Diary of an Erotic Hostess

New Blog

2012-01-02T18:26:00.001-08:00

For those who have been following this blog, I am now writing a at a new blog site and with a new blog identity...

Radical Mystic

The Ecstasy Returns (Whew)

2011-08-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

I had my first ecstatic experience in a couple of months in the forest near my home today. I've not had one of these experiences since I gave the fullness of my heart to someone who didn't see it and decided they didn't want it once they did see it. They wanted my body for sex and my mind for the capacity to fantasize as they liked, but wanted nothing to do with my heart. My heart closed up after being objectified and rejected so profoundly. It hurt big and deep. It caused me to question whether I can continue my mission in vulnerability and open-heartedness. I've spent some time going deep inside to lick my wounds, healing through time, writing and loving relationships.

I live near Jacoby Creek and yet in the year that I've lived here I've never taken the time to visit the creek. As ridiculous as that seems, it's true. Today I was inspired on the way home to pull over and explore a path that I've seen hundreds of times on my drive into town. I have a friend coming to visit and I want to be a good hostess not just in my home, but in this amazing forest that surrounds me. I swear sometimes I feel the trees holding me, their roots underneath me, their trunks and branches around me and above me. As I wove my way through the mossy trees and walked through the water and watched little banana slugs on the path, skittering water bugs in the creek and spiders in a patch of wild flowers, I felt a big opening in my heart. I felt connected. I felt the magic of Oneness and the immense miracle of life that I am blessed to participate in. I felt the God in Everything.

Last night I felt my heart opening in a different sort of way. I spent some time with writing and art by people who are witnessing the tragedies of the world and bringing the stories to the American public in hopes of inspiring people to change the unnecessary harm we are causing/allowing to the earth and other human beings. I am recognizing how my capacity to feel so deeply through my empathy and to evoke feeling in others in all kinds of ways by very my nature is a gift to be used in a similar way. I used to dream of art projects in which I told the stories of people whose lives could be changed if enough people woke up to their true capacity for compassion and empathy and did something about the atrocities taking place every minute of every day. It's stories that cause people experience empathy, to feel for the suffering of others.

I watched an Eve Ensler video earlier today in which she talks about how she experiences Oneness through her body (please go watch it, it's profound and only 12 minutes long). She's recognized that her body is a reflection of the larger world, that the cancer that invaded her body is a reflection of the cancer of war, greed, and violence in our world. It's all the same. It's all connected. It's powerful and so very true.

God, I do feel so very deeply. When I approached my car from the creek this afternoon and looked up into the giant redwood trees, I started crying. Tears are how I express emotions that are too big for words. I could feel my crazy deep love for the Divine Spark in everything pouring out of me, streaming amongst rivulets of grief for the wounding of myself and the world. I've cried so many times in the last few days, nearly every time I'm in conversation with a friend. I am allowing myself to feel the fullness of everything I have experienced and am experiencing in my life recently - the grief and the happiness, the disappointment and the hope, the confusion, the doubt, and the moments of pure clarity. And of course the inexplicable depth of complicated love I have for a few people in my life.

I've missed the heartlight that imbued my life so deeply a few months ago - the light in me that responded to the light in the world with giddy joy and a connectedness that seemed to set my cells on fire. Ecstatic states were happening all the time. I recognize that like the myths of Persephone and Inanna, it is necessary to walk through the darkness in order to clear the shadows from the light I shine. I know that I needed to explore the depths of my sense of worthlessness and invisibility the way that I did so that I could discover just how valuable and visible and worthy of love that I am. While I've been deeply hurt, I am incredibly grateful for the experience and for the participation of the other person in my evolution. I am very frustrated by their shadow right now and working on forgiveness, but I still know their light and I still have love in my heart for them, whether they want it or not.

As I've said before, ecstasy and despair, it's all God.

I'm just so very so grateful to have the heartlight again, to bask in its warmth however long it lasts before a descent into the dark is required for the next stage of evolution.

Thank you for listening.

Grief is Weird

2011-08-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out, "It tastes sweet, does it not?" - Rumi

The waves of grief come farther and farther apart as time passes, but they still crash over me now and then.

My mother died three years ago. Yesterday was the anniversary of the day I found out. We are unsure whether she died 1-3 days before she was found. For those who don't know, my mother died of an accidental narcotic overdose after a lifetime battle with depression and addiction.

Grief is weird. Sometimes it's big and obvious and all consuming, especially at the beginning. But sometimes it sneaks up on you. You feel a tug at your heart, a sadness out on the edges of your consciousness, and everything in your life looks a little bit darker, but you don't realize you're riding a wave of grief until it overcomes you and you feel like you're drowning.

I have been stressed at work the last week or so, unusually so, and while there are understandable reasons I feel stressed, it's felt out of whack for the way I usually deal with work challenges. I've not been conscious of the impending anniversary of my mom's passing, so it never occurred to me that I have funky feelings percolating under the surface.

I have also been anti-social this week. I usually have at least a couple nights with loves/friends, either individually or in gatherings. But this week I've been home every moment I can be. I've been introspective and experiencing a sense of processing, but no clarity on the specifics. I've been fuzzy headed and heavy hearted.

*

The last three years have been a constant ride of transformation as I open into ever deeper experiences of love and consciousness. As I look at the self-therapy process I've cultivated over 15+ years, it's in the last three that the most visible growth has taken place. I've made significant progress in managing my emotional world, both working with hormone therapy to address the physical causes of my moods and working to understand and manage my emotional triggers when they go off. I've made leaps in consciousness and helped raise consciousness in my relationships and community. I have become brighter as I learn to shine my Light with intent and confidence.

I am a work in progress, but I've progressed exponentially since my mother's death. She catalyzed me. She always catalyzed me. When I became a single mother to two children at 22 years of age, I realized that I needed to pull myself together so that my kids had a better chance of being healthy and happy. I promised myself I would not do what my mother did and send broken children into the world after dragging their childhood through addiction and narcissistic drama. After my mother died a friend told me it was an opportunity to be free of chains of my past and live my life beyond my mother's shadow. I took the invitation to heart.

*

I recognize I'm having a new experience of grief this year. It's lighter than previous experiences. I can feel where I have healed. I can feel where I have forgiven. I can feel where I feel great love and compassion for her rather than blame and resentment.

I allow myself to have the fullness of my grief experiences because I know it's vital to moving through. I talk about grief and recognize it in people more than anyone I know. Our culture doesn't make much space for grief. It's meant to be kept behind closed doors at home. It doesn't belong in the workplace, or in the store, or at a party.

At the end of my workday yesterday I had a conversation with a staff member in which she revealed her father is dying. She started crying and she apologized for doing so. She apologized several times in the course of our conversation for perfectly normal grief responses. I tried to tell her that she didn't need to be sorry for her feelings or how she spoke or crying or anything else that comes from grief.

We shouldn't feel that we need to apologize for our grief, however it manifests (as long as we're not causing harm to anyone). I desire to work with people in the heart of the grief process. I've been very conscious of my grief processes in recent years, not just around my mother but in all grief experiences. I'd like to do some study in grief counseling, but I think I've got a pretty good understanding of its complexity and have the capacity to hold other people as they ride their grief waves. I think it's important that people be validated for their grief experiences, no matter how weird they might seem.

*

I am changing so rapidly because I am embraced and encouraged in my process. I am held by several dear loves and a larger tribe of friends who know that I'm striving to be a healthier and more loving person. They reflect my light to me when I shine, they help me up when I fall down, and they forgive me when I totally fuck up. I know that if I reached out to them tonight I would have a friend by my side in less than an hour. I don't need that tonight but it's an amazing feeling to know I have it, to know I am not alone. For a girl who used to sit in a dark closet truly believing no one cared that she existed it's an incredibly big deal to feel held like this.

Every day I trust my visibility more. What I've noticed the past several weeks is that I no longer have the desperate hunger for a partner, I'm very comfortable being alone, and I'm seeking validation less and less. I seek authentic relating. I desire connected time with loves and friends. But I don't act out of a unhealthy need to be validated, to convince myself that someone is seeing me, even in circumstances that don't bring me joy. I realize after recent relationship experiences that I have a pattern of compromising myself just to feel seen. I desire to act from a sense of true connection and love rather than fearful hunger.

For three years I have been actively working to understand The Invisible Girl and to give her the love she needs to grow up and become the Visible Woman Who Shines Bright. Tonight I can feel how much progress I've made and how I'm moving away from doing the work of healing within to doing the work of my heart in the world. While I still have healing and brightening to do, I believe I've cleared away enough of the darkness to serve with my gifts confidently and create the career that will allow me to earn my living from serving others in periods of grief and transformation.

Whatever happened to my mother's consciousness when she died, I hope she can still witness the life I'm living. I want her to be proud of me and my children. I want her to see how our crazy life led me to a revolutionary experience of love and community. I want her to know that all I ever wanted for her - and for everyone - is to consciously overcome the fear that comes from past wounding and embrace the love that is possible. My whole life is dedicated to helping every life I touch experience more love and less fear because of her.

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Image Source: Alice Elahi Seascapes

It's Meant to be Messy

2011-08-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

"We are complete, whole, fine and totally capable from the onset. We may cover up, forget or be afraid of this fine specimen that we are, and as such life becomes a continuous dance with our soul and an ongoing unveiling of who we are in relationship to ourselves and our world. We are on a journey of discovery. We fall and get back up. We have questions with no answers and are full of marvelous paradoxes that secretly make us worry about schizophrenia. Truths change as do our desires, loves, fears and longings as we go along. If only we dare wake up and be with our full, complex, wild ever-evolving selves.

The point is this: it's meant to be messy. Life is a rollercoaster ride, with ups and downs, and thrills and terrors, and the more we lean into the curves, the more we get out of it. Life’s meant to be just that. Messy. A rich, epic experience on all dimensions. You are meant to savor and be savored by life.

But we are afraid of this messy life. Entire careers and industries depend upon and have enhanced this fear for their own profit. Look at the bookshelves, search the internet, spend a day on Facebook, and you’ll know, how apparently fucked humankind appears to be. We no longer know how to live. We plan ourselves out of life. We guru and train and abstain and stretch and educate and work ourselves out of life." Lone Morch

I read the blog post this passage comes from a few weeks ago and my heart said, YES. This is true. Myself and the people I love are wonderfully messy, imperfectly perfect human beings. I have stopped reading self-development books because I know I can get more out of experiencing life fully than reading other people's guides to life. I know no one can tell me how to navigate my own unique path. I have no gurus or formal teachers - I just pay attention to who I resonate with in the world around me and how they navigate their stories for little pieces of insight or tools that may assist me on my journey.

But my reality is that I spend time thinking every day about how I could be improved, how I could be better and more evolved in some way. Lately I harass myself for not making more progress towards my goals to change my career. Today I thought about how I need to continue working on my emotional self so that I attract healthier relationships into my life. I often wonder if I'm neglecting or failing my daughter in some way. I think about how I could have a better attitude and be more centered during the stressful times at work. I think about how I could be a better community leader and how I could interact better with those I love and work with.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how I could be better, improved, and doing more good work in serving the world, as if I am not good enough just as I am. I criticize myself for spending time watching television shows on dvd or futzing around on the internet (even though most of my reading is about spirituality, consciousness and how to be a better human). I tell myself I should be writing (my last blog post was three weeks ago). I should be building a professional website and taking active steps towards changing my career (I've had three conversations with experienced coaches giving me the next steps to take). I should be putting more time into the Imps.

"I suffer mornings most of all.
I feel so powerless and small.
By ten o'clock I'm back in bed
Fighting the jury in my head."
Amanda Palmer

Every single day I tell myself I could be doing better than I am. I hold myself to impossible standards (and as a result others too, which is part of why I struggle with embracing the shadow). I tell myself I should be doing more and being better.

For years I've been telling myself (and others) the story that I was broken and need to be fixed. Growing up in a severely dysfunctional family and my resulting psycho-emotional wounds = brokenness. Mental illness = brokenness. Teen motherhood, poverty and rape = brokenness. I tell myself even now that I if I have strong negative emotional reactions to others, even when it's perfectly understandable, that I'm still broken and need to be fixed.

Since a difficult conversation last night I've been wondering if it's ok for me to be angry and hurt because someone(s) I trusted with incredible vulnerability treated me carelessly. I wonder if it's ok to speak what feels like the truth of my experience right now even if it casts them in a shadowy light. I wonder if it's ok to be frustrated and hurting because people in my life are choosing to withhold intimacy with me because it scares them. I'm having trouble being open-hearted with a couple people I love because they have boundaries preventing our intimacy from being as deep as it could be or manifest in all of the yummy ways it could. I seem to think that if they withdraw then I should, too, because it would hurt too much to let my love flow fully without reciprocity.

Shouldn't I be better, more evolved? Shouldn't I be able to not take things personally, to see the truth of the situation (it isn't about me, their fear is just too big to let the love flow at this moment in their lives)? Shouldn't I focus on compassion for their fear rather than be caught up in my own projections and resulting heartache? Shouldn't I be able to see with clear vision and love unconditionally? After 15 years of actively working on my own psychological, emotional and spiritual evolution, shouldn't I be better than this?

I have pursued open-heartedness and vulnerability with my whole being this year and nearly every road has led to being turned away or shut down or allowed only a fraction of what's possible in the relationship. It hurts. It hurts to feel the possibility in relationship - to feel how the love could flow and heal - but the other erects walls to keep the flow controlled, if allowed to trickle at all.

My instinct is telling me to put a stop to the mission in vulnerability and build walls around my heart to keep me protected. My mind tells me to stop reaching out, to stop trying to connect until I know someone wants to and is capable of connecting with me. But my heart - and messages from the Universe - keep telling me to stay open, to stay vulnerable, to be willing to be heartbroken, and love as big and deep as I possibly can.

My mind keeps asking if I'm being unhealthy in my relentless pursuit of emotional experience, if I am an emotional masochist and creating my own pain. My heart keeps saying that I'm an emotional and spiritual mountain climber and shining my Divine Light means being an adventurer of the heart and sharing my adventure story with others. My map may not lead anyone else to their Divine Light, but my story can provide a sense of connectedness and perhaps an insight into another's story.

I'm struggling right now. I am a paradox, a damn messy one. While I have strong desire to be writing, to be working towards a coaching practice, to be putting energy and consciousness into nurturing community, I am not finding the motivation to act.

Today I read an article that talked about the timing of success and the writer believes that our success comes when we trust ourselves. Now I am asking myself if a lack of trust is what's holding me back. Am I afraid to start taking steps toward coaching because I'm afraid of failing, because I don't trust myself or that people will desire what I have to offer? Do I keep telling myself I need to improve because I don't trust that I'm good enough or lovable enough just as I am right now?

Maybe instead of looking for the next step in improving myself, and maybe even instead of constantly reading articles about how to be better, I need to start trusting myself and my process. I need to trust that I am moving at the pace that is right for me, in my career, in my relationships, in my evolution. I need to trust that taking a break and enjoying the ways I like to take time off - whatever they might be - does not diminish who I am or my value to the people around me. I need to trust that it's ok for me to be an emotional human, to have hurt feelings and fears, and to sometimes act from them and go through the growing pains of relationship. I need to trust in forgiveness, of myself and from others, trust that I can fuck up and that doesn't mean I'm broken or not worth loving.

I need to trust that I am amazing and lovable and valuable in my glorious and messy humanness...and that everyone else is, too. To me, this is what faith is. Trusting that we're all the Divine, sometimes gracefully dancing and sometimes clumsily bumping into each other in our skinsuits, seeking to connect with the Oneness we know somewhere deep inside is our true nature. I don't care about some big God out in the Universe somewhere. I want to be able to consistently perceive the God in all of us, to love myself and each person I relate to as openly as possible, to trust that everything is really ok, and know that the gift of this life is fucking BEAUTIFUL in every way it manifests.

For now, I'm just letting myself be a beautiful mess.

Embracing the Shadow

2011-07-11T18:15:00.000-07:00

I came across this blog post today, which is serendipitous in puzzling out a significant quandry I am facing:

"What would happen if we looked at our lives right now – every one of us – with all the things we love about them and all the things we know we want to change, all our strengths and our neuroses, all the places of confidence and the fears and stresses and what-ifs that we carry, and trusted that the unfolding of all of it is good?

What if we trusted this to be true for other people, too? Even, yes, the person on skid row. Even the addict, the terminally ill, the suicidally depressed?

Could it still apply? (I feel shy and audacious even asking!)

What if we trusted that the exact pace we’re all going is right, and that if any of us were inspired to speed up or slow down, that would be right, too?

What if we trusted that our screw-ups fit into the big picture well?

What if we knew that nothing has been or is being or will ever be wasted or lost, and that even where we could talk about waste and loss on one level, the feelings that get evoked by such things – grief, despair, embarrassment, shame – and the actions these inspire, are important parts of our story, and are working their own magic to take us to important next chapters?

Could it be true? In the face of horrendous loss? Natural disasters? War?" Kirstin Noelle

I am in the midst of a big lesson in acceptance and trust.

As an empath, I can feel the emotional experiences of others. This means that I can experience someone else's joy and their heartache.

Another aspect of my intuition is the ability to see the shape of light and shadow in people. I can see people's gifts, the unique combination of qualities that they shine into other people's lives. I can also see the corresponding darkness, the unique challenges that lie in the shadows of their gifts (there is a direct correlation between our gifts and our shadows) and their past (our life experiences shape our wounded stories). I can often feel the motivation in people's choices, whether they are expressing their light, a choice from love, or shadow, a choice from fear.

I can also feel potentials, which sometimes are experienced as precise premonitions (they have always come true to the exact detail). I can sometimes see and/or feel what will happen if someone chooses to express their light, or if they choose to express their shadow.

These are all gifts I have to offer as a counselor/coach. But here is the quandry - I am attached to the choices people make. I desire for people to choose the light and the deepening of love and joy that will come into their lives when they do. I have a difficult time when people choose the shadow and I know I will witness - and possibly feel - the painful consequences.

The closer I am to someone, the more I can see and feel in them. The pattern that I'm recognizing is that when I've had an intimate relationship with someone and it ends at least partially because they choose their shadow, and I can feel the potential of where they are headed if they continue making fearful choices with painful consequences, I want to withdraw so that I don't have to see or feel their pain, and the pain of others impacted by their choices. I want to shut them out of my heart, not because they've hurt me, but because I don't want to experience them continuing to hurt themselves and possibly others.

And here's why - I watched my mom die from living in her shadow. I watched my mom struggle with addiction most of my life - from age 11 when I was putting her to bed because she couldn't walk straight till age 35 when she died of an accidental narcotic overdose. I watched my mom suffer from severe depression because she would not transform her wounded child stories of abandonment and worthlessness to experience her own empowerment. I've witnessed firsthand what happens when someone keeps choosing shadow and their sense of worthlessness till the day it kills them. I don't want to ever have to witness that again. I don't want anyone in the world to experience that. I want everyone to truly know how bright they shine and how deeply loved they are before they die.

And yet I have to admit that I see the beauty and meaning in my mom's life and death. I see it in how she inspired me to claim my own mental health and be a good mother to my children. I see it in how she inspired my sister to work in art therapy with juvenile offenders. I saw it in the friends from one of my mother's churches who attended her funeral and expressed how they were impacted by her capacity for love and service. Although my mom let shadow drive most of her life, she also brought light and love into the world.

I wonder if I can find the trust that Kristin speaks of. I wonder if I can learn to the see the beauty and meaning in other people's shadow stories the same way I have my own. I know that every painful experience I've had has led me deeper into myself, into a deeper relationship with Life, and into a deeper experience of love.

I can see how powerfully we shape each other, but not always in love. The shadows shape us in ways the light can't.

I did the dance with resistance for years before choosing to make a change I knew I needed to make (ending my unhealthy marriage and my own pattern of emotional violence) - and every one of those years brought amazing experiences into my life that wouldn't have happened if I'd been anywhere else. When I think about those whom have caused me pain or harm, I see that every single one of them also brought me profound transformation into deeper love and joy. Being raped by an abusive lover gave me my daughter, catalyzed my journey to empowerment, and inspired an art project that touched thousands of lives. Being abandoned to single parenthood gave me tremendous strength and a life shaping experience of service and unconditional love that touches every relationship I have.

Most recently, I gave my deepest vulnerability to someone who preyed on it and objectified it rather than treasured it and I experienced a lot of heartache. I also discovered my own desires, new depths of tribal and self love, a trust in my capacity to manage emotional triggers in a healthy way, an ability to communicate my needs, and so much more that I may never even be able to put into words. I needed the experience exactly as it was to learn that I am truly invincible - I can lay my heart bare to a predator and not only survive, but thrive in the revelations of my own power.

Is it possible this must be true for every woman who is preyed on? For every child who is abused? For every man who goes to war? For every person living with cancer? If my heart and spirit is invincible, doesn't that have to mean everyone else's is, too, if only they believe it is so?

Whether I am a spiritual being having a human experience or just a skinsuit capable of consciousness and emotion, I am invincible right here, right now after surviving more traumas than most people experience in one lifetime. I am not invincible because there is something special about me or I am somehow more resilient than others. There are many people like me. I am invincible because I have an unshakable faith than I can survive and thrive in anything that doesn't literally kill me. I believe the resilience of others comes from the same faith, whether it's faith in God or faith in our capacities as humans.

Instead of letting life happen to me, I consciously use my life experiences to transform my wounded stories and grow my psychological, emotional and spiritual health. And this is what I think I have to offer others. This is what I want to help others do - be empowered to transform themselves and their lives by choosing to consciously express their love and light, as well as work with and integrate their shadows so that they don't act unconsciously out of fear. Our shadows are a part of us and need to be explored and expressed, but we have the choice to do so in unconscious, self-destructive ways, or conscious, self-empowering ways.

Of course like all coaches I desire to assist people in seeing and expressing their light. However, I also desire to assist in embracing their shadow, which will give them greater capacity to hold space for and embrace the shadow in others, which is really the only way we'll ever experience peace. We need to accept our own and each others darknesses and hold space for each other express them in non-harmful ways.

"Guess what: God created beings not to act in a morality play but to experience what is unfathomable, to elicit what can become, to descend into the darkness of creation and reveal it to him, to mourn and celebrate enigma and possibility. The universe is a whirling dervish, not a hanging judge in robes." - Richard Grossinger

It's vital to both my personal relationships and my eventual practice in counseling/coaching others that I make peace with the shadows and resulting heartaches in others, even when I can feel it in my own heart. I need to extend the trust I feel in the Universe to everyone I encounter, no matter how tragic their story is or may become. I must keep my heart open (with appropriate boundaries) to the addict who chooses to stay addicted because it's easier to be continually numb and distracted rather than face the pain; to the woman who continues to take the abuse because she believes she deserves it; to the man who preys on others because he doesn't know his own true power or lovability. I have to trust that everything is unfolding exactly as it is meant to for everyone - the addict and their loved ones, the abuser and the abused, the predator and the prey.

If my heart is invincible, then I can love anyone. If my heart is invincible, then I can make myself vulnerable to anything emotionally and empathically. I know that I need to have boundaries if I desire to be conscious and healthy in the expression of my love and vulnerability with others, but I also know from experience that every story is potentially a life-changing love story, no matter how imperfectly or painfully it unfolds. I just have to live it that way.

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Image Source: Kumi Yamashita

Where Everything Shines as it Disappears

2011-07-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

Want the change.
Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines
as it disappears.
Rilke

I haven't written in a long while for a couple of reasons.

The first is that my relationship with Daddy became emotionally complicated in some troubling ways and I found myself both afraid of writing vulnerably where he could see my process and too raw to share what I was experiencing. As vulnerable as I am capable of being here, I don't show you everything. I haven't shown anyone everything in regards to my experience with Daddy, it's just so deep and raw and confusing.

Our relationship ended last week and I am still sorting and processing my feelings about everything that transpired. I'm pretty certain there will be future posts that address what I have learned about myself as a submissive and emotional masochist, as well as my mission in vulnerability and healthy D/s dynamics. I have been writing, I just haven't been publishing, and now I desire to filter those posts through my current perspective.

The other intimate relationships that I was nurturing all ended as well, for various reasons. I am working through experiences of rejection, misunderstanding, disappointment and other tricky relationship territory. Now I don't have any intimate relationships at all, although opportunities for sexual intimacy with friends have arisen, so that I can at least get those needs met if I desire. Experiencing the end of so many relationships in such a short period of time has been hard on my heart. It's difficult for me to write in the midst of the heartache. I usually write after I've turned the heartache into something meaningful and beautiful. I'm still in the process of making it all beautiful.

The other reason I haven't been writing is that life threw me a curveball and my big plans to move to the Bay Area and create the life of my dreams have been put on hold for another two years. I made this decision for the best interest of my daughter, which is a relatively easy sacrifice to make since I believe raising emotionally healthy children is the most important work I can do with my life.

However, I am struggling with feelings of stuckness. I couldn't write for awhile because I was striving to find the beauty in the change - or lack of change. I have been looking for answers to big questions: How can I create the life of my dreams here in this small county that can't financially sustain the sort of work I desire to transition to? How can I find my peers in mysticism, consciousness and sacred sexuality that I've hungered for so long and haven't found in the years I've lived here? How can I experience and learn what I need to in order to become a Tantrika or other sort of healer-counselor that weaves Mysticism, Tantra and BDSM into my practice? And how do I find the sort of intimate relationship that I desire with someone as committed to consciousness, emotional health and sacred sexuality as I am - and is also a dynamic Dominant (something I now know I deeply desire) - when the local pool of possible connections is so small and keeps getting smaller (especially in regards to kink)?

Of course the truth is that I can make progress towards the work-of-my-heart while remaining in Humboldt. I have decided to return as a full partner and Hostess with The Impropriety Society. Jen W has left us to pursue motherhood, and Paddle and I are working with four long-standing Imps leaders to transition to a different leadership model by the end of the year. Having more people responsible for the organization can allow me to focus my efforts in the places I most desire to - organizational culture, community relationship, cultivating conscious leadership, activism through writing, etc. All of these contribute to my growth as a sex-positive leader and community organizer.

I can also make progress towards developing myself and my work as a personal-coach/healer through self-study, traveling to workshops & conferences, writing, building a strong web presence, and starting a part-time practice.

What really frustrates me is the sense of limitation around finding spiritual community and an intimate relationship that meets my desires and needs. I've been seeking spiritual community for as long as I've been here and had one for about 2 years out of 20. I'm skeptical I'll find one now and the spiritual gatherings I facilitated didn't lead to the kind of connection I am seeking, so I'm not sure that attempting to create my own community again will be successful.

As to intimate relationship, I don't even know that I could find a Dominant locally that could inspire me to the depths of submission that Daddy did. On-going psychological and emotional edge play like his is not common in this little community. All the local Dominants I know are primarily into physical play and occasional, light D/s. Now that bitch has been awakened, it makes me incredibly sad to have to essentially put her to sleep until someone else inspires her into being again. To find someone who can be the Dominant I desire, and is also devoted to conscious evolution and relationship, seems like an impossible dream right now.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive.
Rilke

Despite the changes - or lack of change - in my life, I am still the person I've always been. I will turn my circumstances into something beautiful. I will continue to empower myself to claim the life I truly desire. I will keep my heart open to the Universe and every opportunity it brings me. I will trust that I am on the right path, headed towards more love and creativity than I have ever known before.

Because that is what is true about the last few years of my life here in Humboldt - it does keep getting better. I am evolving in significant ways. I have the most amazing community and friendships. I am wrapped in love in a way that I didn't even know was possible three years ago. And I have faith that it will keep getting better as long as I'm willing to trust the journey and remain vulnerable to where the Divine leads me.

The Need to Serve

2011-05-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

"…I would like to beg you…as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Rainier Maria Rilke

As my relationship to Daddy continues to deepen, I find myself plagued with questions about who I am and what I truly desire out of life.

