The ReBirthing of You

You are going to start hearing the word "reBirthing" from me a lot. Right next to "Back to The Body" because I think it's about our bodies and the constant ability to allow a new self to come through. It is about change and transformation which is something that I am devoting my life to. Not just for you - as a coach, muse, and educator. But for me. I am constantly looking at who I am, and the patterns that make up my life. I am a change and transformation junkie - and it's not always easy.  There may be labor pains.  You may need support. Tons of it. When I am in the midst of a Rebirthing of my own self, I call in the troops to support me. I'm doing that right now in my own life. Sometimes, I scream with the pain of my own labor as I allow my newest powerful Pamela to come forth. Sometimes, I don't get the help I ask for. And sometimes, I do. This is reBirth and not everyone can hold you. You need to find the people that can and surround yourself with them. And like any labor, it will be worth it. That I can promise you.

I can't believe that in my life of change and transformation that I am approaching a new frontier again. Didn't I just do that? But here it is,  a new frontier with new ideas and responses. My priorities are changing.

What about you? Here are a few of the tell tale signs that you are about to shed a skin and reinvent yourself again:

* an impulsive decision to do something out of character

*a willingness to take a calculated risk into the unknown

*a determination to make contact with ones' authentic self and tap into the true passion there

*a desire to become a source of truth about life for the next generation

*the delicious freedom of looking the latest expectation in a life time of expectation in the eye and saying "not me, not now!"

Do you feel the twitch? Perhaps that's why you hang out with me. Because I love to ask the question; "What's next?" Maybe you find that question challenging and exciting.  You might find that in this new place that you let go of drawing from your past experiences. What was, may no longer fit all. As the journey goes forward you may need to get to know this new persona a little bit. Welcome your new outlook, new confidence, new dreams. We are not programmed to fade away. As we move into this place of rebirthing ourselves, we might find that we are better suited to new challenges than we ever were in the past. As you move forward in your new explorations, this unfamiliar persona, this mischievous Tinkerbell at our ear, matures into the voice we count on most. It gets stronger, more authoritative , more philosophical, more courageous.

People rebirthing themselves, in their second adult hood are different than anyone else. They tell the truth.

Listen to your voice. Listen to your body.

Loving you from here,

Pamela

You Are Half Water

I have always had this thing about water. Perhaps it is the Tantra metaphors about the feminine and the masculine that got me. The feminine is often described as "a river" and the masculine "the banks". I really got that. I was the wild river flowing, and I always felt like my feminine was in full force when it was held and contained by strong banks. I like to say that if the banks weren't strong when my river was rising - that the water would flood small villages and hurt unsuspecting people. I felt like I needed that - and I noticed that when my energy was flowing and contained that my creativity went way up. I was happier. But if I'm dependent on the banks (the masculine) as an outside force (not a part of myself that I learned to source),  and the banks are not showing up - life can get pretty tricky for a river. I just came across this passage from author Margaret Atwood and this is what she has to say about water:

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”

I love this passage. What a different perspective than the one that I had been holding about water.

I think I like this one better. And the banks? I still like them. But we all have an inner feminine and masculine in our own bodies. Lately, I have be resourcing my own banks a bit more. And the creativity has been flowing because it's true what Margaret says about water - it's patient and nothing in the end will stop water from where it wants to go. And water can do this without resistance - just by flowing.

So what is stopping your flow? What is your story about it?

You are half water. If there's an obstacle go around it.

Loving you from here,

Pamela

I'm Not a Goddess

I have a confession to make. I'm not a Goddess. Honestly, I don't think I ever was. But everyone loves the idea of being a "Goddess" and calling each other "Sister Goddess". It's like "the thing". Especially among new age sex educators and their flock. So, I do it. If it makes you feel sexually empowered to be called a Goddess: then poof you are a Goddess. At Back to the Body: Sensuous Retreats for Women, we often call the women Goddesses. It's meant in a loving and playful way. We want to permission women to be in their full body expression and to feel powerful. and if calling yourself a Goddess gives you permission and empowerment, then why the fuck not? Embrace it. Be a Goddess.

But I'm not a Goddess. I am a very unusual and very normal woman. I understand to you that I may not seem normal - but to me that is who I am. I am sometimes insecure about so many things. My normality and fears runs the spectrum from weight and aging to my ability to create the life I want. I have kids. I worry about them. I have friendships and an expanded sexuality that can put me through my paces. I have a marriage of 32 years.

