How Do You Feel Sexy?

Yesterday, was a big day for me. I did a "HuffPost Live" on meditation supporting your sex life. If you missed it; you can watch it here.

I was also brought in as a consultant to a big company that wanted insights into what made women feel good about themselves. What makes a woman feel sexy?

I think it's all about how we are able to "Pre-Heat" our own oven. But of course that begs the question; "How do we get that feeling in our own bodies and then how do we  sustain that feeling?

I love questions that ask "How?"  The honest truth is that on most days, for many women — our self image can really take a beating.

Many of us want to be seen as hot and sexy. And perhaps most of all, we want to feel like those women look in those women's magazines sipping a Margarita with knowing smoky eyes. We just know that they are about to have the most incredible experiences in the universe. Right? Maybe? Who knows but sometimes I feel confronted by them.

Seeing those images can make me feel just not enough. More than that — it is this feeling that I will never have in my life what I truly want because I don't look like that.  Heck, I got confronted with that on "HuffPost Live"!!!

There I was on my home computer with a bad computer angle while Emily the other woman being interviewed was this "glamorous" former Broadway actress! She had the make up, the perfect face and perfect body. And there I was in poor lighting not done up at all talking about feeling sexy! Wowsa!

But I sunk into my own practice and told myself just to feel it. And in the end - I did fine. But I was actually practicing on live video stream.

And it really doesn't matter how old you are, it can be really hard to look like the images of women that we are surrounded with on a daily basis. This is not news. But it's impact on women is still real.

And what is it that I want, and what many women want? It's a simple thing really...I want to be deeply desired, and feel free in my body. I want to be able to know that I am sexy from the inside out and truly believe it — all the time! I want to be able to walk around naked and not worry about my behind shaking in a bad way.  Perhaps this is simply universal. After all, I coach hundreds of women and they want it too — very badly. This is what I hear from some of my clients:

"I want to get so lost in my own wanton sexiness that orgasms flow from me like a waterfall. I don't want much — I just want to dance in my own inner sexy wildness! Is that asking for so much?"

I get it.

As I just shared, I have moments of feeling confronted with my own self loathing. It is shocking that I can still go to those places of calling myself names. After all, this true confession is being spoken by a woman who has professed to the world that I have conquered body shame and self acceptance by embracing my sexual pleasuare.

Am I a fraud — or am I simply real and honest? The fact is, that I have healed so much of the damage that I have walked around with for most of my life when it comes to my body image and my sexuality.

But everyday, when I wake up and my feet touch the ground, it takes a little bit of courage to love myself just as I am — and that is the truth. To say anything else would be to over promise healing like those 30 day miracle diets on television.

Recently in The Wall Street Journal was a great article, "Conquering Fear," which is all about those nasty little voices in our heads that tell us that we are not enough — that we are fat and stupid. That our bodies are ugly and that our boss hates us.

I know those tapes so well that I could sing along! My book Shameless: How I Ditched The Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure and Somehow Got Home in Time to Cook Dinner is all about my funny, sexy, unconventional path to falling in love with myself again in the most unbelievable way... And I did.

But on my book tour  there were all of these videos being made of me so that people can get to know me — and I get to watch them over and over again.

Every time I watch them — I get taken out of how I was "feeling" when I made those videos and I get stuck in how I believe I look. I hate my neck. My face is too round. I have a double chin in that angle. And I stop feeling sexy. Instead I get filled with self doubt and worry.

You see — I am a real woman. Isn't that reassuring? I am not going to give you pleasure platitudes and tell you that if you do this or that all of your inner fears will go away completely. They don't. But it can get better.

This is what I can promise. If you work on embracing who you are,  every single day just like a religious practice — things will change in your world.

In so many ways, it is like developing a healthy eating and exercising plan. There is a lot of self-encouragement and coaching that has to happen. I have to do it too — even now.

The voices of fear that tell us that we are not enough — or are broken in some way — don't ever really go completely away. But it gets better.

I hope that by showing up and being honest about how I feel and how I move through all of the hatefulness that I can throw at myself will inspire you to do it too. The fact is that most of the time these days — I feel smoking! I have a swagger to my step  and kick to my heels. I dress like a diva with a wink! And I still feel bad about my neck a lot.  You see — I still  have really big moments of self loathing. It's all a part of the process...

