Why Are We Lonelier Than Ever?
Dating apps have become a $6.18B industry in 2024, with 350M users worldwide. Yet sixty-one percent of Americans aged 23-55 report feeling isolated and disconnected, according to a 2022 Gallup/Knight Foundation study. We’re more connected than ever. We’ve never been lonelier.
Sacred intimacy guide and entrepreneur Zuirrae McKinney has a theory. “We’re all having intercourse,” she says, “but we’re not having intimacy.” She’s talking about sex, yes. But she’s also talking about the way we scroll past each other’s lives, consume content but never connect, let our devices promise community while delivering isolation.
During her years at Arts High School, Zuirrae stuttered so badly she avoided speaking altogether. Then she start raising her hand to read aloud—confidence wasn’t the catalyst, it was her refusal to stay silent. “I literally prayed for a voice,” she remembers. “I said, ‘God, if you give me my voice, I promise I’ll use it for you.'”
From Desserts to Sacred Space
How did a visual artist who designed an entire lingerie line end up serving pastries and teaching people to love themselves? Zuirrae’s path to sacred intimacy work started with cheesecakes. Founded in 2011 in Newark, NJ, and now located in Montclair, She Imagined Sweets prepares small, bite-sized, health-conscious cheesecakes that caught the attention of corporate clients who needed desserts that wouldn’t wreck their wellness goals.
“The NBA uses my products. S&P Global. A lot of different companies,” she says. “They appreciate that the desserts are small when it comes to all their events with people who actually care, work out, and live healthy lifestyles.”
The transition from sculptures to pastries was seamless because Zuirrae developed an obsession with the finished product of her creations. Baking allowed her to offer something that looked good, tasted good, and considered people’s health. The bite-sized cheesecake is small and rich, but not too sweet. “It still doesn’t get you full, but it’s like just enough. You literally could eat one, come back in a couple hours and take another one.”
There’s a gap between what the community wants and what corporate clients understand. “I’m competing with the bakery up the street that has huge cupcakes,” she says. “But businesses realize this is what we need and what we’re going to use and it’s good.”
After years of completing orders, Zuirrae realized the desserts were never the point. “I’m not just feeding your body,” she says. “I’m feeding your vessel.” That’s when she discovered sacred intimacy—a practice she’d been living long before she knew it had a name.
What Sacred Intimacy Actually Means
“Sacred is really like the capacity to take you to another state of consciousness,” Zuirrae explains. “You’re going to travel somewhere through this experience. It’s in a whole other frequency than the average frequency that we’re in.”
Sacred intimacy is about honoring yourself before you can honor anyone else. It’s about awakening consciousness, not chasing climax. “You don’t even need another person to go through a spiritual or intimate awakening. You could do that with yourself,” she says.
She sees the gap everywhere. “In a lot of relationships, people are having intercourse, but they’re not having intimacy. It doesn’t even cross some people’s minds. It’s all about let’s hit the climax. But sacred intimacy is literally you awakening the climax within your mind, within your spirit.”
The Love Jonez Answer
On February 7th, Zuirrae is hosting Love Jonez: A Poetry & Music Experience at the Historic Krueger-Scott Mansion in Newark—a building she passed daily on her way to Arts High. The event sold out two weeks early because people are desperate for what she’s offering: real presence.
“I’m truly bringing together people to celebrate something that I’m so passionate about and that’s just intimacy and love and growth,” she says.
Hosted by poet Craig Bradley, the evening opens with an open mic session before featured performances from The James White Band, poets Larayne, Nelly, and Mia X, and Zuirrae herself. It’s a curated experience of soul, art, and intimacy.
The choice of poetry matters. It’s language stripped of excess, like her cheesecakes. Every word carries weight. Every line lands with intention. You can’t scroll past a poem being read aloud in a room full of people breathing the same air.
“Some conversations can only be spoken in poetry,” she says. “It’s the clearest form.”
When people walk into She Imagined Sweets, they’re surprised to see that kind of space in their community. One friend told her pulling up felt like a warm hug. That’s the same atmosphere she’s building with Love Jonez. A space where people can slow down and feel something real. Where presence replaces performance.
From Stuttering to Speaking Truth
Zuirrae still stutters sometimes. She’s made peace with that. What she learned through years of forcing herself to speak—to volunteer, to raise her hand, to use the voice she prayed for—is that showing up scared beats staying silent.
“I had to fight through a whole lifetime to get my voice,” she says. “So I’m going to use it.”
From visual artist to baker to sacred intimacy guide, Zuirrae’s journey proves that evolution is intentional. The sculptures became cheesecakes became spaces for connection. The stuttering girl who prayed for a voice became the woman creating rooms where other people remember how to use theirs.
Love Jonez is an invitation to reignite the intimacy of your most important connection—the relationship you have with yourself. To remember what it feels like to be present in a room, in a moment, in your own skin. To move from performance to being.
On February 7th, Zuirrae is inviting Newark to do what she did: show up anyway. Speak anyway. Choose presence over performance. Choose intimacy over isolation. Because the answer to digital disconnection is more presence.
Love Jonez: A Poetry & Music Experience takes place February 7, 2026 at Cryout Cave in the Historic Krueger-Scott Mansion in Newark.
Tickets are sold out, but you can join the waitlist for a chance to attend.
