Category Archives: Sacred sexuality

Cunt Love

 

Today’s guest post from Colette aka Lady Cunt Love is powerful stuff…

To really love your cunt is to take back what belongs to you.

It is to reconcile with the patriarchal bullshit we have had to put up with for the last thousand years and gain back all the wisdom that we had in a time when our cunts were revered with love and awe. It is to accept that the fear that men felt of our power and capacity for sexual pleasure and to also see that somewhere along the line, we have internalised that fear.

To reclaim the word ‘cunt’ and say with a smile on your lips is so fucking liberating. It is to strip yourself of the chastity belts and straight jackets once and for all.

It’s time for us to move on to a new place.

A place where we are no longer silent or shamed. A place where we see the beauty in ourselves and others.

It is time for us to stop comparing and competing with each other as women but to join together in a circle of sisters. It’s so much easier and liberating this way. It is the only way.

I learned all of this through talking to people on the streets. I decided one day that I had enough of the secrecy and silence. So I created an alter ego for myself named Lady Cunt Love. I wore a silk cunt headpiece on my head and a velvet, glittery cunt around my waist. I had a clipboard and a lots of handrawn cunts and colouring pencils. I had my two friends with me – Queen Clit and The Cuntess. We approached people on the street and in pubs and cafes and clubs. We learned so much about how people view the world, cunts, cocks, sex, porn, gender and language.

cuntlove

I then began to share my story in the form of a poetry collection called ‘The Healing Journey of my Cunt’. We created Cuntcraft, a craft where we sit in circle and use velvet, satin, silk, glitter to create our own beautifully crafted cunts. I facilitate these circles and perform and exhibit from my studio in Brighton, The Cuntquarters and all over the UK and Ireland.

I have witnessed so many beautiful moments where a sweet kind of magic takes over and women find the courage to share their stories with me. Sad stories are told about painful periods, rape, traumatic abortions, miscarriage, abuse and shame (lots of shame). Liberating stories are told too – about sexual pleasure, joyous births and pregnancies, premenstrual insights and happy bleeds. Once the stories are expressed, they are out in the world and can take on a new meaning. They are released and we can come to a place of love, forgiveness and acceptance.

cunt

I have now decided it is time to take this even further and am inviting women to join me on a four week online Cunt Loving Quest beginning on the 1st April. This is to give women the opportunity to explore their relationships with the cunts in the safety and comfort of their own homes.

You can see a video of me describing the course here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGEyvx6dYrY and join the quest on my website here. http://cherishthecunt.com/2014/03/06/introducing-the-28-day-cunt-loving-quest

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Must Read Woman-Craft Books of 2013

I regularly get emails from women asking for book recommendations. So here, hopefully just in time for last minute Christmas pressies, are my pick of the best women’s books that I have read this year.

Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control

This is a superbly researched and written examination of the Pill, how it is marketed, why we swallow it and what it does to us.

“The pill is intrinsic to Western, patriarchal, capitalist culture as it is to the lives of many millions of women.” This line shook me hard. It was a terrifying truth, but one that I had never considered before. In order to be the stable, efficient, fully productive economic units of society that our culture requires, women need to take the Pill!

Over the course of the book she unpacks this statement. Women who take the Pill tend to feel numb and have less emotional response to their surroundings, both ups and downs. So women who are less passionate in all senses. Less angry, less outraged, less excited about whom they love, and have a lower libido. Women walk around who cannot get pregnant, who can have sex whenever, wherever without thought or repercussions – the stereotypical male fantasy of a living sex doll.

And women pay for this dubious privilege, both through their prescriptions, (which whilst free in the UK, it is paid for elsewhere.) but also with their health. Healthy women take a powerful medication daily for years, and often decades. A medication which UN polls has shown would be unpalatable for men to take. And it is a medication which promises so much – not just freedom from the constant fear of pregnancy, but also clear skin, bigger boobs, no PMT, lighter bleeding, less cramps, and with some, weight loss… There are few young women who wouldn’t want all that it promises: the ability to transform from a flawed human woman into superwoman.

