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horizontal with lila

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Lila Donnolo

Lila Donnolo is an Intimacy Specialist. Tell Me More…

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horizontalwithlila

Actress. Writer. Podcaster. Lover. Intimacy Specialist … 70+ exclusive podcast episodes for you on Patreon!

Busy? Low on bandwidth? No time to read the whole

Busy? Low on bandwidth? No time to read the whole piece?

TL,DR: Don’t ask. OFFER.

Don’t ask. Offer.

Honestly though, the whole piece is worth reading, and, of you’re grieving, sharing with those who ask you off there’s ‘anything’ they can do.

Link to my Substack in my bio.

I love you.
I grieve with you.
I love you.

Think of this as a candy conversation heart that s

Think of this as a candy conversation heart that says “READ ME”.

“Annie Lalla, the love coach I would trust with my love life, who explains the unexplainable in ways that break open my head and my heart, once told me of smuggling love. Some people do not demonstrate love in ways that we at first recognize as love. She spoke of becoming a Detective on the Case of Love, noticing where a partner might be smuggling morsels of it. Refilling your water glass while you’re busy writing, perhaps. Going out to the car early to defrost it before you get in. Things like that, and things far less legible.

When I first courted her for a couple of episodes of horizontal with lila, I asked, “How do I smuggle love?” She replied immediately that I don’t seem to smuggle at all; I just come right out with it. Make like confetti. Festoon a person. She said loads of people are more reserved than I am because they believe compliments, effusiveness, and praise, once offered, lower their social status. She said I don’t care much about that, because it’s more important to me to let the person know.

Let the people know.

We are all going to die. And it seems like most of the time, it will be a surprise when. What does status matter, really? Really really.

The fact that I will express my love with a freeness is a thing I love about myself even when I don’t love myself.

So sure, I don’t need a holiday to express my love — which is one of the main annoyances I hear bandied about near February 14th — “I don’t need a holiday to tell me to tell my wife I love her!”

Okay. But setting aside a day for a thing can certainly help, right?

Atonement.

Independence.

Rights.

Holocaust remembrance.

If anything, Valentine’s offers us that cultural pause in the middle of an unfavorite month, a will-we-make-it-through-the-winter, hope-our-stores-last, do-we-have-enough firewood, dear-God-don’t-let-me-freeze-to-death month that says, in candy-colored suspended animation:

Think about love, will you?

What kind do you have?

What kind do you want?

And:

Now what do you want to do about that, sweetheart?”

Read the whole piece on my Substack, darling. Link in my bio.

P.S. I love you.

Read this if you love me: “february, the month

Read this if you love me:

“february, the month you’re supposed to be in love”

https://open.substack.com/pub/horizontalwithlila/p/february-the-month-youre-supposed?r=m6nsi&utm_medium=ios

“This has been a terrible no good very bad super

“This has been a terrible no good very bad super sucky year. For moi. (You too?)

Would not recommend.
Would not wish on anyone.

Back in Florida. Mother descending into dementia and decrepitude.

Don’t want to do the things. I am the only person to do the things.

Almost the entirety of 2024 has been an adulting montage. Or rather, for accuracy’s sake, the first three-quarters of the year was a months-long ordeal which Joseph Campbell of The Hero’s Journey might dub the REFUSAL OF THE CALL.

I am firmly in the montage now, though, for sure. How long will it last? Who knows. Montages are interminable for the person living them. That’s why we speed them up in the movies.

So I juuuust entered the montage 2 months ago. Basically when I got out of bed. There was a lot of bed. See: Refusal of the Call.

This is sort of a MVE, a Minimum Viable Essay. I haven’t written in 10 months. A list is the first thing I’ve mustered, and I’m very glad I’ve mustered it because it means I’m back. English is so confusing, isn’t it? Mustered. Mustard. Tomato. Tomato.

Anyhoodle! Without further ado, I present you with an exhaustive yet incomplete list of Things I Learned (in 2024) that I Really Never Wanted to Learn and Didn’t Really Want to Know:

[Go to the Substack link in bio to read about the 24 things!]

Tara sat in front of me in the studio space and c

Tara sat in front of me in the studio space and coached me to empty my lungs completely. She did it, then I did it, more slowly, yoga-style. Then she guided me to take in a long, slow breath, fill my lungs, stretch my arms out wide and hold my breath, then swallow. Swallow while holding my breath. It felt bad somehow. But I reminded myself that I decided to do this now, with her, because I trust her. I looked into her blue eyes and copied her. I swallowed my empty breath.

