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It’s 11:30 AM on a Thursday in June and I have this impulse to download a dating app.  The impulse surprises me with its clarity and strength.

I know Coffee Meets Bagel moves slow - it will be a good place to start.

Download app.  Upload photos.  Set filters.  Swipe a few times.  Back to work.

15 minutes later, “I have to say.  You have an amazing smile.”  

He’s 31 years old and damn hot.

“That is so sweet.  Thank you.”

And soon after…

“I’d love to get to know you.  Let’s have drinks tom.  I will come to you.”

Coming to me means an hour’s drive.  I am paying attention.

“Cool text me @###-###-####”

I suggest we meet at the beach and send a photo of Glenlivet 15 I’ve dug up from the basement based on his profile’s stated love of whiskey.

Him: “Wow.  Did I tell you that I’m a Scotch drinker?  Glenlivet being one of my favourites.  Let alone a 15 yo one.”

…

Him:  “I don’t know if you’re trying to get me drunk.  I’m a bit more loose when I am LOL ;-).

…

Him:  “Loose.  The beach.  Whiskey.  We’re definitely set.  Should be a fun time. “

And so began the summer of 2023.  I was 48 years old.

I was recovering from a long term love that had dissembled spectacularly.  

I felt old.  A piece of my self worth was fractured. What could I have done differently?  Why didn’t my former lover value our connection the way I did?

It had been eight  months since I had been with a man physically when I went on the beach date. 

As the sun began to set and we sipped whiskey (him) and tequila (me) on the sandy blanket he asked, “how do you feel about the age gap?”  I didn’t have much of an answer.  It didn’t seem to figure.

And so when the bugs drove us from the beach to a local bar and he reached for my hand to admire my yellow nail polish I let myself feel it.  And when he asked to go home with me I said yes.

Sex was a bit awkward.  I didn’t invite him into my bed.  I had had plenty of tequila.  I was out of practice.  And yet somewhere in there I let go and he met me and the aliveness I thought was lost to me came back.  We took a break and I held up my hand “it’s pulsing through my veins” I said.  

When he left I looked at myself in the mirror.  I saw a beauty that had been missing for years.  A fullness and openness in my face.  A young, pink tone to my skin.  I felt satisfied from the inside. “This is what I am here for.”  I said out loud wondering as the words came out of my mouth what I meant by this.

What happens when a woman goes in search of sexual satisfaction?  When she is not looking for the creation of a family or even emotional connection but for connection in the bedroom?  How does she find a place where she can be fully herself while also physically safe and emotionally free?

To fuck is one thing - easily found.  To be fucked to God another.  The stamina and sexual focus of the younger man appealed to me.  I want all of life that it is possible to have.  I want intimacy and fucking and freedom in a combination that seems illusive and yet… I want it.  Badly.

I entered the world of younger men for stamina.  To be fucked.  I don’t need orgasms - I can give myself endless orgasms.  But what can be created with another human, in my preference a man, is another thing.  

I love the orgasm that comes from long periods of intercourse.  The valley orgasm that has my veins pumping life force energy for days.  

I love the slowly surging pleasure that comes from sustained love making.  

I want to be filled up so I can overflow.

If I had it my way one of the two lovers this summer who could do that would visit me weekly.  I’d pay for it honestly.  

So yes I went on this quest for stamina.   The kind that creates aliveness.  And like any quest I found so much more.

That first date on the beach in June turned into an ongoing connection.  We made it into bed and round after round we would go further and further.  I had never been given to in sex that way before.  This wasn’t just about his focus on my pleasure - though that was certainly a piece.  I could feel his whole self as he fucked me - he was open and entirely present and in response I took him in with all of me.  We gave emotionally, physically, and spiritually… no holding back.

I felt like I was drinking from the nectar of life.  I was fed by our actual encounters not by fantasies about the future.  This was different from “relationship”.  I felt safe and also free.

