Permission for Pleasure
A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
Permission for Pleasure
Reconnecting to Yourself and to Your Body
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We are completely disconnected from our bodies. We actually have no way of listening to ourselves.
SPEAKER_02Hello everyone, and welcome to Permission for Pleasure. I'm Cindy Sharkey, your host. Today's something a little different. I'm sharing my interview on another podcast with you today, the Special Needs Mom Podcast. Kara Riska had me on to discuss sensuality and reconnecting to yourself for her community of moms. It was so nourishing. I wanted to share it with you here and introduce you to her platform and her community. For any special needs moms out there, it's a safe space for you to enter in and find community encouragement, hope, and ideas around taking care of yourself. I love that that's what Kara does. She does it through her coaching and through her podcast. You can find her and her community at the links in the show notes. And with that, I'm just going to let you jump in to my interview with Kara on her own podcast. Thanks for joining me today.
SPEAKER_01Cindy, welcome to the Special Needs Mom podcast.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
SPEAKER_01Okay, let's start this conversation off. I'm intrigued because it's not everybody that wants to talk about, I wouldn't call them bold topics, life sciences. I don't know. That openly, and I guess I don't want to call it taboo because it shouldn't be taboo, but a topic that not that many people talk about.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01And you do. You talk a lot about it. You educate, you're clearly passionate. And I'm curious how you got here. Like what led you down the road to being an educator on women's health and women's sexuality?
SPEAKER_02Thanks for asking. I call it kind of a silenced topic.
SPEAKER_01That's it. That's exactly what I was thinking about.
SPEAKER_02Because there is so much silence around our bodies, pleasure, and sex, especially for women. And I've been a nurse for I can't believe it now. It's almost four decades now. And a lot of that time in women's health, labor and delivery, education, teaching parents, teaching moms, and then OBGYN, back office, working GYN, just working with women a lot of years. And I love women. They're my favorite. And I just found the majority of women really didn't have a lot of education around their bodies, around sex, and certainly around pleasure.
SPEAKER_01That word would have never even been on my radar to enter into the conversation, which I think suggests that it's not part of the conversation. I agree. Like to what you saw and to what you noticed. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I think, you know, I had three daughters. I'm married to the love of my life. We had girls in our home. Three daughters, lots of girls, lots and lots of girls. And I found that these girls, they needed me to teach them how to put a tampon in. They needed to understand what their periods were about. They wanted to know about birth control. You know, they had got an STI and they didn't know what to do with the meds. You know, it was just, there were so many questions around so many sexual health issues, as well as sex. And there was no one to ask them to. I I don't know. I tend to be, I tended to end up being the mama shark, and that's what they all call me. And I just fell into it a bit, I think, through my own daughters, my work as a nurse and all their friends. And wanting, I don't know, I just got really passionate about wanting women to experience more pleasure and learn to live and be in their bodies with confidence and joy.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a mission statement to get behind. So it sounds like that you saw this collective of women that you were serving as a nurse that actually were so, I guess the words ignorant or uneducated about their bodies. And then you were meanwhile educating your daughters and seeing like this gaping hole in how we talk about, think about all things women's health, sex, and pleasure. So sounds like one step after another, you followed the breadcrumbs and now you're here today.
SPEAKER_02And here I am today, and it's all I talk about.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. I think it's one of those things when you're always focusing on something, like you get to be the biggest benefactor. Like your my guess is that your eyes on pleasure all the time, which I can only imagine impacts the way that you show up in your own life. With, I mean, is that a fair assumption? Absolutely.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02And for those of you who are younger, like I'm gonna be 60 next month, but I've never felt more freedom. I've never been paying as much attention to my body. And I've never experienced more pleasure and delight than at this stage of my life.
