I just CANNOT get enough of the summer! Sun. Flowers. Fresh food. Swimming. Birdsong. Open windows…

Pleasure is a powerful medicine & resource that is internally generated, freely available and abundantly renewable.

Do you ever find yourself in muddy or murky situations when it comes to consent? I'm not talking about big transgressions where there are serious examples of exploitation, bulldozing, martyrdom, or enduring... I'm talking about the hazy moments that show up in daily life where something's not quite feeling right.

We experience gender so many ways - through our fantasies, the clothing that we wear, the way that we present (and possibly alter) our bodies, our personalities, how we have sex with ourselves or others, how we create, play, storytell… and oh so much more.

Would you rather want to *want* more sex, or *enjoy* sex more?

I just got off the phone with a dear friend who lives in Hamilton Ontario. During our conversation I shared that I find Hamilton to be quite a deeply healing and special place. Playfully she asked to learn more, since that is not a common reputation for a city more likely to be personified as a working class steel town that’s down on its luck (while simultaneously becoming the newest suburb of Toronto).

This is an article that was recently published by my mentor, colleague, and friend Caffyn Jesse. It spoke deeply to me and powerfully illustrated many of the guiding principles and values that inform my work as a Somatic Sex Educator:

Erotic rituals have transformed my life, and I have seen the sacred cauldron of erotic ritual transform the lives of so many others.

Living in this sex negative culture, we have all experienced some form of sexual trauma. We’ve been circumcised, diapered, spanked, shamed for exploring our genitals, taught to conceal our sexual urges. We’ve been programmed into narrow gendered personas that aren’t who we authentically are, and bullied when we don’t adhere to that programming.

When we are living with the impacts of unresolved traumatic stress in our lives, this affects our ability to navigate daily life with grace. The manifestations of traumatic stress are very individualized - maybe manifesting as chronic activation and anxiety. Or as despair and lethargy. Often as some blend of the both.

In this world is there anything more dangerous than a person that has realized that they control the means of their own pleasure production, and that pleasure is an abundant renewable resource?

I recently had a lovely session clearing out my garden and planting new seeds for this upcoming season. And was reflecting on how cultivating eroticism and pleasure is like cultivating a garden. ⁠Our gardens are our right and our responsibility. Our pleasure, sexuality, eroticism, gender(s), relationship models, and joy practices are *ours*. ⁠

I’ve facilitated a few transition rituals recently - and am feeling grief about living in a world where ritual has been sanitized and removed from the winding path of our soul’s journey.

In my work I offer education and training about trauma informed, sex positive, LGBT positive care for allied professionals - therapists, pelvic floor specialists, naturopaths, and more. In working with these amazing folks who have such gifts to offer their fields, I often feel that mainstream trainings still have quite a way to go towards offering trauma informed care.

When I started exploring BDSM I was young and delighted by the sexiness, mystery, and badassery of playing with sensation and power. Over the years since those initial dabblings, my relationship with BDSM has occupied many realms. Currently I feel quite discerning and careful about this kind of play for myself.

I took (most of) the day off, and went out to the coast for a beautiful walk in the afternoon. It was raining, and I forgot my raincoat… again. Hearing the sound of the rain in the woods was such a gift. “Life is much simpler, more richly complex, and a helluva lot bigger than your stories” it pattered soothingly to me, teasing my curls and kissing my shoulders.

I often think about eroticism using the elements - it helps me steer clear of gendered or cultural expectations of how sexuality or eroticism is meant to look, and offers a greater capacity to understand the profundity and power of my experiences beyond modern limiting belief systems. If it’s helpful to hear, I’ve shared a little about how I notice the elements in my arc of arousal.

Most current content about trauma recovery does not include information about recovering from sexual trauma. And, by sexual trauma I mean trauma that has manifested through some form of sexual experience, or trauma that impacts people’s relationships with sexuality or gender.

The modality of Somatic Sex Education is a client directed one. This means that as a Somatic Sex Educator I believe that you are the wisdom holder. You are the one that decides where we need to go.

When COVID first arrived I was living in Ontario and working as one of the worker/owners at Come As You Are. One of my roles at the co-op was writing newsletters for our readership. I recently stumbled upon this beautiful pleasure-full pep talk I wrote during those first uncertain weeks of the pandemic. My hope is to offer the same spirit to you, as someone who has made it this far into these unimaginable times - with an eye to pleasure, healing, and joy.