For me this and The Pill: Are you sure it’s for you? by Alexandra Pope should be required reading of all girls on their 16th birthday.

a body Body of Wisdom – I just took delivery of this last night and I have read the first few pages and WOW! it is the the book of women’s wisdom I have been yearning for every moon time… I am SO excited about reading it. It explores nine hidden spiritual powers within women’s bodies which have been overlooked by patriarchal spiritual systems. Let me share a quote with you… “The powers described in this book are natural to women. They are integrated into our bodies and energy systems, and coordinated with our hearts and minds both…They are not how most women actually live, as most of us have curtailed what is natural in order to survive or thrive in a patriarchal society. But because they are natural they are always with us, like an invitation that is never withdrawn.”

Alchemy for Women: Personal Transformation Through Dreams and the Female Cycle has been my book of the year. I have learned so much about how not only my, but also my partner’s dreams are affected by my cycle… as well as so many other blood mysteries which no one speaks of. This is a follow-on title from the same authors as the classic book The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman – and thought it is much smaller, but equally as valuable, it never really established the same reputation. It is a funny mix of the scientific and esoteric written in quite a bitty way – almost like a notebook of discoveries many of which have yet to be fleshed out. It is influencing my ideas for my next book and comes highly recommended.

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And of course if you’re wanting to learn more about your cycles may I point you in the direction of my on book on the subject – Moon Time: A Guide to Celebrating your Menstrual Cycle – which hundreds of women around the world have described as life changing.

 

I also gained a number of really interesting insights from Wild Feminine: Finding Power, Spirit & Joy in the Female Body (don’t you just LOVE the cover!) I found the exercises in it a little repetitive (I have a short attention span!) and it’s a long book – but if you’re looking for a book to help you get in touch with your female body and especially the pelvic bowl, Tami Lynn Kent is a loving insightful guide.

 

 

My Mother, Myself is a classic, written in the 70s, before it was even acknowledged how much power on a girl’s psyche her mother has. It is a book that I have bought for myself three times, but never gotten past the second chapter. The same happened again… so I skipped a few and got great insight from it. In truth I’m not mad about her writing style, and it feels a little dated as she is talking about the previous generation of mothers and daughters. But ouch her insights cut like a knife. She says what is now a classic took a while before really taking off, as women admitted to throwing it across the room or hiding it in cupboards before taking it out and finishing it, then recommending it to their friends, or buying a copy for their mother. So I guess I’m not alone!

a secret

I have just ordered her other classic My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies which arrived last night and is an eye-opener – it both documents hundreds of women’s sexual fantasies as well as reflecting on the how and why of female sexual fantasy in our patriarchal culture!

a cunt

Whilst we’re on the topic, lets talk Cunt: A Declaration of Independence which I discovered when I was invited to a Facebook group of the same name – well actually it’s called “That book with a daisy on it” because Facebook don’t allow the word cunt in a positive context. Only for misogynists. Anyway. It is a feisty book which explores women, their bodies, their sexuality and independence with sassyness, verve and packs a punch.

Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. For god here read whatever you see god as… but the title would have put me off buying it myself. Don’t let it! It is basically all about mindfulness and eating, written with great compassion and humor.

a dance

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine is another book I avoided for years because of the title – not being into either the Christian tradition or the Sacred Feminine. Really it is a powerful book about a woman’s journey into herself, breaking away from what she should believe and feel and discovering her own truth. It has become one of my all time favourite books, which I know I shall come back to again and again.

art birthThe Art of Birth: Empower Yourself for Conception, Pregnancy and Birth  offers a radical new approach to conception, pregnancy and birth using expressive art for self-development. It is a beautifully illustrated book which will also inspire women who are yearning to express their sense of being a woman through art. Packed full of art exercises, relaxation, positive affirmations, inner work, emotional support and pleasure, where the dream of a natural, empowered journey to motherhood and a positive birth experience can become a new reality.

