Woman on Fire (4 page)

SKILL BUILDING
—Remember, sex requires skills. You have got to
learn
skills. And how do you get better at them? Practice. There is much to say about sexual skills, and we'll discuss this in depth in chapter 9.

TEACHERS/EDUCATION
—You deserve educators who have studied sex and can share information to help you grow and understand the things that confuse you about sexuality. Teachers can be both formal and informal. Some of my greatest teachers were lovers (informal), yet my formal teachers were pivotal for my own development.

RELATIONSHIPS
—Relationships are our greatest teachers. That means lovers, friends, coworkers, family—every relationship in your life is a teacher.

ROLE MODELS
—Role models of healthy sexuality are important. Some examples of my sexual role models: my sexuality professors, Madonna—powerful woman, unabashedly sexual—was a role model for me growing up in the eighties; my mentor Betty Dodson became a powerful role model; and I had peers who accepted and embraced their sexuality and became role models to me. Who are your sexual role models? If you don't have any, keep looking.

OPEN DIALOGUE
—If you don't bring sex out of the closet, you cannot actually work on it, and you will stay alone with it on your journey. Everyone has to overcome the messages they have internalized that tell them not to talk about sex and that it should stay private. You will have to learn to talk about it, even if you only talk about it with your partner or lovers. Open dialogue diminishes any shame associated with the subject.

RITUAL
—Ritual is a tool that helps human beings enjoy life. Ritual makes experiences special. We have rituals around marriage and death, but how about rituals for our own developing sexuality? In some cultures, there are puberty rituals that can be very empowering for young people. Developing rituals for yourself around your body and sexual expression, pleasure, sex, and other parts of your sexuality is a very helpful way to bring more meaning and honor to your sexual journey. There are more details about ritual in chapter 7.

HEALING WORK
—Most people have some healing to do around their sexuality. How we do our healing looks different for everyone. It can be some type of therapy, energetic healing work like Reiki, bodywork, shamanistic ritual, women's circles, workshops, or being guided by any number of gifted practitioners who can help you to heal physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

LIFE EXPERIENCE
—Exposing yourself to new sexual ideas or ways of being and trying new things expands your sexuality. Not
everything is right for everyone, but there are new experiences that may well open and expand you at your core.

SELF-INTIMACY
—This means to know who you really are, how to tap into your own desires or need for boundaries, how to be with yourself, and how to feel at home. Your self-possession reverberates outward to others. True self-intimacy is a deep self-love and comfort in being you, and being
with
you. That is a great gift in any relationship. Developing your self-intimacy is vital for this journey.

When I talk to people interested in working with me as a coach or participating in one of my educational programs, I often ask, “Are you committed to working on this?” Commitment is such a big part of the equation; it determines who really empowers themselves and who continues to stay exactly where they are, having the same conversations, the same pain, the same bad relationships, the same frustrations.

Ask yourself, “Am I committed?” How will you push yourself when it gets challenging or when you have to face the parts you've avoided? Because these moments of reckoning are a normal and important part of the process.

Before you go any further, visualize who you want to be as a sexual being. I invite you to download my guided visualization on becoming your sexually empowered self. You can find it in the
Woman on Fire
online portal at womanonfirethebook.com.

LISTEN TO THE VISUALIZATION AND GET AN IMAGE FOR YOURSELF

What does it feel like to step into your sexual power? How do you walk in the world, express yourself with lovers, experience your body and pleasure? What do you want from this journey? What will it look like and feel like when you have it? How will you know you have it? What are you committed to?

TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO FIRST SEE IT IN YOUR MIND'S EYE, AND THEN WRITE IT ALL DOWN

Make a list, or draw pictures, write a story, or even make a collage. Whatever works best for you. It might simply be the top five things you want to focus on creating and developing. Keep this image, list, story, description, or collage where you can see it to remind yourself of what you are working to create as you read this book.

This is a journey, and there will be times when you'll need reminders about why you started on this journey to begin with. Your commitment is the most powerful reminder you have. Your image and ideas of what is possible will evolve throughout your process. This is a starting point meant to inspire you and to act as a reminder if you find yourself feeling muddled.

As you begin, allow yourself to want. Stop pretending about the things you really do know. Dream the seemingly impossible dream and live full-out now. There is no other time but now. Your path to a place of true sexual empowerment (which is also creative empowerment and life empowerment) is one you cannot ignore or avoid. You know sexuality is important and valuable. You know there is work to be done and things to be examined. You know there is space to be made and passion to be lived. You know you have a personal power to claim. You know there is a fire that burns inside of you.

Once you know, there is no going back to not knowing.

