An Unexpected Journey Through Sex, Shame and Love
On transforming shame.
This is an old tale.
But old tales that are worth telling, need to be retold.
It’s not about the swinging from the chandeliers kind of sex tale.
It’s a story about swimming with the stars in a vast cosmos with endless potential.
It’s a story about the power of being ourselves and what that has to do with sexual freedom.
Several years ago I gave up my career as a psychotherapist and energy healer to do absolutely nothing.
I wanted to see what would happen in the space of just being, unattached to any role, without pursuing any goals. I wanted to feel what space felt like and what would emerge there if I didn’t try to define it or myself so quickly.
I had fantasies, some of which were to dive more deeply into the wilderness of my body, to embrace more fully my femininity and to unleash my sexuality.
I had visions of raw sexual desire, animalistic experiences cutting through any inhibitions and unresolved shame that was still there.
I was on a path ready to meet her: the lioness-wild and uninhibited yet the master of her queendom, knowing her power so well she creates anything she imagines and destroys nothing unintentionally.
And so there I was.
Seven months later…. just at the beginning really of the rest of my life and what emerged during this time were six different men and a lot of short poems.
Not of raw sexual experiences demonstrating how unlimited my sexuality could be, how far I could go and with how many different people I could explore all the different angles of my fantasies.
No, I had just begun the journey into that forest, an adolescent girl blooming into a woman really, just beginning to get a sense of the landscape, the smells, the textures, the paths.
What happened instead-quite the opposite of my amateur pornographic fantasies-was a journey into my vulnerability.
My body slowed me down to teach me that my feminine and sexual power is much more nuanced than unleashing into a space of raw desire.
That if I wanted to be fully sexual in an act that felt connected and empowered, I had to be also fully connected to my deepest fears; that I had to move through, rather than repress, my most vulnerable moments in the presence of another.
That sex indeed can be completely and wonderfully animalistic but that sex also happens in an eye gaze with someone you are so in tune with you don’t have to touch at all.
That sex happens when I am honest with the person I am with about how awkward and ashamed I feel.
That crying instead of orgasming is also pretty hot.
That the most powerful thing, and therefore one of sexiest things, is showing up for myself when I am feeling I want to run out the door and shut down forever.
That sexuality, vulnerability and femininity are incredibly and intimately linked and that it has a whole lot more to do with just being ourselves at all times to the best of our abilities instead of who we think we should be or what society has taught us to act like.
And so here is the last part of my tale which found the rest of its way into a poem.
I was in the middle of the sexual act and hit a wall, one where I wanted to but could not express my sexual wishes. In fact, I had shut down and couldn’t access myself at all. This wall which I had grown to know very well told me I wasn’t good enough, sexy enough, feminine enough, you name it.
I was neck deep in shame, feeling completely unlovable, but decided that instead of letting myself drown, I would stay with myself.
For Daniel
And then the moment came when I began to allow it.
The shame.
It moved through me fast and I froze and I shivered
I couldn’t speak
so I shattered into a million pieces.
That’s what it felt like.
And then I felt
(as I often do)
that I could die here,
all shattered and alone
and that I might die even harder from being left unseen by you
in my shattered frozen place.
But I let myself break
because when I abandon myself,
that feels like dying too.
I fell into the space that you held for me
and found the sun that is you,
that is me,
that is there
always in the center
holding the swirling scattered pieces of the galaxy together
because that’s just what it does.
Being seen.
Every time I allow this I learn how to trust
and every time I trust
I can feel the sun
moving through me so warm and bright
and I find myself exploding into a million different pieces of aliveness.
In love.
The Most Important Thing I Learned
Being sexually free, I have discovered, includes everything. But the most important of all:
If I can honor my shame and be brave enough to express it, then I am, in fact, wild and free.
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Much LOVE,
Danielle