Pleasure after Trauma

Dr. Holly Richmond says, “Your sexual trauma doesn’t inform your sexuality; it misinforms it.” Join us for a compassionate discussion about recovery, healing and pleasure after sexual trauma. Holly and I discuss her research based insights about control, pleasure, and connection for thriving. This conversation centers on practices and hopeful guidance for survivors and those who love them. And because healing and recovery is not a solitary process, there is advice here for all of us.

www.cindyscharkey.com
Supporting Survivors Episode
Read my review of Holly's book
My affiliate link for 10% off her online course
Holly's Free Mini Course for Survivors

Dr. Holly Richmond is a Somatic Psychotherapist, LMFT and Certified Sex Therapist. Her book,  Reclaiming Pleasure: A Sex-Positive Guide for Moving Past Sexual Trauma and Living a Passionate Life, is an innovative look at both somatic and psychological factors in survivors’ erotic recovery.
www.drhollyrichmond.com

ORDER my Book: Permission for Pleasure: Tending Your Sexual Garden
JOIN my Newsletter: Good Education for Good Sex
FOLLOW on Instagram @cindyscharkey
VISIT my website and blog

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:03

This is Permission for Pleasure. And I'm your host, Cindy Sharkey. As a registered nurse and educator for over 30 years, I've seen the real need to break the silence surrounding sex, especially for women. This podcast is about opening doors to healthy conversations about sex. What I found is that when women have comprehensive education about sex, their self-confidence soars. And when that happens, women can truly express, experience, and enjoy their sexuality. They give themselves permission for pleasure. Welcome to Permission for Pleasure. I'm Cindy Sharkey, your host. Thank you for tuning in and listening today. I love this podcast community. And friends, if you enjoy the show, will you help it to continue by following the podcast on your uh preferred platform? Also, rating and reviewing the show on Apple. They seem to be the metric to help a show continue. So if you're part of my community here, will you take the time to do those three things? Follow, rate, and review the show. Today's episode is an interview with Dr. Holly Richmond, and we are going to discuss her newly released book, Reclaiming Pleasure: A Sex Positive Guide for Moving Past Sexual Trauma and Living a Passionate Life. I really enjoyed Holly's book. And we will be addressing sexual trauma in this episode. And I want to tell you that up front, but I also want to say that this conversation is not just for survivors and those who love them. In many ways, the principles and practices that Holly and I talk about in this episode are applicable for all of us. Let me tell you a little bit about Holly Richmond. She is a somatic psychotherapist, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and a certified sex therapist. She works with women, men, couples, and gender-diverse individuals on relationship and sexuality issues. She offers sex therapy and sexual health coaching nationally and internationally. I have loved getting to know her through this conversation. Sometimes you meet people on social media and then you get to meet them over a call like this and have a conversation, and it just delighted me. Holly, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Thank you so much, Cindy. I'm really thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Well, the why behind this book?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

That's a good question. I feel like there's a few whys behind this book. The first is so when I started my master's in clinical psychology in California, you have to do 3,000 hours of internship. And I chose the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center. It was just, um, there is a little history with that. I can go into that story later, but I want to finish this one. So I'm doing my internship at the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center, and I was taught really fairly quickly how to treat trauma well. I had the best supervisor there, and I was very well trained in trauma. But in sitting with my clients back then, I realized, okay, I've got half the story, or maybe I've even got 70% of the story. But what about this 30%? How do they have great sex again? And how do they have healthy, strong relationships? And that's really the problem I wanted to solve. And when I say problem, I mean, you know, that abstract, the hypothesis and the dissertation. What are the elements to helping survivors have great sex after sexual trauma?

