This Book Changed Everything
After spending five years with women who didn't give a damn what the world thought of them, or expected of them, the prime example being Claressa Shields, Boxing Gold Medalist and subject of T-Rex, I began wondering about pleasure and why there is so much judgement and consternation around women who own their pleasure.
I found my way to the book Pussy: A Reclamation and that was as close to a Come-To-Jesus moment as I’ll ever get. Regina Thomashauer, who goes by the name Mama Gena (think sexy, hilarious, take-no-prisoners, feminist, Jewish mother — the one who all your friends want to hang out with), has been working with women for twenty years to flip the script on our patriarchal culture. She’s teaching women to stand for our pleasure and to stand for one another. It’s personal. It’s political. And there is a lot at stake.
For me, it’s about living from a place of desire, not out of social obligation. And it’s about the girls in South Africa who live with the fear of violence every single day. It’s about our daughters claiming their birthright as powerful women.
The Dalai Lama said that it’s Western women who are going to change the world. When I first heard that, I thought, wtf? But I believe this is what he is talking about. Yes, we have Trump and campus rape and sexual violence. But we also have more privilege, resources and mobility than any woman of any generation before us. Let’s get this revolution started.
We’ve ingested so much about sacrifice, suffering, working harder, working smarter, enduring, and sucking it up. Here’s what I’m learning: when a woman is in her full pleasure, or — in Pussy parlance — "turned on”, everyone is taken care of. The first thing a turned on woman does is turn to her sisters to bring them higher. She takes care of her partner, her children, her community. She brings pleasure to her own life and to the world around her. Who doesn’t want that?
This past spring, I spent three weekends with 450 women from around the world. We gathered in the Roosevelt Ballroom in NYC for The School of Womanly Arts where I witnessed incredible healing of sexual trauma, dancing (a lot), and pushed myself physically and emotionally to new places.
One of the tools we learn is Spring Cleaning, a practice I’ve been doing every day where I call another woman and we take turns running out the charge we have on whatever topic is hot for us at that moment, without giving advice. We practice YESing every emotion — grief, sorrow, rage, fear, all of it. It’s all beautiful. I've learned to move emotions through my body and bypass the head. Sensation without the narration. As women, we are so good at complaining, so to flip that, we learn the art of bragging. And we practice stating our desires. And having them witnessed by one another. She teaches how to center our intuition at the seat of our power. Have I not convinced you yet? Go get the book.