Woman on Fire (2 page)

THE BIG ROUND BALL

All of us have a desire inside of us for more. We want to experience more, to grow more, to have more, to be more fulfilled, to be more of who we are meant to be. Women come to me in this place of wanting more, knowing it is intrinsically connected to their own sexual being. I am a guide. It is their journey. This is your journey.

You know there is more. Sexuality is at the core of the longing in us all. It
is
the core. It is the seduction of life itself, the texture of rain on your face, or the dry, cold air you feel in your nostrils on a winter walk. It is the creation of beauty and the meeting of the divine in you, in life itself. It is the enjoyment of being, the pleasure of creating your dreams, and it's there in the expansive space when you pause to appreciate your process. So many women have this hunger inside of themselves, this magic wanting to
birth itself into life. To have your “more,” you will have to claim your sexual power or there will always be a gap between what you want and what you have.

I hear many of the sentiments I experienced at a young age from so many women: that fear of being
the only one.
The only one to experience shame, to have unfulfilled desire, to have deeply ingrained fears of being “broken,” of never having experienced orgasm, or of being the only one who needs “this” particular form of healing (whatever “this” might be).

So many people fear they are sexually broken. Unfixable. It's a tremendous fear—that their sexual history, sexual functioning, sexual problems, or sexual trauma is so bad, so impossible to fix, that they must be permanently damaged. Yet I have watched client after client change her life entirely—change her experience of sex, her sexuality, her body, and her relationships dramatically—because she committed to the process and worked through those parts that made her feel hopeless and lost.

You are powerful and nothing is impossible for you no matter what your experience has been. Your journey might look different from everyone else's, yet it is possible to achieve your vision. You may have gotten messages from your family, friends, or culture that something about you is broken, because we live in a society that likes to tell us how imperfect we are (gasp!) so we stay stuck feeling bad, buying products to help us fix ourselves, and choosing not to rise up and use our power to challenge the systems that oppress us. You are whole and capable of healing the things that you are not at peace with.

In my two decades of teaching sexuality I have witnessed the
transformations of many people. I have developed an understanding of the sexual and emotional devices that keep women from coming home to themselves, of the struggles and heartbreaks that keep them feeling alien to their own sexuality. I have listened to and learned about the stories and secrets women keep—the ones they are terrified of other people discovering or of showing to themselves. The stories I hear over and again are each precious and unique and yet so many threads of similarity are woven into this collective sexual herstory.

In this collective vision, I hear many of the same wants. Women tell me that they want more sexual confidence, the ability to get their needs met, to explore, to be more playful, to have more orgasms and pleasure, to have deeper intimacy, more emotional connection, more desire, and more time for their sexuality. They want to feel more alive, vibrant, and juicy. They want freedom.

We have a deeper idea about the power of sexuality. We know there is something more to it than our glossy sexualized media world has shown us. This power can feel like a secret that has been kept from us because they didn't know how to talk to us about it. After all, how would we teach the magnitude of this powerful force in school? Its true grandeur is so big, so beyond this mundane world and what we can see with our eyes, that it scares many people—so that's what they end up teaching children. Be afraid. Don't get this disease or be
that
girl. Don't let them “take it away” from you. Hold on tight.

And if you feel pleasure, you might like it far too much, so don't feel too much of that, because then you'll go too far and we won't know how to help you. Don't trust boys. Don't trust your body.
Don't trust anyone who is interested in you sexually. Don't trust this terrain of sexuality because it's a scary, complicated place, and since we can't explain it to you, let's just not talk about it.

A lot of women ask whether true power and pleasure is really possible, and fear that it's not—not for them, anyway. If you've had the thought that “maybe it's just not going to happen for me” or that maybe what you want is not really possible, let me assure you.

It is.

I can tell you with confidence that you are not the only one. Whatever your story, whatever your experiences—you are not broken, you are not “unfixable,” you are not going to be left out of having the things you desire or the healing you need because of your history, desires, body, size, age, identity, or any of the other untruths they reinforced. If you want these things, they are here for you.

It's possible you might not even know exactly what you want, but you know it's not what you have right now. Most women are socialized to be led sexually, to be chased and to follow the desires of their partners rather than to tap into their own wants and express them. That paradigm has to shift, and it begins with identifying your own desires and figuring out what skills you could develop to make them real. You won't magically know what to do when you feel a great big attraction, land yourself in a sexual situation, and declare you are ready.

