What's Inside The 12-Week Live Roadmap Course to Conscious Lesbian Dating and Love?

So welcome everybody. So happy to see some familiar faces and some new faces and everybody in between. Thank you for coming to this informational session about Conscious Girlfriend Academy in general, and in particular the 12-week class that we are starting very soon, 12-Week Roadmap to Conscious Lesbian Dating and Lasting Love. And I want to welcome all of you and want to introduce Jen, who's here, who works for the Academy. She's our outreach director, and she's just helping us extend our reach beyond and beyond. So we want to reach all the lesbians and queer women and adjacent non-binary people who need us. So thank you, Jen, and she might be putting links in the chat and Helping us out on this call in general. And also, in about an hour, starting at 6:30, my colleague and friend Jody will come on, and she's doing an informational session about some amazing trips she's doing to Greece. Sacred Roots trips. So if you want to do some armchair travel, or even potentially some actual travel, you can stick around for that. So let's just take a moment here, because this is something we do in the Academy a lot, just to welcome yourself here. So I always tend to close my eyes when I do that. You don't have to, but if it helps you connect in more with yourself, I invite you to do that, assuming you're in a place where it's safe for you to do that. Just close your eyes, put a hand or both hands on your body. Take a deep breath in and out. And just let yourself tune in right now to what it's like to be you and what it's like to be you in this moment. And you might notice all kinds of things inside yourself, maybe curiosity, maybe stress. It could be excitement, sadness, fear, joy, lots of other emotions. You might notice physical sensations in your body, and whatever's here, I invite you to just keep noticing. Just really tune into the mindful witnessing, observing part of yourself that is capable of perceiving What is happening inside of you? Because that's actually a key part of what we do in Conscious Girlfriend and what I, I think is actually a really powerful thing to do in your dating and relationship life. Kind of puts you in the driver's seat when you're not just having experiences, which of course we all want and need to be having experiences, and we have experiences all the time throughout our days. But when we're also able to witness them. And step 2, that's the first C is conscious. Step 2 is bringing compassion into our observation. So I always invite people to really cultivate an inner friendliness as you're witnessing yourself. And when we have the inner friendliness, often we, we also tune into curiosity, which is life-giving. And last but not least, in all of my events, I really encourage people to commit to keeping what gets shared here, here. So confidentiality. So if you see somebody here that you know, or she's a friend of a friend, or an ex of an ex, or whatever relationship you might have, To that person, just to just keep it— whatever happens here, you don't tell anybody else about who you saw here or what got shared here, obviously, except for what I'm going to share and what Jen shares. And that way we all stay safe, safer in our, in our beautiful and small community. So Um, yeah, so I'm Ruth. I started Conscious Girlfriend Academy just about exactly 10 years ago now because I had traveled. And of course I still travel. It's not like we ever get, you know, done. We're never fully cooked. But I had traveled a really long and winding road to learn what I needed to learn about how to have the kind of lesbian relationship I wanted. And I'm using lesbian here as an adjective to talk about, you know, being a woman with a woman. We also welcome adjacent non-binary people. Lots of people define themselves with words other than lesbian, you know, queer, bisexual, sexually fluid. We welcome all self-identified women. So whatever terminology I use, please feel free to just, you know, if you need to translate it for it to fit for you. Um, totally encourage you to do that. Um, we are really a welcoming and inclusive community here. Um, and so I started Conscious Girlfriend with, um, a person who at the time was named Michelle Moraine, and we, we shared a vision of decoding lesbian relationships because I had been through so much pain. I'd had beautiful experiences too. I'd been out for— well, I've now been out for 42 years, so at the time I guess I'd been out for 32 years. Um, and Michelle had been out for, for decades as well. And, you know, we had both learned a lot of things the hard way. And about how many years before I met her— quite a number of years before I met her I had hit a breaking point. I had kind of hit bottom after having 3 breakups in 3 years, and I resolved that I wanted to learn how to do this thing differently because otherwise I couldn't keep doing it the way I had been doing it, this dating and relationship thing, because I kept going into relationships with the highest of hopes and expectations. And then experiencing a lot of pain and disappointment, particularly after the first few months. And that, you know, I had two actually solid long-term relationships, but then I seemed to embark on a different trajectory in which my relationships got more intense and shorter. And it became so painful that that was why I hit the bottom. So for several years, I spent a great deal of my time just learning everything that I could about lesbian relationships, relationships in general, conscious relationships, compatibility, neuroscience, what happens in the brain, attachment theory, everything I could learn. And then when Michelle and I met, she had been on a similar journey, and we said, Wow, you know, we have something to offer. So it took us about 8 years before we started offering it, uh, and then in 2015, this book, uh, oh, I need to unblur my video to show you the book. Um, okay, this book came out, Conscious Lesbian Dating and Love, and women And non-binary people from all over the world started finding it once it was on Amazon and contacting us. Initially, we were just offering some in-person workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area, and then we realized, wow, we need to take this online because there is so much need around the world. And so starting in 2015, we did that and The very first in-depth offering we created was this 12-week class that we called The Roadmap to Conscious Lesbian Dating and Lasting Love. And that's— we have another live version of that 12-week class starting this Saturday. So that's really what I want to focus on sharing with you tonight. But then I also want to just hear from you and tell you what the Academy offers in general. So this will just be a quick pass over the 12-week roadmap class. When we thought about, you know, what is it that we— and I'm going to use the word lesbians, and I may use the word, you know, women and she, but again, please feel free to translate that to whatever wording fits for you. What do we as lesbians actually need to know? Because it was pretty clear to me that I had been dating and loving women for decades without having a clue what it was that would help me do that in the most sane and grounded way that would lead to the outcomes I wanted. I, like many of us in the community, I think there's something about those of us that are hormonally or biologically women that tends to lead us to dive in quickly, feel a spark, see the best in somebody else, have high hopes and expectations. Go all in. You know, we all know about the joke, the U-Haul on the second date. Um, and, um, not really necessarily be doing that from a grounded place of who am I? What do I want in relationship? What am I actually capable of? What am I actually ready for? Who do I need to look for? And then, you know, as you connect with people, like, wow, what is she ready for? What does she want? And what is she capable of? And when we run into challenges, which of course we will, because all human beings in relationship with each other run into challenges, do we have the skills and tools between us already to be able to navigate those? And if we don't, how are we going to develop them? You know, and when, when she triggers me, you know, what do I know already about my own trigger points, and how am I going to work with those? And likewise in the other direction, what does she know and how is she going to work with those? So out of all of this thinking, we developed this 12-week class. And we start out in the first 6 weeks talking about what is a healthy relationship? Because I don't know about you, but I