I Brought Ruff With Me

I came back to the place where I found Ruff, and somewhere between stepping onto the grounds at Parliament Resort, feeling the sun on my skin, hearing music carry across the pool, and seeing familiar faces moving through the space, something settled in me in a way it hadn’t before.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t arrive all at once.

It just… landed.

I didn’t need to find him anymore.

I brought him with me.

Over the past year, I’ve thought a lot about what it means to return to a place that changed you. Last year, Spring Training felt like a beginning. It was the kind of beginning that comes with uncertainty, where everything feels just a little unfamiliar and you’re constantly trying to read the room. I remember moving through those same spaces with curiosity and hesitation, trying to figure out where I fit and how much of myself I was allowed to show.

There was a lot of watching. A lot of learning. A quiet question underneath it all.

Do I belong here like this?

This year, that question never showed up.

Nothing about the venue changed. The pool was still the heartbeat of everything, pulling people out into the open where energy felt easy and visible. The Capri lounge still held that soft, social gravity where conversations stretch and deepen without effort, especially during the pizza party when everyone slows down just enough to actually connect. And the nights still built into something electric out on the dance floor at The Edge Nightclub, where the music takes over and you stop thinking entirely.

What changed was me.

I wasn’t looking for where I fit.

I was already there.

That shift showed up most clearly when I stepped into teaching. This year I taught Knotty Pup: Rope Basics with Ruff and Electro Play 101: Power, Sensation & Safety. I care deeply about the content of both classes, but what stayed with me wasn’t just what I taught. It was how it felt to be there doing it.

In Knotty Pup, I watched people pick up rope for the first time and move through that familiar progression from hesitation to trust. There’s always a moment where it clicks, where someone realizes they’re not just learning a skill but creating connection with another person. Being trusted with that first experience is something I don’t take lightly. It’s never about getting the tie perfect. It’s about how they feel when they leave it.

Electro Play 101 carried a different kind of energy. It was a little more chaotic, a little more playful, and in many ways a perfect reflection of the weekend itself. We adapted when things didn’t go exactly as planned, and that became part of the experience. Because kink doesn’t go perfectly, and neither do we. What matters is how you stay present when things shift.

But the truth is, Spring Training doesn’t live in the classrooms.

It lives outside, in the spaces in between.

It lives at the pool, where people start to let go of whatever they walked in holding and just exist a little more freely. It lives in the Capri lounge, where conversations stretch longer than expected and turn into something meaningful without anyone forcing it. And it lives at night, on the dance floor, where everything becomes embodied and alive and you can feel the entire space moving together.

That’s where the weekend really happened for me.

I found myself moving through those spaces differently this year. Not observing, not waiting to be pulled in, but simply being part of it. Talking to people, checking in, answering questions that weren’t always spoken out loud, and creating space for someone to feel comfortable enough to ask something they weren’t sure they were allowed to ask.

Over and over again, I watched the same moment unfold. Someone would arrive unsure, maybe a little guarded, still figuring out if they were going to fully step into the experience. And then something would shift. You could see it in how they moved, how they engaged, how they started to take up space.

That moment where it clicks.

“Oh… this is what this can feel like.”

That sense of belonging never gets old.

At some point during the weekend, it stopped being something I was thinking about and became something I could feel. The way I was moving through the space had changed, and I could feel it in the small moments. In conversations that lingered a little longer. In the way people opened up without hesitation. In how natural it felt to stay present instead of wondering if I was doing it right.

I wasn’t just attending anymore, and I wasn’t just there to learn.

I was part of it.

That realization didn’t come all at once. It came quietly, like something that had been building for a long time finally settling into place. Everything that had been given to me over the years, every person who made space for me, every moment where I was guided, supported, or seen when I didn’t quite know how to ask for it, all of that was there with me.

Not as memory.

As presence.

And then, as I was packing up my car and getting ready to head out, the weekend softened into that quiet ending that events always seem to carry. People were drifting off, saying their goodbyes, holding onto just a few more minutes before stepping back into the rest of their lives.

That’s when a first-time attendee walked up to me.

They introduced themselves and shared that this was their first time at an event like Spring Training. They talked about the classes, about how the weekend felt, about how different it was from what they expected in the best possible way. Before I could even find the right words to respond, they stepped in and wrapped me in a genuine hug.

They told me it had been one of the best first-time experiences they’d ever had.

And in that moment, everything else just quieted.

Because it wasn’t about what I taught. It wasn’t about turnout or execution or whether everything went perfectly.

It was about what they experienced.

It was about a first-time attendee walking into something new and finding connection, safety, and a sense of belonging strong enough to carry with them when they left.

That moment stayed with me.

And it was the one I carried with me when I left.

By the time I got on the road, I wasn’t thinking about what I had proven or whether the weekend had gone the way I hoped it would. What stayed with me was something quieter and more certain, a recognition of how much has shifted in me over the past year and how naturally that change is showing up in the way I move through these spaces.

I could feel the growth in the ease of showing up fully, in the way connection came more naturally, and in how instinctively I found myself creating space for others.

It wasn’t about becoming someone different.

It was about finally allowing myself to be who I already am.

And more than anything, this weekend made something clear.

Ruff isn’t tied to a place, or an event, or a moment where everything feels aligned. He isn’t something I have to rediscover every time I step into a space like this.

He’s something I carry with me.

Into every room. Every conversation. Every moment where someone else might need to feel seen.

And that, more than anything, is what #UnapologeticallyPuppy has come to mean to me.

It is not about being the loudest person in the room. It is not about standing out for the sake of being seen. It is about showing up fully, honestly, and without apology, in a way that makes space for someone else to do the same.

Because if one person can walk into a space and feel safe enough to be themselves, it makes it easier for the next person to do the same.

There’s a kind of momentum building now, and it feels steady. Grounded. Like something that has been forming for a long time is finally being allowed to move forward.

This doesn’t feel like a high point.

It feels like a beginning.

And for the first time, I’m not questioning whether I’m ready for what comes next.

I can feel that I am.