SPEAKER_01I think that gives us all something to look forward to. But it only gets better from here. Well, initially, before we had talked the first time, I was like, okay, what's the angle I want to take on this? Where do we want to go to serve my community in this? And I had come up with a title, and it was going to be something along the lines of sex when you're when you're nothing but stressed. And I think that could be an interesting conversation for sure. But that's not gonna be the conversation we have today. Because when you and I connected, we just kept kind of, I guess, geeking out on all the things that we're mutually passionate about. And it does align with this. Well, I guess I I would describe it as women's connection to themselves and their bodies. Would you, I mean, that's a really simple way of summarizing, right? And I am coming from this as a from a completely different angle, and really just like you in your nursing practice or nursing work, notice these gaps. And so as I coach women, I keep seeing these, I'll call them disconnections and these patterns that I know I experience in my life as well. So we're gonna talk about this gap today and through the lens of pleasure, sensuality, and language that actually I'm gonna invite you to even expand for us because as when we talked initially, I have a very I think that I have a very narrow view of some of these words, this vocabulary we're gonna talk about. And I found it like deeply inspiring and intriguing to open it up. Okay. So we're having this conversation, and uh let's start with some recalibration of vocabulary, the basics. So, how would you define sensuality?
SPEAKER_02Sensuality is to me, is our senses within our body, using our senses, what you taste, what you touch, what you smell, what you see, what you imagine. And then connecting that to the feelings in our body. It can be sexual, certainly, but it's sensuality is its whole own separate thing. You can be not sexual, but everyone is sensual. How in touch we are with that is is the whole nothing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Why do you think that that word sensual gets attached to sexual?
SPEAKER_02I think culturally that is the skew. I mean, personally, I didn't I wasn't raised up to be in tune with feeling things in my body, rather not listening to my body, not trusting her. And I think that's a how it is for a lot of people, especially women.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's I think where our worlds collide because as I come alongside women, ultimately, gosh, there's there's so many different aspects of this, but there's a loss of identity that I find is significantly apparent with a lot of the parenting journey. I'm sure, you know, with all parenting, but I think particularly with parenting, any sort of disability. And so part of this loss of identity, I think, is we wake up our senses as in feeling things in our body, it helps us rediscover ourselves, right? Because if we are completely disconnected from our bodies, we actually like have no way of listening to ourselves. If we have no way of listening to ourselves, how do we know who we are? We don't. We would only have our brain, which our brain's very helpful in a lot of ways, but not with this. So, yeah, I just love even the simple description that you have. Sensuality is senses in our body. Go a little deeper on that if you mind. So this would be the through the lens of the five senses, right? Sight, touch, sure, smell, taste. Do I have them all?
SPEAKER_02And I add in imagination. I will say that I think that notoriously women have not been encouraged also to feel things with their senses and pleasure and savor that. Like this idea of savoring, I'm gonna add that in because as we talk about this more, do we allow ourselves to feel pleasurable sensations in our body and savor it? Hillary McBride has been one of my biggest teachers around my body and my journey with my body. And she says, sensation. I had her on the podcast, and she said this, and I keep writing it down to myself. Sensation is communication. Oh, that hits home. Yes. Sensation is communication. Our bodies are they're constantly talking to us, they're constantly sending signals. And as through her research and others, it they it has shown our bodies sending more signals to our brain than our brain to our bodies. But are we listening?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think we agree that women especially are taught not to listen. Not apparently, but subconsciously taught not to listen. Right now, we were not having lessons like, okay, now, ladies, let's not fail our bodies. It's more like just keep going. Yes, right? Maybe work harder. I mean, again, that's probably not directly being said, but there's all these subconscious messaging. So sensation is communication, and we've been taught to not listen and to ignore, or ooh, this one really gets me mad, or to deprioritize, or bad mouth or demean. All of the things or punish. And so, oh, oh my gosh. There's that too, right? I'm just thinking of like diet culture and having to be so different than who you are and what you are, and rejecting like your actual physical body and over.
SPEAKER_02Oh, and don't take up space. Don't take up space, don't take up space, and then think of what your body learns from that. And then we ingest all of these messages, and then I know I did, and then to unravel that is tricky.