did not really witness healthy adult intimate relationships when I was growing up. My parents didn't have one. So, raise your hand if you relate to that. You didn't witness that. So, so we start with understanding, well, what is that? And what is it that we need to have on board skill-wise in order to be capable of it? So that's week 1 of the roadmap. Then week 2, we talk about self-compassion. How can we be with ourselves in a manner that is conducive to the relationships we want? Because this relationship that we have with ourselves is the relationship that we can never break up with. It's our 24/7 relationship, 365 days a year. So if we are not having a quality of relationship with ourselves that we want to have, it makes it very difficult to to have that quality of relationship with somebody else. That's week 2. Week 3, we look at making peace with the past. What has happened in the past? How can we reconcile ourselves with that? How can we understand what role we played and forgive ourselves? Week 4 is, who is this self anyway? What are these emotions that pass through us? How can we— Become more familiar with them and learn to work with them skillfully. Week 5 is communication. What, how can we communicate in ways that really increase the likelihood that the other person will hear us? And how can we listen in ways that increase the likelihood that we will actually get the meaning that the other person intends? This would be really perhaps a lot easier in a classroom setting, and I think we've all experienced— raise your hand if you have ever experienced— that when you are in deep with somebody, when you love somebody, when your sense of emotional well-being rests on this relationship, it actually ironically often gets so much harder to hear and be heard. Anybody have that experience? And there's a lot of reasons for that. We dive into that in the Roadmap class. It actually has to do with brain science and attachment theory. It's natural that it becomes harder, and because it becomes harder, we have to really learn how to regulate our nervous systems so that we can do that, because otherwise relationships fall apart. Yeah, so, and maybe this is a good moment to say, because I forgot to say at the beginning, That everything I teach comes from the standpoint of affirming us as lesbians, queer women, adjacent non-binary people. I fully believe and know that we can have the best relationships on the planet. We can have amazing, lasting, healthy, beautiful, trust-filled, passion-filled relationships. And in my experience, Women with women, because we bond more deeply and are capable of more intimacy than people of other genders necessarily tend to be, we also need more skills. So that's where all of this is coming from. So after week 5 communication, we dive into what happens when we get triggered. What happens when our most sore spots get touched? In relationship. And how can we regain the capacity and keep the capacity to be able to actually stay centered and communicate or recenter and communicate from that place when our wounds are really getting touched? Because that's where the rubber meets the road. So that's what we spend the first 6 weeks of the Roadmap class on before we even get to dating. So it's called The Roadmap to Conscious Lesbian Dating and Lasting Love. But we actually go over the material in the reverse order because our thought was, my thought is, you know, what's the point of going out there and dating and meeting somebody that you're really excited about if you don't yet have fully honed the skills to be able to have the relationship you want? It's actually tragic. In a way, to to meet somebody that you want to love and start loving, and then you just like run into these quagmires, which is certainly what happened for me over and over again. So that's why we spend the first six weeks on these conscious relationship skills, and then in the second six weeks we dive into dating skills. And what I have found. Is that you know so many women come to Conscious Girlfriend, including women in their sixties and seventies, who say, "You know, I've never really dated. I've just felt a spark and and dove right in." And occasionally that works out for people, but much of the time it doesn't. And so many women come to the academy. From a place like I was when I deeply dove into, you know, starting to learn what then became the body of work that is Conscious Girlfriend. And believe me, I have never quit learning. I am learning every single day, both through, you know, books and trainings and also through the laboratory of my own personal love relationships. So Women often come and say, I've never dated, but I know I need to do it differently. What is dating? Where do I start? How do I do this? And we also have a lot of participants who have come out later in life, and they may have dated men, but they haven't dated women, and sometimes learn the hard way that dating women is actually very different than dating men. I hear that over and over, you know, in ways again that are beautiful. Many of them, and in ways that can be challenging. So week seven of the roadmap, we talk about working with the stuff that comes up—the fears, the fears of rejection, the fears of closeness, the fears of loss. How do we understand that fear and be with it compassionately so that it doesn't have to derail us? Fear is often bringing us across. Crucial message that we need to listen to in the present, but sometimes the fear that comes up is from the past. And so how do we discern? So Week 7 is about working with that. Week 8 is about looking at chemistry versus compatibility, really starting to understand, okay, I know what chemistry is. Most of us know. Raise your hand if you have ever felt chemistry and you know what chemistry is. And yet, we, we often believe— I know I thought for a long time, the stronger my feelings for somebody, the more compatible we are automatically therefore going to be as well. Hopefully, as long as her feelings for me are also strong. And then learned the hard way that that is— that equation doesn't work. And in fact, actually, sometimes I've had very strong chemistry with, very strong feelings for people. With whom I was not compatible, and I didn't know what compatibility took. So we really— and chemistry is a component of compatibility for sure, but there's so many other components. So we talk about that. We really dive into that. We talk about formulating a relationship vision. Believe that's week 9. Like, what is it You know, many people come in saying, oh, I know exactly what I want in a relationship. I want somebody with whom I connect emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and sexually. Beautiful vision, right? I share that. How many of us feel like that sounds good? And yet that is not enough of a relationship vision because that doesn't disqualify people. Most people are going to say, I raise my hand for that one. And so what we teach in the roadmap class is about really getting more granular than that. Like, how much time do you want to spend with somebody? Do you want to live with somebody? What do you want your life to look like? Um, you know, do you mostly socialize together or apart? Do you share a bedroom? Uh, do you want to live separately? Do you want to, you know, see each other a few times a week? Are you open to a long-distance relationship? What would that look like? What do you want your sex life to look like? You know, what is— what does good sex even mean to you? What kind of frequency? You know, what kinds of activities do you need to share or not share? You know, like if you like to hike, do you absolutely need a partner that can hike with you? Or is it okay if you hike by yourself or hike with friends and then come home and do other kinds of things with, with the person that you love? Lots and lots of other things like that. So we really help you formulate a clear vision of what you are orienting toward, because so many relationships fall apart over these kinds of issues, and it can be really, really painful, or sometimes people stay together but with a sense of loss. So Having a really clear vision is key to being able to get what you want. And then we also talk about, okay, I believe this is week 10, how do you figure out as you're dating whether this other person shares your vision? At what point in the dating process or the getting-to-know-you process, some people call it Predating, you know, if you're spending time with somebody, you don't yet know if you're compatible. Some people say, well, we're not yet dating. For other people, that is dating. So we go over all the different terminology