I have been immersed in Goddess -ness for the past few months.
Okay, years, but seriously who is counting?
I guess the focus has just ramped up a bit with the creation of my new website and the ongoing birthing of my new program Awaken Your Inner Goddess.
Creating the course has been so much fun ( why didn't anyone tell me that creating an online course was FUN!). There have been days where I have tried ( and failed) to create videos: forgot to turn the microphone on, didn't like what I was wearing, forgot what I was talking about or the phone rang in the middle of recording.
There have been days where I was creating audios only to stumble over the words at the end or lose track of where I was in the script or had to fight off an overwhelming urge to cough.
The housework has been left undone ( okay this happens on a regular basis but this time I had an excuse)
But mostly I had FUN! ( in fact at the end of one recording session I said "Goodie, goodie, goodie" I may have even done the happy clapping thing I do - and then I realised that I hadn't turned off the recording - I left it in anyway because we all need more happy, clappy moments)
I thought of how much I could have used this course when I was getting my marriage ended and I thought I would never find love again...... and I know I'm not the only one
I thought of how much I could have used this course when I had forgotten who I was as I was lost amongst the mothering, stepmothering, wife-ing modes....and I know I'm not the only one.
I thought of how much I could have used this course when I turned 30 (and 40 and 50) and wondered if I was still hot and sexy.... and I know I'm not the only one.
I know that once I connected to my Goddess -ness things shifted in my life in lots of big and little ways .... and I know that will happen for you too.
I know that staying connected to my Goddess -ness helps me feel more like me every day..and I know that will happen for you too.
When I talk about connecting to your inner Goddess I am not talking about something fluffy and airy- fairy, all sunshine, Unicorns and rainbows. No, I am talking about peeling back the layers of shit that we all accumulate from years of listening to the "shoulds" and the "shouldn'ts" of being a female in this 21st century. The ideas that we have to look and behave in a certain way in order to be acceptable. Not to mention the stories that we are told as children that end with the Princess meeting the handsome Prince and living "happily ever after" though we have no clear idea of what that means but some how we still feel vaguely ripped off when the fairy tales don't match up to reality.
Our Inner Goddess is our most authentic self and reconnecting with her shifts everything. We begin to remember what our desires were before we were told what they "should" be. We begin to remember what our passions were before we were told that "nice girls" didn't have passions. We begin to remember who we were before we were taught to squash ourselves into some Barbie sized dream. Most importantly, we begin to feel FREE to be ourselves with all our quirks and idiosyncrasies. We start living a life that feels Fabulous because we are Fabulous.
We all know that we are supposed to love our body.
And we all have that one niggly part of us that we just wish looked better.
That spot is different for all of us. For some its their thighs, or their cellulite. For others it is the size and shape of their nose.
Still others wish that their butt was bigger or smaller or a tiny bit more pert.
And some of us resort to surgery to "correct" the imperfection.
It seems like no sooner have we got comfortable with ourselves than somebody ( and I have not even the vaguest notion of who it could be) comes up with yet one more thing that we should be striving to attain.
First it was the "perfect" vagina which saw a huge upswing in requests for labiaplasty which still continues to blow my mind on a regular basis. ( Go check out my other post on Your Amazing Vagina or Love your labia, ladies).
Then came the "thigh gap" which only a tiny number of people can attain. Although according to this article "thigh gap" is just a new name for "heroin chic"( seriously, who comes up with these names) which preceded it.
All any of this does is make us, as women, uncomfortable in our own skin. We feel that there is some unattainable standard that we are failing to meet. With the ubiquitous use of social media and hashtags we are able to compare ourselves to other women out there who are posting pictures of their perfect thigh gap. Or boast about their session at the gym. Or show you just what they are eating.
Which, for those that may already be feeling insecure about their bodies, just makes us all feel a little bit worse.
What if, instead of looking at all those pictures on Instagram we look in the mirror and tell ourselves how beautiful we are and how much we appreciate our body?
What if instead of comparing our body to some media image we set about falling back in love with our bodies and the gifts that they give us? Have you ever watched a bay or a toddler playing ? they take a never ending delight in their own bodies, it is only as we get older that we switch to feeling like we are less than.