SPEAKER_01It is tricky. I'm thinking of a time when I was young. So I like ginormous feet as a woman. I have like I'm a I'm a big-footed woman. For anybody wondering, a size 12, which is a big-footed woman, right? Sometimes 13 in running shoes. And so naturally, when I was a young woman, I'm trying to figure out like how I fit in. I'm like, this is not working. Like, how can I be like I'm big? I'm big because I'm tall too. And I'll never forget the shoe person at Nordstrom really just said, you know what, you gotta own it. Like he just like so simply was like, I don't remember the words, but it was just very like clear like be who you are. Obviously, I'm still remembering this. It really impacted me, and I still remember it to this day. So sensation, sensuality. Okay, now let's move to pleasure. And I actually wanted to see if you could define what pleasure is.
SPEAKER_02I'm not sure anyone's asked me that. I thought we were gonna if we go back to some practical ideas around sensuality, let's do that at some point. Sure. Yes, let's yeah. But pleasure. When I think of pleasure, I think of what lights you up inside. What delights you? I use the word delight a lot. I think if people really do associate pleasure with sex, in fact, people who will inquire to interview me, not you, but other people have said, it feels weird even writing pleasure advocate on here or the word pleasure. Why is that? Why is that? Yeah, because we have just associated it somehow only in a sexual context, which is wonderful and beautiful, but there's so much pleasure outside of that. Our brain is wired for pleasure. So I think of it as what lights you up, what turns you on, what makes you wonder, what gets you curious. And all of that also relates with erotic energy. So it's really fascinating how they're all connected but different.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and now we got we're gonna jump right in. We're gonna jump right into erotic energy because when we first talked about this, like I think I admitted to you, like, uh oh, now I'm uncomfortable. Sure. That now I'm like, oh my gosh, what's happening? Where are we going with this? My mind was blown when you actually explained what erotic energy is. So I'm gonna turn it over to you. Explain what erotic energy is and what you mean by that.
SPEAKER_02Erotic energy is what lights you up. See how these are connected. It's sort of where your body, your mindfulness, and your curiosity meet. This is a stare peril because she's such a beautiful therapist, but also thought leader, and especially around eroticism. She says creativity is where eroticism lives. So, what creates a spark for you? Where is your creativity alive? I think when I started investigating my own creativity, that's where I really started to sink into more eroticism. I always have said I'm not a creative person. I felt like my sister was the one who got all not creative. She got all the creativity, right? And then I did the artist's way. Have you read the book?
SPEAKER_01And it's I've heard of it, but I have not.
SPEAKER_02It's almost like a whole thing. It's not just a book to read, it's writing and practices. And I got more in tune with my creativity, and that really helped me see eroticism in a different way.
SPEAKER_01And also probably to see who you are in a different way, as in you are a creative being.
SPEAKER_02Ding ding ding.
SPEAKER_01So you've established that I think anybody has creativity inside them. I want to actually go back one more time to what you said about so erotic energy is what lights you up. And you talked about, I think you said something about connecting your mind, body, and curiosity. Did I get that right? Or how would how did you say that?
SPEAKER_02It's your mind, body, and creativity. Creativity, okay. Like what makes you spark up inside? What lights you up? And I do think with erotic energy, it is our whole self. That's why the body, our mind, our mindfulness, our presentness, and our creativity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I keep kind of going to and being like, well, how do we end up here? Where the only thing I can associate the word erotic to is sex. Like I never have heard it in any other context. And so that's why, like I joked earlier, I'm like, oh my gosh, like I'm getting uncomfortable now. Cause like my worldview has it only that one way. And clearly that's not that's not even what the word means.
SPEAKER_02Could I share an example with you?
SPEAKER_01I would love it.
SPEAKER_02So for me, there's something about sunrise and sunset. Also, now I've added in moon, but do you ever like see a sunset or see the sunrise or the moon? And your whole body just sort of, I don't know, I'm gonna have to use my own context. So it's sort of like a melting, like a like a melting, tingling both, like a ah kind of sensation, and also, ah, this probably sounds strange, but for me, my whole body responds to that. Because I'm yeah, if I'm paying attention and if I'm letting myself delight in whatever I'm seeing for colors or the mood and like all the creativity of what it looks like, and my whole body responds and my mind says, Let's sit in this and just let's savor this. It's something like that.