that people use in different ways. But whether you're predating or dating, you know, do you bring up your vision on the first date? What does that mean if you bring it up? How do you start talking about it? How do you start figuring out, does this other person share it? How do you share your histories in a way that is calibrated so you're not doing a self-disclosure dump on the one hand, but so that you're also sharing the things that the other person needs to know about you to know if they want to go forward and finding out the things you need to know about them to know if you want to go forward? So that's assessment. We talked about that. We talked about red flags. Every single one of us has red flags in our history. You are not— dating is not a red flag scavenger hunt. But we— what many of us haven't known, and I know I didn't know, is what do you do when you really, really like somebody and yet you see some signs that suggest to perhaps your wiser mind, oh, this person might not be a fit. You know, what I know I always used to do is see those signs and then attempt to ignore them. Look on the bright side, nobody's perfect. Look at all the good things. We have so much potential. Maybe it'll all work out. Anybody here ever do that? So how do we do something different? that can really let us honor our hearts. So we talk about that. I believe it's Week 11. I might have some of the weeks mixed up here in my mind. And sometimes, as you're getting to know somebody and you bring this conscious, compassionate curiosity, it's not like you bring your clipboard, but you bring conscious, compassionate curiosity and you find out more. Sometimes what initially appears as a red flag will turn yellow or even green. Sometimes what initially appears as a green or maybe yellow flag will turn red. Sometimes what appears as a red flag will get redder and redder. And so we talk about, okay, what do you do in that situation and how do you find the strength and the clarity to do it? And then week 12 in the roadmap is, okay, let's say you've met somebody Seems like the flags are mostly green. You're dating. It feels like you're, you're liking each other. Where do you go from there? If the two of you feel like, okay, yeah, hey, we might really want to do this relationship thing together, how do you actually lay a strong foundation for the kind of relationship you want? And how do you deal with the inevitable ripples and conflicts and misunderstandings and fights potentially or ruptures that come up. Because in a way, we don't really even know whether we potentially have the right stuff to be in a long-term relationship until we've navigated some conflicts together. Sometimes women say, hey, like, you mean I can't go deeper with somebody till I have a fight? What do we have to like manufacture a fight? And so we talk about how, no, you do not have to manufacture a fight. But if you're paying attention and continuing to get closer, fortunately or unfortunately, at some point, usually within the first 3 months or so, you will notice some places where you're not lining up, often even within the first few weeks. And then how do you really deal with that in such a way that It doesn't derail you, and you don't have to just ignore it or try to pretend it doesn't happen. You can actually use it as information, but also potentially as a way to get closer. So that is— anyway, that is the quick overview of the 12-week roadmap. I think the one thing I didn't mention that I want to be sure to mention here is that part of why lesbians, broadly speaking, tend to dive in so quickly is that there is this neurochemical phenomenon that happens for all people, but I think happens particularly strongly for women with women, where in the first several days, weeks, potentially months, we get kind of stoned on the connection. And it will feel like the other person is perfect for me. I'll speak from experience. Or even if I can see the things that aren't perfect about her, I have this trust. I have this intuitive knowing that this is all going to work out. And I now understand that brain drugs take us over, and this intuitive knowing and gut sense of perfection in each other is beautiful and shows us potential, but then it's a, it's a state called limerence, and it will always wear off. And then our real work of love is to live our way into that potential. So we talk a lot throughout the Roadmap class about how important it is to feel that, to see that, but not make long-term decisions based on it, because this is how we're gonna Avoid the kind of pain many of us have walked right into so many times in the past. Again, speaking about myself here, but maybe about many of you. Learn to recognize limb wounds for what it is, and then learn to go through this assessment process that I've talked about. So that is the roadmap in a nutshell. Um, I think the one other piece I want to, to talk about is the role of community in the Roadmap class and in the Conscious Girlfriend Academy. Because when I first developed this material, Michelle and I developed a lot of it together. And then starting in 2017, I've been doing this on my own. We thought, hey, we've got this curriculum, we're gonna teach it, people are gonna learn it. That's how this is gonna work. And what has happened to my joy since running the Academy is that there is so much more that happens in the class that is way beyond anything that I could ever have created or made happen. which is the magic and the synergy and the learning from so many lesbians, queer women, queer people coming together, sharing vulnerably and courageously about their experience, and then recognizing themselves in each other, or sometimes recognizing their exes in each other. Hopefully not literally. That happens too sometimes. That can be awkward. But often, like, oh, I hear somebody say something and I hear her talking about why she felt that or did that. And I get this, these light bulb moments, like, wow, that's what was going on with my ex. And now I can understand it. So we give each other this feedback. We also give each other a level of support and accountability. Like, it is so much easier for people to follow the roadmap to date in ways that are smart for their hearts when they have a whole community of like-minded people that they get to talk to throughout the process. We have buddies and buddy groups in the Roadmap class, so you're actually going through the homework together. We have worksheets to take you deeper in your own process, as well as the live classes, which of course are all recorded if you have to miss one. And we really have amazing conversations every single time I show up to teach one of these classes. I have some idea of what I'm gonna say. I never really fully know what I'm gonna say, because I never know what questions people are gonna ask and where the conversations are gonna take us. So it's very dynamic and fluid and living. And it's always evolving. And I'm always learning, and everybody in the group is learning. So it really becomes like a feel tank and a think tank of women loving women, non-binary people loving women and non-binary people. That, to my knowledge, doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. And it needs to be happening in lots of other places, and that's part of the vision that that Jen and I are holding to help it happen in more places and help more people come into the Academy. But it's really a deeply enriching part of the Roadmap experience. So I'm going to unspotlight myself now so I can see all of you. So if you don't want to be in the recording, please go ahead and turn your camera off. to make sure you won't be. And then I would love to just take your questions and hear your experiences and hear anything that Jen or other people who have been through the Roadmap class already want to share about, you know, what I left out or what you got that I didn't name. And let's just have a conversation. And so feel free to put comments or questions in the chat, or if anybody wants to speak verbally, you can go ahead and probably raise your electronic hand if you can, because we have several screens, so I might not see your physical hand. If you raise your physical hand and I don't see you, you can also go ahead and unmute yourself. I know I covered a lot of information, so we can also just Take a moment and ground and integrate and feel what you might be feeling. I'm really curious to know if what I shared resonated, first of all. Does it sound like stuff that would be useful for you? Do you feel like I left out some big pieces of things that you know you want to learn more about? And Steffi, I see your hand up.