If I think of myself in grander terms, I'm the Queen of my own life. I have the power to put into motion the kind of life that I want to live. I am magical like that. I can choose what I'm willing to show up for, and I can disappear. I can bring you into my court - or I can banish you. I have the power to live as fully as I want to. Queens can give gifts and she can surrender her kingdom. Queens can also be betrayed, lose their lands and have their hearts broken. Queens are both powerful and vulnerable. And yes, I suppose the same could be said for Goddesses.

But I am mortal. I am a woman. I take the trash out. I get that this confession may make me way too normal for you. But for me, my life is pretty sexy.

What about you?

Loving you from here,

Pamela

What's Your Excuse For Playing Small?

Many of you say that you want to do so many things! You want to travel to India, find inner peace, have a healthy and delicious relationship with your own body and have an extraordinary sex life. You say that you want to "find your orgasm", raise your libido, learn how to attract a lover or relight the fire on the relationship that you currently have.

If you want something this badly - why don't you do it?

Enter your ubiquitous companion: FEAR.

You are terrified of failing. So many of you have tried one or two things to create a change in your life - and change is hard! It takes practice and you may not have hit on "The Thing" that is really going to nail it for you.  You decide that your efforts have failed, and you don't want to fail again. How you perceive failure is a game changer. What if you saw each step that you took on your way to your desires as a step on the road to success? A great big success! Forget the all or nothing mentality! That, quite frankly, is bullshit.

Allow yourself the pleasure of all of your small steps, and see each positive motion as a celebration, because it is.

What else do you use to hold yourself back from getting what you really want in your life?  You play small.

I know all the excuses: you want happiness, but you are not going to pay fifty bucks for that meditation series by that top teacher that might support your path - because come on it's fifty bucks! You want happiness -  it's the most important thing in the world to you, but you are not going to pay for it.  But go on - buy those new boots!

Money is the biggest excuse that people use to stop them from getting what they want. You want to  make big changes, and then you look at the price tag and say you can't afford it. I wonder a lot about that.  In my mind - how can you afford not to?  People always find a way to pay for what they truly think is important in their lives.

You see, you do not have to be anywhere near wealthy. But to live a big life, it takes something other than money. It takes courage and a desire for more that is way bigger than your fear of what you could gain if you stopped playing small. That's right - "Playing Small". What would happen if you actually healed your relationship with your own sexuality? You might get bigger. Then what?  You can remove the obstacle and open the gate. It is really about finding your courage.

Marianne Williamson says it so beautifully in "A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles".

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

So, what excuse are you using? Are you waiting to be thinner? Do you think that what you need to help support you is out of your financial range? Do you allow your partner to hold your back? Do you think you are too old? Do you think  you can't  have what you want in your life right now because you have young  kids?

What  excuse are you using for not facing your fear?

Find it. Look at it. And then decide if you really want to live the kind of life that you tell yourself that you want.

Do you want to find inner happiness? Do you want a healthy, extraordinary relationship with your body? Do you want more abundance in your life? Do you want a better relationship with yourself?

Does this scare the crap out of you?

It might. Because changing any relationship with yourself will create feelings and reactions that are not only very scary - they will remove you far from your comfort zone.   It is far more comfortable to aspire and complain than it is to actually do anything that will help create the life you say you want. You know where you are and somehow it feels safe to you,  even if you know you can have more. Even if you are dying to have something different in your life.

Think about it. Is this true for you?  And then decide if you really want to play small? Notice that your excuses are really your fear talking.

What do you want?

Loving you from here,

Pamela

Got Comments? Do it here on the live blog!

What to ditch playing small? Wonder what it might be like to have me on your team? Send me an email and let's talk about how I can support you in getting what you want - Pamela@Beingshameless.com

Want more inspiration?

Watch this short video with me speaking about how you can find your own true pleasure:

Read my story about how I stopped playing small in my memoir - "Shameless: How I Ditched The Diet, Got Naked Found True Pleasure and Somehow Got Home in Time to Cook Dinner".

A Recipe For Change

So you want to change your life? I've got the recipe for you, and it's very simple. Recipe to Change One's Life:

Directions....

1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions. Got it?

