Woman on Fire
Authors: Amy Jo Goddard
PRAISE FOR
WOMAN ON FIRE
“
Woman on Fire
is simply a smart, fierce, step-by-step guide by which we can finally name and actualize a meaningful and satisfying sexuality for ourselves, far beyond the limits of hetero or homo. That's a big wow.”
âKate Bornstein, author of
A Queer and Pleasant Danger
and
Gender Outlaws
“There is not a woman I know who will not find part of her story, her sexual journey, her genuine concerns answered in
Woman on Fire
. Amy Jo Goddard, trailblazer and pioneer with deep wisdom and knowledge, understands that, for us, sex is exponentially greater than what our culture defines. By naming a myriad of possibilities and honoring you where you are,
Woman on Fire
is your guidebook where you can cast off shame and dare to take back your birthright as an ecstatic woman who is at home within herself.”
âALisa Starkweather, founder of the Red Tent Temple Movement and Women in Power
“Amy Jo is a warm and wise guide you can trust to support you on your journey to authentic erotic empowerment. Her work is brilliant, offering an intimate and inspiring path to not just more pleasure but to true sexual integration.”
âSheri Winston, award-winning author of
Women's Anatomy of Arousal
and founder of the Center for the Intimate Arts
“Woman on Fire
is a passionate, empowering, game-changing guide for femme-identified people around the globe who want to break through the sex-negative garbage that has kept women playing small. Brava, Amy Jo Goddard!”
âBarbara Carrellas, author of
Ecstasy Is Necessary
and
Urban Tantra
“Amy Jo Goddard is a pioneer in sexual empowerment and her extensive real-world experience sparkles throughout this book. This is a delightful journey toward better, richer, more fulfilling sex, for women who want more joyful, creative, pleasurable lives.”
âMarcia Baczynski, cofounder of Cuddle Party
“All women deserve to read this book! Amy Jo writes an intelligent and inspiring manual, steeped in practical wisdom, to catalyze the rise of feminine power. With twenty years of leading her field, she is a luminary of sexual empowerment.
Woman on Fire
is a bold, lucid, and necessary work of courage. We all rejoice! Bravo!”
âEva Clay, MSW, LCSW, psychotherapist
“Amy Jo Goddard knows that fear, shame, guilt, and lack of understanding around sex keep people from enjoying one of our greatest gifts and forms of expression. She leads you into the joy and power of your sexuality with her groundbreaking
Woman on Fire
. This is a must-read for all people.”
âDavid Neagle, author of
The Millions Within
“Amy Jo Goddard understands that creating a passionate, empowered sex life takes more than trying a new trick or wearing lingerie; she guides women to tune into their deep desires, ignite their sensuality, and maximize pleasure. If you are ready for discovery and to step into sexual empowerment, this book will definitely help you make it happen.”
âCharlie Glickman, author of
The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure
“This book is chock-full of savvy, sexy, and smart advice for every woman who's ever contemplated connecting with the deeper layers of herself to gain pleasure, self-expression, and more joy. Amy Jo Goddard is a generous writer and teacher, giving the reader an easy-to-access guide that will surely become a longtime staple in your success library. It's a must-read.”
âDeborah Kagan, founder of the Rock Your Mojo system and author of
Find Your ME Spot
“For any woman who wants to awaken to her sexual power, passion, and pleasureâ
Woman on Fire
will open your eyes to greater satisfaction and erotic possibility!”
âJaiya, author of
Cuffed, Tied, and Satisfied
“If you're looking for the tools to build a grown-up sexuality that's radiant, empowered, playful, hot, and authentically yours, then Amy Jo's
Woman on Fire
is the spark that will ignite and fan the flames of who you are destined to become.”
âReid Mihalko of ReidAboutSex.com
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2015 by Amy Jo Goddard
Illustrations by Mel Reiff Hill and Rowdy Ferret Design, rowdyferret.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goddard, Amy Jo.
Woman on fire : 9 elements to wake up your erotic energy, personal power, and sexual intelligence / Amy Jo Goddard.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-698-19442-7
1. Sex instruction for women. 2. WomenâSexual behavior. I. Title.
HQ46.G63 2015 2015014779
306.7082âdc23
Neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.
Version_1
For all of us who seek the fire
Chapter 2:
Core Energy Model of Sexuality
Chapter 3:
Element 1. Voice: Excavate and Rewrite Your Sexual Story
Chapter 4:
Element 2. Release: Make Space for the Sexual Self You've Been Waiting For
Chapter 5:
Element 3. Emotion: Show Up as Emotionally Powerful
Chapter 6:
Element 4. Body: Know and Radically Accept Your Body
Chapter 7:
Element 5. Desire: Activate Desire and Create a Sexual Practice
Chapter 8:
Element 6. Permission: Give Yourself Permission to Be Erotically Authentic
Chapter 9:
Element 7. Play: Develop Sexual Skills and Remember How to Play
Chapter 10:
Element 8. Home: Build Sexual Confidence and Come Home to You
Chapter 11:
Element 9. Fire: Use Your Dynamic Sexual Energy to Live Vibrantly
I absolutely love my tribe, and I'm so glad you are a part of it. I would love to connect with you further.