SPEAKER_01Okay, that makes so much sense. And now what's coming up for me is recognizing I can relate so much to the experience of feeling something tingle in your whole body. And actually, oftentimes when I'm in conversation like this, somebody will say something, and it just I get that zing of energy where I just connect so deeply to what's being shared. And that's an experience that I wasn't having 10 years ago because I was so disconnected from my body. And yay, we can we can all come so far and grow, and there's so much opportunity. But also what's coming up in my mind is recognizing that I think we have to be in a safe enough place to be having that experience. Like I'm thinking of the experience watching the sunrise or sunset, and thinking that you have to be present to that moment, right? Really, and I'm just picturing you like letting it in, being a hundred percent there, which I think is lovely. And for many of the moms living this lifestyle, there are many moments that are survival that are not immediately accessible to feeling safe. So I'd be curious as how I mean, we don't necessarily need to talk about like regulating the nervous system to feel safe, like that's a different conversation, but I'd be curious how you would educate a woman on both having this opportunity and also acknowledging the realities in her life.
SPEAKER_02And I think of your community, and you know, my my heart sort of starts to get mushy because it's a difficult role to play. How you all have to navigate your life and your child's and their care and the rest of your family and your just and and and and it's it's big, it's big and you are worth and you deserve to practice experiencing small moments of this connection with your body, connection with your mind, erotic energy and pleasure. And listen, friends, you know, it is a practice. This isn't just you don't snap your fingers and all of a sudden like it works for you. At least it didn't for me. And what I find is most people need a little, you know, guidance, encouragement, community around it, and also just some free moments to practice. And so my encouragement would be where could you start? Where is a safe place for you to start? Is it something with sensuality? Maybe. Do you pick one sense? Just one. Like say you're gonna pick smell and you're gonna focus on that all day. You're gonna pay attention to what smells good, to what smells not so good. But when something smells good, okay, say you walk by a rosemary plant in someone's yard, and you just run your hand along the plant and you bring it to your nose and think, I like that smell. Where do I feel that in my body? You know, when I smell something good like that, I can feel it like go all the way down to my toes, like yum.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I just want to pause here, slow it down, because I I love the way that well, you're slowing it down, right? So instead of just smelling it and kind of moving on, really paying attention to how that feels in your body when you enjoy that smell. So connecting the experience in your body to the sensation that you're having or to the experience that you're having. Where. And where, yes, thank you. Yeah, exactly. Right. And um, I'm gonna put this in here because it was so profound to me when I learned it and I think it fits in this conversation. It was not that many years ago, actually, that it it hadn't occurred to me that feelings happen entirely in our body, not in our brain. Yes. Not in our head. And again, it sounds very simple to me now and obvious, but it wasn't obvious to me at a certain point. Like I really was like, oh, that's how feelings work. It's actually vibrations in your body at any point, going back up to your brain to cue it on information, right? It's all about communication. But it was like profound to me. So I love this slowing it down, smelling it, and then paying attention for that split second where you feel it, you feel it in your feet all the way through your body. And I like this particularly because you've pointed us to start small. And who doesn't have a half of the second to just pay attention to that aspect of her being?
SPEAKER_02And truly it has to be intentional because our lives are so busy and packed, and there is so much swirling for people, especially in your community. And yet those small moments, they do add up. They are worth your time because your erotic energy is worth your time. You deserve to be lit up inside. Maybe not every second of every day, right? But to feel that.
SPEAKER_01We do not. And we're gonna talk more about worth and being worthy of pleasure. But I just can't help but think of all the women that I've gotten to talk to that come to me saying, I feel like I'm dying inside. And then connecting it to this learned habit of not paying attention to our sensuality. And then connecting it to this like worthy of being alive inside. I do want to kind of stay here in this sensuality, like actual tangible, because you mentioned that.
