Join Us!
The Embracing Your Eros Private Gathering
A Camera-Off Book-Launch Conversation About Desire, Trust, and Being Human
Behind every role you carry is a human being learning their own desire.
Join us for a private, camera-off gathering where the authors of Embracing Your Eros share what it took to question, wrestle with, and finally trust the tender, yummy truth of their eros.
We gather so that when you later open these pages, you won’t be reading strangers.
You’ll recognize the voices.
The tone.
The courage.
Instead of consuming stories, you may find yourself in conversation.
This gathering begins that relationship.
If you have ever questioned your desire... feared it, numbed it, doubted it, longed for it, or bravely honored it… you are not alone.
You are welcome here.
The Heart Open Publishing Enterprise now proudly Presents
Embracing Your Eros:
Discovering Vibrance, Passion, Magic, and Abundance Through Embodied Sensuality
Launching March 2026
There is a sacred current beneath the surface of ordinary life. A quiet longing for something more—for truth, intimacy, vitality, and deep belonging.
Embracing Your Eros is a collection of true stories from people who have followed that longing and found their way home to themselves through sensual awakening. They have followed their inner desires one step at a time.
We are gathering voices across the gender spectrum—storytellers, healers, artists, seekers, and guides—who have walked the path of reclaiming eros in their own unique way.
Authors in this book are:
Those who have felt life crack open through embodied practices: movement, breath, intimacy, creativity, and stillness.
Those who have encountered shame, fear, or rejection in the process of claiming their erotic truth—and emerged more whole.
Space holders, coaches, and practitioners whose personal journey with eros has become part of how they serve and inspire others
These stories are tender and true. They are not meant to convince or impress—they are meant to resonate, reveal, and remember.
MEET OUR BEAUTIFUL AUTHORS BELOW!
Meet The Authors
Melisa Keenan
Melisa Keenan is an eight-time international and USA Today bestselling author and the founder of HOPE, the Heart Open Publishing Enterprise, a values-led publishing company devoted to integrity, creativity, and cultural impact. Through HOPE, she supports visionary leaders of all genders and backgrounds in drawing their teaching and healing codes directly from lived experience, whether through multi-author collaborations or deeply personal solo books.
As an intimacy mentor, sacred storyteller, publisher, and marketing strategist, Melisa bridges the spiritual and the practical—helping entrepreneurs expand their visibility and influence while staying rooted in purpose, pleasure, and connection. A core part of her work includes intentionally opening doors through partial scholarships and inclusive publishing pathways, prioritizing voices and stories that have historically been underrepresented.
Known for cultivating genuine, relationship-centered communities, Melisa collaborates with individuals and companies committed to transparency, diversity, and soul-aligned leadership. When she’s not weaving story magic, she can be found barefoot with her bees or savoring slow moments on her family’s hobby ranch in Northern Nevada with her husband and four children.
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Ayce Kyptyn
Ayce Kyptyn is a transmasc powerhouse—part Jesus in leather, part spiritual outlaw—known for igniting sacred fire while dismantling the systems that require self-abandonment to belong.
A trauma-skilled Somatic Sexologist, Ayce works at the intersection of Eros, embodiment, and truth, guiding people who are done performing their lives and ready to live in full alignment. His work weaves Erotic Blueprint™ mastery, Sexological Bodywork, and Bondassage® into an embodied, nervous-system-attuned approach where desire tells the truth, integrity becomes non-negotiable, and evolution becomes inevitable.
When he’s not holding transformational space, Ayce is a semi-professional trombonist, off-road Jeeper, and lifelong devotee of lived experience over inherited answers.
As Ayce puts it: “I didn’t intend to change my life. I stopped abandoning myself—and Eros followed.”
Because when all of you can exist, everything changes. Everything.
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Wild Orchid
Wild Orchid began her path of natural healing more than twenty years ago, exploring massage, essential oils, gluten-free living, desire mapping, erotic blueprints, color magic, archetypes, and soul painting. What began as a gentle act of self-care blossomed into a lifelong devotion to exploring healing, presence, and pleasure.
Over the past nine years, she has deeply invested in personal and sexual coaching, moving through waves of profound growth. Each moment of newness—whether raw, tender, orgasmic, or scary—invited her to expand into deeper layers of herself and ultimately redefine the meaning of a “virgin.”
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Rosie Cheeks
Rosie Cheeks is a professional pleasure translator, accidental erotic adventurer, and a master of curling up with her shame in cashmere. She teaches humans how to find themselves in their bodies, one awkward touch or inappropriate thought at a time, and that eroticism isn’t performance—it’s permission.
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Sky Faa
Sky Faa had a mystical awakening following the sudden and tragic death of a dear friend who had encouraged her to awaken her Eros. Since then, she has been exploring her inner self to uncover and release this dormant energy to play and enjoy herself. She is using this to improve connections in her everyday life, to play and have fun.
She lived in France for fifteen years as part of a French family and attained a level in French just below native-speaker level. She now lives in Bangkok and is learning the Thai language.
