I'm going to tell you a story about an uncomfortable and important initiatory experience I created for myself several years ago while in an intimate relationship.
My creation of it at the time was unintentional (at least on a conscious level), but as I've reflected on and integrated the experience over the years, I see how my Higher (and unconscious) Self deliberately created this experience for me so that I could embody greater truth, power, and choice in my life.
Now, before I begin, I do want to tell you part of this story involves me choosing to get an abortion. It's not the main part, but it's definitely a part.
I personally believe that every woman has a right to choose what she does with her body. I also believe more women sharing from a place of power, ownership, and vulnerability about their abortion choices can help destigmatize and remove shame and guilt around a taboo topic that impacts and isolates many women.
We all have a right to choose and in this moment I want to honor your right to choose by letting you know in advance that this story is here, and you get to decide whether or not you want to read it.
Excellent. I feel clear. Let's begin…
Several years ago I met a man who was significantly older than me and involved in a spiritual community up in California.
At the time, I was already very much engaged in my own spiritual journey…
…studying elemental earth magic, exploring my relationship with God and the Universal energy that connects us all, plant medicines, deepening into my sexuality, learning how to transform my external reality by transforming the belief systems I held within.
When I met this man, I was also pretty ungrounded in my material world.
I was fresh out of a traumatizing experience with a prosperity coach where I systematically bypassed my intuitive knowing in our work together because I'd put her on a pedestal based on how she presented herself on social media.
There were so many moments in our work where I didn't listen to myself, to my body, to the little voice inside of me saying this doesn't feel right…
…and it finally built up to this huge breaking point where I severed our contract together because I completely lost trust in her, but even more painful, was the realization that in the process of quieting the cues of my heart and body, I had lost trust with myself.
After I quit our working relationship together, I stopped coaching and taking on new clients for about 6 months. I was so ashamed that I had bypassed my own intuition because of my desire to accrue greater wealth in quick and glamorous ways, that I didn't feel in integrity working with new clients.
I needed to pull inwards, I needed to heal, I needed to gain clarity within myself about what had actually happened that allowed me to get so disconnected from my own power.
Now cue the man.
I met this man at a party I'd been invited to by a new acquaintance.
He and I met on the dance floor, and it was instant heat of volcanic proportions followed by juicy connected conversation afterwards. He asked for my number, I said yes, and we started dating. I unknowingly was being drawn closer and closer to the fiery crucible of my initiation into power.
The truth is, physically, I wasn't actually attracted to this man. He was literally 30 years older than I at the time. But there was something about his confidence, stability, and a sense of security that he was offering me that kept me leaning in.
He also had a strong felt sense about our spiritual connection, and that he and I were meant to do things together in the erotic realm of great significance.
I don’t know if you relate to this, but in the past I had a pretty kinky fetish for relationships presenting as these grandiose connections of archetypal importance that made the seemingly fucked up things happening within them seem more palatable.
I had this desire to be special, to be chosen, and on a deeper level (partially conscious, partially not) to be saved by a man.
There was something in me that did not fully trust my ability to create safety for myself in my life, so I sought out passionate, volatile relationships with men that presented some glamour of importance, success, and security.
I placed so much emphasis on the man's “rightness” or “sight,” I would bypass my own intuitive knowing when yellow, orange, or red flags emerged in the connection because I was more addicted to validating the man's perspective than the feelings in my heart.
Are you seeing a trend here?
I had a pattern of abandoning the felt-sense in my own body due to my belief that someone outside of me had the keys to my safety and salvation.
There were numerous little yellow and orange flags that showed up in our short lived yet long remembered relationship, but the major red flag that I minimized and ignored in our relationship was in our sex.
I'm a highly s£xual person, and any man who has been in intimate partnership with me knows this to be true. In my experience with this particular man, I would experience intense stabbing pains in my cervix when we had sex.
There was one moment when we were in a hotel room in topical location (he took me on an all-expenses paid trip and intentionally didn't want me to spend one dollar because he knew I was stressed about money)…
…where his cock penetrated me and I experienced a stabbing pain so intense, I literally found myself lying on the floor of the glass-enclosed shower, my arms curled around my body, buckling in pain.
I even remember housekeeping knocking on our hotel door and him telling them to leave because he didn't want them to enter the room with me in that state.
It was intense. I reflect on that experience now as I am writing, and wow.
And here's the thing, this man didn't even have a particularly large cock. He was relatively normal sized, not too long, not too thick.
To be honest, I’ve experienced men who are way bigger, and despite their length, and I've never experienced that kind of pain.
On some level, I knew this back then, but I definitely know it now--his cock size had nothing to do with my experience of pain. The pain was caused by my body telling me that something was OFF in our connection.
The pain was my body telling me that it was not a ‘yes’ to this penetration. That it did not want to receive this man, this energy, this penis inside of me.
When I expressed my concerns to him, his response was something like this: “there was something within me that was wanting to be healed, and if I could just lean into the pain, we could heal it.”