Leonie Dawson‘s 2014 Create Your Amazing Year in Life and Business Workbook has changed how I live my life and do business over the past three years that I have used it! It is powerful transformational life and business stuff carefully presented in a non-threatening, feminine way with girly pictures and gorgeous colours which make me feel so happy and safe whilst I’m doing the big work inside!

I get the wonderful printable PDF version free on her Life and Business Academy (you can buy the Life and Business versions individually for $9.95 here which is what I did last year). BUT I wanted a lovely bound copy to hold in my hands. And this year for the first year you can buy a printed copy of both versions together from Amazon. I ripped mine open last night and started the life planner the moment the kids were asleep… and then first thing at work this morning I did some of the business part. I LOVE this book. I’ve spent the morning taking stock of the mammoth year of dreams that has been 2013 and looking forward to an even more glorious year next year – oh the things I have in store already!!

Obviously The Rainbow Way has been the book I have spent most time with in every way this year. I turn to it myself when I am feeling creatively overwhelmed, burned out or in need of reassurance. There is a lot of woman craft in it – a focus on the womb and its connection to women’s creativity, our menstrual cycle and how it affects creativity, lots about women’s circles in supporting creativity and lots of self care guidance. (I am so honored that Leonie named it one of her top 20 books for 2013!) I was SO excited to see that it is number 10 on Amazon.co.uk’s most wished for book in the Motherhood genre at the time of writing!

For girls

Blueberry Girl A dear friend gave this very special book to Ash for her third birthday and it is SO beautifully written and illustrated. It is a lovely non- religious blessing of power and strength for a girl. Watch the beautiful animated reading of the book here.

Reaching for the Moon was my first book release of the year, and is, of my three self-published books, the quickest seller. It seems to really resonate with mothers and daughters and is spreading like wild fire. My 5 1/2 year old begged to be able to read one of my books, brandishing this one in her little hands, knowing that it was for girls, but I have put her off for a couple more years! I was so honored to hear that it is being taught in a local school and have been invited in to talk to the girls on the topic.

And in brief, other exciting looking new releases still on my Kindle which I have only had a chance to read a few pages of, but have enjoyed thus far include:

Conversations with EVE: Women’s TRUE power – where it came from, how we lost it, how we can get it back!

Conversations with EVE (Every Vagina on Earth) is an eye-opening, inspiring, and motivating book. It shares a fascinating account of how the “Myth of Male Superiority” took away EVE’s rights and freedoms.

Menopause: a Natural and Spiritual Journey

This book is personal journey into the time of menopause looking at it from a spiritual point of view first and how spirituality can help with physical, mental and emotional symptoms. It seeks to show it as a natural part of life.

Ripening Time: Inside Stories for Aging with Grace

Sherry Ruth Anderson, the bestselling author of The Feminine Face of God presents a new perspective on aging. She guides us beyond our culture’s mind traps and shows how growing into old age can be a fruition, the genuine grace and gift of human ripening.

The Good Mother Myth: Redefining Motherhood to Fit Reality dismantles the notion of what it means to be a “good mother.” This collection of essays takes a realistic look at motherhood and provides a platform for real voices and raw stories, each adding to the narrative of motherhood we don’t tend to see in the headlines or on the news.

Spiritual Pregnancy: Nine Months of Spiritual Transformation Before You Give Birth (out Jan 2014) is a really tender, insightful book about pregnancy especially the spiritual aspects, and is written by a husband and wife team of doctors!

What have you read and loved this year?

The Power of Breasts

Art Lucy H Pearce -http://lucy-h-pearce.artistwebsites.com

Few would deny the power of breasts. They are magnetic. Hypnotic. Fascinating.

So much so that their power has become taboo. They are biologically “secondary sexual features”. But their sexual aspect has supplanted their primary function. They are mammary glands. For nurturing young. They are what connects us to all other mammals. But our culture has forgotten this, and has put them into the “erotic” bracket, and kept for TITillation of men. Their superficial appearance is all that is valued: large, pert, neat nippled breasts.

But breasts are so much more than this.

