Skin and Soul™: Beyond the Pale with Gwenm A. Carsley

What Are We Running From? 03.07.2026 1t 3min

We all carry something. A heartbreak that still catches in the throat. A relationship we can't quite let go of. A loneliness that no amount of scrolling, busyness, or distraction seems to fill. What if healing isn't about moving on? What if it's about finally turning toward the parts of ourselves we've spent years trying to outrun? In this episode, Gwenm sits down with healer, teacher, and author Ben Oofana to explore heartbreak, loneliness, attachment, and the emotional lives we never fully digest. Together they dive into Ben's extraordinary path through Native American vision quests, Taoist practice, and more than thirty-five years of helping people navigate trauma, illness, grief, and relational pain. This is a conversation about what happens when we stop abandoning ourselves. About why we cling to relationships that have already ended. About the loneliness that sits beneath so much of modern life. And about the quiet courage it takes to stay with what hurts long enough for something new to emerge. If you've ever wondered why the same patterns keep repeating, why letting go can feel impossible, or what it really means to heal, this conversation offers another way of looking at the human heart. Because perhaps healing isn't about becoming someone else. Perhaps it's about becoming present enough to meet the person you've been avoiding all along.

Round 3: What Is a Man Responsible For? 26.06.2026 55min

What does it mean to step up as a man? In his actions? His intentions? His family? His blind spots? His impact on the people around him? The culture he participates in?In this episode of Skin & Soul, Gwenm sits down with strategist, entrepreneur, coach, and Round 3 founder Reuben Butterfield for an open conversation about masculinity, accountability, fatherhood, consent, reinvention, and the ongoing practice of becoming. Together, they explore the moments that shape a man: loss, heartbreak, mistakes, silence, courage, and the willingness to look honestly at where we've fallen short. Reuben shares insights from his own journey through personal transformation, the lessons learned from fatherhood and relationships, and why growth begins when we stop waiting for permission and start taking responsibility for the lives we're creating. A conversation about awareness. Blind spots. Integrity. About what happens when a man decides to become someone he can respect. From consent and culture to grief, purpose, leadership, and love, this episode asks a question that feels more urgent than ever: What is a man responsible for?

Coming Out Later in Life: When Stability Becomes a Prison 19.06.2026 56min

What happens when the life you've spent years building no longer fits? In this episode of Skin & Soul: Beyond the Pale, Gwenm sits down with attorney, mediator, divorce coach, and artist Sarah Rutledge Fischer to explore the rarely discussed journey of coming out later in life. After coming out as a lesbian at 43 following an 18-year marriage, Sarah found herself navigating not only the end of a relationship, but the unraveling and rebuilding of identity, family, desire, and belonging. Together, they discuss the courage it takes to tell the truth, the fear of hurting those we love, the tension between authenticity and responsibility, the complexity of labels, and what happens when stability becomes a prison. This is a conversation about love, loss, self-betrayal, freedom, and the extraordinary act of becoming who you truly are. Whether you're questioning your sexuality, your relationship, your purpose, or simply the life you've built, this episode is an invitation into a deeper conversation about what it means to live in alignment with yourself.

Permission: Beyond Shame, Beyond Kink 12.06.2026 57min

Most people don't tell the truth about what they want. Not in bed.Not in relationships.Not even to themselves. In this episode of Skin & Soul, Gwenm sits down with Amanda Dames, founder of The Kink Consultant, to talk about fantasy, kink, romance, desire, shame, and the strange things that happen when we spend years pretending we don't want what we want. From fairy tales to fetishes, from secret turn-ons to hidden longings, this conversation explores what our desires might be trying to show us and why so many of us are terrified of finding out. Because sometimes the hardest person to tell the truth to is ourselves.

