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15 Ways Twitter helped me grow as a person
I joined Twitter just a little over 10 years ago this fall. I can’t remember whether I joined as a fad, as an alternative to LiveJournal, or as a valiant attempt to connect to those I adored. While my time on Twitter hasn’t always been consistent or notable, I have grown to rely on this medium as one of my primary means of engagement, expression, and community. Throughout my life, I’ve utilized technology to connect to people in ways that aren’t always available in real life. I mean, back in my early adolescence I played around on QLink, then AOL – and got a lot of disappointed, angry looks from my dad when I spent more than our paid time. College was more AOL, law school was MySpace and eventually LiveJournal.
But Twitter is a different animal – it has fluffy content and deep rabbit holes. It has the best (@DanRather) and worst of humanity (He Who Shall Not Be Named). It has gifs & clapbacks, sweet tenderness juxtaposed on the timeline with porn & politics. It takes a strong stomach sometimes, but when you find a community and a group of people worth following, it can be a wonderful experience.
This week I reached 2500 followers. More than 70% of whom only started following me in the past 3 years. During that same period, I’ve experienced a significant growth in my career, my relationships, my confidence, and my mental health. I think there is something to be said for at least so new people drawn into my orbit since I decided to start healing myself. I have learned from them, created a community with them, and now celebrate all the ways in which that medium, and more importantly, the people who use it, have influenced my world in such a positive way.
Here are the ways Twitter has influenced my life – in no particular order: Read the rest of this entry
Dear Hot Guy
Dear Hot Guy, (insert name here)
Thanks so much for messaging me. It’s nice to hear from you. Before we get started, let me establish a few things first just to make sure we’re on the same page…
I’m not an easy target
I’m sure that if you’re messaging me that you’ve noticed that I’m fat. Let me establish right away that fat girls are not the low hanging fruit ripe for a hot guy’s selective desire. Just because I’m fat doesn’t mean I lack standards. Your presence in my feed or in my life isn’t a gift. And I can easily sniff out when your tone is tinged with a smug “You’re lucky that I came along to save you from a life of loneliness” when I enforce my standards and set my boundaries.
I remember back in middle school, when I had braces and frizzy hair, I would get these men, these boys, these hot guys who would come on to me. Whooo, I was so flattered. They liked me? They really liked goofy looking me? It didn’t take long to figure out that not only did those guys, not like me, that they publicly made fun of me for believing that they could ever like me at all.
I grew my first layer of armor soon after.
I have since learned my own value. I don’t admit (nor ever want to admit) my own beauty. I’ll accept that others might find me attractive, but that isn’t my true value in me. I want them to see me as a woman who has the strength to withstand darkness, the wisdom to share compassion and the courage to prioritize my own self-worth more than any singular man’s attention toward me.
So, if you’re assuming I’ll be an easy lay because, you know, fatness (or age, or presumed cougar-ness or MILF or whatever). I promise, I have plenty of partners who keep me happy and I’m not salivating at the sight of your nude body. It takes more than the mere suggestion of sex with a hot guy to turn my head. That’s because…..
You are not the first; nor shall you be the last
Trust me, there will never be a drought of hot men who like thicker, curvier women. There will never be a drought of hot men who get turned on by older women. There will never a lack of hot men who love going down on a woman. There will always be hot guys with big cocks (and retailers that sell good approximations) And there will always be the hot men who secretly desire women like us but can’t get past their own self-loathing to declare it openly.
Likewise, there will never be a drought of hot men who are attracted to passion and soul. Those who respond to wit and intellect. Those who share openly with their hearts and who cherish what they see in mine. Ultimately, those men remain in my orbit, connected to a shared moment or purpose together that surpasses more than just their mere hotness.
Show me what makes you shine
I admit I’m a greedy bitch. I’m not driven by lust for a body alone. Offer me more. I want the men who have deep passions, generous souls and are pursuing their heart’s purpose. And I also want those who care deeply for others, accept their own vulnerability and take responsibility for their presence in the world, including their fears and biases. Having that kind of wholeness offered is intoxicating. To have those qualities likewise come in an aesthetically pleasing …ahem…package is downright decadent and luxurious.
But once you’ve tasted the richness of someone’s soul, you’re not as thirsty for basic, low-effort dick. It will never matter how big you are or how you plan to “treat me like a queen” until I see more of who you are. Your hotness isn’t all that you can or should offer to me. Your dick’s length or girth will never make up for a lack of personality or casual cruelty. Why would I waste my time on someone who thinks I only want his surface-level offerings? Baby, I want so much more than that.