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yes. And and I love it in the foreword of your book, Holly, you say, There is nothing wrong with you. Something happened to you that's different.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Because a lot of us feel broken, but I feel like when there's an element of sexual trauma in that story of what happened to us, it internalizes that much more quickly and that much more deeply. Because sexual trauma and shame are so closely knit. Sexual trauma, there's often some piece of the psyche that feels like I was complicit in that, somehow my no wasn't strong enough. Why didn't I fight? Why didn't I, why didn't I, why didn't I? And none of those reasons are valid, but boy do they live in us. Because the only reason that's valid is that there was a perpetrator present. There's no good, there's no reason why anyone gets raped except that there was a perpetrator present. But in almost all sexual trauma, that blame and shame goes inward instead of getting externalized to where it really belongs.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

That's so important to say out loud and keep saying out loud. And I I just want to insert here for anyone listening who feels like maybe it's too late for for me. Like I I want you to I want you to hear what Holly says at the start of this book, just to start the podcast, too. If you think you waited too long to look for help, you haven't. The average length of time it takes a survivor to find their way to my office, says Holly, is 10 years. But I've treated survivors as many as 50 years after their trauma. There is no such thing as taking too long to reclaim pleasure, passion, and the life you deserve.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

And all of that is is true. And I think that length of time is again another mind F for survivors because they think, well, if it was as bad as it feels in my body, then I would have said something immediately. And that's just not true. That's not how sexual shame or sexual trauma works. We try to minimize for months, for years, for however long it takes. We do our best to minimize and say, oh, it wasn't that bad. I just need to get over it. It wasn't a big deal. When our bodies know it was a huge deal, there's no getting over this, there's getting through it. So everybody has a different process. Some people, it could be days, oh my gosh, I need to know, I need to take care of myself, where the 50, 50 years later, um, that man is still my client. Um, it it took him as long as it took him, and it's and it's fine. And now he's he's feeling a little bit better.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

And you share a lot of stories in your book so that people can hear the voices of you know the reality of what's going on in people's minds, hearts, and bodies after trauma. And I think that's super helpful, you know, for people to hear other people's stories and be seen and feel seen in reading that.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Absolutely. And Cindy, you said exactly what why the stories are there, because I can talk about this clinically, theoretically, but often it doesn't land until people see themselves in a story, right? Like we integrate stories, we don't integrate theory. It just that's that's not how most human brains work. We want to find that piece of connection. So my these stories, um, you could call them case studies, they're mosaics. There, I pull this piece of this client, this piece of this client, this piece of this client, obviously for confidentiality, but also just to give the the broadest picture I can within the chapter, whether the chapter is about shame, whether it's about pleasure, whether it's about the physical effects of sexual trauma that, you know, that again just get minimized. But I want people to say, oh my gosh, here it is on the page. I've been feeling that, and I didn't know that that was actually linked to my trauma.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Yes, and you you describe the survivor trifecta, you call it as pain, shame, and suffering. Can you talk to me a little bit about those three and why those are the three that you have specifically addressed in your book?

SPEAKER_00 8:20

There is always a pain point, and this can be emotional, physical, relational, or sexual. It's going to show up in some area. It might be in all four areas, or it might only be anxiety, or it might only be um irrital bowel syndrome, or it might only be uh toxic relationships. I can't keep myself out of these bad relationships, or it might be I have pain during sex. But again, people don't this the body and the psyche are separated in our culture. We, you know, I write this in the book: sex and self are not dualistic. They are one in the same. If we're really going to take care of ourselves, we have to take care of our sexuality. If we're gonna take care of our sexuality, we have to address the sexual trauma. So really finding that pain point wherever it is in your body, your psyche, your relationships. The next is shame, which we've already touched on a little bit. Shame just internalizes so quickly. So just as a quick refresher, but Brene Brown does, I think, the best research in shame. So guilt is about a behavior, guilt is I did something bad, I made a mistake, I feel bad about it. That's not completely contradictory. Guilt can be good sometimes. There's reasons we should feel bad, we learn from it, we move on. Shame is almost never good. Shame is I am bad, right? There's something about me that is just fundamentally flawed, I feel different. Um, and for a lot of survivors, they they feel like people can see that difference, they can see what's wrong about them. Um, so they isolate or deflect or dissociate or all the things. So pain, shame, and suffering. Suffering is part of the human condition. I don't want survivors to suffer, but more so it's the resiliency to know when the suffering comes that they'll be able to handle it.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Yes, something else that you say, Holly, that is just for everyone, really, is that ask you tell clients, ask how, not why. So, and you also go on to say, rather than asking yourself, what is wrong with me? You're just addressing this in the shame issue, what is wrong with me, or why can't I be normal? Ask your body and your symptom, what are you trying to protect me from? And how do you think you are keeping me safe? This resonates so much because back in a previous episode 17, we talked about safety and connection and protection and our bodies. I read this in your book and it brought that whole conversation back for me that we can't connect and protect at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

