Woman on Fire (36 page)

As you identify some of the foggy spaces or gaps in your knowledge, and expand yourself with new skills and knowledge about your sexual body and sexuality, your world begins to open up. It's exciting to crack the code. That excitement creates an exuberance and a zest for living, which compels you to seek additional excitement, more new fun abilities, and the next thing you know, you are living in a state of playful desire. As you use your desire to add to your knowledge and skills, you begin to create a craft of your sexuality. Your knowing in your body increases and your sexual expression matches it. You know something inside, and that inner knowing is expressed on the outside as confidence, a sense of self-assurance, and knowing you have the ability to follow your desires to a pleasing outcome. There is a new confidence in you about your ability to meet your own needs. That's hot.

I've seen this process so many times with my clients. They come to me wanting to work on certain outcomes and we identify skills they need to work on. As they do, they have more success in the world, which means more fulfillment. They build their confidence, start going more for what they want, and ultimately they transform their lives. It's so satisfying to be a part of and to witness. There is no end to this process. There is always more to learn. The turnoff comes when sexual confidence swings into an arrogance that prevents you from thinking you still have something to learn. Not sexy, not fun, and not even good for you because then you stop growing (not to mention that arrogance pushes people away). Confidence is good, and it is a dance to express and consistently experience it with all the challenges life sends your way.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

—M
ICHEL
DE
M
ONTAIGNE

You are gathering the pieces of yourself that have scattered, fled, or been lost. This is your homecoming. There are always more desires. More wanting, more moving away from your center—leaving home again. You come home. You leave. You dive deep and you fly back out. Homecoming is a repetitive process. We do it over and over. Even when we have come home, we sometimes stray and we need people we feel at home with to anchor us and to remind us to come back. We need to learn to anchor ourselves and bring ourselves back. You might come home again and again until it becomes the place you want to be, the familiar place you know and are most comforted by.

As you develop your own sense of sexual empowerment and intelligence, you come home to yourself more often and more easily, until you get so adept with your insights and get so intimate with yourself that you stop leaving home at all. You stay with yourself, and that makes you the best lover. If you are fully present to yourself and your own needs and wants and if you develop the skills required to express them in healthy ways, you will be honorable and present to your sex partners.

This state of home is mobile. It's portable. It's connected to your body, your spirit, and your psyche. You can be at home in yourself no matter who is around you or where you are on earth by reminding yourself of your truth, checking in with your honest desires, standing up for yourself emotionally, physically, and sexually, and ceasing forsaking yourself by standing in your love for yourself regardless of what is going on around you. One of my women's program participants commented on how valuable it was that our
weekend retreats happened in multiple places because she got to see how we are capable of creating home anywhere.

Learning to be at home in yourself is essential for your empowerment. You cannot be in your own power if you are busy leaving yourself. You are not at home when you live by doing things for others out of obligation rather than a real desire in you to do them. You are not at home when you are chasing compliments and validation from the outer world. You are not at home when you play roles that are not who you really are. Home is the antecedent to all that had you feeling broken.

When at home, it is safe to be all of who you are. It is a loving and supportive place. You don't have to start from that place in order to create it. If you have been leaving, you can come home to yourself now. This home is the whole you, the unabashed “I'm damn proud to be me” place of self-possession, joy, and rich
self-love.

Element 9:
FIRE

USE YOUR DYNAMIC SEXUAL ENERGY TO LIVE VIBRANTLY

You have unpacked your antiquated stories and found your voice. You've released what needed releasing and have freed yourself of the things that block you from being who you are meant to be. You've looked hard at your emotional patterns and have redefined what it means to be emotionally powerful. You've reconnected to your body and learned new ways to love and accept it. You've tapped into your desire and explored what you really want. You've given yourself permission to want what you want, to experience pleasure, and to have the sexual life you dream of. You've found your enthusiastic “yes” and your honest “no.” You've set your boundaries. You've asked for what you desire. You've assessed your skills and gained confidence in your sexual art and craft.
You remembered how to play, which opened you up to exuberance and joy and way more fun. You are coming home to the authentic
you
that knows she is enough, she is worthy, she is whole. She doesn't have to leave herself and go outside to get what she needs anymore. She likes how it feels right here at home.