Spoken beautifully, Ruth. Um, thank you. I just wanted to share that when I first came to Conscious Girlfriend, I had no intention of dating, and I was really afraid that I was going to have to. Um, and my friend assured me, no, no, no, this is, this is a room that's going to teach you, teach you how. Because I, I felt like a 13-year-old Coming out late in life, like kind of awkward and shy. And I was really fortunate to have a great buddy group that I worked with, and one person in particular who encouraged— she held me accountable to do the work, because especially the second half, because remember, I wasn't going to date. And the second half is about getting ready to date and One of the assignments in the end is just to create a profile. I didn't want to do it. She was like, no one's going to see it. Just create the profile. And then anyway, and then— Doing the exercises. And I actually, you know, I had my first blind date ever in my life. And just things have built from there. I've done the roadmap several times because I didn't— I needed more. And first part was so important for me to help regulate. And it's just helping me be a better partner, not only to another woman, but also in my relationships. Yeah, it was important to me that it wasn't a meat market. I was worried about that.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Steffi. Yeah. I mean, I think that the roadmap As I teach it is really—I mean, it's—it certainly works for people who are already dating or know that you want to get out there. You feel like okay, I'm ready to meet my special person. I wish I'd met her yesterday. Where is she? And there are a lot of people who come through that are feeling like I don't know if I ever want to date again. I don't know if I ever want a relationship again. But There's still a curiosity. The roadmap can work to really help you understand more about what happened in the past. And then with understanding often comes healing. And some people come to the roadmap and they're like, okay, I just want more community. I want more friends. I want to be able to talk about these topics that are so close to my heart. So yeah, all of the above.

