My Life Is An Open Book… Series

My Life Is An Open Book… Series

One of my more favorite personal quotes is “Never do anything you’ll regret. Never regret anything you do.” That’s pretty much the tantra that has guided my life. As a human being, I expected to make mistakes. Yet, I didn’t expect to be so repetitive! Another thing I’ve learned is the reason why I kept making the same mistakes: I hadn’t learned the lesson! As if my brain said “NO! Do it again!” And one of the more “recent” lessons that I’ve learned is that it’s best to be as honest and transparent as possible because no matter how hard you try, you can’t make people do anything precisely the way YOU want them to do it. But the best lesson I’ve learned is to teach what you know. Take my love life for instance. It wouldn’t be until my 40s that I would discover my family history of non-monogamy. To be fair, my parents were monogamous with each other (if you don’t count my father’s wife, who wasn’t my mother, and the family that he had with her, before and after my conception). Considering my first sexual attraction was toward my same sex, it would be years before I would be comfortable telling everyone my secret desires. Once my urges included the opposite sex, I felt a little more “normal” and acceptable by Society. My mother didn’t talk to me about sex the way that I do now. In fact, I don’t recall her actually having “The Talk” with me. No one did. Instead, I experimented on my own. A self-professed “Cougar In Training,” I was always drawn to younger lovers because I don’t like being told what to do and I felt like I was the one in control. Quickly, I would learn that age ain’t nothing but a number and experience is an awesome teacher! Older or younger, it didn’t matter if they weren’t on the same page as me. Blessed to be born bisexual, I wanted to live my life with a man AND a woman! Although I discovered polyamory late in my life, I’m thankful that there’s a way for a non-monogamous person to experience love without hurting anyone or feeling guilty for doing it. I’ve never felt content with a one-on-one loving relationship because I don’t like sharing responsibilities, depending on someone else to do their share to sustain my personal happiness. Also, I love variety and I don’t expect one person to want everything I want. I already have anxiety so the last thing I needed was secrecy and deception in my love life. Plus, I’ve discovered that loving one person will never make me happy. I’ll always want more but I need people who understand the necessity of protected sex until we all get tested, continuing to be careful outside our union. That part wasn’t the easiest thing to sell, let me tell you! Being polyamorous doesn’t mean daily orgies and threesomes. In my current configuration, it’s Hubby and me but we’re seeking a girlfriend in search of a long term relationship with us. This isn’t a fling for us. We’re trying to grow our family: honestly, transparently, polyamorously.

Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-business-close-up-friendship-433495/

Painfully, I admit, I wasn’t the most honest person in my 20s and 30s but I blame the fact that no one wrote a book on how to navigate your sex life as a polyamorous bisexual female in St. Louis. Until I did, that is, although that wasn’t my intention when I wrote my first book, “Livin’ Just Enough.” I was in a new relationship, still feeling the effects of a lingering one. My heart still lusted the one that had hurt me, not fully allowing me to enjoy the love from the one right in front of me! That relationship ended for a multitude of reasons, one of which was the fact that I didn’t feel that he was “worthy” of knowing my secret life’s goal. Between marriages, I experimented with my sexuality, dabbling with the idea of fully dating a woman while enjoying the pleasures of men. Fully enjoying myself while my children were away on their summer visits with their father, I lived the life of a sex positive fun-loving single woman. During a brief stint at BUSINESS college, one of my professors encouraged us to write what we know. An author himself, he was there because he had the skills to teach what he knew although WRITING was his passion! Taking his advice to heart, I unintentionally began writing about my life in fictional format.

Author Lea Mishell at “Tales From The Lou” book signing, St. Louis, 2010

My writing career began on my 16th birthday when my older sister gave me a journal to help me sort out teenage feelings about my life. I don’t recall writing about sex until after giving birth to two children and even then I didn’t know how much more there was to learn! Knowing that my desires may not have matched anyone else’s, I wrote about them instead, allowing my characters to live the life I wish I could. I didn’t come out of the closet until after my children moved in with their father during my second marriage, when I was 41. A year later, I discovered, polyamory: the practice of engaging in multiple intimate relationships with the full knowledge and consent of everyone you’re involved with. To be honest, I wish I had known about polyamory twenty years ago but everything happens for a reason and I wasn’t meant to be fully polyamorous until NOW. Hello World, HERE I AM and so are my SistaGirlz!! Going back to my first published book, I extended it and added the main character’s lovers’ side of her story to make sure it followed through with what developed into my fictionalized semi-autobiography, “SistaGirlz: an Urban Fairy Tale/Mistress Harding Erotica book series.” Mirroring parts of my own life, Monogamy meets Polyamory is the theme of my book series. “SistaGirlz” is an Urban Fairy Tale book series that centers around nine women whose lives are intertwined with love and drama. Friends and family, the SistaGirlz help each other navigate through the trials and tribulations of loving their men, raising their children and finding out about themselves. From their teenage years into motherhood, follow along with the lives of Rachael, Layla, Raven, Imani, Meeka, Angela, Nina, JaShel and Clarissa. “Mistress Harding” is an Erotica book series centered around a very open minded polyamorous mature woman exploring life and various sexual excursions with her loves, Xander, Tracy and Cynda. Everything I’ve written for the series has come from reality mixed with my creative writing skills to help inform the masses that monogamy isn’t the only way to engage in a responsible loving relationship. For those of you that are involved in more than one relationship and everyone is aware, you are polyamorous. If your lovers aren’t aware of anyone else you’re sleeping with, you’re unethically non-monogamous and the good news is that you can change! TODAY! Start being honest and transparent. It’s a lot less stressful and fewer lies for you to remember! In the meantime, if you need some pointers on loving non-monogamously, I ask one thing: Do You Know My Girlz?

PeaceLoveHappiness

Lm…

#DoYouKnowMyGirlz #SistaGirlzUrbanFairyTale #MistressHardingErotica #AuthorLeaMishell #MonogamyMeetsPolyamory