CORE ENERGY MODEL
OF
SEXUALITY

By nature, human beings are fully in their bodies in infancy—in a state of natural joy. Ever seen an infant flirt? They smile, giggle, look away, look back, giggle more, flap their arms. They engage in joyful flirtation with the world. Unadulterated glee. It's pure. It's beautiful.

For many of us, that ability doesn't last long. Soon enough we hear: “Why are you laughing?” “Don't touch me!” “Don't touch yourself!” “Stop playing!” “You think you're so cute!”

All creation holds a kernel of pleasure and joy in it. Conception comes in a variety of ways. No matter the how, within that tiny cellular creation is the joy of life. We start in a combustion of cells and energy
that grows and we come into this world open and ready to be all we are meant to be here as human beings.

Sexuality is the nucleus of all life. Before we have any physical form, our humbly magnificent inception emerges from an energetic desire for life. Our very being desires birth, love, and connection. It wants to thrive and to live. This erotic impulse that creates us all—even before conception—gives us a preformed desire for more life. That core erotic impulse is the nucleus of who we are from the very beginning. Within the melding of those two nascent cells that birth us are the requisite components of creation and connection. What is more powerful than that? What is more sexual than that?

The universe gave us this well of energy so that we could fully live and love all of who we are as human beings. It gave us a body so that we had a place to hold this energy and a vehicle for exaltation and pleasure. We would not have been given such a wondrous capacity to feel pleasure through our senses and our body if we were not meant to experience it. Our sexuality is our spirituality in physical form. Stepping into true sexual power is part of the spiritual journey.

Committing to live a pleasure-filled, sexually healthy life is not easy in a culture that often condemns sex, pleasure, and full sexual expression. The United States is an incredibly sex-negative place. We are born into it, live in it, and are steeped in this sex-negative environment. We are bombarded with its pejorative and conflicting messages from the get-go. We learn the antiquated “sex is dirty, don't talk about it” messaging, and yet we can't look at a magazine, billboard, or mass-marketed video without being bombarded with sex—and a very specific version of what a sexy woman looks like.

I believe sex-negativity refers to the cultural, social, and psychological view that sexuality is by nature shameful, harmful, or vile, and therefore that it should be repressed, policed, or otherwise controlled. This repression, control, and policing happens within families and other interpersonal relationships, in schools, hospitals, places of worship, retirement homes, and other institutions, and is perpetuated in powerful ways via legislation and law enforcement. It serves to preserve and promulgate control of women, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and other queer people, and those whose sexual expression or identity is outside the dominant norm. Why is a person's sexuality still a reason for us to be denied services, rights, and privileges?

Sex-negativity uses shame, guilt, fear, and stereotyping to harm people sexually and disconnects us from the pleasure, joy, and acceptance that is our natural-born state. How could this not result in violence? It is already violence because it disconnects us from our birthright. It is a way of shaming and denying people. It often reproduces itself over and over in people's lives.

Sexual agency means to have control and dominion over your own sexuality. You are a free agent. You are the agent of your body, your sexuality, your sexual choices, your sexual expression, and your sexual pleasure and power. The power over your sexuality is in your hands. You have true independent sexual choices. As a sexual agent, you are susceptible to many conflicting influences as you work to stand in your own place of power as a sexual being. It can feel as if sexuality has been hijacked by the beautiful when we look at the mass media sexual narrative. The oversexualized, youthful storyline that directs women to be “perfect” at everything teaches us that perfection equals sexy. If you aren't young and perfectly beautiful, you aren't sexy or you won't have access to sexuality. It leaves a lot of people out.

If no one sent us sex-negative and confusing sexual messages, our natural state would be one of sexual agency and empowerment. But that power and agency gets condemned, taken away, judged,
squashed, and shamed and we are left feeling unhealthy or broken. Yet that kernel of a pure empowered state is in there. You just have to peel away the layers and reconnect to it.

There is a common term in the sex educator world that many people strive for or purport to be: “sex-positive.” There is some variation and many assumptions about what it means to be sex-positive. At its basic root, to be sex-positive is to acknowledge sexuality as a natural and healthy part of our lives and of who we are. It is to create space for people to make the sexual choices that are right for them, without pressure or judgment that they should be or should like something else. It firmly acknowledges our sexual diversity, that we are the agents of our own desire, and that everyone has rights as sexual beings.

A true sex-positive world is the antidote to all of that negativity we are bombarded with about sexuality. I invite you to consider what it would mean for you to really shape-shift toward a sex-positive way of living and being—and if you have children, parenting. How would you think about and talk about sex differently? How would you reframe some of your sexual judgments?