And at the same time our trust and communication deepened.  We explicitly cared for our emotional connection such that our unmet needs didn’t run the show.  Our ability to do this consistently over months was a revelation.  We teetered sometimes but we did not topple.  

One of the ways I made sure I didn’t put too much energy into this one connection (thus undermining it with tendrils of need) was to keep dating.  I experimented with different age brackets from 18 up to 35.  I discovered that there was an endless stream of younger men wanting to take me out.  And not just for sex.  I went dancing, walking, dining….  

I built a roster with the intention of replicating that first connection. A pilot and I did an edible and hit something primal.  Another man dominated me and it took a week to put my psyche back together.   One innocent man tried to make me into his girlfriend.  It was part sport, part fun, part the excitement of the taboo, part self protective and a large part confidence building.  

The journey was a wild ride with the highs of romance, full body orgasm and the thrill of new experience mingled with the lows of insecurities, attachment anxieties and present and past traumas. It’s been quite the summer. Mystical to its core.

So while Barbie and Taylor centred femininity at the heart of collective aliveness, I dated young men and dated young men and dated young men some more and it all feels part of a precious collective moment I didn’t think I would live to see let alone enjoy.

MILF (Mother I’d Like To Fuck)

The term MILF dates back to at least the 90’s.  The movie American Pie referred to Jennifer Coolidge as a MILF in one of the first recorded references - an interesting mirror of Jennifer’s re-ocurring fame this year in White Lotus.  In 2023 MILF is everywhere as Yung Gravy croons and Martha Stewart reigns on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit at the age of 81.  

MILF is technically a kink.  A sexual experience outside the norm.  It’s fun to be out with a young man knowing the server thinks I’m his Mom.   Very fun.

But my experience this summer goes far beyond kink.  There is a richness to the pairing of  a younger man and an older woman. What the world treats as a kink I experienced as deeply natural.  One hot summer night on the beach I lay beside a young man watching the sun set and I had the distinct sensation that I was the seagull gliding above us - life was easy and right.  All was in order.   So in this piece I use the term MILF to refer to the older woman younger man relationship which includes kink but also all of the other colours and frequencies of this dynamic.

There is a natural symbiosis between younger men and older women.  The priority placed on sex is deeply compatible.  My sexuality has bloomed as I have aged. Twenty years ago a fast finish was a plus.   Today longer is everything.  Multiple young partners hits the mark.  And they are naturally enthused.

The young men I dated were focused on proving themselves in the world. I sensed a deep fear of being distracted from this essential goal.  An older woman who does not ask for career compromises but only for cock fits in perfectly.

Beyond these natural points of taboo and compatibility there are some power dynamics that make the MILF pairing extra juicy.

R. pulled up in his (parents’?)  Lexus SUV.  He got out of the car to greet me and open my door.  On the seat was a bouquet of flowers.  “You are as gorgeous as I thought you would be,” he said.  

R. still has the slight awkwardness of a boy. He is 24 years old. This is the wild power dynamic of MILF.  The man’s role remains the man’s.  

Not much has changed in a century as R. helps me into my seat as passenger princess.  This tone continues to unfold as we get to know each other.  The man holds the man’s power in the patriarchy.  Google MILF and you will see porn and rappers - MILF is about men.

And yet I am, in most cases this summer, a generation older.  My brain is fully formed. I have foresight.  My first (and second) careers are done.  I own property(ies).  I’ve been married.  Lost people I love.  Made difficult decisions over and over again.  And none of this is novelty anymore.   It’s life.  All of this experience is a form of power.

Layered on top of this power is the power of the deference young people have been taught to have for those older.  In the men I chose to date it was real.  

And so in our duos there was a man, an elder, a woman, and a young person.  In one moment the little girl inside me is looking for a man’s guidance while in the next the mother inside says “let’s have a chat before we go further.”  We rotated through roles in complex pairings of self-states never knowing what was coming next.

The power ricocheted between us. We sparred, fumbled, stepped back and looked at each other wide eyed, and, when the balance was right, fucked for hours in a kind of natural polarity loop that I am still working on describing.

