The remarkable new movement changing lesbian lives around the world -- and how you can be part of it

So I'm here in the beautiful Joshua Tree National Park, and it's a really big landscape, and I wanted to talk to you from this vast landscape about the Conscious Girlfriend Academy, because the work we do there is pretty vast as well. I'm Ruth Schwartz. I'm the founder and director of the Academy, and I had no idea when I began what I was actually creating. And how many lesbians and adjacent queer people desperately needed to find like-minded, growth-oriented, consciousness-oriented community, as well as to learn the dating and relationship skills that can make our lives work better and prevent heartbreak and make our relationships sweeter and make our partner choices wiser. So the Academy has become a All of those things and many more. We teach mostly I teach at least nine months of live classes each year. One of my trained coaches leads a skill development workshop every single week all year long, where lesbians and queer people come together and practice the kind of challenging relationship communication, dating relationship communication, asking someone on a date. Giving somebody on a date feedback about something that happened for you, you know, negotiating, making requests, setting boundaries, um, writing dating profiles. It's so amazing what I hear people say over and over and over again is that it makes such a difference not to be alone on the journey. Now, our live classes are also really transformational. So many people say they have, after joining, gone through the archives and watched class after class after class because honestly there is no place else on the earth that has this kind of lesbian dating and love and sexuality archive available. You can learn about, you know, conscious queer sexuality and kink. You can learn about being a great lover to yourself. You can learn about your erotic love language. You can learn about how to date wisely, how to spot red flags, what to do when you yourself have red flags, which of course all of us do, uh, the 5 steps to using conflict to build intimacy with a partner. There is our Attachment Healing Intensive, which is one of the classes that people tell me has made the biggest difference to them. And most recently, we had our Get Your Life Back Intensive, Healing from a Breakup or Toxic Relationship, and that was also really a blockbuster class. It is so amazing to see lesbians and queer people reaching these places of emotional sovereignty, emotional liberation. You know, just last night somebody was telling me a particular phrase that I'd used in that class that she said it changed her life. It helped her finally let go. In case you're wondering, the phrase was, you know, I said, "If she were your person, she'd still be here." And for whatever reason, that phrase in that moment hit this person, and she was like, "Yeah, that's true. I can stop thinking and hoping and wishing and fantasizing and imagining that she is my person, and somehow she's not here with me, and that's terrible." How can I convince her she's my person? You know, if she were your person, she wouldn't need convincing. So those are some of the kinds of revelations that people get to. We also have buddy group programs where we encourage you, and we make it easy and non-threatening for you to reach out to other Academy members for homework buddies, for accountability partners, for friends on the growth path, Friends that can keep you on the queer and narrow when you start dating somebody and you go into that limerence honeymoon phase and you're tempted to just throw out everything you learned because it feels so good. We really support each other, and when you're in a relationship that is pushing your buttons and you're just not clear, like am I supposed to just stick around and grow through this? and handle my triggers, or is this going to be another one of those relationships where in hindsight I realize I stayed way too long? You know, those are such challenging situations in which to discern. So having a whole community that has your back and has your front, you know, that really supports you— not, not colluding with you and your triggers, but supporting you in alignment with your highest principles and your biggest intentions. It is so extraordinary, honestly. So many people say, you know, what a difference this would have made in their lives if they had had access to it 20, 30, 40 years ago or more. And I know what a difference it would have made in my life if I had had access to it 20, 30, 40 years ago or more. But instead, I had to travel my own challenging journey through the rocky landscapes of many relationships in order to get to the place where I am now. And it's, you know, it's not like I'm done. Of course, I'm always evolving, always learning, and I always will be. But I have, through my professional study and through my 40-plus years as a lesbian, and through now over the last 10 years, my work with Thousands of lesbians and queer people from 25 countries around the world, I have amassed a body of knowledge and skill that is really making a difference in people's lives. So if that sounds good to you, if you feel like, you know, you really want a relationship and you're clear you've got some patterns to break, you want a love that's going to last, And you don't want to make the same mistakes you've made in the past. You want to really choose wisely this time. Or you're in a relationship and you want some help navigating the stuff that comes up. Or you're hurting from a breakup. So many of the people that come into the Academy are in states of, of really being shattered. And one of the things that we as lesbians often do is that we get shattered within by one person, and then before we're healed, we go out and do it again, and sometimes even again. And so, you know, one person describes it as, you know, she hobbled into the Academy, metaphorically speaking, you know, just like with these bleeding wounds all over from the multiple train wreck relationships. It is so profound to get to heal in community and in safety and in a conscious, compassionate place where she could finally forgive herself and see why she did what she did and know that she would never have to do the same things again. In fact, she would never be able to do the same things again because once you know certain things, you can't unknow what you know. So if that sounds good to you, I hope you will check out the Academy because we are creating something there that has never existed anywhere on the face of this earth for lesbians, queer people, women who love women before, and it is profound and it can change your life. So I hope to see you there.