“I just asked my pussy, and it told me what it wanted,” my sister said, then took another bite of her salad.
I pulled my head back, my eyes wide, and asked, “Your WHAT?”
“My pussy. Just like you taught me. It knows.”
“You’re teasing me, aren’t you?” I asked, starting to contract with hurt.
“No, Michele, I’m serious! It’s really helpful. Ever since your Wilder Moon Circle, I’ve been consulting my pussy on lots of decisions. I feel like I’m learning how she communicates.”
This whole exchange blew my mind. My sister and I are close. I know she loves me unconditionally and would support me in anything I chose to do, regardless of whether she agreed with or valued it, herself.
But I couldn’t believe she wasn’t just humoring me, being kind while inwardly rolling her eyes a bit. I have this story, see: My family, my mom friends (mothers I met through our kids’ school or shared activities), my neighbors… Well, the story says that my being a relationship and sex coach is pretty “out there” for them. I need to tread lightly and try not to be too provocative.
The same story says that the more esoteric, energetic, explicitly spiritual or overtly sensual aspects of what I teach are really taboo – not very palatable to most people around me. Even my clients. So when I’d taught my sister to use the word “pussy” to describe not only the physical anatomy between her legs but a feminine intuitive center she could consult for guidance, it had been almost by accident.
See, I’ve been out to the edges in my own experiences and training, because I am so devoted to bringing sensuality and spirituality – in full, vivid color and aliveness – into my otherwise fairly conventional life. My husband has a traditional career with a conservative construction company, we have a mortgage and two kids. We bake bread and go to church on Sundays. But in my relentless quest to go deeper in love and sex with my partner of more than 18 years, I’ve not only earned a master’s in psychology but also taken tantra workshops and other sexual skill trainings, learned esoteric Taoist sexual practices, read hundreds of books, and been trained as a teacher of relationship skills and sensuality practices.
I’ve gotten naked in all sorts of ways, literally and metaphorically, with a number of different people along the way. I’ve done many things I would never expect my clients to do.
MY AIM IS TO BRING POTENT SKILLS TO PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT INTENDING TO BE SENSUAL PIONEERS, BUT WHO SIMPLY WANT TO MAKE LOVE AND SEX AS SUCCESSFUL AND FULFILLING AS THE OTHER ASPECTS OF THEIR LIVES.
I don’t expect my clients to go as far as I have, or to orient their lives around sexuality the way some of my teachers have. And I never used to expect them to step far beyond their comfort zones in terms of language, as some of my teachers have challenged me to do.
When I took Dara McKinley’s Volver course (it became the basis of what she now offers as The Goddess Process) in early 2010, I was at rock bottom. I’d just had a miscarriage. My heart was broken. My body was depleted. My foundation was shaken.
I had been living from the belief that I could map out my future, my business, my family, and that life would unfold according to my plan. When my baby died inside my womb, and I didn’t even find out until 10 days later, that assurance was shattered. Things happen that I would not have chosen, and life does not extend explanations or even apologies.
In my bewilderment, one clear awareness arose: I might as well do what I wanted, because doing what I thought would “work” didn’t guarantee a damn thing.
For several years, since my friend Kim had excitedly told me about her, I’d WANTED to dig into Dara’s work. I arrived at Dara’s beautiful home and sobbed my way through our introductions. On that first night, she taught us that we were going to learn to reclaim the wisdom of our pussies. Several in the group told Dara they found the word repugnant.
“PUSSY? IT’S A SLUR. IT’S AN INSULT. IT SMACKS OF MALE SEXUAL CONQUEST. IT’S DEMEANING.”
She’d heard that before, Dara told us. “And all that has been true. That’s WHY,” she said, “we have to reclaim it.”
She went on:
“THERE IS NO ONE WORD THAT DESCRIBES THE WHOLE OF A WOMAN’S SEXUAL ANATOMY. YOUR VAGINA IS THE CANAL FROM YOUR CERVIX TO YOUR ENTROITUS. THE ENTROITUS IS JUST THE DOORWAY; IT DOESN’T INCLUDE THE INNER LABIA OR THE OUTER LABIA OR THE CLITORIS, WITH ITS 8,000 NERVE ENDINGS, OR THE HOOD THAT PROTECTS THE CLITORIS.
“When we name our pussies, we claim their power and restore them to their rightful place at the center of our lives and the world.”