And then, she said, while your arms are stretched out, you can lean back slowly and lie down.

He knelt in front of me and packed the pipe.

What do I need to know? I asked. He seemed very experienced.
Let go, he said. Let go let go let go. If you’re called to take this medicine at this time, trust that your body will get what it needs. Don’t try to rationalize it. Let go let go let go.

Let go.

Trust.

My body will get what it needs.

Don’t try to rationalize it. Let go.

I took a big breath in and a big sigh out. Let go, huh? I will try.

{Read the whole cosmic take on my Substack - Link in my bio!}

I take pictures. I take a lot of pictures. Except

I take pictures. I take a lot of pictures. Except when I’m depressed. Then I take hardly any. Maybe none. In fact, the absent months on my camera roll could probably provide a pretty accurate map of my depressive episodes over the years.
I take pictures because my memories erode.

I have hardly any memories before the age of 12, which is the year my parents got divorced, and my mom took me away from New York.

Long-term friends of mine are like my external memory banks. I seem to have friends with remarkably detailed memories — Joe, Owen, @jujubumble , @evolvedwellnesssolutions, @mrghyseye ... (A few of them are doctors now. They all work directly with people’s health. Hm.) My friends tell me ‘remember when’ stories and they are continually surprised by the fact that, much of the time, I do not remember when. I don’t remember when at all. “You don’t remember that? Really?”

Which is arguably helpful for living in the moment, and the whole acting thing. But probably not so good for the memoirs.

{Read the whole post & see the rest of the 2014 Bathroom Portraits on Substack! Link in my bio, bb!}

If you aren’t already familiar with her supernov

If you aren’t already familiar with her supernova-level brilliance, allow me to introduce you to one of my favorite humans on the planet: @samia.mounts

Samia is an absolute dynamo— wickedly charismatic, vivacious, warm, loving, hilarious, unconditionally supportive, caring, emotionally-available and effervescent. She is a party and a pain-reliever. She is queer, pansexual, polyamorous, nonbinary, and badass.

Samia is an actress, singer, writer, voice-over artist, podcaster & performer of all kinds. She is the voice of many things you have probably heard before, including video game characters!

She was a guest on two episodes of horizontal with lila. She was a member of my ‘Mod Squad’ for the interactive social audio version of my show Positively S&x! (which premiered on @clubhouse as part of their Creator First program). And she is largely responsible for the fact that I’m currently on the West Coast (erm, don’t @ her?).

She has a new podcast forthcoming, full of anonymous interviews with people who are closeted in all different kinds of ways. I helped name it! Be sure to follow her on the ‘gram so you’ll be apprised of her release date.

Honestly. She’s just the bees knees. The cat’s pajamas. The dog’s tuxedo.

And as I texted her just the other day: she is one of my top 3 people in the world to talk through decisions with.

I am sorry that not everyone can have the great good fortune of Samia’s platinum-record friendship. The cackling, the adventures, the cheerleading, the showing-up-ness, the front row seats to each other’s risk-taking, the generosity-as-an-extreme-sport, and the hard conversations, too. In lieu of that, I offer you this recording we made you.

It’s about jealousy, envy, romance, friendship, insecurities and revelations.

It’s all on my Substack - link in bio!

The Bathroom Portraits is an ongoing, off-the-cuff

The Bathroom Portraits is an ongoing, off-the-cuff photo series.

I have taken Bathroom Portraits in more than 10 states1. 5 countries2. On a boat. During a party. During a party on a boat. At a plethora of restaurants and bars. At salons, movie theaters, clubs, bus depots, private apartments, & a converted grammar school.

Nearly all of them were taken with my phone. (The best camera was indeed the one I had with me.)

In the bathroom mirror, I am the most unguarded. No pleasantry, no social mask, no performance.

I’ve taken Bathroom Portraits when I felt sexy. I’ve taken them after rehearsal and after performing and after terrible sickness. Heartbroken or on a first date or so spitting mad that I ran off to a beach house we rented, by myself.

I have worried many conscientious people. I have offended many innocent bladders. I almost always go until I get the shot. I know when I’ve got the shot.

My Bathroom Portraits have ‘rules’ …
… and of course, sometimes I break them:

Welcome to The Bathroom Portraits.

P.S. Should I make a flip book or what?