Red flag.
But there it was again, that thing inside me doubting my own intuition.
Second-guessing the wisdom I felt in my own heart, because I was afraid of saying no and risking a relationship that might be really important and meaningful--I didn't want to “fuck it up.”
So I allowed it to happen, several times, until I eventually got to a place where I realized I wasn't happy, I wasn't crazy, and what was true for me was I wanted the relationship to end.
I broke up with him, but there was a deeper lesson my body wanted to teach me that remains to this day as one of the major turning points in my life.
About two weeks after my breakup, I noticed that my period was 4 days late.
I went to a local Target, bought a pregnancy test and was so clear I needed to know the truth NOW, I went right into their public restroom and took the test.
I peed on the stick and sat there waiting, feeling my body tremble with nervous anticipation, knowing the answer before any plastic stick told me.
I was pregnant.
And then I felt it. All the flushing sensations of new life gestating in my body that I'd been so previously disconnected from I just couldn't feel it.
I had become so desensitized from my body by allowing her to be penetrated without attunement and discounting the feelings that arose within her because they were inconvenient, that I had numbed myself out to the truth.
What came through clear as day to me in that moment, and is still clear and true for me today, is that my getting pregnant was a direct result of not listening to the intuitive wisdom and boundaries of my body.
I've been practicing intentional unprotected sex with partners for years, tracking my cycle, and clearly communicating with my partners about the pull out method with mindfulness around ovulating.
This is the practice that feels best for me. It's what is aligned for me. That does not mean it is right or aligned for you. Just as I said above with everyone's right to choose with abortion, the same is true here. We all have the right to choose.
And in my 7 years of engaging in this practice, I'd never gotten pregnant.
While I'm sure there are plenty of valid reasons and explanations one could present that have nothing to do with the karmic energetic impact of acting out of integrity with the wisdom of my body for why I got pregnant…
…the truth is, I know what's true because I can feel it, and that's enough.
I was pregnant and I was clear in every fiber of my being that having an abortion was the right, true, and aligned decision in this circumstance.
I didn't have shame, I didn't have uncertainty, I just had gratitude.
Gratitude for institutions like Planned Parenthood, gratitude for parents like my mother who fly out to California at the drop of a hat to be with me during that emotional time, and gratitude for the clarity I felt in my body.
That experience, while one of the most challenging and emotionally charged times of my life, was also one of the most transformative experiences of initiation into the power and wisdom of my body.
I had come to a place within myself I could no longer avoid, seeing so clearly how my own avoidance of my truth could create such deep physical pain, and result in the need to make such a BIG and significant decision in my life as to physically remove a living being from my body.
And I realized something very important about what it meant to take ownership for my experience….
It wasn't about shaming myself
It wasn't about beating myself up.
It wasn't about seeing it as a mistake that validated why I can't trust myself.
It wasn't about punishing myself, or creating internal stories about my unworthiness of love, safety, and meaningful connection because of how stupid, silly, or naive I was.
(Though believe me, I cycled through all of those many times).
It was about having deep compassion for all the moments of pain and suffering I’d experienced in my life before I knew I could choose anything different…
…and then honoring and caring for myself in such a way that cultivating trust with my body became the most important form of safety/security I could create.
It was about getting to a place within myself where I knew on a deep level that I have the power to choose something different, and the answers didn't exist outside of me--they existed within.
I've gotten to this place in my life where I am devoted to learning the language of the wisdom of my body,…because I spent too many years looking for power, truth, and safety outside myself in men, money, and distorted Masculine structures that are disconnected from the Feminine integrity of their hearts.
It is a powerful threshold to walk through, and despite what social conditioning or our inner critic might think, the way through is not via self-judgement, or making ourselves (or our experience) wrong or small…
… but through embodying such a deep level of compassion, curiosity, and approval for our experience exactly as it is, that we can free up the energy previously frozen in shame and self doubt, and channel it towards the creation and fulfillment of what we truly desire.
In the words of Marianne Williamson:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure".
This is an invitation into realizing that we have power, despite what past experience or any external voices rooted in fear and control want us to believe.
We have the capacity to transform old memories of pain and disappointment into something truly miraculous in our lives, if that is something that we truly desire…
…and in fact it is the energy stored within our bodies from those experiences that can serve as the generative fuel for that alchemical transformation.
My Questions for You:
1) Are you willing to powerfully transform the way you relate to your own suffering?
2) And, are you willing to allow yourself to find joy and fulfillment in the process?
SOVEREIGNTY, is an 8-Week Initiatory Container for Women who…
…. are turned on by discovering a new and empowering way to work with shame and their erotic energy...
...want to do it in a community of women who support you in your growth and expansion...
...and want to receive support, guidance, and an immense amount of love, approval, and recognition of your power along the way...
Enrollment opens October 1st.
To learn more and receive details when enrollment opens, sign up for the SOVEREIGNTY mailing list here.