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Michele Christensen 0:00

And I wanted to be that woman. And he asked me as we were talking about. He's like, "Does she have small children with her, Michele?" rhetorically. And I was like, "You know, she doesn't!" Never, not ever, just any woman I look at and sort of envy or want to be on the airplane, never does she have small children in tow

Michele Christensen 0:22 

Hi, welcome to Sex.Love.Power. I'm your host, Michele Lisenbury Christensen. This podcast is where I convene in the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they really want in bed and in light. Together, we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease, pleasure and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here.  Welcome to part two of Intimate Getaways. In this episode, we're going to talk about the nuts and bolts of what it takes to create adventures with your partner. In the last episode, we really looked at what Kurt and I have done together and why it's so important for us, what it's given us, and all of the inputs that it takes for us and for you to create these kinds of big deal adventures together. And I promised in that episode that this time, I'm going to go into how it's done, the real nuts and bolts, the "How To". So today we're going to cover the steps of creating, laying the groundwork for this kind of trip, they're going to go into the during kind of part, what it takes to manage resources on the trip, because I've learned a lot about that. That was pretty groundbreaking for me and I think maybe new for some of you. Then we'll look at kind of backup in time a little bit and look at the on the way out the door kind of preparation, how we set up and how we set out. And what we learned this time from leaving at a different day of the week and a different time of day than we're used to leaving and how beneficial that was. And finally, we'll talk about reentry and recovery, how we get back from a trip and wind up feeling better than before we left instead of coming home and feeling like man, I need a vacation after my vacation. Because the way we get back is so rough, because I've certainly done it both ways. And I want to help you learn as I'm learning little by slow to have these adventures in a way that leaves our tanks full. So let's dive in. First of all, there are three core steps that are part of creating something like this. The first is intentionality. The second is resources. And the third is logistics. So first, let's look at the intent. This trip was absolutely my vision. I wanted it and Kurt was a little bit reluctant, he was reluctant to ask his colleagues who would need to pick up slack for him for two weeks off in the middle of summer and in the ramp up of a project. And we both had some anxiety about traveling and COVID. You know, "Is this ridiculous?" And if one of us contract the Delta variant while we're out there, how embarrassing will that be? You know, how much will we feel foolish for having taken the risk of traveling, it's certainly different than staying home. It felt like an intelligent risk, it felt like something that we could mitigate with good hygiene and masking. But certainly there are lots of people who wouldn't do it. And fingers could be pointed if we did contract COVID through this process, and that would be too bad. But we also kind of decided that, you know, life was really what's valuable for us, and that we could minimize the chances of getting COVID. And we could maximize the aliveness coursing through us. And that was a net benefit. So when you go to set out intentionally to create a trip like this, you want to ask a couple of core questions. "Why are we doing this? What is it that I want to get out of it? What is it that my partner wants to get out of it? What do we most need right now?" And so for us, we needed a little bit of adventure, kind of some new horizons. But we also needed a whole lot of relaxation together. We needed to change a pace, we needed a different place than our house where we've spent so much time in the last 18 months. And I really had a craving for both the ocean