And Jasmine.

And then I see lots of questions in the chat, so I want to get to those too.

Okay, I'm just wondering, age-wise, I'll be on the high-end, high-altitude end of the spectrum, and I haven't been in a relationship in a number of years. All of this was very alive and powerful for me for many years, and for the last number I don't know, 8 or 9. It hasn't been a main event, but now I'm feeling more like, you know, maybe it would be really nice to meet somebody. But the issues of somebody who's really age-wise, you know, kind of at the pinnacle, how does that work when probably most of the women in this group will be, you know, not necessarily a lot younger, but But of a different sort of generational age experience, something, you know what I mean? You've probably had this question before. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, it's interesting because I also saw a question in the chat, somebody asking, you know, were there also going to be younger adults present? So I think at both ends or at all ends of— I guess that if you're in the middle, there's— you're not at an end. But I think people of many ages wonder, Will this work for me? Will my experience be reflected here? So I have 2 answers to that. You know, one is that we've had women and non-binary people from their 20s through their 80s take the class. Fascinating thing, we've had also people from many different countries take the class. The fascinating thing, and this is why I think it does have to do with our hormones and biology as women, Is that so many people say, wow, this resonates with my experience. Of course, there also are differences. You know, there are differences in, you know, the time period that we grew up in, the place we grew up in, how long we've been out. But I think most of what we teach and talk about is really relevant at all ages. And for you, Jasmine, there will be— I don't know your exact age, but there are always women in their 60s and 70s in the class. So, and often above 80. There always are women in their 30s, 40s, 50s as well. We've also had some participants in their 20s. So I would say median age is probably like 45 to 55. So does that help?

