Woman on Fire (3 page)

Kathie came to me at sixty-five years old wanting to work on her sexuality but was really nervous and in some disbelief that it would change anything. We had many conversations before she decided to step into my women's sexual empowerment program. I knew she needed it and I wanted it for her. I wanted her to know it is never too late.

Right out of college, I joined a religious order as a nun—a lifestyle that meant giving up two key things: sexuality and money. After two decades in the ashram, I realized I wasn't happy or fulfilled, so I left. As I moved into normal life, I gradually had to face all I had not done, and sexuality and a money-making career were the two biggest things.

During my forties and fifties, I went back to school and earned a master's degree, traveled and studied, and opened a small business as a solo entrepreneur. I was surviving, but I still wasn't successful and fulfilled any more than I had been as a monastic. Something still was wrong, so I started digging—inside.

I did all kinds of therapies. I was always attending workshops, seminars, coaching. I found that old grief and emotional pain from things that happened to me in early childhood were holding me
hostage. Underneath all that pain, I discovered the core belief that I was not lovable, not deserving. When I was a teenager, this belief had run through my conscious mind as “I'm not pretty enough.” The body shame and insecurity connected with that had been severe enough to stop me from being social or dating.

My mother had left when I was a toddler, and I had built a shield around myself. I shut down strongly, disconnected from my capacity to love and from my desire. I had a fear of abandonment. As I grew older I disconnected from my capacity to experience sexuality with another person, although I had discovered masturbation when I was eleven or twelve. I dated a little bit as a teenager but didn't do anything sexual. In college I got made fun of. I had not had any sexual intercourse, and that was part of the shame I carried. I just avoided sexuality. As a young adult I discovered the spiritual life—it was a way of contacting an absolute level of love without it having to be with a person. I fell in love with the universal, you might say.

I still have not had intercourse at sixty-five. A story like that is so far off the cultural bell curve (people make jokes about forty-year-old virgins, right?) that I've had people laugh at me when I share it. That's painful, and it reinforced my own shame about it. In that respect, doing this work where the approach to sexuality is big and broad enough to include even someone with a story like mine has been a lifesaver.

By the time I started working with Amy Jo, I was determined to reclaim my sexuality. I had realized that I must connect with and rescue this part of myself no matter what. I can't help but run into things that prompt regret.” What if I'd done this sooner, when my hormones were on board?” I see younger women who are confident and beautiful and think, “If only I'd been where I am now when I was at that age.” It does hurt. It does sting. You can't undo time. But I find that every step I take toward my sexuality overrides those regrets. It's more powerful to have the experiences I can have in this body now than to dwell on what I could have done.

Amazingly, a partner walked into my life just about the time I started working with Amy Jo. Early on, we would sit on the couch and he would lean over to kiss me and this “No!” would pop up from somewhere inside me. It was shocking, like I didn't have control over it. So I decided one day to override that, to overstep my resistance and kiss this guy. That was a breakthrough point for me. I redefined myself to myself in that moment. As we began to make out more often, I began to find that I could trust my body's response to things like his hand on my back. I felt my sexuality waking up in my pelvic area and hips, and I could follow it. I felt like I was following my desire. We've had some fun. We're talking about intercourse now—another point where I will have to overstep resistance and fear.

I now believe that accessing the sexual self and tapping into sexual, creative energy is vital to a woman's thriving physically, emotionally, creatively, even financially, no matter what her age or lifestyle or life story. Who's to say that confidence, pleasure, and what the hell, joy, too, can't be ours right up to our last days on the planet?

The more whole we are as sexual beings, the more fulfilled we are as human beings. I believe this with every ounce of my being. This core belief is what has driven me in my life's purpose for twenty years and gotten me out of bed every day as a change agent ready to make the world a more sexually healthy place. Sexuality and, in turn, sexual fulfillment is a deeply important wellspring for happiness in all of life.

Sometimes it is easier to know what something is
not
than to know what something
is
. We learn to deal with sexuality in deficits. What's
not
there. What we
don't
have. What we
can't
be. What we
can't
do. What we need to stay
away
from.

In the case of sexuality and sexual empowerment, because we lack role models and positive images, it's hard for many people to describe what sexual empowerment is. We often know what it's not when we see it or experience it. We can just feel that somehow,
this isn't it.
Sometimes that looks like making poor sexual choices or using sex to get approval from others. It might be a person who doesn't take care of herself sexually or emotionally. It could be a lack of understanding or knowledge of sexuality. Sometimes it's when you settle for less than what you want that you realize how much more you desire. Most people stop here, telling themselves they don't deserve more or can't have it.

Sexual empowerment is what we
do
want. What we
can
be. What we
can
have. What we
can
do. What experiences we
can
create for ourselves. What kind of lovers we
can
be. What types of lovers we
can
draw to us. It's how we can
expand
who we are exponentially when we develop, nurture, heal, and explore our sexuality.

The concept of
empowerment
, while overused, is an important one
.
There is no other word that means what empowerment means:
to embody power
. To live from a place of personal strength, autonomy, and integrity. To hold, embrace, and employ one's personal power for the highest good. To make choices and take action and feel an impact. It is to be the independent agent of your own life, the architect of your destiny.

