by Staci Haines
4. Make a pleasure date with your partner. Take a break from emotional issues and healing, and focus on having fun. You could do something together as simple as taking a walk, going to a movie, or working in the garden. Settle into being together and enjoying time with each other. Keep this as a regular practice throughout the sexual healing process.
chapter eighteen
Your Powerful Sexual Self: Who Are You Becoming?
Visions of where we are going are always out in front of us. As we attain one goal, a new one stretches ahead to draw us onward. As you progress in healing, your ideas about your new sexuality will change. A new dream may emerge. Or you may realize midstream that what you thought you wanted isn’t really what you want anymore. Your vision will change and grow over time.
What will your empowered sexual self look, sound, and feel like?
You may take for granted that sex is a normal and healthy part of being human. You could be embodied and at choice sexually, knowing and practicing healthful boundaries. You may be able to communicate your desires and fantasies to your partners. Ideally, you will practice safer sex; you may even practice sacred sex. You could be self-referential in your sexuality, while honoring your connections with others. You may become comfortable with the contradictory nature of sex and come to accept your own sexual evolution—all of it, both the pleasure and the pain. It is up to you. What would a compelling sex life look like to you? Who do you want to become sexually?
Along the way, develop some interim goals for yourself. Maybe your dream is to become fully embodied sexually. You may have just begun to feel your body. An interim goal might be staying present while masturbating or staying present in one part of your body while you are having sex with a partner. You can set the goal of learning how you dissociate during sex and catching yourself sooner. Build lots of acknowledgment and successes into your journey.
How far in the future do you see yourself reaching your goals? How much of your sexuality resembles your vision already? What are the immediate next steps on the road to your vision? What can you do today? Tomorrow? Next week?
Let yourself be a novice. You are an apprentice, a trainee on your way to becoming the woman of your vision. Learning anything new takes practice. You’ll need lots of freedom to make mistakes.
In developing a vision for your sexual healing, remember that yours will be a dynamic vision. It will change over time as you grow. You do not need rigid goals or trials that you can fail. You need a vision of your empowered sexual self that will serve as a source of encouragement, a reminder of your desires and your ability to grow and expand.
In my sexual healing workshops, I ask participants to create three visions of who they want to become sexually. If you had three full lives to live, and each could express a different sexual self, what would those sexualities be? Imagining three lives, rather than one, helps to get around the self-censors that tell us who we are “allowed” to become sexually—as well as the little voice that tells us our dreams are impossible. Creating three visions can also help you notice patterns in your desires. You may find that there is one form of sexual expression that comes up repeatedly. This is a strong desire, one worth paying attention to.
Your Powerful Sexual Self
Following is a sampling of visions from workshop participants:
I am my sexuality and it is me. It isn’t something split off from me any longer. There is not a lot of difference between my sexual energy and my life energy. This doesn’t mean everything is sexualized, rather, everything is erotic and alive with a kind of vitality. My integrated sensual and sexual energy feeds my whole life. Sometimes I also want a break from sex. I don’t want to share that energy with others. I want to pull it into myself, and sit quietly with it. It feels very peaceful.
I want to become an S/M top. I am intrigued and excited. The woman I want to become is powerful in her sexuality and awake. She dreams with other people about desire and pushing the edge, and then makes those dreams a reality. She is gentle in a very deep way. Not careful—bold. She reveals herself deeply and is willing to be vulnerable and naked in her desires. She is not afraid to go into the reaches of sex and sexuality. She is very clear with boundaries and has intimacy and a lot of play in her life. She is sexy, too.
I envision a life with a committed sexual partner, a woman. We share deeply and use sex as a way to grow. I will be scared sometimes about intimacy and how deep I can go, but I will not retreat. I’ll use intimacy as a place to heal. I will learn about loss, joy, grief, birth, death, and change in sex and intimacy. I don’t know how to explain it that well, but it’s like taking the risk over and over again to be close with myself and close with her. Sometimes it will be easy and sometimes it will be hard, but I’ll show up. This is the sexuality I want.
Be creative and outrageous. Once you have created your three visions, consider the following questions: In your visions of yourself, are you embodied? How do you embody your sexuality? How do you feel about your body? Who are your partner(s)? Is there a spiritual component to your sexuality? If so, what is it? What type of intensity do you like sexually? What kind of sex do you like? What are your powers and virtues? Does your sex life feed energy into other parts of your life?