My desire to serve runs very, very deep. Serving the desires and needs of others brings me the deepest satisfaction I've known in my life. I've channeled that desire in many directions - starting a home for teen mothers when I was 19, volunteering for the HSU women's center, tutoring at risk teens, creating The Yoni Endeavor (an art/writing project towards women's empowerment), directing a Welfare-to-Work job training center, devoting my career to service organizations, The Conspiracy of Blessings (an art project in which I sent art blessings to those in need of a bit of kindness), co-chairing the Board of Directors of our local Pride organization, and being a Hostess for the Imps. No matter what is going on in my own life - no matter how crazy or depressed I was, no matter that I worked full time to support my family and was single parenting two children, no matter what relationships I was involved in - I have always needed a place to channel my desire to serve in order to feel any sense of satisfaction in my life.

While I understand that my Servant archetype is a fundamental aspect of who I am, I have struggled with how I feel about where I channel my service and what I receive in return. There is no such thing as true altruism. We always get something from giving, even if it's just pleasure from the act of giving. When we give to a person or an organization or a cause over the long term, it is vital that our needs for pleasure and reward are met, otherwise we experience burn out. I have found that I often reach a point of burn out with the places I've channeled my service because I'm not getting all of my personal needs for pleasure and reward met, whatever they are. For instance, I often serve by meeting the administrative needs of an organization because I'm really good and efficient at administrative tasks, even though I am extremely under-stimulated intellectually, creatively and emotionally by administration. I get the reward of service, but it's shadowed by lack of fulfillment in expressing my other gifts and interests, especially my intelligence and creativity.

I am so very good at meeting the needs and desires of others. As a single mother most of my life, I've always focused on meeting the needs of my children first. I also naturally put the needs of my romantic partners first, not because I believed I had to, but because I truly wanted to. I've always wanted to give as big and deep as I can. I just failed to realize that I have needs to be met, too, and that I would have even more to give if they are met. I have never, ever been good at identifying many of my own needs that can be fulfilled by others (I know how to self care), let alone getting them met. The shadow in my service has been giving all I have until I'm drained and not always knowing how, or feeling I deserve, to get my reserves filled back up with things from others that feed joy to my heart.

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. Howard Thurman

I've seen this quote often and I keep asking myself what makes me come alive. While service itself makes me come alive, it's often shadowed by the lack of reciprocity in meeting other needs and desires.

I've started questioning my lifelong belief that I need to serve the world in the biggest (from the world's point of view) way that I'm capable. My entire life has been committed to service in a belief that I am here to help facilitate the revolution of consciousness in humanity. And my desire to serve is so big that I've wanted to figure out where I can have the maximum impact. And yet I wonder if I have been partially driven by ego and partially by the actuality that I've not found truly rewarding containers for my service.

I have always desired to serve through building others up - empowering women who've been abused, supporting teen moms in becoming self sufficient, inspiring welfare-to-work single mothers to dream for themselves and their children, facilitating sexual confidence in my community - and have always tried to build up the person I am in intimate relationship to as well. I tried so hard to build up my ex-husband to pursue his bliss. I tried to build him up so that he'd have the confidence to develop friendship and community. I tried to be emotionally and spiritually supportive by offering insights, ideas and resources for healing and growth. But he didn't want those things. He wanted to remain a bakery driver and spend all his free time in video games because he was afraid to try to be more.

I've had other relationships in which my energy and love towards building up my partner didn't really go anywhere. Either they couldn't accept it or they weren't interested in it.

I realize that I need a much different kind of man than I have fallen for in the past. I need a man who is not afraid to be all of who he is, and who desires a woman who will build him up and support him in his power.

Daddy is such a man. Daddy does big world changing sorts of things in his work. He claims his power in the world, uses that power to make the world better, and then He comes home and claims his power as a Man who deserves all the devotion and worship that His bitch has to give. Daddy is big enough to hold what I have to give and He desires it.

Here's the truth of the matter:

Serving Daddy makes me come alive. Being a source of joy, pleasure, rejuvenation and building up for a man who shines his light so bright and earns my devotion makes me come alive.

The emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical stimulation and intensity of the Master/slave relationship makes me come alive.

The immense opportunities for growth and self improvement make me come alive. Under Daddy's guidance I am improving myself physically (i have an exercise program now), psychologically/emotionally (i am working through insecurities and fear as i claim my erotic power), and spiritually (i am experiencing the Divine Spark in us both).

The conscious use of my erotic power to fuel my day-to-day joy makes me come alive. Daddy calls it pussy power. Being in touch with my erotic power and being turned on all the time gives me confidence and energy, keeps me smiling and makes me joyful in all my interactions, and inspires me to creativity.

I am not saying that I should give my life to Daddy and stop striving to serve my fellow humans in some way. I am not seeking to completely give my self up to a man like that. I know I have all sorts of things to contribute to the world as an artist, healer and community builder. And Daddy knows and appreciates that, too.

What I am doing is recognizing what makes me come alive and what brings me fulfillment in relationship, because relationship and intimacy make me come alive more than anything else. I'm recognizing what feels like a healthy and immensely rewarding way of channeling my need to serve into a container that allows me to express my service in ways that meet my needs as well as His. I am getting so many needs and desires met through this relationship. However things do or don't unfold with Daddy specifically, I now have a much better idea of the kind of man I truly desire to be in relationship to, and perhaps the specific shape I'd like that relationship to take. No matter how long our connection lasts, the rest of my relationship life will be positively impacted by what I'm learning with Him.

I've been telling myself for quite awhile now how unhealthy relationship immersion is and that it's healthier to focus on the work of my heart rather than who I'm in relationship to. But now I'm doubting the truth in those beliefs. I think it's a matter of being conscious of why I desire to immerse in a relationship like this. I'm not in relationship to Daddy because I have poor self esteem (I wouldn't have lasted this long with Him if I did). I'm not giving up any aspect of myself for Him (in fact He encourages me to be healthy by maintaining a sense of self and shine my light brighter). I'm not in this relationship because I'm playing out an old pattern (this relationship is different than any I've ever had). I'm in this relationship because Daddy and i make amazing magic together, magic that builds us both up in the rest of our lives, magic that brings us pleasure and joy every day. I'm in this relationship - that's also been rather awkward and odd some of the time - because it makes me come alive.

I have to admit that I've been looking really hard for how this is unhealthy, but I can't find it. He and I will have shadow patterns play out, as all relationships do. But my heart tells me this relationship is based on a sharing of light (paradoxically through darkness) and reciprocal support of each others service to the conscious revolution.

Coming back to the Rilke quote above, I want to live this question through this journey with Daddy - how can I shine my light brightest and be most fulfilled in expressing my deep need to serve?

Truth Telling

2011-05-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

"To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong." Joseph Childron Pierce

I lost a blog subscriber this last week, an acquaintance friend, and I'm pretty sure it's because I have been writing about the exploration of my bitch persona. I know it's an exploration that some (many?) people don't understand.

I had another friend who was becoming concerned about my emotional health after reading my first couple of posts, until he spoke to me in person and witnessed the light that shines in me when I talk about it.

I've been wondering lately about the fact that I have co-workers and family members and other bloggers that I admire on Facebook who see links to my blog posts. They may or may not be reading my posts about bitch and witnessing the openly kinky side of me. They may have judgments or concerns.

I wonder about looking for a job in the city in a couple of months and whether I should be worried if they Google my name.

I wonder if I'll lose credibility with people because I will likely never maintain "professional" boundaries in my public expression.

I wonder if it's somehow wrong to share the most intimate details of my erotic life at the same time that I desire to establish credibility as a professional in new ways.

And then I remember...

A friend told me recently that every time she talks with other people about me and bitch and this fascinating relationship I'm having with Daddy, they all say it's beautiful. I've had several friends tell me how strong and courageous they think I am. The people that really matter in my life see the light that I'm shining and reflect it back to me.

In regards to my writing and career direction, I just need to find *my people* as a blogger and a professional. My people appreciate the intersection of psychology and mysticism with sex and BDSM. My people appreciate the depth of my public vulnerability. My people will be touched by what I have to offer exactly as I am. We just haven't met yet.

"The only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity." Brene Brown

I am compelled to write about my journey. This is my primary expression of creativity right now. In fact, writing as the bitch persona excites me as a writer in a way I haven't felt in a long time. I've been thinking about writing erotica from the perspective of bitch.

There are so many reasons to keep bitch in the closet, so many reasons to be afraid of the vulnerability of expressing every aspect of who I am through this public medium. But bitch is an authentic exploration of my archetypes and a part of the psycho-spiritual work that I am doing to evolve myself. she is really no different than my work with the Invisible Girl or the Mystic or the Priestess. It wouldn't be truthful for me to hide her from the explorations I share through this blog, especially since she and Daddy are teaching me so much about myself. It wouldn't be truthful to show the process of using archetypes as a self development tool and exclude her participation.

I know I am taking some big emotional risks, allowing myself to be mind-fucked the way Daddy does it, but I'm doing so with full consciousness of the potential consequences. I know that no matter how things unfold with Daddy, even if they accidentally turn shadowy and painful, I will transform the experience into something beautiful. That's what I do. I can find and draw out the light and beauty in anything, so why not risk walking edges?

The biggest risk I am taking is my emotional investment in Daddy. By the nature of our power dynamic it is my place to be completely vulnerable to Him, to immerse in my devotion to Him, to desire Him - even to need Him - more than i can have Him. That is getting complicated by our growing friendship; I am becoming emotionally connected in ways that blur the lines I've been trying to maintain. As Daddy recently noted, I don't really compartmentalize our relationship as clearly as He does. I tried. I can't. Especially now that I've experienced empathy with him. It's difficult, and not really desired, for me to maintain emotional boundaries or walls when I've formed an empathic bond with someone. Besides, an empathic connection allows me to be more deeply tuned in to His desire. And it increases my vulnerability, which turns us both on.

Daddy has indicated after learning about The Invisible Girl that He has no desire to provoke her. He will take me into dark fantasies that may stir her up a bit, but He does not want me to feel real heartache in response to what we do. He desires for me to have fun, to experience excitement and desire, with a little fear mixed in for the rush of it. As dark and scary as Daddy can seem, he's really a good man that shines a bright light in the world, and in my life.

Here are some of the reflections of light in this relationship:

* Daddy's dark fantasies make me ask a lot of really interesting questions about myself, some questions that I need to answer. Who am I really? What do I really want out of life and relationship and work? What makes me come alive? What gifts do I have to offer and how should I offer them? How can I integrate my passions for God, service to humanity's conscious evolution, psycho-spiritual inquiry, sex/kink, and community building? Where is my niche in this world?

* My relationship to Daddy is helping me to understand the depth of my submissive desires, which run far deeper than I ever realized because no one ever inspired me to true submission. I am not only learning about the various forms of play that turn me on (and have tremendous potential for nurturing evolution), I am learning just how much I desire a Master in my sexual and domestic life. While I could never give my power and freedom entirely to another person (I need independence in parenting, my work and my creative life at least), I feel the desire for a sexual and domestic Master and realize that I have for a very, very long time. There is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction in all of my past relationships because my partners, who often claimed to be dominant, never really desired real submission. They didn't want to work at a deep exploration of power. They just wanted to play.

It isn't just the sexual submission that arouses me, I am deeply satisfied by the idea of domestic service and running a household for someone. It serves my Mother and Servant archetypes. In two years my daughter will be leaving home and my role as a mother will shift. It is already my desire to create some kind of shared home with lover(s) and/or tribe in the next few years, as I can't imagine living on my own, without people to nurture in my home. The possibility of a future home life including domestic service to a Master lights me up.

* bitch is inspiring my imagination. she inspires fantasies and dreams and she inspires me to write.

* My friendship with Daddy has developed into somewhat of a therapeutic relationship for him, allowing me to express my intuitive and healing gifts in new ways, which help me deepen into recognizing and practicing the work I desire to do with people.

* This relationship is both directly and indirectly deepening my resonance with the idea of becoming a Tantrika - a mystical and erotic healer. Wow, I think that's the first time I've admitted my potential new career direction publicly. It's scary to finally speak the truth "out loud" about the direction I believe I'm headed in my bliss work, even though I've been considering it for years. There will be a separate blog post of it's own in the near future exploring this possibility in a deeper way.

*

Regardless what people in various aspects of my life may think about bitch and this unusual relationship that I'm engaged in, I know that speaking my truth and shining my light as authentically as possible is the right thing to do, wherever it leads.

*

You, Darkness, That I Come From

2011-04-27T23:30:00.000-07:00

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people-
and it is possible a great
presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

~Rainier Maria Rilke

* * *

This post is written by bitch - a persona/archetype I play with (see previous posts for context). There are two parts - before and after. Two nights ago i wrote the first, not knowing how long it would be until Daddy and i would play again. Last night Daddy unexpectedly commanded my presence.

* * *

Before

I can feel bitch pacing inside of me, desperate for some kind of expression. I hope this satisfies her for a bit...

i think about Him far more than i want to admit to. i think about Him every day.

Something serious happened in Daddy's life and He's been unable to play since our the last encounter i shared here, nearly a month ago. We have a stronger friendship now and that is wonderful. But i really miss Him.

i feel lost without Him.
Locked away, aching to prowl free but having nowhere to go.

bitch doesn't have a reason to exist without Daddy. It's not the same to fantasize, to imagine His voice in my ear and the electric jolt it sends down between my legs. It's not the same to read online discussions about the kind of play we do, even though i appreciate learning more about what really turns me on...emotional edge play, humiliation, fear play.

Daddy recently called what happens between us explosions. Such a perfect description of the magic that crackles in the air when Daddy has me on my knees in every way begging for the honor to worship Him.

i miss being slutty for Daddy. Some days He would call me on my lunch break and get me riled up before i went back to work. Sometimes He would command me to do slutty things at work, like fuck myself in the bathroom and cum by a certain time. It's such a rush to carry a command from Daddy through my day, to feel the charge in my body when i hear His voice or see His words on my phone.

i want to be on my knees crawling for Daddy so badly that sometimes my body quivers with the ache and the restraint required to keep from reaching out to Him when it's inappropriate to do so. Being devoted to Him means accepting when He needs or wants to put His attention elsewhere for awhile and not asking anything of Him. Sometimes the best service i can give is being invisible.

i knew for years that i had a deep desire to serve, please and obey. i had a feeling about the sort of devotion i could feel for someone who inspired my service and surrender. i tried to offer it to previous Dominants. But Daddy is the first one to bring me to life and show me my dreams could be real.

i long for Him.

After

i was surprised and amazed when Daddy drew me out while we were having coffee as friends yesterday afternoon. As soon as His tone changed, my whole body came alive with "Yes, please, whatever You desire."

He finally gave me some positive feedback, told me that bitch is incredibly hot. And He likes my letters. i like to write Him vulnerable letters. If this is how openly i share in public, you can imagine the kinds of letters i write Him. i tell Him everything. And He uses it against me.

Who knew that in my mission for vulnerability this year, i would explore it as a profound sexual expression? So strange and beautiful.

i wrote Daddy a sort of love letter and told Him my devotion has deepened, because of the emotional intimacy that's developed between us recently, and i am pretty sure He's using that against me. He's upping the ante, asking some things of me that will involve humiliation in the presence of my friends, that i may not actually be able to achieve (He knows i hate failing), and/or that may provoke (dare i say trigger?) the Invisible Girl.

i don't know if i can or want to bring her into this. That's the most dangerous territory there is in my dark places. i'm scared.

Which also makes it the most powerful opportunity for overcoming my fear, for my healing and evolution. If my biggest kink is being a masochist for God, it makes sense that i would be drawn to facing my deepest fears like this. i think the questions i need to answer are whether i believe that i need to do this for my self and whether this would provoke real healing or just heartache. i'm not interested in being an emotional masochist for entertainment. This would have to shift something significant inside of me to be worth it.

Oh, and there would have to be consideration of some kind appropriate aftercare if needed. i don't think i could navigate an Invisible Girl trigger experience without plenty of positive validation afterward to counteract the stories she tells me.

It isn't just that Daddy wants me to surrender to His will, He wants to condition me to become aroused by His fantasies, most especially if they are ones i am resistant to. He wants to change me, to make me better for His pleasure. i don't know if a scenario that invokes the Invisible Girl could ever be eroticized. i don't know if i can give Him this vulnerability.

But i want to please Him so very much. i talked to two friends about the situation today and both of them said they would challenge Him. While a part of me can get riled up and fantasize about resisting Him, my truth is that i really, really want to make Him happy. i want to be able to do anything He commands of me and like it. i want to be the best bitch i can be.

And there's this important piece - i notice something i intuitively wrote in part one two nights ago - Sometimes the best service i can give is being invisible. Just as i'm finding my erotic power in my exploration of bitch, i could find power in invisibility as an act of service.

i am walking the edge with Daddy, taking huge emotional risks by opening my heart in devotion to Him and exposing the places where He could hurt me deepest if He were to cut me with one of His knives.

Ecstasy or despair, it's all God.

The Heart is a Gambler

2011-04-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

"The way of the heart is the way of courage. It is to live in insecurity, it is to live in love and trust, it is to move in the unknown. It is leaving the past and allowing the future to BE. Only cowards can avoid a dangerous path, but then they are already dead. The person who is utterly alive will always take the risk. The heart is a gambler." Osho

Kali is having her way with me.

Everything in the physical Universe lives by cycles - ebb and flow, wave and trough, ecstasy and despair.

It is all God.

While being polyamorous and exploring love so openly exponentially increases the experiences of love in one's life, it also exponentially increases the opportunities for growth and heartache. Two months ago I was riding the high of several new attractions and exciting potentials, following my mission of vulnerability to dive deep into what the Universe offered without succumbing to fears and insecurities. I have been nurturing five on-going relationships that involve some sort of sexual and/or romantic component, but four of them are shifting into something different, if anything at all. The disappearance of beautiful relating is confusing and painful.

There have been other heart-achey situations to navigate as well. One of my best friends moved away, someone with whom I had a connection-date nearly every week, a significant loss. Some members of the Imps community decided to drag myself, my partners and the entire organization through the mud in a very public way. And my daughter is suffering from an emotional crisis.

I experienced an unusually bright and active winter, as did the Redwood Coast since we had more sun than we usually see in the Winter months. As the days progressed into the storms of Spring these last few weeks, I have been walking darker terrain. Misunderstandings. Confusion. Public drama. Rage. Rejection. Abandonment. Withdrawal. Self doubt. Guilt. Loss. Grief. Longing.

It always comes back to longing, doesn't it? Longing for something different than what is. Longing for something bigger, deeper, more. Longing for potentials to be fulfilled. Longing to belong, to be connected, to be touched, to be loved.

"Remember what you are & let this knowing take you home to the Beloved with every breath. Hold tenderly who you are & let a deeper knowing colour the shape of your humanness. There is nowhere to go. What you are looking for is right here. Open the fist clenched in wanting & see what you already hold in your hand." Oriah Mountain Dreamer

There is a deeper knowing coloring my humanness.

As I shift the focus of my life towards living conscious mysticism on a daily basis, I find that it is much easier to ride the waves of emotion and longing that move through me. I know them for what they are. While I experience heartache, I suffer very little. I am able to bear my own witness, to watch the shifts as they happen inside of me without reaction, and perceive the perfection in every situation. I still feel a wide range of emotions very strongly, but they move through me without creating chaos in their wake.

I have created a daily life in which I am supported in remembering that all is God, that I am God playing this human called April. I don't just know it intellectually, I feel it in every layer of my being.

I believe God is a consciousness that permeates everything, including us, and that this Divine Consciousness is dancing with itself through the manifest Universe(s). I like thinking that God is ecstatic in its experience of each individual being in existence - from star, to tree, to butterfly, to human. I believe that God wants to know what it's like to be me - and you - with all of our quirks in bliss and suffering.

God experiences first hand every birth and death, every blossoming and every fall from the tree, every love and every act of violence, every beautiful and terrible thing that exists. Can you imagine being conscious of Everything? Some part of me can at least intellectualize it. And some part of me feels an intuitive resonance with the idea.

This is why Mysticism and Tantra are becoming my frame for living. I desire to experience myself and you and everything in existence as God - consciously, as often as possible. I desire to awaken to the beauty of the Divine Experience in every shape that it takes.

My Heart is taking the biggest gamble - to be open and vulnerable in love to every experience and person that the Universe brings into my life - trusting that the deeper I go, the more God I will find.

Traveling to the Edge of Myself

2011-04-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

"I’ve been taught: to fear this power (of sexuality and creativity), to fear my feral side, my passion, my fire, my ferocity and uncontrollability. I’ve been taught well to fear chaos, yet it is from chaos that anything new is born." Julie Daly

Daddy read my last blog post and He liked it very, very much. My vulnerability aroused Him (anything i share potentially gives Him power to use it against me), as did my invitation to into darker and rougher places. i've been pushing my limits around vulnerability with Daddy, trying to figure out where i'm willing to expose myself and where i need to keep myself protected. i didn't know that my vulnerability arouses Him until now.

i like that there is sexual power in my vulnerability, that it's a place to feel strong.

He commanded that i visit Him for a blowjob at slavequarters that evening. It was the first time He spontaneously commanded my presence; all previous visits had been scheduled through regular conversation as equals. i was happy that i earned Daddy's approval and desire, but more importantly i was excited that i had done something to bring Him pleasure and was being given the opportunity to do more. Pleasing Daddy makes me very, very happy. i already had plans for the evening, but i could carve out an hour for Him. i assumed this would be a mellow encounter, easy to integrate into my night.

i was very wrong,
and will be certain never, ever to visit Daddy right before other plans again.

Daddy sent me a text within minutes of my arrival commanding me to come in, undress to panties, and kneel at the sofa. i did exactly as he asked. i could hear the shower running in the back of the house. i used the time to stretch my body so that i would be in optimal shape to do whatever Daddy wished, for as long as He wished. i breathed deep and let the world fade away as Daddy became my breath and reason for being.

When He came out from the shower, He immediately put in me in handcuffs and a blindfold. Over the course of our time He pinched me with clips and poured candlewax on my exposed flesh. He used discomfort and pain to emphasize my powerlessness.

He pulled out new knives and showed me a whole new depth of darkness. He used my past against me. He nearly brought me to tears in humiliation at some of the things He said about me and how He desires to use me. He did not allow me to touch myself at all, because He desired to enforce that everything is about His pleasure. In less than an hour He took me deeper than i've ever been psychologically and emotionally.

It was dark and scary

...and really quite beautiful.

My panties were soaked when i left.

*

I locked bitch up after leaving slavequarters. I had to in order to function in regular life.

she's been locked up for five days now.
she's pacing in her confinement.

she's feeling the absence of His attention
and the hunger to worship Him.

she wants out real bad.

Daddy says i'm becoming addicted to Him, and to being bitch.
He may be right.

*

Sometimes we have to travel to the edge of ourselves to find our center. - Buck Ghosthorse

Daddy left some marks with his knives that neither of us could see in the moment. I discovered them at the Imps Social on Saturday night, while playing with a lover. I noticed how desperate I felt for validation. I noticed how the old desperation to be seen and desired and touched, a desperation I hadn't felt for months, was driving my party experience. Having that realization opened the floodgates.

I remembered how Daddy told me i'm not worth dating. There was a deep sting in that knife. For one, it brought how other lovers might feel about me into the scene. That's too close to real. Two, it brought how I've perceived myself in the past into the scene. I used to believe that the only way to get affection was through being sexually compliant with men, whether or not I was attracted to them, whether or not I derived pleasure from what they did to my body. I was used for sex often in my early 20's. Too close to real. Three, Daddy and I aren't dating and it's possible he may really feel that way about me. Much too close to real.

Ouch.

I found myself trying to compensate for the potential truth in what he said by seeking as much validation as I could from my friends and lovers at the social. Once I realized what was going on inside of me, my party experience was altered. I became disconnected, half present to my interactions the rest of the night. My heart hurt. I spent 20 minutes crying by myself on the back porch during breakdown. I've been processing ever since, feeling all kinds of emotions, trying to understand what I felt, why I felt it, and if I need or want to ever feel it again.

I do not want to feel that sting again, but I believe I may need to. My initial response to finding my mark was to tell Daddy that we found an edge that I don't want to visit again. However, I talked to a mystic friend last night and he confirmed my sense that the knives I want to run the farthest from are the ones that lead directly into my healing and evolution.

There is a reason that knife felt real when the others didn't.

Humiliation is an expression of our shame. Shame is what keeps us from shining our Divine Light. It is shame that keeps me from being all of who I could be, all of who I desire to be. I must have some shame about feeling undate-able (= unlovable).

I believe this exploration is an opportunity to change my shame stories in a profound way. The last few years with the Imps have been a boot camp in self esteem and shifting my old wounded poverty stories into abundant love stories. But those old stories are still rooted down deep. I feel them regularly, I just rarely show them. This is an opportunity for direct excavation and destruction of those old ways of believing and rebuilding my Self in stories of power, freedom, love and joy.

How much power is there for me in allowing Him to shatter me with the old stories so that I can build myself up with the new ones?

And I won't be building the new stories entirely on my own. I am held by a tribe of loves who will balance my experience as bitch by shining my light back at me, as they did over the weekend. While I had much processing going on in my head and heart, I had friends and lovers who offered whatever I needed to get me through. Kisses and cuddles. A listening ear. Two of my loves told me how strong and brave I am for doing this exploration. They both said I am amazing and powerful.

My tribe reinforces what is real.

A few weeks ago I wrote Daddy a letter in which I stated my belief that I cannot be broken. It's possible I might fall apart, maybe even shatter, for awhile. But I know to the depth of my core that I will put myself back together again, and be stronger and more powerful than before. I've had a lifetime of practice. Resilience is what I do best.

Even this, writing these blog entries, is a way of using my experience as bitch to claim my power as a writer and a sexual explorer. There is something in this for more than me, I can feel it. My willingness to walk into darkness and share the story with you is valuable. I'm finding a significant lack of psychological exploration around humiliation and degradation play online. Most consider it edge play and from what I can tell, most would think what Daddy does is pushing the edge too far.

At the moment, I think his knives may be just sharp enough.

The other thread by thread makes beauty more naked

2011-04-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

Penelope and Odysseus as One Person

One wants the world. The wing of dawn
beats in him: More! More!
The other never stirs from the loom.
An ancient rhythm repeats:
“Less—less—
the real traveling is inward.”

One loves storms and clouds,
says death is a skyless country.
The other prefers trees,
says death is a cloud of leaves
where at last we understand
the sayings of the wind.

One asks why rest—
the horrible gallop of minutes
will trample us if we stay.
The other stops to caress
a single plume of grass;
leans to petals glistening with rain.

One craves extravagant words,
says to a love, “Enchant me.”
The other thread by thread
makes beauty more naked;
weighs a shiver of sunlight,
the stream closing around the hand.

One lets the first smudge of light
erase all dreams,
now as useless as daytime stars.
The other gathers dreams
like lost feathers,
the sky a nest of horizons.

A membrane of memory
grows between them,
a tapestry of tides and tales.
The wave and the shore,
they breathe one breath,
a sea, a story of return—

the moon in a fisherman’s net.

Ionna-Veronika Warwick

Dancing in the Darkness: Introducing bitch

2011-03-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

Last night I came to see you, my love.
And you said “Worship Me”

Slowly, delicately, I entered the fullness of you,
and smoldered against your flesh,
Touched deeply, I forgot myself,
Your fires burning away what I knew to be me.
~Phillipe and Paget

I have previously written about exploring archetypal pieces of myself: the Invisible Girl, the Victim, the Priestess, theMystic, and the Teacher. And there are others yet to be explored, like the Artist.

I have known for a long time that one of my archetypes is the Servant. Caroline Myss says that "The Servant engages aspects of our psyche that call us to make ourselves available to others for the benefit and enhancement of their lives." I love to serve -- in just about any way you can interpret that word. My whole life is about service -- whether in my work, my parenting, or my community relationships -- which includes being a service submissive within my sexuality. I have explored several forms of submission, but I recently discovered a whole new facet of my submission that I had no idea existed: the Slave.

"The Slave archetype represents a complete absence of the power of choice and self-authority. Yet it is precisely the absence of will power that gives the Slave its potential for personal transformation. The ultimate spiritual task is to surrender one's will to the Divine--in effect, to become a Divine Slave...Regardless of how this archetype manifests, its core learning is to understand the paradoxical truth that you are only truly free when you have surrendered all power of choice to the Divine."Caroline Myss

Over the last six weeks I have given birth to a piece of myself. I believe she's been incubating in me for years, but needed the proper "midwife" to deliver her to me. I am learning all sorts of new things about my sexuality, my psychology and my mysticism through her existence.

she is called bitch.

she exists only to serve, please and obey Daddy.