Michele Christensen 4:43  

and- I'll just boil it down to the word cobblestones. I wanted old. And you know, we had traveled fairly recently as a family to Hawaii. And that is a magical place for all of us. But Hawaii is not very much about the built environment. And the history of Hawaii is old and beautiful. And we attend to that when we're there. And it's wonderful to explore the culture, but it's different than places where we can go and see what was built and look at lots of different civilizations, you know, Croatia is a huge crossroads. And so there was something to the history and the architecture and the layers and Greek and Roman ruins and Kurt and I spent time going to an archaeological site and learning about prehistoric, like, long, long, long span of human existence. So some of those pieces were important to us. You know, there was an intellectual stimulation that we were seeking, as well as the emotional, romantic thing, you know. Connection with each other, often for us comes through connection with something that sparks our imaginations, and then beauty, you know, something that sparks our souls through music. There's a strong acapella tradition in Croatia. And we were excited to learn about that, and dance, and a culinary traditions, and agricultural traditions, all of that was fascinating to us. So that's what we were looking for. And you might be looking for real simplicity. And something like a an all inclusive resort or cruise is kind on the other end of the spectrum, you know, from the independent travel that I love, and that may really turn the two of you on just like effortless, we don't have to raise a finger. And sumptuous food and beverage and entertainment are right at our fingertips. And we just follow along with the program that's available. So any and all of the above are totally cool, you just want to know, because if one of you is headed for a more bespoke adventure, like ours, and the other is headed for something like a cruise, you need to get onto the same page to be able to have a great trip together. So melding some of what each of you wants, and finding the kind of place to go, and the duration of trip. And the caliber of accommodations that meets each of your needs and matches your budget is going to be key. Now maybe when, "I say just let the grandparents take the kids," that's not an option for you. And I know that it's a huge privilege and sort of a miracle in our lives that we have one set of parents, we don't have two sets of parents, and a lot of people have no sets of parents who are in the place in their lives old, enough to be retired and young enough to be energetic and on the same wavelength with us enough to have us feel comfortable with them taking our kids for a week or longer. So if you're not in that place, don't despair, a lot of people just throw up their hands and go, "Yeah, we can't do that. Because we don't have what you have" o they think, "Oh, it'd be prohibitively expensive to pay someone to take care of our kids while we went somewhere else," or they think "I could never impose upon other parents to include our kids in their family while we went away." But I want to invite you to get a little bit creative, because the thing is, if any part of you craves the kind of adventure that we're talking about here, then it may be because you're meant to have it. I think of desires as marching orders that the divine writes on our hearts, because it's for the highest and best good of everyone. And so you don't really know what could be possible for your child, for their friend and their friend's family, for maybe one of your babysitters or other community resources, if you were to start to reach out and find a way to work it out. So I've coached a lot of clients through this and different solutions that people have come up with included paying someone to come and stay at their house who was one of their regular sitters, or someone in the community that they trust as a as a house sitter, or pet sitter, somebody who has a reasonable relationship with their kids and who they thought they could, you know, have their kids do well with, having kids go to the families of their friends. So my kids have both been invited on trips with other families. And so getting some of those trips to coincide with each other, like for instance, your kids spring break. If both of your kids went this spring break with their best friend, then no one family is taking on multiple kids of yours. And next spring break, you could take those kids in reciprocity, and give those families that same kind of pause. So there are ways to work it out. And it's been done. And once you start to just set the ball in motion, it may not come to fruition this year, or next year, but eventually it can and you start to bring about changes in your community and in your connections and in your kids as well as yourselves just by reaching out and opening the door to those possibilities. So that brings us to the second piece resources. So before you go to plan a trip, you need to look at what can we afford to spend, and you need to look at what it's going to cost to not be here for your life. You know, if you have paid vacation, or you've got reserves to kind of handle being away from your business. You know, I had to arrange clients in such a way that I could meet their needs in August and September and meet my commitment to them while taking two weeks off. I don't usually do that in any given month. Taking one week off can work pretty well without my clients really missing a beat, but two weeks is, is significant and, and was for each of my client relationships. So you need to look at those pieces. If you have children or pets, there is a cost to getting them care while you're gone. There's gear, you know, we each needed some new clothing pieces, some shoes. I do a lot of packing of my food, especially for the airplane. But also during the day in Croatia, I eat in a very healthy and specific way. And so a lot of times, it's the easiest way to make sure that I get what I need is to pack my lunch, you know, to go out on a boat, for instance, or out for the day, I'll just have my lunch with me. So I needed some new gear for that a cooler bag from Hydroflask was one of my favorite purchases, and some little silicone drop-flat bowls, were super helpful for that kind of packing up lunch, you know a salad size one and a veggie size one and a smaller one that I would use like for oats in the morning and that kind of thing. So when I look at all the gear that you need, and then of course, all the usual travel planning, you know, plane tickets and ground transportation tours, souvenirs, gifts, and just looking at what kinds of things are you going to want to spend. And so we had money in our financial plan for things like I bought several pairs of shoes, which I always love to do when I'm in Europe, because they make such good shoes there. And at 48, I love a shoe that's comfortable and supportive of my arches as well as being cute. And so if you get shoes from Italy, or Germany, or Switzerland, you can get high quality shoes, and they're not inexpensive, but compared to what it would take to get that caliber of shoe here, a lot of times they are a better deal. But also designs that feel a little novel for me not exactly what they have at my local shoe store. So that's a really fun thing to plan for. And just, you know, are you going to want to do big days out? We went out on a boat one day, we didn't do a ton of that sort of thing on this trip. But for

