I recently published my latest course called Reclaim Your Desire as part of my Reclaim Your Wellness series, and this was truly a labor of love. I wrote the course last year, but it took me up until recently to publish it. Many reasons for that which all circulate around Imposter Syndrome, ADHD, running a growing business, raising two tiny humans, and just trying to be a human in this crazy world! [not that ANY of us need any explanation, but I am just saying]. But, I really wanted to get this recorded and out there because it is a benefit of my membership but also I love teaching. I want everyone to understand that desire is not so simple as “increasing it”, and you truly can reclaim whatever it is you want about your sexuality as long as you are intentional, have the right tools, and make up your mind to do some reflection.
I gave myself a goal to get all of these recorded before a specific date, which meant doing it whenever I could. That meant sometimes at home with tiny humans around. We are a very open house and talk very candidly about bodies in age appropriate contexts. We read lots of books about bodies, anatomy, consent, communication, and boundaries. Some of our favorites are anything by Cory Silverberg, the Bodies are Cool book by Tyler Feder, and any book by Jayneen Sanders.
It was time for me to record a module about pleasure. In that module is an exercise I often times give my patients called Pleasure Mapping or Body Mapping. This is an exercise in which you experiment with yourself and to a head to toe survey about where feels good (indicated by a heart), where feels not so good (indicated by an X), and where is kind of neutral (indicated by an = sign). You can do this with any medium – hands, feathers, ice cube, heating pad, vibrators – whatever! You could also do this with a partner, but my focus here is on a woman with her body. What does she like? What does she not like? I certainly don’t know (and sometimes neither does her partner) – this is up to the individual herself to figure it out! This encourages exploration, connecting with your own body, and autonomy. It’s a mindful and somatic exercise. This encourages one to be able to speak their truth when it comes to boundaries, but also speak their truth when they are seeking pleasure and satisfaction with either themselves or a partner.
To my great shock, my daughter was sitting on the steps listening to me. When I finished recording (she knew because I stopped talking), she came into the room. I was instantly angry with her. I scolded her and told her that I asked for privacy and gave her specific instructions that I was talking about something I did not want her to hear. She looked at my somewhat puzzled, and then she handed me this picture below.
She said, is that what you are talking about? Making a map of your body? I rolled my eyes and said yes…… She said well this is my body map. So I looked at it, and then looked at it some more and I asked her to explain. She said “the X’s are where people cannot touch me. Those are off limits, mommy! The heart is because I like to feel and I like people to listen to what comes from my heart. The heart on my eyes is because I love my eyes! I also like to see what’s around me, and I like others to look at me when they are talking to me. The = sign because, well you said feels neither good or bad.”
I was overcome with emotion when she said this to me. She showed me something I wasn’t even considering. Kids can also map their body. We don’t need to sugar coat or change our language (example is calling a vulva something else like “lady parts” or “private parts” or “vagina” or whatever nickname). We just need to say it how it is – which is what I do with my patients. I know this. I have done thousands of hours on sexual health education and continuing ed on conversing with our youth about sexuality. But for some reason, I went in mom mode and didn’t want her to hear any of it. Do I think my desire course is kid appropriate? Absolutely not! Do I think it’s appropriate to talk to kids about their bodies, consent, communication, pleasure, boundaries – ABSOLUTELY.
As I reflected on this I realized that we should educate kids about their bodies and body mapping. It helps them with their somatic experience, it helps them connect emotions to what is going on in their body, it helps the understand what a “gut feeling” is, and they also establish where their strict boundaries are for safety.
A few days later she came to me and told me she thought that body map “project” was really cool. She asked me if this is what I do at work – do I teach people about their bodies. I said yes, that is exactly what I do. She said “wowww, so cool that everyone can know about their body”. Then she left me this on my desk:
[“Mom’s boddy map”]