Your place to go for everything about this book: womanon firethebook.com
I write and produce weekly articles and videos about sexuality and relationships at amyjogoddard.com and would love for you to join the juicy conversation there. There are tons of free resources for you.
Find me on Facebook at facebook.com/amyjogoddard
Talk to me on Twitter at @amyjogoddard
Use the hashtag #womanonfire
Sexual empowerment is a process, a practice, and an experience. You'll want some tools and juicy resources to help you along your journey. At womanonfirethebook.com, find all kinds of goodies to keep your fire blazing, including:
- Your Sexual Empowerment Workbook:
your own downloadable copy of all the worksheets and assignments to fill out and keep, along with some extras that are not in this book - Free audio classes
to help you deepen your understanding and take the work further - A step-by-step guide on how to create a
Woman on Fire book club
so you can work through the nine elements with a group of juicy women who are ready to claim their sexual power
STARTING THE FIRE
This book is birthed from my desire to help you come home to yourself and live a sexually empowered life. I hope this book will inspire you, be a harbinger guiding you toward the sexual wholeness you dream of, and help you live the fulfilling sexual life you deserve.
I believe that having healthy, nonviolent relationships and working toward a pleasure-filled, creative life for all are the keys to changing the world. This vision comes from a place of knowing the world can be so much better, so much sexier, and more beautiful. And what peace, magic, and joy we can experience when we live in this more delightful, loving place. Healthy relationships are essential.
Sexual empowerment has to be holistic. It can't be partway. Your sexuality exists inside of a larger life and a larger world. A person does not become sexually empowered because they start having good sex, although good sex can be a very good start. Plenty of women know how to “have good sex” without fully realizing their own power. You've got to look at the whole package to become empowered sexually, emotionally, and spiritually.
I want to see us stop defining ourselves by forces outside ourselves, forces that tell us what to like, rather than defining ourselves by our own internal desire. I want us to embrace our desire fully
without fear and to wholly express our own erotic being. I want women to demand healthy, mutually satisfying, fully lived relationships and to stop settling for less than they want or deserve. I want women to inhabit their bodies, take back their power, and claim their birthrights of pleasure, passion, and desire. I want each of us to be a Woman on Fire.
Women are the focus of my current work as a sexual empowerment coach. I have coached women via video conferencing from Switzerland to New York and Jamaica to Ohio. I've worked with women of different cultural backgrounds, class backgrounds, and sexual orientations. I've worked with women in countries where gender and sexual norms are very different from those in the United States. I've coached women in their early twenties who want to heal, women in their thirties who are feeling a dissatisfied itch telling them they need to focus in on their sexuality, women in their forties who are ready to address the famine in their sexual lives and the post-divorce women who are dating again and re-creating their sex lives, and women in their fifties, sixties, and seventies who want to do the work before it's “too late.”
I've coached so many women who are single and know they must unlock the buried treasures in their own sexualityâand that they must do it for themselves. It's a tremendous honor when they show up. I've coached women who are married/partnered and don't want to have sex with their partners, women who are partnered and desperately want to have sex with their partner who can't or won't, women who are about to get married and are scared they'll never get to have the sex life they dream of. I've worked with women who are pregnant and are opening the capacity of their bodies to new experience, who are excited and also fearful of losing something they
haven't quite found yet. Women who are lesbian or queer and refuse to succumb to the lesbian stereotype of companionate-not-sexual love, women who are becoming aware of their attraction to other women and want to explore itâand who know that something about exploring that love of other women is about learning to love themselves more fully. I also work with women who have big sexual wounds, who feel like they lost something at an early age and are saddened that now, in their thirties, forties, even fifties or sixties, they are working to get it backâor to have it for the very first time. I have worked with many powerful women who are doing extraordinary work in their lives, who are power players in the world, yet nearly mute in sex. They want to find their sexual voice and experience their sexual power. They want more pleasure.
In this book, I am honored to be able to share some of these women's stories with you, in their own words. I know you will appreciate if not relate to their tender, vulnerable, and honest tales. I work with creative, self-aware women who speak eloquently about their processes and growth, so I will quote them as much as possible to privilege their voices. This book is for all womenâhowever you identify with your womanhood. We are not all the same kind of woman and I honor that. My perspective comes from my experience as a queer, white woman from the United States, with a middle-class, military family upbringing. I will speak to women directly in this book and talk about the socialization of girls and women, although people of other genders may also find it powerful.
