I’ve never read A Course in Miracles, but I think I experienced one last week.
The first day after I turned on my auto-email responder at work to “This email is no longer active”, I woke up in a state of pure euphoria. I felt a lightness that I hadn’t experienced in over 3, long years. A heavy cloud of frustration and entrapment dissipated right before my eyes. Come Monday morning, I wouldn’t need to wake up any earlier than I wanted to park my ass at the computer to do a job that was no longer congruent with my values and desires.
I fucking did it.
I.
Did.
The.
Thing.
Admittedly, my euphoria was quickly matched with an unease of, “What do I do now? …I actually have to go do shit and make it happen. It ain’t gonna happen by itself!” And by golly, the universe of wonders and abundance handed me just what a womxn needed on her first day of freedom.
I moved to a small town of about 12,000 folks just over a month ago to release the pressure of the soaring living costs that kept me in my desk job to stay afloat. As gorgeous and magical the central coast of California is, it’s an unforgiving place when it comes to the income one needs to survive, much less take risks to start a business.
I came to Humboldt to start teaching S Factor feminine movement and coaching womxn on their soul’s journey. S Factor is a movement practice that explores one’s emotional body, erotic identity and divine sensuality using the floor, wall, chair, and pole. While I do plan to teach online, I crave to work with womxn in-person in a dance studio. Signing the lease on my new home, I knew the nearest pole dancing studio was nearly 40 minutes away, but I was ready to make it work because it’s worth it, plain and simple.
So what made that magical Saturday after my last day of work, extra fucking marvelous? My partner and I spent the day wandering around town exploring new areas and getting acquainted with our new town. Our “downtown “is one street of about four blocks. There’re a couple appliance stores, a dive bar, a movie theater from the 30s, some empty storefronts, and a few shops. It’s pretty quiet down there. Strolling down the sidewalk, my erotic dancer radar started buzzing. There was a storefront of mannikins in stripper clothes. I looked at the store sign, but my overstimulated mind couldn’t make sense of it. I zeroed in on the words “pole dancing.” Why is there a store for pole dancing clothes in this small town? I rushed inside to see what it was all about.
THIS IS WHERE THE MIRACLE HAPPENS.
It was a mother-fucking pole dancing STUDIO with a shop.
What? How did I not know this? Not only how did I not know this, but how is there a pole dancing studio in such a small, conservative family town only 5 minutes from my house? A young woman stood behind a counter in the shop portion of the studio. My memory is a bit of a blur now, but I’m pretty sure I overwhelmed her with my enthusiasm for this pure magical discovery. It took me at least an hour afterward for my overwhelmed brain to function normally again.
Yet another sign that I was meant to be here. I trusted my inner Wanderer to get me where I needed on my quest to reinvent myself. Like many Wanderer archetypes, mine was gnashing its teeth and fidgeting in a fiery irritation to leave behind the stagnancy of life. My Wanderer gifted me with the insight and courage to leave a place of comfort–the happiest place I’ve known but that couldn’t provide the safety net necessary to take a big leap.
(By the way, I’ve visited my Wanderer goddess through my active imagination practice—she has cotton candy-esque blue and pink long hair, and sparkly overalls. She gives no fucks.)
“As women we call upon our intuition and instincts in order to sniff things out. We use all their senses to wring the truth from things, to extract nourishment from our own ideas, to see what there is to see, to know what there is to know, to be the keepers of our own creative fires, and to have intimate knowing about the Life/Death/Life cycles of all nature—this is an initiated woman.”
Clorissa Pinkola Estes
Feminine movement has changed my life. A trauma-informed practice, S Factor taught me how to trust and cherish the wisdom of my body. To honor my inner erotic creatures. To prioritize play and pleasure. To reclaim my innate feminine sensuality. To express my grief, frustration, rage, and overflowing joy. This movement has held me through every phase of my life over the past four years. Now I’m bringing it to womxn in-person and online this year because we need it now more than ever.
The government thinks it has the authority to tell us what we can and cannot do with our bodies. Our masculine-wounded parents, teachers, and virtually every other authority figure conditioned us from birth to feel shame for our natural bodies, eroticism, and emotional capacities. Reclaiming the feminine is how we unravel the conditioning. Because this work emanates in all directions, affecting every area of our life.
Stay tuned for my online and in-person S Factor feminine movement classes, coming soon!