The Myth of Ownership 05.06.2026 58min

What if the greatest source of suffering isn't love itself, but our belief that we can possess what was never ours to own? In this episode of Skin & Soul, Gwenm sits down with author, entrepreneur, and creator of the viral EroticSleepOver events, Cidney G. Green, for a provocative conversation about freedom, attachment, desire, and the stories we inherit about love. Drawing from her book All 3 in Me, Cidney shares how Nichiren Buddhism shaped her understanding of attraction, identity, and personal responsibility. Together, they explore the tension between intimacy and freedom, the challenge of unlearning control, and why so many of us confuse love with ownership. This is not a conversation about whether non-monogamy is right or wrong. It's a deeper inquiry into what happens when we stop expecting other people to complete us, save us, choose us, or make us happy. From relationships and jealousy to spirituality, self-sovereignty, and the many parts of ourselves we carry beneath the surface, this episode invites us to examine where we grip too tightly and what becomes possible when we finally loosen our hold. Topics include: • The myth of ownership in love and relationships• Buddhism and personal responsibility• Attraction, identity, and self-reflection• Unlearning control and attachment• Non-monogamy and freedom• Jealousy, desire, and emotional honesty• The many selves we carry within us• What it means to live authentically on your own terms• Self-sovereignty and the pursuit of happiness A bold, honest, and thought-provoking conversation about love, freedom, and the parts of ourselves that are still learning how to let go.

What is Wrong with Being Sexual? 29.05.2026 55min

What if your sexuality was never something to suppress… but something sacred to reclaim? In this deeply honest and liberating episode of Skin and Soul Beyond the Pale, Gwenm sits down with sex and relationship coach, sacred sexuality educator, and author Maria Merloni for a powerful conversation on erotic healing, body acceptance, tantra, intimacy, shame, and the profound wisdom of the human body. Maria shares her unconventional journey from therapist to exotic dancer to sacred sexuality teacher - and how stripping became an unexpected doorway into empowerment, authenticity, and spiritual purpose. Together, Gwenm and Maria unravel cultural shame around sex, the double standards placed on women’s bodies, and the ways both men and women disconnect from their erotic life force.

Erotic Priestess: Pleasure, Power & Erotic Innocence 22.05.2026 56min

How many women are walking around successful on the outside while feeling numb inside their own skin? In this episode of Skin & Soul: Beyond the Pale, Gwenm sits down with Erotic Priestess Patty Alfonso for a conversation on pleasure, feminine power, erotic innocence, sensation, desire, shame, and the slow disappearance that happens when a woman leaves her body to survive her life. Together, they unravel the ways women perform womanhood while starving for touch, truth, softness, hunger, rest, devotion, freedom, and real sensation. The places where the body tightens. The years spent overriding instinct. The ache beneath being “fine.” This is not a conversation about becoming sexier or more empowered. It’s about the woman underneath the performance.The one who still wants to feel.The one whose body has been whispering for years. Patty shares her work around Erotic Innocence, the remembering that nothing is missing and that the body is not a problem to fix, but a living intelligence waiting to be heard. Together they explore:why so many women disconnect from sensationpleasure beyond performance or validationS Factor®, movement, eros, and the feminine bodyaging, aliveness, and reclaiming desiregrief stored inside numbnessself-abandonment disguised as “having it together”the body as oracle, lover, animal, and truth-teller

From FBI to Love Songs: Acacia Grace on Illness, Sensuality & Reinvention 15.05.2026 56min

What happens when a woman leaves behind a life of law enforcement, survives chronic illness, and finally gives herself permission to feel? In this deeply intimate episode of Skin and Soul, Gwenm Carsley sits down with singer-songwriter Acacia Grace for a raw conversation about reinvention, sensuality, heartbreak, creativity, and healing through art. From working FBI forfeiture and seizure cases to writing emotionally charged love songs in France, Acacia opens up about the unexpected path that led her back to herself. Together, they explore chronic autoimmune illness, spirituality beyond religion, feminine desire, emotional maturity in love, and the power of music to transform pain into beauty. This episode is a vulnerable, soulful journey into what it means to soften after survival — and to choose authenticity over performance. A powerful conversation for anyone navigating reinvention, illness, heartbreak, creativity, or the courage to live more truthfully.

Be Chalant: The Mess of Loving Long-Term 08.05.2026 56min

In this live episode of Skin and Soul: Beyond the Pale, I’m joined by Dr. Bruce Chalmer and Judy Alexander, the married co-hosts of Couples Therapy in Seven Words. Bruce is a psychologist and couples therapist who has spent more than 30 years sitting with couples at the edge of rupture, betrayal, longing, distance, and repair. His work circles around what he calls The Passion Paradox: the tension between stability and intimacy. The very things that make love feel safe can sometimes drain the risk, aliveness, and erotic charge out of it. And then there is Judy: teacher, principal, co-host, translator of theory into real life, and author, under the name Laria Zylber, of The Blue Tent: Erotic Tales from the Bible, a work of biblical erotica that reimagines ancient stories through desire, flesh, female voice, and what she calls sexual midrash. This conversation may move through couples therapy, sex, faith, long-term love, betrayal, romance, erotic storytelling, and what happens when two people still love each other but can no longer find the heat, honesty, or courage to reach across the table. Because romance is not dead. But it does ask something of us.