“It’s the idea that I can conquer that,” S.  said, describing what was hot to him about an older woman.  The enhanced level of dominance and power that came through in his tone had me gripping my seat below the table.

“And I can let myself be conquered by that,” I said to myself inside.  An extra level of surrender for me.  Almost shaming humility that translated into a kind of desire that starts dangerous fires.

There is a wild kind of electricity in surrendering to the courting ritual performed by a man twenty plus years younger than myself.  I can feel them stretching themselves and I, despite myself, see myself allowing them to take the lead and it is clearly wrong way up but the unconscious dynamics are stronger than logic.

Sometimes I swayed too far into care-taking and was schooled with, “I’m a grown man, Alison”.  And yet, I felt the power differential.  I knew what this would look like with the genders reversed and I would be concerned.  So I let them take the lead and I inquired as to their experience and noticed their behaviours and attempted to take responsibility for my role as the older member of the duo even if I came off a bit like a mother hen sometimes.

In the end the pairings I formed with these young men were outside culture. Always outside definition. We could try to fall back into roles but which ones?  Who’s in charge here?  Our refuge was the language of our bodies which could not lie and said over and over - be here, stay here, do this.  We had each other’s attention even as our minds spun.

The Mother Archetype

Mother I’d Like to Fuck.  The dark joke here is that, technically,  I am not a mother.  Not of living children anyway.  And not that anyone asked.  

At the same time each of these young men did crack my mother heart.  

I think about their mothers often.  My friends. The women I longed to be.  Preoccupied with the impossible task of shepherding these vivacious humans into adulthood.  And instead, here I am, in a unique position for a woman my age.  I have the freedom to both have sex with these men and to write about it, something I imagine I would be much more reticent to do if I had a 25 year old child of my own. 

One young man told me his mother buys his clothes and as I took them off I wondered if it would ever occur to her that a woman her age was undressing her son.  I wondered about my wondering.  If I was truly sex positive would this even be a consideration?  My wondering felt transgressive in its own right.  And yet the forbidden is a magnet.  And I chose men with conservative mothers.  Of course. 

As I unbuttoned that short-sleeved-button-down-shirt-with-the-geometric-circle-with-a-line-through-it-pattern-perfectly-placed-and-scaled I felt a kinship with her choice.  She has a good eye.  I wanted to be her.  I wanted to pick out that shirt.  And now I am about to ride her creative production and in the process I’m admiring her work.

This is my side of the mother complex.  Becoming in a sense the antithesis of what I longed to be as a mother.  And yet still very much in relationship to the role.

Here’s their mother complex:

I want to please my mother and I want my mother.  Dating you would not please my mother.  So I won’t.  But I want to connect with her.  To merge again.  I long for her so I will fuck you. I will let you subsume me entirely.  I will be taken care of by you always.

These men were also acting the antithesis of their culturally given role yet still very much in relationship to mother.  They soaked in my experience, my wrinkles, my care.

I am sitting in my car right now.  It is raining.  I’m on a medicine retreat and we have the day to ourselves to integrate and I am writing.  I read the above paragraphs.  I shiver.  It feels bottomlessly transgressive.  And yet I am writing the crevices of my-self.  My true thoughts, perceptions and experiences.  Our mothers are part of our love lives - for all of us.  Our most intimate experiences are mother and lover.  And mothering and loving.  Beyond gender and concept these things are felt in our bodies and expressed in our most intimate moments.

My MILF summer was at one level an enactment of my desire to matter to my lost son.  I tried for a decade to create my own child.  To be in intimate relationship with a young person and receive their life force the best I could so they knew it was welcome in the world at large.  We gave each other that, these men and I.  Filling in holes in our unconscious with moans of pleasure and sustained breathing.      

This is what desire does.  It calls us into healing.  Always.