You can write about your new sexual self in a journal or create a collage or other art piece to depict it. The more creativity you bring to this exercise, the better. Whatever medium you choose, create an external representation of your vision so that it can exist outside of your own thoughts. Display your creation where you can see it regularly. This can help keep you oriented toward your dreams.
Take a look at the woman you wish to become. How did she get to be who she is? What was her path? Keep her in your thoughts. She will have plenty to tell you.
chapter nineteen
Bibliography and Resources
CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE
Books
RECOVERY AND SUPPORT
Beginning to Heal: A First Book for Survivors of Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis (HarperCollins, 1993).
Breaking Ritual Silence: An Anthology of Ritual Abuse Survivor’s Stories edited by Jeanne Marie Lorena and Paula Levy (Trout and Sons, Inc., 1998).
Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis (Harperperennial, 1988, 1994). A comprehensive and thorough guide to the process of healing. Includes an excellent and extensive resource section.
The Courage to Heal Workbook by Laura Davis (HarperCollins, 1990).
Crossing the Boundary: Black Women Survive Incest by Melba Wilson (Seal Press, 1993).
Getting Home Alive by Aurora Levins Morales and Rosario Morales (Firebrand Books, 1986).
Healing Your Sexual Self by Janet G. Woititz (Health Communications, Inc., 1989).
Incest and Sexuality: A Guide to Understanding and Healing by Wendy Maltz and Beverly Holman (Lexington Books, 1987).
Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse by Renee Fredrickson (Simon and Schuster, 1992).
Safe Passage to Healing by Chrystine Oksana (Harper Perennial, 1994). A recovery guide for survivors of ritual abuse.
The Sexual Healing Journey by Wendy Maltz (HarperCollins, 1991).
Shining Through: Pulling It Together by Bailey Leslie Wright and Mindy B. Loiselle (Safer Society Press, 1994).
Soul Survivors: A New Beginning for Adults Abused as Children by Patrick J. Gannon (Prentice Hall, 1989).
Strong at the Broken Places: Overcoming the Trauma of Childhood Abuse by Linda Sanford (Random House, 1990).
When You’re Ready: A Woman’s Guide to Healing from Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse by Her Mother by Kathy Evert and Inie Bijkerk (Launch Press, 1987).
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing by Christiane Northrup, M.D. (Bantam Books, 1994, 1995).
Women’s Sexuality After Childhood Incest by Elaine Westerlund (W.W. Norton, 1992).
RESEARCH AND POLITICS
The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory by Jeffrey Moussaief Masson (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1984).
Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse by Jennifer Freyd (Harvard University Press, 1998).
The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry (Oxford Press, 1986).
Borderlands, La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua (Aunt Lute, 1987).
Conspiracy of Silence: The Trauma of Incest by Sandra Butler (Bantam Books, 1978, 1985).
Female Sexual Offenders: An Exploratory Study by Ruth Matthews, Jane Kinder Matthews and Kathleen Speltz (Safer Society Press, 1989).
A Gathering of Spirit: Writing and Art by North American Indian Women edited by Beth Brant (Sinister Wisdom Books, 1984).
The Hite Report: Growing Up Under Patriarchy by Shere Hite (Grove Press, 1994).
Home Front: Notes from the Family War Zone by Louise Armstrong (McGraw-Hill, 1984).
Incest: The Whole Story by Heidi Vanderbilt (Ballantine Books, 1994).
Making Face, Making Soul, Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color edited by Gloria Anzaldua (Aunt Lute, 1990). Medicine Stories: History, Culture and the Politics of Integrity by Aurora Levins Morales (South End Press, 1998).
Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: Sharing the Responsibility by Sandy K. Wurtele and Cindy L. Miller-Perrin (University of Nebraska Press, 1992).
Ritual Abuse: Definitions, Glossary, The Use of Mind Control (Los Angeles County Commission for Women, 1989).
Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Politics: What Happened When Women Said Incest by Louise Armstrong (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994).
Sexual Abuse in Nine North American Cultures edited by Lisa Aronson Fontes (Sage Press, 1995). A guide to treatment and prevention of child sexual abuse in diverse North American cultures.
Sibling Abuse: Hidden Physical, Emotional and Sexual Trauma by Vernon Wiehe (Sage Press, 1997).
A Sourcebook on Child Sexual Abuse by David Finkelhor and Associates (Sage Press, 1986).
Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child by Alice Miller (Meridian, 1986). Originally published in German as Du Dollst Nicht Merken, 1981.
Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman, M.D. (Basic Books/HarperCollins, 1992, 1997).
Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Child Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work by Louise DeSalvo (Beacon Press, 1989).
POETRY, FICTION AND SURVIVOR’S STORIES
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (Plume, 1992, 1993).
Daughters of Copper Woman by Anne Cameron (Press Gang Publishers, 1981).
Dream Work by Mary Oliver (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986).
I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Sexual Abuse edited by Ellen Bass and Louise Thornton (HarperCollins, 1983, 1991).
Not Vanishing by Chrystos (Press Gang Publishers, 1988).
Our Stunning Harvest: Poems by Ellen Bass (New Society Publishers, 1985).
Returning to Herself: Poems of Restoration by Caryn StarDancer (H.P.L. Publishing, 1989).
Magazines And Newsletters
Above and Beyond
P.O. Box 2672
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-2672
The Chorus
Published by VOICES in Action
P.O. Box 148309
Chicago, IL 60614
The Healing Woman
Published by The Healing Woman
Foundation, Inc. An internationally
distributed newsletter for women survivors of
child sexual abuse, “a community in print.”
P.O. Box 28040
San Jose, CA 95159
(408)246-1788
www.healingwoman.org
National Resource Center
on Child Sexual Abuse News
2204 Whitesburg Drive, Suite 200,
Huntsville, AL 35801
(205) 534-6868
Fax: (205) 534-6863
Parent United Newsletter
232 E. Gish Road
San Jose, CA 95112
Survivor Ship: A Forum on Survival of Ritual
Abuse, Torture and Mind Control
3181 Mission Street, #139
San Francisco, CA 94110
(707) 279-1209
Web Sites
Jim Hopper Child Sexual Abuse
Resource Page
www.jimhopper.com
This is a great resource page with information
for men and women, statistics on boys and
girls, and links to research, healing resources,
and articles on abuse and abuse prevention.
Jim Hopper’s page will connect you to
numerous other sites regarding child sexual
abuse. Not to be missed.
Sexual Assault Information Page
www.cs.utk.edu/~bartley/saInfoPage.html
Thousands of links to Web pages concerning
rape, child sexual abuse, incest, ritual abuse,
sexual assault, and sexual harassment
Princesses Haven
www.uq.net.au/~zzdmcint/
Australian Web site “for all little girls who
have been hurt.” Focuses on multiple
personality disorder (MPD) and dissociative
identity disorder (DID). Graphics, links,
writings, books, chat room, coping strategies,
information and resources.
The Wounded Healer
idealist.com/wounded_healer/
Site for psychotherapists and other survivors
of abuse in helping professions. Support,
resources, chat room, and archive of articles.
Recovery Resources, Organizations, and Hotlines
American Coalition for Abuse
Awareness/One Voice
This national organization operates a phone line offering legal referrals and research information. Provides press kits on sexual abuse and memory. Maintains online resources lists, with the latest legal, research, public policy and media articles regarding childhood sexual abuse and adult survivors.
1835 K Street, N.W., Suite 960
Washington, D.C. 20006
Mailing address: P.O. Box 27958
Washington, D.C. 20038-7958
Resource line: (202) 667-1160
Voice: (202) 462-4688
[email protected]
American Professional Society on the
Abuse of Children (APSAC)
An interdisciplinary professional society for people working in the field of child abuse.
332 S. Michigan Avenue, #1600
Chicago, IL 60604
(312) 554-0166
Association for Sexual Abuse Prevention (ASAP)
Dedicated to the prevention of child abuse. ASAP advocates for child sexual abuse victims, provides training for professionals, and networks with prevention programs.
P.O. Box 421
Kalamazoo, MI 49005
(216) 221-6818
CALICO Center
Interdisciplinary center designing new models for responding to children who have been physically and sexually abused.
524 Estudillo Avenue
San Leandro, CA 94577
(510) 895-0702
The Child Sexual Abuse
Strategic Action Project
Organizing to end the sexual abuse of children and empower adult survivors through community organizing and leadership training.
584 Castro Street, PMB 640
San Francisco, CA 94114-2594
(415) 285-6658
Family Violence and Sexual Assault
Institute (FVSAI)
An excellent networking, education and training clearinghouse.
1310 Clinic Drive
Tyler, TX 75701
(903) 595-6600
Incest Survivors Resource Network
International
An educational resource run by survivors. The phone line offers resources
and networking for male survivors of mother-son incest.
P.O. Box 7375
Las Cruces, NM 88006-7375
(505) 521-4260
The Kempe Center