In this YouTube conversation, Ruth L. Schwartz, director of the Conscious Girlfriend Academy (CGA), is joined by collaborators Pierce and Shayna to explain the origins, mission, and day‑to‑day workings of two community initiatives for lesbians and queer women. The CGA was founded to provide a safe, mindful space where queer women can learn relationship‑building skills, explore sexuality, and practice conscious dating. It offers weekly classes, breakout groups, coach‑training, and specific workshops such as an online‑dating hack class. Pierce describes how the Academy helped him break a seven‑year relationship hiatus, improve communication, and meet his partner through the online‑dating workshop. Shayna shares that the Academy filled gaps in her personal development—self‑awareness, emotional regulation, and relationship navigation—that traditional education never addressed, and she now participates in coach training. The newer Conscious Lesbian Elders Group, inspired by Shayna, focuses on connection, community, and support for women with 60+ years of life experience. Topics include aging, health changes, loss, creative purpose, and the unique needs of older bodies and energy levels. Both Pierce and Shayna emphasize how the elders group offers a dedicated space for older women to discuss age‑specific concerns without being eclipsed by younger participants. Overall, the conversation highlights the Academy’s role in combating isolation, fostering self‑esteem, and enabling meaningful relationships, while the Elders Group provides a tailored community for later‑life queer women.
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So I'm Ruth, the director of the Conscious Girlfriend Academy, here with my wonderful collaborators Shayna and Pierce. And we wanted to talk a little bit about both the Conscious Girlfriend Academy and the Conscious Lesbian Elders Group. Um, I wanted to start with why I started the Academy several years ago now, and then why recently we've started the Elders I started the academy because I wanted to create a place for lesbians and queer women to come together and talk about dating and relationships and sexuality and how to bring our conscious selves, our most thoughtful, mindful selves to these incredibly important endeavors, and also how to learn and practice skills. For the dating that really gets us the relationships that we want, how to create and maintain the relationships we want, and how to have the sex we want to be having.
Mm-hmm.
Um, if we want to be having it, how to have, you know, the physicality lives that we want to have, whatever that looks like for each of us. So that was the original impetus behind the Academy and Then several years later, um, at Shayna's urging, we have started the Conscious Lesbian Elders Group, which is still evolving. But in my sense, it's really about connection and community and support and friendship among those lesbians and queer women and women just coming out, women who've been lesbians for a long time, everything in between. Um, specifically around, um, what life is like now and what your needs are now for women with 64 or more years of life experience, as Dana has put it. So we have a beautiful group, uh, we have beautiful groups in both places. The Academy, we meet weekly for support and skills practice and education. I teach a lot of classes. Some other people teach classes. And, and again, they're basically related to dating and love lives. And then in the Conscious Lesbian Elders group, we talk about all kinds of other things too. We certainly talk about dating and love lives, and we also talk about getting older and health changes. Loss changes, losses, the changing world, our creative lives, what gives meaning to life now. So, I'd love to hear from each of you, Pierce and Shayna, what your experience has been in both groups. What led you to join the Academy? What's leading you to be involved with the elders group now? And what have you found in both groups? How have they impacted your life?
