I have a few places I go to retreat and renew, even if I only have 24 hours. Islamorada, in the Florida Keys, is one of those spots. It’s only a 75 minute drive from Miami, but it feels like I landed in the islands and for a few hours I can live in my swimsuit and bare feet.
I watch the sunrise and then walk across the street bare foot and watch the sunset (the island is long, not wide). In between, I sit in a hammock and swim and remember how good it feels to strip everything away so I can feel more of my body and nature. It feels like a sacred connection.
This trip, one of the servers at a restaurant I’ve been going to for many years asked me how my writing was going. I’ve had many conversations with him the past few years when I’ve been a customer at his restaurant. He never asked what I was writing about until this time. I told him my book was complete and he gave me a high five.
“What’s the title?” he asked. “I want to buy it when it comes out.”
“Autobiography of an Orgasm,” I said.
It suddenly got very quiet in the bar area where I was sitting and everyone near us leaned in. And instead of making a joke about the book and the subject (like I use to because it seemed everyone was a little uncomfortable talking about it), I shared with him the story of why I spent five years researching orgasm (to recover from sexual assault) and how my relationship to other people changed once I started honoring my body as sacred. In the end, my transparency led to a really beautiful conversation with this man (and everyone listening around us) about how truthfully we live our lives and the freedom that occurs when we finally speak up and reveal ourselves which allows others to do the same. It also showed me how we can bring intimacy and meaning to a conversation that could have been meaningless and how we can choose to make each moment sacred, or not. He then asked if I do workshops (yes, details coming soon) and when is the book coming out (November). And then I gave him a few suggestions on being sacred that he was very excited to try with his wife (read book to find out!).