Licking Life
“I just want to lick everything.”
That sentence poured from a woman’s mouth during an event I attended.
It was powerful. Palpable. Ancient. Like it came from molten lava at the center of the earth and had been danced by goddesses and medicine women throughout history. It moved people.
It got me thinking...when was the last time any of us were so in the moment, so deliberately engaged, so lit up and turned on, in a state of such surrender, experiencing such pure ecstasy, so connected and devoted to our environment and the people in it that such a statement would come to life like ... “I just want to lick everything.”
Who says that and what would she be feeling?
We may not even remember a time with that depth of feeling, of passion, of rapture.
If it’s ever happened at all.
So. What does this mean?
Women are achieving more and more, yet are less happy and more stressed than ever before. Lack of fulfillment, loneliness, anxiety, depression, prescribed medications, chronic illness, divorce, and a general dis - ease in life are skyrocketing. Women are carrying more and more responsibilities at work and at home. Many times being the person responsible for most of the household income, as well as, most of the household caretaking. It can be exhausting. We are looking more and more to unhealthy outside sources of numbing ourselves from the flatness we feel.
We wear our “I’m so busy badge” like it’s a winning lottery ticket. And I know we technically ARE busy. We do all the things, we get the job, get the partner, leave the partner, leave the job, start a business, get the kids off to school, get the meds, get the wine, get the therapist and ultimately get the same question banging around in us like a pinball...
Now what?
We’re highly accomplished. Highly sovereign over our lives. Don’t need anyone or anything. We got this.
And we’re lonely and exhausted.
We’re still unhappy. None of those things worked. There is still a void. Fulfillment has disappeared into the beautiful bottom of a crystal glass of chardonnay. The thought goes something like this -- I’ve built this ________ life, and it just doesn’t always feel like what I thought it would feel like. I feel...trapped. Caged.
As a society and culture, we mostly have it all wrong.
We have accepted and excelled at what society has told us we should be. What we should look like. What we should sound like. And what success should look like.
We have twisted the truth of our natural erotic nature into something obscene and taboo.
Many women specifically are not fully connected to our sensual and sexual selves. I mean, actually physically and energetically connected to our bodies and vaginas, with sincerity, sensuality, gratitude, and pleasure. The feminine power source is the most powerful force on earth yet we have great guilt and shame associated with our beautiful, voluptuous, unique works of art called our female bodies.
We’ve fallen so far into the “doing” world that many of us have been trained to be prettier versions of men to get by, get up, get heard, and get seen.
Or to completely go the opposite direction and base our entire esteem on what we THINK sexuality is supposed to look like, based on super-sexualized imagery and porn. Both are drastically missing the mark.
So … now what?
“The extent to which we prioritize and care for our eroticism, sexual vitality, and embodied health (and the depths to which we see all of it as sacred) is the extent to which we allow our genius to be fully present in the world.”
That’s a quote from Christiane Pelmas, author, co-founder of The Verdant Collective and one of the most deeply profound women I have ever met, and it perfectly describes my vision.
In a culture that swings between extremes of Tinder/promiscuity/sexwitheverythingallthetime/educationbyporn to puritanical/locked down/moral/judgmental-keep your-mouth-shut-sex-is-only-good-for-married-people-and-then-it-should-be-just-something-we-do-because-we’re-supposed-to, we have lost sight of the sacredness of our erotic life force.
The potential of what sacred sexuality can be and the value of being fully sexually alive isn’t even on the range of what we currently have in modern sex conversation and climate. The real potential of our wild, Natural Erotic Energy is in a completely different universe.
Compounding this issue is the complete lack of good sex education out there. Sure, we learn what sex IS from school (haha), from our families (probably not), from our friends and their older siblings (most likely), or from porn, but not what it CAN be, or the real purpose, and value of a deeply satisfying and elevated erotic life. The current taboos surrounding sex -- especially womens’ relationship to sex, our bodies and expressing ourselves as fully-realized, whole, complete women -- are quite ridiculous.
Owning our sexual energy, the essential creative life force, and cultivating it in healthy ways, shatters the shackles that have us all bound so tightly. (Unless that’s your thing, and in that case…) We are looking everywhere in the world to blame why we are filled with anxiety, depression, overweight, sick, and unfulfilled in our relationships, careers, and lives, without looking to the one place where creativity and energy flourishes.
To go from flat and fear-based to fierce and fabulous, it is crucial to reconnect to the most untapped and unlimited power source on earth. Our Natural Erotic Energy. When we develop and unleash our feminine turn-on, it affects every area of our lives. Learning what powers us and knowing that 1) we have a Power Switch and 2) how to flip our power switch to ON every day, liberates us from the tightness, constriction, and anxiety we feel.
When we learn to feed ourselves first, we focus on identifying, clarifying, executing, and receiving pleasure in all its forms.