I did do a kind of mothering, too

H., 24, wanted to lose his virginity.  As soon as I met him I saw that he was a child. I did not feel chemistry and told him so.  But he had a plan.  He explained that he was a virgin and wanted to have sex with me (“plus I think you’re gorgeous” he added as I stifled a giggle) then leaned back, pulled out his phone, and said, “I’ll wait.”  

It took me two hours to decide.  I deliberated back and forth. I couldn’t deny his logic.  I believe in my bones that sexual energy running clear and strong is the basis of humanity’s thriving.   I respected his confidence in asking and I wanted to do this for him.

And yet what kind of responsibility was I taking on?  Was this right?  I had this strange Puritan streak still in me.  He is twenty four years old and it is time.  Or is it?  Who am I to say?

In the end I agreed.  I could see nothing wrong and everything right with this.  And what tipped me over was that I wanted the experience for myself too. 

It was beautiful in its own way.  I felt emotional.  He didn’t seem to.  I could feel his body putting the reality of sex together with the idea of it.  Afterwards we shared real intimacy by exchanging TikTok FYPs.

He was the only virgin this summer but he wasn’t the only one who came to me explicitly for sexual healing.  I liked these ones.  The hockey bro looking for a fuck has never been my thing.  But the introverted young man earnestly wanting to get laid has my attention.  One man wanted instruction on how to please a woman.  One wanted to learn how to last longer.  They sought me out specifically.  I admired their thinking.

I was heartened by all these desires.  I wanted them to have it.  To satisfy themselves and all the women in their futures.  Beyond this I wanted them to gain the confidence to live sexually empowered lives in whatever form they desired. The pull of this type of “work” was strong.  I mark it here as a sign of hope and of a very real need.  I could have “worked” full time meeting this kind of request.  

I also encountered a surprising number of sexual challenges in my partners. I was surprised by this.  I had gone in search of stamina but did not receive nearly as much as you might think.  I spent a lot of time holding space for conversations about lost exes, feelings about their genitals, their careers….  Far more men than not had difficulty having or maintaining an erection, difficulty staying in the same room after sex, difficulty ejaculating, needing certain fetishes or positions to ejaculate or ejaculating far too fast.  

I could feel that pornography figured prominently in the sex lives of most of my partners and many of them confirmed this.  Changing gender dynamics, the isolation of the pandemic, and significant mental and emotional challenges mean that many young men are meeting their sexual needs in a way that can potentially hurt their ability to connect physically and emotionally with real world partners.  This is something that needs to be talked about with so much compassion.  It takes courage to step into the real world and men need to be supported along the way by both men and women.

With so much challenge for the men around their performance I also came to see why they might protect themselves.  How big the feelings must be and how minimal their capacity to allow them to flow.  How so much of what has hurt me in the past in relationship is in fact not about me at all but about the inner struggle to be a man in a world that unconsciously expects men to save us.  And fuck us.

When presented with the opportunity to realize their fantasies so many of these men crumbled.  They did not have the internal self image to meet themselves or me.  

My inner journey

And so if physical stamina turned out to be relatively rare, what was in it for me?  

I was particularly enthused by the work my dates were doing in the world.  I wanted them to get the internship at Morgan Stanley, win the client deal, articulate bigger ambitions….  They were awed by my CFA and financial background.  This part of me long dormant became much more visible.  I relished the initiatory energy of these pre-Saturn return men.  I believed in them wholeheartedly.  Silently, I knew that playing their cards full out would lead them where they were going - whether that was traditional success, traditional family life, or not.

A mentor pointed out the following:  my business had been struggling.  I was finding the marketing side of personal growth as superficial and counter to my values as finance was.  I was feeling lost.

Right here in my MILF summer, she pointed out, is my prima materia.  

I am relying here on the Jungian concept of feminine and masculine.  These are energies like yin and yang… the energies of creation.  They exist separately from gender.  Each of us contains both masculine and feminine energies inside us. A generative life starts from inner marriage - the bringing of the two energies together inside such that we are whole beings acting from a place of balance.

