Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (28 page)

ROOM FOR PLEASURE!

Every woman should make room in her life for pleasure, so let’s talk about the two rooms in the home most associated with a woman’s body—and most likely to be uninviting, cold, and/or cluttered: the bathroom and bedroom.

Women so often settle for whatever their surroundings are. If they’re renters, they convince themselves it’s a “waste of money” to decorate—even if they’ve been in the same apartment for ten years. Is your bedroom a love nest or a storage space you plop down in after you’re exhausted by the demands of your day? A bedroom should be a boudoir—inviting, sensual, visually reminding you to reconnect with your body and its capacity for endless pleasure. Get rid of the electronics, such as the TV and computer. Clear any clutter; use beautiful fabrics on the bed, pillows, and windows; and have plenty of soft spots to sink into, whether it’s a bed or a chair. Give the walls a fresh coat of paint and choose a color that turns you on—according to feng shui, flesh tones are best because they’ll remind you of your connection to your body.
Install new lighting that enhances your skin tone. Candles are great, but it’s dangerous to fall asleep with them still burning, so you might use Himalayan salt lamps instead. Have fresh flowers or at least fresh plants around, as well as natural objects. Make sure that your windows are open to the starry, moonlit sky and to sunlight, if possible, to make nature a part of your bedroom experience. Set up the room as if for a visiting queen.

And make room for a partner if you desire one—or want to keep one. An expert in feng shui told me that having two nightstands, one on either side of the bed, is one way to change your bedroom’s energy from being perfect for a solo sleeper to being just right for a couple. On that note, take down any photos or paintings you have of single women if being alone in your bedroom isn’t the message you want to send to the universe.

And now, on to the bathroom! Don’t you just love those comfort stations in the ladies’ lounges of finer hotels and restaurants? They set out a perfect little display of lotions and sundries, including perfume, to make a woman feel beautiful and connected to the pleasure of her body in a space that, let’s face it, often involves some not-so-romantic activities. Make your bathroom a space where you feel inspired to nurture yourself and get in touch with your sensuality and sexuality. Stock up on big, fluffy, soft, and absorbent towels that feel heavenly against your skin. Keep some in the bathroom to dampen harsh sounds and echoes. If you don’t have windows in the bathroom, use natural, full-spectrum lighting.

I book hotel rooms based on whether or not they have a tub and even bring my own rubber drain stopper in case the tub doesn’t work properly! And in my home, I built my ultimate fantasy bathroom, with a shower that has two showerheads and a large sunken oval bathtub facing a window with a view of the river near my house. It’s surrounded by green marble that forms a shelf that’s the perfect area for flowers, candles, and incense. I also built a bookcase right behind the tub because it’s my favorite reading spot. And I have a great sound system, with Pandora radio stations playing sensual or relaxing music. Yes—it’s an amazing room. And I describe it only to inspire you. It took me
years to come to this. Don’t wait. You can create a wonderfully sensual space even in the smallest bathroom.

When I bathe, I make it a ritual with bath salts, aromatherapy or incense, candles, music, and a good book. I crave a bath before I go to sleep—maybe because my moon is in Pisces, a water sign. Immersion in water is always soothing. Doing affirmations, massaging your breasts, journaling, and singing while soaking in the bath will all awaken your sensuality and pleasure.

In the language of dream interpretation, water represents abundance and the flow of life and emotions. Maybe that’s why we’re so often drawn to it. All life starts in amniotic fluid, which has roughly the same chemical composition as the ocean. If you have a chance to swim in clean, natural bodies of water—lakes, an ocean or sea, or even a pool cleaned not with chlorine but an ionization process—you can experience the sensual pleasure of water against your skin and a sense of oneness that comes from immersing your body in the caress of water. Let yourself be infused with the spirit of the river goddess who teaches you to go with the flow and the goddess of the ocean who is teeming with abundant life.

We can all become deliciously seductive pleasure goddesses—not predatory cougars but golden tigresses luxuriating in the delight of our own sexual power. My late cat, Francine, who still appears in my dreams regularly, taught me more about being a woman than anyone else has! When she sashayed over to me and deemed me worthy of having her place her soft, silky, warm body on my lap, I’d feel as if I was the chosen one. And
that
is how the world will respond to you when you truly own and operate your inner erotic creature.

CHAPTER SEVEN

GODDESSES LOVE WITHOUT LOSING THEMSELVES

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.
Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

— H
AFIZ
(
TR
. D
ANIEL
L
ADINSKY
)

I
n the 1970s, Gloria Steinem used to say, “We have become the men we wanted to marry.” I have my own twist on this: become the kind of woman to whom the kind of person you are looking for would be attracted. This is the path I decided
to follow. In the year or two following my divorce, as I thought about getting involved with a man again, I resolved to become the kind of woman that the kind of man I wanted would desire.

How do you feel about yourself? Here’s the truth:
the number-one relationship that determines the quality of all the others in your life, and sets the tone for them, is the one you have with yourself.
Are you willing to learn to love yourself enough to discover your depth, own your beauty, and articulate your deepest desires? Or are you going to neglect the work of mining your inner treasures while waiting for someone else to sweep into your life and rescue you from your loneliness, your yearning, and your despair? Each of us is confronted with this choice every day. Only when we have the courage to love ourselves as the divine, ageless goddesses we are do we have a real shot at creating heaven on earth with someone else.