When i am bitch, i am nothing but a mouth and body to be used as Daddy likes.
i have no power. i have no choice. i am Daddy's slave.

(Sidenote: Daddy is not Sir, the Dominant I have written of in recent posts. This is not about spiritual or emotional connection, Daddy is where I go to play in the dark and find out why being bitch turns me on so damn much. My incredible sexual-physical arousal response to being bitch is blowing my mind and my body wide open.)

About once a week in person, as well as through regular texts and occasional phone calls, bitch crawls for Daddy. When i crawl for Him, nothing exists except Him and i will do anything He commands.

i serve Him primarily through my mouth -- worshiping His body as he directs with my lips and tongue and through speaking/writing to Him in the ways He's trained me to. Daddy really likes to be worshiped through words.

Daddy has very dark desires.
He calls them knives,
and He wants me to tell Him i will do terrible things for Him.
Degrading things.
Humiliating things.

Unethical things.

This is a mind fuck. i had no idea how much i love being mind fucked. Daddy is wicked smart and knows how to get into my head. Our interactions are mostly psychological. Daddy tells stories and has me participate in them. Some of the stories go into the realm of taboo: situations that are not safe, sane or consensual.

(For my literal brain, it's kinda hard not to take the fantasies literally. I have asked myself repeatedly if I truly desire to be playing with a man who explores these kinds of fantasies and manipulates women (although somewhat transparently) in participating with him. But the man that is more than Daddy is very ethical - he lives and breathes social justice. And there is something in this exploration that I am learning about holding space for the darkness in myself and others, as long as it doesn't cause harm. Daddy doesn't cause harm, He desires bitches who get off on where he takes them. Like i do.)

He brings out the knives when i'm vulnerable, when i'm aroused beyond belief, when i'm begging to get off. He makes me get off to his fantasy, his desires, conditioning me to be aroused by what turns him on.

And the amazing (and scary!) thing is, it is changing me. i am finding myself aroused by some of his fantasies, situations i couldn't have ever imagined before, and even i had, they would have turned me off rather than turn me on. i even took one of his fantasies much farther than he did in my mind while getting off one night when we were communicating by text.

i almost didn't tell him about it, even though i knew he would want to know that he's getting to me, that he's penetrating my mind. That would make Daddy very happy. But he asked me the next morning if i was holding anything back and i couldn't lie, so i wrote him the fantasy because i couldn't yet say it out loud.

It is a challenge accepting how much it turns me on to fantasize about degradation and humiliation. The feminist in me rages at this some days.

In my struggle to fully accept bitch, i have occasionally been defiant, which is also new for me as a submissive. i've never been defiant. i take pride in being obedient and don't like how it feels when i disappoint the One i serve. But i've also had an equal and intimate friendship or relationship with every other Dominant i've played with to balance the power dynamic. This is the only relationship Daddy and i have. Sometimes i don't like that He always has the power and that the only desire or need i get satisfied is serving Him.

We don't have sex. He rarely touches me, except to grab my hair, hold me down while i get myself off, slap my face (as punishment that is deserved), pinch my nipples, or once in a while briefly caress me (he does cuddle in aftercare). The only way i get off is if i get myself off when he commands it or allows it when i beg for it. Even when we're apart, i'm not allowed to touch myself while fantasizing about Him unless i ask Him first. At this very moment i am squirming as i wait for His permission to fantasize about Him and cum tonight.

There is no traditional intimacy or validation, which is unnerving for me. i am having to stretch to understand where the intimacy exists and to perceive the ways He does validate me. Because of this, the opportunities to explore vulnerability -- my mission for the year -- are immense.

This whole experience is fantastic! i am stimulated and in deep self discovery at every possible level: intellectual, emotional, spiritual and sexual. The only thing i ever wish for is more physical interaction, especially if it's rough. He told me last night that's He's being somewhat gentle and subtle with me, and i don't know exactly what that means or why (except that He wants to be sensitive to my past trauma, which is great but not something i actually need), but i find myself wishing He wouldn't be gentle with me.

i want to go as deep into my darkness as Daddy can take me.
i hope it will please Him to take me there.

*

It's fascinating how I am relating to and expressing bitch. As I've written in previous posts, I don't really do pretend, role play, acting, game playing, etc. I have a very literal brain and I can't help but be who I am. Yet this interaction is a strange combination of real interaction and imagined scenarios that invoke powerful visceral response.

bitch is a part of who I am, so I'm not actually role-playing. Yet some of what Daddy has me talk about isn't actually true. Within our play, i am to say or repeat anything Daddy tells me to, whether it's true or not. It's taken a bit of time for me to get into the flow, to know what's real and what isn't in Daddy's world.

When I am interacting with Daddy, bitch is the only part of me that I am allowed to be. I cannot be any of the other parts of me that feel powerful, comfortable, strong, bright, creative...all the parts of myself that I know and love and feel confident about. I always feel unsettled with Him because I can't rely on everything I've learned to depend on in attracting or seducing someone.

And because bitch is new to me, I don't know how to be her yet, or how to succeed in serving Daddy. I am insecure and lack eloquence in communication -- Daddy's favorite ways of playing -- and it's frustrating because I am good with words! Yet I struggle in meeting Daddy where He desires to go. Or at least I did.

I seem to have made a breakthrough in that regard the last week or so. Daddy has allowed me a bit of room to find my rhythm through intuition rather than exact direction in worshiping him. He's such a good Daddy because He sets his bitches up to succeed and is willing to coach/train/condition me as much as i need.

What fascinates me so much about my desire for this experience of being nothing-but-a-bitch is how it doesn't seem to provoke the Invisible Girl, at least not yet. And if it eventually does, it's a perfect situation for working with her in a very conscious and emotionally safe way, because I don't have a bond of emotional intimacy with Him.

And where does my mysticism come into this? It's the act of worship. When i am bitch, Daddy is my God. All i see is His Divinity, in both the light and the dark. When i worship Daddy, i am worshiping both the man who deserves my worship because He turns me on so well, and the God in the man, the God in Everything.

I am also worshiping and expressing the Goddess in myself.

Sir, the Dominant I've written about before who gave me spiritually oriented assignments, He serendipitously sent me a reading a few weeks ago that included the following passages:

"...the female is symbolically representative of the negative, dark, and hollow aspect of the world, without which the masculine, positive, light, and solid aspect cannot be manifested or seen. The very word "Tantra" is connected with the art of weaving, and denotes the interdependence of warp and woof in woven cloth: the one cannot hold together without the other...

...Some understanding of Tantra is therefore a marvelous and welcome corrective to certain excesses of Western civilization. We overaccentuate the positive, think of the negative as "bad," and thus live in a frantic terror of death and extinction which renders us incapable of "playing" life with an air of noble and joyous detachment. Failing to understand the musical quality of nature, which fulfills itself in an eternal present, we live for a tomorrow which never comes - like an orchestra racing to attain the finale of a symphony. But through understanding the creative power of the female, of the negative, of empty space, and of death, we may at least become completely alive in the present." Alan Watts

I am diving into my own darkness and worshiping the feminine by expressing absolute receptivity, submission, and surrender. Just as bitch exists because Daddy inspires her, Daddy exists because bitch holds the dark and empty space for him to. I hold Daddy as who He is, worshiping Him rather than judging or rejecting Him for His darkness. bitches are actually quite special because they can hold the darkness.

I am learning how beautiful this kind of energy exchange can really be. I see it even more deeply in Daddy's relationship to his full time slave. While I only express bitch when I want to, she is his bitch 24 hours a day. That is powerful and awe-inspiring devotion.

I will never be that kind of bitch or submissive. I have too many Masters to serve -- God, community, children, etc. -- I cannot serve only one. While my entire life is about service, I spread my love far and wide rather than devote it to one person or one cause.

But when i am in the present moment with Daddy, He truly is all that exists. i am extremely focused. i have found a whole new capacity for meditation when i'm worshiping Him. i have no April thoughts. my only thoughts, when i have them, are about whether i'm pleasing Him or need to adjust what i'm doing to bring more pleasure. Mostly i have moments of pure worship, being One with the Music of the Universe by dancing with Daddy.

This life and the practice of Tantra is a Dance.
I am dancing with all of my heart, every single day.
I am dancing with the Divine in everyone and everything, including Daddy.
I am loving dancing in the Divine Darkness thanks to bitch.

*

Image Credit: Dancer in the Dark by Klas Smeby

The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Each Other

2011-02-24T15:56:00.000-08:00

"I have experienced tremendous tragedies in my life, ninety percent of which never happened." ~ Mark Twain

I am thinking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves about each other - the assumptions we make about the other person's words, actions and behaviors - whether our lover, our friend, or the stranger in the grocery store.

More often than not, it seems like we tell ourselves the worst possible fear stories, rather than look for the best possible love stories.

For instance, we might tell ourselves Susie is quiet because she's snobby and judgmental, when really she's just shy and has trouble with small talk (a story people have told themselves about me). Or maybe our boyfriend knows we have a trigger around him talking to that one woman, so he must be hurting us on purpose by talking to her (and she's trying to steal him), when really he's helping her out with a genuine problem. If someone's not answering a text, email or phone call, they must be ignoring us or have a problem with us, when really they're just very busy and maybe haven't even seen what we've sent yet.

We especially tell stories about the misunderstandings and conflicts we have with each other. That's where misunderstandings come from, we tell ourselves a different story than what the other person intended instead of getting clarity from them. When someone lashes out to hurt us, we tell ourselves they are intentionally hurtful, when actually they are acting out of their own pain.

We make these fear-full assumptions about each other all the time, and then we make an emotional investment in the stories we tell, creating our own suffering in the process.

This is important to me because my last broken relationship fell victim to this all too human tendency in irreparable ways. I was heartbroken because someone told themselves the worst possible stories about things I said or did - even accused me of intentional cruelty - and invested so much energy in those stories that the truth couldn't discharge the negative emotion and bring understanding. I will own that I also told myself stories about them that kept intimacy from deepening. When misunderstandings or conflicts arise, everyone involved starts telling themselves blaming and shaming stories about each other, most or all of which are untrue.

This is also important to me because I'm noticing how I'm doing it in some of my new relationships, although I'm mostly catching myself in the process and shifting the story, rather than taking my false stories and suffering to the other person. Sometimes this takes minutes, sometimes it takes hours. But I strive to come back to the love story unfolding between me and the other, rather than let the fear stories take hold and trigger emotional reactions.

The craziest thing about this kind of story-telling is that we do it the most with the people who love us most deeply -- the very people we should be trusting are always acting with the best intention towards us, even when they make a mistake that hurts us. Over the last couple months I've caught myself telling fearful stories about my business partners, now that I've stepped down as hostess and am trying to figure out my role as a founder-but-no-longer-hostess. I even had a nightmare about it. I've feared that they will think I'm acting entitled in an inappropriate way when I tell them how I still desire to be involved. The truth is that they are as confused as I am about my place and they are certainly open to exploring what's comfortable for all of us regarding my new roles. I also tell myself fearful stories about my friends, assuming that if someone doesn't ask me for time that they don't want to connect with me, when really they've got incredibly busy lives but would make time if I asked for it, or maybe even have their own stories that hold them back from reaching out to me.

I also notice that while we know that we are here for each other in any possible way, we still don't always ask for support, a listening ear, a hug or touch, or whatever we might need that would make our struggles a little easier to bear. We call each other family and yet we don't fully trust each other's deep, deep desire to connect. We all desire to experience love as much as we possibly can. And yet we hold ourselves back all the time. And tell ourselves stories to justify keeping our distance.

I am striving to notice my fear stories and stop them before they gain emotional momentum. I am also focusing on the love stories unfolding in my life with deeper awareness than ever before.

I am sure this will be an on-going work for me. What about you? What fear stories can you change into love stories?

Feels Like More Love Than My Heart Can Bear

2011-02-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I lose sight of the most important reasons that I have given my life to sex positive activism and consciously building cultures of love. Sometimes I get so caught up in my little bubble of liberal culture in Humboldt County that I forget what's going on in the rest of the world. This past week and a half I have been broken open by both love and heartache.

Here's what's going on in the rest of the world...

"Intrepid "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan endured a "brutal and sustained" sexual assault by a mob of men while covering the Egyptian uprising, CBS News said."

Rape used as a weapon of mass destruction: "A source from Tripoli has confirmed to us that Al Zawiya Street hospital seen many rape victim admittances last night. Such deplorable and sickening actions were committed after Gaddafi’s speech in which he called for door-to-door cleansing of the city from those who are against his regime." thelibyanrevolution.tumblr.com

It's easy in my safe and incredibly beautiful little corner of the the planet to forget how much violence is a normal state of being in other parts of the world. When I identified as a sexual trauma survivor and created The Yoni Endeavor, I focused my attention on violence against women. Now that I work through sex positive activism and loved based spirituality, I spend my time and attention on positive things -- creating amazing spaces for people to connect and share, nurturing healthy relationships in my intimate circle and the community at large, and writing about my journey to deeper experiences of Love. Rather than being a reactionary activist who creates more resistance, I strive to embody, role-model and create the change I seek to see in the world. I strive to create cultures of love.

Someone said to me last night that he felt that with our events we create little windows of how it's possible for the world to be -- a place where everyone is free to express themselves and find belonging.

"When we denigrate the erotic impulse to create and to connect, we fall in love with the power of violence."Beverly Dale

The reason people sexually assault a woman during a revolutionary celebration or war is because their freedom of expression has been oppressed for so fucking long. The freedom to be who we are is the most important thing in the world as far as living together on this planet is concerned. When we are free to be who we are, who we are is mostly good. When we are oppressed and forced to endure constant violence or threat of violence, who we are is miserable and we perpetrate that misery on each other. It seems like common sense in 2011 and yet we are still perpetuating the misery everywhere.

"Your happiness is the most significant contribution that you could make. In your reaching for happiness, you are opening a vortex which makes you an avenue for well-being to flow through you. And anything that is your object of attention under those conditions, benefits by the infusion of your Well-being." Abraham

This past Valentine's weekend I continued to participate at a very deep level with The Impropriety Society as Co-head of Vibes because I believe so strongly in community and creating a safe space for true freedom of expression. It's so amazing what happens when people feel free to express themselves - because what we all really desire to express is love and joy and play and creativity. We want to make music or dance or create beautiful costumes or plan edgy scenes or make love to someone or spend the whole night having a love affair with everyone we come into contact with. In the depths of our hearts, most of us long to be a part of a culture of love.

I did try to embody Vibes and connect as deeply as I could with everyone I interacted with, not just during the party, but during the entire weekend. I tried to follow through on every impulse for connection - from inviting someone from Facebook to attend whether he knew people who were going or not, to doing a little energetic work with a performer who was feeling low physically, to giving hugs generously during breakdown. I didn't always succeed. I lacked a bit of grace here and there (like on stage of all places), or just wasn't as present as I could be. But I have to trust that everything unfolded as it was meant to and everyone made the connections they needed to.

What I experienced with the community was amazing and what unfolded within my personal relationships was downright magical. What amazes me more is to know that my dearest friends and a whole lot of other people had this kind of big magic that night. So much goodness! I am sharing what my goodness looked like because I want people to understand what is possible when you open yourself in the biggest possible ways to loving others.

I am loving how there are so many different kinds of relationship unfolding for me - from the lovers who ignite my sexual fire, to the kissing friends who have passionate make out sessions with me, to the snuggle friends who are cuddly every time I come near, or even the guy I met in the smoking area and gave his first kiss of the night. As I open my heart to the fullest expression of love I'm capable of, I receive more and more love from the people around me. As I break out of the limitations of traditional relationship structures, I am able to receive as much love and touch and intimacy as I can possibly stand. It isn't just at the parties, it's extending into deeper relationships with members of my tribe that I haven't gone so deep with before. Three of my five lovers are dear friends turned something else. Even my definition of lover has changed. I think a lover is someone with whom we share deep physical and emotional energy, possibly even erotic, but that doesn't mean it has to express full-on sexually. Lovers are people we share deep intimate love with in a significant way.

I had so many lovers at 1001 Arabian Nights.

My first date of the night was with one of my kissing friends, K. I asked him for a cuddle date. It was the first time we set intention to spend together at a party. We both ended our Vibes shift at the same time and it was a perfect transition from working to playing. K is such a bright light and one of those beautiful souls who mirrors my light back to me in profound ways, and has done so since the night he met me at our first event and we played spin the bottle. We became kissing friends instantly.

Then i had an impact play date in the dungeon with Him. He had me change from my sexy party dress to my slutty lingerie before our scene. He gave me an intense spanking/caning (on the double-sided cross across from my ex-partner and his playdate-also-one-of-my-dear-friends whom i gave a kiss, which was very cool). Afterward, we moved out into the main room and cuddled on the couch by the dancefloor for what He later called a "cosmic make-out scene." i have to agree. i danced for Him. That was really fun and i want to do it again. He turned me on so much and then wouldn't do anything about it, other than let me touch myself a bit. Damn sadist. i had a lot of sexual tension built up, which He told me He hoped i would find someone to relieve. Bastard!

What I didn't realize at the time was that dancing for Him sorta led me to my last date of the night.

But first I snuggled with Sean, who is so very awesome. Sean is a young and beautiful androgyne, an incomprehensible and compelling blend of woman and man, who is one of the best snugglers in the world. At least in my world. We have only become snuggle friends in recent weeks, after one of my moments of intentional vulnerability in which I asked for full cuddling rights. Sean has brought considerable goodness into my life since saying yes.

I am surrounded by these radiant lights embodied in my wonderfully quirky friends who are vulnerable enough to be exactly who they are and share themselves with me.

Ok, so back to my last date of the night. Eros and I have had pretty intense sexual tension between us since we met three years ago while co-creating Cherries Jubilee. Eros is the DJ and he has been one of our most amazing volunteers, giving hundreds of hours to creating playlists for every event that we've produced. He's bought equipment so that we would have the best possible sound. He's dealt with other dj's who've haven't jived with our groove or who partied too hard or brought drunk and dramatic women or who just didn't bother to show up at all. He DJ'd this last party completely on his own because the others canceled at the last minute. He's tried as hard as he could to give us what we ask for as part of the vision of each party and this last event totally rocked it. Eros is a wonderful human being who has given his whole heart to the Imps community.

It's no wonder I dig the guy so much. And I have been flirting with him more than I have ever flirted with someone. He identifies as poly but was in a complicated relationship and because he gives his whole heart he just couldn't make space for me, which I understood even though I was disappointed. I've always known what's in him, I can feel it. I can feel how deep he loves. Of course I wanna taste some of that. So I've been mostly patient and keep coming back with an open and flirtatious heart. He's no longer in that relationship and finally opened up his heart to me at this party, which I saw in his eyes when he was watching me dance for Him. At that point I was dancing for both of them. I asked him shortly thereafter if he wanted to play with me and asked that we find a bed rather than play in the dungeon. I was so happy when he said yes. And damn, did we have a good time. It was like an explosion -- three years worth of desire unleashed and the realization that we have really great chemistry. I am so excited for our next date!

I can't believe that I am so blessed to not have one Valentine, but to have an entire community of Valentines. By opening my heart to love, no matter how it shows up, I am blessed with dear friends who share love with me in all kinds of yummy ways. This blog post would go for ever if I were to try to write about every single connection I made, every beautiful moment that filled me so much with love I felt like it was more than I could possibly bear. There were tears shed often over the course of the weekend (as there have been tonight writing this) - always in complete and utter joy.

When I let myself really feel the immensity of the love I have in my life, when I really pay attention to the amazing human beings who see the amazing human being in me, I feel like I could burst with it. I can't believe that this is my life and that I'm only 37 years old and just learning that I deserve this. If I'm only a couple months into creating the life of my dreams, what on earth will I be living in a year, in five years?

What would the world be like if everyone experienced this? If we all felt held and witnessed and loved for all of who we are? How much violence would there be if every single person just experienced enough touch in their life? What would happen if everyone felt as free as we do to be queer or kinky or counter-culture or geeky or whoever they are?

What of a world free of shame? Can you imagine how different we would be if we didn't have shame, if we only had vulnerability and experienced love and acceptance for all of who we expose ourselves to be?

That's what I help to create and desire to create more of. A place where there is that kind of freedom. A place that is so far from the oppression of Egypt and Libya that I forget about the oppression that has driven me to work for a better world. Whatever I can do, whatever I can give, I will so that cultures of love will grow as cultures of violence die away.

I am ever so grateful for the love I am experiencing in my life. But I am far more grateful that an entire community of people is experiencing love at new depths because of The Impropriety Society, because of this amazing magic we co-create together. I am a part of something that is revolutionizing the world one heart at a time, including my own.

I Am Awake

2011-02-08T19:10:00.000-08:00

A Thousand Pools by Mark Nepo

I am awake. It wasn’t always so.
It may not last for long. So let me
say this while my heart is beating like
a river. This life is more than one can
bear. It’s taken years to learn this, to
feel this, to know this in my bones.
I am not talking about giving up or
persevering. I mean we’re not designed
to bear it in the first place. Anymore
than the sun bears the sky or the wind
bears the thousands of leaves it moves
through. I am awake. This time I stum-
bled to it. I was productive. Some said
on fire. Then I tripped on something
ordinary. Like a pebble in your shoe.
And I fell out of the dance I had
created. The one by which I knew
my worth. I couldn’t get it back. It
depressed me for months. But like a
whale I kept diving down and coming
up. Despite the parting of my dream.
Now I’m awake as I never imagined.
This doesn’t preclude pain or weather
or disappointment. These as well as joy
land in some lake I have carried since
birth. It stills whatever enters without
silencing our heart. Like an endless
pool that clears after a violent rain,
you can see through me. Come.
Look. I am awake.

Courting Kali & Mystic Awakening

2011-02-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

I am so in love - with my self, with the Universe, with each and every person I am privileged to know. I feel as though I've finally broken through from the desire to be a mystic to the actual embodiment of a full on love affair with the Divine in Everything.

My heart is burning with love
All can see this flame
My heart is pulsing with passion
like waves on an ocean...

Behind the veils
intoxicated with love
I too dance the rhythm
of this moving world

I have lost my senses
in my world of lovers

~Rumi

I've read the erotic-mystical-love writings of Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Avila, Hafiz, Rumi, Rilke and others and I have hungered so deeply to know that Divinely Inspired Love. I have called myself a mystic for years, but I wasn't really living the experience, at least not like this. I have had a few ecstatic moments sprinkled throughout my life - truly feeling Oneness with All That Is - but they were rare peak moments on my spiritual journey, and often induced by drugs (peyote, ecstasy, acid) or intense community spiritual rituals. Very rarely did they just occur in every day life.

This awakening that is happening in me now - this state of near constant turned-on-ness and immense love that just keeps filling me up - this I have never experienced before. I've experienced ecstatic states every day this week.

I drive down the road from my house in the woods to town and every single time I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the flowers blooming in this early spring and the trees and the sky and the unique and beautiful homes that my neighbors live in. I go to the marsh for my lunchtime walk and I cry in a gratitude prayer for the amazing life that I've been given. I read an incredibly vulnerable blog from a dear friend across the world and I am suddenly able to perceive the Divine in everything - 20 minutes I cried and loved everything and everyone in my life and awareness. It was the most overwhelming and powerful experience of Divine Awareness / Oneness / Love for All-That-Is that I have ever known.

This mystical~emotional~sexual awakening is fierce and amazing. It is as deeply erotic as it is spiritual. I am experiencing the world around me through a sensual and erotic perspective most of the time. I am turned on in some way almost all of the time. I am experiencing the Divine in everything -- the music I listen to, what I read from others, in nature, and most especially in the people I love.

I sat with my bestest buddy during brunch today and cried because I am so incredibly in love with her and what she gives me. She was expressing her guilt around accepting generosity from others and has no idea just how much she gives by being her incredibly loving, kind, accepting, fun, cuddly self who makes me feel like one of the most beautiful people in the world when she reflects my light back to me.

Every moment of my life, no matter how ordinary, is now vibrant, rich with loving energy and meaning. All of existence is a miracle and I am aware of it nearly all the time now.

Kali, the Great Mother Goddess of the Hindu tradition, is the Source, the One that gives birth to All. Known as a slayer of demons, She destroys the army of mind-born delusions symbolized by demons that separate us from the Divine as our own true Self. To our bound, limited and contracted ego identities She may strike terror, at times appearing as a coal-black, sword-wielding, blood-smeared dancer of death and destruction. To our Divine Self, She is our supremely beautiful Beloved, our dear spouse, performing a ballet of incomparable grace, overwhelming us with love.

Kali - Hindu Goddess of Universal Creation and Destruction. Destroyer of Illusions. When you burn in Kali's Fire, your illusions and ego are burned away. I have burned in Her Fire so often that I have a very conscious relationship with Her. I've written about Her before. It's taken years for me to come to peace with the constant state of transformation that defines the modern mystic's journey. Now I am not only at peace with it, but I'm falling head over heels in love with Kali and Her power in my heart. The Fire feels different this time. I feel the creation - the pheonix rising from the ashes - more strongly than I feel the burning away of old illusions, patterns, stories and wounds.

I have recently engaged in a relationship with an amazing man who also has a conscious relationship with Kali. We are exploring both a romantic-sexual connection and a D/s relationship. It's only been three weeks, yet this relationship is already impacting my life in tremendous ways. Kali's Fire is already burning and it's delicious torment.

I've had two assignments so far and they both rocked my world. The first was to write an erotic objectification fantasy -- which was a challenge on multiple levels. I don't write stories - I write real life, I have insecurities around communicating my fantasies, and I am just learning about my objectification desires. The experience was awesome and so hot -- I was inspired by a new fantasy because of the assignment and I did a good job of writing a story because I wrote it while in an aroused state.

The second assignment involved a ritual over the course of three nights -- creating an erotic-submissive sacred space for Him around me and inside of me, reading a sacred text describing a spiritual-erotic ritual in honor of Kali, a contemplation of some questions, and then writing about my experience. What came from that exploration was self-altering. I saw the Divine in myself and broke through to a much deeper level of self love. I don't know if I can be vulnerable enough to write about that experience publicly, but maybe it will one day have a post of its own.

For years I have been hungering for someone who would dive into God with me through sex and relationship. I didn't/don't know how to have that kind of relationship, but I knew intuitively that experiencing relationship as sacred practice and sexual exploration as an expression of spiritual yearnings would be a powerful and transformative experience. And it is. I am now living this dream of mine and it is remarkable.

He is a catalyst for my process of mystical awakening. It started before Him and it isn't because of Him, but He is a Gift from the Universe in catalyzing my experience. There is awakening happening in Him, too.

Tonight He said He was considering the idea of our being in a triad relationship with Kali, the Divine. Imagine that, a triad relationship with God. Really? Is that possible? It's mad and it's amazing and it's right. It's what I desire more than anything else in the Universe. To know God through loving another person as deeply, as vulnerably as possible, that is the greatest turn on there is in my world.

He is wicked smart, deeply passionate about making a difference in the world, a beautiful poet, and so very many things that turn me on. One of His gifts is to mirror my light back to me in words, telling me what He sees in me, what He appreciates in me. As if He sees the Divine in me, too.

He likes and desires my strength, my empathy/intuition, my intelligence, my spirituality, and my submissive sluttiness. He even loves my long letters. I can be all of myself with Him.

Three months ago I decided to change my life, to live more authentically and pursue the life of my dreams. Now the Universe is dropping my dreams in my lap. This love affair, it's not just catalyzing my personal growth around relationship, it's also helping me to understand my Divine Spark more, to figure out what it is I am meant to give to the world. It's all integrated.

I have opened my heart to the Universe, surrendering to where I am guided, following intuition through each new door that opens to me. The result is a new relationship that seems to be a dream come true, a more authentic relationship to the Imps that allows me to express my gifts more deeply and with more presence and joy, and this mystical awakening that is rocking my world in every possible way. It's touching me at work, making me more present to the people I interact with in the mundane every day world. It's touching my spiritual life through my new relationship and the spiritual gatherings I'm facilitating. It's touching my friendships as I experience a deeper love for everyone in my life.