Self loving is a practice. Feeling sexy is a practice. Let's practice together.

Loving you from here,

Pamela

A Shameless Diet

Life is full of ironies.  I ditched the diets years ago.  I found that by having nourishing touch - that I was less hungry and that I was able to full the void that was in my life in much more sexy ways than a chocolate chip cookie. Weight fell off of my plus size body naturally - no failed diets for me! I was free. I never got skinny - I simply left the plus sizes behind and became quite comfortable as a curvy size 14.  I actually like my round ass, full breasts and I can even see beauty in the softness of my belly.  I wear sexy clothes and flirt with the world - it took a long time to get me here - this place of self acceptance and internal sexy fire.  It's what most of my readers and coaching students want.

And then I developed a tightness in my throat.  It scared me. I flew to the doctors after choking at dinner at a conference - and after an extensive work up found out that I had a type of reflux.  ICK.  What to do?  Well - apparently my kind of reflux was not cured by a purple pill. Oh no - if I wanted to get rid of this tight around my collar feeling - I was going to have to go on a diet!

He was kidding right? No - actually he wasn't.  I had to give up some of the things that I love to eat - modify the quantities of things like coffee (one mug a day) and on top of THAT diet - I was going to need to size down again.

So here I sit - the author of a book that tells you how I ditched the diets.....and I did. Right now,  I am trying to look at dieting through a different lens.  Before dieting was about trying to look a certain way to feel better about myself. I found out that dieting didn't do that for me. Being thinner didn't make me sexier.  I was and am - sexy.  Instead diets always made me feel like I was less than.

I am on Weight Watchers on Line playing with points.  I am wondering if I can diet my way out of a tight throat. That would be a good use of a diet.

Feeling sexy? Accepting myself? Learning how to be a turned on woman? No diet can do that.

My Red Hot Sexy Girlfriends...

I have this incredible posse of girlfriends. They are an unusually powerful, free thinking, introspective, independent and sexy group. I am surrounded by women who are generators of ideas, and who march through this world with an expectation of nothing less than lighting it up. Each of them is a Fourth of July fire works display. And they do light up the sky...all of them, in their own unique way. They are innovators of change, while many hold traditional roles in the mix of creating new ones. Yesterday I spent the day with three of them. I include my sister in that. If you read SHAMELESS - they are "The Martini Circle". We were walking along the beach - "Scarlet Women" - one of them called us. We were all sexing in some way  out of the box...so to speak. I trailed for a little while behind them, listening to them talk. These sturdy, curvaceous bodies...their round asses swaying in front of me. My friends are not cookie cutter women ( not this group and not the ones that I have scattered all over this country). I could feel their power. Their discontent - their determination to have something important and rich in their lives that activated them. Whether it was their life partners or lovers - their jobs - or how they spent their leisure time - their kids or even how they loved each other.

I felt quiet around them. One thought that I was off my game. I was not....not really. Not anymore than normal - anyway. I was just taking them all in...feeling them. Looking at my life in relation to theirs. We were all so the same...we were all so different. We were united in an imperative to no longer accept what we have been fed about our roles - and what should make us happy. We were willing to take what some might seem as unacceptable risks to not have unacceptable lives.

In some ways, I found it exhausting. The hunger in us was palpable to me. The determination to do better than simply get by - was overwhelming. There was also this underlying anger that kept resurfacing in our conversations. We had been fed some kind of a story....and as I said to one of them....the story might have worked if we had died in child birth. But we didn’t. We have lived on to be young in our middle years during a time when we would have been old or gone. We are mapping out a new middle age where the old rules simply don’t feel like they fit our souls anymore.