I was digging the message, and she was right: there wasn’t another catch-all word. But “pussy” still felt dirty in my mouth. I didn’t like to think that I had a lot of sexual hang-ups, but clearly we’d hit my “good girl” wall: it felt like a slatternly word to use.
Over the coming weeks, I learned practices for connecting to my pussy’s communications for me — I took to these skills like a fish to water! — and if the word itself was less natural than the connection to the center of sensation and intuitive knowing, I made up the difference with diligence. I practiced wrapping my mouth around the word. I said it quickly. Slowly. Tenderly. Roughly. I used it in sentences with my new friends from Volver.
THE MORE I HEARD THE WORD “PUSSY” IN OTHER WOMEN’S VOICES AND SPOKE IT IN MY OWN, THE MORE NATURAL AND USEFUL IT FELT.
Yes: PUSSY became a way I could refer to my sex, inside and out, and to the experiential center of my feminine, sensual knowing. My pussy did indeed have subtle messages about what she liked and didn’t like, and connecting to her sense of things gave me valuable information about what served me and did not, in all sorts of situations.
For my own purposes, I never stopped calling that part of me — physically and energetically — my pussy. But teaching it to others was uncomfortable.
As I added sensual intuitive wisdom to the suite of tools I teach my clients, I shied away from teaching women or men to use the term “pussy.” I would mention it, sure, and share a bit of the story I just told you about my own experience of the word. Then I’d quickly say, “but I’m not going to insist that you learn to say pussy. Yoni is the Sanskrit word for the divine feminine genitalia that communes with Lingam… If you’re more comfortable with that, say “Yoni.”
I HAD BECOME THE WOMAN WHO COULD OWN HER OWN PUSSY…
BUT I HADN’T YET BECOME THE TEACHER WHO COULD TRANSMIT PUSSY TO OTHERS.
I’d comfortably wrapped my position in a metaphorical meditation shawl, telling myself it was more spiritual and respectful not to cram pussy down women’s throats.
Somehow, at the Wilder Moon Circle I hosted, where I’d invited friends and my sister and clients to whom I’d never preached the pussy gospel, we got to talking about pussy wisdom and consulting with one’s pussy… And my sister heard the message and fed it back to me in a way I could finally hear as my own teaching.
IT IS TABOO TO BE A RELATIONSHIP AND SEX COACH.
People raise their eyebrows, in all kinds of different ways.
After completing a big project for my son’s school, the volunteer team talked about having a “cast party” and I joked, “I’m not making out with any of you, though!” (anyone involved in drama in high school or college knows the cast parties are famous for extensive and surprisingly non-sequitur hook-ups). A lovely friend from my son’s school quipped back that she’d be nervous to have to kiss me… “Michele, that’d be intimidating! You know too much! I’d have performance anxiety!” I laughed out loud. She was joking, too, but every joke sprouts from a seed of truth.
Wowza! A sex-expert can push buttons even if none of us are prudes! By the way: when it comes to enjoying sensual experiences, the skills I’ve learned and that I share aren’t like the sommelier’s dilemma, where you can only enjoy the best, most expensive wines once you “know too much.” It’s the opposite, actually: I’ve learned and I teach people to “get off on the stroke you’re receiving” — to draw pleasure from a WIDER variety of styles and moments, like a musician whose ear has become so sensitive that they experience even the most pedestrian or dissonant noises as beautiful music.
Sexuality — and even love, really — is such a tender topic.
SEX IS SUCH AN IMPORTANT ASPECT OF LIFE, AND SOMETHING WE DON’T OFTEN TALK ABOUT.
BEYOND THE TABOO, WE MAY THINK WE SHOULDN’T HAVE TOTALK ABOUT IT.
We often go into long-term relationships thinking sex will just WORK – and keep working – if we’re with the right person. So It’s shameful, for many of us, when we run into challenges or when we want more or different sex than we’re having with the one we love. All these factors conspire to make sex a very challenging subject for many people in long-term monogamous relationships.
But it’s precisely those people who I help to go deeper in love and sex. I’ve come to see that I shied away from the word “pussy” because it’s so important to me to be approachable and not push any more buttons for my clients and students than I absolutely must. I help make sex more talk-about-able.