I am courting Kali and awakening the mystic within me. This is the life of my dreams, right here, right now. I can't even imagine what the Divine has in store for me next.

*

Art by A. Andrew Gonzalez

Sexuality Meet Divine Spark

2011-01-22T12:57:00.000-08:00

"...don’t talk to me about health benefits of sex and how to score the guy. Talk to me about being fully alive and harnessing the amazing energies within to create beautiful, transformative art, love, partnerships and a better world. Talk to me about sex that breathes erotic play, seduces me to fall off the edge of control, and dissolves, for a moment, life and death. Talk to me about the mystery of sex.

In its highest sense, our sexuality is a gateway to spirit, to the place where humanity meets divinity, and as such it is sacred. It offers us a readily available opportunity to experience the ecstatic union we all long for. If...that is...we dare surrender so deeply to the erotic dance, with ourselves, with each other.

I want to make love to life. What about you?" Lone Morch

*

Kelly Diels says she's good at sex.

I am realizing that I am good at sex, too. Really good.

And I'm wondering if it's kinda crazy to say so. This is one of those "who am I to ______" kinda moments. But I'm choosing vulnerability. It is this year's mission after all. And I'm honoring that it's just as authentic to say I am good at sex as it is to say I am good at writing.

I am good at sex and it isn't because of the shape of my body or how traditionally beautiful I am (not), nor is it because I know how to flirt and seduce really well, nor do I have a toolkit of well-practiced techniques.

I am good at sex because I give all of myself and because I have deep intuition about how to give another person love and pleasure.

Last night I had a magical experience with a long time friend who became a lover. He mirrored me through words, told me what he saw come out in me when I opened my erotic-emotional palette to him. Hearing myself witnessed and described in such a way, and noticing my visceral response to it, helped me piece together something that has been taking shape in my consciousness over the last year.

Something is opening in me, something that's always been hinted at in my sexual life but has yet to find full expression, although I'm getting closer all the time. Is this what reaching my sexual peak is about? Or is it something more?

It started with Knight and I thought that it was because of him, our crazy intense chemistry and good loving. But now that I've had other lovers, I find that it's inside of me and it's getting bigger, stronger, brighter.

It came out at the holiday social last month, the one I was so afraid to attend. I chose love for myself and my community rather than my fear of what might happen and the night stunned me. The entire night I flowed from one intimate connection to another, sometimes a kiss, sometimes a dance, sometimes a flirtatious conversation. Every interaction had an erotic charge based in love. And I had the potential of six play partners that night, which had never happened before (and I have no expectations of happening again). They were close friends or already lovers or a new friend who I felt would likely become a lover (and did). I had fantastic experiences with three of them and experienced a distinct lack of inhibition in my play and my connection with them in every case. I lost myself in the experience with them, gave everything I had to give in that moment, completely unaware of the party going on around me. I have to admit that at moments I felt like a sex goddess -- the full embodiment of Woman -- empowered, confident, and incredibly sexy.

Passion • To ignite. To feel all there is to feel. And to be OK with that. life by me

I love sex. I love the intimacy of kissing and licking and sucking and opening myself to penetration and riding someone to incredible orgasms. I love the play of giving and receiving, the play of assertion and receptivity, the play of dominance and submission. I love the experience of surrender to intimacy and nakedness and raw sexual hunger with another person.

Sex is not about getting hard or getting off, although they are wonderful flavors to taste in the vast buffet of erotic experience. Sex is always something more. My erotic palette blends the fiery red of raw physical hunger in my cunt with the watery blue of emotion held in my heart with the vibrant indigo of Sacred awareness that imbues my whole being. Sex is incredible magic.

I am very present during sex, giving the fullness of myself physically, emotionally and spiritually. I am very aware of how deep sex goes, especially kinky or power exchange kind of sex. That's why I can't do much casual, stranger sex. When I get sexual, I want to go as deep into the energy of shared pleasure as I can. I suck a man's cock passionately because I'm expressing my deep care for that man and appreciation of his beautiful masculinity. I thrust from the core of my being into the core of another woman when I fuck her with my hand because her emotional receptivity drives me wild. I need emotional traction for a good sexual experience.

Once I have it, it's on.

I love sex and it shows. I love having a curvy body and the ways that I can make it move when I'm beneath someone or on top of someone...and most especially when I'm dancing with or for someone. I love my hips - so much that I love the poetic anthems to the power of hips by Lucille Clifton and Maya Angelou. I love my mouth, all of the things I can feel and do with lips and tongue and teeth, and especially the way my mouth can bring someone so much pleasure. I love that I've been told by my last five lovers that I am great at giving head, not because I am I want to be special, but because it means I made them feel really, really, really good. Nothing makes me happier than to bring joy to others. I love that I am all woman with the fleshy body of a two-time mother and a receptive nature that takes people in and holds them in holiness in the temple of my cunt and my heart. I love that I have lovers who realize the sacredness of this gift. The more that gift is seen, the more I am driven to give it.

Being an empath, I feel my lover's orgasms.

Sex is so sacred to me because I can feel people inside of my heart as well as my body. It's uncomfortable or painful for me to be with someone who isn't fully present, who is just looking to get off, who goes only as deep as skin and isn't interested in the energy we are sharing. I think a lot of my friends don't quite understand that. But I am really glad I am wired this way. When I find a good partner, I get triple the pleasure in every experience - my pleasure, their pleasure and the magic of our combined energy.

I used to be a touch healer.

I used to do energy work on people and help them alleviate symptoms or heal physical issues. It started when I would give friends or lovers massages and they would say that they felt I had a healing touch because they felt a shift during or after my the experience. I learned to direct that energy purposefully. Now I can direct energy like that when I touch people sensually or sexually. I believe my passion for touch, for consciously channeling my care and love through my fingertips, can be healing.

These are all pieces of the puzzle. I am trying to figure out the shape of my Divine Spark and I believe it's time to honor that my sexuality is a significant part of it, in my personal relationships and in the work I am called to do in the world. It's so interesting that I can often feel the shape of other people's Divine Sparks to great specificity, yet I have struggled so long to recognize the shape of my own. Although I've been an erotic hostess the last three years, I have been focused on the advancement of the sex-positive philosophy and the sexual expression of others far more than my own. While I have become more vulnerable and uninhibited in my sexual expression in my personal life and at events, I've also continued to limit myself in significant ways out of insecurity (or lack of play partner who desires to go where I desire to go).

Now I see what has truly attracted me to sex-positive work all this time, and the explorations of the last year into sluttiness and sexual submission - it's all driven by my own expression and exploration of the profound mystery of sex.

I am being offered opportunities to explore the depth of my sexual passion - to feel everything there is to feel in sharing erotic energy with others.

In my personal life I have been offered an exploration of complete sexual submission to my dear friend turned lover mentioned above. I have come to understand that the explorations in sluttiness and sexual domination last summer were a little misdirected. I desire to experience complete sexual submission as an expression of uninhibited love and devotion for another person. I am not a stereotypical slut that feeds my raw sexual hunger through many casual encounters. I am a slut who gives that raw sexual hunger to one person I deeply respect to do with as they wish. There is a deep expression of love woven into the deep arousal that comes from submission and raw sexual expression. I am so turned on by the potential of playing with someone with whom I have a deep bond and can be completely vulnerable.

My greatest turn on is love. And it doesn't have to be the big fireworks, all encompassing, you're-the-one romantic love. It can be love with anyone whom I share chemistry with. I am finally understanding the dance between the lover of sex and the lover of love within me.

At the community level of sharing my erotic divine spark -- this next party is a new opportunity for me. Instead of hostess, I will be co-head of vibes. I won't be exhausted from spending two days (several weeks) setting up the event. I will be focused on my strongest area of contribution and leadership. I am excited about the possibility of shining my light brighter than ever in the party environment. Drawing on the energy of this sexual vitality that I'm unearthing can help me do that. It's my hope and desire to contribute to and role-model an empowered sexiness through vulnerability while working and in my play. It won't be about whether or how or with whom I play. It will be about me being turned on (there are so many things about a party to fall in love with and turn you on without a partner) and really embodying my erotic power in everything I say and do.

I'll tell you what feeling this erotic power grow in me is doing -- it's causing me to fall head over heels in love with all of my life. I am more engaged in everything and everyone. I am more aware of all kinds of sensual pleasures and I experience delight many moments throughout the day. And cultivating so much yummy goodness makes it easier to choose good stories when I am in the complicated and messy and painful moments. Reinforcing joy in my life on a daily basis is making it easier to trust in the goodness of every situation, no matter how confusing or seemingly hurtful.

I am making love with life and I am truly beginning to feel that life is making love to me in return.

Or like Gnarls Barkley happens to be singing to me right now, "Maybe I'm crazy."

Home & Care of the Soul

2011-01-16T14:15:00.000-08:00

This is a different sort of writing exploration. I am sitting at home tonight feeling immense appreciation for the space I live in, the sacred space in which I care for myself and my daughter. I feel inspired to go stream of consciousness in this moment of gratitude so big it brings me tears.

One of my favorite authors is Thomas Moore, who writes about the importance of soul...

"It is impossible to define precisely what the soul is. Definition is an intellectual enterprise anyway; the soul prefers to imagine. We know intuitively that soul has to do with genuineness and depth, as when we say certain music has soul or a remarkable person is soulful. When you look closely at the image of soulfulness, you see that it is tied to life in all its particulars - good food (music, art, writing, too!), satisfying conversation, genuine friends and experiences that stay in the memory and touch the heart. Soul is revealed in attachment, love, and community, as well as in retreat on behalf of inner communing and intimacy...

Tradition teaches that soul lies midway between understanding and unconcsiousness, and that its instrument is neither the mind or the body, but imagination...

What we need is soul, holding together mind and body, ideas and life, spirituality and the world."

Care of the soul is caring for ourselves through caring for our bodies and senses, our home and family, our pleasure and creativity, our spirituality and community relationship, etc. It's paying attention to those little things that feel sacred, call to us, and bring us joy.

Part of a soulful life is creating a soulful home, a home that suits our quirky soulful tastes, and then caring for that home. Filling our shelves with sentimental momentos or things we find beautiful is creating a soulful space. The act of doing dishes or sweeping the floor can be a sacred and soulful activity.

I love my home. Living in The Barn on the Creek has transformed a half-visioned dream into an incredibly joyful home life. My last home was not a good place for me for the last few years I was there. It was neglected by the landlords, moldy and falling apart. It also felt like negative emotional energy from my marriage seemed to permeate the walls. I got into patterns of neglect and felt near daily negativity about the space. For a Cancer woman, for whom sacred home space is deeply important, my home life was impoverished for far too long and it hurt me in significant ways. Moving into The Barn was my biggest act of radical self-care this past year.

I have always desired some color on my walls. Color brings soul to a home. I love the deep green of the kitchen cupboards (it matches my couch), the various watery blues in the bathroom, and the painting of the mountain lion in the woods on the inside of my front door. I even love the two different shades of mauve carpet I have in my giant bedroom. I love that two of my livingroom walls are half windows that look out into redwood forest - so many shades of green and brown that change with the weather and the seasons.

I love that I can hear the creek and other sources of water flowing every time I step out the door. I love that it's big enough to comfortably host 10-20 people for a variety of reasons...a spiritual gathering or a slumber party. I love the empowerment I feel in being a mountain woman - chopping my own wood, creating the warmth that we need in the woodstove, meeting and dealing with critters - learning how to take care of my home and family in new ways.

I love the things I surround myself with, the soul I bring to my home:

* art from my sister, my children, friends and myself on walls throughout the house;

* a hag marionette doll from Venice gifted by my sister hanging over my kitchen counter (I call her my kitchen witch);

* the magnet poetry on my refrigerator (sex is deep art);

* the bookshelves and books in three rooms -- science fiction an fantasy, dark children's stories, poetry, subculture and bohemian explorations, good literature, women, creativity, spirituality, consciousness and quantum physics;

* the altar on my kitchen table left over from the last spiritual gathering I hostessed;

* my personal altar by my bed, most especially the tiny bottle of years upon years of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence glitter and make-up, a recent sacred gift from a Sister friend;

* the few remaining houseplants that have survived all of my moods and neglect over 15 years, as well as the Barn's extreme temperatures (especially the ones inherited from my mom);

* the images of the sacred feminine on my bedroom walls;

* my little altars to roses everywhere;

* and the wall-to-floor shelves and dresser in the hallway stuffed with art supplies (there's another table and bins with art supplies in my room as well).

I have a soulful home. Most people comment on it's beauty and comfort when they visit the first time. And I am finding that I want to be in it more and more, just for the sake of being here. It actually brings me joy to be here and to live the rituals of caring for myself, my daughter and this place that holds our daily life.

As I sit here drinking my tea and looking out on the gorgeous bounty of beauty in the Redwoods, I feel held by the Earth and my own continuous acts of self care through nurturing a soulful home.

*

Image Credit: My Daughter's photographs of The Barn and surrounding land. Another joyful boon about this place is that photography is her bliss and she loves wandering the woods to take pictures.

Claiming Pieces of Myself: The Teacher

2011-01-06T18:54:00.000-08:00

Every year, instead of setting New Year's resolutions, I choose a word that I intend to embody. This year the word is vulnerability. Tonight I am choosing to be vulnerable by sharing the struggle I am having with expressing an aspect of my authentic self.

I have a sense that there will be multiple posts about claiming different aspects of myself in the coming months. Some are a reclaiming of a part of myself I gave up at some point in my past (artist, healer), some are a claiming of something I've never fully embraced.

“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” Kahlil Gibran

An archetype and expression of my gifts that I have been long avoiding is that of Teacher. While I have become comfortable with facilitating spaces for people to be creative, learn or connect in various ways, I have avoided being the "expert" at the front of the room as much as possible. I've become more comfortable leading trainings for the Imps, but I try to use interactive activities and learning through discussion more than talking to groups of people. I don't feel comfortable being the center of attention in that way. I worry that I am uninteresting and boring everyone in the room, especially since I'm not funny. I am insecure about my authority in any subject matter. And I worry that my ideas for interaction are silly or weird.

In high school I dreamed of being a teacher. It was the first time I felt a calling. I desired to teach high school English and Theater. I desired to be like the few amazing teachers I had and make a difference in the lives of teens, especially troubled teens who weren't seen by others. I didn't want any teen to go through school feeling unseen. But I gave up the idea of teaching at the end of my college education because I found art and thought that if I became a high school teacher I would give my whole heart to the kids and have nothing left for my own creativity. I don't know if this is true, I just know that teaching in the institution of public education was really not the place for me (too much of the Rebel archetype in me).

A year after college I fell into a job as a teacher - I ran an employment training center for welfare-to-work participants. I taught basic math, reading, writing and computer skills, as well as developed a soft skills curriculum. Even then I avoided standing in front of the room talking to the entire class as much as I could. One-to-one I was fine. Small groups were ok. But the more focus on me as the center of attention, the more uncomfortable I was. I ignored several ideas I had for activities that might have actually been fun and engaging but I was too scared to be the one to tell other adults to do something different. I was afraid to be vulnerable and to ask for their vulnerability (although there were other ways I invited their vulnerability through writing exercises).

Then for 7 years I didn't do any teaching at all (although I've nearly always been writing/blogging).

With the Imps I've felt the need to step into the teacher role around the concept of Vibes and creating safe emotional spaces for erotic exploration. I give a short talk about Vibes and holding space at the all staff training and co-facilitate the Vibes crew training for every event. I am so passionate about the Vibes concept and its importance in the success of our events that I no longer have insecurities about "teaching" this specific topic. I have a confidence when I speak in this context that I've never experienced before.

Now I am facilitating these sex-positive spiritual gatherings and I am scared about teaching. I have a lot of knowledge and insight to share regarding self-development and the spiritual path. I've been studying psychological and spiritual material since I was 16. If there's anything I'm an expert in, it's purposeful evolution and transformation through the application of psycho-spiritual tools and wisdom. Yet I don't trust that anyone really desires to hear what I have to say about these things. I think more about how to generate discussion than what I have to share from my own knowledge on the next gathering's topic.

I also met with a friend in the Bay Area over New Year's weekend and brainstormed possibilities for co-facilitating a workshop on women's sexual empowerment. She put out an invitation for co-collaborators and I felt immediately inspired to respond. It's a chance to develop myself more fully as a workshop facilitator and to introduce myself and what I have to offer to the Bay Area community.

I know that I have been called to teaching all of my life. I have been called to share what I learn through writing in public forums. But I am also called to teach to groups of people in person. I can feel it in my bones. And yet I am so afraid of it, so resistant. I am contemplating ideas for breaking through this resistance, for combining teaching and interactivity in ways that are comfortable for me, for using the spiritual gatherings as a training ground.

As I write this I realize for the first time that the people who are coming to my gatherings are doing so because they trust me and they believe I have something of value to share with them. They are my right people and I need to trust that they are interested in what I have to share as long as I follow my heart. Or if they come and realize they aren't my right people, that's ok for everyone involved. They just have other people and community that are right for them. This is an amazing opportunity for me not to take rejection personally and to see what happens when I act fully from my heart and spirit.

I imagine it will take me time to figure this teaching thing out...exactly how it works for me to both stretch my edges yet also honor my unique feelings about teaching (which is really about facilitating the space for people to have insights into themselves and the world). It will take time for me to embody my authority in what I'm qualified to share. But I will use my theme for 2011 - vulnerability - to guide me into claiming my inner teacher and letting her fly.

***

Image Source: Lisa Valder

I Declare Myself Now for Joy

2010-12-29T12:28:00.000-08:00

A beautiful poem from Erica Jong that reflects my own desire to declare myself for joy this coming year...

I, Erica Jong, in the midst of my life,
having had two parents, two sisters,
two husbands, two books of poems
& three decades of pain,

having cried for those that did not love me
& those who loved me- but not enough
& those whom I did not love-
declare myself now for joy

There is pain enough to nourish us everywhere;
it is joy that is scarce…

Unhappiness is cheap,
Childhood is a universal affliction.
I say to hell with the analysts of minus & plus
the life-shrinkers, the diminishers of joy.

I say to hell with anyone
who would suck on misery
like a pacifier
in a toothless mouth.
I say to hell with gloom…

Doom is cheap
If the apocalypse is coming,
let us wait for it in joy…

I resolve myself for joy.

If that resolve means I must live alone,
I accept aloneness.

If the joy house I inhabit must be
a house of my own making,
I accept that making…

No joy-denyer can deny me now.
For what I have is undeniable.
I inhabit my own house,
the house of joy…

The soul is contagious.
One man catches another’s
like the plague;
& and we are all patient spiders
to each other.

If we can spin the joy thread
& also catch it-

If we can be sufficient to ourselves,
we need fear no entangling webs…

How to spin joy out of an empty heart?
The joy-egg germinates even in despair.

Orgasms of gloom convulse the world;
& and the joy-seekers huddle together.

We meet on the pages of books & by beachwood fires,
We meet scrawled blackly in many-folded letters.
We know each other by free & generous hands,
We swing like spiders on each other’s souls.

My Resolution (and Resignation)

2010-12-28T20:49:00.000-08:00

This is my resignation/love letter just sent to the Imps community:

This is one of the hardest things I've ever done...which is why it's taken me two months to write it.

There is a saying in South Africa...Ubuntu - "I am because we are."

Take a moment to really think about that. I am because we are. You and I are connected in much deeper ways then we are generally conscious of. Every life we touch shapes us. Right now I can feel how each of you has shaped me.

I don't do New Year's resolutions, but I do choose a word for the year, a sort of aspiration of what I desire to experience. This year my word is vulnerability. I desire to open my heart in the biggest, deepest ways and to experience love free of attachment to anything but the wonderful experience of loving. I desire to be vulnerable - to risk reaching out in the face of rejection...or powerlessness to help...until it isn't difficult to do so anymore; to be vulnerable in sharing my story through my writing; and to be vulnerable enough to dream and believe I can make my dreams come true.

It's a big aspiration, but those that know me best know that I've already been on this journey awhile. In 2008 my new year's word was open-hearted and a few months later I was starting this crazy business with two other women. Being a Hostess for The Impropriety Society has been a significant aspect of my journey...perhaps only second to being a mother in the immensity of impact on my life and evolution. And I suppose that makes sense since I co-birthed and co-nurtured this community with the Jens these past three years. There is much of being a Hostess that is like being a mother - including washing the dirty sheets (you do realize someone takes all that laundry home, right?).

My relationship to this community has also been like a poly relationship - I am so incredibly in love with the community as a whole and so many of the individuals who comprise it. I have been twitter-pated for you and turned on by you and heart broken by you and reborn in greater love with you. Sometimes you have taken priority over everything else - even my actual primary partner. You have danced with me, kissed me, spanked me and and told and shown me over and over again how desired and cared for that I am. You have given me my first true experience of family.

My relationship with the Jens has been a partnership stronger than any other partner relationship I've experienced. Those two amazing women have been my support in ways I can't even put into words - keeping me fed and being there in any way I needed after my mom died, including putting up with bouts of crazy grief for months afterwards, is a damn good example. Reminding me that I'm right to follow my heart is another good example.

Sometimes it doesn't matter how in love you are, you have to do what's right for you.

As deeply in love as I am with this community and my partners, it's time for me to move on and make new dreams come true for myself and my daughter. In November I resigned as Hostess so that I can concentrate on preparing to move to the Bay Area, hopefully this summer, and working towards creating the work of my heart as a paying gig. I don't know exactly what that work is, but I know it has something to do with facilitating sex-positive spiritual community - spaces where sexuality is honored as an integrated aspect of spiritual and psychological evolution. It also has something to with counseling, writing and art. I trust it will all come together as I follow my heart.

Until I move I will continue to attend events, but more likely as a guest than a volunteer. I will also help document aspects of the business and train others in the parts that I've contributed. I already miss being a Hostess and working every week with the Jens. But I'm very happy to continue making meaningful contributions behind the scenes and participate in the community in new ways. I attended the holiday social as a guest and had the time of my life!

And for anyone who might be interested, I am beginning to facilitate biweekly sex-positive spirituality gatherings in my home (these are discussion oriented, no actual sex is involved). More information can be found at the link below and/or you can email me directly. The next one will be January 9th.

http://humboldtimps.blogspot.com/2010/11/invitation-to-sex-positive-spiritual.html

Thank you for holding me as I learned to trust myself and the gifts I have to offer as a community leader. Thank you for the honor of loving you through producing events and nurturing community in all the ways we've been inspired and you've downright demanded. I am what I am, and everything I will ever be, because of you.

I love you,
April

The Power of Flight

2010-12-22T13:10:00.001-08:00

Today is a glorious sunny day in Arcata, a rare sunny day with little wind. I just walked at the Arcata Marsh for the first time in a couple of months. Oh God, how I have missed everything that being in that place inspires me to feel. Perhaps it is because I have processed so much of my evolution and grief there the last three years. The land holds many of my prayers and my tears. Perhaps it is because I have experienced moments of ecstatic Oneness as the vitality of life in that place embraces my entire being. Perhaps it is the power of the water, the water that sustains all of the life that pulses in that place, the water that cleans Arcata's human impurities from the sewer system and returns to the bay as clean water again.

Tears of joy and appreciation for the blessings of beauty in my life flowed as I walked by one of the ponds and saw baby ducks diving in the water and shaking the water from their wings. This is the second generation of ducks I will witness grow into adulthood.

Today's walk was perfect for this Solstice time. While Arcata is sitting under the bright shining sun, there are dark clouds over the mountains to the east and the air is chill. I would walk under the sun and feel warm, and then walk under the shadow of trees and feel the chill creep up my skin under my clothes causing goosebumps, and then to the warmth of light again. The light *always* follows the darkness as the wheel of the seasons and our lives turns.

The smell of the earth and water fills my nose, while the cool fresh air fills my lungs.

The sound of water moving and birds singing fills my ears.

The reeds and blackberry bushes are decaying, leaving marvelous views of all of the ponds that are usually sheltered by the tall plants in the summer time.

And the dance of the birds today -- so incredibly beautiful. There was a giant flock -- hundreds of little birds -- that completely covered two of the islands in the lake. Every so often large groups would take to the air together and dance - swirling, lifting and falling over the water - sometimes in one group, sometimes in two or three, or shifting from one to two and back to one again. They would turn one direction and it would be flutters of white. They would turn the other direction and it would be flutters of black. Their spontaneous choreography, moving as one body, never ceases to astound me. Then they would return to the island and chatter about their flight, hundreds of voices in what should have been a dissonant cacophony but sounded to my ears more like a song with a hundred distinct yet harmonious voices.

And what other reason do they have to do this dance together than to share in the power of flight? What we can learn from their collaborative flying? That there is more power and joy when we journey together, lift one another up with the power of wind from our wings, and fly higher on the current of one another's journey through the air?

I think of how I am able to fly and soar in ways I never imagined because I have shared experiences of growth and transformation with others. I think of how my dance with the people closest to me powers my ability to fly in the world, whether they are flying by my side in any given moment or not. I fly stronger because I ride the currents of joy, witness and support that I share with my loved ones.

“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.” Anonymous

I fly higher because of how well I've been loved by those that journey with me, those that remind me to lift my eyes to the sky and remember I have the power of flight.

I Am Enough, Just As I Am

2010-12-21T16:10:00.000-08:00

My last blogging endeavor (this is blog number 5 in my writing life) was called The Conspiracy of Blessings. I was inspired by Rob Brezny's idea of Pronoia, which is the belief that the Universe is conspiring to shower us to blessings, if only we'd wake up to it. The blog itself was an opportunity to explore creative generosity, random acts of kindness and gift economy. I researched people actively participating in blessing others, posted links and wrote about all kinds of goodness going on in the world (there is so much more goodness than people realize!).

It started in December 2005, when I decided that I was making too many crafty things to be able to give to my few friends for Christmas (imagine how much time I was giving to the Imps and how many crafts/art pieces I could make if I gave that time to art/craft making instead...it's kinda insane how productive I can be). I needed an outlet for my creative generosity and I had come across some random-acts-of-kindness artists on the web. So as my first act of creative kindness, I put beaded snowflake ornaments I had made with a handwritten card in places around town for people to find. I put one in the restroom at Border's in the mall, one in a potted plant in Old Town, one on someone's windshield, etc.

Eventually I desired a little bit more of a personal connection with the recipients and an opportunity to give more items to each person, so I came up with the idea of sending art blessing packages to people who requested them through my blog. The blog was anonymous and I signed the cards "The Blessing Conspirator" so no one knew who I was. Over the course of a couple years, I gave away over 100 art blessings to people all over the world. I received requests from people experiencing intense stages of life, especially women in transition. While it may seem kind of frivolous -- what can a handmade doll do for someone going through divorce or cancer? -- it seemed to really touch the lives of the people I sent them to.

There is a special tenderness when someone we don't know reaches out to us with love in any form, no matter how small or seemingly frivolous.

I tell you all of this to explain how I am feeling this very moment. I find myself suddenly missing the Conspiracy. I miss blessing people in need of a little light in their lives, especially during the holidays. I have been seeing amazing stories of generosity this season -- a homeless man starting a non-profit to collect shoes for other needy people; a popular blogger giving away some gift cards to families in need, which snowballed into over 600 people giving to over 600 families within 72 hours; and another popular social networking site inspired by that blogger and seeking to continue the giving trend. I read the comments from people in need and I wish so very much that I could give them something, but I am struggling financially myself right now and don't have anything monetary to give. The only gifts I am giving this year are to my children. The only lives I'm touching are those closest to me. Is that enough?

I have been contemplating what my options for generosity are, brainstorming on how I might be able to touch a stranger's life. Yet as I sit here writing this, I wonder why I feel like I haven't been participating in the Universe's conspiracy to bless others all along? Why do I always feel like I'm not doing, giving, serving enough?

What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly. Carl Rogers

Is it enough to feel compassion and send love from my heart to theirs as I witness each story of need and watch it fulfilled by others? Haven't I already given as much of myself as I have to give this year (which is why I'm burnt out)? Hasn't the service I've given through the Imps blessed hundreds of lives this year? When is it enough? When am I enough?

