten into romances in the last few weeks–it reminds me so clearly of that time where I thought I was going to lose my friend. I’m still having to remind myself often that I’ve weathered these kinds of friendship changes before and it is going to be okay.

Being a hipster in Austin, TX at their monthly Femme night.

I’m positive all of these big changes aren’t just isolated to my friends. Since this is probably relevant to my readers, too, I thought I would do a round-up of some of the things I’ve learned along the way about embracing the velocity of change.*

1.Accept that change is part of living.

I like to remind myself that when things are changing and tranforming that I’m really living. The only constant in life is change. When I get a little dizzy with the “too much too soons” about change (because sometimes the good and the bad changes seem to happen in a flash without warning) I remind myself of that Pearl Jam song titled Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town. For some reason, when I was a fourteen year old devout Pearl Jam fan I heard that song and I would get so afraid that would be me—changed by not changing at all. And given how resistant I was to change at that age (and for many, many years after) it is a miracle I have gotten as far as I have.

I’m also the kind of person who initially resists even the little changes (I have feelings when my roommate moves around the appliances on our countertops), so my square one about change is generally negative. Accepting change as a constant has helped me hop away from that negative box faster than I used to.

Since change in life is a constant, accepting that as true—we cannot grip the happy times just as we cannot escape all the hard times—is actually a relief. When I’m having a shitty feeling I like to chant to myself, “Everything is temporary.” That helps.

Re-envisioning change as a good thing, a sign that my life is dynamic and magical, works for me.

Having my cards read by a roaming psychic.

2. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Similar to the sentiment above, sometimes seeking out change is a really good thing. I’ve made big changes in my life before—I moved across the country at age 21. That was the first big thing I ever chose to do that forever altered the direction of my life. And it wasn’t my first choice, I really wanted to go to law school at my alma mater but I didn’t get in. Rather than hang out another year in Davis and re-apply I just bit the bullet and moved to Camden, NJ.

This was absolutely the best thing I did for myself at that young age. Without friends, a sense of safety or comfort, I really had to learn who I was. And I found myself. The year after I moved I started identifying as queer, made peace with my body and learned that femme was a thing you could be and it was awesome. I don’t know how long those changes would have taken if I’d never moved. I don’t know if those changes would have ever happened! I had no idea how resilient I was until I had to be.

Slow dancing with that dreamboat Jessie Dress.

3. Small changes are good practice for the big ones.

Despite my desire to see change as a good thing, I remain a contented, homebody earth sign. I am so comfortable with things I’m familiar with I have to consciously seek out the discomfort of change. I try to push myself once a month to go to an event that’s out of my scene, I encourage myself to do new stuff. The weird panic I feel even for something as small as taking an unfamiliar subway stop is actually great practice for the big changes I have no control over. The tiny panics are prep. And once I’ve done it once it expands my worldview just a little bit more.

I also like to instigate change just to shake up my energy. Moving things around in my room, doing a purge of a drawer, slightly changing my hair, getting a piercing or a tattoo, going on a trip, these all help me feel change energy in order to shift my perspective on my life.

4. Remember all the times I weathered change.

When I started getting that panic about, “OMG the summer is ending and all of my besties are in relationships and I am going to spend all of my Saturday nights alooooooone,” it was helpful to stop and remind myself I’ve been through this before. Some friends just bail when they start dating something. That’s not about me at all. (You know, when they become the “I have to check ‘our schedule’ friends.” And the friends I have now slipped in there for the friends who slipped away. It’s the ebb and flow of life. My closest friends, our relationships have weathered a ton of changes. Including long stretches of not talking or moving long distances. But those are the kinds of friendships where you can pick up the phone and it’s as though no time has passed at all.

I’ve realized I never know what a friendship is going to look like when it starts and it is only time that tells me whether it will endure the shifts in our lives.

Just like friendships, I’ve gone through a ton of other changes that, at first, felt like a huge crisis but eventually became great opportunities. The whole memoir I’m writing is basically about how I weathered some tremendous changes in my life. (My wedding was called off six months out, I lost my job of five years and six months later was forced out of my apartment.) The good thing about those changes was (spoiler alert) I learned how resilient I am.

When I got laid off again by a small business I worked at for a three years, I learned it definitely gets easier the second time around. Applying this even to unfamiliar change is really helpful to shift my perspective from fear to curiosity. I don’t know what life is bringing me with each new change, but I know I have a choice about how I look at it.

We were in Louisiana long enough to stop for gas and this photo at a rest stop. Definitely need to get back there and do NOLA!

