🌕 Fill Your Life with Pleasure
it's a full moon in leo 🌕
Fill Your Life with Pleasure is the closing line in every module of the online erotic course Frederic and I have been taking (see below👇🏾). It’s a simple imperative. Not so easy.
Per my last newsletter, yes, conversations around pleasure and the erotic are tender for me, touching places of resistance. This past fall, I asked Chela (truly, the best coach) to make the erotic one of my coaching objectives — one which I then continually tried to dodge. She ingeniously gave me an assignment: to watch, with Frederic, a Netflix show about sex👇🏾. This too I resisted! But because I am a diligent (if anxious) student, I panicked the night before my next session, saying to Frederic, “Um, sweetie, we HAVE to watch the goop show TONIGHT!!” This led to more conversations, more resistance, at least one more panicked homework fulfillment, more jibber jabber, finally finding (some) ease...
Maybe this should be titled: Why Do We Resist Pleasure? [Because then we can’t be constant producers/consumers. Also, trauma. And, most of us have a hard time even naming what it is we truly desire, let alone practicing it.]
Below, I offer some resources (just a beginning) that have helped me explore this resistance and open to more pleasure, to the erotic, to erotic pleasure. Emphasis on me: I am a cis-gendered, straight-ish, black, pretty vanilla, middle-aged, monogamous, middle class woman — my references reflect this.
AND, I want to appreciate the profound role queer culture has had in my process of healing erotic and sexual wounds. Being “raised” in gay male bars exposed me to liberation steeped in sexual expression, and introduced me to a fierce reclamation of the erotic (within a response to AIDS that particularly shamed and punished that expression). Cultivating some of my longest friendships with women who center the love and lust of women continues to heal the delusions I have absorbed from misogyny, and leads me to interrogate what it means to be a true subject (not merely an object) of the erotic. Witnessing trans friends bravely transform a hostile world allows me to marvel at the literal spell-work of renaming and reordering our dualistic world, and continually upends my limiting concepts of gender and the erotic.
There are many acknowledgements I could give (there will need to be an entire newsletter – or series –dedicated to the power of Black erotic wisdom), but I will only offer one more: eldership. Because I entered medically induced menopause in my forties, sometimes I feel like a Gen-X spirit from the future — so, this is for my peers and older millenial friends (and any youngsters here not born in the 1900s... anyone?): Gather around children, let old aunt Sebene tell you about waning physical desire. Yes, yes, I know it’s hard to imagine right now, while the erotic is still evoked so strongly (and easily). But, in fact, the body changes. (!!!!!!!)
These changes shocked and frustrated me. For years, I felt quite lonely as I found very few people speaking to aging and sex. I am thrilled that more people now are because: 1) I am lucky to get old (the other option is to get dead). 2) Old me is also an erotic being and there’s actually a lot to learn from the elder expression of sexual pleasure. 3) The erotic within old me needs different nurturing and nourishment (and lubrication👇🏾).
Erotic pleasure is a practice that requires tenderness, attention, and care. Again, simple but not easy — especially in a world of speed, distraction and work as worth (what Chela calls “the pathology of productivity”). That pathological tendency will be unhelpful here. Another way? This from astrologer Chani Nicholas offers possibility:
Flowers don’t think about reaching for the Sun; they simply follow the energy. You too can follow the path that feeds you. There is courage in trusting that which is effortless.
I would add: effortless does not mean not high energy.
May your lives be filled with effortless pleasure!
🍑🐫😉🍆👉🏾🍌😈🦴👌🏾🌮♋️🍓💥
I did not want to include too many books or readings here because although words can help us conceptualize and understand things in new ways, opening to the erotic is inherently an EMBODIED EXPERIENCE. So here are only three of the writings that have been most influential for me — each representing a different era of my life, in order.
This almost 40 year old, ovulary essay on the erotic as power from the great Audre Lorde is life changing (the entire collection is a must read). I first read the essay in college (the late 1900s for you kids), but I only began to understand its connection to my spiritual practice in my thirties. I re read it regularly. Her framing of the erotic as not only the sexual is radical and liberating. Please allow it to transform you. Also, you can listen to her read a version here.