Michele Christensen 12:24 

But for the Hawaii trip, we had set aside a fair amount for excursions. And because of COVID, we weren't doing a whole lot. And so then we were able to go on a helicopter tour, which is, you know, feels sort of extravagant, like something we wouldn't have necessarily done in the past for all four of us. But we had it because we put it in the plan. And so then it wasn't just close your eyes and plug your nose and put it on a credit card and figure out how to pay for it later. It was really in our plan, we had the cash. And so we were able to just do it, it was real peace of mind. And that's one of the things that I want for you. And that I want to be modeling and and showing you how to do is like if you plan for these things, and prioritize you know, from date night people will tell me, "Oh my gosh, how do you afford to pay that much for child care," and especially when our kids were littler or and we had to have like a really good grown up person to take care of two little kids, four or five hours every week that wasn't inexpensive. But it was so valuable that we would rearrange other priorities to make sure that we had the resources for that. So same goes for a bigger trip like this, you just need to put it into your priorities. Everybody's spending money, right? And so you know, maybe it's less somewhere else, so that you've got what you need in order to be able to make something like this happen, even if that means hiring help to get away, the two of you together so that your kids are in a good place. We were blessed to be able to send our kids to my parents for those two weeks. That was what they wanted. My parents had asked if the kids could come up. And that was really, really the impetus for us going right when we did was like, "Oh, we've got this window, when we know the kids are going to be in a good place." And we wanted to take advantage of it. So those are some of the resources that it takes to get going. Then let's look at logistics. So setting up the logistics of getting away from your kids, of course, you want to have your kids be mentally prepared for the time apart. And your kids are going to need you know, in our case our kids traveled, too. So we had to get them packed and out the door. Or it might mean that your kids are going to be home with somebody else. And I think a lot of times, and I know that when I've gone away with my girlfriends, a lot of times we sort of over prepare for somebody else, like our parents or our spouse to single handedly care for our kids. And we want to make things easy for them. And we want to show our appreciation and we don't want to take for granted that they're going to just scramble and cover everything. So we try to have things prepared, like have plenty of groceries and have food in the freezer or you know plans for everybody and all the information. But I think it's useful to look at like where is there possibly overkill in that? Where are you infantilizing other people and over functioning yourself and stressing yourself out by overdoing some of what, if the tables were turned and you were responsible, you would be perfectly happy to do, like planning activities, or planning and preparing meals, or getting groceries. So just look for, you know, what's the humane, balanced level of setup that's needed. But in general, in these three steps, intentionality, resources and logistics, I'm just inviting you to recognize that you can start preparing a couple months in advance. And if you do that, you can get all the way from the concept of getting away to the reality of handing your kids off to somebody else, or your pets or whatever you need to hand off (or just your house plants), and walking out the door together. So let's turn now to mapping the resources on the trip. So for us, this was about having that spending plan that I described, and then being mindful each day. And I know that for some people, that sounds like a real buzzkill to be conscious of your spending. But it was so affirming for me just to be mindful each day. For one day, we were working with Croatian cash, I didn't want to mess around a whole lot with ATMs. And I knew that a lot of places only wanted to take cash. So I ordered it from Wells Fargo before we left, and they actually fedexed me a bunch of Croatian cash. And so we were able to walk out the door with