Maybe you've felt moments of sexual empowerment—times when you tapped into the power and pleasure of your body, clarified a desire and experienced it, or had the best sex of your life. Maybe you've also felt moments when you settled, when your desires were unrequited, when you had sex you weren't into or experienced that disturbing place of self-betrayal. This book is about creating a life filled with moments of power.

In this book, I aim to contribute a clear picture of what sexual empowerment looks like, how to live it, and how it can impact every other part of your life. I want it to touch you, help you to cherish
your time, to know that, like sex and pleasure, life is immediate: it's right now, and you can't afford to wait any longer to give it the attention it deserves. I hope to help you affirm and to step into your big, bold, dreamy, sexy, on-fire self.

Empowerment is action, and it's a state of being. There are many essential parts to living a truly powerful sexual life. I want to talk about these essential elements on three levels: our relationship with our self, with others, and with our culture. After all, sexuality does not exist in a vacuum.

PEOPLE WHO ARE AUTHENTICALLY SEXUALLY EMPOWERED:

• Are intimately connected to their sexual selves
  
• Accept their bodies and are educated about how their bodies “work”
  
• Understand and acknowledge that changes in sexual function or desire are a normal part of aging, and that they can work with those changes to create a satisfying sexual life at each new phase of life
  
• Know that they do not have to have sex to be a sexual person
  
• Feel fully sexually expressed, and when not in full expression, they have tools to help them get there, utilizing available options for sexual expression and erotic experience
  
• Make pleasurable, satisfying, fulfilling sex their norm and experience pleasure regularly and as a norm in their lives
  
• Attain sexual agency by thoughtfully exploring sex and sexuality and making authentic decisions about what is right for them and what is not
  
• Develop healthy coping skills for managing difficult emotions like loss and pain
  
• Explore and develop an authentic sexual identity and do not need to hide or shift that identity to feel comfortable and safe in their lives (also impacted by culture)
  
• Live in alignment with their desires and know they never have to settle for less than what they really want
  
• Commit to heal and release any shame, guilt, or trauma about their sexuality
  
• Develop their confidence and sexual self-esteem
  
• Feel at home in themselves and move through the world from a place of self-intimacy
  Our Relationships with Others
  

PEOPLE WHO ARE AUTHENTICALLY SEXUALLY EMPOWERED:

• Communicate needs, wants, and desires without blame or shame
  
• Set clear boundaries and identify and experience their wants and desires without crossing the boundaries of others
  
• Accept rejection without taking it personally
  
• Express a range of emotions in healthy ways that do not harm themselves or others
  
• Identify defensive patterns in relationships and work to overcome them by replacing the patterns with healthy ways of connecting to others
  
• Minimize the need to be competitive with others and release patterns of lack, deprivation, or feelings that they can't have what others have
  Our Relationship with Our Culture
  

PEOPLE WHO ARE AUTHENTICALLY SEXUALLY EMPOWERED:

• Critically examine cultural messages about sexuality, gender, and sex
  
• Reject and challenge sexual stereotypes, assumptions, false ideas, and cultural myths that hinder, impair, squash, or dim their sovereign sexuality
  
• Identify and experience erotic authenticity even when social pressure or popular ideas push them to do or like something else
  
• Examine how the values and beliefs of their culture impact their personal experience of gender, sexuality, and power
  

It may feel like a tall order. Do not be overwhelmed—be inspired! Your sexuality is vast. There are many parts of it, and different aspects of your sexual self will be prominent at different stages of your life. That's the good news. You never need to stop growing as a sexual person, or forsake your sexuality for security, a relationship, a new phase of life, or for any other reason. There is always more to learn, room to grow, and a choice to experience your life
now.

Sexual empowerment is a way of living life fully, with passion and creativity, and in deep love. We are meant to be expansive as sexual and creative beings, and many gender roles and other expectations limit and diminish our expansiveness. Subscribing to limiting roles is the opposite of empowerment. Breaking roles and rules to be who we really are will bring us to an authentically powerful place.

In this book we are going to talk about the things on the above list and why they are important. We are also going to address what gets in the way of having the sexually empowered life you deeply desire and deserve. We are going to talk about sex and how to create a fulfilling sexual life. And know that when I talk about “sex,” I am not saying intercourse—they are not synonymous. Intercourse is one form of
sex, and there are many more ways to have sex. I'm talking about the whole pie. The enchilada with the sauce and the guacamole.

Sexual empowerment is not only for people who are having sex or want to have sex. Whether you are in a heterosexual marriage or several relationships at once; identify as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer; are young or old; are asexual; are celibate; or pay for sex, you are a sexual person who can experience sexual empowerment. Your core energy is sexual energy. You do not leave your sexuality at home because it doesn't match today's outfit, you are having a night out with your girlfriends, or because you don't have a sex date planned.

No matter who you are, there are means of support we all need on this journey if we are committed to our fullest sexual expression and expansion:

RESOURCES
—Everyone needs accurate resources about sexuality. Books, honest information, websites, and places you can go to get the support you need for your sexual journey. This book is one such resource.