Well, it helps. I mean, that's kind of what I thought you'd say, but, you know, special issues come up when you are that much older. I would love a roadmap class for older, much, you know, older women like the elder group. So I, it's just hard to know. I'm sure all of it will be interesting and relevant, but special issues come up when you're that much older, and I don't know how it'll be to talk about those in a group that feels a fair amount younger. If the predominance feels younger, it's hard to know who's going to be in the group.

Yeah.

Or how, you know, how many younger, how many— so it's Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I love this question. And one of the ways that we're addressing this— and there, I would say there are lots of people who could feel the way that you feel with a different specific. So like for you, you're expressing it with age. People might feel it in terms of, will there be other women who just recently came out? Will there be other women with health problems? Will there be other women of color?

Yeah.

You know, and so part of what we have done to address that is on the contact list for the class, we suggested affinity groups. So there's an affinity group for women over 60. There's an affinity group for trans and non-binary people. There's an affinity group for people of color, affinity group for recently came out people, affinity group for people under 40. So that will be a way that you can connect with others in the group who are in that category where you especially want to be able to have those conversations with people who get that piece.

So that group, your affinity group, would set up its own time and meet.

Exactly.

In terms of time, there are buddy groups and then you have your own buddies, so how does all of the time commitment work for Both, you know, how much time really is required? Because I assume you do all of that. You have your own buddy, and then you have a buddy group, and then you're in the large group, the weekly.

Well, so the weekly class meets for 2 hours a week for the 12 weeks. The worksheets, written homework, could take you anywhere from 1 to 2 to more hours depending on how deeply you dive into it. And then the buddies and buddy groups are really up to you. So some people form— some people prefer to just have one buddy. Many people like to have a buddy group. You might text or message with those buddies, or you might set up a Zoom meeting with those buddies.

Right.

Or you might set up a phone call with one buddy. And, you know, so that part, there's a lot of flexibility depending on what works for you.

Great. Thank you for that information.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for those questions. And I see Jen's hand up, and you might be also wanting to apprise me of questions in the chat. So you might be wanting to share.

I didn't, but I see somebody else's hand up who might have a question. I have something else I can share, but maybe, Honey, did you want to share before I do?

Yeah. Hi, how are you? I just have a quick question. Just based on your experience, um, it may be a crazy question, but how, how would you— why is it dating women? Because I've dated both guys and girls, but dating girls is like, so for me it's been more emotional. Um, I just want to know from your experience, you know, how is it different from dating guys and girls?

I think it's just what you just said. You know, I mean, it's, it's the both and. Women do have more access to our emotions. And I had a long-term partner, actually Michelle, with whom I founded Conscious Girlfriend, who transitioned to male. And as he transitioned and went on testosterone, his access to his emotions and his emotional experience changed. He didn't transition till age 58, so he had 58 years of living as a woman and, you know, about 30 years living as a lesbian. And he is a different person now, and he knows it. So it was fascinating because it gave me such a window into— and I've heard many other people who've, you know, been connected to trans people say the same thing— as somebody transitions to male. There are reasons why relationships with men are different, and it's not— some of it is socialization, but I think some of it is hormones. So I agree with you, honey. I think that women are more emotional, and we have greater access to our emotions. We're more emotionally complex, and that lets us bond more deeply. And it also means that the triggers, when they come up, come up thicker and faster, and therefore, I believe we need more skill. When we want to be women with women to be able to work with those triggers. Does that address what you're saying?

Yeah, yeah. And I told this to a few people, and some people tell me, oh, but then those guys are like girls, you know. There are some men can be sensitive and emotional and stuff. So how do you really compare to that? I mean, I'm not talking about physical, you know, the looks, right? But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I know it's like a silly question, but—

No, it's not silly at all. I mean, and, and obviously when we're talking about these things, we're generalizing. And I want to acknowledge there are lots of people who do not identify as a man or as a woman. You know, gender is not fully binary. But if we speak in broad generalizations, yes, there can be very emotional and sensitive men, and yes, there can be, you know, more shutdown women, and there can be non-binary people that, you know, are mixing it all up. A lot of what we talk about in the roadmap class is applicable to people of all genders dating people of all genders. But then there are a few phenomena that I think tend to be different with women with women. And if you take the class, you get to compare it with your own experience and see, okay, is this what I've experienced, or have I experienced something different?