SPEAKER_02I do think the easiest way, because your sensuality is with your senses, is to pay attention to your senses. So I said something you smell. Maybe smell isn't your thing. Maybe it's what you see, maybe it's what you touch. Let's just start there because we have to have a practical place to practice, so to speak. And then think about allowing yourself, giving yourself permission for the extra moment. So just like you were saying, maybe you're cooking and you're getting lemon zest, you know. Do you just taste the lemon a little bit? Do you smell it? Do you, you know, does it get in a cut on your finger and and burn? Do you feel it? It's attention with intention.
SPEAKER_01Let's say that again with intention. Attention with intention. Yes, yes. Okay, beautiful.
SPEAKER_02And I don't want to overwhelm people because at the beginning you think, well, well, I just it's like one more thing. You know, this is not a chore. This is a practice for you for more thriving, for more light in your life.
SPEAKER_01And I almost can relate to it as like, this is not the most sexy analogy, but I'm gonna use it because I think it almost illustrates the point the best. I think some of these things have been dormant in a lot of these women, right? And we're so we're starting to wake them up and they're like, you know, kind of like there. And the picture I get is like a car or something that's stuck in the mud where you're like nudging it, you're like moving, and it's like not really moving at all, like maybe a little bit, but you keep going, you keep pushing it, you get a little bit of momentum, it starts to move, and then you know, yay, you're out of the mud. And I think it's similar to where the first time our ladies stop and smell some lemons, they may just be like, well, it smells good, and there might not be much more. But with that persistence, with the intention of paying attention, that's where I think you learn the practice of actually being able to feel deeper and to be able to have a higher connection to what's happening in your body.
SPEAKER_02And to take it even down, maybe a notch, too, is what could you do in your body that feels connecting to yourself and pleasure? This is the other thing with women, is we don't want to give ourselves permission, you know, to feel good, right? It's all about everyone else and what everybody else needs. And I know I'm I'm raising my hand, okay? But even like a small practice of massaging your own scalp, you know, or just like circling your own palm. Simple. But does this feel soothing to me? Where do I feel that? What sensation do I feel? You know, or if you feel anxiety in your body, I'm kind of going uh circling out bigger, but it's that paying attention to when I feel stressed or I feel anxiety. Can I put my hand, you know, over my chest, over my abdomen, and say, Okay, Cindy, something's activating you. You are activated. What is it? Can you tell? Where do you feel it? What is that? I mean, this is what I've learned to do. I never did it when I was younger. You know, I just powered through.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02And learning to do that is, I mean, I can't believe what I've learned about myself and my body and how to live with her in more freedom.
SPEAKER_01I can't help but notice how you talk about your body in third person. And I love it. Tell me a little bit about your relationship with your body that has you speak of her that way.
SPEAKER_02I do speak of her as her and she. I used to starve her, exercise her, I mean, into submission. I didn't trust her. And I saw her as an object rather than a subject. And I think when I finally turned that corner with seeing my body as a she and a her and talking to her with kindness and gentleness and listening to what she had to say, my life began to change. But boy, it was it's a bit of a do. It's a bit of a journey, certainly. And I'm still on it. And I would say sometimes I think it might be harder when you're younger and with your children and the needs in all your homes as you're listening. And I get that. I mean, I'm an empty nester, my daughters are all grown. I'm in a different place in my life, right? Where I have more space and time for some of this, certainly. But I just always have wondered if I had started sooner, if I had allowed myself to taste food. I taste it. If I had allowed myself to ask my body, are you hungry? Are you tired? Do you hurt? How do I want to live my day today with that knowledge? You know, talk to me. If patients that I've worked with over time, I'll even bring it into another context, had listened to the whispers of their body trying to tell them something was off or something was wrong or something hurt, or they had pain, or instead of waiting for their bodies to scream at them, scream. This is the way we function and operate. And yet, if we listen to the whispers and we're paying attention, we can sometimes avoid our body having to get to the screaming state. Mm-hmm. What do you think about that?