I came to see that I was externalizing my potency.  My youthful vigour.  My masculine.  I was attracted to the potential success of my lovers. Allowing their energy to subsume mine by riding high when my phone was blowing up and deflating when they were busy.  Having left Wall Street for a more feminine path I had dropped some of my own masculine along the way - it was time to own it again.

I had the opportunity to perform alchemy.  To bring that successful dominating masculine energy back inside me.  To ground in the inner marriage rather than feel split apart by the externalization of my masculine onto this array of human beings I had met.

Seeing the power I was attracted to felt hopeful.  I had chosen this group of men and knew that this power was indeed inside me.  I began a process of consciously bringing this energy inside.

On the suggestion of my mentor, I began an inner dialogue with John Dutton, Kevin Costner’s character in the TV series Yellowstone.  I asked John (in my imagination) what to do about a date who had not been in touch for a few days, “Honey, if a man wants you, you’ll know”  John said.  I settled back into myself and focused on work. The date I was waiting on texted me the next morning.  This is how alchemy operates - inner balance first.  Outer coherence as a secondary result.

I grounded myself over and over in this masculine energy, building the patriarch inside myself. Over and over again I saw that as I focused on my wholeness, my dating life was smoother. The inner patriarch never steers me wrong.  He holds my health, well being, business, and heart.  He is the one who takes care of me.   John Dutton will not lose the family ranch. 

And then it became even more real as my inner marriage began to create on my own behalf.  Writing this article is a natural maturation of my masculine.  Instead of being turned on by a text from one of many young and inconstant lovers I became turned on by the marriage of my feminine and masculine and what they can create right here on the page.

As I introject the young masculine into myself I have less impulse outwards and more inner strength.  Later in the summer I even had a spicy fling with a man named Jung.  Just so I wouldn’t miss the point.

I have, through writing and thinking daily about my experiences this summer, become convinced of the importance of these experiences.  The relevance of them to the people who care about my work.  The ways that they mirror the collective.  The ways I am growing personally in ways that serve all of life not just me and my dates. People started reaching out to me saying “oh that resonates so much… I see the same thing at work…” My summer as a MILF became the catalyst for a massive inner transformation that resulted in an external re-invention in how I am presenting myself to the world.  And it is just beginning.

It hasn’t been easy.  Releasing my energy in the world comes with performance anxiety.  What will you think of my offering?  Too much, too little, too long, too short, too strange, too unformed, too all-in, exhibitionist, ephemeral, cerebral, slutty, transgressive, immoral?  I am like Z. who said to me as his erection waned “you are a high value woman.. I can’t stop thinking this is wrong.”

Action is as vulnerable as surrender.  Penetration in the form of intercourse or the release of creative production into the world requires a kind of cracking open… this is the inner marriage.  Both force and release in the same moment.  In my case working with my writing voice became the laboratory for my inner work.

The publication of this article may be the biggest orgasm of the summer.

Healing triggers in love

If I had tried to make these men into some idea of what I wanted I would have gone wrong.  And it would have been easy to do.

At this point in my life I take the feeling of anxiety as a signal to go inward. That doesn’t mean it’s easy.  I compose disastrous texts in my head.  I fantasize about the romantic return of the unavailable man.  But I am clear - the only obligation of the other is to keep his word.  

For all the mistakes I might have made this summer I never critiqued a man from my little girl place. Recognizing it is no man’s responsibility to meet my desire for aliveness nor to meet my unmet needs the adult Alison set boundaries with love and grace. And that was a huge win. 

A situation with my first connection offers an example.

I have a massive trigger around time.  I find it so disrespectful when someone books a time and then is late or cancels with short notice.  I put effort into being present when I say I will be somewhere.  I say no to other things.  I know my reaction is out of proportion, especially in dating, but I am often livid when I feel disrespected in terms of time.  Any former partner of mine will tell you this.  Sigh.

This summer, in relationships with more internal spaciousness, I had the opportunity to begin healing.