She cooks nearly all her meals and prefers using organic ingredients. Her interests include maintaining her health, exercising, and socialising. She likes visiting art galleries and attending concerts. Her tastes in music are wide. Recently, she has developed an interest in Reiki, Tarot, and ethical and conscious kink, which she integrates into her everyday life.
Ephraim Mallery & Gina {GG} Garris
Gina {GG} Garris (they/them or she/her) and Ephraim Mallery (gender fluid/all pronouns) are lovers, ritualists, archetypalists, and Lead Trainers with the Erotic Blueprints™ who live in the wild, exquisite tension of devotion and desire.
Together, they open doors to embodied ecstasy, intimate energetic play, and sovereign self-pleasure—what they call “Spheres of Pleasure”—where you can meet yourself fully and without shame.
In their presence, pleasure and curiosity become teachers, and every encounter is a doorway to your own deepest wisdom. They hold the tender darkness alongside the luminous joy, showing that love, intimacy, and the sacred erotic are inseparable, and that union begins within. Working with them is an invitation to awaken your body, expand your heart, and remember the ecstasy that is always already yours.
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Lorina Manzanita
Lorina Manzanita, MA, SEP, is a Somatic Intimacy Coach and Somatic Experiencing and Psychedelic Somatic (PSIP) Trauma Resolution Practitioner. She is the creatrix of Integrating Eros, a learning community and framework for space-holders who struggle with owning their desires and boundaries.
She helps people expand their capacities for pleasure, presence, and potency by helping them transform old wounds and liberate their aliveness. With heart, intelligence, and laughter, Lorina cultivates trauma-informed containers that invite people to experience more fulfilling, juicy relationships that are rich with love and Eros.
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Kirsteen Blackswan
Kirsteen Anderssen is a certified psychotherapist, embodied mentor, and certified trainer of Psychodramatic Bodywork®. She has decades of experience guiding individuals, groups, and communities through transformation and serves as a grief worker, Temple of Rage facilitator, and certified spiritual bodyworker. As a pleasure activist and attachment specialist, Kirsteen integrates body, spirit, and psyche to create spaces where healing and liberation can flourish.
Central to her work is the teaching that the body is the bridge to the unconscious—a doorway to grief, rage, pleasure, and embodied presence. Her work honors the wisdom of neurodivergence, queerness, and the necessity of crossing boundaries between disciplines, practices, and ways of knowing.
Known as a radical midwife of transition, Kirsteen supports people in birthing new versions of themselves. A committed cross-pollinator, she weaves together therapeutic modalities, spiritual practice, and community healing to help others reclaim their vitality, belonging, and wholeness.
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David Olson
David Olson—known as “Dave-O” in the CNM community—is a San Francisco author, advisor, and coach. His life is a practice of gathering, listening, and weaving people and stories together. As a social alchemist, he creates intentional spaces where connections bloom, and people explore relationships beyond traditional structures.
His chapter in Embracing Your Eros chronicles his journey from a trembling confession to confident polyamorous living with his partner Catt.
After three decades as a C-suite finance professional, David is currently writing a novel based on real CNM journeys, documenting the messy, beautiful, challenging experiences of people embracing non-traditional relationship structures.
He welcomes story submissions from readers navigating their own transitions, invitations to connect over the shared journey of relationship evolution, and coaching inquiries from those ready to embrace their authentic Eros.
Winters finds him on the slopes of Tahoe with his partner Catt and their dog pack.
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Kristin Warnaca
Kristin Warnaca is a holy freak, pleasure maven, and founder of Wilder Intimacy Coaching. An author, speaker, and midlife mentor, she is a survivor of the 2x2 cult and a fierce advocate for erotic sovereignty and soul-deep liberation. Her work bridges the sacred and the sensual, serving leaders and seekers across traditions and identities, including rabbis, pastors, ex-vangelicals, kinksters, swingers, shamans, and mystics.
Kristin brings a trauma-informed foundation rooted in the Wheel of Consent®, Religious Trauma Studies, and somatic intimacy practices. Her signature offerings—including Good Girl Jailbreak, Naked and Unashamed, and Wilder Intimacy—help clients alchemize shame into sacred power and reclaim pleasure as holy.
If this chapter stirred something in you, Kristin warmly invites you to send her a message—and to begin with her free Permission Granted mini-course, an embodied activation into erotic, emotional, and existential self-authority.
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Sapphire Woods
Sapphire Woods has worked in the sex industry since the age of eighteen. She began by offering sexual services in massage parlours, and after eight years of erotic massage, moved into brothel work.
At fifty, after a twenty-year hiatus, Sapphire returned to this work with renewed enthusiasm and for the last five years has specialised in offering her valuable time to people with disabilities, while also bringing her unique flavour of erotic sensuality to a range of modalities, including kink, fetish, tantra, and role play. She helps people of all ages, shapes, genders, and abilities feel sexy, wanted, and alive again.
Sapphire has always loved writing and especially enjoys sharing the wisdom and experiences that come from decades of working with Eros. Or perhaps lifetimes!
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Mallory Kiersten
Mallory Kiersten (she/they) guides souls home to the wild truth of their bodies, where desire thrums with spine-tingling pleasure in every breath. Her work is a love affair with aliveness itself. Mallory is a self-love coach and Accelerated Evolution practitioner. She is also certified in the Sacred Money Archetypes® framework and an emotional clearing practitioner of The Spiral modality.