It is out of this intensely personal and powerful work with women that a framework for sexual empowerment revealed itself to meâgrowing organically from something unformed taking form, as a tribe of women expanded in this work. I teach with frameworks
to make it more easily understood, accessed, and integrated into one's life.
In this book, I detail what I have found to be the nine essential elements of sexual empowerment. In chapter 1, I define what it means to be sexually empowered, which is the foundation and my approach to sexuality. In chapter 2, I lay out my Core Energy Model of Sexuality, which helps to organize sexuality as the powerful force it is in our lives. In the chapters that follow, I detail my Nine Elements to wake up your erotic energy, personal power, and sexual intelligence, which to me are the core components we each have to develop in order to make our sexuality as powerful as it can be. These elements are the ways we can animate, expand, and dance with sexuality. They are:
ELEMENT 1. VOICE:
Excavate and Rewrite Your Sexual Story
ELEMENT 2. RELEASE:
Make Space for the Sexual Self You've Been Waiting For
ELEMENT 3. EMOTION:
Show Up as Emotionally Powerful
ELEMENT 4. BODY:
Know and Radically Accept Your Body
ELEMENT 5. DESIRE:
Activate Desire and Create a Sexual Practice
ELEMENT 6. PERMISSION:
Give Yourself Permission to Be Erotically Authentic
ELEMENT 7. PLAY:
Develop Sexual Skills and Remember How to Play
ELEMENT 8. HOME:
Build Sexual Confidence and Come Home to You
ELEMENT 9. FIRE:
Use Your Dynamic Sexual Energy to Live Vibrantly
I believe we can use these elements of ourselves to develop our erotic energy, improve our sexual intelligence, and step fully into our own personal power. We can and should approach sexual intelligence the way we approach emotional intelligence: as something that requires knowledge, understanding, and the development of skills. Most of us are missing the information we need about the things we don't discuss. We need to ramp up our emotional skills in order to have the fully blossoming lives and relationships we most want. Our erotic energy is often our most untapped resource, and yet it is there inside us as a wellspring of juice we can use to direct our lives, and as we do, step more and more into our personal power. In the modern world, it's easy to spend the entire day in our heads in front of a computer, almost entirely disconnected from our bodies, eroticism, and desire, and then we want to turn back on when we are with our lovers. Our well-being and sexual fulfillment depend upon taking seriously improving our sexual intelligence and lighting up our core erotic energy.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
I have created an online portal for you with play sheets, exercises, and resources that will help you to get the most out of this book. Go to the portal at womanonfirethebook.com now to get a sense of what is available to assist you on this journey. I like to think of assignments as “home play.” There are play sheets for all of the exercises that are included in this book and additional exercises and resources you won't see here.
I RECOMMEND THAT YOU PRINT OUT THE DOWNLOADABLE PDF OF THE WHOLE WORKBOOK.
All of it is designed to help you go deep into your sexual exploration, expansion, and healing.
You might choose to do some of the exercises or all of them as you go, taking in each aspect of the work and exploring it deeply. You may want to read the whole book through and then go back and do all of the home play. You might read the chapters in order or you can skip around. I have put them in the order that made the most sense, as one will build on others; however, they are not linear, so you can read them in the way that works for you.
I suggest you read this book with a friend, partner, therapist, or group of people so that you can have live conversations about the material and what it brings up in you. This journey is yours, and you can do it in community and with guides. Many of us are used to doing things alone. Not having been mothered properly, or busy caretaking everyone else, we often feel isolated in our own internal process and crave the support we typically give to others. The learning can often be deeper when you grow in a community. You have an opportunity to give your sexuality the attention it deserves, bring others into your journey, and find a new tribe. Even if you choose to read the book solo, know that many other women are on this powerful journey too. However you choose to do it, there is no wrong way. Engage with this book in the way that works best for you.
You picked up this book because there is a desire in you, in your sexual being. Your desire could be to figure out what you want, and to learn to get it. Your desire might be to go deeper in your relationships and in your life. It might be to become a sexually self-actualized being who lives her life in unapologetic ecstasy. Your desire might be to heal and develop a new relationship to sexuality. Your desire might be to more fully understand your sexuality and how to express it in powerful ways. Your desire might be to experience pleasure more wholly.
I can help make some sense of the vast terrain of sexuality. I'm going to define sexuality and sexual empowerment in a useful and practical way. I will give you tools. And a lot of encouragement and permission to explore your sexuality, to claim the sexual power that
is yours to claim, and to live vibrantly at full capacity. I'm going to do my best to make it relevant to your life, and to share all of the things I wish someone would have shared with me when I was feeling pain and searching for answers. I hope that the framework of sexual empowerment I use in this book is powerful for you. I hope that it will allow you to see many of your blind spots, to heal your wounds, and to take on a new way of being that allows you to have the sexuality and life you
desire.