Loving you from here,

Pamela

Your Sexuality Is Your Garden, Your Will The Gardener

I meet women every day who want something more in their lives when it comes to their relationship with their own bodies. They feel shut down and turned off when it come to their own sexual selves. They describe to me a general feeling of numbness, lack of sexual desire and this feeling that someone just turned off the switch "down there". And yet they call me, because they know that deep down, their own bodies tell them there is more for them to have. The fear and excitement in that initial outreach is palpable. This letter from a 60 year old woman tells the tale: "After years of disappointing sexual experiences (thanks to disowning what I now know were my own legitimate sensual/sexual/intimacy needs, at a very young age) there is still juiciness inside me, and the possibility of satisfying, even ecstatically transcendent sensuous sexual spiritual experience (by myself, and with a partner) for the rest of what I expect will be a very long life! So sending this email is my first big risk-taking reaching-for-the-moon of 2014 (maybe even scarier than jumping out of an airplane, running a marathon, and climbing 10 mountains when I was 40)."

During our first sessions, many of the women describe to me a feeling of stomach upset and resistance - as if their genitals are saying something to them like "Leave me alone! Go away! I don't want to wake up! Why are you doing this to me?"

The fear of "reunion pain" when a woman gets to not only make peace with her genitals but finds the capacity to meet her genitals again in pleasure feels terrifying.

There can be the fear of regret which can sound like this: "I can't believe how amazing it is to finally be in touch again with my sexuality" which dissolves into tears and the lament, "Why did I wait so long?" The fear of reunion pain is real, the struggle women are facing between their own resistance and their desires for reuniting with their bodies is extraordinary. It's almost as if years of sexual rejection from partners, or messages from society, have created a place in a woman's body where her own genitals are saying; "Fine, you didn't want me when I wanted to be wanted - so now I don't want you."

The good news is that women are breaking through this wall and finding out that their bodies were just as scared as their minds. Once we move past that initial terror of; "I can't, I'm stuck, Nothing works, I'm ugly, I'm old, My hormones are a mess and nobody wants me anymore" - pleasure can happen and that changes everything.

Do you recognize yourself here? I promise you, that you are not alone.

Here are some tips for gently easing yourself back into a healthy relationship with your own sexuality:

1. Dignify your own desires: Spend some time thinking about what it is you want in your own personal relationship to your body and sexuality. Get to know what you truly desire. Write it down. Speak it to somebody such as a close friend, partner, therapist or sexuality coach. Speaking your desires can be powerful and life changing.

2. Prioritize pleasure in your life. Create a "Pleasure Plan". Start to look at even the smallest moments of choice in your life as a possibility for pleasure. Do you want that salad because you think you should have it, or because eating it will give you pleasure? Notice the pleasure choices you are making. Making pleasure a conscious choice every time you are choosing something can change your experience of even the smallest decision.

3. Activate your ability to receive. The extent to which you are able to receive pleasure and kindness in your life has a direct influence on your ability to love and feel your body. Oftentimes women are great givers, but really don't know how to receive or take for themselves. Look at where you are pushing away pleasure, kindness and support. Try saying "Yes, I would." instead of, "I'm fine."

So many woman have put fences around their sexuality garden and they may have been put there for good reason. There may have been a feeling that this part of you needed protecting and just wanted everyone including your own self to keep out. But it's possible that you are hearing this tiny voice in your head that is urging you to do something about these fences for a very good reason.

You know deep inside that there are riches to explore, and you just don't know how to get started.

Listen to the little voice. 

If your sexuality is your garden, then your will is the gardener. You are not too late.

What to Do After Reading This Article:

Please take a moment to "Like it" "Share it" and give it a Tweet! And comments are always a pleasure!

Are you curious about Pamela's "Back to the Body Retreats For Women"? Check out the website here.

Do you want to know more about Pamela's journey back to her own sexuality and healing her body when she put her big toe into the mid-life? Read "Shameless: How I Ditched The Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure and Somehow Got Home in Time to Cook Dinner" (Rodale, 2011).

Fair Energy Exchange in Sex and Relationship

It's time to talk fair trade when it come to sexuality and intimate relationships! Are you giving as good as you are getting and are you getting as good as you are giving? The concept of fairness and balance in energy exchange is not a new one, in fact I found a few articles and blogs about this idea on the internet. But I first heard about it in conversation with a friend over lunch. It seems reasonable, but somehow until I heard the term "Fair Energy Exchange", it didn't put my own feelings about giving and taking into perspective.