What if instead of looking at the pics of someone else's green juice or plate of healthy salad we head to the kitchen and create our own self nurturing, healthy concoction?
What if we told ourselves every day, endlessly, all day long that who we are is enough. That how we look is just fine?
What if we told each other how great we are and got really comfortable giving and receiving compliments? And not just for how we look but for the way that we go about our lives.
What if we made the best compliment that you could give someone "You are an awesome kick ass women" instead of "You look great. Have you lost weight?"
Step away from technology. Look in the mirror and remind yourself of all that you have been through and all that you have achieved and you are still here. Strong, capable, beautiful. Sure you may have a few silver hairs or a laugh line here and there maybe even a stretch mark or two They are marks that you have lived, where them with pride.
Want to learn how to let go of the past and move into your future with a deeper sense of self love? Then check out the Awaken Your Inner Goddess course.
We all want to be thought of as being good in bed.
We want to think that we leave our partner satisfied and happy and with thoughts of only us dancing around in their heads for hours afterwards.
We like to think that they will have a sly smile on their face the next day whenever thoughts of us drift across their mind, which will happen often because the sex we had was just that good.
The trouble is, as women, we keep looking outside of ourselves for that magic solution on how to drive a man crazy in bed or make ourselves desirable.
We think it comes down to the right boob size. It doesn't.
Or the right dress size. Again it doesn't, in fact I dare you to ask your partner your dress size. I bet he doesn't have a clue.
Or we think it comes down to how much we weigh. Nah - wrong again.
Or whether we have cellulite on our thighs, or stretch marks, or whether we have the right hairstyle, or , or, or. Our list of things that could be wrong with us is long and we think if we just fix that then men will want us, desire us.
Then we think is we just do this or that then he will keep coming back for more.
We forget that we are enough.
I just watched a promo for a new program this woman has created that will have men flocking to you, enable you to unlock their deepest desires and become their all time fantasy woman and it's yours for the small price of $47 USD but you better hurry because she should really sell it for $297. This program will have men adoring you and begging to be your man and while it wasn't sleazy it is still focused on him and all you can do to help drive him wild.
At the same time I got an email from another person that I follow telling you ways to make you feel more like a Goddess all of which I already knew and wrote about in my book "The Goddess Guide to Sex, Love and Life" .
I know which one I am more interested in... and I hope you are too.
Becoming our most vibrant, sexual, sensual selves will bring about the most amazing change in our sex lives while at the same time making us happy and content within ourselves, boosting our confidence and all while taking the best care of ourselves .
Nothing is more potent and alluring to men than a woman who is completely at home in her own body. A woman who revels in her sexuality and isn't scared of embodying her inner goddess is a woman who will be adored but more than that she will enable her man to open fully into his own expression of his sexuality.
This isn't just a theory that I hold it is what has happened in my own relationship. We are not some hot, young couple just starting out on our journey together. No, we are a middle aged couple who have been together for the past 22 years and our relationship hasn't always been this way.
In fact it has only been in the past 8 years that things have really begun to get hotter and steamier, right when the media would have you believe everything should be heading in the opposite direction. It wasn't until I changed that things took a turn for the better. One day I decided that it was time for me to embrace who I truly am and start living as a full expression of my authentic self and so I declared myself to be a sex Goddess and with that everything shifted.
Since then I have been writing and talking about self love, sexuality and being a goddess. Most importantly I finally published my book in which I give women tips and exercises to do to help them become their most sensual selves.
One of the most heart opening aspects of all this has been that my husband has been able to shed years of guilt, shame and fully open into the gorgeous, sexy, loving man that was buried beneath all of that old shit. And none of that came about because I was focusing on him like all the articles suggest you do. No, it came about because I opened up to myself, just like Marianne Williamson says in her famous poem " And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our
presence automatically liberates others.”
So where are you going to look? Outwards or inwards?
After months of work and hesitation and fear and self doubt I have finally done it and my book is now available to order on Kindle at Amazon.
To celebrate I'm posting the first chapter here for you to read.