I want to be on your mind first thing in the morning, searching for messages I left for you overnight. I want you to crave my words and to respond to my touch. I want to see that flash of opportunity in your eyes. I want to explore deep into the chasms of your desire. I want to feel the tremulous waves of anticipation and share the inevitable surrender to pleasure and joy. I want to see the real you.
Allow yourself to be more than just another hot guy in my life. Supply more than lustful promises for my satisfaction. Offer more than just your dick. Surely, we both deserve better than that. Allow yourself to actually shine from within, beyond the glossy surface you’ve been told that women want. Worship at the font of authenticity and humble yourself before your own depths. I crave connection to the wholeness and am waiting to see you trust yourself enough to let it shine.
Only then will I truly know how attractive you really are.
SharpSweetBella Cheat Sheet
This is what was originally meant to be in the Essential Bella Rosa page and probably will still make it there. But I thought I would add a cheat sheet to names, places, and concepts that I talk about frequently here:
Who’s BellaRosa?
I actually went through and updated some of my booking info which tells more about me as a professional educator, but you can probably get a good sense of who I am from the blog posts themselves.
But on a more personal level, I am:
- almost 40
- half Mexican/half Scottish -Irish? (who knows) – I pass for white, but identify more with my Mexican family
- bisexual+ (I am attracted to a wide variety of genders and gender expressions)
- Lawyer – although working in a more social work setting
- Spiritual seeker – and quite serious about it
- Geek: Browncoat, Whovian, Trekkie, SPNFamily, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., So Say We All (not in that order)
- Switchy edge player: Little Princess / Goddess
- Raised Catholic – many rituals still matter deeply to me, but the doctrine no longer fits me
- Homegrown in Colorado, daughter of Pride City
- Sagittarian
As for the name, Bella Rosa, it is a name that was given to me by one of my first poly husbands. I keep it to honor my roots even if the relationship has reached its end.
SharpSweetBella is an older name – Husband once wrote a poem for me where he called me his Jocasta, sharp and sweet. So when I resurrected from the ashes of being outed and I was searching for a new identity, I loved that image of sharp & sweet, apt descriptors who I am as a woman. So I added Bella to it and the rest is what you see here.
Who’s Who
My two leather brothers on the far ends of the photo. Warrior is 2nd on the left. The other two men are my extended leather family
There’s honestly a lot of people in my life who really matter to me, but few of them that I’ll mention publicly because they have become important enough to be part of my life story. Here is a smattering of some of the current ones I might mention by name:
- Husband: You can find the Origin Story here – Married for 15 years, together for 18 years. Comic book writer (title forthcoming), father of my two teenage sons. Funniest impromptu lyricist I know.
- Warrior: My spiritual spouse. We don’t live together, but have always felt destined in our love for each other. Deep and passionate, we are like a tidal wave of fire when together.
- Blush: Local female partner who has primary relationships with two men and a kid of her own. We share a love of Kushiel’s Legacy, witchy spiritual things and lounging naked in the hot springs together in the fall.
- Navy Boy: Old lover from college that I fell in love with despite our No-Strings-Attached agreement. He went off to the Navy and couldn’t avoid me for long and is now pursuing his dreams of finishing his degree so he can travel the world helping people.
- The Priest: One of my oldest and most loyal of LiveJournal friends (turned long distance lover). He and I share a Catholic background that we’ve integrated into our entire dynamic that ranges from taboo lust to sharing Disney World geekery. But the most prominent dynamic we have is as Goddess and Priest. He guards my spiritual temple and helps me keep my boundaries as I grow in my own power.
- Leather Family: I could probably put a lot of the Denver Queer Leather community in this category, but when I mention it here I usually mean my two (now three) primary gay leather brothers, the team behind Exile Fetish Ball (which I helped with for a time). We’ve been through some shit together and through it all they have taken care of me, put their necks on the line for me and given me an abundance of support. And we have our arguments and have had a few major conflicts that have required us to hold each other accountable. But love is love and these men are my brothers no matter what.
- Pretty Boy: A local subby guy I’ve played with a few times who is moving away just as I am starting to get comfortable with my role as a Dominant.
- Trooper: a new potential partner from home. In all fairness, I was friends with his wife first. But through that connection I got to know him and find all the areas of commonality we share. A new exploration. I have no idea where it will go, but feeling surges of NRE again for the first time.