You are on fire. What lights you up with passion? What do you want to set aflame? What nourishes the seeds you have planted into full-blown creations? Your fire is your core sexual energy we talked about in chapter 2. It is the genesis of all you create, inside and out—
from
the inside out. Your fire is your own personal fulfillment generator. What does fire need in order to flare its flames? Oxygen. What does orgasm need in order to be expressed? Breath.

There is a thermal energy at the center of the earth, like there is a thermal energy in the center of you. Nurture your inner fire. Nurture that which lights you up and sets you ablaze as a kinetic force of nature.

After I'd finished grad school in my late twenties, many of my dreams were coming to life. I was being mentored by radical sex pioneer Betty Dodson and featured in her
Viva la Vulva
educational video, and I was meeting sexual luminaries who I admired. I was in love with sexy powerhouse New York City, surrounded by the most brilliant sex-positive feminists on the planet. I had written, performed, and produced my play:
Vulvalution, Her Lips Speak
. We produced a sold-out several-week run at an off-off-Broadway downtown women's theater. I had taken major risks with this work, entwining education and performance with seeming success. In
Vulvalution
I had shown larger-than-life photos of real vulvas to my unassuming audience. My activism was art. I was also hosting a women's sexuality program on the very first “Internet television” streaming
network when the World Wide Web was in its infancy, and I was on the verge of publishing my first book. My creativity was on fire.

No small surprise, my sex life was too: I was in the most exploratory, expansive sexual relationship I'd ever had, with someone who could really
meet me
where I was. I was exploring the terrain of my expanding desire with a woman I trusted to guide me to places I'd not been before, and with her skilled prompts, I was becoming the true architect of my own fantasies, desire, and pleasure. I was exploring BDSM and figuring out what it was about it that turned me on. I was claiming my polyamorous life and choosing to live differently from most people I knew long before there were poly social groups, dating sites, and TV programs. I was stepping into my own identity as a queer femme and exploring gender as a drag king in the burgeoning 1990s New York City drag king scene. In short, sexuality was not just my profession, it was my art form.

I can remember walking down Houston Street in Manhattan one night with my BFF and partner in crime for many outrageously fun adventures, saying to her: “I absolutely
love
my life. I love everything about it, everything I do. It's like the best movie I've ever seen, and I can't wait to see what happens next!”

That was a moment when I recognized the quickening of my own desire, my flame being lit up—that was me, the explorer who set off into the wilderness of New York City in her early twenties, ready to take risks, push her limits, and to experience vibrant life. That was my desire on fire, the inside of me being met expertly and precisely by the outside world. I was a woman on fire.

Several years later, after I turned thirty, my path shifted as I developed a partnership with a woman I grew to love deeply. I created a home with a partner for the first time. I was loved in a way I'd not been loved before, and it expanded my ability to love. She and I began to travel the world and we lived a beautiful life together, surrounded by circles of artists and musicians and people who were doing meaningful and beautiful things with their lives—people who
were also lit up with passion. Our relationship was revered and respected by friends. The way we lived our values and loved each other inspired others. I know because I was told so many times by members of our close chosen family.

I experienced an amazingly loving nine-year relationship and I spent my thirties learning and studying love, intimacy, and partnership—things I needed to understand in order to do the work I do now. In the beginning of that relationship there was a lot of sexual passion. We explored sex wildly, and our sex was connected, passionate, pleasurable, and fulfilling. I brought my fire to the relationship in so many ways. Slowly, I began to concede sexual desires. The quality of our sex was high throughout the relationship, but the frequency and level of exploration dramatically decreased. My frustration about this rose to the surface, and I found myself in couples therapy for the first time, trying to understand why we were where we were, and how to move out of it, or beyond it, back to that place of fiery passion meets loyal love.

We were in that muddy space for several years. It's that in-between heart-sink place, like when coffee goes from being just warm enough to still be enjoyed to just cool enough to be disappointing. On the eve of my fortieth birthday, the coffee was cold, and we split ways. After I got through my grief and picked myself up, I began to get excited again. Why? Because there
I
was again, with my internal desire as my compass, ready to re-create my life—or get it back on the trajectory I'd subconsciously aborted some years before. And that meant stepping into my power as a woman, as an entrepreneur, as a free agent, and as CEO of my own life in a way I never actually had. It meant being totally single for the first time in my life since age thirteen when I first started dating. It meant me dating myself. It meant getting back my fire.