Chapter One
Birth of a Goddess
“Let the world know you as you are, not as they think you should be because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose and then where are you?” Fanny Brice
A few years ago I was away with my husband for a bit of “ahem” adult time and I decided that I needed some sexy lingerie to add to the atmosphere so I trotted in to the local lingerie shop and started looking through the racks.
Now, I must add a note here that I am a plus size woman, or as I like to say, Voluptuous. Just take a moment and roll that word around on your tongue, voluptuous, the word itself sounds sensuous, don’t you think? Far better than “plus size” (blech!) or “fuller figured” (gick!). No, I am an Amazon; a voluptuous, curvaceous woman.
So back to the lingerie shop and the lovely middle aged woman who was serving me. I started off by telling her that I was looking for some nice underwear and she dutifully started showing me some fairly beige bras etc. I forgot to mention that not only am I curvaceous I am also middle aged and have numerous grandchildren but I refuse to dress or look like a Nana!! After she had showed me a selection of very bland offerings I announced to her that actually I was a Sex Goddess and wanted something a bit sexier. To her credit she didn’t bat an eye or even blush. No, she instantly switched from beige Nana bras to some sexy, black, lacy camisoles and a racy, red teddy. Perfect!
I have no idea where the urge to inform this poor woman that I was a sex goddess came from or why I blurted it out but it did and it was the best thing ever. After I had made my purchases I reunited with my husband and informed him of what I had said. His response was to laugh and say “Well of course you are” and we proceeded to have the best weekend ever.
There are a few other events that also set me on this path. One was a naked photo shoot I had done years earlier for a male friend of mine. Grundy (that was his nickname) had been mates with me for a while, nothing sexual just good friends. He was also a photographer, doing mainly black and white pictures and he was looking to branch out into nudes. That is when he asked me to pose for him. I was 27 at the time and not involved with anyone and was taken completely by surprise. I was also instantly aware of my less than perfect body but I agreed and just asked him to give me a few days to get myself mentally prepared.
On the day I posed for him I was nervous as anything and it was only as he was setting everything up that I noticed that he was in fact, shaking and more nervous than I was. Once I saw that I completely relaxed and had the most amazing day. I lost count of how many rolls of film he used and at the end of it another friend; Paul arrived and became part of the shoot as well. Nothing sexual took place but we were all exhilarated at the end of it and went out for a great night of drinking and partying.
If you have ever watched “How to look good naked” with Gok Wan you will get some idea of just how liberating and uplifting doing a naked photo shoot is. The boost to your confidence is amazing. I was blessed to have two dear, male (non-gay) friends spend the day admiring my body which felt incredible.
Years later I was asked by another friend if I would participate in a fashion show as one of his models. By this stage I was a plus sized woman, in my 40’s and living in a small town and working in one of the local stores. I agreed and again it was life changing. Robert is gay and so it was like my very own Gok Wan moment. I swear every woman should be dressed by a gay man at some point in her life; they view our bodies in a totally different light. That is, of course a very broad sweeping generalization because not all gay men are fashionistas but the ones that are? Oh my Goddess, they are amazing at dressing women’s bodies.
Being a model and walking down a catwalk with my youngest son (14 at the time) and husband in the audience, both looking so proud was another amazing boost to my confidence. What totally blew me away and was quite unexpected was the number of gorgeous women, of all shapes and sizes who came up to me afterwards and told me how brave I was and how beautiful I looked on the stage and how they wouldn’t have the courage to do the same thing.
All of these events; at different ages and stages and sizes of my life, have led to me becoming more comfortable in my own skin, more comfortable with who I am sexually, emotionally and spiritually. The biggest lesson I learned is this: No-one is going to come along and anoint you a sex goddess it is something that you declare for yourself and then grow into.
When you think of the term sex goddess what springs to mind? Do you think of a model from the cover of a magazine in a provocative pose? Or do you think of something a bit tacky? Whatever you think you are probably wrong. Every woman has within her the power to be a sex goddess, to ooze sex appeal and sensuality, without having to wear provocative clothes or be overtly sexual. The trouble is we have lost sight of our own sensual nature. We have been taught that sex is dirty and bad and sinful. We have been led to believe that women who dress a certain way are slutty or cheap or that they are just “asking for it” (reinforced by songs such as Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines).