To follow the whole series, subscribe to my Substack horizontalwithlila.substack.com

It was the fall of 2010, and I was feeling very bl

It was the fall of 2010, and I was feeling very blue. Blue AND grey. I didn’t know what to do with myself, how to progress, where to go, what to devote myself to. When I asked myself what I really wanted to do with my life, the only answer I could come up with was, “I want to travel.”

“Ok,” I said to myself, “Why aren’t you traveling? That’s why you became an AcroYoga teacher, right? So you’d have this valuable, portable skill. Lots of your colleagues are traveling full time. Why can’t you?”

“I’m scared,” I answered.

“What are you scared of?”

I searched myself for the truest truth, and I found an answer that embarrassed me.

When I peeled back the layers of my fear, (which I did gently, by alternating asking myself, “What are you afraid of,” and “What happens then?”) what I was actually afraid of was this: that I wouldn’t be able to pay my student loan bill, my credit card bill, and my cell phone bill each month.

This amounted to $300.

The thing was, I knew I could do that. And once I was able to address the actual fear at the core of my fear, I could prove my fear wrong.

I decided to travel for a year. […]

Substack for the whole essay, my love. Link in bio.

At the top of the book she reprints a letter from

At the top of the book she reprints a letter from her father. He reminisces about their barefoot walks together along secret trails when @sabrinawardharrison was six.

“The thing about bare feet,” he writes, “is that they move easily and quickly over mud and dirt and sand and grass but tend to hesitate before a barrier of pointy, sharp-edged gravel.”

That summer, her grandfather re-paved his driveway. The first time they approached the edge of it, barefoot, Sabrina held her arms up for a “special carry.”

“But in this situation something told me not to pick you up.” […] “In my mind’s eye I see myself hunker down in front of you and explain the rules of barefoot travel. I told you paths are not always smooth and familiar like the Indian Trail or the good ones out on Pine Ridge. Sometimes there are rocks on the trail and the only way to cross them is to be brave. As I sit here so many years later, I smile when I remember how proudly you walked over the gravel that summer. Whenever we came back to the cottage by way of the Frog Bridge, you would get breathless and boldly announce how you were going to be ‘brave on the rocks.’ Love, Dad.”

I’ve had so many opportunities to open when I wanted to shut. So many opportunities to practice. To paraphrase Ursula: And did I take them? Yes indeed.

And did I take them?
Sometimes.

For more brave on the rocks, my essay inspired by the work of Sabrina Ward Harrison, make your way to horizontalwithlila.substack.com

“I can’t even convince her to leave her cell p

“I can’t even convince her to leave her cell phone on. This is the only thing her and my father agree on in their old age. They can’t have their phones with them all the time. They can’t even have them on.

“Please,” I have said, innumerable times, “I need to be able to reach you in an emergency.”

“I can’t have it on all the time,” she says.

WHY NOT?! EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD DOES!?

IF YOU FALL DOWN AND CAN’T GET TO YOUR LAND LINE AND YOU LIVE ALONE AND NOBODY VISITS YOU WHO WILL FIND YOU IF YOU CAN’T CALL FOR HELP?

She’s been falling down. Her arms are covered in bruises and her shirts in blood stains. And not just blood. Unidentifiable chalky smears, something that looks like coffee but can’t be coffee because mom doesn’t drink coffee. Droplets of urine in a trail, like an incontinent Hansel and Gretal, from the bedroom to the back bathroom. Almond butter on her chin. A streak of blush like a diagonal neon line only vaguely in the direction of her cheek. She can’t see the stains. Her glasses are coke bottle thick and speckled with… what? What is that?

She doesn’t want to move from this house. In our tenderest conversation, she told me if she leaves she’s afraid she’ll never be independent again.

But to be independently miserable?“

You can read the full essay here: horizontalwithlila.substack.com

#dementiasucks

Does someone in your family have dementia?

“That’s when I threw my hands up and said: Nop

“That’s when I threw my hands up and said:
Nope! Resolutions are promises to yourself that you break! I’m not doing that anymore.”

But when I stopped making resolutions, I missed the cultural pageantry. That fresh-notebook energy. The collective New Year! New Me! The siren call of self-improvement and growth.
I love shiny things.

I could feel the thrum of New Year’s resolutions on the glittery air. I still wanted to harness their power (all that hope! let’s bottle it!) and begin my arbitrarily-marked year with reflection, revelation, recalibration... [Say that three times fast.]

reflection revelation recalibration
reflection revelation recalibration
reflection revelation recalibration

I just wanted something I couldn’t break.