SPEAKER_01Well, there's a question that I ask a lot in my coaching practice. It's a very simple question, but it's not an easy question for most of us to answer. And it is, what do you need right now? And as you were just talking about this relationship you have with your body, how you were saying, like, are you tired right now? Are you hungry right now? Right. So really being able to listen to your body is essential. And actually, and I'm even going to say listening to your whole being is essential to answer the question, what do you need right now? I don't know if you feel this way, but even I struggle answering that question a lot of times. I think for a variety of reasons. One, we're so conditioned to like even if we think of something that we think we need, we cancel it out because we're like, it's not possible. So now I can't need it. Right. So we we kind of filter before we even let an idea come to the surface. But I also think sometimes, you know, we haven't practice listening to our body to be able to answer the question of what do we need right now?
SPEAKER_02But it's an essential question, and not just a one-time question. You said right now. This is key, is even a daily practice of learning how to do this, if it's before you even get out of bed in the morning. What are you feeling? How are we doing? Let's take one breath before we get, or stand up by your bedside and take two deep breaths and say, How do you feel this morning? You know, what what do you think you need based on that? Or as you go through your day. Sometimes, you know, it takes finding where in a day works for you to start this practice because truly it is a practice.
SPEAKER_01You'll like the saying that I learned from a coach many years ago, and her saying was the answer to any how question is practice. And I don't think a lot of us really give practice credit for like what it is. Like practice is doing something you're not good at in service of trying to get better at it. And many of us don't enjoy doing things we're not good at, and so a lot of times the first time we try something, we don't even experience a benefit from it. Like, you know, self-care has such a stigma now because there's a lot of eye rolling in my community about self-care. Because I think my theory is because we're so disconnected from what we need and have true logistical challenges for getting what we need, that it's like an immediate like cast aside. But also, like when we do have an opportunity to slow down and to like try something, it doesn't have this immediate powerful impact. It's not life-changing, and so we say, Well, that didn't work anyway, and we never try it again. Oh, it makes me so sad.
SPEAKER_02That's a good word right there. And this, I'll give you an example for my own self just to share vulnerably, is like movement and dance. So I have learned at this age to let my body move more, but oh, it was so uncomfortable at the beginning for me. And I went to a retreat and we did a dancing practice, and I didn't stay for the naked dancing, but I would I will say that I do now do the naked dancing by myself in the mornings. There's something about allowing ourselves to try something new like this, whether it's asking our body what she needs or paying attention to one of our senses, or moving our bodies in a way to just to help our nervous system and release what's happening and also tune into what we feel and experience ourselves in our body where we live. So don't freak out that I talked about naked dancing, but there's something about these practices, and different things will work for different people. Exactly. So you you have a wide variety of people in your community, and somebody's listening and going, You're out of this girl's a nutcase. I mean, there's no way I'm gonna dance naked ever. Okay. And somebody else is going, I see rosemary. I have rosemary in my yard, I wouldn't even think of smelling it, you know, or the sunset doesn't do anything for me. Okay, so everything doesn't work for everybody. That's okay. Finding what works for you, for like what you said, what you need. What do you need? Opening yourself to figuring that out for yourself.
SPEAKER_01That's where you start. Yeah, I I don't know why my mind went here, but you know, you share, you know, you're you said you're turning 60, right? And just that you're in a stage where you I think it it over here it occurs as like you're genuinely enjoying you. You have gotten to know you, you love you, and like you have the rest of your life to look forward with you. And so I'm I'm about to be 44. And I feel like I am enjoying growing up as an aging because I feel like I am getting to be more me. I'm getting to figure out actually who I am. And even just the other day, I was trying to figure out like why I I don't like to talk to my husband about like the day in the night. And kind of making, I was kind of like, oh man, like, I don't know, there's probably something wrong with you. I don't know. Then I realized, oh, no, I'm actually just tired, and it's the last thing I don't want to connect with somebody at that point in the day. I want to be by myself. And for me, it was just like nice little, oh, great. Now I know at the end of the day, I like to be alone. And that was just like a nice little, it's a very little thing, right? But now I know myself a little bit more. At least at this stage in my life, that's what I want. So we've jumped around a little bit, but we you've mentioned this thing a couple times, and I want to kind of go back to it. And it's this idea of worthy of pleasure. I don't even know how to open the question here or the topic because I feel like there's actually I was actually just working with a one-on-one client this morning about worthiness and this concept of like inherent worthiness and recognizing it's kind of like the same thing as enoughness, right? Like there's nothing, in my opinion, we can do or say to be more worthy or more enough. We are, period. So I guess where do you start when you're I want to say teaching, you know, a young woman about worthiness, worthiness of pleasure.