"...be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here." Max Ehrmann

I think this comes back to the old belief that I have to earn my place in the world through giving and service. And discomfort with being the center of my own attention. The truth is that this holiday season I am giving mostly to myself -- quiet time for reflection and rejuvenation; one-on-one time with my closest friends; a solstice gathering and spiritual connection with other journeyers in my home; an amazing New Year's Eve experience with my teenage daughter and one of our favorite musical artists in the world, Amanda Palmer (my heart longed to spend NYE at her show with the Boston Pops last year, this year she's in San Francisco with The Dresden Dolls, so I'm making my own dream come true).

Transitioning to a much needed focus on my self is a significant challenge some days. Letting go of an identity based in generosity and service and accepting what is left - me - is a significant challenge most days.

Yet each day I find new ways to give myself spaciousness and to accept that I am enough, just as I am.

Honoring The Priestess: A Story of Overcoming Resistance

2010-12-18T13:36:00.000-08:00

"One of the favorite archetypes found in the 78 cards of a Tarot deck is the High Priestess, Key #2 of the Major Arcana. She represents spiritual awakening and development of the universal intuitive mind. Awesome and mysterious, the High Priestess sits before a veil that drapes the entrance to a temple. The temple symbolizes the higher knowledge, spiritual knowledge, the sacred truths (both personally and cosmically), or the Holy Grail that we all seek. This temple holds both sacred, universal secrets as well as the guidance required to unravel our own personal issues. Behind her is the veil between this world and the “other” world – the veil that separates that which we know from that which we long to know. She is the guardian of the occult, of hidden knowledge; the scroll that she holds represents arcane teachings – lessons that those on a spiritual path must learn. She emphasizes the essential role of the unconscious mind as a source of those sacred teachings that direct the soul’s evolution and growth."

As mentioned in previous posts, I initiated myself as a Priestess to the Divine when I was 23 years old, in the Wiccan tradition. I felt called. I have felt called to Divine Service for as long as I can remember. But I have been resisting it just as long. Tomorrow I finally live up to that promise I made 14 years ago by facilitating what I hope is the first of many spiritual gatherings and rituals in my home.

"Despite the somewhat glorious title of "spiritual superheroine" - being a redvolutionary isn't about being invincible or perfect or being "spiritual" or "enlightened" - it's about being yourself - the full messy, raw, dirty, funky, authentic lovely human self. A woman willing to be this transparent and vulnerable, a woman willing to reveal her true self in this world no madda what - is revolutionary, rare, daring, a superpowered strength - and I think it's one of the main reasons we're here." Sera Beak

Mine has been a long process of ordination -- nearly 15 years before I've finally accepted the mantle of spiritual leadership of some kind. Ordination is the sixth Sacrament in Christianity, the commitment of one's gifts to Divine Service. I have sought ordination in various ways over the years, but never taken the inner and outer transformation required to completion. I've been unwilling to surrender completely and I've let my ego have it's fun. I've been afraid. I've used single motherhood and the need to provide for my children as an excuse for not pursuing the work of my heart. I've given only a fraction of my life to projects of sacred activism. I've stayed on the path just enough to justify myself -- I am growing and evolving, I am becoming more conscious, I am making progress. Yet all along I've been dissatisfied, because I know I'm not living in integrity with what I know about myself. I am not living in the fullness of my Divine spark.

My truth is that I am so completely in love with God and so committed to the awakening of all beings that my life cannot be joyful without complete surrender to Divine Service and Sacred Activism. To be in integrity with who I am, I must admit to myself and everyone else that I feel called to a spiritual life. It's been scary to use the word Priestess. It feels powerful and presumptuous. I have been afraid to claim my power, afraid of the responsibility it requires and afraid of how others will perceive me if I presume to call myself what I am.

“Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change...What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” -MLK

Redvolutionary, Priestess, Shaman, Hierophant, Bodhisattva - all of these have called to me over the years and the implication is the same. I am driven to contribute to the awakening of the human race. I am destined to be a bridge builder between the sacred and the mundane. By my very nature I bring consciousness and healing into all of my relationships and every day life. I facilitate community experiences that encourage consciousness raising, sacred intent and transformation/evolution. I bring knowledge and wisdom from spiritual traditions to the people in my life. I use my intuition to deliver messages from the Universe to the people in my life. In many ways I am already living the archetype of the Priestess in not-so-subtle, yet un-named ways.

I realize that I haven't given myself enough credit for how the spiritual is woven into my life so completely. I am incredibly hard on myself about not being evolved/enlightened/spiritual enough, as if I have failed. Yet when I look at what I say and what I write, what I share with others, it is filled with spiritual ideas and language. When I look at how I've led the Impropriety Society from a place of love and inclusiveness, I recognize that my work is imbued with spiritual love and compassion. When I consider all the reasons I do community service, I honor that I am already living the vow of the Bodhisattva. While I am imperfect on a daily basis, I do strive to live with as much consciousness and sacred awareness as I'm capable at this point in my evolution.

While I may have been resisting obvious spiritual leadership, I have been living a spiritual life and having an impact on the lives around me. And while maybe I could have stopped resisting my full commitment to ordination sooner, maybe everything has unfolded exactly as it is meant to for the greatest potential for Love and Awakening for myself and every life that I am honored to touch. Perhaps this is where faith matters most, believing in myself and the imperfect perfection of my own journey.

On my birthday last July, I drew an archetype card for the coming year. Maybe it was always destined that my 37th year would be my year of ordination:

The Monk/Nun: The positive aspects of this archetype are: spiritual intensity, devotion, dedication, persistence, and perhaps wisdom. ...the Monk archetype may show up in the ability to be single-minded, assiduous, devoted to a spiritual path or to any great achievement that requires intense focus. In this sense, novelists and entrepreneurs can carry the Monk as readily as spiritual adepts."

The Victim

2010-12-01T10:11:00.000-08:00

This is stream of consciousness, as I’ve just had a really important insight into an emotional challenge I’ve been trying to sort out for several weeks. I am writing my way through it.

I am having a difficult time with seeing Knight in relationship to others when we interact socially. There are multiple reasons for this that don't all come from being the ex-girlfriend, but there is much that does come from that.

I was contemplating this issue tonight because it came up with a friend who is throwing a party. I didn’t like how I felt when she brought up her desire to have him there. I was also looking for an art project to work on tomorrow night, as I had just been invited to a crafty night at a friend’s. I wandered around, looking at different art supplies, feeling out the appropriate creative expression for right now. Then I grabbed one of Shiloh McCloud’s coloring book journals, drawn to the title She Moves To Her Own Rhythm.

I started turning the pages and was immediately drawn to a paragraph that starts, “Gratitude is a remedy for self-pity.” Suddenly I realized that I have been feeling significant self pity, feeling sorry for myself because my relationship with Knight didn’t work out, partly because he rejected me as a partner due to my actions, partly because of his desire to spend more time and energy on other lovers than on me, partly because he was careless with me when trying to manage multiple relationships (and many other reasons, too), and now I have to watch him be with those other women...and more...if I desire to continue participating in tribe and Imps activities. The paragraph continues on to talk about being a victim...

“Gratitude inspires humility. Gratitude guards against self-pity. I cannot express how important it is not to be a victim. Being a victim, along with holding guilt and shame, paralyzes us and keeps us from growing. Those emotions and responses are a disease, once you let them in, they spread and mutate until you cannot even tell where they are and what havoc they are wreaking. Cast those demons out. Tell them you have no more use for them. We can become invested in our sad story and use it to control others and keep ourselves from being well. Overcoming the victim does not negate that you had to endure injustices. Overcoming acknowledges your pain and allows you to transform.”

I work with archetypes as one of my tools for self and human exploration. Caroline Myss, a teacher I highly respect and that I’ve mentioned before, says that there are four archetypes that all of us contain: the Child, the Saboteur, the Prostitute and the Victim. Even though three of these have negative connotations in our current cultural understanding, all of these archetypes have both a light and a shadow expression.

In the light the Victim is the Guardian of Self Esteem.

My victim has been at play regarding my reactions to having to confront Knight and his other relationships at social events, most especially the Imps parties. Being confronted with your ex-partner seducing, playing and having sex with other women shortly after your break up is not an easy thing to do. While there are many reasons our relationship didn’t work out, I seem to have fixated on the sense of rejection that I feel. Hence the self-pity.

The self-pity, and shame from feeling that I was rejected specifically because of my shadow around emotional control, have been feeding a monster of emotional brutality in my heart towards Knight. It is so easy to demonize him. But it hurts me to do so.

I have been digging at this, feeling the negative reactions and trying to chase down the sources. I don’t like the way it feels at all. I don’t like that I left the staff party a couple weeks ago because I couldn’t bear watching him seduce another woman and feeling it as rejection. I don’t like that I’m afraid to attend the social this weekend because I will feel that way again, even though I have my own lovers to connect with. I don’t like that I want to shut him out and convince myself that he isn’t worthy of relationship with me by focusing on his shadows.

It’s like I’m trying to take my power back by wielding the power of disconnection – which is actually the most potent weapon I can use against him. He thrives on connection and intimacy. Shutting him out is a powerful way to hurt him.

And disconnection has seemed like the only way to protect myself from more heartache. Essentially that's what it's all about, trying to protect my heart. But defenses never lead anywhere good.

The lesson is that my victim needs to develop personal boundaries and a sense of personal power, but I’m not doing it in a healthy way. I need to figure out how to turn this story around to one of self empowerment.

Of course none of this has been entirely conscious. I’ve had the fucked up thoughts and feelings about him the last few weeks, but didn’t see what was really going on under the surface until now. I’ve just been conscious enough to know that I am in shadow and have taken the positive step of keeping it to myself as much as possible. I haven’t spoken to him since the staff party because I don’t want to communicate with him from a negative place. I have learned from previous mistakes of communicating from shadow.

Is it not time that our loving free us from ourselves, and that we, though trembling, endure. Rilke

And of course all of this brings me back to vulnerability and open-heartedness. The vulnerable thing is to face how I feel, to see myself fully and allow others to see me fully, to bring my shadow into the light and love it. The open-hearted thing to do is cultivate love toward Knight and compersion toward his relationships.

Another aspect of my evolution right now is learning to hold space for my own shadow rather than judging and shaming myself when I act from fear. This here, right now, is an opportunity to do that. Rather than be ashamed of my victim and her attempt to protect me these last few weeks, I am going to thank her for trying and ask her to work with me in a more empowering way. I am not powerless and do not need to seek power through attempting to diminish another. I am not unlovable because I am imperfect and act from fear at times.

Shiloh says that gratitude is the remedy for self-pity. I realize that I have stopped experiencing gratitude for Knight’s presence and impact on my life. I have stopped seeing the Divine Spark in him and the beauty of the relationship we shared. Our fear based choices don’t negate or diminish all of the love that we shared. I’ve blinded myself from his light, and the light of our relationship, with shadow. He is a bright light, he has tremendous love to share, there are so many things to be grateful for about that man. And it does not diminish me to say so, no matter the circumstances of our relationship’s end.

From Sacred Contracts by Myss: "The primary objective of the Victim archetype is to develop self-esteem and personal power...You have Contracts with people who are directly connected to the Victim archetype. Their primary role is to help you develop your self-esteem through acts of honesty, integrity, courage, endurance and self-respect."

Even now, Knight is a gift in my life, as I learn to develop a healthy relationship with my Victim archetype and find a deeper sense of my own empowerment and self esteem. While facing this truth in myself is not easy, I am incredibly grateful to have made a breakthrough and sense that I now have a direction to go in cultivating the response I desire to have to Knight and his lovers...which is pure love.

Rediscovering My Bliss

2010-11-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

Last night I did a Tarot reading for a friend. It was a really good reading. It inspired deep, meaningful conversation for us both and I believe he walked away with an idea of something important that he needs to develop within himself that he wasn't necessarily aware of before.

I felt my intuition kick in at points during the reading, which is a very magical experience for me. It is also a bit unnerving. I still struggle with trusting what I feel or "know." Actually, it's more appropriate to say that I struggle with trusting it will be accepted and honored by others. I trust what I know through intuitive feeling because I've always been right whenever there's been an opportunity to know so. But I have had people deny things I've felt and I've even lost friends from speaking my intuitive truth (I had a very specific premonition of the negative consequences of a choice they were making and they didn't want to hear it -- sadly my premonition came true). I understand the Cassandra Complex quite well. Yet I continue to speak my intuitive truth, at least in the company of friends and when it's specifically requested.

After my friend left my house, I found myself in a really, really good mood. I felt light and joyful. I felt connected to my deepest, truest self. I daresay I felt a bit of bliss.

Fifteen years ago, after I left the Christian church and started exploring a Pagan/Wiccan path, I read the book The Mysts of Avalon. Although it is a work of fiction, the stories of the Priestesses of Avalon deeply touched me and inspired a pivotal moment in my spiritual journey. I decided to initiate myself as a Priestess, committing my heart and my life to the Divine. In the book, the Priestesses were initiated by having a turquoise crescent moon tattooed on their third eye. Since getting a tattoo on the forehead in the modern world is not socially acceptable, I had a turquoise crescent moon tattooed on the back of my head (I was also a punk-goth who shaved part of my head in various eccentric haircuts for several years).

I began intense self study in divination/intuitive practices, various healing practices and herbal medicine. I gained a reputation with my friends and neighbors for being an intuitive and healer. I did hands on healing for physical issues. I could "read" a person's energy body to determine where the pain or symptoms were and I could often feel out the related emotional challenges that needed to be addressed. I could often relieve symptoms through energy work. I made teas, tinctures, oils and incenses for both physical and emotional issues. And I did Tarot readings.

For some reason I stopped all of these things when I graduated from college and started working full time. Having to work a crappy job to support my children did something to "kill my spirit." I've never fully reclaimed my spirit or my gifts since.

Last night's reading reminded me of how it feels when I am in the flow of my gifts and expressing who I am in the world. I am rediscovering my bliss. I am remembering how important magic is to me (magic being my way of describing energetic experiences that transcend material reality). I am remembering the commitment I've made to the Divine over and over again to embody the Priestess archetype and facilitate spiritual connection within my community.

I don't know if I'll return to practicing everything that I did before, but I know that doing intuitive readings is a step in the right direction towards the sort of spiritual counseling/coaching that I'd like to do. I am going to start paying attention for opportunities to practice my intuitive skills. And I'm going to put out an invitation on Facebook to see if anyone I know feels called to receiving a reading. I need and desire the practice...and to experience the sense of bliss that I felt last night.

***

Image Source: Inner Voice from the Osho Zen Tarot
(High Priestess in traditional decks)

The Power of Vulnerability

2010-11-29T16:26:00.000-08:00

I’ve been struggling to write. My heart cries out for me to sit down and pull my feelings out to the written word, but I resist. I’ve started many blog posts in the last couple weeks, but never finish, never go as deep as they promise to take me.

I've had this video of social work researcher Brene Brown sitting on my computer for days. I didn't know exactly what it was. Someone posted it on Facebook and I was drawn to the description:

"...she has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness, posing the questions: How do we engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to embrace our imperfections and to recognize that we are enough -- that we are worthy of love, belonging and joy?"

I was surprised, as much as she was, by what she learned.

The qualities of a wholehearted person:

Courage - Tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. Courage to be imperfect.

Compassion - Be kind to yourself first, which will result in kindness towards others.

Connection - As a result of authenticity. Let go of who you think you should be to be who you are.

Fully Embrace Vulnerability - What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.

*

It's the last one that really gets to me and it is the quality that she finds to be most important of them all...

Vulnerability - allowing ourselves to be fully seen, exactly as we are.

Two and a half years ago, right before I co-created The Impropriety Society, I made a commitment to myself and the Divine that I would live as open-heartedly as possible. To me this meant that I would choose to risk loving without knowing where it would lead and even if it led directly into heartache. I would express my love openly and I would say yes to every opportunity to love for my self or others.

I had come to this intent by participating in a brief but very intense relationship that also inspired a spiritual awakening. It was a spiritual connection, as much as intellectual and emotional. I chose to be as open as possible, despite my fears and the possibility of rejection. Ultimately she did reject me. But the experience of love that took place inside me made it all worth it. I felt more connected to everything.

I’ve learned that my heart cannot be broken in the traditional sense, it can be bent, beaten, misshapen, lost in the dark and cold, but never broken, never irreparable. And I have learned that the deeper I allow myself to go into love, no matter the outcome, the more love and joy I become capable of experiencing. Risking love in the face of suffering and allowing the heart to break open to deeper experiences of grief, empathy and compassion can lead to an awakened life.

And yet now, after experiencing such a difficult relationship with Knight over the last six months, I find myself afraid and withdrawn, struggling to be vulnerable again. I have new lovers, a married couple and a long-time friend with whom there has been a long unexplored spark, and I am struggling to be vulnerable to them with my feelings and desires.

“I suggest you study the relationship between what you want and what you have to offer.” From Eric Francis’ Cancer Horoscope for 2010

What do I want? I desire to live an awakened life and I desire to live every moment of my life from the deepest experience of love a human being can know.

What do I have to offer? My vulnerability. My willingness to be seen, to be open, to risk for love. When I write here, it is from a place of vulnerability because I hope that by sharing my experience, my story, someone else may find something valuable for their own story.

What do I want from others, in relationship? Their vulnerability, their willingness to risk opening themselves to love, no matter where it leads.

What keeps us from vulnerability? Shame. Shame is a fear of disconnection and a belief that we are not worthy of connection/belonging/love. We think, "I am not _________ enough to belong." (Fill in the blank -- smart, beautiful, talented, wealthy, outgoing, charismatic, etc.)

I don't know that I have ever been as vulnerable as I was with Knight. We had an intimacy that was rare in my experience of relationships. And I feel that Knight rejected me in a very significant way when he shut down his heart to partnership with me. So vulnerability, being fully seen, is more frightening than ever. Will anyone stick around if they see the worst of me? Am I too emotionally unbalanced to be connect/belong/be loved? Allowing myself to be seen in entirety, especially my shadow and the challenges I have in managing my emotions, scares me very much.

I hope to find inside myself whatever it was that I found before that inspired me to choose open-heartedness. I desire to renew that commitment and to open my heart again, as fully as I'm capable. I desire to be fully seen - raw, wild, french kissing life and bleeding on the page with heart-opening vulnerability.

Invitation to Sex Positive Spiritual Community

2010-11-23T22:26:00.000-08:00

"Community, especially a community of like-minded souls, is a blessing like none other." Caroline Myss

I am finally following the call of my heart to create what I long for.

I have talked to several in the community in the last year or so about spiritual community and I have heard that there are many interested in connecting with others around spirituality and conscious evolution.

"One of the riches of the awakening path is that it becomes entirely possible to look beyond the accumulated baggage of the religions and philosophies, beyond notions of atheism, non-theism, pantheism...to feel and experience the presence of the sacred without getting tangled up in doctrine and belief." Josey Moray

Most of us have only experienced spiritual community within churches, particular religions or traditions that we found confining or lacking in significant ways, especially regarding sexuality and kink. Most of us are also probably jaded about any leadership organization constructed around spirit. All of these are true for me.

However, I miss spiritual community. I miss the rituals of creating sacred space and time in which to share our in-love-ness with the Divine/Universe. I miss having conversations with other people about the spiritual journey -- what is god, the nature of reality, the reason for being, all the big questions, as well as the small ones. How do we make it through each day of work and family and friends and lovers and a world full of suffering with a deep sense of joy, love and connectedness?

What I am proposing is a circle - a gathering of people committed to working together and providing support for one another on the conscious or spiritual journey. Some of you may not resonate as deeply with concepts such as God and spirituality as others of us do, yet you still perceive the Sacred in life or strive to live consciously. I believe we can find enough common ground as well as learn from each other's diverse perspectives, just like we do with sexuality through the Imps community.

The truth is that I don't know exactly what this will look like. We have the wonderful and intimidating opportunity to do something new. We can use our amazing power to create spaces where energetic magic happens in a whole new way. We can create a community where we are not bound by dogma and conformity to an external standard, but are joined by our desire to evolve, to become more conscious, to experience more of the Sacred in our lives, to express our sexual nature, and to deepen relationship.

Relationship is part of my spiritual practice, not just romantic/sexual relationships, but friendships, family, etc. I experience my highest highs (Divine Union) and my lowest lows (the hell of perceived separation) in relationship. I need a spiritual community that recognizes that at every level, including the sexual. I am proposing the idea of sex positive spirituality - a space where sex and kink are part of the spiritual conversation and recognized as important tools on the path to awakening. I have a feeling that many of you would appreciate a space like this.

I have been considering what our gatherings might include and have had the following ideas, knowing that others may have inspirations of their own and the group should decide together what will flow best over the long term:

* Possible structure: an opening prayer/meditation/ritual to establish sacred space both externally and internally (so that we can hold sacred space for one another), a time for any personal sharings--joys or struggles or creative expressions that we may desire to be witnessed, a presentation and facilitated discussion and/or activity around a particular topic (readings distributed in advance), and a closing prayer or meditation to ground the energy.

* We could consider holding rituals around Sacred Holidays of our choosing. My intention is to start with a Winter Solstice gathering on Sunday, December 19th.

* Everyone is a teacher and student. We all have different tools that we use on our journey and different teachings that have transformed us. I envision each person who is willing leading a meeting, choosing the topic of exploration and arranging whatever materials are needed (with assistance if needed). It could also be possible for two or three people to present a topic together. I would like to lead the first couple meetings to give us some momentum and give time to build intimacy within which people are more willing to be bold in their sharing.

* At some point early on we should talk about our spiritual histories and what we are all looking for in spiritual community to discover where we resonate most strongly.

* Possible topics: spiritual and self-work practices (meditation, prayer, ritual, psychological approaches, archetypes, personal honor code, etc.); inspirational teachings from various traditions or modern teachers; intuitive or divination tools (Tarot, Runes, etc.); and creative practices (sharing mystical poetry, making sacred objects, etc.).

* We may find that there are some people interested in exploring Tantra and other sexual-spiritual practices in a group setting and facilitate other events beyond the biweekly meetings. This could be true for diving deeper into any particular topic.

* * *

I am going to open my home every other Sunday evening for the circle beginning December 19th at 6 p.m. If an earlier time ends up working better for the majority of interested people, I am open to adjusting for future meetings.

On the 19th I will be facilitating a Yule or Winter Solstice Ritual...a celebration of the promise of the Light's return in all it's power. I intend to incorporate a celebration of the light we shine for each other in relationship as individuals and community.

I am sending this out as an open invitation because I realized recently that I have no idea who might most be attracted to and benefit from sex positive spiritual community. I am trusting the Universe to bring the right group of people together for the most beautiful opportunities to evolve.

Please RSVP for the event by Facebook messaging me or emailing me at opheliared@yahoo.com, as well as to receive directions if you've never been to The Barn. I'd like to have an idea of how many people to expect.

* * *

Image Source: Mark Springle

15 Writers Who Have Influenced Me

2010-11-15T19:54:00.000-08:00

Josie at safetycomfort tagged me with this.

Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen writers who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.

These are my influential writers and a few words about how they've influenced me...

Susie Bright - Sexual Freedom, Creative Empowerment

Leo Buscaglia - Love

Thomas Moore - The Soul, Loving Our Humanness, Bridging Transcendence and Immanence

Rob Brezny - Pronoia, Creative Generosity (He inspired The Conspiracy of Blessings)

Shiloh McCloud - Feminine Creativity and Spirituality

bell hooks - Love, Social Justice

Mark Nepo - Awakening

John Welwood - Love and Awakening

Eve Ensler - Women's Empowerment, Healing (Author of The Vagina Monologues - She inspired The Yoni Endeavor)

Caroline Myss - My Spiritual Teacher

Andrew Harvey - Mysticism, Queer Spirituality, The Divine Feminine

Lucille Clifton - Feminine Wisdom in Poetry (Huge influence on me in college as I was learning to embrace myself as a woman.)

And four science fiction writers because they deeply inspire me:

Frank Herbert - Incredible Insight into Human Evolution (Philosophy, Religion, Politics)

Octavia Butler - Gave me a Heroine with the Gift of Empathy

Dan Simmons & Orson Scott Card - Beautiful Visions of What Humans Can Become

*

I am going to tag people I'd love to answer this in Facebook.

(Image Source: Enter the Heart by Shiloh McCloud

Coming Out of the Spiritual Closet

2010-11-14T21:45:00.000-08:00

From today's entry in Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening (I want to give this book to everyone I know):

Being true to who we are
means carrying our spirit like a candle
in the center of our darkness.

If we are to live without silencing or numbing essential parts of who we are, a vow must be invoked and upheld within oneself. The same commitments we pronounce when embarking on a marriage can be understood internally as a devotion to the care of one's soul: to have and to hold...for better or for worse....in sickness and in health....to love and to cherish, till death do us part.

This means staying committed to your inner path. This means not separating from yourself when things get tough or confusing. This means accepting and embracing your faults and limitations. It means loving yourself no matter how others see you. It means cherishing the unchangeable radiance that lives within you, no matter the cuts and bruises along the way. It means binding your life with a solemn pledge to the truth of your soul.

It is interesting that the nautical definition of marry is "to join two ropes end to end by interweaving their strands." To marry one's soul suggests that we interweave the life of our spirit with the life of our psychology; the life of our faith and truth with the life of our doubts and anxiety. And just as two ropes that are married create a tie that is twice as strong, when we marry our humanness to our spirit, we create a life that is doubly strong in the world.

Yes. This is what is seek, to make myself stronger in the world by marrying my humanness to my spirit. I am withdrawing from Imps leadership - and the pursuit of full-time/partnership relationship - because I need to learn to hold space for humanness, first my own so that I can better hold space for others. I am choosing to dive into my spirit, to strengthen my relationship with the Divine within so that I can better relate to the Divine in the others. I am pulling back and examining every life choice from the perspective of integrity and desire: is this aligned with what I know about myself, what I know about Love, and my Divinely inspired desires for my life?

I need to fall in love with my self and my dreams. I need to learn who April really is and fall madly, deeply in love with all that I find: both my Divine Spark and my imperfect human filled with quirky desires that are spiritual and hedonistic, generous and narcissistic, creative and ordinary, playful and dark.

Letting go of the Impropriety Society is one of the most difficult things I have ever done. But over and over God has asked me to turn my heart towards my spiritual longing, and over and over I have only gone so far and then said no, I will go no further. I would entangle myself in relationship or creative projects, and exhaust myself so that solitary time was spent vegging out in recovery rather than in soul-feeding activities (art, writing, reading, spiritual practice, yoga, etc.). I would keep my spirituality subdued, so that the people who know and love me best really have no idea how important God and the spiritual life is to me. And my emotional, physical and spiritual health suffered for it. I am not living in integrity with my faith and my truth.

This is how deep my faith is: I have known every single moment of my life that there is some kind of God/Universal Energy/Sacred Presence, something that binds all of life and feeds the passionate energy of evolution. I believe conscious growth and evolution is the point of everything. We are pieces of God experiencing all of life through evolution. And somehow it's all powered by Love.

I have always, even in my darkest moments, felt held by God and trusted the power of Love. This seems to be a rare life experience, to not have known one moment of doubt or faithlessness. I don't know how to explain my deep abiding faith in God and Love, especially in light of how much trauma and loss I have experienced in my life. Maybe I was born with it. Maybe faith is part of my unique genius.

It is this faith that keeps me choosing open-heartedness as much as I possibly can no matter what happens in my life, no matter the heartache and painful experience that comes from being vulnerable. I trust that I cannot be broken. I trust that God and Love will keep me safe and thriving in life no matter what circumstances come my way. I trust that the only thing that holds me back is my fear, which is why I work so hard to become conscious of my fears and fear based behaviors. I shine the light into my darkness so that I may act in enlightenment and love as often as possible.

And maybe this genius for faith and my desire to contribute to our collective evolution is why I am drawn to this idea of sex positive spiritual guidance (coaching, counseling, whatever), with a creative twist (using art/music/writing projects as part of the coaching process), as the kind of work I desire to be doing in the world. I believe this is my bliss, the vocation I have been looking for since I initiated myself 15 years ago as Priestess/Bodhissatva, surrendering my life in devotion to lightening the suffering of all beings. That has always been the driving motivation of my community service, art, writing, and my flavor of giving friendship and love.