You said it beautifully, and and the three steps, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but um when I was sick, and I mean, you know, I I for years before I did my work, I had what I called my poison worm. Um it was just pain would move throughout my body, just completely uncontrolled. I would go to the doctor, this hurts, my shoulder, my stomach, my hips, my knees. Nothing was ever wrong, right? The doctors could never find anything wrong. Um, but at that time in my life, I was completely constricted, completely shut down. So my body was screaming, something's wrong. I was constricted. What was missing in my life was first of all pleasure, and the second piece was connection. Um, I wish, I wish like healing and recovery was a solitary process. And what I've learned is it's not, like it just can't be. And please, listeners, I'm not saying, oh, you have to be in a romantic or erotic relationship to heal. It's not that, but you have to be in some relationships: family, friends, community, um, your local rape crisis center, your local animal shelter. I it doesn't matter what it is, but there has to be connection that is meaningful to you. So you're really seen.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

So important. So important. And I'm listening to you say, you know, as a nurse, I tell my community often, like, don't wait until your body is screaming at you. She could be, she's usually whispering, and if you listen, you know, she's trying to tell you something, but we wait until you know she's screaming at us. Sexual trauma happens in uh the body, uh, and so it has to be healed through the body. I mean, this is what you do. You're a somatics psychologist, you this is your lane. Tell tell me more about that in a way that person like me, who's maybe not quite as informed, you know, could understand it.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, well, you were we were four minutes ago when you led the conversation with how not why, that's exactly where where I want you to go. Why lives in our brain. We try to rationalize and think our way out of things. My clients are really smart people, but why doesn't work with trauma, especially when it's deeply embedded trauma, um, whether it happened two months ago, but especially if it happened two years ago, 20 years ago. I mean, it is buried, it is buried in there, and we can't access it just through the mind. So when we ask how, it becomes process-oriented. So this is very much a somatic technique, a somatic psychology technique. So, how? How do you know how that feels? How do you know where that is in your body? How do you know that you're anxious right now? How do you know that you're mad? I ask these how questions, and you should see sometimes my clients are like, oh my gosh, I'm so frustrated. I don't know how, but it's so much more effective than uh, Cindy, let me try to think of an example. I know it's early where you are. So I could ask you, why did you need coffee this morning? Versus Cindy, how did you know you needed coffee this morning? I was feeling dull, I was feeling whatever it was, I felt sluggish.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

So do you see how those questions just immediately almost become somatic questions? They they force you in a gentle way to do a little bit of a body scan.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Yeah, and then this question, what is your body saying that you cannot, just like straight out of the somatic psychology book. To your point, though, when our bodies are whispering, knocking, screaming, they're really trying to save us. And if we ask that question, what is my body saying that I cannot? I know for sure it's not saying you're broken. I know for sure it's not saying you're wrong, you're weird, any of those things. It's trying to give you a message, and it's probably reiterating something that worked for you 10 years ago, 20 years ago, two years ago. So something that was adaptive then, some way that kept you safe, some way that kept you moving, some way that kept you on that treadmill has now become maladaptive. And your body's saying, Okay, I'm done with that. Can we move on to probably something that's got some connection in it?