Croatian cash. And we had kind of a funny moment, when we first got there, our Airbnb set us up with a driver, who turned out to be her ex husband, they're on very good terms. And so I went and paid him what she had told me by email, it was gonna be 35 euros. And so I took some of those Croatian kuna, they're called, and gave him 35 of them. I was fresh off the plane and kind of jet lagged. And he was like, "Oh, hmm" you know, kind of looked at me funny. And I was like, Is that alright, and I know, I gave him more, you know, maybe 40 or 50, or something, I tipped him, but it was in the Croatian currency, which is a fraction of the value of a, of a euro, you know, it's more like eight to one or something to euros. So I was like, "I'm so sorry," it was funny and embarrassing. But we got that straightened out. And most things then after that were paid for in their currency, not in euros. So every morning, we would start out with a certain amount of cash. And then at the end of the day, we would have our receipts and know what we had spent, and most places gave us receipts. But sometimes it'd be like, this money, we didn't account for everything that was missing. But at least we knew on a daily basis where the money had gone. And so by doing that, every day, all the way through, we sort of had a finger on where we were and what we could spend. You know, "Oh, can we go out to a splurge-y dinner? Or can we go on this boat ride? You know, we we wound up having a tour in Split through Diocletian's palace. And it was an 8am tour and our guide, let us know like, "Yeah, a lot of times people don't sign up for this one." We were the only people on the tour. So we got this private tour, which we had paid for on Airbnb, we only pay like 20-some dollars a piece for it. So we went and we told him we were going to do this. We booked it again for the next day so that we could tip him that much again, because it was such a great tour. And we so appreciated having that privacy. And he gave us so much time and so much insight was amazing. So just having a finger on that meant that we had peace of mind all the way through. And when we got home, we didn't have this sort of financial hangover. And we're not going to have to tighten our belts for the next couple of months to pay off a credit card bill that happened because we were unconscious of our spending on the trip. So that's something that I see a lot of people do is either live in deprivation, or live in indulgence. And what I'm advocating for here is living in mindfulness so that you know what you have, and you're appreciative of it, and you spend that- no more, no less. And we came home, we have just a couple hundred dollars left, you know from our spending plan, and the only thing left to do is thank our pet sitters. So then we'll, can kinda put that spending plan to bed and start looking at what our next trip will be and what resources we'll need for that. So that kind of mindfulness is not something you have to do, especially if you can spend however you want on your trip and not get into debt. But for a lot of people, you know, resources might be abundant, but finite, just like ours. And it's really helpful to be awake around it. And that really reduces conflict between the two of you. If somebody wants to buy something or go do something the other one can know like, "Yep, we've got it to do that and that'll be fine." We bought Kurt a really beautiful Italian linen shirt. And then another time there was this beautiful little dress that Kurt that was pretty sexy. And so we started looking for you know that one or something better and and found one so like little white backless, beautiful thing that I wouldn't normally buy necessarily, but that was super fun to buy and wear there and I'll have fun with it and other beachy places in the future. So, having that kind of thing as part of your spending plan is really fun and fun to kind of anticipate. You know, half the joy of, of travel is looking forward to things. And so looking forward to what you're going to get and bring home. We carried home just a little bit of wine and olive oil and that sort of thing as gifts. But you know, liquids encased in glass are really heavy and not that much fun to carry. And so you just want to think about, like, how much are we going to deal with that. We've also bought things like dishes