When we talk of nurturing, the first thing we think of is their milk. And this is truly incredible stuff. Over the years, the more I have learnt about it, the more I have been purely stunned by the intricate miraculousness of this precious fluid. Breast milk, so I have read, changes composition according not only to the age and nutritional needs of the baby, but in order to protect them from infection. Every time a mother kisses her baby, she ingests the pathogens on their skin and creates antibodies which are then fed to the baby through her milk.

I breastfed all three of my children for around two years each. I am so glad I did. But many mothers can’t, or don’t. What I want to talk about is the invisible aspect that is rarely talked about that every mother, whether she breastfeeds or not can give with her breasts: her feminine, nurturing energy.

Think for a second of when you hugged your mother as a child, or when your child hugs you… where is the head? That’s right, laying on the chest, on the breasts. Soothing. comforting, transmitting love. It is intangible, but no less real. This is how mothers transmit the nurturing, loving energy to their children even when they are not breastfeeding, but when we breast feed this streaming of energy is even more direct from mother to child, and sustained for greater lengths of time than a hug.

I first read about the energy properties of breasts in Dr Christiane Northrup’s life changing book, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, where she talked powerfully about energy depletion in the breasts and how this can lead to infections and abscesses, when the nursing mother is giving too much and becomes exhausted.

I have also read about the energetic properites of them in Tantric Orgasm for Women, Where author talks of the breasts as a woman’s positive energetic pole, which needs to be approached and awakened first, before genital contact is made. In The Art of Sexual Ecstasy there is an incredible picture of a man sucking his partner’s breast, with a thought bubble, and in it you see him remembering the feeling of suckling at his mother’s breast. His eyes are rolled back, in the same way a milk drunk baby looks, in sheer ecstacy, feeling deep peace and pleasure in their own body and profound connection to the beloved. This is the power of the breast.

Many who have not breastfed worry about the mixing of feelings and emotions between the eroticism of the sexual breast and the nurturing aspect of the mammary gland. Most women report that the physical sensations of breastfeeding are completely different to any sort of sexual interaction, and that if the sexual feelings do emerge, which can happen with a child who is weaning and gone a few days without feeding, that it feels odd and uncomfortable. But the feelings of pleasure and closeness for mother and child are similar to a post orgasmic haze as the act of nursing produces the same hormone: oxytocin, which produces feelings of bliss, bondedness, deep connection and relaxation.

But there is something more to the energetic and nurturing aspect of the breast – something to do with this energy flow which I have experienced many times. When each of my children weaned for a few weeks, to a couple of years with each different child, when they were tired or upset, they would choose to come and put their head, or their hand, on my breast. At first it would have to be on the naked breast. There was some sort of soothing which they got from its energy alone, that was separate from the sucking sensation and the milk itself with which they previously comforted themselves.

And it was not just my breastfed babies who would associate my breasts with nurture. A neighbor’s 3 year old son, who had not been breastfed, fell on the road outside my house, and was very shaken and upset. I picked the sobbing child up to carry him down to his house, the first time I had ever held him, and the first thing he did, was to put his hand gently onto my breast and kept it there, as his sobs subsided, all the way to his house.

And it is not even just humans. One day we found a tiny abandoned kitten in the hedge, and carrying it back home (I was still nursing at the time), it wriggled and nuzzled its way in under my cardigan, nuzzling and licking at my breasts, looking for milk and comfort.

This energy, its pull, its draw for both nurturing and sexual terms fascinates me. One of the most distinctive thing about my paintings is the nipples with the spirals on that emerge so often: a making visible though art, of what lies invisible.

Many of us are unaware of this energy spiral. We have learnt to shut off our feelings to our breasts. But whether we are breastfeeding or not, being aware of this aliveness in our breasts, the energy spirals is key to our feminine health and to healthy, loving, connected relationships. Bringing our attention to them throughout the day and especially when you are hugging people, and before and during intercourse is a key way to be sure that we are in our bodies, giving freely of our energy, not depleting ourselves, nurturing and connecting with love. It is also vital to receive love in through the breasts and heart chakra through hugs and open communication, through keeping our bodies warm, through rest and relaxation, and through massage and loving touch.