Women and girls are taught so many false ideas that keep our sexuality limited and in someone else's hands. We learn that sexuality is about losing something or giving something away. The concept of virginity as a bartering chip and something outside of our bodies is disempowering and often hurtful. We learn that it's our job to be pretty and sexy and not to rock the boat. We learn to be a glossy two-dimensional version of sexual—not an authentic sexual that comes from a place inside of us. We are constantly taught to mimic the oversexualized version of what and who to be sexually. This is a disfigured sexual agency.

Ann came to me after her third divorce. She was about to turn fifty and had four children.

I was living in sexual unfulfillment because of religious shame for my whole life. I was shamed by my parents' post–Depression Era middle-class upbringing of “not talking about it,” and the shame was both overt and unspoken. If we didn't talk about it, then it must be awful, right? I ran from that, trying to explore, and was shamed for it by our misogynistic society. Being a wild child didn't work, so I went to the extreme end of the spectrum and joined the Mormon Church in order to be a “good” woman. That led to my loss of self-expression and internal anger for not having power of my voice, my body, my career, my mind, and my desires.

For a long time the Mormon Church and its doctrine shamed me in so many ways as a divorced woman and a woman who stood up for what was right. I was made to feel guilty and ashamed about how I dressed, how my makeup and hair looked, and even about wearing jewelry by some members of the Mormon Church. Unseen or unnoticeable was virtuous, and bigness was shamed, shunned, or gossiped about. I realized that sexuality is a power, that if it is open and an integrated part of us as women, it freaks men out because they can't control it.

I got permission from watching others in their own power. I wanted what they had and was afraid to allow myself to have it. Their power was magnificent and I was afraid of it. When I thought long and hard about it, I realized it was my right to have it and I realized I had given my power away and had to reclaim it immediately. I gave myself permission to not feel shame or guilt for my desire and preferences.

This work [on my sexuality] has allowed me to love my body and to seek pleasure in whatever way serves my highest purpose
without shame. Understanding my own sexuality has opened my eyes and heart to myself and others with compassion for our humanity in a tough world of shame, darkness, and disempowerment.
I became gentler and compassionate rather than judgmental with myself and others.
The deepest part of this healing work is my soul healing and my work on recognizing how religion had taken away my ability to see my spirit and my spirituality. I have sexually evolved into knowing that I deserve pleasure and it is my divine right. Pleasure without the price of pain.

To become sexually empowered, we must learn to question our beliefs. You must excavate those that limit you and don't work for you. There may be lots of beliefs that you like and want to keep. Not all of your learned messages about sexuality are bad. It's almost always a mixed bag. The key is to figure out what supports you in your sexual growth and which beliefs you need to let go of or reframe, as Ann did.

We cannot talk about sexual power without talking about sexual energy. I believe our sexuality is, at its root, an energy. This energy is our own powerful core, the fire we use to flirt, connect, explore, fantasize, and express our power in a multitude of ways.

When your energy is strong and you are aligned with it, you have a powerful way of attracting to you 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, ecstatic 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. You forget the power you have to create a life with the people, relationships, experiences, and things you want. 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 exists, to 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. 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. You can use it for creativity, to make art, or to make love. You can use it as the fuel for developing your career or professional pursuits. You can use it to create strong communities or to make and raise children. You can use it to work toward social justice and change in the world. This energy wants to express itself.

Sexual energy is incomprehensibly expansive, so it will take a while to meet its edges. So get in and put your goggles on. Once you experience its power, there is no going back. Audre Lorde, a celebrated black lesbian, feminist writer, said in her classic and extraordinary essay “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”:

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.

Spiritual energy is creation energy is sexual energy. It all comes from the same source. There are many false divisions between spirituality and sexuality. Our spiritual and sexual paths provide us with tools to reach our greatest good. And both spirituality and sexuality can be misused, abused, misrepresented, and manipulated.

The core of sexuality is energy. The core of spirituality is energy. Energy is the beginning of all creation. It grows and expands as it comes to life because that's what it's meant to do: it's meant to reproduce. We often separate sexual energy and spiritual energy, yet they come from the same well. We all have that well within us. Our core energy is the source for creation: whether for art-making, love-making, baby-making, community-building, or project development, we use it for things that are important to us and the world. That same core energy is the well we tap into to orgasm, to fall in love, to love God/Goddess/Spirit, to meditate, to feel pleasure, to feel divinely inspired. It all comes from the same deeply rich life force that is creative source energy, that is our higher self, that is our capacity to heal and love, that is the erotic core of our very being.

People have ecstatic experiences with “God/Goddess,” the universe, the cosmic, creator—whatever you choose to call it. There is an enlivening, a quickening, sometimes a powerful surge of energy that comes from connecting to the universe or the greater creative energy that is all around us. You can have a similar energetic surge when you have ecstatic partner sex, or when you connect with yourself when you masturbate and drop in deep.