Right. Okay. And then this class is for people who's never dated the same sex?

No, this class is for all self-identified women and non-binary people who love women or want to. So we usually have a mix of longtime lesbians who have been in, you know, relationships with lots of women over decades. And we have women who are just coming out who have never been in a relationship with a woman and everybody in between.

All right. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you. Um, and I wanted to get to a few questions in the chat because I saw a question about costs. So the cost for the 12-week class is $597. We do give partial scholarships and in some cases full scholarships, and we do also have full scholarships available for people of color. This just started recently, super exciting to me because I really wanted to see a lot more people of color in the academy. So obviously, if you are a person of color, You know, you are welcome to choose to pay, but we make full scholarships available to all BIPOC people. Okay, and I see another question about breakout groups. And yeah, so we do breakout groups in the Saturday classes, and so if you can't come live, you will miss those breakout groups. But you will get to hear and see the topics in the recording, and you can have those conversations with your buddies. So I'd say usually in the Roadmap class, in the 2 hours, we spend about 20 to 30 of those minutes in breakout groups. So it's certainly doable with buddies. Okay. Yeah, Jen.

Yeah, no, I was gonna share that, you know, when I came into Conscious Girlfriend, it was like 15 months ago, and I came in. And at the time, I, I was like a total wreck, you know, like, I was feeling like the rock bottom of a lot of what Ruth was describing, like the, the highs of the lesbian limerence or the avoiding red flags. And Getting on the U-Hauls, and I was in like my lifetime rock bottom. And so when I found it, I was so excited because I was like, where was this when I was coming out 30 years ago? Like, how much therapy and legal fees would I have avoided? And so I came in on the roadmap because that's what I found on Meetup. And then when I came in here, Um, Ruth, you didn't talk that much about this, but I, I just found there was this amazing library of information inside of Conscious Girlfriend. Like, apart from just this one course, it was like this whole world of, you know, if you become a member, um, where you can just keep— you can learn just— I mean, there's so many courses, so many videos, like, that really touch on all these topics. And in depth. And so I started doing that. I like kind of binged Conscious Girlfriends like I binged The L Word when it first came out. And I was just like— and at the time I was like, I'm not dating. I had taken a year not dating anybody. And, and I was like, and I'm not dating now, but I'm going to learn how to like do this lesbian dating thing the right way, like what Ruth was saying. And I— so I started Just watching all these videos. And it— and I was like, I had upgraded to the community membership because there's a community membership and supporting membership. And I kept upgrading because I was like, I want more, I need more. And I was in this kind of— the cool thing about Conscious Girlfriend too, I found, is you can do it like however you want at whatever, you know, like you can come to these meetings and have your camera off and listen. You can come and you can get a buddy group or not get a buddy group, you know, like wherever you're at, or you can become a member and just listen to these videos and get access to this. For me, it's like the biggest lesbian and queer, like, portal library ever existed on planet Earth. So I, I love that about the Academy because we're all coming in at different places. And And, and, and it's just been an amazing experience for me. I mean, like, I came in, I'm not dating anybody, and then in like the first month I was just doing all this homework. So I was like, I can't, you know, continue this shit show myself and my daughter and my family to have to experience. And I wrote a profile inside of one of these.

Oh, we're we're losing.

I think we lost her internet. We lost her. Yeah. But she'll come back.

Videos just as a creative writing experiment in in Conscious Girlfriend, and she was. I hear. Yeah. Okay. I don't know where I was, but anyway, I wrote a profile just to write it for just because I wanted to really honor and love myself because for me, I was like in here to create this. lesbian love affair with myself. And that ended up like— I, I wrote the profile, the only person who read it— I was like, I'm not putting it online— was in this academy. And she was like, I'd respond to that. And I've been with her, you know, over a year. You know, like, it started as a homework assignment. And that doesn't happen with everybody. And I know I wouldn't still be with her if we weren't inside of this community, because it's like the most amazing support community to be able to figure out how to self-regulate inside of any kind of relationship you want to have. So yeah, I wanted to share that with you all.