5. Use your shitty feelings to teach you about yourself.

As someone who likes to learn and grow, I’ve found that often my shitty feelings are trying to teach me something about myself. Like how my panic around my bestie getting booed up taught me about my fear of abandonment, often there’s a lesson in my resistance to change.

Leaning into the shitty feelings is something I learned from my life coach when I was being life coached by Lynnee Breedlove. He told me once that if you imagine shitty feelings like an ocean wave that going through them is the best way to get to the other side. (Rather than fight them or just get out of the ocean altogether.) He said he likes to send up a prayer of “Thanks” whenever he’s facing a yucky change, reminding him to stay in gratitude.

I’ve got a couple of book recommendations. One is by SARK, a thought leader I enjoy who writes playful and deep books. Glad No Matter What: Transforming Loss and Change into Gift and Opportunity is an amazing book! SARK details a year where she lost a partnership, the death of her mother and her beloved cat companion. She walks through the process of turning these losses into opportunities to grow. It’s playful and deep and taught me a lot about learning how to embrace changes as they come. There are a ton of questions to ask yourself, workbook style. But even the narrative alone, if you’re not ready for the work, is worth the read.

At Sister Louisa’s Church of the Living Room and Ping Pong Emporium in Atlanta.

For the spiritually inclined, I also really enjoy Transitions by Julia Cameron. She wrote the Artist’s Way, so when I saw this in a tiny twelve step bookstore I visited when I was traveling cross country I snatched it up. Lately I’ve been reading the bite size reflections on change before I go to bed. It’s really amazing perspective on the good elements of change that we often can’t see through our pain. I like it a lot. It’s non-denominational and talks about God in the Spirit/higher power sense.

The result of my friend getting booed up years ago? We drifted apart. But it wasn’t nearly as hurtful or catastrophic as my panic at the time acted like it would be. I weathered the changes in our friendship and I’m confident I’ll keep weathering all the new changes my friendships have to offer.

*I am borrowing this term from an affirmation in Badass Resilience: Black and Brown Femme Survivor Love and Desire Affirmations by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Keisha Williams.

Originally published by QueerFatFemme.com

Bevin Branlandingham is your femmecee at QueerFatFemme.com where she chronicles the relentless pursuit of her joy.

The post Five ways I’ve learned to embrace the velocity of change first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Jennie McNulty

BY JENNIE MCNULTY
Lesbian.com

Astronaut (and Senator) John Glenn may be most famous for his quote about steps for mankind but he also said, “Too many people, when they get old, think they have to live by the calendar.” I’d like to acknowledge two phenomenal women who never look at that calendar and why we might want to be just like them when we grow up.

Reason No. 1,000,000,000 to love Cher: She turned down an offer to sing at the opening ceremony at Sochi Olympics in protest of the Russian Government’s anti gay policies. And, that’s a pretty big statement coming from someone who has a brand new CD about to drop and who doesn’t usually shy away from promotional opportunities. But, then again, Cher’s always followed the beat of a slightly different drummer. And, that beat goes on and on and on.

On May 20, Cher turned 67. Her new album, “Closer to the Truth” is coming out and it’s single, “Woman’s World” is already a big hit on the dance floor. She is reportedly readying for another tour. She is the ONLY artist to have a No. 1 song on the charts in 6 decades. Think about that. Six decades! That’s a long time to be not only current and relevant but exceptional and fantastic.

And, that’s just her musical success. She’s won not only a Grammy, but an Emmy, an Oscar and 3 Golden Globes. You have to admit that’s impressive. What is it about Cher that we just can’t get enough of? Why do we love Cher?

I’m a bit of a fan. In fact, I used to think I was Cher’s No. 1 fan until I moved to West Hollywood (Those boys win, but I’m close). I have, of course, all the albums and CDs. I have an original Cher doll, although, during one of my parties in college, somehow, Cher lost a shoe. I have boxes filled with articles I cut out about her as a kid. I have movie ticket stubs from her movie premieres (the one from “Silkwood” is framed along with the full page newspaper ad for its release), boxes of old VHS tapes with interviews, movies, commercials, anything she was in.

I’ll stop now because, at this point, I’m either losing your interest or scaring you, so let me get back to why I love Cher.

I first discovered Cher in fourth grade on the old “Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.” For those of you too young to remember that show, here’s a sample.

Cher wore those amazing outfits by Bob Mackie. She was sexy. She was cool. And she was FUNNY. She stood there with arms folded dryly delivering zingers at Sonny with a sly smile and an attitude of confidence.