The Spark You've Been Missing: Authintimacy 01.05.2026 50min

In this episode of Skin & Soul, Gwenm sits down with Paul Aaron Travis, founder of School for Love and School for Lovers, certified sexologist, AASECT-certified sexuality educator, long-time men’s group facilitator, and author of The Spark You’ve Been Missing. Paul’s work asks what happens when love stops being a fantasy we chase and becomes something we practice. We talk about the divorce cycle, conscious endings, the voice in the mirror, dating fatigue, surface connection, the loneliness hiding inside “I’m fine,” and Paul’s framework of Authintimacy — authenticity on the out-breath, intimacy on the in-breath. This conversation moves through love, sex, pleasure, communication, men’s work, adult sexual education, and the quiet places where relationships go numb long before they officially break. It’s about the spark we lose when we perform our lives instead of inhabiting them — and what it takes to come back into truth, contact, and connection.

Encore: Shameless Parenting 24.04.2026 52min

What happens when you mix a sex-positive grandma, a childhood spent figure-skating on frozen lakes, and a lifetime of dismantling religious shame… with modern parenting, porn, and kids with iPads? In this episode of Skin and Soul: Beyond the Pale, I sit with Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers — therapist, educator, and author of Sex, God & the Conservative Church and Shameless Parenting — for a wildly honest, surprisingly funny conversation about raising shame-free kids in an over-sexualized world. We talk about babies discovering their genitals in the bath, toddlers who just want to hug everyone, and why “hands in your pants at the dinner table” is not a crisis but an invitation to teach boundaries without shaming desire. Tina walks us through what real “family life education” looks like from 0–18, why one hundred tiny, awkward one-minute chats beat the one Big Talk, and how to start when you feel like you’re years too late. We go there with porn, phones and tablets, patriarchy, boys’ right to say no too, and how to help our kids recognize exploitation instead of becoming numb to it. We also talk about re-parenting ourselves, healing the little one inside who never got these conversations, and the strange grace that can show up with aging parents and dementia. This one is for the exhausted, tender, secretly terrified parents who still want their kids to know: your body is yours, your pleasure is good, and you never have to trade your soul to belong.

The Intimacy that Women Pay For 17.04.2026 55min

What are women really seeking when they reach beyond the usual scripts of dating, sex, and intimacy? In this episode, Gwenm speaks with George Goulburn, who left corporate life at 51 to become a professional male companion in Australia. Together they explore longing, tenderness, desire, loneliness, safety, fantasy, and the deeper hunger beneath what people say they want. This is a conversation about what it means to be met, without performance, confusion, or apology.

The Well Loved Woman 10.04.2026 57min

Suzanne Raja has spent decades working with women at the intersection of power, intimacy, leadership, and love. In this conversation, we go into the deeper terrain of The Well Loved Woman ~ not as a polished ideal, but as a lived experience. What does it mean for a woman to feel cherished without losing herself. To be met in her strength, her sensitivity, her hunger, her complexity. To stop performing competence and begin receiving love in a fuller way.We talk about feminine power, relational dynamics, the patterns women fall into when they have spent too long holding everything together, and the shift that becomes possible when a woman no longer defines worth through overgiving, over-functioning, or self-abandonment. This is a conversation about being deeply loved, yes—but also about becoming the woman who can inhabit that love without shrinking, armoring, or disappearing from herself.This one is about devotion. Softness with spine. Power with heart. And the kind of love that does not ask a woman to betray her own aliveness.