So we tone down our sexuality and sensuality, we try to keep it under wraps for fear of what others will think of us. We also beat up on our bodies for not looking the way that we want them to, for not having big enough breasts, thin enough thighs, for having cellulite or lumpy bits. We think that to be sexy we have to be a certain size, shape, weight, height or some other attribute that we currently lack.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Being a sex goddess is built right into our DNA, it is who we are. We are designed to be sexual, sensual, alluring creatures. We are designed to be curvy, in the right places, to exude pheromones that surround us alerting males that we are available. Yes, we all look different and there is someone out there that will find what you have to offer incredibly hot and exciting. But first you have to realise that you are hot and exciting.
We get so busy judging ourselves, judging each other, comparing our bodies to what we see displayed on billboards that we forget just how fabulous we already are. I constantly hear from women that they don’t undress in front of their husbands or that they only make love with the lights out and every time I hear it I swear, a little sex fairy dies.
You see our men adore us. They don’t care about the cellulite or the wrinkles or the extra pounds you are carrying. They care that you are climbing into bed…… with them. That they get the privilege (yes, privilege!!) of making love to you. But we are so focused on the jiggly bits that we find it hard to even stay focused on the moment and enjoy what is happening to us. We forget to participate fully in the here and now and so our orgasm remains elusive, our enjoyment of the moment is blunted and we all lose.
Now maybe we had our mojo back in the day. Maybe we thought we were all that and then some before we had kids and then they came along and our belief that we were sexy flew out the window. It happens. One minute you are a hot, sexy women and the next you are a mother and for some reason that feels like the least sexy person you could ever be. And you are not wrong.
I’m not saying that mothers are not sexy, far from it. It is just that up until this moment, when this word applied to you, the words Mum and sexy just never went together in your mind. Generally because we tend to think of Mum as being our mother and we sure as hell never thought of her as sexy.
Motherhood is huge adjustment and part of that, that often gets over looked, is maintaining our intimate relationship and hanging onto the idea that we can be sexy and mum at the same time. Most of us get lost in the whirlwind of new babies; sleepless nights, trying to make it through the day with this little being that can’t tell you what it wants or needs at any given moment. Add into the mix issues with breastfeeding; cracked nipples, swollen breasts and whether or not it is right for you and your baby and soon enough sex gets pushed far….. far down the list.
Or maybe you are past that stage of life and now you have older kids in the house but you still haven’t managed to bring the sexy back. Or maybe you have teenagers and all that entails. If you have teenage daughters roaming around the house you have the daily reminder of how your body is not anymore and so you hide your body even more.
Maybe you are an empty nester and were hoping that now, finally, you could get back to your sexy self only now you are going through menopause and all of its dramas; loss of lubrication, hot flushes, lack of sex drive and the list goes on (just between you and me it doesn’t have to be this way. We’ll get to that later on). Of course, the media doesn’t help with its view of older women as being undesirable.
Well I’m here to tell you that you can bring your sexy back. You can reconnect with your inner Sex Goddess whatever age or stage that you are at. She is right there waiting for you to let her out. In fact she never, ever left you.
You left her.
You stepped away into the world of ‘should’s. You bought into the belief that the media has been shoving down our throats for years that it is men that want sex and women that say “no”. You bought into the belief that women over the age of ( fill in the blank) aren’t sexy, that being a mum isn’t sexy , that women of a certain size or shape aren’t sexy, that small breasted woman aren’t sexy. You bought into the idea that only blonde's are sexy, thatonly by fitting into size (fill in the blank) is sexy, that sexy looked a certain way and you were not it.
All of this is lies propagated by the media; the cosmetic companies, the fitness industry, the diet industry, the clothing manufacturers to keep you dissatisfied with your body, with your hair, with your skin so that they can sell you more products. Women’s hating their bodies is a billion dollar business. From cosmetics to cosmetic surgery, from weight loss programs to diet foods, from the latest fashion craze to the fashion spreads in magazines, the list goes on and on and all have one goal in mind; to keep women feeling insecure about their bodies and how they look.
