“My Work is Very Personal”

When describing why she does the work she does, you’ll often find Michelle with tears as she describes the generational work she’s been doing on her own, while supporting clients in building these same skills. “The work is very personal,” is the start of describing generations of women in her family that didn’t have the voice Michelle has now.

Born and raised in West Michigan, Michelle Renee (she/her) spent her first 17 years in a household that looked quite normal from the outside. She was the oldest of 3 daughters and lived with her two parents. What wasn’t so clear to others was that her parents didn’t know how to communicate in a healthy manner. She remembers her father yelling at her to go to hell at the age of 5, her parents going from screaming at each other to an eerie silence in the later years of their marriage, and witnessing her mom avoid sex with her father but never actually modeling bodily autonomy or boundaries. She also recalls a deep history of being sexualized by many adult men in her teen years, something she was flattered by in her adolescence but now sees as extremely problematic. It wasn’t until her current relationship that she was able to see that her self-worth had been tied up in her sexuality.

One strong memory Michelle has is of her mother’s draw towards self-help books. Often titles like “How to declutter your life in 30-days”. Looking back, she often says that she wishes her mom had had a bookshelf that looks more like the one she has now in order for her mom to have gone a little deeper into her self-work.

In 1996 Michelle married her first husband at the age of 20. Over the course of an 18-year marriage, they raised 2 sons, but in that process, Michelle completely lost herself. She lost the confidence she had going into that relationship at 17. She recreated her parent’s relationship and that included not practicing bodily autonomy, often giving into sex because it was easier than the repercussions of having a no, something she now understands as ‘sexual coercion’. Instead of identifying and holding boundaries, she handed over her body to her husband and died a little every day. Her husband wasn’t getting the connection he longed for and she wasn’t either. Neither knew any better.

During these rough years in her marriage, Michelle’s mom passed away after a two-year battle with Inflammatory Breast Cancer in 2002 at the age of 50. While their relationship wasn’t ideal, her mother had a positive impact on Michelle’s life.

A much more complicated relationship was the one with her father. As he aged, he became more difficult to be in relationship with. This may have had something to do with Michelle’s personal journey to identify and be in healthy relationships. Her father passed at the age of 69 in 2021.

In 2014, as her marriage was ending, Michelle Renee found a rock-star sex educator named Betty Dodson.  It was in Betty’s Bodysex workshop that she knew she wanted to do hands-on sex education. It was also the start of her learning to love her body, claim her sexuality, and make courageous choices in her life.

Her first big step towards her new career goal was to train in an emerging market, professional cuddling. She was a newly divorced, stay-at-home mom, and was looking for who she would be in this next stage of her life. In December 2015, she made the snowy drive from West Michigan to Chicago and met with Cuddlist.com co-founder Madelon Guinazzo, a meeting that would be the beginning of the rest of her life.

Over the next year, she became a Cuddlist Certified Touch Practitioner, Operations Manager for Cuddlist.com, and Certified Cuddle Party facilitator. Her life changed through this “cuddle work”, which involves educating around consent, communication, and boundary setting, on top of providing a safe container to facilitate touch. Through her work, she healed the wounds of her unhealthy first marriage and became a walking example of the virtues she teaches.

While living in West Michigan she also founded two local Sex Geekdom hubs, an international group that promotes open conversation about sex and relationships. The two groups met monthly to exchange ideas on a variety of topics including kink, relationship structures, consent, etc. 

After a move to  San Diego, California, in 2018, she began Surrogate Partner Therapy (SPT) training with The Institute of Mind Body Therapy.  In San Diego, she became an active member of both STEM (Sex Therapy Education Medicine) and GSRD (Gender, Sexuality, and Relationship Diversity Affirming Therapists).  

Finishing her Surrogate Partner Therapy training in 2019 and moving to Baltimore, Maryland, she launched her new SPT offering to the Mid-Atlantic.  She took a position with Ananda Integrative Healing in Philadelphia as a staff surrogate partner, and built connections through her mentor, Brian Gibney, building a client list across the Baltimore/DC area.  She also co-founded Embrace, a professional resource group for surrogate partners and collaborating clinicians.

In 2021 Michelle reestablished a home base for herself back in San Diego.

In 2022 she became the co-chair of the AASECT Somatic Sexuality Professional Special Interest Group and she founded Soft Cock Appreciation Week, an annual week of education and appreciation for the flaccid phallus.

2023 brought Michelle full circle, back to Cuddlist leadership, as their new Director of Training. She also launched two podcasts: The Intimacy Lab and The Soft Cock Week Podcast.

Michelle identifies with many labels including cis, asexual, and neuroqueer. Her passion is working with clients with a history of trauma and supporting them in establishing safety in themselves and others, working with all genders.  But ultimately, she wants to provide a space for clients to be authentic and discover their desires, and what they want in life. Her work is an extension of the work her mother had started on herself and the work Michelle continues to pursue for herself. This work is personal.