Most of us understand trading money for physical things, or even trading physical things for physical things. Ever go to a card swap? While we trade physical things, we are all also involved in trading energy on some level. We may on a very subtle level be also trading our emotions or thoughts. Have you ever bartered? Struck a deal? What did that feel like to you?

So, in the world of physical trading, it's all about everyone getting what is fair in value. In a fair energy exchange it's all about each person getting a fair and agreeable or balanced share of the effort and energy being put out and received in relationship.

People don't just steal or take advantage in business. People also steal, take advantage, or make bad trades when it comes to another person's energy.

Beware the energy suckers! These are the folks that are really good at getting, but rarely put out. They can literally steal your life force energy in order to feel better themselves. Energy suckers can keep you waiting, those folks that are consistently late for everything. Energy suckers are often insensitive to the emotional or physical state of another person and continue on with their own agenda. They may also demand unreasonable things and cause stress in the lives of their friends and family. Energy suckers can also steal ideas and pass them off as their own, such as writing about "Fair Energy Exchange" and saying that it is an original concept! It's important in energy exchange to give credit.

Fair Energy Exchange in sex and intimate relationship is crucial even in "Power Relationships" when one person is dominant and one is submissive. When a submissive gives to a dominant, the dominant also has responsibilities in supporting the submissive's needs at the back end. In every kind of sexual relationship, no matter how kinky or traditional - there is an energy exchange and fairness counts.

If you believe in what you give comes back to you, the universal law of Karma, we need to be aware of the balance of what we are taking and giving in a relationship. How we give back may be very varied. It may not be an orgasm trade!

So pay attention to your energy exchanges. It's important not to get stuck in a pattern of over receiving and over giving. Spending too long in each pattern will eventually cause a relationship collapse. We need to think about how to give back the energy in healthy amounts to the person that is giving to us, and this is not always as straight forward as it seems. Some ways of giving back can include touch. Giving a massage without receiving one back. Reaching for a hand, or putting an arm around your intimate partner while you are walking. using your "love language" with each other. Is it important to your intimate partner to be called by a nick name? Do you have a special way of signing off emails? Taking the time to listen without inserting your own story. Texting, or phoning just to send love. Planning an evening out, or even the traditional bringing of the flowers are all examples of ways to give energy. Taking your partner on a trip, making sure that their is wine in their glass, the possibilities are endless for way that we can give and take energy in intimate relationships. It is all about balance and being aware of the other person. So much of energy exchange is subtle. It can take the form of kind words, sharing our creative thinking, cooking meals, and even how we react verbally or physically to each other. How can we offer sexy fun, healing, compassion and support to each other?

We live in a world that is full of transition and erratic energy. Everyone it seems is going through something in our every day lives. The world is calling for our attention, and demanding our time. It's hard to create the time and attention that is often required for a fair energy exchange. It takes effort to give and receive pleasure, love, caring, and intimacy in our everyday lives.

It's important to remember that whatever we receive, is taken from somewhere.

We can also take a more proactive perspective to energy exchange. We can help build kindness reserves by giving more than we take. This is service. It's always our choice of what we need, want or expect in an energy exchange. It's just a good idea to be aware that fairness counts. Play fair everybody!

Reclaiming Our Virginity

I am studying the work this week of Saida Desilets, Ph.D.  I was attracted to her because she does a lot of work with women around the use of the Jade Egg which is an embodiment practice that I am intending to bring to our work at Back to The Body: Sensuous Retreats For Women (BttB). In her writing, Saida speaks about this concept of "Reclaiming Our Virginity". I love this. Mostly because it has put words to what I see in the women who leave "Back to The Body", and what I have experienced in myself.

So many of the women who I watch leave BttB feel to me like they have been born again sexually, or have reclaimed their own pure sexual essence. It is as if they have returned to a natural state where they are free from contamination, foreign shame, the softening and letting go abuse or negative thoughts about their bodies and sexuality.  I watch many regain a feeling of spontaneity around their sexual desires where they only welcome in what they need in order to feel in a state of completeness.

We can learn to touch and reclaim this pure essence of our own sexual energy. It is always pure, spontaneous, wild, free, and available to help us create whatever we want in this life. As Saida says, "As we reclaim our virginity we return to our innate sense of self. Through redefining ourselves according to our own truth and not according to what others lead us to believe, we deepen our trust in really knowing what that is for us".