I remember one day speaking to a woman who had been in conversation with me for several years about doing some work on her sexuality, and she said, “It's like my sexuality is a big round ball and I don't know what to grab on to or how to get in.”

I think a lot of people feel that way about their sexuality. It's complex. Where do you begin? What is the first thing to touch? How do you make it concrete? How do you explain some of the feelings you have that are so profound or intangible you aren't sure how to access them using human words and emotions; or the longing that feels like such an amorphous craving and yet feels so important and rich, the one that would transform your experience of life itself if you could meet it? How do you share with a lover or a partner how magical and big you know this energy to be—and how do you go
there
with them? How do you access the orgasm that you know is waiting to be born inside of you? And once you do access it, how do you bring this energy into your everyday mundane life and make your life extraordinary?

Many adults anguish in the myths about all we “should” know and the kind of sex we “should” be having and the sexual lives we “should” be living. The reality is that our culture chronically underprepares us for fulfilling sexual lives. Since most young people never get adequate sex education, we all grow up into adults who think that just because we are grown, we are “supposed to know” how to have sex, how to do it well, how to orgasm, and how to not have any hang-ups. We're supposed to have a ravenous sexual appetite, healthy desire, and clear sexual communication. We should be confident in our bodies and sexual abilities. A tall order if you've never had any real sex education or developed your sexual intelligence. How exactly are people supposed to learn how to be sexually healthy adults? Even if you were lucky enough to get quality sex education in primary or secondary school, it's likely that the word
pleasure
was never even mentioned. Sex ed is too often taught in that fear-based
model of everything you need to avoid and with little about what to pursue besides abstinence and “virtue.”

As girls, we are taught to fiercely guard our virginity, this thing we barter with and will “give away” to someone—almost always assumed to be a male. And many of us have a story of it being “taken away” by someone we didn't consent to “give it” to. This idea divorces us from our sexuality and our bodies as an intrinsic part of who we are, as if one act of sexual intercourse is more important than a whole lifetime of discovering what this body and heart is capable of and what it really desires. Again, there is this deficit model: we think we
lose
our sexuality to someone else, and then we wonder why we grow into adults who think we are
broken
. There are pieces that have gone
missing
.

Marry and you are “given away” again. Is it any wonder so many women don't feel like they have agency over their own sexuality? We continually put it in the hands of men. The system was set up that way a long time ago. Many women enter sexually blind into marriage because they've “been saving it.” We think the choice to say “I do” will automatically give us the ability to have a functional and fulfilling sexual relationship. You aren't any more ready to have a marriage without relationship education and self-examination than you are ready to have a child without any birth preparation or child-rearing education. The same goes for sex.

As an adult, you have all sorts of new aspects of your sexuality that you are discovering and new sexual situations and dynamics to work with, so the need for adult sex education remains paramount. For instance, how do you negotiate safer sex in an adult dating world? What do you do if your partner doesn't know how to please you? What do you do when you partner with or marry someone with
whom you do not feel sexually compatible? What if you haven't had an orgasm? How do you explore new sexual territory or introduce a new idea into a relationship like a new toy, a threesome, an open relationship, or some erotic power play?

We need ongoing sexual education for every stage of our lives. Everyone needs sex education. And I mean
everyone
. In general, people do not treat sex and sexuality as something to work on or put effort into. The assumption is that sex will just happen. This is a harmful myth. Optimal sex and sexuality require awareness, skills, and practice. If you want to cash in on the best sexual pleasure possible to you, you have got to put in the time and energy. You've got to cultivate your sexual intelligence. There are many ways to feel supported on your journey and some essential things you can do. Understand that becoming sexually empowered is not magic . . . it's about dedication to parts of yourself you may have neglected because you didn't know you needed to do something different. There are no enchanted pills or shortcuts to make it all better. Good thing, because it is one of the most enlivening, beautiful, expanding journeys a person can take. You really want to enjoy the ride.

Simply becoming an adult does not make you ready for a sexual relationship or mean you will automatically have good sex. Becoming an adult does not empower you as a sexual person. What it does do is give you more freedom to make your own choices and to act on your desires. What you do with these desires is entirely up to you. How well you do it is related to your knowledge, skills, self-awareness, and commitment to growth. The fact that you picked up a book about sexual empowerment indicates that you are well ahead of most of your peers on this path. Welcome to the journey.

CLARIFY YOUR “MORE”

Take a moment now to start defining your “more” that you want. You'll see throughout these chapters just how excited and refined your answers will become. What is the desire in you that made you pick up this book? What needs to happen for you to give yourself permission to want it?