One night my first connection from June sent me a text that he was doing an extra set at the gym and would arrive at 10:30pm (a late start).  Thoughts began to flood my mind.  “I am a booty call that’s it.”  “I could have gone out with friends and been back in time.”  “I’m unimportant.”  The thoughts were escalating fast…  finding places inside where I believed I was worthless and filling them up with substance.  All of it fabricated from one extra set at the gym.

I could have shown him how I felt.  But I sat with my feelings on the terrace sipping tequila.  We had not agreed on a time.  He is a night owl.  He is staying over until noon tomorrow.  He is committed to his work and his health and I support both these things for him.  From the seat of 48 years old I would never want him to cut corners for me.  And bottom line - he’s not breaking any agreement we made.  It’s up to me to say what I need.  As I breathed and enjoyed the summer air I saw myself opening beyond a trigger that had previously been intractable.  I saw myself growing into the partner I want to be - for myself and for a future love.  And for this one right here.  He does not deserve the wrath of my inner disrespect for myself.

And a few weeks later we had a tranquil conversation via text about our communication that felt amazing.  He heard me and he’s stepped it up.  As have I.  That reflexive “there’s something wrong with him” narrative is my personal healing work not his.  

I believe this: Our partners aren’t here to be receptacles for our processing, our emotions, our projections.  They are catalysts for growth.  Of course there is a place to ask for what we need - but the exploration of the inner dynamics that create our emotions - those aren’t designed for our relationships in a live manner. This summer I got to see my new self in action.   I feel hopeful at what I am seeing in myself and in men when I bring respect and self-responsibility.

This should not be construed as advice

As I sit on the other side of the summer I can’t say I recommend this experiment to anyone.  And I also can’t say don’t do it.

What I can advocate for unequivocally is following desire.  Living full out all the way on the edge of (what appears to be) danger in the direction of what we want.  Acting on our desires deliberately, boldly and with care.

This is the signal to life that we are ready to grow.  That we are willing to expand beyond the current version of ourselves. And as we step boldly life meets us. Every step of the way this summer life met me and I grew.

MILF is a dynamic outside of cultural scripts. And cultural scripts attempt to cover over the ultimate uncertainty of being human by giving us roles to play. Losing the scripts plunges us headlong into the nakedness of who we are and we cannot help but be changed.

What does your face look like when you come? 

Orgasm is release.  It is a surrender, a letting go.  The safer we feel, the more we let go (without thinking about what we look like or how we sound) the more pleasure we can experience.  Orgasm is a great teacher.

And life is orgasm.  Best learned through experience not books.   Aliveness is creative.  It is an encounter with the unknown.  We have become accustomed to the non creative - the safe.  It’s everywhere - repeated ideas, images… To orgasm is to allow something to happen.

And it is only through encountering the unknown through our desire and allowing ourselves to feel it all the way that we will be able to grow into the new versions of ourselves that the world needs.

This is a journey.  It takes time and wisdom and community support.  But it is also true.  To be alive is to shed preconceived notions of what it is to be a person and be who we truly are.

If you showed this article to the January me I would have run away.

And yet here I am and I couldn't be more sure that standing for the rejected parts of the female archetypes - sexual power, magic, and freedom - are the best thing I can do for our world right now.  To inspire people with better longer orgasms and sexual freedom gets to heart of what we most need as a collective.

As this article was going to print so to speak I had a final initiation.  A weekend so wild and sweet only the goddess could have designed it.  

On Friday evening, after an electric night of tequila + conversation, B. came inside me, pulled out, and as he walked to the bathroom said, “just a sec I need to get another condom”.  Relaxing in that juicy post-sex-bed-moment I thought I had misheard him.  I hadn’t.  Within seconds he was inside me again.  And again.  And again. I counted four full condoms in the morning -  three hours of sex with only a short break for water.   When he left I was full.  Satisfied.  This energy.  This energy.  This is what the first connection of the summer re-awakened in me.  This is what set me on the quest of endless texting and drinks with very young men while my friends watched bemused.  This is the reason for the season of MILFing.  This is being fucked into aliveness.  Into my work in the world.  Into God.  What would our world be if every woman who wanted it had a B. in her bed?

