The holidays impact everyone differently: Some people go into a manic holiday cheer, others wander aimlessly through the swathes of people contemplating their own demise through pounds of festive treats and spiced booze. Personally, I vacillate but I see it all in my friends and my play partners and people tend to be very forthcoming with their feelings during the holidays. It’s interesting what people will tell you and how that makes you think about yourself.

Recently someone was talking to me about the shame involved in their own kink and it made me think about how ashamed and alone I felt when I was first officially starting out in kink- No one in my friends circle understood me and I ended up being an outcast because I was kinky. There are a lot of complicated things that led up to that being factually true but let’s just say that and leave it at that.

I had never felt like an outcast or a reject before but I did then and some part of me still does, it’s hard to shake. It impacts you pretty deeply when people reject or abandon you for some reason and when it’s because you’re different, it stings. Because of this, whenever someone tells me they fear being rejected I want to tell them they won’t be by me, that they aren’t alone. If someone does reject them it’s not about them but the hang ups of whoever is rejecting them and that it doesn’t matter. Ultimately it doesn’t, really. If I hadn’t been rejected I may not have had the courage to follow my dreams from where I was, I needed to get out of there and being rejected was the only way I was going to leave.

Consider this my version of “It gets better.” (It really does get better.) If you feel alone, reach out. If you don’t know how to deal with your kink or how to talk to your partner/family about it and you’re scared of how they’ll react, send me an email. There’s no point in going through something alone.