My first step towards this goal is putting out an invitation very soon for spiritual community to gather in my home on a biweekly basis to share ritual, prayer/meditation, study and discussion about the spiritual journey (and whatever else we decide to do together). Through conversations with community members I have found that for some of us there is a hunger for spiritual connection. We believe in some kind of Divine Presence or Universal Energy or Sacred Connection, and we see its importance and expression in our relationships. We don't feel comfortable in churches. We don't know of any spiritual communities for sex positive, bdsm practicing, queer and poly freaky people. Even the ones that embrace freaky folk don't bring discussions of these parts of our lives into the spiritual conversation. And what we get from the sex positive community doesn't fill our longing to share our personal spiritual journey with others who feel a connection to the Sacred in some way. I desire this in my own life and so I am going to try to facilitate the creation of it within our community.

The interesting thing is that I have been thinking and talking about doing this for two years. Truthfully, I've been feeling called to it for many years in various forms and I have kept saying no. I probably have friends who doubt I'll follow through this time because they've been listening to me talk and not act for so long. But I can't ignore the longing in my own heart any longer...or the fact that a week after deciding to resign from the Imps the Universe sent me a friend who specifically asked me to do this because she needs it, too. It doesn't get any more obvious that I am being called than that.

Being true to who I am is bridging transcendent spirituality with immanent earthy human life and sexuality. To marry my own soul is to marry the importance of my spiritual path to the rest of my life, despite the fears of exclusion, rejection, loneliness, etc. I am following God's call to come out of the spiritual closet and am trusting that my tribe and community, who has held all the freakiness and quirky Aprilness I could throw at them, will continue to hold me, support me and connect with me where I am most in integrity with the truth of who I am.

I am trusting Love.

***
Image Source: Born of Light by Meganne Forbes

Night Tears

2010-11-10T10:40:00.000-08:00

There is a crying
that happens at night
that does not come
while the light is with us.
There are things that cannot
be evaded
once the sun goes down.
Small nocturnal creatures
with sharp white teeth
silently gnaw at the edges of
belly and heart
when the darkness descends
and the void inside
grows larger.

It can split you open.

And bone
in the centre of your chest
aches
like the cracked wishing bone
from the turkey breast.

And if we are strong enough
to be weak enough
we are given a wound
that never heals.

It is the gift
that keeps the heart open.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer © 1995

Longing

2010-11-08T21:07:00.000-08:00

Here,
in the center of my chest,
their constant dwelling:
the persistent yearning
the insistent craving
the unbidden imagining
the desire awakening
the daydream, the nightdream
the reverie unfolding:
the language of longing
drawing me home.

~ Jan Richardson, In Wisdom’s Path

Sometimes it aches, much like grief. Sometimes it feels dark, like emptiness. Sometimes it feels like incredible passion that has no outlet for expression. It comes in waves. It will come when I am alone. It will come when I am surrounded by others. It will even come when I am in another’s embrace.

Longing. A deep reaching for something I can feel, yet mostly remains just out of grasp. It feels like I crave something much bigger than my heart can hold, possibly bigger than life itself.

"Longing is the core of mystery. Longing itself brings the cure. The only rule is, suffer the pain. Your desires must be disciplined And what you want to happen in time, sacrificed." ~Rumi

I have been contemplating and reading a lot about longing. Actually, the Universe has been talking to me about longing. I am attempting to truly understand this place I keep returning to. No matter what path I follow, no matter what I do with my life or what relationships I form, I keep coming back to this incessant and deep longing for something more. I can project onto other people or creative projects for awhile, but it never lasts. I return to what feels like the vast space between me and everything, me and God.

Intellectually, I know it is a longing for Oneness and direct experience of the Divine. That is the source of all our longing, a desire to return to where we come from, where there is no separation or isolation. Wearing a skinsuit (as a dear friend puts it), sets us apart from one another. While we can penetrate each others bodies and experience communion through shared energy, we can never truly become one while we are in skinsuits. I cannot join you in yours, you cannot join me in mine.

Oh but we try. I have been first hand witness to a couple hundred people attempting to assuage their longing for a few brief moments as they dance and play and fuck in a room together. I have had rapturous moments with lovers in a union of love and orgasm. We crave sex because it is the closest thing to Oneness most of us know.

And then there are those of us who have tasted Oneness through ritual, altered states induced by substances or body modification or prayer, and energetic experiences with individuals and groups. My empathic experiences certainly feel like Oneness.

No matter how we get there the experience is brief. Few of us have attained enlightenment – which I believe is a full time conscious experience of Oneness with All That Is. The rest of us get brief tastes...and we may likely become addicted to them.

I know all this intellectually, I know to the core of my being that spiritual connection is a vital expression of who I am, and yet I keep turning away from it. I lack discipline and I find distraction in what feels good, especially intimacy (oxytocin, touch, emotional vulnerability) and relationship (validation), which may be addictions, and justify it as conscious experience through which I am evolving. I am evolving in many ways, but I am also stagnating spiritually, returning to the same place over and over again.

"Our longing is the way." Rumi

Here. Where the longing is so great I feel it physically in my chest. It's time to dive in to the mystery, to follow the trail along which longing leads me. No more distractions and avoidance. No more hiding. My longing is the way.

Your Life Is Your Art (said Anais Nin)

2010-11-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

I love Fall. I am sitting here with my laptop drinking a cup of tea, warmed by the roaring fire in the woodstove, surrounded on two sides by views of the trees, sun streaming through the windows, and I find myself in a strange place of both deep comfort and unsettledness. I am sitting with a significant decision I've made to near completely change my life over the next 7-9 months.

All of my life I have been making my life from found art. I have taken what the Universe drops in my path and made the most extraordinary beauty I could possibly muster from it. I have transformed tragedy into treasure, at times literally turning it into service, art and poetry that impacted other people's lives in positive ways. I made motherhood my art, attempting creative mastery at holding space for my children's conscious unfolding. I've chosen unsatisfying but secure administrative work that pays well in order to provide for my children, and have learned how to become a good leader and successfully run an organization with a fairly healthy and very loving culture because of my experience.

Whatever life hands me, no matter how dark, dirty or mundane, I will transform it into something remarkable.

All of my life I have also made myself visible by serving the needs of others. I had a revelation through an NLP session with Dave Berman at Manifest Positivity that I believe I earn my visibility to others through my generosity and service. If I was not giving, then I didn't believe I was visible or lovable. I believed that I had to justify or earn my existence and love from others.

I have never taken a significant life dream of my own and brought it into reality. I haven't actually spent much time dreaming, not really. One reason is that I haven't had the time for it because I am so busy serving other people's dreams, whether it's my children's dreams, or my partner's dreams (when I have one), or my employer's dream for their organization and the dreams of the people they serve, or the dreams of the Imps community (or whatever community I'm volunteering for).

Another reason I haven't dreamed much is because I didn't believe dreams could come true for me. In my early 20's, after having to make so many sacrifices of my own desires to meet my children's needs, I stopped believing that I could have anything different. They came first and then I tried to satisfy pieces of myself wherever I could find the space (making sculptures while watching movies with the family, late night writing after everyone was asleep, occasional weekend trips to the city, etc.).

It's not that I don't have dreams, I just haven't spent much time with them. I have dreams that live in the background of my heart. Since I was a teenager I have dreamed of being a writer who touches other people's lives in a positive way by sharing my stories and the insights into being human that they've unfolded in me. I've dreamt of creating community based multi-media art projects that bring healing to groups that are in conflict. I've dreamt of telling other people's stories through art and writing, stories of people who are different and need to be understood for who they are, or people who have survived terrible things that we need to change in the world but are too damn complacent because the realities don't touch us. I used to talk about searching for some kind of grant funding that would allow me to focus on creative work (but never really believed it would happen for me).

I have also dreamed a long time of being a counselor of some kind, helping people make sense of their life stories, offer experiences that facilitate healing, and support them in living consciously. At times I've thought about it through the lens of spiritual guidance. Now maybe I would call it sex positive spiritual guidance.

Two weeks ago I decided it's time to make my dreams come true. I am going to refocus my energy into creating the work of my heart. I am going to put my energy this winter into figuring out how to transition from my current work to the work I desire to be doing with people. Steps toward this will include working through the Fire Starter Sessions (which I purchased months ago but haven't spent any time with), changing my blog home and purpose, promoting my writing, participating in establishing a sex positive peer support group, and creating/facilitating a spiritual community of some kind.

I am also planning to relocate, probably to the Bay Area, next summer. I am dreaming of finding community that meets my needs spiritually and creatively and I've never really found it in Humboldt. There are many amazing people here and I am so incredibly grateful for their presence in my life, but I've never found resonance with other artists or spiritual communities here. I feel an urban area that draws a much wider diversity of creative and spiritual people might be a better fit for me.

Shifting my focus means that I am resigning immediately as a hostess (event coordinator) for the Impropriety Society. I don't know exactly that my relationship to the Imps will look like over the coming months, but it will be changing in significant ways to make space in my life for following my heart. While I love our community and love the impact the parties have on people's lives, I am not getting my needs for personal fulfillment met by big event production. I've been serving a need I see rather than serving in ways that bring me the most joy.

I look foward to witnessing how the Imps will continue to grow and thrive in my absence. I trust my partners and the people who have stepped into leadership to both carry forward the best of who are now and create new visions of who we could be. And perhaps I will carry the Imps into my new home in some way, bringing our vision for inclusive sex positive culture into a place that has allowed diversity to keep people apart.

Whatever role the Imps play in my life from here forward, it's time for me to craft my life into the masterpiece I know it can be and will allow me to serve in ways that bring me the most joy.

What It Means to Be Sex Positive

2010-10-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

As I was pulling educational materials together for the Carnal-Val event last month, I pulled together definitions of what it means to be sex positive.

This is one of the most comprehensive definitions I've found as stated by the Executive Director of the Center for Sex Positive Culture in Seattle...

Sex-positive is a cultural philosophy that understands sexuality as a positive force in personal development and society. To be sex-positive is to believe that…

Consensual sexual expression is a basic human right regardless of the form that expression takes.

People have the right to accurate and straightforward sexual health information.

It is not appropriate to judge others consensual choices regarding how to have sex, who to have sex with, and how one defines their sexual orientation and identity.

It is equally important to focus on the positive aspects of sexuality, like sexual pleasure, and not just disease prevention, prevention of sexual assault and unwanted pregnancy.

Sexuality is largely socially constructed, and there are few if any essential truths about sex.

As I reflected on this definition, I realized that I have not been practicing sex positivity with myself.

Because I am very literally surrounded by people who explore and encourage casual sex and relationship in various ways, whether they are couples or single, I have assumed that sex positive means being open to casual interaction. I have felt pressure as a sex positive leader to explore sexual openness through ethical sluttiness, especially within the poly relationship that I attempted with Knight.

The truth is that I have lacked a sex positive attitude towards my own natural sexual tendencies because they are very different than most of the people I know. I have doubted myself and tried to tell different stories about who I am in order to fit into other people's ideas of open sexuality. While open-minded exploration of my own edges in order to determine who I am and what I desire is a positive thing, doubting/distrusting myself is not.

Over the summer I explored the possibility of being an ethical slut and pursuing casual sexual and power exchange encounters. While I had conversations with several people, I only had one casual encounter, which was fun but less than fulfilling. In my explorations I discovered that I have no desire to connect with someone sexually if I do not connect with them intellectually and emotionally. I don't experience excitement from encounters with (near) strangers like many of my friends. I don't experience excitement from sexual chemistry alone.

I experience excitement in connecting with people at multiple levels, at having my mind, heart and body stimulated simultaneously. Being sex positive is accepting that that it is all right to only desire deeper connection with my sexual partners.

While I am a lusty woman who can get down and dirty in all kinds of ways, the truth is that sex is a sacred act in my life. I am learning to accept that the fullest expression of my sexuality is intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical. Anything less is not in integrity with who I am or what I desire.

Love and Fear

2010-10-04T20:51:00.000-07:00

"Her wounds came from the same source as her power."
Adrienne Rich

I have been passionately interested in love and healthy relationship since I was a teenager. I don't mean romantic love, although I have had typical obsessions with romantic relationship over the years. I mean the Big Love, the Love that is the life's blood of the Universe, the Love believed by all the world's religions. The sort of love represented in the story of the sacrifice of Jesus' life for humanity. When I was a practicing Christian (ages 3-20), I was deeply touched by the story of Jesus and his immense love for us all. I desired to feel that love in my own life and be that love with other people.

I started reading Leo Buscaglia, the first university professor to teach love, when I was 15. I started working on my self development with Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled when I was 16. Even in the midst of living with my mother's narcissism, addictions and emotional abuse, my stepfather's alcoholism, and my father's neglect I knew there was a happier way to live and I knew it was based in love.

Back then I perceived it as God's Love. As my understanding of God, religion/spirituality and love have grown over years of intellectual study and experiential living, what remains is this knowing deep in my heart that we are capable of living with so much more love than we do. We are so afraid, afraid every day in so many ways. I seem to have been born with an innate awareness of, and drive to create, the Love filled lives that we are capable of living. I can feel the potential of it and everything in my life is motivated towards growing deeper in love for myself and others. My deepest desire for relationship is to find others who will go to the depths of love with me, who will choose to face our shadows together and work to heal into greater experiences of love together.

There is very little black-and-white duality sort of thinking that I invest in anymore, but I do believe that all of our emotions and choices, big or small, are based in either love or fear. Love leads to expansion, fear leads to contraction. Love allows us to be big and shine our lights for one another, fear causes us to shrink into the shadows. Love leads to Oneness, fear leads to separation/isolation.

It seems that part of my ability as an intuitive/empath is to feel when people are making love or fear based choices. I just know, even when they aren't necessarily conscious of their own motivations. I also tend to have intuition about what a person could do to choose love rather than continue in a fear-based pattern. That isn't just intuition, I have a 15 year self education in self development, psychology, philosophy, religion and spirituality. I have a pretty good understanding of how the human heart and mind work (based on our current collective understanding, of course we still have much to learn).

It very literally hurts my heart to witness/feel people choose fear. Because it hurts, I judge it as bad. I don't know how to change that. I don't know that I should. I watched fear slowly kill my mother. Her fear eventually grew so big that she became psychotic with delusions. I watch my ex-husband sit day after day for 7 years in his bedroom in front of his computer because he was too afraid to interact with the world. He lives a very small and depressed life (and I lived that life with him for awhile because I was afraid to give up my delusions about our so-called partnership and be on my own again). I've felt the big impact fear can have, and I see it's little impact in people's lives every day (including my own).

For a long time I have struggled with the story that my mom, my ex, and others chose fear over their love for me. Because I chose my children when fear could have ruled my life, I have told myself the story that my mother chose her fear, her addictions, and her narcissism over me, as if it was a conscious decision she made very day. Same with my ex-husband. I believed he chose his fear over our family. I made it personal and I am working on changing that. It isn't ever about me, it's about their own relationship to love and fear. But even if I take myself out of it, the reality is that it hurts to watch the people I love suffer from fear based choices.

*

"Closing the heart is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we close it, we attract more reasons to keep it closed. Opening the heart is a soul-fulfilling prophecy. When we open it, we attract blessings." Jeff Brown

Part of my grief process right now is accepting that Knight made a fear based choice four months ago (and actively maintained since) that prevents our relationship from being what it could be. It has nothing to do with poly. It has to do with what is, or isn't, between us by his choice. He told me this when we came back together, but I didn't want to believe it. I chose to hope for the potential for great love I could feel between us. I poured my whole heart into our relationship. But he did not do the same. And now I know that I can't be in a relationship that isn't whole. I can't be in a relationship where fear prevents love from flowing and healing from taking place.

The struggle I am having right now is with the story that Knight chose his fear over his love for me. I don't know how not to take it personally, how not to feel rejected. I realize that the bigness of my grief, and my anger towards Knight, come from the history of the people I love choosing their fear. This is a pattern in my life.

The struggle I am having right now is with my own fear. My fear tells me that I will always feel rejected in his presence. My fear tells me that I can never be emotionally intimate with him again, even as friends. My fear tells me that I am not strong enough to bear watching him having other relationships in this community, relationships that I have to watch unfold and be expressed through BDSM and sex in public, in front of me at the parties that I help create.

I am scared. I am scared of how much more this is going to hurt. I am scared that it will hurt too much. My fear tells me to shut down, to shut him out, to try and make myself cold so that I don't feel it. My fear tells me to stay angry so that I can fall out of love with him.

Now I face the choice between fear and love. What are the loving choices for myself and towards Knight as we transition away from a romantic relationship to each other? What is the most loving choice for the community as I try to navigate my grief as we approach a big party? Can I be a positive role-model by making it about love, by embracing Knight as my friend and his other relationships as part of his joy? I desire more than anything for him to be happy. I just wanted him to be happy going to the depths of love with me.

*

It isn't about being fearless. Most of us will struggle with fear all our lives. We're evolutionarily conditioned for it and it's something we have to change as a species.

It's a matter of being willing to face our fear, to shine the light on our shadows in order to experience deeper joy, love, and intimacy. Most of us run from our shadows, especially in relationship. Yet there is nothing more intimate than sharing the evolutionary process with another person and actively choosing love in the face of fear together. There is nothing more vulnerable than exposing your darkest shadows to each other, forgive yourself and the other, and to choose to heal through conscious action to be happier and more loving together.

Telling the Truth

2010-09-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

I have not written for the last month because I have not wanted to face the truths of my life and my relationship with Knight. Writing requires truth-telling. I have been avoiding the truth. I have been hiding away and telling myself all kinds of sad stories instead.

*

I have been telling myself for months the story that I need to be fixed, that I am broken, wounded, and unable to have healthy (poly) relationship because the way Knight is choosing to do poly and be in relationship to me causes me suffering.

But it isn't true.

I faced my demons and dug through the past and tried to approach love from every possible conscious angle in order work through my poly issues to stay connected to Knight. I brought everything I had to the table -- everything I know and am daily learning about conscious relationship, psychology, spirituality and love. I tried to fix my mind and my heart, thinking that if I just worked on myself hard enough I would stop suffering. (And I have been so very mean to myself in the process.) But no matter how much work I do on myself, the truth is that my needs and desires for Knight and for relationship aren't being met. We want different things from our relationship. When I take all the wounded stories away, the truth is that I desire more than a part-time relationship with the love of my life. If I am going to give my all, I need someone who will bring their all to the table for me and for our relationship.

*

I have been telling myself for months the story that I might be crazy and that I can't manage my emotions. My mother never got better. My mother died because she had a psychotic break after years of trying to heal her depression. She was a narcissist and narcissists rarely get better because they can't get out of their self-obsession. I had a tough time convincing my doctor the other day that I was once Borderline because Borderlines don't usually get better either. She told me Borderline is on the Narcissistic spectrum (which makes sense). The laws of both nature and nurture are against me in this. It is so easy to believe the story that I am and always will be mentally ill because I feel emotions so deeply.

But it isn't true.

The truth is that I have been at the mercy of crazy hormones the last few months because I have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome and this is the new way it is manifesting (I will write more about PCOS and its impact on my life in another post). PCOS can cause depression and severe mood swings. My mood swings have been on monthly cycles. I am not crazy. I have fucked up chemistry right now. I saw my doctor recently to take steps to become healthy and hormonally balanced again.

*

Today I learned just how healthy and loving that I am. Today I hugged the man who put a gun to my head on the night my daughter was conceived nearly 16 years ago. Today I celebrated with him the amazing and beautiful young woman that we created together in our violence and insanity.

Today I came full circle with the night I hit bottom, when my insanity was at its worst, when I nearly lost my life while my 4 year old son was sleeping on the other side of my bedroom wall. That is the night that turned my life around. When I found out I was pregnant, I realized that I would damage two children the way I was damaged if I didn't pull myself out of the crazy. So I have worked on my self for 15 years. And I didn't just pull myself out the crazy. I raised two remarkable human beings almost entirely on my own. I contributed to my community through my work and my volunteerism every year since, no matter my personal struggles. I am a successful artist, writer and community leader.

The truth is that I am not broken. I am fucking amazing. I am big and powerful and I am worth someone giving their whole heart to. I love big and I love deep. I need someone who will meet me in the big and deep.

As a dear friend once wrote about me, the truth is that I am woman living an ordinary life in an extraordinary way. I am a woman who desires (and strives) to love in extraordinary ways.

The truth is that I am a woman too big for part-time relationships and unfulfilling office work. It's time to move into a life that is as big as I am, in my work, in my relationships, in every way.

*

This past week I finally faced the truth. This past week I learned that I am not broken or unhealthy because I am not happy with the choices Knight is making in regards to our relationship. This past week I finally realized that I both desire and deserve more...that if I desire to give someone all of my heart, I should only be giving it someone who desires to give me all of theirs (even if they share it with others).

I am finally admitting what is true, to myself, to Knight and to my tribe so they can support me in letting go, so they can remind me why I can't go back (even though I am sobbing right now because I want so badly to be in his arms rather than walking away).

*

I will be writing again but this will no longer be the story of my relationship with Knight. While I believe we will eventually be close friends again, I am moving onto a new chapter in my life. This will be the story of my grief, my growth and my resurrection into greater love and joy.

The Power of Your Intense Fragility

2010-09-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
-e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

To Make Love is to Make Justice

2010-08-31T14:18:00.000-07:00

Our Passion for Justice – Carter Heyward

Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling, not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being “drawn toward”. Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one’s friends and enemies. Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggles, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm fuzzy experience. I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.

For this reason, loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called “love”. Love is a choice - not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity - a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is a choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh. (Thank you Kelly!)

As The Impropriety Society takes steps toward becoming a non-profit organization, I have been inspired with the thought that the mission and vision of The Society should include love. It is my perception that everything that we do is relationship building. Our service is facilitating safe, fun and beautiful spaces for relationships to unfold between people, whether that relationship is between volunteer staff and community member, voyeur and exhibitionist, new play partners, or long-term friends and lovers. How better to build relationships than on a basis of love?

When the Hostesses started the Society, our intent and desire was to throw fun and sexy parties. Little did we know what we were in for. While we could have focused entirely on throwing events without regard for the community we serve, we have discovered that it is our passion to build community through inclusiveness in all possible ways. We have also discovered that opening Pandora's Box of freedom in sex and relationship has the consequence of unleashing big emotions and fears in tandem with the pleasure and joy. We consciously acknowledge what arises and act from an intention to support each other in our processes of growth and healing when things get rough.

I believe that it is an act of love to embrace another human being who expresses something that challenges our own worldview. The Imps community commits these acts of love regularly. We embrace the person who has a kink we don't understand rather than reject them in judgment or fear. We embrace the person who creates a difficult situation in ignorance and practice forgiveness and education rather than exclusion. We even embrace ourselves when we discover we have desires that we've been conditioned to believe are disgusting or morally wrong. It is an act of love for self to come out of the closet and it is an act of love to support others when they come out of theirs.

The Impropriety Society believes in freedom of expression. But the space we create for freedom doesn't only require physical security, people require a sense of emotional safety in order to be vulnerable. People need permission to be open; they need to be boldly invited and encouraged to express themselves. We facilitate emotionally safe spaces and invite people to express the fullness of who they are, whether that means expressing themselves sexually or in other ways. Our parties aren't as much about the acts of sex as they are about a place where we can be integrated, where our sexuality isn't excluded from our experience like it is in the rest of life beyond our bedroom. Many who attend our events don't have sex, but express themselves openly through talk and dance and play.

What I am learning is that successfully creating emotional safety requires a loving intent. Emotional safety extends beyond having a Vibes Crew at our events, it includes facilitating an emotionally safe space for written expression on our Yahoo list and encouraging posters to communicate with compassion rather than hostility (especially when they disagree). Facilitating emotional safety includes radical honesty in interactions between staff in order to find understanding with each other when we experience conflicts. Facilitating emotional safety means finding compassion for those that hurt us and reaching out when it's hardest to do so. And it means choosing what is best for the collective over our own ego desires or reactions. All of these are acts of love.

The last few weeks I have met people who feel they are bound by cultural, professional, relationship or other limitations and cannot be free to be who they are. I met a 50 year old man who has an incredible new passion for sexual discovery but is married to a woman who has no desire for sexual adventure, so he is seeking covert relationships. I learned of a prominent political activist who can't attend play parties because it would tarnish his reputation. I know several people who are concerned that they will lose clients or suffer negative consequences in their workplace if they attend Imps events. I am heartbroken by these stories. Wonderful people who do good things in the world cannot participate in the bliss--the community friendship and love--that so many of us have experienced at our parties. Or if they can participate, they have to hide it rather than celebrate something that brings them great joy.

As a culture we are so frickin' mixed up. We demand good sex stays in the bedroom but we pull it out into the streets as often as possible in order to oppress or manipulate other people, especially those that oppose our worldview. We humiliate each other with sex. We use sex as a weapon. We broadcast headlines when people hurt each other through sex but we hide away all the loving sexual experiences that are happening all over the world every day.

Sex positive activism is seeking justice for everyone who varies from cultural norms around sexual expression. We are seeking justice for everyone who has been or will be oppressed and have their rights, their job or their children taken away because of their sexual expression. Just as we advocate for the rights of homosexuals to marry, we advocate for the right to be free with our sexuality (as long as we are consensual and don't cause harm to others). We are seeking to create a culture where no one has to worry about losing their job or their child or going to jail because they enjoy sex at a party or whipping someone with a flogger or have multiple relationships.

If we spent as much time and energy condemning those that are causing harm to others through sex crimes and sexual exploitation as we do condemning healthy sexual expression in good people, we could save the minds, lives and bodies of millions of men, women and children. If we spent as much time and energy celebrating our sexuality as we do hiding it, judging it, and hurting each other with it, we would all experience more freedom and happiness in our relationships to one another.

Becoming a non-profit organization and extending our services to expand the circle of emotional safety puts us on the frontline of the sex positive revolution. We are taking a bold step because we believe in justice and freedom. We are committing to a mission to better ourselves and the world because we love: we love community, we love freedom, we love sex, and we love what we have created together the last two and a half years. I am excited to see what unfolds for The Society and Humboldt County as we evolve and grow.

***

Image Source: Love One Another by Shiloh Sophia

The Sweet Confinement of Your Aloneness

2010-08-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of poetry that rips my heart open in the most exquisite way.

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond Love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that doesn’t bring you alive

is too small for you.

~ David Whyte

* * * * *

Tonight I am sitting in my sweet darkness. I have moments of feeling the confinement of my aloneness. I have become so resistant to being alone. I didn’t use to be this way. Before my marriage I became very comfortable as a single mother and did all kinds of things that brought me joy when I was alone. I loved those too rare moments when I had the house to myself and could indulge in anything I desired. Yet now I am uncomfortable on my own, questioning that somehow I am less because I am not in the company of others. Between 7 years of living with someone and 2.5 years of participating in my glorious community I have become addicted to the validation of relationship.

But I do think there is more to it. Here’s an interesting question – am I having difficulty being alone because I’m having difficulty knowing what I desire?

Alone means that I can sing my heart out to any music I want.

Alone means that I can dance without inhibition.

Alone means that I can read and write without external distraction.

Alone means that I can make art (I can't even remember the last time I made art just for my self and the sake of creation).

Alone means that I can focus on my self and my connection to the All through spiritual practice, ritual, divination, and journal writing.

I know that I desire meaningful interactions with other people more than anything else. And I don’t experience much meaningful connection at work, where I spend so much time, so I drink up what I can when I can. But I can not have a balanced life if I do not spend time on my own, putting energy into other activities that nurture my soul and all of who I am.

How different would life be if I was doing what I desired for work – connecting meaningfully with other people? It’s what I always hoped for in non-profit work, but family survival drove me into administration (where the better money is), which rarely leads to meaningful connection. It’s all about information management. I desire to be creating and delivering programs that hold space for or facilitate transformation in people.

The thing is that I can't make the transition to the work-of-meaningful-connections without spending time on my own to develop the foundation of delivering this work to the world, whether through the Imps or through my own business or both. I cannot create the work and the life I desire if I am spending all of my free time socializing with others.

