The Ecstasy Returns (Whew)

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.

Mirrors & Motherhood

My family has a legacy of mental illness, teen motherhood, addiction and violence going back many generations. I believe I am transforming my family's legacy. Since getting pregnant the first time at age 16, it has been my life's mission to raise children who are happy and whole, rather than broken, when they go out into the world. Instead of continuing to unconsciously perpetuate the cycle of violence with my children, I have worked to heal my wounds, disarm my triggers and change my behaviors. But I still have violent communication to unlearn and I struggle with shame about that. It breaks my heart when I lose control of my emotional reactions and hurt anyone, most especially my children.

I have a 14 year old daughter. She is one of the brightest lights in my life. We have a great relationship with very little conflict. For a teenage girl she is remarkably easy to live with. But she is still a teenager and she has her ways of digging at me now and again.

It is in her sarcasm. She speaks a version of the truth through a veil of dark humor. It is penetrating and sometimes it is quite painful. She has this way of finding the places where I believe I fail as a mother and digging at them when she is in a bad mood. Sometimes I am stunned at her capability to call me out on my shadow. It is tough to hold space for.

The other night she was in a dark mood, and laughed out of the blue as we were preparing dinner. I asked her what was funny. She said she had a mean thought go through her mind and she thought it was funny. We talked about how she can't control how mean thoughts come, only what she does with them. Then she asked if I wanted to know what she thought. I said probably not, as I was tired and experiencing a bit of an emotional crash after a full weekend. She decided to tell me anyway.

"When you talk to me in your annoyed-with-me-voice, I want to go crawl into a cave and die."

Yeah. Not funny. It broke my heart actually. I started crying. It makes me sad that something I do could cause her to feel that way. It's another example of how I communicate through tone in harmful ways, something I have already been looking at in my relationships to both Knight and the Imps.

Some days it is difficult looking at the mirror in my daughter. Like me, she is an empath, which has its light and its shadow. As an empath, she intuitively knows things about people and can use that knowledge to help them, or to manipulate and hurt them. When I am angry and scared, I can be incredibly mean. I can spin some fantastic stories by manipulating the truth about a person's shadow behaviors. I am recognizing and healing the violence that persists in my communication when I am triggered. I don't like seeing my daughter struggle with what she has learned from living with my violence.

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To balance this sharing, on the light side of mirrors and motherhood...

Most days I look at the mirrors in my daughter and I love what I see. Like me, but in her unique ways, she is immensely clever, creative, intuitive, and emotionally intelligent. She is a fabulous human being. I like spending time with her.

Sometimes, she lets me know that she really sees me and how I have tried so very hard to be a good mother.

For Mother's Day, she wrote me a thank you letter.

"Thank you.

Thank you for always being there for me whether I'm talking to you about boring everyday things or just sitting with me while I cry.

Thank you for putting up with my snobbiness and sarcasm.

Thank you for always trying. You may not be a perfect mother, but you try and that's good enough for me.

Thank you for putting up with my complaining and ungratefulness.

Thank you for letting me be who I am without question.

Thank you for always supporting me.

Thank you for being who you are.

Thank you for trying to grow and be everything you can possibly be.

Thank you for being so kind and giving to me, your friends and your community.

Thank you for telling me I'm smart and beautiful when I don't believe it.

And most of all thank you for giving me life and letting me be free.

I'm so sorry that you couldn't have had a mother like I do. I'm sorry your mother couldn't always give you what you needed. And didn't always put you first like you put me first. I'm sorry she wasn't all she could be. But I know she loved you, just like you love me. And I think you should always try to remember that. And if she wasn't who she was, then you wouldn't be who you are, right? I know she loved you. And I love you, too. I could not ask for a better mother. Really.

I appreciate you. I appreciate everything you've ever done for me. I appreciate what you are."


Pretty amazing, especially the paragraph about my own mother. Another mirror that I am grateful for.

***Image Credit: Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror

Girl Power Can Save the World

Replace the word "girl" with "feminine" and this totally supports my thoughts in the previous post on feminine leadership.



"Imagine that girl is the part of each of us that feels compassion, empathy, passion, intensity, association, relationship, emotion, play, resistance, vulnerability, intuitive intelligence, vision.

Imagine that compassion informs wisdom. That vulnerability is our greatest strength. That emotions have inherent logic and lead to radical saving action.

Now remember that those in power essentially taught us and conditioned us to believe the opposite:

Compassion clouds your thinking.

Vulnerability is weakness.

Emotions are not to be trusted.

Don't take things personally.

To be a boy means not to be a girl.

To be a man means not to be a girl.

To be strong means not to be a girl.

To be a woman means not to be a girl.

To be a leader means not to be a girl.

