Dear Readers…

(Posted in Reflections — Autumn 20XX)

I have decided to let myself fall in love.

Looking back over my life since the divorce, I can see how much energy I’ve spent avoiding love—and, by its nature, the joy and happiness that accompany it.

It was a bad decision.

Helen Keller, the first person to earn a college degree while being both deaf and blind, once wrote:

> “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

And Jonathan Safran Foer, in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, reminds us:

> “I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

While creating this website—and exploring the expressions of sexuality and sensuality within it—has brought me tremendous joy and healing, I also realize that I have built a defensive wall around myself to avoid repeating the pain of my marriage and its end.

That may be a perfectly human response, but I believe it’s time to remove the barrier, to allow a special someone access to my heart, and to give the rest of my life a chance to soar.

Growing old is inevitable; hastening it is not.

An unused heart, like any other muscle, will atrophy if it isn’t exercised.

I believe now is the time to turn up the volume of my heart—not so it can be heard, but so it can feel and do more once again.