We have forgotten who we are.
We have forgotten that we’re women of the moon and the sea, women of the tides and the jungles. We have forgotten that we run with the wolves and we swim with the dolphins, that we listen to the wisdom of the trees and we follow the metaphors in our dreams. We have forgotten how to dance in a grove of cypress and sleep among the beetles and bees. We have forgotten our wildness.
We have forgotten that our bodies are gardens where we plant the seeds of our aliveness and desire, and when we water these seeds they blossom into fields of poppy-bliss and orchid-fire. We have forgotten that when we squish our toes into the mud of our spring banks we slide full-bodied into the rush and flood of snowmelt, unafraid of the current and cold. We’re so lit up inside that even glacial runoff can’t extinguish our flames.
We’ve forgotten how to walk barefoot. We’ve forgotten how to get dirty, and not in the pop culture sense. I’m talking about true dirt. I’m talking about dirt that seeps into the cracks in our soles and spreads over our skin in a layer of holy-dust causing us to remember that our original scent is the scent of the earth rising from our pores like steam from freshly plowed fields on a hot summer day. We have forgotten how to rejoice in these bodies. We have forgotten to press our ears to the earth. We’ve forgotten how to listen.
We have forgotten who we are because we’ve been told lies about ourselves, our bodies, and our sexuality. We’ve been told that we’re wrong, bad, or broken in some way. We’ve been told that our bodies don’t look right or smell right, that they’re something less than a cause for celebration and reverence. A long time ago our bodies were honored as gifts of power and all would pray at the altars of our belly, our breasts, our sacred center. Now our bodies are defiled, used, and objectified. We’ve come so far from the days of reverence that it’s hard to remember, even for a moment, that this could be true. You may even cringe a bit while reading this. It may make you want to run.
But another part of you is listening, ears awake, hearts fluttering with yearning. What do you mean my body is sacred? What do you mean I’m a woman of the moon and sea? Something inside of you remembers. Something inside longs to return to your rightful place in the ancestral line, to retrieve the lost legacy so that you can become fully alive and perhaps pass on these teachings on to your daughters and daughter’s daughters. Some part of you wants to remember who you are.
It’s time to remember. It’s time to re-sanctify our bodies, to hearken into our history and remember that we are priestesses and woodland dancers. It’s time to remember that our sexuality isn’t a source of shame and has nothing to do with what we look like or sound like, but how we feel from the inside out. The most common sexual complaint I hear from women is that they lack desire, but what they don’t see is that healthy desire springs from the hidden and magical places in our own bodies. The cultural myth says that lack of desire is indicative of the wrong partner, or, conversely, that the “right” partner would set you on fire. This is yet another myth in the long series of myths that create unnecessary anxiety in the realm of love, sex, and relationships.
It’s easy to buy into this myth, especially if you’ve experienced high-desire in the past with other partners. But the question to ask is if those partners were fully available, for another culture misfiring teaches us to equate desire with longing: when we want what we can’t have and we use sex as a way to validate our worthiness, our bodies learn to awaken in response to being wanted. We become addicted to the gaze, to the game of chase, to the drama. Everything in the culture – every novel, film, magazine article, and billboard – teaches us from the time we’re little girls to link validation with desire. This is a massive and tragic misfiring. If we are to learn to activate healthy desire within the context of a committed partnership or even alone, this misfiring needs to be corrected.
We can heal and we can remember. We only need to be shown the way. We need the map so that we can reclaim our stolen treasures. We need to link arms with other women around the globe who are also seeking to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, who are ready to travel into the heart of the earth and retrieve the runes and gems that live there. This is what I will be teaching in Sacred Sexuality: A 40-day program for women to heal body shame and ignite desire. I can’t wait to share it with you.
Note: Because this is the first time I’m running this course and I won’t have a co-moderator on the forum, I’ll be limiting the number of participants. The course won’t begin until June 24, 2017, but if you want to be one of the first people notified when registration opens, please enter your information in the box at the bottom of this page. I look forward to meeting you there.
