Nora, over at Finding Strength in My Submission, has been reading a book by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny. I was delighted that she was enjoying the book and really appreciated her thoughts about it. You can read her reflections (so far) here: Bookworm: Review of Real Service continued. That post contains the links to earlier posts she’s written about the book.

I commented that I had seen Raven present at an event, along with his boi Josh, that I had also done some writing about it, and that he had a big impact on my ideas about submission. Nora expressed interesting in reading about my experience, so I’m re-blogging my first post about him. This was back in 2011 when MP and I had just started dating and were hot and heavy into our D/s relationship. But I had signed up for this event before I met him, so I was there by myself.

I notice in this post that I didn’t refer to him as “Master Raven” when I wrote about him – but I remember back then that was totally acceptable not to use that honorific because he wasn’t MY Master. Anyhow, here’s what I wrote:

For starters, here is Raven’s website.   http://www.ravenkaldera.org/

Before i met him, i was a little unsure how i felt about his paganism.  It seemed ~ i don’t know. Unreal somehow.  It seemed {forgive me pagan folk} it seemed flaky.  i guess that’s how other people feel about BDSM.

But once i met Raven, those doubts just fell away.  He is solid.

And his boy, Josh, made a comment in Sir Top and slavebonnie’s class that made me think they knew what they were talking about.  That they had some education, had done some research on their topic.

i had not planned to go to their class on polyamory.  You know, polyamory is not really my thing.  i’ve been saying i don’t share well, and been quite serious about it.  

But my idea of polyamory has been the model of a Master who says to his slave, “I want another slave,” and brings another woman into the relationship.  Raven’s polyamory certainly doesn’t fit that model.  As he says, it’s not all about sex, it’s about family.

So he starts by telling the story of his family.  i won’t try to tell his story, you can read it on his website.  But let me just say, his family doesn’t fit the other stereotype we have about poly relationships ~  the old Mormon polygamy, also one man and more than one woman. 

As Raven talked about his own poly family, i watched him and Josh.   They were relaxed and comfortable with each other.  Josh contributed equally to the presentation.  The care and devotion between them shone.

Raven talked about the rules for poly relationships.  He’s written a book on this, so i won’t try to cram it all into this post.  But it’s important.

The first rule, he says, is that the person who has the least power, is the one who needs to be listened to first, not the one who’s primary or most important.  The least has to be first.

That doesn’t mean they get the power to decide, or that the Master is submitting to them  in some way.  But they have the least recourse ~ the least power to impact the situation.  So the Master needs to make sure they’re ok first.  They are the most vulnerable.

For me, hearing Raven articulate this created safe space.  i stayed in my chair, but mentally, i was sitting at his feet.

If anyone’s interested, I have a few more posts about him… but for now, just dropping this here.