“Your body breathes through inhale and exhale. Your soul breathes through experience and express. Experience and express.”
-Sao, Shamanic Astrologer, www.astrologyofchange.com
One of the first things I notice when I’m not fully expressing myself is my breath is shallow. I need more sleep. Then, I become edgy and unfocused. Next, I feel full, but I’m still hungry. I may even get a sore throat.
These are some of the signs that remind me I’m holding onto things — keeping things inside. Maybe I’m not speaking up because I’m worried about what others will think. So I let myself get small. I let myself disconnect and slowly disappear. And then a song or a sunrise or a soulful conversation will bring me back to my essence and I connect again and I remember to say what I need to say. Out loud. It doesn’t matter if anyone is listening. What matters is that I let my soul breathe.
In one of the essays in her book, Men Explain Things To Me, author Rebecca Solnit writes about how “Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once.” She adds that “The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.”
“I feel it when we disconnect. I feel it when we resurrect.”
-Jeremy Johnson, bleedingkeys, www.bleedingkeys.com
With the release of my book, Autobiography of An Orgasm, I finally chose to let my soul breathe. What I didn’t expect was the outpouring of public and private messages from women, and a few men, who read the book and were affected by my choice to tell such a vulnerable story.
“Thank you for speaking up.”
“This is a courageous book.”
“You’ve shown me how to stop judging myself and appreciate myself instead.”
“I was meant to read this book. I’ve been afraid to talk about what happened to me.”
“You’ve shown me I can recover from my past.”
“Your book made me excited about exploring sex again instead of being ashamed.”
“You are changing the world and how we think about sex.”
I’ve read so many of your powerful stories since the release of the book, I’ve decided to release a collection of these stories. The next book will be called Autobiographies of Our Orgasms. Think of it as a Chicken Soup for the Soul, but for orgasm. This isn’t Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s women (and men are encouraged to submit too) telling a true story from their sensual path. It may be the moment you disconnected. It may be the moment you resurrected.
To be considered for the book, please submit your story of 4,000 words or less by Feb 14, 2015 to: aoaothebook@gmail.com. Ideally, you will choose to write and publish under your name, but if you aren’t ready to speak up with your name attached, you can choose to write under a pseudonym. You will be notified by March 1, 2015 if your story is selected to be included in Autobiographies of Our Orgasms.
Remember your soul needs to breathe.
Experience. Express. Experience. Express.