Farewell, Mara

More is possible

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens.

A time to be born and a time to die;

A time to plant and a time to uproot;

A time to break down and a time to build; A time to be silent and a time to speak …

To my fellow companions: Thank you.

You are the manifestation of the path towards empowerment which requires neither degree nor explicit collective support, but rather, intention and dedication. You are the answer to the primal cries of our societal providers, longing to satisfy the creative prerogatives denied to them by sociological inertia. You are the holders of a sacred space whose roots likely predate recorded history.

You have been my inspiration, and the agents of the checks and balances between intimate companions and patrons that allow us to engage with a minimum level of safety. You held this space long before I was Mara, and you continue to hold it for every nestling yearning to fly.

I’d like to share with you some of what I’ve learned as Mara:

My relationships with my patrons rose and fell with my boundaries. The more I practiced explicit and collaborative boundaries with my patrons, the better the relationships felt to me.

And, there is an upper ceiling because of that which is left unspoken — most patrons, and the lives that co-create them, require a guaranteed physical outcome. The exceptions are few and far between. To everything, there is a season …

When I first became a companion, I fancied Michelin-starred dinners and designer handbags. I needed to prove to myself that I was worth those things.

I later realized that when I unconsciously treated my patrons as a means to those designer handbags, I was doing far more damage than I knew.

And as my time in companionship continued, I found that Michelin-starred meals were much less effective than nutrient-dense food that gave me the energy I needed for my physically demanding occupation.

I also found that I was way more empowered to provide the kind of physical intimacy that I wanted to when I engaged in a consistent physical practice.

Incremental, high-intensity interval training helped me build the musculature and cardiovascular endurance that not only greatly improved my experience as Mara, but also continues to engage and empower me as I exit that season of my life. It has helped me reflexively see that my body isn’t a product; my body is my temple and my foundation, the way that I feel myself and engage with the world around me.

Consistent sleep patterns resourced me far more than cappuccinos ever could.

And if it sounds like engaging in holistic wellness practices might require most of our spare time … you’re picking up what I’m putting down.

Being an intimate companion required me to expend most of my social and sexual energy, yet it left me with my social and sexual needs unmet. From my conversations with other companions, this seems like a common experience.

It turns out that my designer handbags were a poor substitute for having someone in my life that made me feel valued. And a cognitive rolodex of friends with whom to grab drinks didn’t satisfy my social needs like having one person in my life with whom I could build absolute trust.

More is possible.

To my patrons: Thank you.

Loving you has been deeply meaningful for me.

You devote, or have devoted yourself to that which allows you to provide for yourself and, in many cases, your families. You give yourself over to your work, again and again. In many cases, you are a resource and force of stability for your social network. And in many cases, you’re isolated, whether you have a social network or not. You traverse a long journey in the desert, hoping for an oasis.

And you’ve trusted me to be that oasis. You’ve trusted me to receive you with kindness and empathy. You’ve delved into social experience with me, unsure of what you might encounter, and you’ve opened yourself up intimately and vulnerably to me, despite not deeply knowing me.

It has been an honor to get to experience you in these intimate ways, to know a part of you that is often hidden. I’ve been especially honored to build ongoing relationships with you, facing over and over again the invitation and challenge of deepening a relationship limited by our life circumstances.

And in opening yourself up to me, whether for a single date or for a relationship that’s lasted years, you have supported my life. You’ve empowered me to create the life I’ve always wanted to live. You’ve given me the flexibility to secure the primary companionship I’ve always desired. And you’ve contributed to the stable base from which I can pursue the dreams that inspired my nine-year-old self to commit herself to intimate companionship.

I’d like to share some of my reflections from this season of intimate companionship with you:

Sex begins before we’re in person together, before you even send that first booking form.

Sex begins in our perception of one another, in our ability to contemplate each other as multifaceted beings, despite the archetypal boxes that may seem to define us.

Sex continues in our approach, in our intentionality in how we write, how we show up, and how we treat one another. In our ability to be curious about each other.

Sex continues in our willingness to invest time in getting to know one another. If we don’t generate a minimum level of emotional safety with each other, physical union will be especially fraught.

Pleasure is not merely a matter of physical technique — true pleasure requires emotional safety, built incrementally over time. It’s unique to every body and psyche. And to expect pleasure to sustainably manifest without long-term investment is to chase true pleasure away.