- Druid: Not a real person, but more of an archetypal figure from my life, from my earliest and oldest soul memories. It’s an image that has been a guide for me over the past several years. I hope someday to find a person that fits this influential type of energy in my life.
Most of the time I am not specific about who I’m talking about because I exist to offer the lesson from my exploits, not the gory and potentially invasive details. Unless I have consent from someone to discuss our intimacies here, I will only vaguely allude to or loosely describe a situation, especially the newer it is. And sadly, while I can be a flirt, I don’t often have availability or energy for active dating, so I don’t have many salacious stories to share.
Living at the Crossroads
A lot of who I am and what I discuss in this blog is a personal perspective of living at the crossroads of so many identities, communities and experiences. When I can be, I try to be clear about who I am, but more often than not, I’m floating midway between a ton of different identities, fluid and free. And following me, reading me and understanding me relies on a certain acceptance of the empty spanse between the exhale and inhale. The thrill of exploration that pushes past the fears of stepping past our comfort zone, where nothing is just black or white but is arrayed in a technicolor range of possibility.
I am not comfortable with doling out blind advice only because each dynamic is unique and powerful and I will not presume to know more about your life and experience than you.
All I can do is share where I’ve been, what I’ve seen, what I’ve noticed in myself and the lessons I’ve drawn from those experiences. I don’t expect everyone to resonate with that, and that’s perfectly fine.
Thank you for reading. I’m so very grateful!
For those who want to read about the adventures of a HotWife check out Juliet’s Busy Weekend at:
Check out Isabelle’s post about Sex Blogging Liberation
BellaRosa’s Spring Serenade
I have to be able to capture this feeling. Elation. Joy. Gratitude. Pleasure. Freedom. Desire. Cosmic Awareness.
It’s been so long, friends since I last felt this joyful in myself. Confident and self-assured. Devoid of doubt for my purpose or of my voice. Absent are the rules that once restricted me. My body is empty of the worry that always consumes it and holds it hostage. My mind is free of the fear that accompanies my word. My heart so strong and self-possessed.
See, a few days ago, something broke open from within. I liken it to a hatched egg, but it was more like breaking free of a cocoon after nearly 10 years. It was a catharsis that I was convinced would never come.
February 2006 was a very different time for me and a very different version of me. A foolish and overwhelmed version of me. I always thought that the events of that year were designed to take me down a peg or two. Indeed, I had grown too full of myself and didn’t have the maturity to really see the 10 steps ahead that I needed to, so very caught up in the everyday poly drama, the attention, the successes.
But now I look back on that time in my life as resetting my path, resetting my calling, breaking down the towers that I had built for myself because they were built on top of shifting sands. Everything had to crash down for me to start over again.
Starting over sucks.
An inelegant and crass way to sum up the otherwise beautiful process of transformation. But as you go through it, the pain, the doubt, the impatience all wears you down until you don’t think there’s any “you” left at all. It breaks apart your identity to its smallest parts, examining it, discarding the corrupted and hurt bits.
The most painful part is letting go of the expectations you once had for yourself, the image you once had of yourself. We become attached to that image, not because it’s great or even accurate, but because it’s safe. That image we hold of ourselves is safe and familiar. And most of all it’s easy. It’s so damn easy in fact that we never think about changing it until something, like life, threatens to take away that part of our identity.
These crises of identity can happen for any reason and at any time. And while I paid a lot of lip service to the need for us to periodically confront these facets of self. I likened it to the Tower from Tarot. You spend your life building up this tower of self, the bricks and materials made of the knowledge, wisdom, beliefs and memories we had accumulated during our lifetime. This tower houses not just us, but everything that makes us special, unique and different. But then an event, a person, a cascade effect of choices comes in and knocks it all down, like a wrecking ball. Devastation and despair ensues. Chaos reigns. To the point that when it comes up in a reading, I’ve seen experienced tarot readers get scared.
But I had always thought that if I was proactive and took the opportunity to examine the bricks and tear apart my own tower I could avoid the headache and the mess that would have otherwise caught me off guard. I was going to be smarter than everyone else!
Until it happened to me. It wasn’t just being drugged, being outed, losing my job, or gaining a lot of weight. It was the impact on my family. It was the depression. It was the heartache and doubt. I thought life couldn’t get any lower. But then my spiritual husband and I broke apart for reasons that seemed important at the time but don’t make any sense to me now. But the worst of it started 4 years ago when my oldest son ran away. The events of that year, 2012, changed my life and broke me down even further than I thought I could be. If I had cracked, broken but mostly whole bricks before, I had dust falling through my hands afterward.