SPEAKER_02That's a big question. Good question. I do also find this with so many women that I meet with that don't feel like pleasure is for them. So I'm in the sexual wellness space mostly, so yeah, it usually is coming in in from there. But we can broaden that to I don't think many of us have been taught to create space to receive.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I had that tingle. Remember the tingle I had around my whole body when I hear something? A million percent. Because I think there's this. Here's my take on it. I think receiving is actually quite vulnerable. Everybody feels like strong and powerful when you're giving. That's why we have a lot of overgivers. And when we're asked to receive, she raised her hands for those of you not watching. Yeah, when you when you're in a receiving position, it's vulnerable and amazing, incredible. And I actually have episodes on receiving because, especially in the world where you know we've gone through seasons of fundraising for our family, because quite honestly, brain cancer is expensive, apparently, and all that comes with that. And so I have had to work through a lot of my own resistance to receive. And there's all these little chapters of resistance. One of the ones I found really interesting is like that I could only receive when I had nothing left myself. When I actually looked at it and like I had this vision of me swimming alongside a boat, a vessel of some type, and only getting in when I was gonna like go underneath water. Whereas what I changed it to is like, no, I could actually get in the boat at any time, and that would be great. The people on the boat would be like, Thank you for getting in the boat. Like we were suffering watching you swimming there alone and and like, you know, in danger. But without examining and questioning these kind of default things, we go and live our lives subconsciously thinking that we're not worthy of pleasure or avoiding the vulnerability of receiving. So, anyhow, I kind of hijacked that because I I got a little excited there. But go back to kind of the experience of receiving and where you see women in particular get stuck.
SPEAKER_02You know, my platform is all about permission. So I think that's where I always come back to is I feel like many women have not learned how to give themselves permission, permission to receive, permission to be worthy of pleasure, permission for pleasure, permission to long for things, permission to want, to desire. Many women, I mean, this myself included, we were trained up to give. I mean, yeah, I don't know if you do Enneagram on this show, but like I'm a two of the two-e two twos. I'm like, you couldn't even get a stronger two, which is that you know, the helper, right?
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say, if any of you have a friend who is just always helping you, she's probably a two. I have a couple twos in my life, and it is just incredible.
SPEAKER_02Oh dear. Well, the problem maybe not for the problem with that is, and even a lot of women will uh do these kinds of uh evaluations and think they're a helper, right? Because so many women are trained up to be givers, you know, to give and give. And yeah, I think because of that, that's a big piece to what we have to unravel in order to get to the place of recognizing our own wants, our own longings, our own desires, and our own permission for pleasure.
SPEAKER_01And so for people that are like, okay, I'm with you so far, maybe not on the naked dancing part, but I'm with you so far. On, yeah, I can see where I haven't been giving myself permission to be worthy, to receive, to long, to desire. Where do I start? So, where would you say, like with permission in mind, where do we start to unravel?