Cher was the first woman who was cool and funny. Carol Burnett was hysterical (and a genius) but she was goofy funny with crazy characters and curtain rods as part of the merriment. Phyllis Diller, Totie Fields and Joan Rivers were hilarious, but it was very much a self-deprecating humor and they certainly weren’t known as sex symbols. Cher was different. Cher was sexy and hip and cool. Cher didn’t make herself less to get a laugh. Cher’s laughs made her even more. Sorry, Mr. Springsteen, Cher was, and is, the boss.

Cher in her 60s

Through the years, she’s just kept bringing it. In comeback after comeback, we love to see what Cher has for us now. She took time off from music to give us some great acting performances, then she came back, jumped on a cannon barrel and “Turned Back Time.” Then more movies and an Oscar before making us “Believe.” And, all the while, doing it in her own wonderful style whether anyone else liked it or not. I don’t know about you, but I wish I cared a little less about what other people think.

Several years ago, someone asked her for advice and she said, “Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” For six decades, she’s not listened to naysayers. She’s not let what others think affect her actions and she’s done what she’s wanted to do. I, for one, believe she can do anything she wants. I’d be first in line to buy tickets (I’d beat the gay boys, they’d never get up early). Although, if she’s ever in charge of supplying definitions for Webster’s Dictionary, she should probably let someone else handle the entry on “farewell.”

Cher is not the only amazing lady to emulate. A few weeks ago, Diana Nyad was responsible for a great many pulled muscles. If you’re unfamiliar with Diana, she’s the marathon swimmer who this past Labor Day swam over 53 hours from Cuba to Key West Florida. Nonstop. Without a wet suit or fins or stopping or hanging on to the boat, stroke after stroke after stroke for what ended up being 110 miles. SHE didn’t pull any muscles. She made the swim just fine. We pulled the muscles as we ran that extra mile, did one more set of weights, as we thought, “Hell, if a 64-year-old can swim all the way from Cuba, I can do one more … Ouch! Ahhhh, crap! Somebody get me some ice.”

By the way, Diana is 64. Yes, 64. Again, those numbers were 110 miles and over 53 hours. Many people tried to tell her not to do it (even some in her own team). They said, “Enough! It just can’t be done.”

They said she was crazy to try this again after having almost died in her previous attempts. On August 31, 2013, at 8:59:02am, Diana Nyad jumped into the water in Havana, Cuba, and 52 hours 54 minutes 18.6 seconds and 110.4 miles later, she walked onto the shore of Smathers Beach in Key West, Florida. Through sunburned and swollen lips, she bade us, “Never, ever, give up!” and “You’re never too old to chase your dreams” before collapsing into the arms of her handler. She does put up a convincing argument.

Swimmer Diana Nyad (via History.com)

Briefly, for those that aren’t familiar with this story (and, if you are, you may now skip ahead to the next paragraph), this was not Diana’s first attempt. It was the fifth. One attempt came in 1978 when bad weather and giant swells threw her too far off course to complete the swim. The following year, she made a swim of equal distance from the Bahamas to Florida, but it wasn’t “The Cuba Swim” of her dreams. And, really? Who hasn’t done the North Bimini to Cuba Swim? Please. Actually, no one. At that time, it set the record for longest swim in open waters without a shark cage. Nyad quit swimming for 30 years when, at 60, she decided to go for that dream one more time. She began training again, in secret at first, then, when she felt certain she could do it, she told her friends and assembled a team. She tried the swim from Cuba to Key West again twice in 2011 and once more in 2012. Bad weather currents, storms, asthma attacks and deadly jellyfish stings derailed these three attempts. This was it. This final shot, make it or not, she promised, this would be the last swim. OK, now you’re caught up.

After four failed attempts, Diana Nyad finally did it. She did it to prove to herself what she knew deep inside: She could make it. She did it to prove to all of us that we can do whatever our “it” is. She did it to make us all see that age has nothing to do with a dream and we’d be crazy to give up the chase.

So, my friends, I hope you appreciate what these two amazing sexagenarians have done. One has given us a lifelong lesson in being who you are never letting people tell you ‘no.’ The other has shown that, at any point in life, you can still fulfill your dreams, if you go for it. They’ve kinda made it impossible for us to have excuses.

“I couldn’t possibly go back and get that degree.” Oh, really? Are there sharks chasing you?