And there was no part of my identity that didn’t have to be rebuilt. Yes, I was still polyamorous, but it was a different poly that I had started with. Yes, I was still a mother, but what kind of mother would I be now? No, I was no longer Catholic, but what did my sense of faith look like now?
The question when it all falls apart, is what will I build in its place? And ordinarily I would turn to some sense of higher consciousness to access the answers I needed, but not this time. That was the brick that had been shattered and shamed, blamed and broken beyond all others. No guidance. No light. No purpose. Nothing.
I cocooned myself away from the world. Only minimally engaging with the people I like or admire.
Until Now
Here I am, free once again. Free from a few of the beliefs that inhabited the stones and bricks of my tower. Values like sacrifice at all costs. Habits like pernicious negativity. Beliefs like being replaceable in people’s lives. So much has changed. And yet it feels entirely authentic and natural.
I can’t get over the feeling that the universe conspired this break down to reveal the wise, wild, vibrant woman bursting to come forth. No longer the girl mourning the loss of her youth, but the wholly invested queen ready to rule her life. I am discovering the dominant side of my switchiness. I am embracing the duality of my attractions to women and men. I know my limits but stretch my wings to try to overcome them. I am savoring the increase in attention from younger men.I am learning more about how to relax and just be. I love the grey in my hair, the wrinkles emerging under my eyes. I can feel the world in its wholeness again.
I feel renewed.
Welcome to Spring. My spring.
The Awakened Shall Trust
This morning I participated in an online “oneness” meditation with hundreds of other people from around the country. While others had this immense feeling of well, oneness, and awakening, I felt something that has been virtually inaccessible to me for the past several years: my own light. I get glimpses of it from time to time, it shines through brightly only to fade silently into the twilight of my own fears and anxieties. While I have been a healer to others over the years, able to see the invisible energy centers twirling and dancing within, I’ve never been able to see my own. Until the meditation today.
Today I sat in the silence of my own truth and was able to see why I’ve grown so distant from myself, why it has been so hard for me to trust…not just others, but in particular myself and my own skills. Here is what I saw: Read the rest of this entry
A Blessing for 2012
I know some will panic about this year. Not me. Not today.
Today I am building miracles.
I am creating joy.
I am savoring the goodness.
Today I am expressing the calm.
I am loosing the wild woman.
I am approving the chaos.
Today I am mourning the silence.
I am praising the release.
I am cherishing the gratitude.
Today I am spending my energy on the blessings yet to come. I am walking in gratitude and joy for the years spent in Love. I am honoring the old and renewing my faith in the new I am proud and whole. Mighty and assured. I am grateful for all that has been and all that is still yet to come. I am open and unafraid of receiving the blessings of the future for I know I am protected. I am alive. Today I am free to live in the truth and beauty of bliss. I live with integrity as I challenge my old beliefs. I am growing and becoming wiser with each step I take.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your thoughts and commentary. I look forward to spending this new year with you!
The Real Pueblo Pride
..Going home was a huge thing for me. And even though I’ve been struggling with my sexuality for the past few weeks/months/years, it was a weekend that held significance and gravity for me.
Some people have their fun making jokes of how small the town is (it’s really not) and how they think it’s not racially diverse (48% of Pueblo is Hispanic). It is also overwhelmingly Democratic and so the town cares about issues like gay rights, worker’s rights and equality, but like most cities has struggled to enact policies and laws that truly reflect these values and predictably the rest of its citizens still have a lot of catching up to do in their interpersonal dealings.
It is because of those values that I felt I needed to go home and attend Pride. The parade wasn’t long. Only 4 blocks. It wasn’t well attended…most of the people who want to be seen supporting gay pride were in the parade itself. But the fact that there was a pride parade at all, an afternoon festival, performances and an organization behind it all is remarkable in and of itself. Walking down the street in front of the building where my husband proposed to me, nearby my old workplace and close to my friends and family was significant. So much history. So much of myself there. Read the rest of this entry
Solution: Reconstruct the Reality
A few nights ago I wrote about 7 arousing images and what about them bothered me. Because I was writing it in the early AM, I sort of spiraled onto a tangent. So, I’m going to edit that post and get to the point I had really wanted to make. The old post is in blue. New comments in black.
