First I want to say what an amazing opportunity this is!

Me and my partner would love to get our connection back. We’ve had two children in the last 2 years and it’s been a lot on our marriage. I’ve had pretty rough pregnancies so our sex life went down the drain.

This retreat would give us an opportunity to truly connect again. Not only would it be amazing for us as a team but personally for me this would be an amazing opportunity to learn to love my postpartum body and embrace my sexuality.

Being a women of color I have always been taught to minimize myself to fit into this society. Especially when black and Latina women are overly sexualized. So I think something like this would help me finally let go and be proud of my body and sexuality.

Our love story began in the spring of 2016. I had just started working a restaurant job to supplement my income while in graduate school. The person put in charge of “showing me the ropes” of my new position did more flirting with me than training me. I wasn't too mad about it. We became friends and eventually lovers chasing our favorite bands and other adventures throughout Colorado. Did I mention we had the hottest, curl your toes, call out for more sex I’d ever had? At the start of our relationship sex was spontaneous, playful, and enticing in every way. We will celebrate 5 years together in summer of 2022 and this retreat is the reset we need.

Unfortunately, not everyone is accepting of our relationship. Society in particular offers troubling reminders that as an interracial lesbian couple we are deviant from the norm. However, when you witness the love between us nothing feels more right. And of course we experience the challenges of any other relationship.

One of our main challenges is “finding the spark” or “keeping things spicy” in the bedroom. We’ve gotten older, busier, and our day to day is layered with big girl decisions that induce doubt and anxiety. We love each other, feel safe with one another, and still find each other extremely attractive, but for some reason there’s still distance between us sexually.

As two lovers who are navigating layered identities, trauma, body image issues and more it can be a struggle to feel sexy and desirable. It has deeply impacted our connection. As newly engaged love birds and homeowners, with hopes of soon growing our family, we'd hope to regain an irresistible connection through this experience. We’re in love and growing beautifully together which makes me even more excited that our spark could be reignited through this opportunity.

There’s no way we could afford such a generous experience like this on our own so it would be such a blessing to be selected!

We are seeking to join the retreat because [partner 2] recently had major gender affirming surgery that went awry in December 2021 (had 4 surgeries rather than 1), and our relationship has experienced secondary effects as a result.

Our ability to have any kind of intimacy has been hindered given that while (partner 2) was healing from surgery, we were both focused on ensuring he didn't have pain and could gain his independence. Meanwhile, I played the role of caretaker at this particular level of severity for the first time in my life.

That dynamic has shifted as (partner 2) has returned back on his feet, but our intimacy connection is still experiencing delays.

We think that joining the retreat and participating in various workshops, can help us gain the skills necessary to better communicate with each other and build confidence around how to discuss issues regarding intimacy, and asking for what we need. Additionally, we have an added complexity of figuring out how to be comfortable in our bodies with each other.

(Partner two’s) surgery wasn't completely successful and therefore has complicated our sex life. We're currently working on trying to understand how his newly affirming body parts fit in with our intimate connection, especially with regards to navigating the various upcoming remaining gender affirming surgeries.

I am also trying to navigate advocating for my needs while knowing what we can do together is limited. The biggest silver lining from the surgeries is that we're closer than we've ever been.

That said, we want to ensure our connection is more than an emotional one, enabling our love for one another to continue to flourish during the first few years of our marriage. We're certain the Reignite retreat would provide us the foundational tools we need to create the everlasting physical, emotional, and intellectual connection we need to only keep our bond growing stronger.