I strongly believe that everyone has three loves in their lifetime. They don’t always happen in order, and sometimes they are a jumbled mess, but there are three distinct types of love we experience in our lives. They happen because we grow throughout our lives and become different versions of ourselves, better versions of ourselves as time goes on. These three loves…they can all happen with the same person if you’re with him/her long enough. But for most, it happens with three different people, because most importantly, you’re three different people at these different moments in time as you grow and change.

The First Love – Lust

This is the youngest love. You’re fresh and new and everything is exciting. You’re following your heart and body over your mind. It doesn’t matter that all the jagged edges don’t fit perfectly right, or that there are red flags you shouldn’t ignore. Love conquers all. Love will triumph over all those hardships and potential pitfalls.

Right? Wrong.

But that’s what you tell yourself for now as you fall in the deepest love you’ll ever feel. The heart-breaking-aching-deep-in-your-chest type of love that tears you open at the sight of each other kind of love. Everything is passion and lust and sex and desire and you’ve never felt so wanted, or wanted so much before in your life. This is what true love feels like. This is what soulmates feels like.

This is what infatuation feels like. This is what the high before the fall feels like. Because there will be a fall. There will be a fall so hard, so far that you will feel like your heart was shattered into a million pieces. Passion doesn’t just live in our happiness, but it lives in our grief, too.

You’ll walk away from this love sore and in pieces, holding yourself together with tiny pieces of tape and old slathers of glue, gasping for air because you’re drowning. And then you’ll meet the one who teaches you how to breathe…

The Second Love – Pain

Falling in love with your second love is like figuring out how to be whole again. That love will revive the broken pieces of yourself and remind you what it feels like to be loved, to love, to live, to laugh, to face the world everyday with a partner by your side. This love will teach you who you are. You’ll learn about yourself. You’ll grow as a person and find yourself in your partner’s eyes. They’ll lift you up and give you the freedom to become the person you were always meant to be. You’ll grow wings and fly…

and then they’ll clip them.

And you’ll come tumbling down to the ground. You’ll crash and burn. But you won’t give up. You’re in love. You’ll fight for that love. You’ll get up, dust yourself off, and soar through the skies again. But you’ll crash…again. And again. And again. It’ll be a cycle–love and pain. You’ll soon forget that love doesn’t require pain, too. The two will be so blended for you that you’ll expect them together like a dose of medication you never needed.

You’ll keep fighting. You’re in love. But they will break you down until there’s nothing left to fight for. You will have nothing left to give. There aren’t even broken pieces left to carry away–there’s just nothing. And you’ll walk away empty-handed and empty-hearted.

The Third Love – Forever

Then you’ll meet the third love and you’ll turn away from them because you have nothing to offer them. But they won’t care. They’ll want you for you, and they’ll see past the scars and the pain and the tangled mess the other loves left behind. They’ll see what you can’t and they’ll remind you what was once there and what can be there again. They’ll remind you who you are.

It’ll be so easy, so effortless, so full of peace that you won’t trust it. Your scars remind you that pain is always lurking around the corner, but this time it never comes. You wait for it, brace yourself for it’s impact, but all you feel is love and acceptance. It reminds you that you can stand on your own. It empowers you, gives you confidence, pushes you to do more, be more, want more.

And then you start to let those shields down.

Walls crumble. Defenses fade, and you’re left trusting that this is real. This is forever. This isn’t lust, it isn’t pain, it isn’t any love you’ve felt before. This is comfortable. It’s genuine. It’s pure and happy and real. This is what love should have been like all along, but you weren’t ready until now.

And here you are–ready. And here he is–ready.

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I published Nudes on May 22, 2017. 

I wrote it the previous fall in two weeks. It literally poured out of me. That book has been, to this day, one of my favorites to write. But at the time, when I started talking about it online and teasing the release…I was told no. 

An author called me up on my cell phone and told me not to publish it. 

Yes, a fellow author. A peer. A colleague who knows the ropes and how difficult it is to pour your heart onto the page. 

She told me not to publish the book. She told me there would be backlash. It was too taboo. It was too blurring of the lines with consent (or so she assumed). Hint: It’s not. She saw a teaser online. She made an assumption about what the book was about. She decided to play God and deemed that my book should not be published. She called me and told me not to publish it. 

Honestly, I didn’t react well. I was horrified and angry and hurt and I recoiled like a puppy who’d been kicked by someone who’d just been petting her only minutes ago. I showed my teeth and bit and snarled and demanded she keep her opinions to herself. 

No one was going to tell me what I could and couldn’t write. 

Almost two years later, that book is my best selling novel of all that I’ve written with tens of thousands of copies sold. It’s sold in other languages, in print, in audio, and into a video game. That book put me on the map and bared my soul to the world and not publishing it would have been the biggest mistake for my career and for myself. 

Publishing is a complicated industry. Everyone will have an opinion. Everyone will tell you what to do and when you’re wrong. You can only listen to your gut. That’s the only thing that will guide you to really make the right choices for yourself and your career. 

You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to fuck up. You’re going to miss opportunities you wish you’d taken. You’re going to ruin chances you wish you could redo. That’s all part of the process. But in the end, it’s your process. 

No one else can take this journey for you. 

So listen to your gut. Publish that book. 

And when they tell you no, show your teeth. 

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Tainted Bodies, the first book in the Photographer Trilogy, is live on Chapters Interactive as a video game now! Go download the app now to play the game for yourself!

In fact, I sold the rights of 6 of my books to be turned into video games (interactive stories). 🙌 I certainly didn’t see that one coming when I first started writing. You can expect to see the entire Photographer Trilogy on the site, as well as the entire Exposed Trilogy! There’s a brand new “Video Games” tab on my website where you can keep up with the latest releases in this genre.

