Sex and depression interview for Elle - Mental Health Awareness Month

For my weekly Elle.com sex interview, I focused on sex and depression. While it's not the place for it in the interview, I can say that I've dealt with depression and it's certainly affected my relationships, all the more so my current one because I live with my partner, and it's something I know many other women struggle with. I'm looking to interview more women (anonymously, unless you want to use your name) about their sex and dating lives, about anything and everything related to sex, whether you're partnered or single. So far I've talked to women about everything from polyamory to BDSM to sex after childbirth to sexual fantasies and affairs. You can email me at ellesexstories at gmail.com and tell me a little more about yourself and what you'd want to discuss in the interview.

Can orgasm cure depression? Mental health, masturbation and an Orgasm Quest in this week's Philadelphia City Paper sex column

Mental health is a topic that's very important to me, so I knew I wanted to write about the ways it intersects with sexuality and in this week's Philadelphia City Paper sex column, "Cheering for a mom who's on an orgasm quest", I did. It's also about the vital importance of masturbation to sanity and what masturbation can offer that partner sex can't and what the link is between sex and mental health.



If you like the column, please pass it on, and if you have suggestions for future columns, please let me know at rachelkb at gmail.com with "City Paper" in the subject line.

So far I've covered slut shaming, campus sex ed, the best time to get it on, an erotic salon, couples' sex toys, pegging, blowjobs, sex gratitude, talking dirty, porn censorship, Catholic virginity, lube, spanking, swinging and now, mental health. The beauty/struggle of a weekly column is there's a new topic every week so I have to stay on my toes and plan ahead. I also have been forced to reign in my instinct to talk to everyone who's ever so much as thought about a given subject because my word count is short short short, so I have to focus more on personal stories, and that's been a gift to my working process as well.

This week I got a happy surprise that free paper Metro picked up my spanking column. It was ironic because that is the one out of all of them I struggled the most over. Like, couldn't sleep, would wake up in a panic, put it off and off, almost scrapped it to write about a different topic. Isn't that always the way? I'm trying to keep that in mind these days when writing is a challenge, which is far more often than I'd like.

Hell Week

My apologies for not posting here, but only half-hearted ones. To sum up, I had a really bad week. This is not the place to get into it, but thank you to everyone who reached out to me. I DO appreciate it. Nothing awful happened, nothing specific, just a lot of little things, stress, etc., that all added up and it was really rough there for a few days, the kind where I was almost not able to even function. I did, but barely.

Juliana Hatfield wrote a brilliant song about her own depression called "So Alone," a subject she addresses along with some other of her troubles in her memoir When I Grow Up, and what I love is that she managed to make a catchy, beautiful pop song about such a dark subject. So I'll leave it to Juliana. A fan video, but the point is, the song is excellent.