There is something that happens to your sexuality when you begin experiencing it from a healed—and still healing—place.

I know because I am a completely different creature sexually than I once was.

And I don’t mean that simply in terms of what I like, what turns me on, or what I desire. I mean the consciousness that now inhabits my sexuality, the woman who is actually present inside of this body.

There was a time when my relationship with sex, sensuality and pleasure came from a deeply wounded place.

I experienced tremendous grief at a very young age, followed by sexual trauma while I was still developing my understanding of myself, my body and the world around me. Those experiences shaped my relationship with intimacy before I even had the emotional language to understand what was happening inside of me.

I was trying to soothe things I couldn’t name.

And sometimes, sex became part of that soothing.

Sometimes sex was superficial connection. Sometimes it was coping. Sometimes it was escape. Sometimes it was me reaching outside of myself for something I had not yet learned how to give myself.

I know the difference now. And baby… there is a HUGE DIFFERENCE.

After years of grieving, nurturing myself, loving myself, learning myself, healing myself and continuing to evolve, my relationship with pleasure has completely transformed.

My sensuality has intelligence now. My eroticism has consciousness. My pleasure has intention. And my sexuality feels sacred to me—not because it has become less sexual, but because I have become more present inside of it. That distinction matters.

I have no desire to sanitize eroticism in order to call it spiritual. I don’t need sex to become less juicy, less hungry, less playful, less delicious or less erotic for me to recognize something sacred within it.

If anything, healing has allowed me to go deeper into those sensations. I can be completely inside of my flesh while simultaneously experiencing something that feels far beyond it. And THAT is the paradox that fascinates me. The deeper I descend into the physical, the more spiritual my sensuality becomes.

Sensual Empathy

There is another part of this transformation that I have struggled to put language around. The closest phrase I have found for it is sensual empathy.

It is a kind of knowing through feeling. It is sensitivity to energy, emotion, body language, boundaries, desire, comfort, hesitation, softness and intensity. It is listening with more than your ears. It is understanding that another body is communicating with you even when nobody is speaking. It is knowing when to soften, when to deepen, when to play, when to become still, or when to simply remain present and allow pleasure to do what pleasure knows how to do.

And because I am deeply connected to myself, I don’t have to manufacture that presence. I’m not performing sensuality. I’m not performing femininity. I’m not performing pleasure or satisfaction. Baby, I LIVE in this shit now!

Pleasure Can Nurture

This may be one of my favorite discoveries about pleasure. Pleasure can nurture. We talk about pleasure as excitement, climax, attraction, desire and indulgence. But there is another side of pleasure that feels almost like being fed. Pleasure can hold you and soothe you. It can invite a guarded body to soften. Pleasure can say, Come here. Rest. Let yourself receive. You don’t have to do anything right now except feel. There is something deeply nurturing about that energy.

I sometimes think of it as maternal—not mother in the literal sense, but the ancient archetypal energy of tending, holding, nourishing and creating safety. And our bodies understand some of this biologically. Affectionate touch, intimacy and connection interact with our nervous systems and bonding chemistry. But my experience of it doesn’t stop with biology. There is something spiritual there for me, too.

Sex Can Still Be SEX

This is where I refuse to separate the sacred woman from the sexual woman. They are the same woman. Sex can still be juicy—hell, it’s juicer! It’s still playful, hungry and erotic as fuck.

I hold more intention. Sex for connection. Sex for nurturing. Sex for release. Sex for creation. Sex for manifestation. Sex for healing. Sex for moving energy. Sex as two (or more) people meeting one another in an incredibly physical place and discovering just how far beyond the physical they can travel together. I don’t believe we have to transcend our bodies to experience something sacred. Maybe we have misunderstood the assignment. Maybe the senses themselves are part of the doorway—

Touch

Taste

Sound

Scent

Sight

Breath.

Skin.

Pleasure.

Presence.

All of these incredibly earthly things can bring us so completely into the present moment that somehow we touch something that doesn’t feel entirely earthly anymore.

I Know What I’m Carrying Now

And perhaps this is also why I have become increasingly selective about access to me. Honey, I don’t spread my love the way I once did, and not because healing made me frightened of sexuality or more modest…tuh…quite the opposite.

Healing made me understand how fucking powerful my sexuality actually is.

I know what I’m carrying now. I know what lives inside my softness. I know what lives inside my touch. I know what lives inside my sensuality. I know what my presence feels like when I am fully present. And I understand that intimacy with me isn’t simply access to my body—it is access to a woman who has spent years learning how to inhabit that body authentically and unapologetically. That realization changed the value of access for me.

Because the woman I am today didn’t simply appear.

I grieved for her.

I nurtured her.

I protected her.

I listened for her.

I healed enough to finally hear her.

And I am still becoming her.

So he’ll no, everybody doesn’t get access to this version of me. Not because I believe sexuality should be withheld or feared. But because I finally understand its sacredness. Even I had to heal to meet this woman, too. And everybody does not get access to the woman I had to heal to become.

💋