Jennie McNulty was named one of Curve magazine’s Top 10 lesbian comedians and is a featured Sweet performer. She can be heard weekly as co-host of LA Talk Radio‘s “Cathy Is In: The Cathy DeBuono Show.”

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The post Lessons from two sexy sexagenarians: Follow your dreams first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Cathy DeBuono, licensed psychotherapist, empath, radio personality and actress you may know from “A Perfect Ending,” “We Have to Stop Now” and “And Then Came Lola” is here to help you sort out your deepest thoughts.

Read part one The reality of self-transformation, part 1: Kicking and screaming in the gap.

If making big changes in ourselves were easy, I mean evolutionary types of changes, we’d all be a perfect race by now. We talked about that in part 1. It behooves us as sentient beings to proceed on this front with real awareness that we will more than likely find ourselves confronted by and battling the anxiety of traversing that terrain.

In part 1, we learned that as the ego meets this new terrain and as it resists its habitual, automatic patterns of decision making, it will encounter a powerless state, more than likely experienced as confusion. This is the space in time that I refer to as the gap.

The gap is usually a state of severe discomfort, but I’d like to shift that perspective so we may make more room to receive it for exactly what it is, a tremendous opportunity for expansion.

When it comes to effecting change in our lives via self transformation, how far we go is entirely up to us and directly involves something called our free will. When our ego encounters the confusion (and often profound discomfort) of the gap, in order to choose growth and change, we will need to necessarily rely upon free will to suspend the ego’s habitual responses and to navigate the gap, instead, away from fear and toward the direction of our core potential where all other infinite possibilities are found.

When we experience the confusion that alerts us to the arrival in a gap, we know that our ego has just encountered a barrier to our core potential, within its own structure. Instead of automatically continuing on as before, it is here that we either engage in the opportunity to apply our free will or we engage in our previously practiced ego tactics thereby changing nothing.

So what is the “how” of applying our free will in service of accessing our core potential? The answers lies in mindful exploration of the actual cognitive components that form the infra-structure of our own ego. It is the automatic functioning of these components that we encounter when our previous and automatic responses to the world and people around us are doing their thing.

These components arise largely (if not fully) from the soil of other cognitive constructs that psychologists often refer to as our belief systems, the term means exactly as it sounds. These cognitive constructs are the ideology and thought patterns we hold that motivate us to make certain choices and engage in certain behavior. A very large percentage of these things become our second nature or our automatic way of seeing the world and ourselves in relation to it. In order to evolve on a personal level, the current functionality of our belief systems must be challenged and thoroughly examined by our own conscious process.

Taking a real look for ourselves at the characteristics of our currently active belief systems and the bases for their initial construction allows us the option of adding consciousness to their reconstruction. Only upon contemplation of these perspectives can we begin to deconstruct them in order to consciously reconstruct them. You can only traverse new ground by building new roads.

When considering taking on the challenge of personal evolution, remember the more practiced the cognitive construct in question has been for us, the more patience and application of consciousness to this process you can expect to be required in order to transform it. Hence, the absolute necessity of free will. Without its constant application our unconscious, automatic cognitive constructs will only continue to assert themselves and manifest in the thoughts and subsequent choices that currently define our personal limits.

“I am an empath, actor, therapist and a firm believer in truth over diplomacy.” — Cathy

For more, visit www.CathyIsIn.com

Tune in to “Cathy Is In: The Cathy DeBuono Show” LIVE! with co-host comedian Jennie McNulty, MONDAYS at 3pm PST/ 6pm EST only on LA Talk Radio.  

Listen here: archived episodes.

Watch Cathy’s films on demand:
And Then Came Lola
A Perfect Ending
We Have To Stop Now

The post The reality of self-transformation, part 2: The necessity of free will first appeared on Lesbian.com.

“The Salon Series: Conversations about Success” will continue on Wednesday, July 25, in San Francisco. The topic for this second in a series of six events is “Women’s Focus” and will feature speaker Jana Rich, Managing Director of Russell Reynolds Associates with an introduction by Ryan Christine Coulson, Wealth Planning Strategist, California Wealth Planning Group.

The hosted cocktails event, sponsored by dot429, Wells Fargo, Sweet and Lesbian.com, will be held at the beautiful Foreign Cinema at 2534 Mission Street from 6p.m to 9p.m. Tickets are $25 in advance or $35 at the door with proceeds benefiting Shanti’s Breast Cancer Program.

Learn more about the event at Facebook and RSVP at dot429.com.

The post ‘The Salon Series: Conversations about Success’ to be held in San Francisco first appeared on Lesbian.com.