and woodwork, and had them shipped back. So, just wanna have a plan for those things. Other things that you might want to plan into your spending plan include special experiences, and adventures, ground transportation, giving, whether that's through tipping people, or you know, in Croatia, we didn't run into a lot of financial need. But certainly when we go to Mexico, we look for places where we can take school supplies, a lot of times batteries, diapers, you know, they're things that are really expensive or, and are hard to get somewhere. And if you can pack some of those into your luggage and take them with you. It's tremendously valuable for people there. So you want to have that be part of your plan of like, "How will we leave this place and these people better than we found them?" And of course, planning for tipping. You know, I think that through travel, one of the things I've come to recognize and that I teach people at my retreats is our beautiful lives are on the backs of other people, and in particular on the backs of women. And in service industries, men often have those visible roles, like delivering luggage, or driving vehicles, and so they get tipped a lot. Women's labor is more likely to be in the kitchens or cleaning a lot of behind the scenes and a lot of places where they don't wind up getting tips. So I make sure that hotel nights always involve a thank you note and -a foldy currency thank you note, that kind of thank you note you can spend- for housekeepers, they're almost always women, and they've make our lives and our travel beautiful and clean and safe and healthy. And so it's really a beautiful, full circle way to be truly connected, you know, to travel in a way that's mindful and not blind-ful to plan in that giving. Plan it financially, plan it logistically so that you've got the cash to tip with, and then give yourself the time to be able to do that, as you're checking out, you know, making sure that you remember to leave that on the nightstand, that sort of thing. And then, you know, dealing with foreign currencies is a little bit of a mindfulness thing. I never did kind of get it down the math, in my mind, whether it was jetlag, or just that I was relaxed, this time that the math didn't work, but I just use my phone and figure it out. And then you want to think about which card you're using. If you're using plastic for any of your transactions, you want to know whether there's going to be a foreign currency free on that or not. And, you know, just be mindful and intelligent about that. And then one of the things that we do at the end of each trip is just a little debrief, you know, like you do at the end of a project at work, "What did we learn? And what do we want to take forward into next time? What do we want to celebrate?" and just kind of looking at what was best about the trip, what could have been even better, and who we're becoming through this process. So that's that piece about managing resources and doing all of this in a mindful way. Now let's look at how we set up and set out. So on this trip, we had made the plans for our kids to go to Alaska, and they were coming off the back of Mira having been away at camp. My daughter had gone to a sleepaway camp and she was coming home on Saturday. So we didn't want her to leave Saturday, or even Sunday, right away having been away from us for a week already. So we made the plans for them to go to Alaska on Monday. And that meant we couldn't leave until Monday or later. And the way that it worked out the kids left at like 3pm and Kurt and I left at about six. So we just all went to the airport together. It was wonderful to be able to leave for the airport at noon ish and have that morning. Our house was just in so much better shape when we left and we were so much calmer and more relaxed than if it had been one of those early morning flights and, backing up from there, we were mostly ready to go by Friday. And so the weekend, which went through midday Monday, really felt like a three day weekend at home, relaxed. It was like vacation had already started. But we were also able to still keep getting ready and, true confessions, man, I have been just an adrenaline junkie, you know, up late packing and tearing my hair out and "Oh, I forgot something," running back inside for something that should have been in my suitcase days ago-

