Ashleigh wrote “Swing” because it was her deepest, darkest secret. She thought that there wouldn’t be anybody in the world that could relate to what she experienced, so she wrote about about it to tell everybody. She thought, “Now I’m going to make this into art to share it.” An artist understands that every person will experience art in a different way, and that’s ok.

“Swing” is a book about the story of her and her husband getting into an exclusive sex club in New York City and the things that happen at the club. The book is meant to be a “bait and switch” though, because according to Ashleigh, the book is actually about “how easy it is to lose yourself in the roles that you think you should be playing for other people,” not about sex clubs.

She coached figure skating, 150 skaters on 10 teams. In a decade, she realized that she had been showing up for everybody else, but not for herself. Her marriage was imploding. She realized that she didn’t have a firm foundation anywhere in her life like she thought she had.

All of us are looking to feel “filled up.” Most of us have one or two ways of feeling filled up that aren’t good for us. Ashleigh found out that getting attention from other men was one of those things that made her feel good. She got the attention and affection that she desired in her own marriage through other men that she interacted with at these clubs. Growing up, she was the child who “never needed anything.” She simply reached for another accomplishment.

There are so many men who have connected with Ashleigh and to how she feels in the book. Some people may assume it to be a creepy thing, but it ends up being the complete opposite. Men describe her as being like a big sister. The way she describes things in the book are “you and your partner,” so there’s a universal aspect to it. People just want to talk to her about their feelings, men included.

Where do we get our information? Our parents don’t typically talk about sex in front of us, or finances, or any of the other things that cause us problems as adults.

Hot sex is a side effect of a healthy relationship. When we turn the iceberg on it’s side, though, it’s a way to get all of our communications and connections to be better.

The book actually started as a screenplay, but she couldn’t finish it. She got about halfway through and realized that people would find comfort in knowing the story actually happened after posting some things on social media and getting some positive feedback.

If we want to get to the place of radical connection, we have to go through the valley of honesty. She thought that the only thing that was ever good enough was something that was flawless. Anything less needed to be glossed over. “Good or better” was the only way to succeed. If you’ve had any kind of fracture in your relationship and you decide to stay together and work through it, on the other side of the fracture is a freedom to not be afraid of being imperfect anymore.

Peeing can teach us something about how we should treat ourselves. For Ashleigh, she realized that she needed to simply pee whenever she had the urge. If she couldn’t go, “Ashleigh needs to pee,” or “Ashleigh is hungry or tired,” she couldn’t be trusted to make the good decisions about the other cues that her body is telling herself. How do we know what we like sexually if we don’t even listen to our bodies for the simple things?

Ashleigh’s book “Swing” is available anywhere books are sold. Other ways to stay connected with Ashleigh are:

On IG: @AshleighRenard

“Keeping It Hot: The Workbook” - pre-orders available now!

Tiffany wants all women to have beautiful sex lives, which is why she loves to talk about sex.

So much of what we’re told is either black or white in church isn’t really black or white. One of the harmful things about the way the Church has approached sexuality is that it is approached as black or white.

Tiffany talks about a book called, “Out of Sorts” by Sarah Bessey. It explains that kids need “black and white.” A lot of people never leave the stage of blind acceptance, though. The black and white answers feel safe, but they are only meant to be a ‘beginning.’ We need to be questioning the “why” behind the black and white answers.

She grew up in the church because her father was the youth pastor at the church. Her childhood was very sheltered and conservative. She was homeschooled. She never talked about sex and didn’t even know basic body anatomy. Even the word “vagina” was foreign to her. She grew up afraid of everything, especially relationships between her and the boys she was interested in.

In college, she had a boyfriend. When he put his arm around her, she knew that it felt good, but she felt incredible guilt and shame around how she felt. She felt like in order to keep his attention on her and off of pornography, she needed to keep going further and further physically. Still, they never had sex but the guilt and shame kept growing. She felt like there was a wall between her and God. Eventually, her dad broke up the relationship because she was honest about how physical their relationship had gotten with him.