In her work, Mallory focuses on liberating clients from their limitations, helping them shed the shame they’ve carried and reclaim all parts of themselves—especially those they’ve been told are "too much." When your life radiates joy, deep connection, and unapologetic liberation, it becomes a sanctuary of possibility—a place where dreams are not only possible but inevitable.
When she’s not coaching, you can find Mallory reading, writing, dancing, watching cartoons, or making silly faces at herself in the mirror.
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Laura Smith
Laura Smith bridges the tangible and spiritual to help her clients embody love and establish sacred relationship with self, spirit, and romantic partners. As a channel, teacher, and facilitator, she guides clients through her training from the divine feminine through the Sisterhood of the Rose, an MS in Spiritual Psychology, Akashic Records certification, Shamanism in Indigenous Ceremony, Theta Healing, La Ho Chi lightwork, Grief Recovery and holds a Yale MBA.
Her approach creates a transformative space where teaching, activation, transmission, and embodied practice guide clients toward deeper alignment with divine love and how to tangibly express love in their lives.
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Auburn Marie
Auburn is a former journalist, a TEDx speaker, and a development professional for charitable nonprofit organizations that are near and dear to her heart. Currently, she is proud to be raising funding to preserve and protect the rights of LGBTQ2SIA+ Oregonians. There is nothing she enjoys more than the chance to tell a good story.
Auburn is also a mother to three boys, a dog mom to one, a late-in-life lesbian, and a never-ending work in progress who loves to connect with people through community, dancing, and food.
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Anaka Thorsted
Anaka Thorsted is a Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and a religious deconstruction coach who empowers women to rediscover their confidence and personal agency. Having grown up in a high-demand religion, she is passionate about helping women rediscover their innate authenticity, shed limiting beliefs, and transform their identity. She combines clinical expertise with thoughtful, values-based coaching. Outside her work, she enjoys traveling and caring for her rescue Chihuahua, who proudly wears her hand-knit creations.
She is currently accepting new clients into her 1:1 coaching program and through online courses. Feel free to book an advice call at no cost to see if her programs would be a good fit for you!
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Veenaa Saynana
Veenaa Saynana is a priestess, motivational speaker, and author devoted to the awakening of consciousness and the empowerment of women. An ordained minister in plant medicine, Veenaa is also the author of The Magdalene Letters – Flame of Ascension, an illuminating book that explores Magdalene temple wisdom and spiritual embodiment. She channels soulful sex magic practices to create transformational experiences through innovative somatic and yogic practices designed to transmute pain and depression into health and joy in her modality, Dolphin Heart Alchemy.
She is the co-founder of Thanktuary Retreat in Gualala, California, dedicated to healing, awakening, and authentic connection. Veenaa channels the Divine Feminine through her calm, embodied presence. Since 2003, she has shared her teachings and facilitated transformational work internationally. Trained by mentors and indigenous healers, Veenaa integrates ancient wisdom with contemporary understanding. She offers a heart-centered approach to support clients in fully embodying their transformation.
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Diana A. Kim
Diana Kim is a spiritual mentor, advanced energy healer, and embodiment guide whose work centers on helping women overcome generational trauma, return to their bodies, their intuition, and their capacity to receive. Drawing from lived experience and deep somatic awareness, she supports women in releasing survival patterns, reclaiming pleasure, and cultivating safety from within.
Diana’s work is grounded, honest, and body-led, bridging spirituality with the human experience of healing and remembering. She is known for creating spaces where transformation unfolds gently: through presence, nervous system attunement, and the quiet courage it takes to come home to oneself to live authentically.
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Aliyah Hamilton
Aliyah Hamilton is a mystic mother, somatic guide, and keeper of the golden thread. Her work weaves deep sensitivity, devotional practice, and grounded presence. Rooted in the Kootenay mountains of British Columbia, she walks as both child and priestess of the land, guiding others into the sanctuary of their own becoming.
Her gifts live in her ability to feel deeply, soften where others brace, and listen where others rush to speak. As a Relational Somatic Therapist, play therapist for both children and adults, parent coach, and ceremonial guide, she invites others to access the wisdom written in their bodies and the innocence that still lives beneath their survival.
Whether tending children, holding ceremony, or sitting in circle with women reclaiming their truth, Aliyah lives her prayer: to walk softly, love fiercely, and midwife the sacred in all things.
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Michael Robison
Michael Robison is a photographer, husband, and father whose creative work is rooted in a lifelong journey of integrating faith, sexuality, and emotional presence. Raised within purity culture and shaped by years of navigating shame, suppression, and later healing, he has devoted himself to understanding how safety, nervous-system attunement, and reverence transform intimacy and self-perception. This personal work has profoundly influenced his approach to boudoir and portrait photography, where his focus is not on capturing images but on holding space for women to experience themselves without judgment, objectification, or performance.
Through his art, Michael seeks to honor the female experience, soften the impact of the male gaze, and create environments in which women can reconnect with their bodies, their worth, and their own inner authority.
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