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yes, and you also say that your sexual trauma doesn't inform your sexuality, it misforms it. What do you what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 15:35

What worked then may not work now. And you know, my mantra from the book, that was then, this is now. So much of trauma recovery is separating the past from the present. We have to understand the past, we have to have an awareness of it, we have to retell that story in a way that it's true. And we're here in the present moment. I can see you, you are safe now, I am safe now. Where do we go from here? I see a lot of survivors, a lot of clients where there is some sexual hook. You can sometimes it would be a kink or a fetish, but it's something that typically turns them on, or it can even be something that distresses them, but they don't feel like they have control of the thought or the need for it. So that's why, and that often is a direct link from their trauma, right? So it's something that happened during their trauma. So your sexual trauma misinformed your sexuality. It didn't inform it. So I just said, you know, backwards of what you said. Your sexuality, sexual trauma didn't inform your sexuality, it misinformed it. So now here's the hard part. I have some clients where that hook, that arousal piece, they're like, man, I really need this. I want to keep this as part of my sexual template. So we figure out a way to rewrite that story so they can integrate it into a healthy sex life. Where I have other clients, I'm thinking of one woman right now, where that hook will still pop up, but it's too distressing for her. So we've really had to work on mindfulness techniques for her to, okay, that that thought is there. I'm going to put it to the side. I'm not going to try to shove it down, but I'm going to mindfully put it to the side and choose something that really turns me on.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

And let's continue with that because you have like a three-step process for thriving, you call it, in the in the book, right? Control, pleasure, and connection. So let's talk about these three really important pieces to the process.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Oh, thank you for that. And I just I want to be clear, these aren't things that I decided. These are from a grounded theory research in my dissertation back when I was at the Santa Barbara Wright Crisis Center. So it's just this information has been integrated in me, integrated in 13 years of clients, and now in this book for lay people. So this is this is really what the research shows us. Let's talk about control. And for a lot of people, that would be self-evident. Of course, survivors need to feel like they have a sense of control of themselves, their partner in the situation when they are having sex. Absolutely. And a lot of times survivors have that on lockdown. So they're super controlled, they're very controlled, they're almost like two. I have a lot of them say, I'm so in my head, I'm so careful, I think about every step. So it's really the flip side. So it's relinquishing control where I come in, like where I try to make that inroads for survivors of that first piece of reclaiming great sex. So the again, that first element of control is both maintaining control and relinquishing control.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah, and that's a journey to go on for everyone, but especially for survivors. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

It it is, it's scary.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Yeah, and a couple people from my community sent in, you know, questions uh about a this kind of conversation saying, you know, how do I continue to ask for consent? I need consent over and over and over for me to feel in control or to feel safe. So I guess I would just want to mention that because it it it was so clearly a concern of how come that doesn't feel okay? How come that I don't feel like I'm allowed to do that? How do I make sure that's received? And I'm and I'm thinking that's because we don't we don't have a lot of training, uh, education and practice around consent, right? We don't have the language for it, you know. And so my feeling with these questions was it's almost giving ourselves permission to ask for consent any and all and every time.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

From my perspective, and I'm sure from yours too, you have permission. You absolutely have permission. I want you to take the permission. I would hand it to you right now in a silver platter if I could, until you feel like that that asking for permission is integrated in you. And if you are in a long-term partnership and continue to stay in that long-term partnership, my guess is that the asking for consent will integrate and at some point you'll be able to relinquish control over the asking. But if you're a person who's in the dating stage of life, I want this to just be part of your practice. Whenever you're entering into a new sexual experience, consent, asking for consent is right there because it's where it has to start. If we're in our sex-positive approach, right, all sex is good sex as long as it's consensual and pleasurable. Those are our two pieces we're very concerned about. Consent. Nothing good sexually can happen without consent. And I would hope that you would be with a kind partner who would ask you, and I'm smart enough to know that doesn't happen all the time. So I want you to advocate for yourself. You can do this in a way that's very direct. Um, hey, I'd like you to check in with me with whatever you're thinking. It's really important for me to know I'm giving consent and that I know what's happening to my body. Or you can be a little less direct and say, hey, I'm curious about what feels good for you. What do you think, you know, what do you want this experience to be? And if you have an attuned partner, then they're going to say, Well, this is what I was thinking, but what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 21:25