Your breasts are miraculous, not for what they look like, but for what they are and do. Take care of them.

This post is part of the Irish Parenting Bloggers BlogMarch to support Breastfeeding Week. For an introduction to the March, and a list of the other participants please visit
Mama.ie

Let’s talk about sex… when you have kids

I seem to have been talking sex a lot recently, with soul-sisters, my women’s group and my partner. It strikes me that though we may not want to DO it as much, us married women with kiddies sure love to talk about it! It matters to us. It excites and intrigues us and makes us glow – as one friend says, she knows I’m about to start talking sex (which is quite often, if truth be told!) because my face lights up! But talking and doing are not the same. 

There comes a time in your life when sex isn’t, well, so sexy. And it’s certainly not carefree. Nor spontaneous.  Sex becomes more functional as you enter your thirties – tied up with conceiving… or desperately NOT conceiving another. It can feel like a strategic military operation at times to get both partners in the same place, minus kids and plus small amounts of energy. Nor is it about lust-filled exploration – as you know each other’s bodies back to front. So what IS sex about…?

In one word: connection – to ourselves and each other.We’re all pretty good at superficial connection via Facebook, and superficial titillation in this sex-saturated world. But real connection is anything but superficial. The longer you know someone, the less places there are to hide. Sex cannot be used as escapism once you have been together for a prolonged period. It requires connection. I know in myself, I turn away from this connection when I feel overwhelmed with the world and myself: the thought of being that open, that connected, is more than I can take. And so when I go off sex, it is a great reminder to me that I am disconnected – not just from my partner, but also my own body, and from other areas of intimacy in my life. If I can’t show up in bed, I am not showing up elsewhere.  If I can’t let myself go in the bedroom, chances are the rest of my creativity is being inhibited too.

Sex requires that we turn up as we are, in the bodies we currently inhabit. And with an openness of spirit. It requires complete openness and vulnerability. A desire to engage fully. To BE together. And that’s before you get to the physical aspects which might be blocking your path…

Post-baby bodies: it might be as simple as stretch-marks or as serious as tearing and scar tissue, or a body memory stored in your genitals from a traumatic birth – going down there post-babies can be a lot less straight forward. We are aware of our bodies in a more functional, less romanticised way. As are our partners. It can be hard for either or both of us to detach from their baby making qualities, to their erotic ones, especially when breastfeeding and our partners might cop a squirt of milk in the eye during foreplay!

Cycles: It is natural for libidos to be dampened down whilst breastfeeding. But when our menstrual cycle resumes, so do our monthly hotspots. It is great to be aware of when these occur and take your lead from your hormones. When your libido rises just before ovulation, and just before (or for some women during) menstruation. For more information on your cycle do check out my book Moon Time: a guide to celebrating your menstrual cycle.

Feeling touched out: Mothers, especially those who are co-sleeping, breastfeeding, or mothers of under 3s can feel totally overwhelmed by touch at the end of a long day mothering, and when evening comes just want their physical space rather than being touched some more.

Exhaustion: Many mamas get into a spiral of I’m too tired, I don’t want to have sex. Their partners subtly or not so subtly express that sex hasn’t been had in a long time, and she begins to feel resentful about being put upon – doesn’t he understand I’m tired? I don’t have any more to give. I really just don’t want to… A vicious spiral of disconnection can build from here, with both too frustrated and misunderstood to communicate. How do YOU break out of this? How do you find a way through where both of you feel your needs are being heard and honoured?

Turning it around…

Reframing: I often feel hounded if I am not in the mood. And know that many other women do too. But when it was explained to me that that hungry look was not a demand, but an appreciation, a visual “I love you, I love your body.” Rather than perceive it as a threat which I had to defend myself and my tired body from, I could totally reframe it, and it made me feel energised, loved and grateful. What woman doesn’t want to feel loved, to know she is loved? And that is all most of our partners want for us too: to express their love. For them it can often be with actions of physical love making, rather than words or other gestures. But you may need to have the words and gestures first. Reframing it in your own mind can make you feel a whole different way, instead of him “needing” or “demanding” something, can you consider it a devotion, meditation, a shared enjoyment, an invitation for play or fun, a chance to feel loved?