Yeah, yeah, it's such a beautiful part of your story, Jen. And it's happened for a number of people in Conscious Girlfriend that they have gotten together with other people in Conscious Girlfriend. And sometimes they've gotten together with people not in Conscious Girlfriend and then brought that person in. So yeah, there is a lot of support just by continuing to have the conversations that we have every week, which is, you know, leading off from what Jen said. We have the 12-week class, the 12-week roadmap, which starts this Saturday, runs from January 20th to April 6th this year. But we also have this, um, Dating, Love, and Connection Skills Lab, which meets every single week throughout the year. We have another 12-week class in the fall, which is specifically our deep dive in online dating. And then we have in between whatever else I dream up, uh, and have the bandwidth to do, because I can dream a lot more than I can do. So if you sign up either by the month or by the year for an Academy membership, you get access to, depending on which level you choose, lots of these recorded videos and then the weekly skills lab. So there is a lot more support above and beyond the 12-week class. So you can take that à la carte, or you can do more.

Is there somebody we can call and talk to About these different things. Jen, you can call Jen. Oh, yeah. How does one do that? Yeah, because when I— for me, you know, doing— I'd like to stay with the elder group and then to figure out how else to do this, because it gets expensive with, you know, if you're doing that, which you have to do separately, you know, how much of what else I would, would really benefit me at this time, um, in order not to, you know, uh, break the bank here.

Totally. Well, so that's why, yeah, call Jen, and we do have sliding scale for the elders group, and we do offer, as I said, partial scholarships for the Roadmap class. So we want you to be able to do everything that you can do. So we are definitely here to support you.

Thank you, sweetie. That's great. Yeah.

Yeah.

I got a message that I wanted to— that I think would be helpful. When you said, if you're not there live, what Ruth meant was when you're not able to meet, be in the class when it's happening live. So it's not— it's not in person. It's on Zoom live. The breakout room.

Right, exactly. Thank you for clarifying that, Steffi.

The breakout groups aren't recorded, so she stops the recording during that time.

Right, right. So only the part where I'm speaking and then answering questions and we're dialoguing as a group is recorded. And it's from, uh, we meet Saturdays from 10 AM to 12 noon Pacific, uh, so that might be different in your time zone depending on what time zone you're in. And if it's not good in your time zone, you know, and you can't get up that early or stay up that late, then, then definitely. We've had people go through and just watch the recordings and have buddies and, you know, get a huge amount from the class. So great if you can come in that time frame, but I hope it won't deter you if you can't. So this is so fun. We've actually never done one of these info sessions before. Obviously, we should have. So other questions? Iris?

Just a quick question. So since this is starting— excuse me— on Saturday, when does payment have to be in? And, you know, how would that work?

I would recommend that you sign up But between now and Saturday morning, 9 AM Pacific time, just so you get the Zoom links or you have time to email us if for some reason the automated email doesn't work. So yeah, and you know, yeah, so, so when you sign up, you will click for the level of payment you choose, or you email us if you want a partial scholarship, and then my assistant and Jen. I have an assistant named Deb who deals with a lot of the customer service issues, and then we have Jen. So people are going to be definitely working and paying attention to the email box, so we will get back to you quickly. Yeah, I'm always excited at this time of year because there's a lot of momentum, you know, in January. People are wanting to create the year that you want to have. So it's a lot of energy coming into this class. So we're, we're here to support that. Any other questions? Did I miss any questions in the chat?

I think you've got most of them.

Okay.

Ruth, I had one question just to remind me since it's been a year. I remember that there was pre-work that you had given us for each session. When do we get that? As soon as you sign up for the roadmap, you will get access to the course page, and on the course page, the worksheets are housed. So I signed up since I'm already a member, but I'll just—

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so, yeah, that's a good point. I need to make sure that I— well, actually, in this week's email, I sent an email to all members giving them the course page. So, but if you can't find— just go to that course page, you'll find the worksheets. Or if you can't find the course page, just email us and we'll send you that link. Okay, thank you. Yeah. So wonderful. Well, let's just take a moment. I'm about to turn things over to Jodi For the second hour, which is not about Conscious Girlfriend Academy, but is going to be another wonderful hour. But let's just take a moment to transition and just—I want to encourage you to appreciate yourself for your courage and appreciate yourself for showing up here. And whether you take the roadmap class or not, my hope is that you take something. from what we've shared in this conversation that empowers you in the dating, love, lesbian, queer life that you are here to live. That's, that's ultimately what matters most to me anyway, is that all of us in this community have more and more tools and ability to live the lives we want to live. So let's take a moment and send appreciation and love to each other. You can do that with your hands or from your heart, with your eyes. And thank you so much for taking part in all this, and hope to see many of you on Saturday.

Thanks for all you shared. Very informative. Answered all my questions.

Wonderful. Thank you for all your questions, Jasmine. Thank you, everybody.