100%. And I love, I love just that you're giving language around it. That that's what I was hoping for, because we have to keep talking about this consent piece to help people be more comfortable with it, to understand it more, and to to you know, role play outside of a sexual situation to bring it to the a sexual encounter and and feel more comfortable and feel like you have the words to say and you know you know how to ask and to receive.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yes. And if you don't receive it back in the way you want, then your Consent is not given, then that's where you use your no's, right? We've got our yeses, our no's, and our maybes. Um, it's really important for survivors to have their no. Like, uh, yeah, no, that's not gonna work for me right now. And consent can be renegotiated, reneged at any point, even if you're in bed, having sex, your no should mean no, and everything comes to a stop. So there's none of this. Well, I got in bed, and so I have to follow through with whatever the expectation is. Absolutely not, no way.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Yeah. 100% back to that as well. So the control piece, learning how to relinquish control to be able to connect, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:45

And then to be able to, yeah, let pleasure in.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Yeah, so control and pleasure and connection. Which do you want to speak to pleasure or connection next?

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Well, so the relinquishing control, it is that we have to, if we're completely constricted and guarded, it's really hard for pleasure to get in. But again, that relinquishing control, it's not to be out of control. That's not what I mean. It's trusting yourself in those reflective, reflexive, fluid moments to be able to trust your decision-making and trust your body. So relinquishing control is this beautiful space of fluidity, knowing that your yeses matter, your no's matter, and that your maybes can live there too. Which then opens you up to to pleasure, which Cindy, you talk about this so much. Pleasure is the missing piece in our conversations about sex, which is just mind-blowing. We just don't talk about pleasure enough when we talk about sex. It's like getting a job done or don't get pregnant, don't get an STI. So the the pleasure, it's just it's critical. It has to live here. Um, and for every person, obviously that look just looks different. Sex is so creative and um self-curated, and it is what you want it to be. Maybe it includes penetration, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it includes role play, maybe it doesn't. Like these all, so when you're exploring your sexual template, which is in this this chapter on pleasure. So, what do I desire? Um, what arouses me, uh, what turns me on, what do I find sexy? I take readers through little exercises to to help figure that out. So that it's yours, it's so personally yours. It's not what's on a rom-com, and it's certainly not what's on porn. And please know I'm totally pro-porn. Porn is fine, but it's also not often real life sex. So we just we have to separate the two.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

You know, I love you you use the word curiosity a lot, and I just associate curiosity with pleasure because I think curiosity is a real part of eroticism, and we want to encourage everyone and survivors that you can be curious about what's pleasurable for you, and that's a good question to ask yourself over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

And it changes, right? It's just it's just this beautiful evolution. What's erotic can be sexy, but it doesn't have to be sexy. To me, eroticism is a life force, vitality, vivacity, curiosity, novelty, all of these things that make sex great, but also make life great.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Yes. Oh yes, totally. Yep, I'm I'm all on board for that.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Let's let's talk about the connection piece. I'm trying to think of where else to start other than what you said before. Sexual trauma happens in the body, thus, we have to heal it through the body and how we are in our bodies. Most of us are social creatures. There's some amount of connection that humans need to keep us at our optimal, to keep us feeling our most healthy. Most of us don't function well in isolation. And it's just been interesting watching survivors over the years. I mean, they rail against this idea of connection. It's probably the hardest because they so want to do it by themselves, because it's the most safe to do by themselves. Of course, of course. And I wish it were true. And again, this is not you don't have to connect sexually, but there has to be something, some other people, some other animals, some other purpose that you're deeply connected to, and that you're showing up in a vulnerable way and you're not hiding yourself anymore because you think you're broken. Like that's what it, that's what connection is working against.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Yeah, and I remember in the book you talking about performance related to this connection piece and how that that just that unravels, you said, connection. And you talked about a client or how we're in our head and we're thinking through every step and worrying about if am I doing this right or is this gonna go, you know, that performance piece, I mean, for all of us, is such a pleasure killer. How do you connect, truly connect if you're performing?