And can he reframe what he considers “necessary” for “sex” – is sex just intercourse leading to orgasm? What other ways can you connect physically and emotionally? Negotiate non-intercourse ways of interacting lovingly. Everyone needs touch, some of us more than others – making sure you are giving, and receiving loving touch is vital for all relationships.

Get away – a change of scene is so important to get our energy flowing. Our energy stagnates if we live day in, day out, in the same place, in the same way, and in the early years of parenthood we can be very stuck at home. Getting away together – to a hotel, or house sitting a friend’s house, or having a naughty Saturday afternoon together sans kids at home is often just what the doctor ordered. Time out of mundane reality to reconnect on every level.

The erotic – pillow books were a common thing of the Japanese, I like this idea of shared enjoyment of eroticism. In our culture pornography tends to be a male-dominated, female-exploiting field, and is often mixed with aggression, domination or abusive models of sexual interaction. But we all have an erotic side – a side that loves sensuality, titillation, naughtiness, the erotic – can you find a way to share this in a way that celebrates, not denigrates you as a woman? That makes you feel good?  Do share your suggestions below for woman friendly eroticism that you share with your partner.

Keep exploring, and enjoying and pleasuring your own body – the more to love and enjoy your body and sensuality, the more you understand, without pressure or expectation what you like, and love, the more alive your body feels on a regular basis, the more alive and in your body you will feel.

There is, and always has been, a pressure on women to have sex – both to make babies and to give pleasure, often regardless of her own desires. Even when our partner may not be intending to put pressure on, there is the cultural pressure on men and women to be doing it more. Enough, enough already. Sex is nothing to prove, nothing to achieve. There are no minimum requirements.

But that is not to say it is not important. But our vision of sex, our definition is narrow. And what is important is that which makes us glow when we talk about it, and that we experience after making love – the glow of our heightened life force flowing through our veins, the feelings of ecstasy, of abandon, and sensuality. The sense of being one with another, one with the world. The comfort and pleasure of being touched by and touching. These matter. These impact all of our relationships and our life as a whole. However you can, make sure to weave THAT sort of magic through your life and your partnership. Find how to connect, and reconnect in a way that pleasures and celebrates you both.

 

Enter the goddess

The Queen of my Heart – Lucy Pearce

The goddess has entered my life.

After years of reading about her and rejecting “her” as a false replacement for the already rejected male god of my childhood. She was represented in paintings of maidens with flowing hair, in lumpen statues hewn out of rock. I saw them and I did not connect. All I saw was women hungering to see the divine made in their own image. Women yearning for a world filled with light and love and fairy dust. Women trying to boost their self confidence by calling themselves goddesses or deluded women who needed attention and love from somewhere…

And I’m sure that all these facets are out there. But I also know that she is a very real, felt sense of the inner divine: the sensual female snake-like life force. She is found in all of nature, in beauty and love and sensuality wherever they reside. She is sensuality, fluidity, sisterhood, spiralling, circling, juiciness, creativity, roundedness, empowered surrender, adornment, dancing, sexuality, opening…

It seems like, whether by coincidence or design, the routes to the goddess have been scorned, erased, made taboo, illegal or unreachable, by religions and cultures alike. Sensuality, women spending time together, adornment, erotic pleasure, natural birth, the creative arts – all these and many more ways to the goddess have been dammed, blocked, amputated from our culture and our individual lives.We have been taught not to trust our bodies, or other women. We have learnt to be scared of our sexuality, to shy away from sensuality. To limit our creativity.

Yet we have within ourselves the apparatus for experiencing the divine. For co creating with her. We can dance with the goddess, make love embodying her. Breathe her in, feel her sensuality pumping through our veins, to feel her in colors, taste her in visions. Tingle with the experience of knowing that she imbues everything.

None of this seems profound to read back. I have read it many places before. I have known it in my head. But to experience the goddess in everything, to feel the shakti rise in an electrifying full body sensual “awakening” is to KNOW.