Michele Christensen 25:08  

The last minute kind of thing and I got to experience myself with this Monday departure as calm, cool and collected. And I've always had this, I used to talk to my therapist about this years ago, when Cooper was little, like, there's this woman on the plane, you know, I have this archetype of this woman on the plane. And she's kind of got it together. She looks lovely. She's got traveling clothes, but there's an elegance to them. And she's got a bag with her that has everything she needs in it, she's got a bottle of water, and, you know, some lip balm, and a book, maybe her Kindle or iPad, and she's just taking good care of herself. And I wanted to be that woman. And he asked me as we were talking about. He's like, "Does she have small children with her, Michele?" rhetorically. And I was like, "You know, she doesn't!" Never, not ever, just any woman I look at and sort of envy or want to be on the airplane, never does she have small children in tow. So he was really kind of teasing me and saying, like, "Maybe you're not in the chapter where you're going to be that woman because of putting so much energy right now into making sure your kids are ready for the flight." But I think it's a good fight to fight to make sure that we're taking as good care of ourselves as we are of our children. I remember when the kids were little, I thought of it, if we went on a flight together, it was like I had to buy time, 15 minutes at a time. So this little game is gonna get us 15 minutes, this coloring project is the next 15 minutes, and I had to have one of those, I'm gonna get this little car that's gonna buy 15 minutes, I'd have one little treat for each 15 minutes for the whole flight. And so like to get to Anchorage, to my parents house is three and a half hours. So that's 14 of those 15 minute segments. And boy, I was ready, you know, one bag a Pirate's Booty would would get us there. But you know, you're not gonna do 14 different snacks. And when my kids were little, I was pretty disciplined about not using screens, even on flights. As they got older, that seal got broken, and I did allow them to watch screens. And of course, that makes things much easier, but it's a different thing entirely. So certainly not having to worry about kids well being on a flight. You know, at least they weren't with me, we did get the kids, you know, set up with their snags and their books and the things they needed for the flight. And it's definitely a different deal with making sure they have masks and know how to take good care of themselves with turning the air on. And you know, if they eat on the flight, which they should minimize, you know, kind of taking a bite under their mask and pulling the mask back down between bites, that kind of thing. So that was about preparing the kids. But on the flight this time, because of that departure on Monday, I was that woman. I had on my little jacket, and my little scarf and my little hat and actually had makeup on. It was so fun to feel really prepared and serene. And like I had looked after myself. And maybe that's not as big a battle for you. But certainly for me, there were many years where I felt frazzled when I was traveling. So it's wonderful to be giving myself the space for that. And I think that a lot of us try to optimize our trips. And when we make plane reservations, we're trying to optimize to maximize the time. So if you're taking one week off work, you know, if you can get two weekends out of that, that's more days of vacation. But really what I'm learning is fewer days of vacation, you know, getting like five or six days of vacation in that nine day period and giving yourself some of the oxygen on either end is actually more restful, more rejuvenating, more joyful. So I encourage you to play with that yourself. Like what might feel really good? Might it be leaving on Sunday and coming back Friday, or leaving on Monday and coming back Thursday or Saturday so that you've got some room to pack on the front end and unpack on the back end. And, certainly, Kurt and I are up to our eyeballs right now in jetlag. So I think I reported when I recorded the last episode, it was very early in the morning. And it's getting better. But certainly I was up bright eyed and bushy tailed very early this morning. And getting to bed really early is an important discipline for us during this period. So that we get enough hours of sleep before our circadian rhythms, which are kind of on Euro time still kick in and wake us up against our will.