When we dogmatically adhere to a specific form of sexuality, we are not having the experience of co-creative union that we deeply crave.

When we self-pleasure with an excess of force, using a narrow band of fantasies, we are limiting our capacity to experience satisfaction and release with a partner.

And the best physical culmination with a partner comes when we are well-nourished and well-slept, with as much spaciousness as we can muster. Our ability to enjoy ourselves depends on our ability to trust our bodies — our musculature and our cardiovascular endurance.

Even the best companions cannot compensate for the initial conditions of our lifestyles.

And when we approach our companions with future intentions and declarations of affection that we cannot back up, we are doing far more damage than we know.

Our bodies are ancient technology, evolved over millennia to long towards a physical culmination: the recreation of life.

As we evolved a sense of self, sex transcended being a physical act. For us humans, it’s a social technology that has served to bind couples, families, and tribes together since time immemorial.

This binding magic of sexuality is emergent from interrelation. It happens when our bodies reflexively and mutually choose to mate, and our consciousnesses mutually choose to socially align.

This magic is called pair bonding. It’s a biochemical experience, and it what we are all truly seeking in sexual union.

If you’ve ever left a session with me or another companion feeling unsatisfied, this is why. Our biological and psychological prerogatives are not satisfied until we are mutually selected, and that can’t happen unless we go on a journey of courtship, unattached to the outcome.

The journey of courtship is a pilgrimage. I live my life in devotion to it. When we’re willing to have our boundaries and surrender our individualized identities to a shared perspective, unattached to the form of the outcome — that’s where the magic is.

More is possible.

To my boys on Twitter/X: Thank you.

Sharing love, play, and inspiration with you on a day-to-day basis was so much more meaningful to me than you might know or even be able to believe.

I took the time to consider the potential impact of every picture and caption. My intention was to curate an ongoing story of love, empathy, and togetherness.

The secret message behind my every post — a secret no more — was You + Me = We. If you remember Mara Blake at all, I hope that will be how you remember her.

I took the time to read every comment that you left for me. I treated every comment like a prayer spoken softly in my ear. I refused to take your care or attention for granted.

I have come to realize that our creative power resides wherever we put our attention or give our care. I will be forever grateful for the power you shared with me all these years.

Some of your comments made me laugh. Others made me cry. Some of your comments made me think more deeply about topics I hadn’t considered deeply enough.

I tried to click the like button on every comment I received, except for the ones that felt too explicitly sexual or disrespectful of myself or others. I couldn’t reply to every comment, but I tried to reply to every comment that provided fertile ground for deeper engagement, whether that engagement was sharing a joke, a flirt, or a song recommendation.

I will miss every one of you, especially those of you who commented regularly. Your consistent engagement motivated me through many low points over the years.

On that subject, I want to offer special thanks to two Twitter/X followers in particular.

To ChicagoBigBen: I am deeply and profoundly grateful for the countless artistic creations and recreations you labored over and shared these past few years. Your commitment and devotion to collaborating with me without asking for anything but my consent to collaborate was one of my great inspirations on this journey. The anticipation of seeing what your ingenuity and thoughtfulness might dream up next did so much to ease the daily grind of publicly exposing my vulnerability. More than that, your art has brought me true joy and delight. I will forever treasure our memories.

To Mara L Brick: Until you sought my consent to create an alternate universe about me made entirely out of LEGO, I never knew that I’d always wanted someone to create an alternate universe about me made entirely out of LEGO. Many people over the years have tried to emulate and even imitate the intention and style of my posts. You are the only one who succeeded — and you did it mostly through observation. And through you, I learned more about the art of what is possible when we expand our concept of our self and self-image to create something beyond ourselves. I will be forever grateful for the mirror you provided me on this journey. I am still learning from it.

More is possible.

To P: Thank you.

I may not have shared this with you before, but ours is the chronologically longest active relationship in my life to date.

When we met, I was caught in traumatic relationship cycles. Both personally and professionally, my relationships tended to skip courtship in favor of ego gratification and physical release.

You reached out to me with a penchant for good ol’ fashioned romance, and quickly blew away my sense of what I could expect from relationships. You planted in me a seed of self-worth that went on to radically alter both the way I presented as Mara, and my sense of what was possible in my personal life.