It seems so obvious now. As all life transforming realisations are. I share it because I know there are some of you who already have the goddess in your life. Who say, hurray, you’ve “got it”! And there are many others who were me who say goddess mumbo jumbo.

To you I say, I hope, one day, some way, you will find her in yourself.

Celebrating the feminine – linky love

 

I have read some top posts on the various aspects of celebrating feminine this past week which I want to share with you.
It seems that women around the world are feeling a rise in the energy of the feminine – a rise in their power, in sensuality, in their need to claim the erotic, the dark, the forbidden. 

Women are sensing a rebirth of what has been confined to silence and shadows for centuries.

It is truly an exciting time to be a woman – to witness the feminine rising – to hear the voices of those who are speaking her truths, seeing the beauty of women embodying their deepest knowing and raising their voices.

Please do share posts and videos which have spoken to you. Let us curate a collection of the feminine together – to lift, inspire and empower us all.

  • Loving Julie Daley of Unabashedly Female described by Bridget Pilloud of Intuitive Bridge as “the holy wisdom bearer.  She is one of those people who is directly, deeply connected to the Divine and to collective consciousness.”  three of my current faves are In the Arc of Orgasm, a post on Reclaiming the Erotic on her own blog, and Being Unabashedly who you are on Productively Flourishing, from which I share a quote:

As we began to explore the question of what gets in the way of the students being fully and wholly creative, one woman spoke up about having to ‘translate’ at work. I asked her to explain. She began to talk about how she had to translate her own feminine language into language that would be ‘acceptable’ in the corporate environment. As she told her story, suddenly the other women began to nod. And then they began to say, “Me, too”. They looked at each other with wide-open eyes, beginning to understand that they weren’t alone. […]

Why do women have to translate? Because the system has been created to honor masculine ways of being, while at the same time holding feminine ways of being as anything from silly to sinful. “

“The birthing of the feminine in all her glorious forms and expressions is upon us.

She does not seek domination over the masculine.

Nor does she wish to be masculine.

She is ready to take her seat.”

 

 

Celebrating the yoni

The Gorgeous Yoni Cushion was born on June 1st 2005 at a tribal Menarche Ceremony in Dorset.

It was passed around a circle of 200 or so women who held the cushion and spoke 3 words to describe their bleeding and their yoni. Young girls caressed its softness and women held its warmth to their wombs as it went around the circle.

The Yoni Cushion connects us to the ancient power of the Goddess Baubo: There is a powerful saying: ‘Dice entre las piernas’, or ‘She speaks from between her legs.” These little ‘between the legs’ stories are found all over the world. Baubo, the name of the ancient goddess from Greece, has older names such as Iambe, and it appears the Greeks borrowed her from far older cultures. There have been archetypal wild Goddesses of sacred sexuality and life/death/life fertility since the beginning of memory. (passage by Clarissa Pinkola Estes) In Greek mythology, Baubo was a female clown who managed to draw laughter from the Goddess Demeter when she was hiding away and withholding the gift of fertility from the world.

We all came from the Gorgeous Yoni and we all have a story to share.

The Gorgeous Yoni Cushion is explicitly detailed and hand-made using silks, cottons, satins and velvets, and stuffed with raw sheep’s wool. All are adorned with beading and gems. Each one is infused with fragrant flowers and herbs and signed and dated by the artist.The Gorgeous Yoni Cushion is a work of art!

What do women use their Yoni Cushions for?

* To decorate their altar space.
* As a ‘talking yoni’ in their women’s groups.
* As a piece of Art! Frames can be ordered to hang your Yoni on the wall.
* To have on their bed.
* and of course…Women can use the Yoni Cushion to show her lover how and where she loves to be touched, men use it to open communication and improve their sexual prowess. Men buy Yoni Cushions for that special woman in their life as a way of honoring her. This usually leads to deeper intimacy and discussions on new erogenous zones and increased sexual satisfaction.

Words and images courtesy of Rachael Hertogs www.moontimes.co.uk