These New York girlfriends of mine, are not so different from my other female friends. All of them are facing change in one way or another - or creating the change that they face. We are all yearning for something. There is a kind of journey quest going on upon my friends...this group of forty or fifty something women. I might even call it a "movement". What would satisfy us years ago in the love department - bores us now. We are wanting something more. We are offering something more. There is this under current upon all of us - that we don’t want what "turned us on" when we were of reproductive age. Those moves won’t make us swoon anymore. The men have to dig deeper. And they have to be willing to allow us to impregnate them this time around. It is not just about them fucking us. There is a richness to these women....a priestess quality to all of them. I wonder will these men are who have shown up to hold them..or will show up. Because they will. I wonder how could they pass up such a deep level of sexiness. The hotness of these women comes from a burning place inside of their bodies and simply radiates out. No, these cannot be ordinary men - looking for that special skinny 25 year old that they can make swoon in order to feel masculine. Not the men that are showing up for my posse of mid life sirens. No...they are independent thinkers. They are open to a new kind of feminine power and feminine surrender.....and these "new" men will want to drink from us too...they will want us to fill them up and plant gardens in their male wombs...because these men will be giving birth too in a brand new way.

I do not know what I would do without my posse of female beauties who I love all over this country. I could not be and become who I will shall unfold into when I die without them. And I could never let them walk alone either...unless they wanted to. My red hot, sexy, free thinking out of the box girlfriends - give me the strength and the courage to be me. And I hope that I love each of them back with the same veracious energy that they so generously bestow on me. I hope that I give them the same courage, by sharing my out of the box life with them - to dance naked under the stars and shake their delicious mid life asses for all the world to see

Are You Willing To "Be Seen" As a Sexual Being?

"Being Seen" has always been a really huge issue for me.  I have always wanted to be seen - and I have always lived in fear of the judgment that would follow if anyone truly saw the real me. And who was the real me anyway? I wasn't too clear about that either! There are so many aspects of my life - where I am obviously seen a lot. I am seen as a Fertility Advocate, a Blogger, a "Founder" and a daughter, wife, mother, sister and friend.  I am very busy in in the world of social media - and you can friend me on Facebook or follow my tweets. You would think that I have no problem at all with "Being Seen" - with  such a big mouth! But that is not what I am talking about....I am talking about being seen as a sexual, erotic being.  For years - that part of me was completely invisible.  And I chronicle my journey from being sexually invisible to being brave enough to be seen as an erotic being in my memoir, SHAMELESS - just as I was then and just as I am now.

It's a long, story - one that I am not going to go into now - but just for argument sake - have you read those articles about buying sexy lingerie "Just for You".  Those women magazine pieces that suggest that you should go buy those sexy pull up stocking and put them on so that only you know how hot you are? These pieces are meant to inspire ourselves into feeling sexy from the inside out - and it does help. I have done that - and it can be very delicious to walk into a buttoned up business meeting and know that you are wearing a rhinestone bra.....but that is not what I am talking about. Many women are willing to buy the sexy and keep it private and under wraps. Some never even wear it for the partners.

What if you allowed yourself to be seen wearing the sexy? What about being photographed? Have you ever thought of that? How scary would that be? How delicious would that be? Just think about it....

I went from a woman that wouldn't look at myself below the neck line to a lady who loves to put on sexy lingerie for the camera! Now how did that happen? And trust me on this - my size hasn't changed all that much through the years. I am still a handful!

But there was incredible power for me - as a woman - to allow myself to express who I was out loud in living color as a sexual being through my clothing. And once I realized that I could not only feel good in silk - but look good enough  too - I began to get braver about allowing myself the pleasure of prancing in my costumes! First for my husband , then  for the camera.

Some how it was the act of being seen that really helped me in coming  alive as a feminine being. It was as if  posing like a sex goddess gave me the courage to be that sex goddess.  Maybe it was the encouragement of the photographer. I just don't know. But there I was showing up and playing the part of the calendar girl.  And then - some how - I wasn't playing the part anymore. I became the calendar girl!

I didn't need to hide my body - my size 14 frame - my less than perfect anything! It was like a proclamation to myself - and to the world to  bring it on! It was as if the young sex kitten in my middle aged body was shouting "SEE ME".  I am just who I am and I am perfect in this "as is" container.

For me - there was and still is great healing in being seen simply as a desirable woman. It was a part of myself that I didn't believe in for so long.  And it is so good to finally come out - and offer you my eyes looking boldly back at you from my photographs.  Yes - this is me too.

No shame here!  Just a playful, sexy, fun woman who has finally found her skin.