The next few years, she struggled with hating her body and with relationships. She wanted to be in a relationship, but all of her past struggles with relationships made it extremely difficult. Eventually, she developed a mentorship with her pastor and his wife and started to share her thoughts and feelings with them, which started her healing journey. She then ended up dating another guy who was really good for her, which was the opposite of her first relationship.

You can’t have good sex if you aren’t “in your body.” She still had a lot of baggage around sex. How are you going to enjoy sex if it’s just “duty sex.” She didn’t know her body at all and she couldn’t figure it out. She need to learn how to be present in her own body to be able to enjoy sex and figure out how to have a good orgasm.

Sex is about being in it together. It isn’t a dictatorship or one person telling the other how sex should be. We need to be on the same page as our partners. Sex is not a duty. It’s all a mutual compromise.

Tiffany also mentions a book by Sheila Gregoire - “The Great Sex Rescue.” This book contains research based evidence for breaking down the myths that a lot of Christian women have believed about sex. She sees nuance in how Christians view sex. Without context, it is very hard to understand what the Bible has to say about the subject.

You can get turned on without judgment. Learn to understand your body and understand what your body is telling you and take the time to understand what works for you as an individual and as a couple.

Resource for listeners: “The Wedding Night Talks - How do you get from nothing to great sex. Here’s what you need to talk about… “

You can find more about Tiffany at:

tiffanydawn.net

And on IG: @TiffanyDawnIQB

Kyra was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by an ex-boyfriend her Junior year of High School. She was taken in the middle of the night and was transported to a field behind the local HS where she was assaulted in many ways. She was put back in the car and made the comment to him “I can’t believe I ever trusted you.” So, instead of taking her home, he took her to the dump, where she thought she was going to die.

Nobody in her hometown believed her. He was a preacher’s son and an athlete and on an athletic scholarship and nobody thought he would ever do such a thing. So, she didn’t know where to turn or who would believe her.

She didn’t see a therapist for any of this until nearly 10 years later and has been in therapy ever since. Every week in therapy is a new adventure uncovering new things about herself. If she had started therapy immediately following her trauma, she admits that she may not have gotten as much out of it.

She wasn’t believed, so she didn’t even believe herself.

We aren’t “dealing with things,” we’re working through things. She will never go back to her life the way it used to be. There is before the trauma and there is after the trauma and you can never go back to the time before, you can only work to make the life after the trauma the best that it can be.

What’s the new normal? How has this trauma shown up in Kyra’s life? She is very up front about how things have affected her. She is very open and honest about what has happened to her, at least at a high level, with prospective partners. So many of them can’t handle it and basically run away. She realizes that this is not about her, it’s about what they can or cannot handle. Kyra shares a couple of examples of times with partners that involve how her trauma has affected her sexual encounters.

She didn’t want to go to therapy because “broken people go to therapy.” She was willing to share her brokenness, but wanted to seem put together all the time on social media. This was because, according to her therapist, she needed to control the narrative. So, she had to bribe herself to go to therapy. She wasn’t there to talk about her trauma, she was just there to talk about whatever the problem was at the time. Of course, her problems seemed to point back to her trauma, so eventually she was able to talk about the things from her past and begin healing from these traumatic events.

She cared so much about the person that assaulted her, she didn’t tell the truth about what happened. The night it happened, her dad told her to write down everything that happened. So she went back and got a copy. When she looked back at what she wrote down, so much of what she remembers happening wasn’t in what she wrote down because she was still protecting him at the time.

“Good sex can’t happen until you learn to love yourself, and what you like and what your body likes.” Society teaches us that a man’s pleasure is the most important thing, but that’s just not true. Uncomfortable conversations are important to get the truth out there about sex. They’re hard to have, but they get better over time.

Kyra can be found on IG: @kflatow09