SPEAKER_02I think it takes sitting with ourselves when you get any little moment of quiet, you mama's out there. And asking ourselves, like you said, what do I need? What do I long for? I mean, I ask women to sit down like you, and I all say, like, what do you desire? And they can't answer. So it's the same idea. Yeah. Can you allow yourself to answer? To really actually give yourself a few moments to breathe, sit with yourself in your body, like be present with yourself and ask yourself these questions. What do I need? Like your question, or for me. What do I desire? What do I long for? What do I want? And then what is like one step I could take towards allowing myself to go for those things, allow myself to speak up for what I need, allow myself to voice my needs and wants and desires out loud to myself first, and then to someone else in my life. And I'm even thinking, like I'm a journaler, so like I would probably write, try to write it all down, right? Or maybe you speak, maybe you draw it out, maybe you do a collage board, whatever helps you creatively kind of get your juices going. Uh, give yourself a pathway, an avenue to do this. Sometimes, you know, I say sit with yourself, and people look at me like, well, that doesn't sound like no, I don't want to. Maybe it's going for a walk. You know, when we walk. And we're outside, our brain, we're able to, there's science behind this, but you're able to think and be in your body and process. Maybe it's better that way for you. That works really well for me. I get out and I just start walking. Maybe you can carve out 10 minutes by yourself to walk, where you can actually just let your brain think and let your body feel and see what comes up. I think honestly, how often do we just sit with ourselves even for a minute and see what comes up?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so on the same thing, I want to go back to what you said, one of the questions you said. So, of course, what do I need? That's one. But then the one after that, I think it's really critical. And the question was can you allow yourself to answer? And I love that question because it implies several things. One, I think it's like you don't, what I want to say is like you don't have to be right. Allowing yourself to answer might feel like it's kind of a guess. Because maybe you don't know exactly, you know, and maybe you're gonna do that thing or learn something and it it'll be like the thing, and maybe it's not. You go ask yourself a question again because I think it goes back to what you also just said is to see what comes up. In my experience, they're not usually like, you know, like a plane with a sign in the sky saying, like, this is what you need. Like it's not always completely obvious. It's actually like whispers, it's very subtle, and it's almost like, well, this is just the word coming in my head, or just is just the vision. It's very subtle. And you have to learn just to kind of let it be and to allow itself to amplify. And then there's a critical piece here, and I want to hear what you say about it to trust, to trust that that thing that came up matters and is important, and like you can listen to it. What would you say about that trust piece?
SPEAKER_02I think it's really big, and I think a lot of us don't trust ourselves. We don't trust our inner voice, we don't trust our body to talk to us, and it may be something we need to practice. It was for me, you know.
SPEAKER_01Same. Yeah, even as I'm doing this work, it's like, I don't know, like, oh, what's going on here?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. There's also a sense, too, of I don't want to say courage. I don't know what I'm thinking. I'm thinking bravery. I'm thinking, like, I guess maybe it comes back to you're worthy. You know, you're worth it. You are worth listening to. You are worth your desires and what you want. It's worth it because you are, because you are worthy. Maybe I'm not making sense, but I feel this strongly. I wish I could articulate it a little bit better in the sense of you're worth spending the moments to listen to yourself. Your wisdom is inside you. Yeah. I really believe that. And I believe you can understand and hear what's in there if you pause or walk or dance, or whatever it is, to allow yourself to listen.
SPEAKER_01And this is something I wholeheartedly align with. And I think it's a good place to wrap up and just really emphasize the beauty of what you just said. Or I I find it to be really simple and profound, but the wisdom is inside of you. Like I have a hundred percent confidence it is there. And I think what you and I are kind of imploring in this conversation is that this community pause and bring that attention with intention with intention. Yeah. Well thank you so much for being ahead of us on this journey and sharing all of you with us and your wisdom. And as we wrap up, is there anything that's on your mind or on your heart to share?
SPEAKER_02I loved this conversation, I think it's an important one. I'm grateful to get to know your community a little bit, and I can picture some of them in my mind's eye. And it's a hard, it's a hard journey y'all are on. And it's a lot, and you are a lot, and I believe that you're worth it. I wish I could just each one and say, just if you're overwhelmed listening to this conversation, perhaps pick just one thing. You know, we don't have to do and be it all at once. It doesn't work that way. Perhaps just find one thing that you can pay attention to with intention and just do that one thing and see what you hear, see what you learn.
SPEAKER_01That is something that I'm going to do and simplify, right? Because I am a person that was like, I'm gonna do everything, all of it. So simplifying and allowing, allowing the one thing to be enough.
SPEAKER_02I hope you enjoyed that conversation and found something that was nourishing for you to take away. As always, keep giving yourself permission for pleasure.
