JR
Offering such a unique set of services at JR Wolfe Coaching, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask us why we chose to do this work. While I cannot answer this question for Red, I certainly never thought I would be doing this kind of work or even owning a business. More than forty years of life experience has gradually brought me to this point. It would be impossible to give you a full answer without telling you my full life story, but I will share with you a few key motivations.
The Last Straw: Let’s start near the end. I was participating in a Reddit forum where people shared experiences with and advice about kinky sex when I ran across a post requesting advice. The entire point of the post is that this person felt a craving for kinky sex, but believed they couldn’t have it because they were a Christian. The answer to this crisis was simple: God doesn’t prohibit kinky sex, the Bible doesn’t tell us what kinds of sex we can have, and any shame or stigma that may come from being tied up or spanking someone or wearing a catsuit or placing a locked collar around someone’s neck comes purely from mistaken Christian people, not from God. While people may engage in theological and ethical arguments over some of the groups we work with, there is simply no argument to be had here
I Love It: I don’t know that I necessarily believe that “if you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life,” but I do love what I do. At my deepest core, I love God, I love people, I love talking to people, I like watching other people succeed and be happy, and I’ve felt that happiness myself. I’ve always enjoyed roles where I could give people the tools they needed, sometimes inventing those tools, and then watch them go out and use them to succeed.
I’ve Lived It: I was not unhappy before I discovered my own identity or sexuality or before I got into kink, but I did begin to live a much more full and fulfilled life once I did. Each experience was a struggle: discovering that I was capable of loving more than one person, discovering I got pleasure from power exchange, discovering that I was nonbinary, discovering that I was attracted to people across the gender spectrum (for more on these, see my “coming out” series of blog posts). With each discovery came pain. Each challenged the way I saw myself. Each involved difficult conversations with my spouse and my friends. Each required soul searching, therapy, and the guidance of a good spiritual director.
It’s My Gift: God created me, and my family raised me, as a non judgemental listener with the natural ability to put myself in other people’s shoes. I’ve done this in many settings, from walking with friends through hard times to my work as a professional church worker (as a friend used to say “professional God person”). This was the right time to begin this business. There are plenty of Christian spaces where I could happily and openly work, but most of the large organizations are deeply conservative and would require me to stay closeted. If I was going to be out and make a living doing what I love, it was time to make my own way.
It’s in My Blood: My family has been full of church workers. Each of them in their own place and time shook up the status quo. Whether it was performing interracial marriages in the American South, participating in the civil rights movement, opposing unjust wars, integrating previously homogenous churches, or working with people with AIDS back when the church was calling it “God’s judgement on gays,” all the examples of faith that I grew up with were people who made the world a better place by doing things that the larger American church looked down on.
It Has to be Done: I’ve spent my life in progressive Christian churches where LGBTQ+ people were welcomed as fully part of the church. I’ve been a member of and worked in churches that want to talk about racial, social, and ecological justice. Yet, the average person would say that Christians do not believe in these things. This is a result of the current political and media climate. The largest and best funded Christian organizations do not believe in these things. The loudest voices get on the news because they say the dumbest, most attention grabbing things. There is another way, and it’s out there if you want to be part of it, yet so many of us carry around so much spiritual abuse and spiritual trauma that the prospect is daunting.
If you’ve stepped away from faith because of who you are or the things you want, we want to help you reconnect with The Divine. If you’ve repressed yourself in order to fit in with your religious community, we want to help you reconnect to yourself.
