Warm sand cradles my body.
Sunshine brushes my hair.
Waves serenade in a rhythm mirrored by my heart beating against the beach towel.
Without and within, I relax into the waters of the feminine, and I float in an elevated sense of embodiment. The hurriedness that typically, even subtly, courses through my mind has been hushed. The hypervigilance I use to fall into about being a lone woman at the beach has been replaced with a fiercer and lighter truth – I am safe to be me, I am safe because I am a woman (all the programming and absorbed stories about what it means to be a woman have been seen, acknowledged, integrated for their lessons and released), and this ignites an inner blaze that reflects the sun.
My life-force, my sexual, creative life-force fully inhabits every part of my body. I am conscious, curious, carefree. This felt internal safety frees me to feel the particles of sand coating my fingertips, slows my reading to a leisurely pace, and opens me to receive the sensual vitality of a gorgeous morning at the beach.
This is snapshot one … an illumination of the first time I felt whole-bodied relaxed in my feminine-flowing body. Safe to be a woman. Safe to receive. Safe to experience life in a pace that matches the balanced give and take of the sea. Exhilarated ease.
Stage lights glare down upon the empty stage. I bounce up the tiny staircase, channeling my pre-performance jitters into becoming the cheerleader for the clitoris.
The audience is a sea of murmuring darkness that breaks into laughter, hollers, and rallying cries.
I become “The Happy Vagina” in the Valentine, collegiate showing of Eve Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues, and foot-pop exclaim and enthusiastically elucidate about orgasmic pleasures.
I become a campus celebrity. In line at Chipotle, on the walkways to class, even at a garden community event years later, admirers from the show, will timidly walk up to me and say, “You were my favorite vagina.”
I don’t miss a beat. “Babe, that’s what they all say.”
This is snapshot moment two … an illumination of what I want to do, a planting of a seed that is still gestating and growing, about merging performance and comedy into empowering bliss-filled embodiment for women. I starred as the happy vagina, and it is a glimmer of what was to be. I’m forever grateful to Eve Ensler for her work, for her writing, and also, I know now that this is just a hint of the beginning of what will bloom to be sexual alchemy, and that to be a happy vagina, one must go deeper to self-actualize and catalyze that pleasure into creating new realities.
It’s 2:30am and I cannot sleep.
Restless, in the throes of fear-driven narratives, I toss and turn throughout the July night.
“You’re numb, down there,” the medically intuitive informs me. She’s referring to my disassociation, my disconnection and disengagement from my sexuality. And my initial thought is one of annoyance, of “I’ll handle that later once I sort out the other stuff.”
From my perspective now, on this sun-kissed February day, I can see and lovingly call out my own conditioned and programmed ignorance.
Now, I know … prioritizing the wellbeing of my sexuality first sorts out ALL of the other stuff.
And I know that or really embody that now because of what happened at 2:30am on that July night.
In the tossing and turning, there came a lightning bolt of clear insight.
Google Kim Anami.
I had just listened, all eager-eared, to an interview between wellness author and feminine coach, Melissa Wells and a holistic sex and intimacy coach and vaginal weightlifter (that’s a thing?!) Kim Anami.
Listening to Kim, a knowing within me clicked and announced, “You’ve found your teacher.” I resonated with her voice. Our voices hold our energy frequency. It’s not the words we use, I mean yes, of course words are spells, powerful and potent, and a well-phrased line can be medicine or poison, because it’s the energy behind the words that hits and matters.
(We know this. A well-meaning person can give us a compliment and we feel instantly lit. A passive-aggressive person can say the same words, deliver the same compliment, and we feel that arrow. It’s all energy.)
So at 2:30am, I follow the instruction to get up, google and find that an online program she’s offering about women’s sexuality is open for registration. I feel those pre-show jitters, the ones I felt before jolting up to the stage.
This is how I know that I am on the edge of change.
This is snapshot three … an illumination of following that inner voice, of being in flow and noticing how ease-filled all of this was … listening to the podcast, somewhere subconsciously looking for a program or a teacher to help me activate and attune to the power of my womb, and acting on the whisper in the middle of the night.
This is a process of homecoming, of coming home to the rich insights and energizing pleasures available to me by simply softening into my body, into my feminine being.
This is conscious work.
This is unearthing, untangling, clearing all that has been imprinted, programmed, conditioned and absorbed through osmosis.
But I’m here for it.
The work soon dissolves into flow, like the waves, and the shore is in sight, the shore of feeling so beautifully alive and supported and guided by a very happy vagina indeed.
It’s at the edge of the sea that I root into the dance of my feminine being, and trust that she has me, I have me, and I can soften in for the sun-kissed ride. It’s all process. All small illuminations that gather up into bursts of epiphanies that feel like pure sunshine.