Encore: After Usefulness: Desire, Identity & the Quiet Panic of Freedom 03.04.2026 55min

What happens when usefulness ends and life finally slows down.In this episode, I sit with Dawn Marcotte, a Certified Professional Retirement Coach who works at the inner edge of retirement. Not the financial planning. Not the bucket lists. The moment when roles fall away and time opens up, leaving many people face to face with freedom, grief, desire, and a quiet panic they did not expect.We talk about identity after productivity, what surfaces when no one is waiting for you to perform, and how retirement can become a threshold rather than a retreat. This is a conversation about aliveness, unlived longings, and the courage it takes to meet yourself when the scaffolding disappears.

Grief, Risk and the Second Act 27.03.2026 55min

Producer Laura Z. Barket shares her journey through widowhood, motherhood, and finding aliveness again through theatre.

Rites of Return: Women, Healing and Home 20.03.2026 45min

In this episode of Skin & Soul, Gwenm is joined by Terry Folks for a conversation on women, healing, and the return to what feels like home within. Terry’s work sits where psychotherapy, spirituality, and women’s lived experience meet — especially through grief, trauma, transition, and inner change. We explore her new book, Another Spring, a seasonally shaped guide rooted in self-therapy, spiritual practice, and women’s wisdom. Together, we touch on stillness, grief, trust, intuition, emotional resilience, and the quiet reclaiming of inner authority. This is about the soul after winter, and how women’s healing ripples beyond the personal.

America in Therapy 13.03.2026 56min

In this episode of Skin and Soul Beyond the Pale, Gwenm Carsley sits down with psychotherapist and author Phyllis Leavitt for a deep conversation on abuse, learned helplessness, family systems, boundaries, power, and repair.Together they explore how what begins in the home does not stay in the home. The child who becomes symptomatic, the family that cannot repair, the absence of healthy boundaries, the silence around pain, the pull toward blame, helplessness, aggression, and disconnection — all of it echoes outward into culture, community, and nation. Phyllis brings decades of therapeutic insight to the question of what happens when individuals and societies lose their capacity to listen, to tolerate difference, to stay in dialogue, and to heal.This conversation moves through trauma, witness helplessness, nonviolent communication, accountability, belonging, and the power of love not as sentiment, but as a real force in healing. It is a conversation about what breaks us, what hardens us, what keeps us repeating harm, and what becomes possible when we begin to repair.

The Sounds of Hands 06.03.2026 1t

His name means My Voice. And yet he has spent more than forty-five years standing between silence and sound ~ translating not just words, but grief, sarcasm, poetry, justice, faith, intimacy, and pride. In this episode, we explore what it means to live as the bridge between Deaf and hearing worlds. What it means to transmit without altering. To hold neutrality in courtrooms, in family calls, in moments of tenderness between sisters. To speak fluently in sarcasm - in two languages. We talk about the sensuality of language. The fact that signing does not merely say “It’s raining,” but shows the force, the wind, the impact - all at once. How eye contact is built into the grammar. How music becomes visual poetry in motion. How the body becomes tone, rhythm, emphasis. And beneath it all, a deeper question:If words are but pictures of our thoughts… what happens when the picture is made with hands? This is a conversation about the human need for connection and the world inside silence. About standing between silence and sound. About the extraordinary depth of a language that turns the body into voice.

After Usefulness: Desire, Identity & the Quiet Panic of Freedom 27.02.2026 55min

What happens when usefulness ends and life finally slows down. In this episode, I sit with Dawn Marcotte, a Certified Professional Retirement Coach who works at the inner edge of retirement. Not the financial planning. Not the bucket lists. The moment when roles fall away and time opens up, leaving many people face to face with freedom, grief, desire, and a quiet panic they did not expect. We talk about identity after productivity, what surfaces when no one is waiting for you to perform, and how retirement can become a threshold rather than a retreat. This is a conversation about aliveness, unlived longings, and the courage it takes to meet yourself when the scaffolding disappears.

Carrying the Tiger: Love Practiced in the Presence of Death 20.02.2026 57min

What does love become when there is no cure ~ only time, devotion, and choice? In this episode of Skin & Soul, I sit with Tony Stewart to talk about Carrying the Tiger - a memoir that refuses to sentimentalize illness, grief, or recovery. We talk about:loving someone while they are dyingcaregiving as an act of intimacyhow grief lives in the body, not the calendarthe moment joy returns — and the guilt that can followloving again without erasing what came beforeThis is a conversation about staying present when life cannot be fixed.About learning to live with your hands open.About what it means to carry love forward, while remaining with life.