I’m immensely grateful to Mark Epstein for his book Open to Desire. I read it just as I was greatly deepening my studies of Theravada Buddhism and repeatedly returned to his ideas whenever I encountered the egregious anti-eroticism (not to mention misogyny) within those teachings. His re-frame is sweet relief for anyone confused by the claim that desire causes suffering.
adrienne maree brown gifted the world with the term pleasure activism in this groundbreaking book which asks us to connect feeling good with our efforts to make the world a more just and equitable place for all. There is a brilliant chapter-length analysis of Audre Lorde’s essay. Also, brown recommends the reader masturbate at the start of every chapter. 💦🖖🏾🔥
Again, opening to pleasure is an embodied and sensual experience. Each of us will have our own processes of erotic healing over time. And, I firmly believe the disconnection from dance in dominant (i.e. white) culture has been one of modernity’s greatest erotic tragedies. In
You Belong, I talk about the loss of culturally situated forms of dance and the vital role of movement rooted in African diasporic traditions for my own process of re-embodiment — ta da🪄, Black erotic wisdom making an appearance (how can it not?). Many embodiment practices undertaken in spiritual circles I’ve been a part of dismiss/denigrate the hips. I love yoga. Yoga changed my life. And, as it's mostly practiced, there is little more than hinge-like movement of the hips. That’s all imma say for now... But here’s a video post that I made with my dance teacher Laci, who is featured in my book (there are 3 more videos with explanatory captions in my IG profile). Yes, I am willing and easily able to embarrass myself for our collective liberation. You’re welcome.
I always look forward to the recommendations in Fran Tirado’s substack Fran’s Joy Digest. With suggestions that range from beauty products to new music to butt plugs (plus one political action every newsletter), it’s a queer, celebratory fest of liberatory pleasure.
I really enjoyed the aforementioned Netflix show from Gwyneth Paltrow and goop (hear me out). It features five brave, (fairly) diverse couples with sex issues paired with four sex therapists helping them with intimacy and pleasure. Erika and Damon’s trajectory alone is worth the six episodes.
One of the sex therapists from the goop show (the one who works with Erika and Damon) has a fascinating framework called Erotic Blueprints. There’s a free test you can take to discover your main blueprint type, a longer test (for $17) to understand your full profile, and a
multi-module course to guide you through a detailed exploration of the Blueprint framework. The offerings are not partner dependent and I find the course content well-paced and very accessible. Attention: This is a framework — i.e. like all metaphors (and language itself), it is TOTALLY made up! If it resonates, use it. If not, don’t.
I’ve only listened to a handful of episodes, but received a lot of good info from this podcast from Devi Ward Erickson, the curator of the Authentic Tantra ® modality and an accomplished Vajrayana Tantra Practitioner. She has an eclectic and diverse group of guests and shares openly about her own process as a Gen-X, mixed race woman dedicated to erotic pleasure. It also introduced me to yoni steaming.
I know I said I wouldn’t offer too much to read but this New York Times article about sex after 70 is beautifully researched, expertly reported, and very moving. [Also, I want to make my friend read it... Jacky! 👵🏻 💦😛] It should be required reading in high schools.
Here are a few serums and oils that have helped me with vaginal dryness and stimulation. Let me know if you have found others.
Julva cream changed everything for me! FYI, I use much less than recommended.
This rose oil is dreamy.
Foria has many great CBD products for lubrication and stimulation. I like these the most.
I could go on and on... I will leave you with a few journaling prompts.
Off the top of your head, what do you feel is most sensually pleasurable for you? [fresh fruit, scented baths, and tropical beaches are on my list]
Explore each sense as you further consider what brings you erotic pleasure: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Can you take your time to connect to sensations as you contemplate this prompt?
What is one erotic pleasure you would like to experience in the coming days/weeks and how could you satisfy or move towards it?