And guess what? I found myself back in that place I can remember so vividly, as the one who loves her life and enjoys the
popcorn while the story unfolds, ever more magical than I could even imagine—and my imaginings are pretty sparkly and sexy.

There were plenty of times when I had that in my marriage. There were times when I was alight with excitement for how we were living and loving and all we were creating together. We both were. Yet slowly I had begun leaving myself in various ways. I was not marching true north. I had to get back to blazing the trails I knew I was here to ignite. And now I can't allow myself to demand less at any time.

Kiki, a thirty-four-year-old woman from New York City, participated in one of my first women's programs. She explains so eloquently what it meant to have her fire lit up:

I now stand more grounded in who I am as a sensual being, swing my hips with more awareness of my body, flirt with more confidence, speak to my lover with a deeper and more honest intention, pray with a bit more attention, make love more deeply/wildly/softly/without walls, or sometimes I retreat back to where I was before, yet I'm more mindful about it. It is an everyday (sometimes extremely hard) journey, no doubt. However, the tools and energetic fuel I have gained from the workshops keep me mindful and intentional and capable of saying yes every day, no matter how quiet or
loud!
I wholeheartedly recommend this journey to all women wanting to live a fulfilled life in every way and are willing to accept the challenge to do so.

To get clear about sexual power, let's talk about sexual energy. When your energy is strong and you are aligned with it, you have a focused way of attracting the things you want. This is an ideal state.
This core sexual energy is essentially your gas tank; it keeps you going, but it's not mere fuel. There is a quality to it that is fundamental to your having a dynamic, orgasmic life.

When your core sexual energy gets depleted, it impacts you on multiple levels. You become dulled to life, sometimes even depressed. The joy, poetry, and allure of everyday life dissipates. You find it harder to appreciate your life and the details that make it gorgeous and worth living. The colors become muted and everything is less shiny. You forget the power you have to bring into your life the people, relationships, experiences, and things you want. In a word, you stop experiencing pleasure.

Most people do not work with their sexual energy consciously. An essential step in living a sexually empowered life is to acknowledge that this energy is there, consistently nurture it like the friend it is, and increase it. Then you have more fuel and power to experience pleasure and desire and to express your sexuality with the fervor that makes your life vibrant and joyous.

Your core energy is your life force. The hot thermal core. It is the fire. It's that part of you that tingles with excitement and spreads through your body when you orgasm. You can keep it for yourself and you can share it. You can funnel it in many different directions. The power and strength of your fire comes from developing the tools we have been talking about in this book.

I hope that by now you are comfortable with the idea of your personal power, and that you are excited to exercise it ever more adeptly so you can enjoy your life more profoundly. It is your power-within. When you use it to connect to others and to co-create, it is power-
with
. No one needs to take power away from someone else in order to experience themselves powerfully. That is a harmful myth and a story that gets played out in films, on television, and in books over and over; that somehow if you own the fullness of who you are as a woman, it diminishes someone else. This myth keeps us carefully avoiding being “too powerful.” It also keeps women in
competition. And that is not the world I am here to co-create. I want all of us women on fire to unapologetically step into it fully, fires blazing, and make a better world. You harm no one by being strong and solid in your own personal power. You only inspire. We are a reflection of one another.

What specifically makes you feel powerful?

MY TOP 10 PLEASURE LIST

Think about what makes you feel vibrantly alive and fully expressed. What activities do you love so much that you lose track of time while doing them? You feel so connected to yourself and your own power and life force that you get lost in them. What things bring you the most pleasure?

Make a top ten (or more) list of the things that you love doing more than anything. It could be simple things like giving hugs or smiling at strangers. It could be more involved like art-making, sex, or dancing naked. It might be related to nature or the people you love. What makes you feel on fire?

Then look at how much time you are spending doing these things. To live a vibrantly pleasurable life, you've got to be doing things on this list each day. At least one. If the time you spend in your life on this top ten list is small, what adjustments can you make? Remind yourself to engage with what you actually love, with what brings you unrestrained joy.