So I started the Academy at the beginning of COVID and it made a huge difference. I was very isolated, and from my first class, I connected with people, and those relationships have lasted. And I mean, I know so many women now intimately because of the topics, because of the breakout groups. And I've only met one in person. And out of, I don't know, 60 women, 70 women maybe, I've only met one in person. But that doesn't diminish the connection that we've been able to create. And part of it is the classes. They're very deep. The space that Ruth creates is very safe, and we're doing this consciously. It's not just whatever happens. So that it's very helpful to go into a topic and really be able to look at it in a safe environment, to explore it with other people. I've learned so many skills. I mean, so many skills that have really helped me. In fact, a year ago, I started a relationship after not being in a relationship for 7 years. And it has been a great one because it started with us taking it slow, exploring what's your relationship vision and what's mine, because didn't want to start a relationship with someone whose vision who was totally opposite or different than mine. And so along the way, I've been using the skills, communication skills, and it's made all the difference. It's been wonderful. And there was something I was going to say. What was it? Anyway, so that's been— oh, yeah, I took a class on online dating. And my attitude toward online dating was, no, I don't want to do that. It has to happen organically. The universe universe has to bring us together. And, uh, but the class was great and, uh, a lot of, a lot of hacks and ways to make it work. Um, and that is where I met my girlfriend, was on Silver Singles. So it worked. And, uh, so then recently the, the Conscious Elders group started, and I was attracted to that because I love being an elder. I think it encompasses so much that we have to offer from our life experience. And so to be with other women and to share what's going on, what we need support with, has been really helpful and enjoyable. I love getting on and being with the women and Learning and growing together.
So beautiful. Thank you so much, Pierce.
You're welcome.
And Shayna was the inspiration behind this new elders group and also has been very, been very passionately, deeply involved in the Academy for several years now. Yeah.
Yeah, I was thinking when Pierce was talking that the Academy is the class that I've always needed and— oh, the classes that I've always needed and always wanted and never got. How do you talk to people? How do you know yourself? How do you deal with your emotions? How do you meet people? How do you love? How do you not love? What's blocking me from my own happiness? What am I doing that's getting in the way? Tremendous amounts of self-awareness and also compassion for others who are struggling with their struggles. And we all, you know, we all have them. And I feel like This— the Conscious Girlfriend Academy fills gaps in my soul and in my life that have never even been touched before by any university, by any class, by any teacher, by any book. This is a very rare and rarefied space. That is real and important and has changed my life, really has changed my life. I, I, I came in a very different person, and I feel like Ruth and the way you conduct classes really, as, as Pierce said, helps us feel safe, helps me feel safe. and secure, and that I can talk about anything. And I've made wonderful friends, of which I consider both of you and many other people. We talk on a regular basis, and it's just amazing, especially in this time where it's difficult to— because of COVID and because of everything going on in the world, it's difficult to get out and meet people. And this helps with isolation. It helps with loneliness. It helps with self-esteem. It helps with everything I could think of. I mean, there's really no deterrent. This is, this is a, you know, I think I see your, your leaves in your beautiful garden behind you, and, and, and that needs to be fertilized and watered in order to be gorgeous and to grow. And Conscious Girlfriend Academy is the beautiful water, spring water, pure, beautiful water, and just the right natural ingredients to really enable growth. And so I've been involved, I plan to be involved, and I'm in the coach training, which is wonderful. And I look forward to More classes, and the Conscious Elders group is a different group in a way. It has all those wonderful qualities, and in a regular CGA group, there will be people of all ages. And I had the feeling that either sometimes it's hard to speak up as as an older woman who has different needs when the conversation is going in another direction. And I just felt like we needed our own space to discuss our lives, which are very, very different at 60, 65, 70, 80, 85. I am not the same person. I'm not the same woman. I don't have the same body that I had even 10 years ago, even 5 years ago. And I don't have the same resources, and I don't have the same amount of energy. So here is a group of women who are in similar situations, and we can be that for each other. We can be a support, we can be a community, and we can talk about the things that affect us in ways that are very different from how they affect other people. So it's a real treasure. I'm happy to be in the Conscious Girlfriend Academy and in the elders group. And in the coach training group and on dating apps, and I just can't get enough. So I'm, I'm a conscious girlfriend junkie. It's absolutely true, and I'm proud of it. Thank you, Ruth. Thank you, Pierce. I'm delighted to work with both of you and thrilled that women are signing up for our elders group and really finding their needs getting met. where they haven't been before, which is, I would say, sort of that is the typical reaction of people when they come to CGA. These are needs that have been longstanding that have just— no, that nobody talks about. And here we do. So, thank you.
Thank you so much, both of you. And it's so wonderful to be involved in sharing community space And co-creating with both of you.