Post-divorce, I believed that finding Mr. Right would completely solve all my problems and make me feel happy and whole again. That was a worthy goal, but at the time I had no idea that my soul had a much bigger plan for me. I was driven by longing for a relationship that would complete me. Now, I knew intellectually that this awful feeling of yearning was about far more than the lack of Mr. Right in my life. Still, I wanted that “perfect” man and “perfect” relationship.

Though I met a lot of men, the few I desired weren’t available—but all of them
were
soul mates for me at some level. They were meant to be in my life to wake me up—to show me my need to reconnect to Spirit and find happiness inside me instead of looking for it somewhere out there.

In the process of becoming the woman the right kind of man would want, I transformed into a woman more whole, happy, and confident than I’ve ever been in my entire life. Now, instead of feeling like a woman who has been neglected and left behind, I am happy and whole and know that my presence is an asset. Why? Because I finally mated with my soul and became my own soul mate.

I know many of you are seeking a flesh-and-blood life partner. We are mammals and herd creatures, after all. But I can assure you that the only way you’re ever going to be fully ready
to step into true partnership with the person of your dreams is to release the constant craving to be completed by another. You must learn how to complete yourself. You have to see yourself as irresistible and set a high price on your head. And you have to believe that your ideal partner has already been picked. He (or she) will show up at exactly the right time and in the right way. In the meantime, your job is to live happily ever after, starting right now!

The truth is that when you feel whole, complete, and lacking in nothing, that aching abyss you think only a mate can fill will finally go away. And you will stop choosing mates or even friends who ultimately disappoint you. Trust me on this one. No one expresses this better than writer Tosha Silver in her poem “The Kiss,” which you can read on the next page.

BEING LOVE

To have a better relationship with yourself, begin to think of yourself as love itself. Imagine you are both a transmitter and receiver of an infinite amount of life-giving energy. Share this love with others. You can do that with just a smile.

A man and his wife and daughter sat down at a table near me at one of my favorite local restaurants. He radiated life force and joy, even though he spent most of the lunch absorbed by his smartphone. When I finished lunch, I stopped by his table and told him how strikingly happy he appeared. He beamed from ear to ear, and in a German accent said, “Even though I was spending too much time looking at my phone?” We all laughed and I left, both of our days lightened with love and joy. You can do the same thing wherever you are and whatever you are doing. Before you post something on a social media board, saturate it with Divine Love first, and don’t make the mistake of expecting a particular response—a validation from someone else. Freely send your love outward and trust that love will always come to you.

Find your inner voice and sing as an offering to the Divine and to love itself, whether you do it literally or figuratively. As Wayne Dyer says, “Don’t die with your music still in you.” It doesn’t matter whether your song is an offering of love to yourself
or to someone else. When you love yourself, you contribute to the abundance of love, and we all benefit.

A few years ago, my mother won an award from the state of New York for being a “distinguished woman.” At the awards ceremony, I noticed that the other women who had won the award had all been recognized for something they had done for others in their communities—everyone had performed unselfish, charitable acts. My mother was the only woman being recognized for having simply followed her passion, climbing mountain peaks, hiking the Appalachian Trail, and continuing to lead a physically active, adventurous life in her 80s. It’s not as if she had never served her community directly: she had been mayor of her town for five years. But then, even though both the Republicans and Democrats in town wanted her to run for reelection, she decided not to because she had other interests that were important to her. Many in the audience came up to my mother after she received the award and were buzzing with a sense of excitement about her. It was as if they could feel the joy of my mother’s life flowing into theirs. They wanted what she had—the willingness to put herself first, enjoy life, and follow her passions. Her relationship to herself was inspiring to women and men alike.

But how many of us buy into the idea that following our heart’s desires is selfish? Anita Moorjani, author of
Dying to Be Me,
says, “Selfishness comes from too little self-love, not too much.” And she explains, “When I’m
being love,
I don’t get drained, and I don’t need people to behave a certain way in order to feel cared for or to share my magnificence with them. They’re automatically getting love as a result of me being my true self. And when I am nonjudgmental of myself, I feel that way toward others.”
¹
By having a great relationship with yourself, by loving yourself fully, you
are
serving the world. You’re inspiring others to truly appreciate themselves by modeling what it looks like to appreciate yourself without conceit.

To truly love yourself, you have to get to know who you are instead of repressing all the parts of yourself that you might have been shamed for in the past. For years, I wanted to learn how to dance. But whenever my husband and I took dancing classes, I simply ended up being criticized by him for what I was doing
wrong. Unbeknownst to me, in many ways I was shut down emotionally because I was always trying to make myself into someone I wasn’t.

Often, we go along with other people’s plans for us and expectations of us because underneath it all, we’re terrified that if we really go for all of what we want, we’ll be abandoned. Better to get crumbs than risk being left alone, we tell ourselves. We leave ourselves undeveloped and emotionally malnourished. Then we yearn for someone to rescue us and provide what we think we can’t provide for ourselves. That makes us needy, not alluring. It’s not the beauty of youth that we lose when we’re constantly compromising ourselves but the beauty of youthful courage. You’re never too old to take risks and do what makes you feel alive.