We get clear about what we want, how we want it, with whom we want it, when we want it, where we want it, in a completely truthful, direct way with love and compassion. And in so doing, the connection we so long for with ourselves, in our intimate relationships, and our relationships at work and in our communities will come with ease.
The natural next question is -- HOW? How does one go about this process of reclaiming the natural erotic state?
The process is simple, but not always easy. It’s not another prescription to follow and you can’t be told how to do it. It comes from unlearning old, outdated programming; everything that isn’t original and uniquely true for you. Elevating your life force through connecting with your natural erotic essence will elevate your entire life.
Notice this isn’t an “upgraded life.” An upgrade comes from outside of us, like when you book a plane ticket and you wait for the airline to “upgrade” you to a superior seat and become excited that you were deemed “special” and get to sit in First Class. This is not what I’m talking about.
Elevated life is about raising the seat of the soul from inner work, truth and connection. We elevate our existence by how and who we are being. It’s the knowing that we have everything we need within us, at all times.
A story
A few years ago, I met a woman who had been through the most excruciating pain a woman can feel. The loss of a child. Her son died several years ago in his 20s from addiction. He was the only child of her and her loving husband.
In the not too distant past, she didn’t want to live. The pain was so great, she didn’t think she could overcome it. Her husband, also riddled with grief, was at a loss of what to do.
They tried everything. Many healing modalities, therapies, medications...all the typical places to look.
Through a series of events and personal work, she connected to her Natural Erotic Energy, and it literally saved her life. She calls it a sexual awakening.
It’s like her light, and life turned on again. Through a willingness to let go, to surrender everything she thought she knew about reality, about grief, everything she thought she knew about herself, and everything she thought she knew about love, she was able to connect to her deepest truth. And come back to life.
She is a stunning, delightful, sexy, kind, and wise woman who remembered the wild natural feminine force within and is now devouring life with gusto. AND...she’s in her 70s.
But she’s not the one who wanted to lick everything.
That woman...was me.
After reconnecting to my natural erotic state, those were my words dripped in a moment of pure ecstatic bliss and connection in a carefully curated environment. I took ownership of my desire, my sexuality, my sensuality, my lips, my hips, my body, my pleasure -- and my Life will never be the same.
After having shut my erotic nature down for many years, decades in fact, I am now no longer the same person I was.
Mine is the same tired story so many of us have -- meet the boy, fall in love, jobs, careers, kids, life stress, throw in some big life stuff, major obstacles to hurdle -- and you have the recipe for a lackluster sex life and lackluster connection to my own self and body. I was spending so much time in my head, in my mind, on my to-do list, on everyone and everything else that I was cut-off from my body and pleasure completely.
And I looked everywhere but here for what I thought would make me whole. I turned over every rock and wine glass, and never thought to look here. Sex? That’s ridiculous. It’s not what serious people talk about. It’s just sex, right
Wrong. In reclaiming this part of myself, I have experienced the most impactful transformation of my life. I’ve had traditional therapy, years of coaching, personal growth work, been alone in the jungles of Costa Rica, trekked through Bali, done holotropic breathing, meditated for hours and hours, studied a bajillion thought leaders and programs, practiced all (OK, most of) the practices that every mind/body bullshit guru says to practice, coached my own clients for years and this is the last place I thought of looking for the THING, the spark, the sledgehammer that would shatter me at a cellular level and rewire everything I thought I knew about love, life, performance, and reality.
You see, I had no idea what lay on the other side of me owning my erotic nature. My lived experience, what showed up through me showing up through my fear and resistance, what came through me in an embodied truth, is a wave of wild life force. A wave that carries love, vitality, creativity. This wave is infinite and pure.
It is Wild.
At a dinner party once, I was asked if I thought this was available to everyone. The answer is absolutely, yes.
It IS who we are.
So, now what?
This ecstasy I speak of.
Yes, it is possible for everyone. Even you.
It is possible for a woman to be sexual and be professional. It is possible for a woman to be erotic and be a mother. It is possible for a woman to be ecstatic and be a partner. It is possible for a woman to speak her desires with power and elegance. It is possible to show up to school dropoff and the boardroom as a fully turned-on woman.
Diving into the deep water of our erotic essence and pleasure can seem irrelevant at best and terrifying at worst. It’s the last place many of us think to look. Yet it’s exactly where living a vibrant life is hiding in plain sight, waiting to be set free.
It’s where the magic lives. And we’re terrified to go there.
I used to be. But not anymore.
I am now basking in the warm light of the wave, with a new understanding of life. Where the seat of my soul has been raised to new heights and is coming along for the ride.
When we are brave enough to declare our desire to “lick” everything (or whatever your version of that is), we melt into the richness of our Wild Nature and actually…
