What could be better than a gathering with delicious vegan food, wonderful people, and deeply engaging conversation? The same party with some snuggling! (Spoiler alert: new book and giveaway announced below.)
When I moved to Portland, I discovered a community of long-established snugglers. While their practices initially seemed a bit odd to me, they ended up being a wonderful support during a challenging period of my life. I’ve now included optional snuggles in two of the annual vegan waffle parties I’ve co-hosted.
If you’re looking to create positive change with your events, there are several excellent reasons to include snuggling at your next vegan waffle party–or other food party, for that matter:
1) When people feel a lack of affection in their own lives, the resulting frustration may contribute to violence toward other people and other animals.
2) When people feel an abundance of affection in their own lives, they have greater bandwidth to feel compassion for other people and other animals.
3) Parties combining vegan food and snuggling can easily involve non-human members of your family or others’ families. You could have a snuggle involving both people and dogs, or even a snuggle including volunteers and residents at your favorite farm sanctuary. Cats, of course, are more unpredictable, as are elephant seals like those pictured above.
4) If you think seriously enough about social issues to be reading a vegan food website, then you probably also have interests in topics like the intersectionality of oppressions, and the relationships between our lifestyles and sustainability. Physical affection in our culture ties into both of these areas.
I was so eager to share knowledge about what I had learned from the snuggle community that I wrote The Snuggle Party Guidebook. More than a guide on how to attract more platonic physical affection, with many fun games and activities, it candidly explores our social programming around touch, sexuality, and gender.
Oh, and did I mention that both the hard copy and ebook versions include a ton of cute animal snuggling photos and sketches? You can see a few on the book’s Amazon page below, or at the Snuggle Party Overview Page, which links to free tools from the book and other resources.
I hope you check it out, share it with anyone you might find it useful, and let me know what you think. And if you’re catching this post the same week of its publication date, you might still be in time for a book giveaway!
Learn more about the book (Amazon book pages): US | Australia | Canada | France | Germany | Japan | UK *
*Will also be available at other online retailers and via bookstore special order by fall.