If we loved ourselves and were happy with our bodies we wouldn’t constantly be obsessing about buying just the ‘right’ outfit to make us feel better about ourselves. We wouldn’t be trying to find the right diet or the right fitness regime to help us become the perfect size. We wouldn’t be shopping around to find the perfect shade of lipstick or the best anti-aging formula for our skin.
No, we would probably be home having mind blowing sex with our husband, in broad day light feeling like the hottest thing on the planet.
But we are not.
We know that something is missing. We know that we should feel better about ourselves. We have been searching for the thing that will fix us. We’ve read all the self-help books. We’ve been to all the seminars. We’ve been to various healers, clairvoyants and health expos looking for the answers. We’ve tried all the weight loss programs. We have tried all the diets to lose that last ten pounds. In fact we may be in the best shape we have ever been in (or not).
The truth is we just need to reconnect to our inner goddess. We need to connect to our sensuality. We need to stop fighting with our bodies and trying to force them into some ideal that we have in our minds of what we ‘should’ look like. We have fallen out of love with ourselves and so we are busy looking outside of ourselves to try and fix it but the answer lies within us, it always has.
We have become so disconnected from our bodies that we don’t know what messages she has been trying to tell us for years. We have assumed that the aches and pains, the nausea, the constant tiredness is from some mystery illness when in reality it is just our body trying to get our attention. Often getting sick is the only way for us to start paying attention to ourselves. When we get sick we finally have permission to look after our bodies. My wish is for us to pay attention before that happens.
Human beings are very sexual beings. We have just denied this part of us for so long that we have forgotten. Watch any baby boy with his nappy off for any length of time and his hands begin exploring; he will grab his foot, his hair and finally his penis and then he will start to get an erection. In fact there are even images of baby boys playing with themselves in utero. Baby girls will also explore it’s just that we don’t have an external appendage that we can hang onto.
Babies are also very sensual. Everything is new to them and so they enjoy and delight in all of their senses. In fact it is how they make sense of the world, everything is sniffed, touched, tasted, chewed up and spat out. And we have lost that connection. We have shut off our senses and lost connection with our bodies.
We no longer know when we are hungry or thirsty or if that ache in our gut is from something we ate or because we are feeling anxious. We confuse thirst for hunger, and vice versa. We eat foods that are not good for us and do not pay attention to the warning signals our brains are giving us. We have handed over the care of our bodies to doctors and expect them to fix us with a prescription all the while failing to pay attention to the signs and signals our own bodies are sending us.
We exercise to the point of pain and then push through it because “no pain, no gain” and other such slogans, all of which betray the very body that we live in. We stay up late, past the point of feeling tired in order to watch one more TV show or complete some work or just because we can and then wonder why we can’t sleep. We drink coffee after coffee to keep us a wake, to give us an energy boost, to keep going and going when what we really need is water and fresh air and a brief moment connecting with nature away from the electronic world. Or we eat sugar, in the form of chocolate or cake to make us feel loved.
How do we step back, reconnect to our sensuous nature, and reconnect to our bodies?
We start by declaring love for our bodies and stopping the war that we currently have with ourselves. Now, you might think that this is a purely selfish act that developing a love affair with our bodies is not a noble act, that it is not serving the world or the greater good and I am here to tell you that it is, in fact, the single most powerful act you can commit to. Not only is loving your body a truly revolutionary act for yourself but also for the whole world.
In metaphysics they talk about “as above, so below.” The bit that we forget is “as within, so without”. What does this all mean? It means that everything that you do for yourself, you also do for the planet.
My theory is this; if we all stopped the internal war that we are having within ourselves then all the wars out there would also stop. Jesus said “Love thy neighbor as thy self.” And we have been paying attention only to the part about loving our neighbors and forgotten that it starts with loving ourselves, all of our selves, not just the bits that we feel good about already.
We live busy lives, full of distractions. We are bombarded with sights and sounds and smells but there are so many of them that we have learnt to tune them out to protect ourselves. The trouble is in doing this we have dulled our senses; we have lost touch with our own bodies and the innate wisdom that we were born with.