It must be very powerful to be a girl if everyone Is taught not to be one."

Feminine Leadership

Let me start by explaining what I mean when I use the words masculine and feminine. This isn't about gender. I am not writing about women vs. men. I believe in an evolved version of Jung's ideas that all human beings have masculine and feminine qualities within them and it is part of emotional health to be an integrated expression of those qualities.

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A brief description of the qualities that are associated with each (every quality having its own light and shadow expressions):

Masculine: Logical, assertive, active, initiating, tender, risk-taking, focused, rational, providing, protective, independent

Feminine: Intuitive, passive, receptive, responsive, sensitive, intense, connection oriented, emotional, creative, nurturing, relationship oriented

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I believe that a healthy approach to all of life honors the light qualities of the masculine and feminine. However, we are not balanced as individuals or as a collective. We live in a culture (a world) that honors masculine qualities more than feminine, especially outside of the home. One does not have to be an academic or fierce feminist to understand that we are slowly moving out of a rational and patriarchal paradigm...and we still have a long way to go. I believe it is important to focus attention and intention on nurturing the feminine in order to bring eventual balance. We need to lift the feminine to the same honor and respect that the masculine receives.

We also need to shift away from shadow expressions of the masculine (aggression, domination, violence) and feminine (helplessness, co-dependence, drama). It is by nurturing positive expressions that we become healthier, happier people and ensure humanity's ultimate survival. What people don't tend to consider is that men suffer as much as women from the patriarchal imbalance. A man who is not allowed to be emotional cannot have empathy for others. A lack of empathy leads to isolation and violence. Similarly, a woman who lacks assertiveness cannot be empowered to resist oppression. We all need to find the healthy balance.

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Over the last two years some community members have expressed their thoughts about the Society being led by three women. Someone called us a matriarchy. Young women tell us that we are their role models. People have expressed an overall appreciation that women are in charge. There hasn't been a deep discussion that I'm aware of, just comments here and there. It hasn't been something that I gave much thought to. In the moment I would have a flash of resonance that it seems significant that we are a women-led organization, yet I didn't really sit with it until recently.

Another blogger shared a definition of feminine that resonates with me: "Feminine is a force to be reckoned with...nurturing, inclusive, and intrinsically and actively compassionate. Midwives and caretakers of ideas and community, Feminine is sought out for guidance, inspiration, and comfort."

It isn't that we are women that is so significant, it's that we are feminine leaders. We believe being "caretakers of community" is the most important aspect of our work as erotic hostesses and sex-positive activists. Discussions have come up in the Imps leadership recently that emphasize how we make decisions differently than others might, especially those with more traditional, or masculine, tendencies. It is becoming apparent that what makes us different is that we operate from a feminine perspective.

I am really beginning to see the importance of feminine leadership. We don't have many role-models for feminine leaders, female or male. Women in leadership tend to express more masculine qualities, often out of necessity to have a chance at leadership at all. Would you use the description of feminine above to describe Hilary Clinton or Condaleeza Rice? I hardly think so. The workplace virtually demands that we choose rational over emotional, logical over intuitive, and authoritative over collaborative. Every dysfunctional work culture I have participated in suffers from a lack of feminine awareness. Feminine leadership is needed to show there is a different way of doing things.

Within the Imps we are trying something different and I think it's just as revolutionary as being sex-positive. Love is our bottom line. We lead the Society from a relationship-centered point of view. We intentionally work for compassion and inclusiveness, even when it challenges us to do so. We recognize that most of our challenges involve relationship. We put our people management efforts into solving relationship challenges and nurturing positive relationships with healthy communication. Our staff meetings involve activities with the intention of building and strengthening relationships.

We also honor the emotional. We hold space for emotions as they arise, especially the painful ones. We produce our events with an awareness of the intense emotions that are stirred up by erotic parties, which is why we have a Vibes crew. We know we have to do more than facilitate a safe physical space, we need to facilitate a safe emotional space for people to feel they can be vulnerable in expressing themselves. The emotional matters very much when it comes to expressing sex and gender, identity and relationship. The emotional also matters in building community.

I am coming out as a feminine leader and I am finding my confidence and my strength as such. I lead with my heart. I am intensely emotional. I make decisions based on intuition and compassionate relationship. I consider how others, individually and collectively, are impacted by our decisions because I see and feel the ripples that happen with each choice we make.

As far as my own balance is concerned, I have masculine qualities to balance my feminine. I am assertive, risk taking, focused and authoritative/decisive when needed. But I have more work to do. I still try too hard to please everyone and I take it personally when I don't. I can be too passive/receptive and not take an active role in building individual relationships. I can be co-dependent rather than appropriately independent (on the other hand, I can also be too independent and not ask for the help I need).