Click to Download for Free:
Apple | Android

Go play now!

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I want to tell you a love story.

When I was in college, I was head over heels for a women named Amber. She was everything I’d ever wanted in a partner–beautiful, breathtaking, patient, kind, intelligent. I was so sure that she was my soulmate and when she left me, she took a piece of my heart with her that I’ll never get back. But this isn’t about Amber, or how fucking beautiful she was.

After she left me I met my husband and I learned what it meant to love a man, too. And men are wonderful…fuck, they are so wonderful. I loved him more than I ever loved any man. He was my everything for so many years, until he wasn’t. But that’s a story for another day. The point is…

I’m bisexual. I came out to my reader group (Robinson’s Ramblings (Sarah Robinson’s Reader Group)) for the first time a few days ago and it was a life changing experience. I’d been telling them my dating stories for over a year and I’d been lying about the gender of half my stories. I kept changing “she” to “he” for fear that they wouldn’t accept me for who I am…for fear that someone who writes straight romance novels can’t love women in my free time.

The outpouring of support was overwhelming. My reader group embraced me with love and kindness, and that’s a love story all in itself. And, yes, it was fucking terrifying. I was petrified that I would lose readers because, after all, losing readers doesn’t just mean losing fans. It means losing groceries, the ability to pay rent, a home for myself and my dogs…it’s my entire fucking life.

Let me say that again, I’m risking my entire fucking life just to be honest about the fact that I like dating women.

Is that stupid? It sounds fucking stupid. More than one person told me to keep it to myself and shut the fuck up. In fact, more than a dozen people told me that.

The thing is…telling my reader group about who I am inspired me. I caught the bug. I want to tell the world now. I now know what it feels like to be open and live openly…and it’s fucking amazing. I never felt that before. It’s enlightening. It’s beautiful. It’s everything I hoped it would be. Living truthfully? Living my life out loud? Holy shit, it’s intoxicating. I just want to scream who I am from the rooftops. Is this what “regular” people feel like all the time?

But that’s the thing…I really didn’t. I came out in a small group of 1,600 people. Which is not the world. It’s not even close to the world. It’s certainly not my family. My family didn’t know. They were in the dark as much as the rest of the six billion people on the planet. So…had I really done anything at all?

I tip toed out of the closet and thought that meant something…but did it?

Sure, but was it enough? It didn’t feel like enough. It feels like I got a taste of air and now I’m suffocating, begging for more. Drowning and can’t breathe. I need to know there’s more. I need…more.

So…I told my family. I called my bio mom, my mom, my father, my aunts, my sister, my Bible study leader. I told them all. I told everyone who really mattered. My parents all told me that they still loved me and wouldn’t leave me, but that they didn’t support who I was and my deviant lifestyle because of their Christian faith. It stung and hurt, but they still loved me and, really, that’s all I wanted. So, I’m happy and relieved, and thankful that they still love me and know who I am now.

And now I’m going to be honest with you. With my readers. I’m going to tell the world.

And it fucking terrifies me.

*takes deep breath*

I’m a bisexual woman. And that love story I was talking about at the beginning of this?

It’s to me. I fucking love me and I know that by telling the world who I am, I very much could be throwing away my career. I may not be able to pay for groceries tomorrow. I may get hate mail and be told I’m a deviant and disgusting. But, I’m doing this for me.

I love me.

And I fucking love women…and men.

Hey, I’m bisexual, and that’s just fine with me.

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Every new year, I come up with a phrase to guide me through the year. I’ve been doing it for almost a decade now and, honestly, it really has helped me so much. I definitely recommend it for everyone. In 2017, my phrase was “Me First” as I was deciding whether or not to get divorced and go out on my own for the first time in seven years. I was deciding whether or not to demand more for myself–demand respect, kindness, love. In 2018, my phrase was “It’s Okay” because I was now dealing with the aftermath of the divorce and all the grief that entailed. I was making mistakes all over the place and creating disasters in my life, but I wanted to remind myself to be kind to me because that’s okay. It’s okay to grieve and mess up and hit rock bottom.

Last year, I spent almost six months not writing a single word. I couldn’t sell a book contract to save my life. I had a string of meaningless one-night stands that made me feel cheap and worthless. I was still struggling with grieving and getting over my divorce, unable to really cut things off cold turkey with my ex-husband. I had a large group of friends that were full of drama and fake friends who didn’t really care about me for me and who ditched me the moment times got tough. I let people disrespect me and use me because I didn’t value me.

In 2019, my phrase is “What’s Next?”

Because I’ve hit rock bottom and I’m ready to start climbing. Something has snapped inside of me, and I’m just done. I’m done with crying. I’m done with wallowing. I’m done with wondering why this happened to me or why I had to go through the things I went through. Even more than that, I’m done with accepting less than I deserve because I’m lonely and sad. I’m done with dating men who don’t deserve me just because they gave me attention. I’m done with trusting friends who stab me in the back the moment I turn around. I’m done with giving my heart away to people who don’t value me for who I truly am.

Now, I’m currently writing a new book series that makes my heart soar with happiness. I have exciting new book contracts and news that I can’t wait to be able to announce. I am dating a ridiculously handsome man I love and adore who has been there for me for over a decade. I have a tight knit group of a few friends that I talk to every day and know I can always depend on. I have parents that love me and I talk to daily. I have a home I love and that makes me so happy to walk into every day. I have a job that makes me feel important and like I’m making a difference every day.

So, I’m focusing on what’s next. I’m focusing on what I want out of life, who is truly there for me, and where I’m going next. I’m focusing on my writing career, my counseling career, and making the most out of life. I’m focusing on new memories and experiencing new opportunities.

Because you know what’s next for me?

Happiness.

What’s next for you?

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