Yes, it is possible to be born again sexually - and to keep being reborn and kept in a pure state of sexual virginity where every touch and moment is free from contamination.  I love this definition of virginity. It's not about penis in vagina, it's about the pureness of feeling and the opening afresh every time to touch. It's this sense of aliveness and anticipation to each and every sexual encounter, and a shame free curiosity to our own bodies that can keep us as eternal virgins.

I love putting new language to ideas and thoughts that I already know to be true.  Yes, it is possible to be an eternal virgin. I watched a 75 year old woman become one last retreat. It can be reclaimed, and kept forever.

Loving you from here,

Pamela

PS...Have any thoughts? Put them here!

Do I Need Lipstick?

I love this Rumi most of all:  "Forget Safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be Notorious.

Not a big surprise, if you know anything about me. But it is something that I choose over and over again. I choose it when I wrote "Shameless".  And I am choosing it right now, simultaneously writing a book of erotica and a self help book at the same time.  I kept being drawn to both - "The Arousal Principle" and "The Surrender Games". And I worried that no one would take "The Arousal Principal" (the self help book), seriously if I wrote erotica (which for me is part memoir anyway!). So, I kept putting down "The Surrender Games", because I am a SERIOUS FEMALE SEX COACH! Right. And then I decided once again to follow my heart and my fingers and I am forgetting safety. Right now again, I am living where I fear to live. I am writing self help and sexy stories. I am running retreats for women that are so magnificent and out of the box, that they couldn't even imagine the box when Will, Ron and I created "Back to The Body".

Oh yeah. I might destroy my reputation. Who knows....I may be notorious already. Isn't that kind of wonderful?

I feel great. I am right where I should be.

What about you?

Can you let yourself forget safety? Can you live in that place of low vibration arousal where you have this tingle of anticipation that starts in your pelvis and rolls up through your body throughout the day?

Can you let yourself feel what it is to live where you fear most? You say you want to live with an open heart, and destroy the old patterns. You read all of us "self help" Goddesses to you are blue in the face. How many pictures with new age expressions can you "LIKE" in one day on Facebook?

Let me kick your ass. You can discover yourself anew and it will be risky. It always is. You may spend your fortune on your quest. You may break you heart a thousand times over. But you will fall in love. You might change the world.

Stop holding back.Really, I may be just like you. I have all of the fears. I have insecurity. I worry about scarcity. Sometimes I allow my ego to get in the way and have incredibly strong feelings of jealousy. Sometimes, I just worry if I'm pretty enough to get out there and rock this world.

Do I need lipstick?

You found me, this blog and perhaps my Shameless Community which is filled with people who want to create change in their lives and in some ways the world. Soak it up. Breathe in my intensity and make it yours. Dance. Sing. Write. Get Sexy. Fall in love with yourself. Hang out with your friends and love on each other with unbridled support. Laugh until your ribs hurt.Let yourself feel. You can do this.

We can do this together. Soak it in. And if you like, put on lipstick. I do.

Will I Be Safe? Exploring Hands on Sexual Healing

I talk to literally hundreds of women that are exploring cutting edge humanistic sex therapy, somatic sex education or more simply stated - hands on sexual healing and exploration. The number one question is "Will I be safe?". That's the most complicated question to answer, because there isn't a straight forward response! What does being safe mean to you? Of course you will not be harmed in any kind of physical or emotional way. That is the hope whenever we see a professional holistic practitioner that we trust with our care. But safe? A part of me wants to answer..."Of course not! And isn't that the point?" Is that why you are truly showing up? Or are you showing up to push your boundaries and comfort zones? To feel things that you have only read about in books? To explore and heal places that perhaps you could not get to through pills, shakes, and Dr. Oz?

Going deeper into your body and mind can be really challenging. Sometimes, it can really make you feel uncomfortable because you are touching all kinds of new and old feelings. So, no, you will not be safe from any of that. Sometimes, you may feel like you want to run away. That is a challenge any time that we want more in our lives. It's about digging in, and getting terribly real with ourselves. That's what hands on therapy provides.

It's an opportunity to explore your sexuality, desires, and body image in a way that is all about you.