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Yeah, I I mean the answer is you can't. You can't, and it's just so much of the survivor story and our lived experience. We've had to pretend just to get by, just to get by and to feel like we might have a place in the world, just to feel like our bodies and our sexuality might be normal. So we've been pretending, pretending, pretending. So my offer is just when you're reimagining what you want life to look like, what you want your relationships to look like. What if you show up as you? What if you show up as this person who doesn't think they're broken anymore? What if you show up as something happened to me, there's nothing wrong with me, and I'm gonna step into myself and I'm gonna let other people see me, and I'm gonna express my thoughts and my feelings and my body and take a risk and know that I'll be loved and seen and cherished.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Yes, that's beautiful. And again, who were anyone listening, we can get there with help. And like Holly has said, we can't do this hard work alone. If you're listening and in your heart you're thinking, I've never talked about this with anyone, I've never shared this with anyone. When I meet with women, Holly, so often they have never, ever shared their trauma with another person, and it lives just in the dark, in that shame space you would you identified, and there is not healing there, it has to be brought into the light, uh, like you're describing for there to be healing, and there can be. This is what's hopeful about your book is is that there is hope and help, and you can heal.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Yeah, um, I don't even know how to say it any better. Um, so the sense of again, there's so many ways for this to manifest, and that's for every person to decide for themselves. When you're talking about talking, this sure therapy would be great if you feel like you would benefit from therapy. I absolutely encourage it. But if you have a trusted friend, if you feel like a support group might be better for you, if going and just um, or for some people it's more forward-facing, though, so they become social activists around the sexual violence space. It it you can share your story without ever sharing details. So, so when we're saying talk about it, I'm not saying you have to sit down and spill every element or every detail of your story. You never need to do that. Some of the most profound work I have done with clients, I do not know the details because they don't matter. They they just really don't matter. It's that big shame picture that I'm working with. And um, Cindy, that first story in the book with the woman that sat down with me, she had never told her story and she couldn't wait to get those details out. So, for again, for every person, this is different because for some people hanging on to those details like that just adds to the shame. So they need to get those details out into the light. Where for others, they don't, they just those the details they don't want to go there again. And certainly no practitioner should ever make you go there again. We can do the work without the details, but there's some there's something, there's some place where this connection needs to happen.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

That's profoundly important. I'm I'm so glad you circled back to that. Wow. Tell tell people, you know, how they can find your work and where they can find your book. Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Yeah, it's it's all pretty easy. So let's um let's start with the book. So Reclaiming Pleasure, a Sex Positive Guide for Moving Past Sexual Trauma and Living a Passionate Life. That's at Amazon, that's at Barnes and Noble, that's at your local bookstores. Um it will be on Audible in mid-December. So you can download it and listen to it. You can also find all of this information on my website, which is drhollyrichmond.com, and all social media is at drholly Richmond. And again, it's just dr Holly Richmond. Um, I love, yeah, I'm pretty engaged in social media, so message me, email me, um, I will get back to you.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Wonderful. And on this podcast, we have a pleasure practice, Holly, of um trying to really stop and notice what delights us. We talked about this together, you and I, this piece of eroticism. Really, it's it's just the things in life that delight us and recognizing the pleasure. I wonder if you might share a day-to-day thing that just delights you.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Oh my gosh, that's a wonderful, that's a really great question. I'm trying to pick one. So this is this is funny, but I have a practice, but it does delight me. I'm a person, I eat cookies for breakfast, and I know like I just like every nutritionist is gonna be like, oh my gosh, but my little cookies for breakfast, they definitely delight me. Um I I have young children who have, you know, recently kind of started going to school. The idea of rediscovery and reconnection with them at the end of the day, that still delights me because they're still in that, you know, really sweet space. Um, I love reconnections. I love when everybody comes back to the house and we get to reconnect. And I think it's especially it's even more profound since COVID when we were all home and you get sick of each other, and now everybody's out a little bit again, and now we get to come back to each other. And I'm just I'm loving that, those moments.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

That's beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. Um, I might like a cookie or two with my coffee in the mornings occasionally, too. So it's just the best. Oh, thank you so much for being with us, Holly, and sharing uh really your heart and passion for for everyone to experience pleasure and your heart and compassion for survivors. I'm I'm grateful for your work.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Cindy, thank you again for having me on, and I'm really happy to connect with you anytime we can and with your listeners.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Wonderful. And community, I'm gonna leave you with a quote from Holly's book that says Pain was your way into healing, but pleasure is your way out. And so for all of us, anyone listening who's healing, may you learn to give yourself permission for pleasure.