There’s something that happens to a woman after a certain age. She has to shed her skin and become a new woman. Reinvent herself. So many think that reinventing should mean “re-claiming”. I did. That’s what I was trying to do for such a long time. I was trying to reclaim myself. Reclaim the sexuality that I had not just flaunted but frankly earned through all those years. But instead, I am trying to keep the door open a redesign, a reinvention. But in order to do that I have to lose that part of myself. I have to shed that skin.
I really do. For the longest time my identity was of this sexually confident woman, but yet someone who wasn’t entirely secure with that confidence (oxymoron anyone?) I questioned it more often than not, allowing phrases like “promiscuity equals low self-esteem” to permeate my consciousness. The first big change to my sexual identity happened when my husband and I decided to become poly. The second big change happened after I was outed. And here were are in the third wave of change. Change isn’t scary, it isn’t bad. However, what is scary is to “change” only to realize you’re exactly where you once were…and it’s uncomfortable and tight and massively unhelpful. Read the rest of this entry
Return
I made a vow when I started this blog that I wouldn’t discuss my personal life here very often. Or at least if I did, it wouldn’t be in grand amounts of detail. I’ve been outed before. It’s not fun. And some of the people I’m involved with would also consider it, not quite so fun to be outed.
But one thing this past weekend is honestly too big to hold back on. Here I am three years after the fact, facing a return to my spiritual husband. It’s terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. We broke up two years ago…but in my mind it was really three. It was three years ago our relationship started to seriously deteriorate. As that was happening, I was adding two new relationships to my life: one had been in the wings for quite some time and the other was accelerated on a timeline I couldn’t foresee. And my spiritual husband and I both were caught up in the waves of the latter. Crashing, crushing waves that I had not encountered with anyone other than this spiritual husband. Initially he was supportive of all those relationships, but then the relationships (both local) were quickly overshadowing what he and I held together. There were a lot of other factors at play, not the least of which was our own pride and resentment brewing under the surface. But the events of July 2008 forever changed the rules of the game and set us on a path that only served to push us away from each other.
And the wedge of resentment was so very strong. Walls went up quicker than either of us had the power to eliminate (and we are both quite skilled at it). For the first time in a long time, when we talked we didn’t listen because we both insisted that the other wasn’t hearing us. So we just talked louder. And more forcefully. And louder still.
Until we could hear nothing but the hollow echo of our own emptiness.
I may never fully comprehend what happened back then. I know that I went through a massive emotional and spiritual reboot. And I know that I couldn’t have done that if he and I had still been together. Even as things shifted and changed, we were holding true to these perverse assumptions we had about each other. You know the ones, the ones where the “other” is actually the villain. This is not what we believed in. And yet it happened.
It happened because it needed to happen. I’m a big believer in “everything has a purpose” and this was no different. Both of us have changed significantly over the years, without much involvement from the other party at least. So when he announced he and his kids and girlfriend would be coming to town, I had to rely pretty extensively on what I’ve developed in myself over the past three years. I was nervous and terrified and radically honest with myself about what I could handle and what I couldn’t.
…you know how people tell you emphatically to never, ever get back together with your ex?
Yeah, I ignored that advice and I’m glad I did.
Because the part where we got to talk without kids, without responsibilities weighing us down was amazing. It was honest and sincere. We were both holding a little back, but we recognized it for what it was and moved onward with an initial amount of trust.
And when we kissed, the cosmic forces seem to shine their approval. Was it really a break-up if we both still loved each other that immensely? Was it really a break if we both had hurt each other that much? All I know is in those magic hours under moonlight and stars, we remembered who we really are together. All the immense pleasures and joys we bring to each other’s lives and how deeply and immediately we feel that connection.
I don’t have words for what we are and I’m reluctant to name any, particularly at this stage. All I know is that I felt like a part of my soul snapped back into place and I feel inspired and alive again. We will have to create new images, new ideas to truly describe where we are now and who we are to each other.
… but Love fits. Always has and no matter what we endure alone or apart it always will.
A Loose Woman Speaks
A Loose Woman Speaks
You k
now me. You always find me at the crossroads. Smoldering sweetness. Transient memory. Dark benevolence.
I have burned with you in the fires; I have resurrected you from the despair. I’ve held your hand in the depths of your darkness. I’ve given you light to lift you. I’ve been here each time you’ve prayed out loud or cried silently.
Sweet and bold. Powerful and quiet. I will never leave you, my Love.
Blissful and melancholy. Radiant and cursed. Sensual and familiar. Rough and blessed. Vibrant and smooth. I embrace your duality and all the space in between.
Strike at the soul and be consumed within these flames.