[Read the rest on Substack to find out what I do now, so l don’t break my resolutions]

horizontalwithlila.substack.com

This is the newsletter (with pretty pictures & rea

This is the newsletter (with pretty pictures & read-alouds) with the same name as my first podcast, “horizontal with lila,” in which I had intimate conversations about s&x, love, & relationships of all kinds, entirely recorded while lying down.
To be honest, most of this stuff was written while lying down, too.

I like lying down. I’m lying down right now.

I realized that I had all this work. Hundreds and hundreds of poems and essays and screenplays and articles and pitches, entire photo projects cultivated over a decade’s time, a couple of books that never got past a rough edit, a play that won something a long time ago, interview answers that were never blurbed, and so on and so forth. Some of these have never been seen by anybody else; others were sent one time to the tiny mailing list I had circa 2008 - 2016.

In his book, The Courage to Write, Ralph Keyes calls this “trunk writing.”

It’s a profound thing to write for oneself.
But that’s not what I do. (Not anymore.)

And yet. I’ve hardly shared my work.

My friend, the great-writer-of-our-time (for real)
@hellafitzgerald hosts a good deal of her glorious body of work on Substack, in a collection called griefbacon, and she got me thinking that this, here, might be a good place for me, too.
So. I will try this. I will make horizontal with lila THE SUBSTACK a home for all of my things. A destination for this second brain I’ve amassed over the past 15 years or so. All the Bathroom Portraits. All the essays. All the poetry. Some of the other stuff.

There is a free version and a paid version of horizontal with lila.
They’ve both got words, but some of my favorite words are in the paid version. Because I’d really love to pay my rent, and put gas in my Vespa, Loralei, and eat, occasionally.

I am also partial to lipstick.

Subscribe here darlina: horizontalwithlila.substack.com

Do you get my missives? horizontalwithlila.substac

Do you get my missives? horizontalwithlila.substack.com

What are your topical antidepressants?

What are your topical antidepressants?

For the entire speechy speech on dressing up, dres

For the entire speechy speech on dressing up, dressing out, & dopamine dressing, sign on up for my Substack bb! horizontalwithlila.substack.com … Now tell me, do you have your own version of my TED talk glasses?

Dear Ones, I made a card game for connection. A

Dear Ones,

I made a card game for connection.

And now I will bring it to print!

I’m doing a crowdfunding campaign, but without the platform that takes a cut of your funds, or refuses to give them to you if you don’t raise the amount you intend.

This game is the product of 20 years of work in intimacy. It is based on my intimacy framework, which I was a @ted finalist with in 2021!

I’ve pulled questions & exercises from thousands of hours of intimate podcast interviews, and hundreds of authentic relating workshops.

THE GAME gives you a way to quickly, deeply ✨ CONNECT WITH ANYONE ✨ … from a stranger on the plane to your life partner of 50 years.

With over 200 cards in the deck, each time you play The Game it will be a completely different experience!

And these aren’t just questions! Some of the categories are activities - games within the game. You’ll connect with people not just by sharing & telling, but also by doing!

While most of the companies making question games try to maximize profits by selling you one game for couples and one for family and one for friends, and one for first dates, and one for colleagues, and so on and so forth, my game is completely customizable to any relationship.

Any relationship!
Truly!

The idea is that you’ll take it along in your bag every day, knowing you can adjust it to any social situation & anyone you want to play with. Without it being weird!

Just like a Kickstarter campaign, I have several Reward Tiers! I’d love to share them with you.

Like, comment, or DM and I’ll tell you more, darling!

You can be part of happening it (& maybe even a part of The Game itself)!!!

Big Love,
Lila

📸 by @ericvogelphoto
💄 by @fayelaurenmakeup
👗 by @temperleylondon
💗 by @mellifluousladym , who sewed me into this dress when the zipper didn’t work!

Looking to bring this vibe into my new era! The

Looking to bring this vibe into my new era!

The rest IS still unwritten.

Let’s get to the writing, bb.

Yoohoo! L.A. ….. Let’s play, shall we? 📸

Yoohoo! L.A. …..

Let’s play, shall we?

📸 by @ericvogelphoto
💄 by @fayelaurenmakeup

Moral support & sewing me into the dress when the zipper didn’t work! @mellifluousladym

(Don’t fret. Have since fixed zip.)

Caption this? 📸 by @ericvogelphoto ⚜️ by

Caption this?

📸 by @ericvogelphoto
⚜️ by @barbosanewyork

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