Now is the time for us to reconnect with our selves, to rediscover all that we have been hiding from. Now is the time for us to come home to ourselves.
Why? I work in the mind body field, primarily helping people with their relationships and their sexuality and what I am discovering is that people are so disconnected from what is happening in their own bodies that they are unable to connect with their partners bodies either. Being disconnected from your body means that you continue working when you are tired, you forget to eat when your body is signalling hunger, you push through the pain when you are exercising and then you pay the ultimate price and get ill when all along your body has been giving you the cues to rest, relax and rejuvenate.
Our society encourages us to continue the disconnection. There is a pill for every ailment; aspirin for headaches, ointments for joint pain, pills to help us sleep, drinks to give us energy and alcohol, drugs and endless reality shows to distract us from thinking too much. I think the whole world would suffer from caffeine withdrawal if coffee suddenly disappeared off the planet; it seems to be the fuel that gets us through the day.
It is my view that a love your body revolution can have a major impact on the world and maybe it is a lofty ideal and, frankly, we have got nothing to lose.
Coming soon: A four week on-line course "How to be Irresistible"
I seem to be fascinated with time today I just wrote this article for The Wellness Directory and now I am working on this chapter of my upcoming book: Every Goddesses guide to Sex, Love and Life.
This is just a wee snippet. If you love it sign up for my newsletter for all the updates on when the book will be available.
The Curse of Busy
We all do it. We use busy as an excuse for getting out of
things or as a catch cry for everything; “I’m so busy” “I’d love to but I’m
just really busy right now.”We think it
makes us seem important , all this busy-ness means we have so much to do, so
much to juggle and so we rush through our days, being busy, often though, the
very act of being busy is stopping us from actually being productive or
connected or from just being. We have got so caught up in the rush and thrill
of being busy that we have forgotten how to just be.
After all we are human beings not human doings, though if
you were to check us out on any given day you would find that we spend far more
time doing than being. Our lives rush past us in a blur of busy-ness, we seem
impatient for the next step the next achievement and forget that this moment
right here, is our life.
This is never more apparent than when we are raising our
children; we cannot wait for them to reach the next milestone; sleeping through
the night, rolling over, crawling, walking, talking and the days slip by
without us registering the enormity of us having birth to this human being. We
need to stop, slow down, take a breath and drink it all in.
This became fully apparent to me when I had my youngest son;
that this would be the last time that I would be pregnant, the last time that I
would breastfeed, the last time that I would be there for so many first times.
I still didn’t get it right all the time, I don’t think anybody ever does and
by trying to make it perfect we suck all the joy out of it anyway.
For all you mums out there take it easy on yourself, it
doesn’t matter if the laundry doesn’t get folded, it does matter if you sit and
listen to your child explain what is going on for them whether they are 2 or 15
or 25 no, it never stops and yes, listening is always that important).
We forget in the midst of all the busy work; the laundry
folding, dish washing and meal cooking that life is happening and life is what
we are supposed to be paying attention to. Your life, your kids’ lives, your
life with your partner (husband, lover whatever you want to call him –or her).
Step out of the kitchen, put down the phone, step away from the computer and
find something, anything that connects you to you. We all need to spend more time
connecting with our centre, finding out what makes us tick and letting go of
our baggage.
One of the ways that we stop ourselves healing from our past
is the eternal quest of busy; reading one more email, writing one more post on Facebook,
running endless errands, anything that will stop us from being still and
looking inside ourselves and asking “ What do I need to heal? What do I need to
let go of?” This is the real work of living, developing and growing into the
finest, highest, best version of yourself, peeling off all the masks that we
wear and looking ourselves in the eye and loving who we see staring back at us.
And we don’t get to do that if we are constantly busy, if we are running from
one job to the next and the only stillness in our day is when we plonk
ourselves in front of the television for some mindless entertainment.
A true goddess has asked herself the big questions: Who am
I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? And she likes the answers that she has
come up with: I am a luminous being of Light and Love. I am here to share my
Light and Love with the world. My purpose is to shine and help others to find
their way.
Like this? Want to find out when the book is coming out? Fill out the form!
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