need to insert spacing in posts

I’m getting really frustrated with the way WP is stripping out my spacing in my blog posts. I want bigger spaces between the paragraphs. I think it looks too crowded on the page, and when my posts are emailed, there is NO space between paragraphs. It all looks like breaks only, all running together.

When I put in extra paragraphs (either by hitting return, or adding html code) it strips them out. I’ve tried adding it with the “code” button and any other way I can think of. How can I get my posts to have a bit of white space and not look like a huge chunk of text all run together?

Thanks for any help that works.