I am working toward my balance, but I feel focusing on a feminine approach to leadership is a vital experience for myself and for the community. I think we need to understand what feminine leadership is and how it works before we can truly integrate it with the masculine for a holistic approach.

An Opportunity for Evolution through Roleplay

The Society is hosting an erotic role-play themed party on July 25^th. One of my fellow Impresses has challenged me to be some aspect of myself, or someone other than myself, that I haven’t been before. This is more of a challenge for me than anyone I’ve discussed it with seems to understand. My brain just isn’t processing through the idea of role-play from a personal perspective, although I love to experience others doing it in theater, film, event play, etc. Every time I try to imagine who I could be, or what archetype I could express, that is different from every day me, I feel blocked, like there is a big blank wall. I just can’t get there.

Puzzling over this I realize that I have always projected a strong external identity because expressing my identity has been a matter of taking control of the only thing I could in a chaotic life as a mostly uncontrolled empath – my body (I will write more about being an empath in this blog, as it’s one of the primary reasons I do what I do as an Impress and am so invested in the Vibes component of our events). I am realizing that this is the core of the role-play issue for me. I experience other people’s emotions so much on the inside that holding tightly to an outer expression of my identity is vital to retaining a connection to who I am, especially in social situations. I don’t ever feel the desire to role-play/pretend because I already spend so much time feeling the emotional experiences of other people. I want/need to feel like *me* as much as I can.

I have not worn a “costume” since I was a small child. The only time I have pretended to be someone other than myself that I can remember, even in appearance, was when I played Rizzo in my high school’s production of Grease. I don’t fantasize about sexual experiences I’ve never had, or about material things I might want to own, or about places I’ve never been. Even in my writing I have never written fiction or made up a story, I’ve only written about my actual experience or what I’ve felt from another person empathically.

When I dress up for Halloween or parties or whatever, I always dress up in something that reflects a part of me that normally doesn’t get to come out and play but is still very much a part of every-day me. I love corsets and bodices, so I tend to build an outfit around them for dress-up events. I have always been a Goth girl at heart, so I tend to wear outfits that are based in black, sometimes with red or silver accents. My lover pointed out to me when talking about this that I always have a bit of an edge to the way I look, which may be a form of protection. It was a stretch for me when I wore a very ruffly, short red petticoat and ruffly red panties with my black bodice for My Kinky Valentine. It was much more girly-girl than I am accustomed to. Under The Sheets was the first event I wore no black--or had no edge--at all. I wore a lovely purple sparkly dress in a Marilyn Monroe halter sort of style with silver sandals, and that was something very different for me. But the idea of role-play is about more than just clothes in my mind. It adds a dimension of embodying a different energy than I normally do, and maybe that is the heart of the challenge for me.

I don’t remember playing pretend as a child and know that I haven’t as a teen or adult. I have never fantasized anything that wasn’t based in a potential reality. I am not a person who wants. I am happy with what is. I strive for growth as a person and a professional and I enjoy the rewards that come from that. But I don’t spend time thinking about the future, how things might be different or better. I strive to live in the moment, grateful for the abundance of love, opportunities for evolution, and physical/material comfort that exists now. Some of this comes from poverty consciousness, both physical and emotional. I have struggled to pull myself out of financial poverty and severe family dysfunction. I don’t take the material abundance I have now, which isn’t so abundant from a cultural point of view, for granted because it’s better than anything I’ve had before. After years of choosing unhealthy relationships due to old familial patterns, at 35 years old I am experiencing many facets of healthy, abundant loving for the first time in my life. Again, it's better than anything I've had before. Some of this also comes from my development spiritually, I do my best to live in the moment and accept what is because suffering comes from living in the past or the future and resisting what is now. I see this related to the role-play challenge because I do not *ever* think about being different than I am, or wanting something different than what is. I don’t fantasize about anything in any facet of my life, I simply appreciate what exists now.

I have decided I am going to read Deborah Addington’s book, Fantasy Made Flesh, in order to expand my consciousness around the whole concept of role-play. Maybe something there will help me find my capacity to imagine something other than what is. I am also contemplating various archetypes that might be buried with me that I have never given life to. What archetypes am I most drawn to in stories? Can I find a story character that embodies a particular energy that I would like to express?

Although this seems like a such a simple thing to others, I think there is a great opportunity for me here to learn how to imagine possibilities of more…more abundance, more love, and more positive experiences for myself. My lover has been telling me that maybe I need to learn that it is ok to want and that I deserve to have my wants become a reality. Maybe if I can come to believe that, I can figure out what I want beyond what I’ve already been offered or who I could be beyond who I am now.