You cannot expand your erotic capacity without grieving what was lost

the silent grief sitting under sexual shame.

Hello, beauties.

So I wanna share what happened in a recent session. I was coaching a woman and we were about to explore touch on a part of her body that had been surgically altered. Now, this wasn't by choice, life had changed her body.

And so we've been talking about how do we create ways to meet ourselves and our partners that feel honest and intimate and authentic. And as we began discussing what touching that part of her body could look like, she froze. Now it wasn't dramatic. It was very subtle.

Her chest stiffened, I noticed her shoulders brace. Her eyes widened slightly and then dropped, the energy in the room shifted. I paused and I asked her what was happening? She couldn't hold my gaze when she said this.

"I feel broken."

Like she had already accepted that as fact. Small, defeated.

And that's the moment. That sentence, I feel broken.

Because when something in your body changes that is outside of your control, especially something that used to be a great source of pleasure, of identity, of connection, it doesn't just change your experience of sensation. It changes the way that you see yourself.

Who am I now? Am I still desirable? Am I still a good partner? Am I less of a woman? Less of a man? Less of myself? And most of the time there's no space to say these things out loud, there's no ritual for erotic loss.

In our society we celebrate birth. We have ceremonies for marriage and graduation. We even have funerals for death. But when a part of your body changes and your sexuality changes with it, what do you do with that? Where do you put that grief?

I see this after mastectomies, after prostate surgeries, after birth tears. Menopause, chronic pain, cancer, injury, bodies that change. And sometimes body change in ways that are visible, and sometimes it changes in ways that only the person living inside that body can understand. And the message that they get is almost always the same.

Just be grateful. Move on. Adapt. At least you survived. At least you can still function. Function over Pleasure. Gratitude over grief, and so now this grief has to go underground. And not because it doesn't exist, but because we are made to feel wrong to even acknowledge it.

And so then what happens years later? Someone, maybe someone that you love dearly touches that part of your body, or speaks about it and then the body freezes. Not because there's something wrong or broken with it, but because it was never allowed to mourn the loss.

Many people come in to work with me thinking that they're here to learn a new skill. A technique, a tool, a better way to touch, a better way to last, a better way to connect. Yeah! All the fun stuff, right? And yes, skills do matter, but you can't expand your erotic capacity without grieving what was lost.

If there's something in your body that has changed and you've never been allowed to feel the loss of what it used to be, it doesn't just disappear. That loss leaks out in other ways. It shows up in avoidance, intention, in that quiet belief that there's something wrong with you.

Broken is often grief that has not been named.

And so in that session I asked her gently whether there might be grief there? And it was confronting for her, because she never thought about it in that way before. And if she named it, it means admitting that something was lost. Admitting that survival and gratitude do not erase the fact that something meaningful had changed.

And that's not sexy, that's vulnerable.

If anything I want you to know, that you're allowed to grieve the erotic losses in your life. The version of your body from before, the sensations that used to be there, that identity you carried before something shifted. This grief doesn't make you ungrateful, it makes you honest. And honesty with yourself is actually what creates capacity.

The capacity for connection, for intimacy, to be met as you are now instead of performing who you used to be. I. In sex we are stripped bare, there is nowhere to hide. And from the work I do, I can tell you that this is what couples actually want. They want to meet each other there in vulnerability, in truth, in the realness of what is happening in their bodies.

And that is big and that is scary.

So I'd love to ask you gently, is there something in your erotic life that changed that you never fully acknowledged? Is there a part of your body that feels different now that you silently made peace with, but never actually grieved?

What story tells you that you shouldn't be upset about it? That you should just move on? Be grateful, that it doesn't really matter. And now if you are really being honest, how does that unspoken grief show up? In avoidance? In tension? in the way that you hold yourself? In the way you pull away from being seen?

This isn't something to be solved today, but know that you cannot expand your erotic capacity while pretending nothing was lost. Naming the loss is the first step, but grief doesn't integrate just because you've acknowledged it.

And so inside the membership space this week, we're looking at what it actually means to grieve erotic change and why rituals matter. And I don't mean religious ritual, but a structure as a way to give your grief shape. So it can move through you instead of sitting underneath Shame.

Thank you, beauties for following me through this tender thread. I'll see you in the inner circle.