Step-by-stiletto step, it can feel exciting, eye opening, earnest, pleasure filled, and magical. On your journey you will be flipping the switch on your erotic engine in ways that you never thought was possible. That’s the powerhouse motor fueled by sexual energy that propels every aspect of a woman’s life--sexual pleasure, relationships (from mother-daughter to lover to her own body), education and even success in business.

Safe? Will I be safe?

Well, it all starts with you. Your body. Your humble vagina and your precious pelvis. Every woman’s got one. The problem is it’s only the rare woman who knows how to access and use its magic powers for self-transformation.

That's what hands on, somatic practice is offering. An opportunity to explore this place in yourself and learn how. The goal is to power up, rediscover or perhaps to find for the first time that hotbed of energy and harness it to unleash each woman’s full potential.

Do you want to feel integrated, powerful, sensuous and seen? Do you want to look at your sexuality through a different lens then you ever have before? What if sex is not just there for attracting men, orgasms or making babies? And what if you could have all that and the secret sauce too if you wanted it?

Naomi Wolf has taken on the subject of the vagina-heart-brain circuit in her inevitably controversial treatise and NY Times bestseller, “Vagina: A New Biography.” Though it’s met wild adulation and bitter criticism, the message is compelling. When the circuit, a dopamine-oxytocin-opiate loop in physiological terms, is intact and uninterrupted, women are in a state of genuine well-being: capable, confident and sexy. When that loop is disrupted, severed, shamed or abused women numb out. They get depressed, anxious, have low libido and dare I say it, suffer “hysteria.” While Wolf’s analysis may be bitterly contested by some, her understanding and defense of the genital-brain connection is one that we've studied and established empirically.

What she didn’t explain in any great detail is how to acknowledge and complete that circuit so that we women are steadily charged, activated, open to and ready for life. That’s what this is all about.

Will you be safe? Is perhaps forever changed safe?

Yes....you will be safe in the deepest sense of the world. And you will also be busted open, and alive like you have never been in your entire life.

Do you want to know more? Contact me for a free "Curious Critter" session. Just send an email to Pamela@beingshameless.com and put "Curious Critter" in the subject line!

The Guts To Do Something Different

I know, I have talked about doing something different before. I will again. Because it is such a big, important skill set to learn. It takes guts to do something different.  In somatic sex education (through the body) we talk a lot about re-wiring neural pathways to sexual pleasure. That is what can happen when you do hands on work with a somatic sex practitioner. It is an amazing experience.

But there is also another piece to the puzzle on sex and relationship, and that is reprogramming our emotional neural pathways. What happens when you begin to feel restless, unsettled, anxious? Can you stop a minute and notice the hotness? That moment when you instantly grab for something? You know the something....that thing that you do when you are in one of those moments. Do you constantly threaten to leave your relationship? Do you withdraw? Abuse a substance? Throw things? Is it the same thing that you do repeatedly? Does it get you anywhere different? My guess, is that it doesn't. Think about doing something different ahead of time. What do you want to feel? How do you get there?

When you feel it coming on, just stop for a minute. And bring in your pre-planned new pattern of behavior or wing it! It can be really hard to do this. We want to reach for the familiar because even in it's dysfunction - it comforts us. Ask for support for this change in response from your friends, lovers, partners, therapists and coaches. It is through this constant paying attention and witnessing of our own emotional reactions that we can create the sexy, playful, beautiful experiences that we want to fill our lives.

An Invitation to do Something Different....

It has begun. The time between Thanksgiving and New Years where we prepare for Winter with celebration before we officially turn inward to the time of resting, re renewal and gentle change. Today is "Black Friday" and the world is out shopping. I find myself doing something different. I am reading old letters. Letters of love, sex, and anticipation. Letters of heart break and misunderstanding. Do you ever do that? Go back and read your life? Recount the memories? Touch the soft spots? Long for more of them? A beautiful man sent me this poem a long time ago. He loved me and wanted to know what made up the marrow of my bones. The poem below still speaks of the truth that I seek in myself, in my friends, in my beloveds. I share it with you on this day of consuming....it's a different kind of invitation.

Read this. And then think about sharing something tender with another or yourself. Write about something deep in your heart that connects you to what is real. Blog it. Mail it. Text it. Reach out today and share something authentic.Start a conversation. Be generous with love. Move a heart in your life. Today doesn't have to be about leftovers and shopping. It can be something different.....

An Invitation:

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dreams for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful be realistic to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes."

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Loving you from here,

Pamela