Relationships

*Note that these books are heteronormative in their language and research; though concepts are applicable to all relationships

TRAUMA HEaling

Here, you will learn:

- The innumerable ways trauma shapes our world-from identity and health to economy, geopolitics, and the state of the environment
- The concept of "trauma loyalty"-unconscious group bonds based in a pain narrative
- How the climate crisis is both a manifestation of humanity''s collective trauma and an opportunity to heal
- "Retrocausality"-how the power of presence can reshape the past and make new futures possible

Including essays contributed by experts such as Dr. Gabor Maté, Dr. Otto Scharmer, Dr. Christina Bethell, and Ken Wilber, Healing Collective Trauma offers not just an advanced look at community trauma but also a hopeful glimpse of the future.

Sexuality & Sexual Healing

This completely revised and updated 20th anniversary edition continues to provide the compassionate wisdom the book has been famous for, as well as many new features:

• Contemporary research on trauma and the brain

• An overview of powerful new healing tools such as imagery, meditation, and body-centered practices

• Additional stories that reflect an even greater diversity of survivor experiences

• The reassuring accounts of survivors who have been healing for more than twenty years

• The most comprehensive, up-to-date resource guide in the field

• Insights from the authors'' decades of experience

Cherished by survivors, and recommended by therapists and institutions everywhere, The Courage to Heal has often been called the bible of healing from child sexual abuse. This new edition will continue to serve as the healing beacon it has always been.

In this collection of real-life stories and interviews--from Indie Music Producers, International Sex Educators, Creatives, Models, Corporate Jet-Setters, Sex Workers, Bisexual Muslims, Transgender Folk undergoing gender reassignment, Men, Women, Mothers, Fathers, and many more—holistic educator Julie Archambault has crafted a fascinating and revealing portrait of sex.

Everyone is dealing with something—and that something has a lot to teach you about yourself. Sex Up Your Life offers a unique "Continuum of Connection for Sex"--brought to life by collected stories of struggle and triumph—to guide you from destructive disconnect to blissful sexual for sex in your life.

The founder of Co-creative Sex, Julie forges a new paradigm where sex, relationships, and personal growth go hand in hand, and will help you “Up” your experience of sex in your life.

SEXUALITY & SEXUAL HEALTH
WEB Resources

Webinar:

Attachment, Trauma and Sexuality—Coming Home to the True Self with Ariel Giarretto

This is 2-part webinar series.
Description: For countless generations, beliefs about sex and the body have been exceedingly pejorative and condemning. Although most religions develop these mores as a necessary means of keeping social order, such ideologies have a devastating effect on our psyches, emotions and relationships with others. Abiding by these creeds necessitates a thorough disconnection from our essential nature.

Calling on my decades of experience as a trauma therapist and trainer of Somatic Experiencing, combined with extensive training in somatic sexuality, this series will address what it takes to heal our sexuality and our relationship to our gender, and to our bodies.

Through the science and heart of attachment and trauma, we’ll examine how we are physiologically designed for connection, closeness and pleasure—which is as deeply “wired” as our response to threat—as well as what happens when this nature is denied.

Through a mix of educational material, experiential exercises, reflections and homework this series will provide numerous ways of coming home to the body, finding advanced levels of pleasure and helping to identify and overcome all that gets in the way.

We will cover:

• The science and psychobiology of attachment needs

• The physiology of trauma, and how disconnection from the body prevents the resolution of past trauma

• Exercises that support fuller embodied pleasure and self-acceptance

• Ways of recovering from sexuality trauma and sexual abuse, and how to do this at a respectful pace that prevents re-traumatization

Sex Stores (Toronto)

Come As You Are - Founded as a worker-owned co-operative in 1997, we have a fundamentally anti-capitalist and feminist approach to sexual pleasure, health, and education. We don't profit from your pleasure and we only stock products that we truly love and believe in.

Good for Her - Good For Her is Toronto’s cozy, comfortable place where people of all genders, sexes, orientations and desires can find a variety of high quality sex toys, books, DVDs, workshops, great advice and much more. Offers women & trans people only hours. Good For Her also offers workshops, and sexuality coaching.

WEBSITES

SCARLETEEN: SEX ED FOR THE REAL WORLD

This incredible resource has THOUSANDS of pages of information related to sex, sexuality, reproductive justice, gender, and relationships. It is the best place on the internet for sexual health information.

Scarleteen provides “content and interaction that seeks to provide developmentally and culturally-sensitive sexuality education and information that reflects the diversity of people and sexuality; that aims to serve all sexes, genders, economic and social classes, sexual orientations and relationship models, types of embodiment and more, including information on contraception, safer sex and sexual health, reproductive choice, masturbation, anatomy, sexual orientation and other aspects of sexual identity, gender identity and equity, pleasure and human sexual response, body image, sexual and romantic relationship formation, communication and negotiation, sexual and other interpersonal abuse, self-esteem and care and compassion in sexual enactment that is not intentionally exclusive to any one group, save privileging those in their teens and twenties”.

OH JOY SEX TOY

Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan’s widely acclaimed Oh Joy Sex Toy (OJST) is a free weekly sex education webcomic that debuted April 2013 and updates every Tuesday.

It covers everything sex related from, sexuality and the sex industry, to toys, workshops, birth control and much more. With the aid of guest contributors giving us us many perspectives as possible, we strive to be relevant to a wide variety of genders, body types, and sexualities.

KINKLY

Kinkly was founded by two Canadian women who had plenty of sex-related questions – but found the online space short on answers, especially when it came to things like kink, sex toys, and content that explored sex and sexuality from all angles. So, they built that resource by creating the largest dictionary of sex terms on the web, along with an archive of content on all aspects of sexuality presented from a pleasure-based perspective.

Kinkly’s content is written by sex educators, coaches, therapists and writers with a background in sexual health – as well as people like you.  We aim to provide a mix of information that is based on facts or, when appropriate, personal experience and insight. We understand that when it comes to sex, everyone’s tastes differ; our aim is to provide the full palate of flavours in a way that is respectful, insightful and fun.

THE BODY IS NOT AN APOLOGY

The Body Is Not An Apology is an international movement committed to cultivating global Radical Self Love and Body Empowerment. We believe that discrimination, social inequality, and injustice are manifestations of our inability to make peace with the body, our own and others. Through information dissemination, personal and social transformation projects and community building, The Body is Not An Apology fosters global, radical, unapologetic self love which translates to radical human love and action in service toward a more just, equitable and compassionate world.