It's time to accept the sweet darkness, to see the freedom in my aloneness and discover what truly brings me alive.

*

(P.S. I actually wrote this post a couple nights ago, but my internet at home wasn't working.)

Image Source: Alone in the Dark by Vaclav Sirc

The Unexpected Gifts of Online Dating

2010-08-16T16:20:00.001-07:00

I am having a much different experience with online dating than I have ever had before. Since I've gone into this new adventure with a desire for sexual exploration specifically (and without any kind of hope/expectation for finding a long term partner), I am finding my understanding of a "successful" connection is much more open.

Gift: In my last post I mentioned a man who is turning me on intellectually. We have shared our sexual interests and fantasies in writing and in conversation. Through our sharings, and more specifically through answering his questions, I have explored many ideas and new fantasies. I am learning new things about myself, sexually and emotionally, with nearly every interaction. Due to scheduling and other issues, we haven't had a sexual encounter yet. And maybe for one reason or another we won't. I don't know. But it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I am continuing to unfold in new and beautiful ways as I learn more about who I am and what I desire.

Gift: I am experiencing openness at a new level. I follow nearly every impulse to express what I'm thinking or feeling, even if it may lead nowhere or even to rejection. I am enjoying the process of being open for itself, rather than picking and choosing who I am open to because I am invested in something specific coming from it.

Gift: I am realizing that I am not really a shy person any longer. I don't have difficulty talking to or being open with new people. I share my sexual vulnerabilities with no restraint. I need to let go of the story and any limitations that come from the story that I am shy.

Gift: My confidence in expressing myself is getting stronger every day. I am becoming more bold and I am becoming more of a flirt. I hope to carry this confidence and flirtaciousness into my every day life.

My Rules of Attraction

2010-08-12T00:16:00.001-07:00

As mentioned previously, I put out an ad under Craiglist's Casual Encounters, specifically seeking sexual domination. This is the part describing what I thought I am looking for...

Seeking a kind yet sexually dominant man who desires to use me as his fucktoy. Someone who is strong and forceful in his desire to use my body for his pleasure. Someone who can make me weak in the knees and desiring to submit the first time we meet. I have fetishes for cock worship/face fucking, ass play, spanking, and bondage. I love dirty talk. I am open to trying new kinks...Send a pic and tell me what you'd like to do to me.

I had slim hope of finding someone who would actually turn me on in the way I described. When I place personal ads, it's often more of an invitation to the Universe to bring something my way, under any circumstances. But you never know.

Most of the 60+ responses were ridiculous one liners or generic and poorly written or included cock shots rather than a face pic. It was amusing...and disappointing. I am an intelligent woman cruising CL, I know there has to be intelligent men doing the same.

The thing is that I have incredibly high standards. Intelligence really turns me on, as does creativity. A combination of the two, with high emotional intelligence as well, and you could have me squirming.

And someone does. He is intriguing. He seems to be a nice guy, smart as hell, a fellow writer(!), great conversationalist...and he is already enticing my slutty submissive out to play. He was bold enough to send me erotic instructions the other morning, before we'd even met. I wanted to obey. He's told me a bit of what he wants to do to me and I am eager to play. We've mostly been interacting through writing, which I really enjoy. I love connecting through writing, especially erotically. I love having a freedom in saying what I'm feeling that I don't experience in person. And I appreciate opportunities to practice writing about sex. I would love to turn people on with my words.

I am recognizing that part of this adventure into sluthood has to do with exploring the flavors of attraction. What turns me on and why? How much has to do with the person and how much with the act? What kind of ecstasy can I achieve with various combinations of lover and kink? Can I experience open-heartedness by dropping my walls and being sexually vulnerable in emotionally safe but non-romantic/non-bonded interactions?

I am fascinated by the questions and the discoveries that are arising from this new adventure.

Tomorrow...an exploration into why I'm seeking out experiences in submission through objectification and humiliation.

Wait...Slut? What?

2010-08-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

If you have been a regular follower of my blog, which has been mostly dormant the last month, then you're probably wondering where the heck the last post about exploring my inner slut came from.

As I work to make my peace with Knight's desire for sexual explorations that don't involve me, I've been noticing my responses to his desires. I've been noticing my judgments about sexual exploration without established relationship, whether with strangers or acquaintances. I've been noticing a belief that anything "less" than what we have in love and chemistry isn't worth exploring. I am realizing that I have tangled up sex and love more deeply than ever before in my life.

I know that when I have a judgment, I need to be looking inside for what I may be rejecting in myself.

I used to be an ethical slut. I've had over 60 lovers in my life. It wasn't all healthy, I admit to significant self-esteem issues, but it wasn't all dysfunctional either. I started exploring poly in my mid 20's. Before meeting my ex-husband, I successfully navigated poly relationships as a non-partnered person. I had a lot of sex and a variety of connections, from fuck buddy to long-term love. I had amazing one night stands and repeated weekend dalliances where there was more sexual magic than I've had with most of my long-term lovers. I know through experience that there are many healthy and wonderful ways to sexually connect with other people that might last a couple hours or years and never lead to a partner relationship. I am so grateful to have known those people and shared the incredible experiences.

So where has all this judgment come from? When did I start believing that having a deep love makes all other connections somehow less meaningful or worthwhile?

I have also had incredible desire to open myself to more sensual and sexual expression within the Imps community. I have dear friends with whom I would love to share sexual and power exchange experiences. I have felt attraction for people at parties that I have been too shy to approach. In truth, I have been desiring all of the same things that Knight is desiring -- the freedom to explore sexual attraction, the excitement of experiencing new things with new people, and the intimacy of allowing friendship to include erotic interaction. But I've been telling myself a lot of stories about why I can't have those things.

I think I am holding all potential relationships to the standard of mine and Knight's in self protection. I think that there may be a self-esteem issue at play here, in reverse of what it used to be. In the darkest days of my youth, I used to seek sex with just about anyone who would look my way in a desperate grab for the validation, as well as physical touch and affection. But I am not desperate for those things now. While I still have self-love issues to work through (and really, who doesn't?), I have lots of love, affection and fabulous sex in my life. The desires I have now are just that, authentic desires sourced in my intense sexuality.

I am a highly sexual woman and I always have been. But I've kept it mostly to myself. I've shown it to some people, people I feel safe and comfortable with, and Knight in particular knows that part of me more intimately than anyone. I believe I've been experiencing a new level of sexual awakening with the Imps and Knight as I express and explore my true desires (rather than being satisfied with what my partner offers). But I am really struggling to accept my desires. I am especially struggling to believe that anyone else would want to make them come true.

What Knight has noticed in me is a belief that I am not desired by others. A belief that he's the only one who wants me (hence my clinging to him so tightly!). He's pointed out how I dismiss every possible sign that someone may be interested in me. He talked to me the other day about my having sexual prowess and incredible erotic power and I found myself cringing inside at the idea. I would never consider myself as someone who has sexual prowess. I have never thought of myself as seductive or having erotic power of any kind. In fact, my greatest insecurity as an Imps hostess is that I am not the sex goddess that people would expect an erotic hostess to be.

But I think the truth may be that I am. I love, adore, and cherish sex and sexual expression of all kinds. I love to read erotica. I love erotic art. I love a great sex scene in a movie. I love to throw sex parties! I love to witness other people's sexual expression. And when I allow myself to fully express my sexuality, it touches people deeply. I open myself deeply. I am known for going deep as a submissive and masochist. I am cherished for the fullness of presence that I give and my willingness to truly surrender. Just as I express intensity of feeling in other areas of my life, I bring a rich emotional experience to sex, whether the scene is based in love or primal lust. It is never just physical with me. If you consider the vulnerability with which I write about my personal evolution here, then you might imagine the vulnerability I bring into sexual experiences.

I need to recognize that I am an incredibly sexy woman because I love expressing my sexuality. I've known this about others. Sexy isn't about looks or age or other surface factors. Sexy is about one's open expression of their sexuality. We love people who are bold and vulnerable about being their authentic sexy selves (which is why our performers are so adored!). Doesn't that apply to me (and you), too?

This, and more, is what led to putting myself out into the dating world through an online dating service a couple weeks ago, and now a Craigslist ad. A few weeks ago, in what I determined to be a healthy choice to expand my relationship world, I signed up for a dating site. It was more of an invitation to the Universe to bring new connections into my life than an actual hope that something would come of it. But some good things have unfolded because I am following my impulses. As I've met a few men and really considered what I'm interested in experiencing, I've come to realize that I desire to fulfill some specific fantasies involving sexual domination and humiliation. I've been fantasizing almost exclusively about sexual domination for the past several months. My explorations in D/s with Knight have been few and far between due to our rocky relationship status. I am hungry for more. So I wrote the CL ad.

Every man I've met so far has desired me. I have made my choices of whether to pursue the potential from an empowered place. This is so very new and wonderful.

I am finally accepting the sexual and sexy woman that I am. I am letting my inner slut out to play. I am expressing the sex goddess within me. I'll let you know how it goes. ;)

Exploring My Inner Slut

2010-08-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

I came across this wonderful article yesterday...

My Sluthood, Myself

I think it's awesome that a woman is writing so openly and positively about identifying as a slut.

This came at a serendipitous time as I've recently decided to explore my inner slut in ways that I never have before, including a casual encounters posting at Craigslist seeking sexual domination. This is emotionally risky behavior for me. I am intentionally pushing my edges around the entanglement of sex, intimacy and love. I am desiring to explore pleasure for it's own sake and genuine connections with people that are based in shared sexual passion rather than romantic intentions. I am attempting to open my heart, my mind and my body to exploring my deepest fantasies without the emotional safety of already established relationship.

I am finding that even admitting my desire to be slutty is uncomfortable. I have to wonder how much is societal conditioning and how much is about my unwillingness to open my heart to less than "love-of-my- life" sexual intimacy? I wonder how much of the story I've been telling about "needing" emotional connection is actually true and how much is fear masquerading as a sense of self protection? I wonder how much my reliance on emotional connection has been about my inability to be my own best support no matter my relationship status?

I am significantly involved in a community that supports sexual exploration, surrounded by people pushing their own edges, and yet I've been incredibly restrained, wrapped up in conditioning about the necessity of safety through emotional connection. While I've had casual sex before, I can't say that it was from an empowered place or that it was free of the motivation of finding a deeper relationship. It was more likely driven by that motivation in most cases. And I've never been open to power exchange with strangers, or even acquaintances (well, other than birthday spankings at a social). The vulnerability of submission is something I've been unwilling to give to someone I am not bonded to as friend or lover. I am now questioning my self imposed limitations in order to discover what is really true for me rather than continuing to live the old stories I've been telling myself. I love people and I believe good connection with others is possible in all sorts of ways, so why am I living a story that keeps me from exploring those possibilities?

I like this passage...

"Even now...when I am actually ready for and wanting a more emotional connection, sluthood keeps me centered. It keeps me from confusing desire and affection with something deeper. It means I have another choice besides celibacy and settling. It means I won't enter another committed relationship just to satisfy my basic need for sex and affection. It gives me more choices, it makes room for relationships to evolve organically, to take the shape they will before anyone defines them."

And this passage was unexpected.. .

"I'm telling you this because sluthood requires support. Because any woman who indulges these urges carries with her a lifetime of censure and threat. That's a loud chorus to overcome. A slut needs a posse who finds her exploits almost as delicious as she finds them herself, who cares about her safety and her stories and her happiness but not one whit about her virtue. A slut alone is a slut in difficulty, possibly in danger."

This is an aspect of our sex-positive community that I hadn't considered before. But it's so true. I don't know that I would feel safe and sane exploring my sluthood if I didn't have friends who support my sexual adventures with enthusiasm and without judgment.

Maybe emotional safety means something different than a deep intimate relationship with one person. Maybe it means being vulnerable enough to be held by many and strong enough to hold myself when no one else can be there.

It Really Is All About Love

2010-07-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

Even though this blog is supposed to be a diary of my life as an erotic hostess, I haven't been writing about the Society the last few months. This is because I have been experiencing significant burn-out, as well as distraction with the intensity of my personal life and the changes I am going through.

As I shift and evolve in my personal relationships, I am having realizations about my relationship to the community. I have been processing my thoughts and feelings about my future with the Society mostly privately. I think it's time to be open about my present experience.

"What I want to say is this: You know. You know what you want and who you are. You. Know." Danielle LaPorte

I keep telling myself and everyone else that I don't know what I want, or that I only know little pieces of what I want but can't create a full picture of the life that is an expression of my most authentic self.

Last night I experienced one of those pieces and the fire in me is burning brighter. One of the other Imp Hostesses and I were on local radio station KHSU's Thursday Night Talk. We participated in an hour-long discussion about the growing sex-positive movement from a political and revolutionary perspective.

I LOVE talking about the revolution. I believe the Imps community, as well as many other communities around the country, are on the front-lines of a new sexual (and relationship) revolution that could ultimately impact all aspects of our culture. As we experience sexual freedom and healthy relationship, we also experience freedom to be integrated and emotionally healthy beings in all aspects of our lives (as parents, teachers, employers, workers, community leaders, politicians, etc.). The more in touch we are with who we really are, and the more we can express ourselves openly, the more love we will experience in our lives. If we can heal and transform all of our relationships into loving expressions, then we will be motivated towards a culture that expresses love rather than fear and violence.

When we say we want to change the world -- doesn't it really always come down to ending fear and violence? War is violence. Environmental destruction is violence. Government oppression is violence. Racism, sexism, and all other such -isms are violence. Dysfunctional families are violent. And what am I learning in my personal life? That is takes self-love and love for one another to overcome violence. It is in our personal relationships that we can be saved as a culture, as a species. It really is all about love.

The sex positive community provides significant opportunities for evolution toward love. We are learning healthy communication and practicing radical honesty, which can be applied to all aspects of our lives. We are consciously supporting each others growth, mostly willing to face our shadows and work together to forgiveness, acceptance and love. We are deepening the intimacy of community by walking through the relationship fire together -- simultaneously as lovers, friends, and community co-creators.

What do I truly desire?

I desire to have public conversations, like last night's radio show, about the importance of the sex-positive revolution to individuals and society. I desire to talk about the importance of love to individual and cultural evolution. I desire to write and talk about the change that I am experiencing and witnessing in the lives around me.

I desire time to write and work on art projects as part of my contribution to the conversation.

I desire to facilitate community education in non-violent communication and conscious relationship practices.

I desire to facilitate experiences for conscious engagement with our lives -- whether through sexual expression, creativity, and/or intimate conversations.

I desire to continue nurturing conscious leadership practices.

I desire to co-create a spiritual community.

I desire to be more deeply involved with individual journeys. I desire to work with people in the midst of transformation. I have a lot to offer in love, learning and experience to coach/counsel others on their journeys through change -- whether grief, recovering from trauma, relationship shifts or other life altering experiences.

How does this relate to my role as an erotic hostess?

What isn't working for me is the administrative responsibilities for producing Imps events. I put a lot of time and energy into managing logistics for events and I don't enjoy it. And because my time is going to administrative functions, I don't have the time to put into expanding our education and community outreach. I put so much mental and physical effort into making parties happen that I am often too tired and sore to be emotionally present to the community at the events themselves. I am burned out. I have lost my passion and everything feels like obligation.

What I enjoy most is relationship -- interacting with other people in deep and intimate ways. Witnessing people unfold. Hearing people's stories. Sharing conversation and experiences in which we learn and grow from participating in each others lives, whether for a day or a lifetime. While I love our parties and the opportunities for freedom and healing they create, I desire to put my energy into going deeper between events.

And I desire to move out of this 9-5 job into work-of-my-heart. I don't know how to do that in addition to what I am doing now. Something has to change. But I know that the Society and I should be able to continue supporting each other in our evolutions. What that will look like, I don't know yet. But I'm excited to finally speak my truth, open my heart to the possibilities, and find out.

Beannacht (“Blessing”)

2010-07-30T11:30:00.001-07:00

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

– John O’Donohue

* * *

I used to send this poem out with all of the art blessing packages I sent for The Conspiracy of Blessings, but I had forgotten about it. So grateful the Universe brought it back to me.

* * *

Image Source: Laramie Sasseville

Sex Without Love (Poem)

2010-07-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

~ Sharon Olds

Go to the Limits of Your Longing

2010-07-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

God speaks to each of us
as he makes us,
then walks with us silently
out of the night.

These are the words
we dimly hear:

You, sent out
beyond your recall,
Go to the limits
of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

Everything Is Waiting For You

2010-07-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely, even you, at times, have felt the grand array; the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

~ David Whyte ~

The Guest House

2010-07-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

– Rumi, Translation by Coleman Barks

***

This is my favorite Rumi poem.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

2010-07-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep in your heart the miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.” Kahlil Gibran

I am striving to accept the seasons of my heart.

It has been awhile since I've written and with the move into a new house this weekend (as well as social plans for my birthday), I likely won't get more than this post done in the next week unless I'm positively inspired. I recognize there is so much I haven't shared here, that I've neglected my commitment to sharing my story. I haven't written about the fantastic last weekend in June when Knight and I visited San Fransisco to check out the Citadel (a BDSM club) and the Pride celebration (after which I was truly intoxicated on love and joy), or stopping in Harbin on the return home and finding an unexpected moment of deep intimacy with a friend. I haven't written about the near argument we had on the way home about limitations on our time together and the clusterfuck of communication issues that have followed. Things have gotten very heavy again, but we are trying to truly understand one another and see if we can work it out.

I also haven't shared about my sudden leap into dating others! Or the Society's incredibly successful social last Saturday night. But I will, when the time is right.

So much of my journey right now is about faith/trust.

The move is a big deal, so I am attempting to be kind to myself about how my self-care and spiritual practices have lapsed the last couple weeks. Moving is an incredible, potentially life-altering, act of self-care. I have been itching to move out of the old place for nearly two years. We have not been happy there for a long time. The landlords do not take care of problems and we have fallen into habits of neglect, so the place is falling apart in lots of ways. We also don't like the neighborhood (there was a drug-related shooting two houses away a few weeks ago). But more importantly, we've never been able to shake the feeling of dark and funky energy from my marriage. My ex-husband and I moved into the house with my kids during our first year together. We lived there for 7 years together. The house has physical reminders of our emotional and physical violence (he put holes in walls and doors), reminders of so many things that we would rather forget. It feels like the walls are soaked in grief and heartache. We would like to start over, to feel good about the space we inhabit.

We are moving into a lovely little house on Jacoby Creek called The Barn (the roof has a barn-like shape). I have always wanted to live away from town. We are surrounded by redwoods. You can hear the creek when you open the windows or step out on the front porch. The landlord is a nice guy who does take care of business (except for the potholes in the driveway). The house was inhabited for the last year by two dear friends who have filled it with positive vibes. And my next door neighbor is one of my best friends. I believe this will be a healing place to live on many levels for both my daughter and I.

However, despite all the good reasons for our move, I am also experiencing incredible grief because I am not moving in with Knight as we had planned. I am packing up my house by myself to continue life on my own as a single mother. I am grieving a dream -- the dream of a home and a life shared, the dream of partnership. I have dreamed of having a true partner all of my adult life and believed that dream was coming true with Knight. Now I have no idea where our relationship is headed and believe it is healthiest to let the dream go for now.

It hurts. A lot. Grief is strange and unpredictable.

We have also had a lot of communication issues the last couple weeks that have made me question our relationship more than ever, as well as caused me considerable heartache. And this is where the title of this post comes in. True transformation is a tricky process. It's not as linear as we'd like. It often involves tripping over ourselves, having to take steps backwards before we can permanently move forward. I have given over to my grief and frustration the last couple weeks instead of maintaining my diligence towards active self-care and positive/spiritual perceptions. I've allowed myself to descend into darkness rather than pull myself by the bootstraps into the light. I've experienced considerable resistance toward nearly all of the activities that were enlightening my process (except for walking and reading The Book of Awakening every morning).

I desire to move forward again, to bring back the experiences of expansiveness and connection to Oneness. I am hoping the exhaustion from packing up my life is a significant part of the issue and things will shift after the move on Saturday. I am hoping that I am inspired to good feeling as I create a new sanctuary. There is no place more sacred to me than my home. I know that it will feed my soul to wake up to redwoods in my window every morning and the sounds of creek water whenever I step outside. I know that while I am not moving in with Knight as a life-partner, I have a best friend next door who believes our business partnership extends far beyond the Society and provides incredible care for me when I need it. While it looks different than I had expected or hoped for, I am still experiencing a dream come true.

Needs

2010-07-12T16:47:00.000-07:00

I am having a lot of difficulty with the concept of needs. So much of the reading I've been doing about conscious relationship, polyamory, self-love, etc. talks about needs, meeting our own needs as well as communicating our needs so that they can be met by our partners. But there is no real definition of a need vs. a desire. I am really struggling to understand what my needs actually are and how important they are. Is having most of my perceived needs met more important than being in a loving relationship that meets some of them?

As human beings we have basic needs. There are survival needs: food, shelter, clothing, etc. For a vibrant life, there are also needs for self-care and connection to other human beings (to be witnessed and intimacy through conversation and touch). But beyond that, can anything else be called a need?

If I am a healthy single person with friends and community but not dating, then anything that would be called a relationship need is null and void. I can live without sex with another person. I can live without romantic intimacy. I can live without the validation. I can live without everything that comes from romantic involvement. So what are my needs in romantic relationship and how many of them should I expect to be met by someone I'm dating vs. a boy/girl-friend vs. a life partner?

Over the last two weeks Knight and I have had a series of situations involving poor communication around the changes and losses taking place in our relationship in order to accommodate his relationship with Rose. I have been trying to determine what I need in order to feel emotionally safe and cared for in an intimate relationship with him (or anyone). One need I have established is to feel considered and included in decisions that affect our relationship and time together.

On the heels of our emotional heaviness, this weekend was the first kid-free weekend that Knight chose to spend with his other lover. We have spent all of his kid-free weekends together since our relationship began, except for the couple weeks between "breaking up" and coming together in this new relationship.

What I am learning about my experience of transitioning from a full-time life-partner relationship into part-time poly-dating relationship is that it isn't just the lost time that is difficult to adjust to, but his inaccessibility during that time. I can't call him for any reason, no matter what's unfolding in my life (unless it's an absolute emergency). I can't flirt by text with him when I'm feeling loving or sexual. Nor can I call on him when I am having a difficult day. He is inaccessible because he needs to protect his relationship with another. We have been communicating nearly every day of our relationship and now even that is decreased by this new relationship.

What caused me suffering this weekend was that after spending 7 hours cleaning and packing my house on Saturday and again on Sunday, I was extremely tired and sore and all I needed (desired?) was to be witnessed and held by Knight. I needed to be naked and raw with someone, witnessed and held in my experience, and he is the only person with whom I have that level of intimacy. But he wasn't available. I couldn't even reach out to tell him what I was experiencing. I was alone.

In the moment it felt like a need and I suffered for not having it met. But here I am on the other side, still a whole person (yet sad and confused because the man I love wasn't there for me). So was it need? Or just a desire? Is it a temporary feeling that will shift over time as I continue to share him? Or do I need a partner who is more accessible to me?

I am caught up in sadness and confusion (amplified by exhaustion and physical pain) and likely to darken our date tonight with my grief over the changes that keep happening to our relationship. This was the man I was going to share a life and a home with. Now I have to accept that not only is that dream not coming true, but I am losing time, accessibility and intimacy with Knight because of what he is choosing to give his other relationship.

I have a lot of questions coming up for me around the sort of poly arrangement that Knight desires to live and whether partnership could ever be an option. Can one be a life-partner if they are only sharing half their life -- half their time and accessibility, half their resources available for intimate relationship?

Knight talks a lot about desiring to treat us both like whole people. But I don't experience my wholeness being honored when I can only have my needs met on our date nights and the rest of the time I am on my own...like a single person. How do I continue to be completely vulnerable and open with someone in a part-time relationship whom I cannot depend on except when time is scheduled? Do I truly desire to?

I have been a single mother, navigating life on my own and for other human beings, since I was 17 years old. Even within my so-called marriage I was alone in significant ways -- the only (4.5 out of 7 years) or primary breadwinner and the only one to keep the house and family functioning while my ex-husband played on his computer all day and night. I very strongly desire a life-partner -- someone to share the day-to-day joys and responsibilities of family, someone to share community with, someone to provide support when life gets rough, and someone who desires to meet most of my emotional needs in intimate relationship. I desire to have someone I know will at least strive to be there when I'm falling apart. I also desire to go as deep into conscious and spiritual partnership as possible. I just don't know how that's possible in a part-time relationship.

I am deeply concerned that no matter how much Knight and I love each other, we just may not be compatible in our desires for relationship or structures of polyamory. I am not giving up yet. I am just trying to see the truth of the situation.

Radical Self Love

2010-07-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

I have not been loving myself well the last week and a half, hence my quiet here. I will write another post about what I've been experiencing, but I desire to share this.

A few weeks back I talked about writing a letter to myself for when I feel triggered, to remind me of everything I know when I am not in the fear-fog. This is different than the love letter I wrote to the Invisible Girl, although I think I will keep the letters together to turn to when I need them. I will be carrying this in my wallet so that I can be my own greatest friend when I feel triggered, lost and/or alone.

* * * * *

April My Love,

I am proud of you and I have faith in you, even now. You are in the midst of a psychological and spiritual awakening. You are deepening into love and healing your fear. It feels like chaos. It feels uncertain. And that is exactly right because you are challenging the conditioning of a lifetime and revolutionizing relationship. You are choosing to be a trailblazer in Love.

If you are reading this letter, it is likely you are feeling very insecure, or you have been triggered and you need trigger care. If you are immersed in fear stories (and you know what is fear and what is love), then you need to give yourself time to come out of the darkness before making *any* decisions. Remember the wreckage you have caused by believing the fog is all there is. You may feel lost and out of control, but the loving insights *always* come.

Remember that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. Your longing is a Holy Longing for yourself and for God. Try to shift your perspective to Oneness and eternal connection.

Honor your wholeness.

"Being present--rather than being emotional--is what allows real intimacy to happen." John Welwood

Please don't become your emotions. Feelings are meant to move through you, please stop gripping them so hard.

Be present. Hold space for yourself. Be your own witness and sit with yourself no matter how uncomfortable or painful it is. Trust yourself. Do not resist what comes, let it move through you. Resistance creates suffering. Hell is the rejection of things as they are.

Be kind and forgiving with yourself. It is all right that you still have places to heal. It is all right that you get triggered and break down sometimes. It is all right that you have big emotions, they are as much your gift in relating to others as they are your challenge. You are doing your best. You are not crazy and you are not your mother. You are strong, resilient and functional and you are growing into healing and deeper love. This is just another opportunity to wake up.

Keep your heart open. Remember that safety and security are illusions. Being raw and genuine, even in your heartache, is what's real.

Ask for help and support if you need it. Trust that the people who love you desire to support you -- even if they can't make the space to do so right away.

Remember that you believe in the open-heartedness of poly. Whatever you are feeling, in your body, in your heart, is a fear response. Talk to your fear. Find out what it needs for you to feel safe and loved.

"I imagine God loves in multiplicity, and with no conditions. That God has figured out that there is more than enough of her to go around, that love is never in short supply. I can't imagine God saying, sorry, I'm taken." Lori Lothian

If this involves Knight, remember that you are responsible to this relationship. Remember that commitment isn't about what we call ourselves or how much time we spend together, it's about our willingness to love and hold space for everything in each other. Remember that he is committed to you and holding space for your process. Remember that our strength comes from growing consciously together. He loves you. Trust him and trust the relationship you are building.

Remember that you love Knight for his open-heartedness. Remember that in your love for him, you desire for him to shine his light as brightly as possible – please don’t try to diminish him with your fear. You desire him to be authentic and to experience the fullest possible awakening and joy - that will involve other relationships. Find compersion for those relationships, in the spiritual perspective if necessary. Find the love in Knight's other relationships. Use your empathy to feel the joy they bring one another (you know how blessed anyone is to have Knight's love). Honor that they are opportunities to wake each other up.

