About Dark Minerva

Alien Anthropologist

My therapist asked me once, "Who are you, at your core? Go back as far as you can. What has always been true about you?"

As a compulsive shapeshifter (like a people pleaser, but more tactical) it was challenging to track down an answer. With my eyes closed, gaze turned inward, I went all the way back to what felt like me as a two-year-old, and this thought came to mind: I'm an alien. An alien who came here to poke shit and see what happens.

That odd moment eventually led to this more precise, and articulated version—I orient to life (at least in majority part) like it's an experiential research project. And I am both lead researcher and main subject.

My Experience and Expertise

From age 18, I wanted to be a therapist. I also knew that I didn't know much and that I'd have to live some life in order to have anything substantive to offer others.

In 2014, solidly in mid-life and with a lot of lived experience under my belt, I founded my practice, The Pleasure Ethic.

Over a decade later, my role as a sex and relationship coach has evolved into so much more. I've had the incredible opportunity to witness people through the full arc of intimate life: through dating and marriage, the births of children, in crisis and resolution, in creating tailored relationship structures, and cultivating empowered erotic connections.

My practice, and the vulnerability that my clients have entrusted to me, has added incalculable depth and diversity to this project of mine. Each path and each person I've had the privilege of engaging with—whether personal or professional—has shaped my expertise.

My Mission

My professional mission is to contribute meaningfully to the transformation and elevation of how we relate—from the intimate to the social.

My personal mission is to live a life of generative pleasure—prioritizing creativity, experimentation, and discovery in everything I do. This includes how I work with others as a therapeutic coach, how I build a business, how I parent and partner, and how I write and express myself.

These missions amplify each other—my personal explorations inform and improve my professional practice, and vice versa.

Dark Minerva

I've always powerfully identified with Athena—goddess of wisdom, strategy, and fierce protection. Minerva is her Roman counterpart, and 'Dark' signals that nothing here will be sanitized. It might get a little uncomfortable, there will be paradox, contradiction, and complex truths.

What To Expect

Here you'll find essays covering Pleasure Ethic themes of relational and erotic literacy, intimate justice, and cultural analysis—how the personal is political and the political personal—plus whatever else strikes my fancy. I hope they inspire, challenge, and resonate.

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