Michele Christensen 29:28

So you want to leave room for that in your return. And so the setting up and setting out and getting back. I encourage you to think about leaving on Sunday or Monday and returning on Friday or Saturday at a minimum. Giving yourself extra time. Because it turns out not to actually be extra. It's only extra in contrast to how we have done things in the past. And then that brings me to this notion of re entry and recovery. This is something that I'm learning in my recovery, 12 step journey that I think a lot of people in the culture whether they're in recovery or not have heard of the alcoholics anonymous notion of don't get H.A.L.T., too hungry, angry, lonely or tired. Those are kind of red flags that can warn someone like you might be driven to drink, if you get in those places, and that's not my addiction. My addiction is around food. But for me, in our industry, a lot of those definitely still apply. And I eat three times a day like clockwork, so that I don't get too hungry, because obviously getting too hungry is definitely a red flag for everybody for eating. But what we look at in recovery is: what are the places that stress us out, and may cause us to act out? And I don't think that's unique to addicts. Everybody breaks down when things get too stacked up on us. And the bottom line is, however wonderful your vacation was, coming back from it is a stressor. Getting back, you've got your life and the ways that it has continued on without you in your absence and is piling up waiting for you. You've got the detritus of your trip to take care of and deal with. And you may be depleted in certain ways or, or highly stimulated in certain ways from the marvels of your trip. So you know, the notion of too much of a good thing or needing to metabolize something that was wonderful all means that we need space, we need to account for reentry from a trip, like it's a project of its own, like it's a part time job for some period when we get back. So if you go away for the weekend, that period might only be a day or two, but it's real. And if you go several time zones away, or nine time zones away, like we did this time, it may be several weeks of reentry. And if we can account for that, we will be a lot more sane in the process. If we can simplify what we're attempting during that time, we will be a lot healthier and happier through it. So some of the ways that I account for re entry and recovery are getting more help. Help with cleaning, unpacking, getting groceries, getting meal prep. And as I say that it sounds so privileged, like well just get people to help you. But it's true. If you've got resources, there's nothing wrong with asking for help. And imagine yourself in a different chapter of life. It's fun. If you get paid well and you're respected, I would love to shop for somebody else's groceries according to their list in a chapter of my life where I just wanted work and wanted to be helpful in exchange value for that. So I know that they have, you know, the people who helped me are happy to do it. We've had the same wonderful woman who cleans our house and brings a helper with her for 10 years. And she's like part of the family. And we are in a very symbiotic, supportive relationship. And I love that. And that was wonderful to know that they had come on Thursday, before we got back on Saturday, even though they had come right before we left, too. The house was just that much nicer. So look at how you can get help. Give yourself those days, weeks, however long makes sense. And it's probably longer than make sense if you're really realistic. You know, they say there's one day per hour of time change. But I think that when it's costing you sleep, it's longer than that, you know, because you've got to recover from the loss of sleep, too. So giving yourself a couple of weeks after traveling transcontinentally and reducing your other plans. And really just emphasizing sleep and togetherness and eating well, are great ways to get your body and your mind and your heart to bounce back. So for us right now, we came back Saturday. School started Wednesday. So that was a couple of days to get our school supplies together help the kids kind of plan. My mother, wonderfully, loved helping the kids get their school clothes lined out. And so I was thankful for that support. And just it wasn't great timing, you know, to come back and have school start, but I'm glad it wasn't us coming home Saturday and school starting Monday. It was until Wednesday and we're working it out. And so my expectations of myself this week and next week, I'm recording this like the day after school started. I'm going to get the kids to school and from school.I'm going to be present for them. I'm going to be present for myself and my sleep, my exercise and my food and keep it simple other than that, not take on too many expectations, too many commitments, and other projects will resume after that. Of course I'm back with my clients and present for them. But big marketing initiatives or anything that takes too much "oomph" from me is going to need to wait. And that's okay. So I hope this is helpful to you in terms of looking at what it actually takes and what actually makes it possible to go on a wonderful adventure together with your partner. I love to help people create the lives of their dreams and to create legacy love. Not just the love that they've been given as a legacy from your parents and your partner's parents. But the kind of love that you want to have your children or others in the next generation live out as a result of your example and the love that you give. Legacy love means that our cups runneth over. And from the abundance of what we share together, we have that much more to give to others in our activism, in our involvement in our communities, and in all of the resources that we have to share. So this kind of travel is one of the ways of keeping our tanks full. And I wish that to continue in my marriage, and I wish it for you as well. 

Michele Christensen 35:49

So, I look forward to hearing on social media or an email about what this brings up for you and any other questions you have. And I'll look forward to hearing that and being in dialogue with you about it. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode, and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My free Conscious Couples Circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both it's all happening at society.lisenbery.com . That link is in the show notes for you. You know, new listeners need to hear what you're taking away, too. podcast reviews are what really helped others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thank you in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app while you're thinking of it before you forget with just a few words about what this show gives you. And, hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're gonna want to so you never miss an episode. Please go to the app where you listen, hit that subscribe button, and you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michele Lisenbury Christensen, and this has been Sex.Love.Power. I will see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.