Remember it has never been another person or anything other than the fear between you that has caused the rifts in intimacy and trust between you and Knight (or anyone else).

Be grateful for the ways this relationship is smacking you awake.

"...if you love someone, go deep into your own unique experience of what that love is, and just let that be who you are. Surrender to it. Build your identity upon it. You are not a person who is jealous. Not someone who's trying to control. Not even someone who's fearing. You are love experiencing itself deeper and deeper within its own fullness."

You are Love. Love your self, April, all the best ways you know how.

Storm

2010-07-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

Your kiss is the wind, beautiful girl.
Don't tell me you have to go.

I'll stand on my toes
on your toes
just to reach the rice paper of your eyelids

just to lay my fingers across your throat.

Your hands are tide-licked bone
and I must confess

I'm a little afraid
of how easily we could
blow away.

Or how easily we could snap,
tangled as we are into that space between two heartbeats -
my fists locked around your bird bones
and your teeth clenched
on my ear.

I wouldn't mean to do it, but
you see, I've just discovered
this vein of cruelty running through me.

I always mean to touch you tenderly,

I always try! But your skin, somehow,
begs for bruises

and the hurricane of your sobbing
is such an enchanting sound.

Tell me, please, that when I drink away your rain,
your smile will come out,

you'll assure me that I read
you right,

let me kiss your typhoon eyes.

~ Andy I (also known on Fetlife as Yandy)

Rewriting the Fairy Tale

2010-07-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

Someone asked Knight recently how he felt about being called Knight in my blog. When I was writing one of my first posts about our story, I felt I needed a pseudonym because I wasn't sure that he wanted his name used. Of course, the people who read this blog who are part of our tribe already know who he is, but I desire to respect his privacy as much as possible (fortunately, he loves the way I write our story and doesn't feel his privacy is invaded by my blogging).

Knight was the first "name" that popped into my head, so I followed the intuitive nudge. At the time I wrote, "In many ways he has been my Knight in Shining Armor, even if we may not live happily ever after from a traditional perspective. We are rewriting the fairy tale and redefining 'happily ever after.'"

Knight feels that perhaps it's too big a name to live up to. But I don't feel that it is, especially when looked at from an archetypal rather than literal perspective.

Part of my path as a modern mystic is to look at my life and the world through symbolic sight. Caroline Myss is an excellent teacher in this regard. Symbolic Sight is "a way of seeing and understanding yourself, other people, and life events in terms of universal archetypal patterns. Developing symbolic sight enhances your intuitive ability as it allows you to view events, people and challenges in an objective light."

I am striving to understand our relationship through symbolic sight and archetypes. I don't perceive Knight as my rescuer or savior. That's part of rewriting the fairytale. Our traditional fairytales are about a princess being saved by a hero. I believe our fairytales need to change.

"A true soulmate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.” from Eat Pray Love

Knight has been a catalyst for me to save myself. Loving him and being loved by him is smacking me awake to the truth that I am the Queen and Heroine of my own life. And in my love for him, I am cheering for him to be his own Knight and rescue himself from his own wounding and sense of separation from the All.

What if we had fairytales about couples who catalyze one another to save themselves?

What if we had fairytales about couples who build each other up? Instead of stories of co-dependence or independence, what if we told stories of healthy interdependence?

What if happily ever after looks like a commitment to an authentic, healthy relationship, no matter how hard we have to work on ourselves to make it possible?

What if happily ever after looks like loving each other forever no matter the form our relationship takes, even if it means letting go because it's the most loving thing to do?

***Photograph by Annie Leibovitz

Prayers for the Broken

2010-06-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

Memorial crosses symbolizing what is lost due to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill stand in the front yard of a house in Grand Isle, La., Tuesday, June 1, 2010. "This is breaking people," property owner Patrick Shay, not pictured, said of the spill's effect on Grand Isle residents. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) Huffington Post

I am sitting in presence with the oil spill for the first time this morning, not because I've wanted to remain blissfully ignorant of this disaster, but because I know the depth of pain that is there and it is overwhelming for me, especially in my current openness to the energy of all life. I cannot stop crying. To attempt to hold space in my heart for all the human pain and animal/plant death is incredibly difficult. But necessary.

The Buddhist spiritual practice of Tonglen is to breathe in the suffering of the world and breathe out compassion and healing. I am doing this practice this morning and every morning from now on.

I pray for those who have the intelligence and education to find solutions to the spill and the damage it is causing.

I pray for all of the individuals and families impacted by this disaster to receive the emotional and financial support they need.

I pray for protection for the ocean, the plants and the animals that are still alive.

I pray for the awakening of us all so that we stop wounding ourselves and the planet in these terrible ways.

Masochism: Lessons in Pain & Unbounded Power

2010-06-20T16:11:00.000-07:00

I have a very special friend with whom I have a complex and strangely intimate relationship. He is special because he is a fellow mystic with whom I can share my journey in the most intimate ways. He is special because he was my closest friend after my mother died and an amazing gift in my grief process (although not always in the nurturing way you might expect). But my friend is also a sadist who will consciously and joyfully take me into the places that scare me both physically and emotionally in order to help me face my fear, heal and evolve. This creates a tension in our relationship.

I am a masochist - spiritually, emotionally and physically. I willingly move toward fear and pain. It forces me to grow, to dive deeply into my own darkness and fly out more spacious. It gives me release. It tests my resilience and endurance. And physical masochism allows me to express and transform spiritual and emotional heartache through my body.

My masochist is powerfully attracted to my friend's sadist. The pain he is capable of inflicting with joy is terrifying, more than I know I can handle. And yet I feel a strong desire to surrender to him, to allow him to push me to my edges.

It isn't the same as the submission I surrender to Knight. My masochist and my servant-submissive archetypes are very different. Masochism isn't about service to another's will. It is about surrender to fear and pain, in the hands of someone I trust not to harm me.

My friend and I have had several impact scenes over the years, but always at parties, always light because they were limited by time and space. He is moving away from Humboldt soon and I have been experiencing a growing desire to see what would happen if we allowed my masochist and his sadist to dance without limitation before he goes. I expressed my desire to him recently and discovered he had the same thought.

Last Saturday night we danced. It was an ordeal. It blew my body, my mind and my heart wide open. It mirrored my current emotional experiences in powerful and excruciating ways. I am overflowing with insights. I believe that I was subconsciously seeking an ordeal all along, knowing that my friend would push me to my edges and beyond.

This dance was different than any other BDSM scene I had done before. It was the most physically and emotionally trying scene I have experienced. We started with dinner and a mystical conversation. As we moved into scene space, we talked about some of the things that came up for me (like how it freaked me out when he slapped my face). I was very vocal, which I usually am not. I talked about feelings and fears I was experiencing in the moment. I admitted when it hurt. I cried torrents of tears. I called him names. I stood up for myself when he taunted me. I even fought back to make it stop and refused to allow certain sensations to continue. It was the first time I refused to completely surrender to the physical play.

But I experienced complete surrender emotionally. I shared my raw pain with no inhibition. My habitual pattern is to keep my pain to myself, both in scene and in life. I pride myself on my endurance, strength and resilience. I hide away with my darkness as much as possible. It scares me to be so vulnerable as to share my raw pain with another and trust that they can and will hold me. But I put it all out there with him. I was afraid he would judge me as weak for carrying on, or that he would disappointed if I didn't go as far as he thought I could, yet I didn't push myself any further than I believed in that moment that I could go. I accepted my limits and I expressed the hurt when I reached them. I believe there is a lesson in this for me in "real life."

This scene was also different because my tolerance for pain has changed. I am far more sensitive. While I can still endure a lot, it feels like pain rather than intense sensation that can be processed and even enjoyed. We couldn't break through to the "forever place" (that magical transcendent bottom space that usually comes from an intense scene). In my head I asked myself several times why I was putting myself through it, why I kept surrendering to more hurt. I eventually refused to take any more. All I could see was fear of pain. I couldn't see the spaciousness on the other side.

I looked into the mirror of the experience and saw that I fear that the heartache I am currently experiencing around poly and my triggers will never end. I am afraid my wounds will never heal and it will hurt forever. And I am frustrated that either path I take -- staying with Knight in a poly relationship or giving him up -- both lead to pain. It feels like I have no choice about hurting.

But they are two distinctly different kinds of heartache. Giving up my relationship with Knight would be the loss of the greatest love I have known and tremendous grief. Facing my demons in poly relationship will (likely/hopefully) lead to more love and a healing of these gaping wounds I've been carrying around and picking at since my mom died. I will come out more spacious and joy-full on the other side.

I think I have become too identified with pain (read the link - it's really good!). I think I might believe that my wounds will be open wounds forever and evolving will always have to hurt. Maybe I believe life itself is painful. Maybe I even believe that I deserve to hurt.

From the link above: "Personally, I haven't run from my pain. I compensated for it. I spent so much time accommodating it, "working with it", paying attention to it –- NOT avoiding it, that I neglected my very agency and power: my joy. Unbridled, unabashedly sweet, essential joyousness."

I think I am afraid of my power unbounded by the limits of fear and heartache. I am afraid of my own bigness. I am reminded of this well-known quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I am interested in seeing what unfolds in the coming days because I have a sense that even though we couldn't move me into the "forever place," we broke something open in me energetically. I seem to be extraordinarily sensitive, not just to other people's energies, but the energy of life itself. Those ecstatic states I recently wrote about? More. Bigger. Deeper. I feel the Divine moving through me in strong currents, a sort of electricity through my body and my heart. I feel Oneness, my connectedness to all of life through my Divine Spark.

Lunchtime at the marsh today I really felt recognition that the God in me is the God in everything, which makes me as big as the Universe. It brought me to tears.

One of the things we talked about over dinner before our scene was my frustration with feeling disconnected from the Divine. Even with my new spiritual practices, I have been struggling with really feeling connected to God like I did when I was younger. My intuition is telling me that this new opening to the energy of life may be my door into the personal relationship with the Divine I have been craving.

What might life be like if we are capable of sustaining a sense of Oneness most or all of the time in all that we do? What might our relationships be like if we are aware that we are relating God to God in every conversation and in every touch?

It sounds so far-fetched, doesn't it? Who am I to talk about being God? Yet everything I have studied and experienced in my life has led to this and it is what I strive for -- to know myself and you for the delicious (and quirky) facets of God that we are.

On the practical level, there is something in this for healthy polyamory, too. When talking to my friend recently about my struggles with Knight's growing love for another, he asked the question: what if I see her as an aspect of myself in the Divine? What if I see her as an aspect of the God in me who will love and hurt him differently/uniquely, but just as perfectly as I do for his evolution into his own Divine nature? Where is the room for fear and jealousy in that awareness?

So many big questions. I look forward to living the answers.

Courage

2010-06-18T14:35:00.000-07:00

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon

I am really proud of myself for my courage.

Last night I had dinner with Knight and his new lover, whom I shall call Rose (we share a love of roses). I did not feel ready for it. I had strong urges to back out of it. But I did it anyway and am so incredibly grateful that I chose love.

Knight started talking about the three of us getting together within a week of their relationship beginning. I was hesitant for many reasons. For one, it feels like everything is moving really fast and the idea of meeting implied a bigness to their
NRE that I don't want to acknowledge. Knight and I didn't call ourselves a couple for nearly two months and I didn't meet his daughters for more than three months. Yet here he was asking me to invite this new lover into my heart only two weeks into their relationship.

Secondly, there is the bigness of my own process around accepting their relationship. I am still suffering from nervous belly every day. I am struggling emotionally every time they have a date. I have no idea what will trigger me. What if I was triggered by their interaction during dinner? How could I take the risk of exposing my shadow, or failing to have grace, with someone I don't know? How much vulnerability am I capable of?

I am capable of so much more than I imagined.

Last Friday, in my ecstatic state after writing the love letter to the Invisible Girl, I wrote an email to Rose. I desired for her to know that it is my goal to embrace their relationship, as well as some other details about my process. In her response she expressed a desire for the three of us to meet and talk as well, but was willing to respect my timing.

I thought it would be weeks before I would be ready to come face-to-face with their relationship. But the other day I felt an intuitive nudge to just do it, so I let Knight know I was open to it and last night worked out for us all.

Yesterday was difficult. My belly discomfort increased exponentially. The fear was huge. I came very close to backing out. But I chose acts of self-care instead. First, in the afternoon I followed a recommendation from a co-worker/friend to pick up an herbal de-stress formula that she had found effective during periods of emotional stress. I took it immediately. Within an hour my belly discomfort had subsided significantly and my emotional state felt more mellow. I also went home to relax for awhile and picked up The Places that Scare You again. This time I was drawn to the chapter called "Learning to Stay," which talks about staying with our emotional states rather than repressing them or acting out from them. I was in a fairly calm state by dinner time.

It started out awkward. We (mostly they) small talked during food preparation, but when we sat down together it got very quiet. No one knew where to start. But then Rose took the initiative and talked about her own willingness to be awkward and vulnerable, which led us into a two+ hour deeply honest conversation about poly, our desires, our fears, our histories and so much more. Although we are very different, Rose and I have some significant resonance in our histories. She is compassionate towards my situation and willing to honor my limitations for the time being (I know that I am not ready to see them be physically intimate beyond a greeting/goodbye hug and kiss). She also gave Knight and I gifts she had made.

We talked about having a once-a-month dinner with the three of us. We also talked about her and I spending some time together without Knight, which I think is essential to discovering if we have friendship chemistry.

Overall it was a great experience. While I don't believe my struggles with the fear are over, I do feel that this is a significant step towards increasing my comfort with the situation. I have a better understanding of what draws them to each other and what impact they may have on each other's evolution.

But most importantly, I feel my heart opening to Rose and her place in Knight's life, which I believe will lead me toward a deeper experience of Love.

Cultivating Ecstasy

2010-06-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

"We can learn to cultivate the quality of a great lover in the way we live our daily life. Ecstatic moments can be cultivated on a daily basis when we enter into a love affair with life." Margo Anand

To bring some Light into this story, I desire to illuminate the fact that not every day has been hard and painful. Some days have been full of joy and ecstasy.

In this amazing process of transformation, I am experiencing spontaneous ecstatic states. Moments or hours of pure bliss. A sense of being so very alive that I am literally buzzing with aliveness. My body vibrates. My heart and spirit feel so expansive I feel that I could hold the world in my love. I have had moments that are so joyful I am almost embarrassed to share them with people, because I'm not sure they'll understand.

Relationship is part of my spiritual practice. It is in intimacy with others that I have my deepest experiences of Oneness. I feel that I am cultivating my relationship to the Divine through my relationships to my self, Knight and others. In my morning prayers I pray to keep my attention on the Divine Spark in others throughout my day. I am also striving to nurture deeper connections in my friendships. Some of my ecstatic states are sourced in these rich interactions.

Sometimes the ecstasy comes when I'm with Knight or just after I've been with him. I am finding that as we work through the challenges of transforming our relationship and opening to poly, we are deepening in our intimacy with and desire for each other. Our time together is very rich and our sex has been phenomenal! I have opened up to a whole new experience of arousal and orgasm.

Sometimes the ecstasy comes after significant emotional breakthroughs. The day after I wrote the love letter to the Invisible Girl was an ecstatic day.

Sometimes the ecstasy comes from spiritual practice: prayer and contemplation, spiritual study, ritual, etc.

Sometimes the ecstasy comes from walking in nature. I have moments when walking at the marsh overwhelms all of my senses with beauty.

While I know that it is unreasonable to hope to sustain a permanent ecstatic state (at this point in my evolution anyway), I do hope to cultivate a deeper relationship to my ecstasy so that I can bring it to the surface at will.

"Let's toast Every rung we've climbed on Evolution's ladder. Whisper, 'I love you! I love you!' To the whole mad world." - Hafiz

Image Source: The Ecstasy of Alexis Amore James Roper

Heightened Neurosis

2010-06-14T23:43:00.000-07:00

It has been a rough day. Knight was with his other lover for more than 24 hours and I have been struggling with my emotions and my fears all day. I have felt sad, almost depressed, and couldn't find anything in my reading or writing or anywhere else that would lift me up. But then tonight I noticed and picked up Pema Chodron's book The Places the Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times.

I looked at the table of contents and was drawn to a chapter called "Heightened Neurosis." I am comforted by this:

"We might assume that as we train in bodhichitta, our habitual patterns will start to unwind--that day by day, month by month, we'll be more open-minded, more flexible, more of a warrior. But what actually happens with ongoing practice is that our patterns intensify...this is called 'heightened neurosis.' It's not something we do on purpose. It just happens. We catch the scent of groundlessness and despite our wishes to remain steady, open and flexible, we hold on tight in very habitual ways.

This has been the experience of everyone who ever set out on the path of awakening. All those smiling enlightened people you see in pictures or in person had to go through the process of encountering their full-blown neurosis, their methods of looking for ground...

A first step is to understand that a feeling of dread or psychological discomfort might just be a sign that old habits are getting liberated, that we are moving closer to the natural open state. Trungpa Rinpoche said that awakening warriors would find themselves in a constant state of anxiety. Personally, I've found this to be true."

I am still having nervous belly issues. While my rational mind has been trying to tell me that the physiological and emotional anxiety I've been experiencing is a sign that I am doing something wrong, my deeper self has been telling me that it's just heightened fear that I will eventually work through. It is so encouraging to find this passage, this validation, that what I am experiencing is entirely normal for the process of awakening. All I can do is continue to sit with it, hold space for it, rather than my habit of withdrawing, avoiding, and criticizing.

Even though today was rough and pervasive, it was different. Not as sharp, not as dark. Something is shifting.

I Imagine God Loves in Multiplicity

2010-06-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

Holy Moral Dilemma

There is promise here, in this paired place,
of a safe ease without the buzz
of what next, what if, if only.

And yet here, I am sometimes restless.
As if my soul is wired for action, for split
second love and last minute partners,
adventure in each turning.

As if I am alive only
when I walk the edge
of maybe.
As if certainty
is certain death.

And I think to myself:
do I have "commitment issues?"

Perhaps I commit fully
to not knowing.
the way a warrior
commits to battle--
with my life.

Or the way a monk
commits to God,
in each holy moment
with no expectations
for exclusivity.

How special we make each other
when we promise to love
in twosomes, as if we
are the last pair on earth
and our narrow love
will save the day.

I imagine God
loves in multiplicity,
and with no conditions.
That God has figured out
that there is more than
enough of her to go around,
that love is never
in short supply.

I can't imagine God
saying, sorry,
I'm taken.

November 9, 2009 By Lori Lothian

Love Letter to the Invisible Girl

2010-06-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

I feel lighter and happier today than I have since Knight started his new relationship nearly two weeks ago.

Those who know me well have heard me talk a lot about The Invisible Girl since my mother died nearly two years ago. The Girl is an archetype in me, the way that I have come to perceive my inner child. She is the part of me that never outgrew the pain of the invisibility that came from living in the shadow of a narcissistic mother. She is the part of me that doubts I can be seen and loved for who I am. She is the part of me that is terrified of abandonment, and becomes incredibly sad or throws temper tantrums when I feel unseen or I'm afraid I'm losing someone. The Invisible Girl is the part of me that gets triggered and overwhelms me with fear.

I have been trying to work with this part of myself, to really understand our relationship so that I can manage trigger experiences, and eventually learn to prevent them from happening at all. I have spent a lot of time observing her when she freaks out, especially since I have been in relationship to Knight. While I have had incredible insights into the source of my fears and the reactions they stir up in me, I haven't felt like I've made any real progress in managing the Girl or her triggers.

I've learned recently that the problem is when I observe her, I hold a lot of judgment about her, and even hatred for her existence. I have believed that her existence is evidence of my crazy brokenness. I've blamed her for making my emotional life so difficult. I have been incredibly unkind to her.

What I am learning in my studies into radical self-care is that my Girl needs to be mothered...by me. I need to hold and comfort her when she is terrified. I need to accept our feelings rather than resist them. I need to talk her to with kindness and compassion. I need to help her understand that I don't need her to protect me any longer. I need to find out what we truly need to feel safe and secure (as opposed to what she thinks we need).

Yesterday morning Knight had a date with his new lover. I started out the day all right but by early afternoon, when I hadn't received any texts from Knight, the Invisible Girl started throwing fits. Before and after his last date we had flirted by text and it had helped me feel connected to him. I told him how much it helped. So even though I didn't outright ask for it, I expected him to do the same yesterday (unexpressed expectations = inevitable disappointment).

As the Girl started telling me stories about how he's forgotten me, how I don't matter, how he likes his other lover better than me, etc., I realized I needed to do something to shift the momentum. I drove to the marsh to change the scenery and connect to nature, which always helps calm me. As I sat in the car, I was suddenly inspired to write a letter to my Girl.

While I have resisted the idea of communicating with parts of myself through dialogue or letters, as has been suggested by a variety of sources but always felt sort of hokey to me, I'm beginning to understand what a healing practice it is. For the first time I accepted everything that I was feeling and I felt significantly different afterward. I felt lighter. I felt hope that this may not last forever.

I woke up this morning feeling expansive again.

Here is my letter...

Precious Girl -

I know you are scared. You feel like we are in the dark and it reminds you of the closet we used to sit in when we had no one and truly doubted we existed at all. You wonder if we continue to exist if no one is present to witness us. Do we continue to exist to our Love if he is seeing, touching, loving someone else?

But we are real and we are loved. We are a Divine Spark - a child of the Universe. Not only do we exist, but we are amazing. We are so very strong and resilient. We have overcome so much together. And our story is witnessed by many. We are loved by many. We have never been so visible or loved before. We have touched so many lives with our poetry, our art, our writing, our service to community, our friendship, our vulnerability, and our willingness to share our story to be a light on the path to healing for others. There is so very much to love about us.

We are not alone - even when we are. People do not stop loving us just because we aren't interacting. We are loved every minute of every day by everyone that we love every minute of every day, whether we are consciously thinking of them or engaging with them or not. It is no different for those we love than it is for us.

I know you're scared by this new relationship, but the truth is that Knight made us first, to his own detriment, and we still felt invisible. It isn't about his new lover or him. It's about us. It's about me. It's about how I have been rejecting you when you most need to be held.

I am sorry. I am so sorry for making you more invisible by rejecting you and believing I am broken because you are inside of me. I am sorry for hating that you are a part of me. I am sorry I haven't given you the love we need when you are only trying to protect me.

It's not our fault that mom couldn't see past her own crazy to really see us. It's not our fault that the fathers in our life could not see past their own fear and addiction to see that we needed to be saved. It does not make us unlovable that our parents could not love us well. They really did the best they could.

Mom's illness is not our fault, and it's not hers either. I think she was an Invisible Girl, too, and she never figured out how to heal. Let's love her rather than blame her.

Precious Girl - it's time to heal. It is time to believe in ourselves. It's time to believe that we are our own super-hero and we can save our self.

Really look at our life, our story, and see how we have been our own super-hero all along. We saved our self from insanity. We saved our self from violence. We saved my children from a legacy of brokenness. Now it's time to save our self from this fear of something that is no longer real so that we can have the fullness of love we desire.

It's time to rewrite our story together.

Thoughts on Polyamory

2010-06-09T23:55:00.000-07:00

Tonight my business partner asked me if I have really considered that polyamory may not be part of who I am right now. I have considered it, very deeply. What I am experiencing is excruciating at times. I have asked myself many, many times if it's worth it. And I absolutely believe that it is, not only because I believe polyamory is an authentic expression of who I am and what I know about love, but because I also know what I know about fear.

My emotional reactions to Knight's new relationship are all based in fear. The topsy-turvy feeling in my belly is fear. I will not live a life based on fear, especially in my relationships. I have already lived fear, contraction and making myself smaller than I really am. I have watched the people I love choose fear. My mother died at the hands of her fear. My ex-husband lives his life through a computer because of his fear. When any of us hurt ourselves or each other, it is always in fear.

I choose love and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get there. I will sit through the fear, the heartache, the bellyaches, the memories, the insights, the breakthroughs and everything else in order to have love. I will work, like I have worked all my life, to create a life of joy, intimacy and creativity with Knight, my tribe and all the loves who come into our lives in the time we are together.

I know that once I work through the fear, I am capable of compersion. I know what it is to be desired and loved by Knight. It's a gift and one that should be shared. I cannot possess it. I cannot ask him to hold it back from others, to diminish his light when he feels drawn to shine it in sexual and/or emotional ways. If the relationship turns out to be long-term, rather than fear Knight's new lover, I would like to get to know her and to understand the opportunity in her for his capacity to love to deepen.

I believe in love. I know with all of my being that love can overcome my fear. Not just the love between Knight and I, but the love for myself that I am slowly growing, and the love from my friends as they bear witness and support me where they can, and the love of the Divine that flows through me when I am not afraid to let it. I believe that God, my community and I can love me into healing. I believe that the light that Knight shines in his love for me inspires me to burn brighter in my capacity to love (and vice versa). I will not walk away from it in fear.

*

As I consider the work of my heart, I keep coming back to something a spiritual teacher told me a few years ago. I was in a state of self-pity about how much trauma I've had to endure in my life. He told me that he felt that my purpose was to learn how to live through these traumas and heal them so that I could help others navigate their way through. Instead of going to university to become a psychologist, I am living the life of healing so that I can share my story and the tools that I am learning to use along the way.

I have overcome so many things: emotional abuse and a neglect as a child, a mentally ill mother, an alcoholic/drug addict stepfather, sexual molestation at 11, teen pregnancy/motherhood, single mothering, a gun to my head, rape resulting in another child, more single mothering, Borderline Personality Disorder (and all the consequences of acting out), and an extremely unhealthy and violent marriage.

What I am experiencing now is nothing in comparison to those traumas. This isn't trauma, this is fear of trauma. I can overcome this incredible fear that came from all of those things I have experienced. What I am afraid of is what happened before, not what is happening now. What is happening now is that I am in the most loving and healthy relationship of my life (even with its issues). What is happening now is that I have found someone willing to give me everything I have ever wanted -- to be known and loved for everything that I am, light and darkness, and to grow consciously together towards less fear and deeper love.

Sitting with my fear and feelings while my lover has a joyful, loving experience with another person is not the most horrible thing in the world. Facing my fear so that I can have compersion for his other relationships is something worth working towards. I believe that all relationships have spiritual purpose--that we are drawn to people who can help us wake up to greater love, if we do the work in relationship to them. If this is true, then every woman that Knight is authentically drawn to has the potential of waking him up to more love, which then allows him to share more love with me. The same goes for me and my other relationships when they happen.

I have been looking for love, and actively desiring to overcome the fear in my heart and home, since I was 14 years old and started reading every book that Leo Buscaglia wrote. I have known about and believed I am poly since I was 21. If you look at my bookshelf you will find many titles with the word Love, or which have ideas about how to experience more love in life. My life is about love, experiencing it in every possible way, as deep as it can possibly go. I can't and I won't choose anything else.

I believe that everything about who Knight is, including his authentic desire for polyamory, is here to wake me up to greater love. I believe that what I am going through right now is absolutely necessary if I am to have the vibrant life of love and creativity that I desire. I also believe it's absolutely necessary so that I can help my community move into lives of vibrant love, too.

I had the thought today that maybe there are other people who struggle with emotional and mental health issues that desire to be poly, but maybe having a more difficult time like I am because of brain chemistry or really fucked up childhoods or whatever. When I read resources about polyamory, what I don't see is someone addressing the deeper issues that result in intense jealousy and fear-based reactions to our partner's other relationships. Some of us have psychological (and spiritual) work to do in order for poly to be workable. I wonder how many people might be giving up too soon because they don't know what they need to make it work?

Just questions for now, but possibly another piece of the puzzle. There are a lot of serendipities pointing the direction towards me doing work with people around emotional-mental-spiritual health.

Blessing to Lovers

2010-06-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

My love, you are a river fed by many streams

I bless all who shape you,

The lovers whose delights dance patterns on your back,

Those who carve your channels deeper, broader, wider,

Whitewater and backwater lovers,

Swamp lovers, sun-warmed estuary lovers,

Lovers with surface tension,

Lovers like boulders,

Like ice forming and breaking,

Lovers that fill and spill with the tides.

I bless those who teach you

and those who please you

and those who hurt you.

All those who make you who you are.

--Starhawk