And then Saturday came.  I had recently met a man who called me an angel.  He had taken me on a chaste date to the Era’s tour movie the week prior.  On Saturday evening we went on a third date.  I wore a backless slip dress with a Virgin of Guadalupe choker.  We sipped double pours of tequila and rum in a cozy corner of Soho House.  Later we went home and danced to Taylor and spent five hours in bed in the sweetest lovemaking I can remember. He was devoted to my pleasure. The delight he took in discovering my body was unlike anything I had experienced this summer. I felt deeply honoured. After my third orgasm I curled into his chest and sobbed.  

The weekend was the yin and yang of fucking and I have never had so much so beautifully all at once…

The message from life was clear.  “You are creating life.  You by virtue of your aliveness are loved.  By virtue of being alive.”

I had put myself out there for months.  I followed the thread even when it was more surprising and challenging than fulfilling.  I encountered some dark places in myself that are not directly related to younger men but that being a MILF allowed me to see more clearly. I had brought these learnings into my work and was ready to release them into the world.   This multi orgasmic weekend was life reflecting back to me my inner wholeness - the fullness of masculine and feminine intertwined in ways I could not have imagined and certainly not received even a season earlier.

MILF + Collective Change

A mental health crisis.  A climate crisis.  War.  

And here I am writing about MILF.  Yet I am finding exactly what we all need to find.

Our world reflects the state of our inner marriage. Broken inside we make the external world our target.   We attack, blame, destroy, grasp and avoid because of our inner instability and pain.  

Our inner shackles get replicated outside. 

Our planet is dying because we are not cultivating the conditions for creation.

The wounded masculine owns, objectifies and dominates without regard to impact.

The wounded feminine acquiesces, remains silent, and cultivates bitterness without peace or love.

The patriarchy in its current form is a lose-lose bargain.  A manifestation of our inner fracture and everyone pays - the dominator and the dominated.  And the result is a culture of banality and copy-cats at best and horror at worst.  Creation requires release.

Let’s go back to when my lover was late and I began to feel unimportant despite no stated meeting time between us.  My masculine had been externalized.  If I was connected to my inner masculine I would have said what I needed.  But I did not.  Instead I leaned towards blaming him for not meeting a need he knew nothing about.

The world is full of blame.  Of assumption.  Of critique of how things are compared to how they should be.  We spend so much time trying to “change the world”.  This is wildly off the mark.

The answer is not in getting people to change.  The answer is in allowing ourselves that moment on the terrace when we feel the hurt of feeling unimportant.  The answer is in allowing the feeling to flow through us so that we can then see who is on the other side of that feeling - a person with a very different perspective.  A person acting from security knowing I am there.  A person acting on his own behalf - for his business and his health.

Instead of tearing down that person what if we can see what they are offering?  And appreciate these qualities that we can also build in ourselves.

Relationship of all kinds calls us into growth.  Into creation.  And the shadow is destruction. 

Every time life disappoints us we choose whether we will create or destroy.

Do we attack? Blame? Sooth ourselves with distractions or substances?  Hide?

Or do we feel? Allow tears and anger to flow through?  Be present to ourselves and allow ourselves to open to what is new?

What does this world need?  It needs focus on creation.  Creation of something brand new.  And creation comes from the cultivation of both masculine and feminine energies.   The energy of bold action and the energy of surrendered receiving.  

What I am talking about here is not easy.  It’s the hardest thing.  Waiting for that text and feeling the unmet needs beneath the desire.  Accessing and expressing our anger self-responsibly so that our hearts can open.  Taking the risk to act boldly.  Deciding to grow through life.

If our world is going to change in this way it is going to take a fundamental change.  A waking up.  Our world desperately needs the initiatory make-love-to-the-world masculine energy that these young men are bringing to their work, to their health and to my DM’s.  Sometimes tender, sometimes forceful the young male will not let life pass him by.  He will create and he will fuck.