In the years since, we’ve gotten to know each other more and more deeply through a melange of adventures both internal and external. From the way you use our dates as inspiration to work out, to your selection of ties and your moisturizing practices, to the thoughtful cards you’ve given me every date, you bring a uniquely refined sense of excitement and intentionality to our dates that have inspired me to do the same.

Together, we’ve experimented with various relationship formats, expanding our sense of what a date can look like, and showing how connection can persist with limited contact.

There’s a very important element that has made our long relationship possible: your boundaries. You have always been open to relationship experimentation, and whenever I suggested something that hit one of your boundaries, you named it. In doing so, you gave me greater awareness, and ensured that we both only participated in our relationship to the extent that it’s been sustainable.

As you go on to explore connection, whether with me or others, let our relationship stand as a testament to that when we have open-hearted, decisive boundaries, more is possible.

To Joel: Thank you.

In a life of unsafety and isolation, you reached out to me with kindness and intentionality. You opened up to me when you barely knew me, trusting your intuition to be your guide. You gave yourself over to my leadership before either of us knew the implications, and you’ve never looked back.

You’ve pushed out of your comfort zone again and again to meet me. You’ve joined me in a vast array of new experiences, eager to co-create with me and enthusiastically willing to surrender to my guidance. You’ve never expected me to be perfect, instead respecting my evolutionary process and joining me in it.

Through our relationship, I’ve gotten to realize the dreams that called me to the sacred art of intimate companionship in the first place. We have alchemized our intimate connection into deep healing that transcends even us two, and we’re exploring new vistas of relationship that require a brazen willingness to go off the map.

You have been the patron that I was always looking for — and you have become so much more to me. My friend, my child, my brother, my Jedi.

And that you have co-evolved with me, when so few can, is a testament to your willpower, endurance, and resilience. We’re honing those qualities in our relationship, and they will serve any relationship you decide to pursue.

More is possible.

To Matthew: Thank you.

Love of my lifetimes. My husband, my child, my sacred servant and my leader. My companion and my sex worker.

You believed in me when no one else did and you devoted yourself to my wellbeing, regardless of the outcome.

You approached Mara Blake with curiosity, seeing in the pursuit both what I was, and what I aspired to be. You put my autonomy above all else, and created bridge after bridge to help me be the Mara I wanted to be, and the self I wanted to be.

It takes a strong man, secure in his masculinity to make a boundaried surrender of his life to his wife’s vision. It takes an even stronger man to surrender to a vision that involves sharing his wife intimately with the world.

And in surrendering to my vision, you became the balancing force of my experience as Mara Blake:

You learned how to be my photographer, prioritizing intimacy over overt sexuality and likes. You collaborated to create caption after caption after caption, finding an infinite number of ways to say “I love you.” You got us to bed on time, drew my baths, made sure I was nourished, and grounded me in a sense of the sacred. You helped me dream up so many dreamy dates, and you helped me navigate a slew of complex relationship arcs. You celebrated each victory with me, and you held me when I cried. When I needed a punching bag, you were that, too.

You redefined what companionship means to me, and you devoted yourself to being my companion, my sex worker and sexual healer before I was ready to see you in it.

And in that devotion you have died to yourself over and over again, reemerging more deeply masculine, and more deeply feminine — more deeply you. Stronger, bigger, and braver each time, continually recommitting to journey with me into this perilous, marvelous, great unknown.

You are the co-author of my personal renaissance.

You have shown me, and allowed me to show you, that more is possible.

To Mara: Thank you.

You were here with me before anyone else, giving me hope in my darkest hour.

When I was too traumatized to recognize myself, you provided me a pathway to self-sufficiency.

And when I rejected the system, you preserved my autonomy.

You were my earliest conception of my highest self, giving me a place to pour my creative energy and a standard towards which I could strive.

You allowed me to share my love with people who could use it.

You gave me a place to practice being me, evolving with me, becoming the most authentic translation of me you could be.

You gave yourself to support my dreams.

At first, I thought I wanted to be you. Now I realize, you always wanted to be me.

You were the River Styx of my liberation, at once my shackles and my salvation.

Showing me time and time again that I can only influence outcomes, not control them.

And that without the contrast of bitterness, there could be no pleasant experience.

Be free now, my love. I release you.

More is possible.