OTHER EXPERTS IN THE SENSUALITY ARENA ARE FAR MORE PROVOCATIVE, AND I LOVE THEM FOR IT.
Take my tantra teacher: She changed her name to a Sanskrit word. She dresses like a temple priestess with upper-arm bracelets and long flowing skirts… She lives part of the year in Bali and have never had children. I love her devotion to divine sexual expression. Her super-sexy vibe is part of how she serves.
Or my Orgasmic Meditation mentor Nicole Daedone: She writes explicitly about her Whole Foods pick-ups and her insatiable pussy and she doesn’t believe having one’s clitoris stroked by someone other than one’s partner transgresses monogamy. She holds back none of herself or her days and her nights from her ongoing research and it’s made her a sexual ninja and a master teacher and powerful agent of transformation for me.
Or Kim Anami, whose Instagram feed is devoted to pictures of #thingsIliftwithmyvagina. Or Layla Martin, who recently wrote a blog post about “hot threesomes for curious beginners.”
These teachers — and others I also learn from and adore — are all in. They are utterly devoted to the exploration of sex as a path to spiritual unfoldment and to wide and deep adventure.
I CONSIDER THEM MONASTICS IN THE SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE OF SEXUALITY.
On that path, to continue with the yogic tradition’s terminology, I am a householder: a practitioner just as devoted to the path as a monastic, but whose journey takes her straight through the middle of the secular culture. By contrast to my colleagues whose lives are visibly steeped in sexuality — and usually unfettered by long-term commitments to one partner or a mortgage, let alone little people who can take 110% of your emotional and physical energy — I live in Commitment City.
I’m married. Monogamous emotionally and sexually. We have children… Young ones. A house we built together and plan to live in for decades.
SEX IS THE CENTER OF MANY SEXUALITY EXPERTS’ LIVES.
For me, too, sex is the lifeblood of my existence. It’s a source of not only pleasure but growth and connection to the divine and deeper understanding of everything outside of sex, yet for me all those qualities are meaningful only in the context of my life of mothering and partnership and service in my work and participation as an engaged citizen in a hurting world.
And my clients? They’re right here, too, in the cafes and the schoolyards, the yoga studios and the grocery stores. They live all over the world, and they’re straight or they’re gay, they’re married or they’re not. Some are single though most are partnered. They’re mamas and daddies (or not) and business owners and leaders. They’re volunteers and soccer coaches and they sing in the church choir (or they don’t).
MY CLIENTS AND STUDENTS ARE HOUSEHOLDERS, NOT MONASTICS. THEY’RE “WHOLESOME” AS ALL GET-OUT. AND THEY’RE SEXUAL BEINGS.
The challenge is this: Amid the busy-ness, the dozens of shared tasks and logistical conversations and the years of familiarity it can feel like they and their partners are better roommates or business partners than lovers in a steamy affair.
I still want to be crystal clear that I’m just like my clients in many ways, living a life that looks very “normal.” I’m a feminist and a pussy-proponent, but I’m not living in a different world. I work every day to keep sensuality and eroticism vibrant in a life much like theirs. Ours are lives where desire and pleasure are endangered by a thousand predators, including time pressure, familiarity, stress, fatigue, and even the images we hold of what “sexy” or “turned-on” are supposed to look like.
My sister is just like my clients. She’s happy to have her relationship with her partner work well; she doesn’t need to see Shiva dancing across the sky from the deck of a sailboat in the South Pacific when she has sex… Saturday night at home will be a-okay.
When my sister told me the word “pussy” had served HER, something clicked for me about teaching others to use that word.
I REALIZED THAT I AM THE “SEX COACH NEXT DOOR,” APPROACHABLE AND WHOLESOME, KNOWLEDGEABLE AND PRACTICAL.
Teaching women to reclaim the word “pussy” doesn’t undermine that. It enhances it.
I do want to provoke more women and men to take ownership of the sexuality in their own lives and to legitimize its place of honor amid their priorities, here and now. Pussy is an important part of that.
I’ve stopped worrying about being “pushy” with the terminology. I’ve stopped soft-pedaling and offering up alternatives even before I hear an objection to the most powerful word I know. I’m still flexible, but I’ve opened myself to being the sexpert next door, offering unadulterated transmission of pussy wisdom for regular folks who are ready to go deeper.
So let’s say it… All together now: Pussy. Name it and it’s yours.