We need to say yes to him.  Which means we need to say yes to the strong masculine within ourselves.  To our voices and to our actions and to our emotions.  We cannot tolerate in the young man what we cannot tolerate in ourselves.  My summer as a MILF has expanded me.  I have felt more - pleasure, rage, happiness, devastation, elation, insecurity.  Dating these energetic men has called me into more and more of myself.

I have expanded my feminine capacity to receive.  To allow.  To hold.  

And I have expanded my masculine ability to act boldly and to seed creation.

This is alchemy.  Taking what we experience and allowing it to inform and expand us.

“What can I say to my mother in law” a client moaned to me.  “I can see she is in fear, she doesn’t need to be, she’s all worked up, how can I help her?”

And the answer is - feel your own fear.  What is it like to walk alongside fear?  To witness it.  What are you afraid of?  What is it like to feel the vulnerability of being one in a field of interconnected beings?  

When we connect to our own feelings others trust us.  We can only show genuine compassion and respect to others to the extent we  show it to ourselves.  People can feel us when we hold them in regard with compassion and respect.  That is the alchemy that changes the collective field.  It happens inside us.  

The patriarchy is not men.  The patriarchy is inside each of us when we castrate the masculine in ourselves and the world and demonize it in retaliation for our self-imposed captivity.  Just like I would have done if I had lashed out at my lover for his late arrival.

Because I stepped aside from my desire for the Prince and let myself want what I want and enjoy what I enjoy these men stepped forward and said “this is who I am”.

This was a whole other kind of meeting.  Devoid of conventional expectations we met nakedly.

And in that liminal space where two adults fuck and then share things that even the people closest to them don’t know I came to see men entirely differently.

They do not want to submit to the patriarchy any more than we do.  They don’t want to be subsumed by the dark feminine - her needs and her destruction.  They instinctively know this is not good for them.  They want freedom.

They flow into my DM’s in a kind of private hope.  Being themselves with me and acting out a taboo that gives them the freedom from constraints that they long for.

And yet what if that energy was welcome in the world?

What if our world said ‘yes please more please’ to their desire to express themselves as they are?

What if instead of (or in addition to) my DM’s these men felt supported and secure in their actions in the world?

What if they knew that the fullness of their energy was wanted? Needed?

What if all of us felt supported and secure enough to be ourselves?

To bring our full energy to the world?

Please, goddess, let the young men fuck us into something new.

Let us allow a new kind of creation inside ourselves that results in a new way of living together.

A way of living that allows for tenderness and cultivates safety and creation.

How do we do this?  By first welcoming every part of ourselves.  The part that wants to act.  The part that wants to fuck.  The part that fears disappointing others with our performance.  All the parts welcome inside creating a feeling of safety - first with ourselves and then a palpable feeling of safety that others are drawn to.  

Sex is a powerful catalyst for this healing. The upside down wild polarity of MILF is a battery to fuel change.  The charge so strong that we must transform as it runs through us.

This is the heart of the MILF experience.

It turns culture on its head and welcomes our bodies, hearts and minds just as they are.

It places sexual connection above both biological and cultural demands.  

This kind of freedom is essential for our collective well being.

After the summer ended I changed my dating profile to say I was looking for something long term.  I widened my filters to include men of my own age.  I slowed down and focused on writing this article.

The conversations with men my age fell flat.  And so the first date I went on after ceremony was with someone who was 31.  I judged myself.  I was supposed to be growing up, wasn’t I?  

And yet this one was different.  Our conversation was stimulating.  And he was experienced.  He had had a long term relationship with an older woman before.  I saw a glimpse of the possibility that one day, perhaps, I might not have to give up anything.  

“The world is not used to a situation where everybody wins,” my date said.  Indeed.

In the patriarchy nobody wins.

We have become accustomed to Faustian bargains in all areas of our lives.

Yet outside my window the garden feeds on itself.  Life lives.  Life wins.

May nature, and our naturalness, teach us what it means to truly win.

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