Okay, men, let’s talk. Not long ago, I wrote an article about how much women long for passionate men — and I was surprised by some of the comments and email responses it inspired about #MeToo, stalkers, and how feminism allegedly destroyed men’s ability to express their feelings for women.

I realize that most of that feedback was made by deeply misogynistic men who are always searching the internet for women to intimidate. But I also observed that there was some genuine confusion about when and how a man can express his passion.

So let’s break this down.

The Movie vs. Real Life Dilemma

Okay, maybe…

I want to introduce you to someone: Michael Pollan. Oh, you’ve met, already? Excellent. That makes my job so much easier.

If you’re familiar with Pollan then you probably know that he’s a well-respected author and journalist with an M.A. from Columbia University. You probably know he’s been published in the biggest newspapers in the country, has been on the bestseller’s list, and has received countless awards.

Even if you don’t agree with his perspectives on American food production (something he’s arguably most famous for), you probably hold him in fairly high regard, right? …

Do you ever notice the way breakup stories in the movies portray men and women?

After the heartbreaking ending of a relationship, the men usually wake up the next day in a hangover-induced stupor, to find themselves in bed with a woman, and no memory of the events of the previous night. …

Am I sleeping enough? Going to bed before midnight? Resisting the pressure to wake at dawn day after day after day? Am I giving my body enough rest to recover from each day’s labor?

Am I listening to my body during my workouts? Or just pushing myself to meet that daily standard out of the terror that if I don’t, I’ll gain weight? Am I perpetuating my obsessive-compulsive behavior by being so ritualistic, so consistent? Can I be more flexible and forgiving? Can I listen to my body and do what it asks, what it needs? …

All my life, I’ve been trying to find myself. I have searched so desperately.

I have read Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf. I have worn long, flowing skirts, and breezy blouses. I have lit sticks of sandalwood incense, burned mugwort, smoked mullein. I have beaten on drums and lit candles and sung songs about the Old World. I have belly danced, performed strip teases, twerked and shimmied. I have sat in the woods with great horned owls, learned the names of plants and trees, made medicine from herbs and flowers.

I have looked for myself in paintings of medieval princesses…

What would you do if the relentless heat of June and its sun-dominated days didn’t come with the sweetness of the strawberry?

If you didn’t find those shiny rubies tucked into the shade of the plant’s broad leaves, their flesh gently warmed by the season’s first promise of the even hotter days to come?

If you couldn’t taste that sweet, red nectar that coats the eager tongue and stains your fingers with every bite?

This is the Feminine. Respect Her.

What would you do if there was no moon in the sky, swelling and subsiding with a faithful devotion to…

“He left. He just…left.”

I immediately picked up the phone after seeing this text and called my friend back. The moment she answered, I croaked, “What?!” Then she told me the story of her husband walking out after years of marriage, saying he just didn’t have it in him anymore. He hadn’t alerted her to the fact that he was struggling. She never saw his departure coming.

One day he was her husband. The next day, he was gone.

In the past two months, it feels like I hear a story like this from one of my friends with a…

My baby is turning two today! I cannot believe I ever thought I knew anything about what it means to love a child when I was just an aunt. I didn’t know anything. I only learned how to be a selfless person by becoming a mother, and this little girl is the angel who gave me that gift. I laugh at myself now, to think of how foolish I was to think I knew anything as an aunt. Motherhood, friends, is the real deal. #nogreatercalling

This is what greeted me when I reactivated my personal Facebook account after a recent…