Editor’s Note: Carla Sanders, a longtime Planet Waves reader and commenter going by “Diva Carla,” shares here some of her writing as a sex educator; she most recently contributed an essay to the 2016 annual edition, Vision Quest. We looks forward to your comments about the piece below. — Amanda P.

By Carla Sanders

I teach people how to have sexual pleasure.

Meanwhile, thousands of refugees are trapped in limbo between bombed out homelands, death squads, and closed borders.

Terrorists bomb restaurants, concerts, and shopping centers.

In the United States, home-grown terror, armed at the neighborhood gun shop, mows down adults and children at work, dancing and going to school.

Police murder of African-American men happens almost every day.

Rape is commonplace all over the world as a violent act of private or collective conquest.

This isn’t even counting natural disasters, disease, famine and climate change.

Media eats it up like news crack, and throws on gas on the tension and fans the flames.

As violence and desperation continue on all continents…

I am writing an article on foreplay.

I hear a whisper from my inner judge.

“Isn’t the quest for sexual pleasure and the ultimate orgasm a ‘first-world’ problem?”

Searching my Soul for the answer, it only takes a moment to see it, as if written in glowing red paint on a wall of a holy cave.

There is nothing more important than healing the wound that all of humanity carries in this tender place labeled “SEX.”

Cultures, religions and governments have split off sexuality from the rest of life, made it evil, tried to lock it in a box and throw away the key.

As a result people all over the world wander through life cut off from a core aspect of self. Individually and collectively, for generations, modern humans search for their lost parts and try to fill the void. What cannot be expressed freely as love and pleasure has a way of turning sideways and toxic. It becomes violence.

We see the effects in depression, dysfunction and violence in families, violence towards the environment, and violence in the streets. It becomes systematic rage, war, genocide. It spews forth hate as oppression of women, other ways of loving, other races and nationalities and religions.

We learn to suppress ourselves.

How can you help others if you are suppressing or struggling with your greatest power?

Look inside.

Look at that dark, silent little box where you were told to put your sexuality. Feel who you are. Feel where it hurts. Look at where the bandages are hiding your wounds (yes, that’s where the light enters).

Even if you are sexually open and have a great sex life, look anyway. You’ve put a piece of yourself, maybe a very large piece, inside that dark, secret box. There isn’t one of us on the planet who hasn’t felt this way.

That place where it hurts, or feels shameful, or like a failure or disappointment — that’s where the light is.

For now, just hold the box. No one will make you open it before you are ready.

Remember this: You are inside that box labeled ‘sex’.

If you’ve hidden away a piece of your Self in there, what else did you hide with it? What genius, what greatness, what love? How much work is it to hold yourself in, so that box stays closed?

Consider all these things, and what it’s costing you.

What is it costing all of us for you to hold your power in?

That’s why I write about foreplay — it is where where sex meets daily life and gets practical. Most of us experience sex through relationship, or desire to do so.

Foreplay is where we use our best erotic skills, intimate communication and creative love play for our own and our partner’s pleasure. It’s also where we rub up against each others’ wounds, expectations and secret hidden emotional triggers.

If over half the people having sex claim to be unhappy with their foreplay experience, then there are a lot of people who do not have full access to the power of their sexual life force. Something is locked away in that silent dark box. Sometimes just a little lovin’ or a little information will let it out. Sometimes more work, healing and education is required.

Foreplay is an erotic playground, and a sexual healing ground. If you are having trouble opening up the box where you’ve hidden your sexy communication skills and erotic confidence, practice your skills. If you don’t have a partner, practice foreplay with yourself. When you masturbate, give yourself as much erotic time and attention as you want to share with a lover, as much as you hope your lover will lavish on you.

Collectively we have a big mission — to live together peacefully on Earth. It is not an impossible mission if we each start the only place we can: within our own bodies and souls, soothing the sore spot where we are at war with ourselves. Love yourself into healing, and offer it to the people you are most intimate with: lovers, partners and self.

You are not a first-world problem. Neither is your sex life, or doing what it takes to enjoy your sex life more. Your pleasure — everyone’s pleasure collectively — is necessary to creating a more peaceful world.

Carla Sanders teaches sexual pleasure and orgasm, and guides women and men on their path of initiation. She believes that sexual expression is your birthright and an infinitely renewable personal power source. She lives in Maine where she swims, dances, stargazes and makes art. Her website is Orgasmicalchemy.com.

I recently encountered a pair of posts on the New Zealand-based website The Yoga Lunchbox. Taken together, they create some food for thought about the nature of teacher-student ethics, boundaries, consent, power dynamics (real or perceived), interpretations of “friendship,” and whether a healthy close personal relationship necessarily runs counter to a healthy teacher-student dynamic.

Kara-Leah Grant (left) and Cameron Shayne talk ethics, power dynamics, sex, freedom to choose, polarization and Yoga culture.

Both posts are focused on the environment of Yoga classes, but I suspect many of the ideas can be extrapolated to other teacher-student situations.

Of course, with Yoga, we get the question of how an ancient ‘spiritual’ practice with such an emphasized physical component (at least in popular culture) might add layers of complexity to the questions posed.

In the first piece, Kara-Leah Grant interviews author and Yoga teacher Donna Farhi. Much of the interview centers on Donna’s responses regarding the nature of the relationship between a Yoga teacher and their student. Farhi asserts that to become a personal ‘friend’ to a student weakens or subverts an effective teacher-student dynamic in Yoga, and clearly holds herself and others to high ethical standards.

This topic stems from Grant’s introduction of yoga teacher Mark Whitwell’s assertion that Yoga can only be transmitted in relationship, and that he defines that relationship as friendship. Normally I do not advocate reading the comments sections on most websites, but the comments under this piece contain the suggestion by a man that perhaps men and women define “friendship” differently and have different expectations around it, and that perhaps that is contributing to a misunderstanding.

In the second Yoga Lunchbox piece, Kara-Leah Grant introduces a video interview with Yoga teacher Cameron Shayne, who kicked up a shitstorm in the Yoga community when he wrote an article asserting that two consenting adults in teacher-student roles should be free to decide for themselves whether they want to engage in a sexual relationship.

As Grant notes, regarding the vitriolic comments and rebuttal articles Shayne’s piece engendered, “This is a hot topic — power, sex, ethics and the teacher/student relationship. The difficulty lies not in determining what is right or wrong but in our ability to communicate with each other when these buttons are being pushed.”

I encourage you to watch the full interview, no matter how much Shayne might rub you the wrong way at times. Apropos of Eric’s recent writings about Saturn conjunct the Great Attractor, Shayne’s stance and personality are polarizing. Are many of his statements just a cop-out on having personal and professional ethics? Or are his remarks about fear — how it teaches us, and how it shows us where our inner work is in this lifetime — right on the mark? If he pushes your buttons or provokes your fear (which might come through as anger), are you still able to listen?

I’m not sure I’ve entirely made up my mind about Shayne. But I think both he and Farhi raise important questions, and I offer kudos to Grant for holding space for the conversation.

This week’s relationship-themed guest-post comes from Christina Louise Dietrich, whom we’ve featured a few times in the last year or so. She writes about her healing journey at her own blog. — Amanda P.

By Christina Louise Dietrich

I am now 44 years old. I am a mother and a head of household. I am past the age where people used to be generally considered “over the hill.” From a transition standpoint, this is significant for me personally because there’s only one generation remaining between me and mortality: the generation of my mother and her siblings. My next big generational shift will be to matriarch/crone. My mother’s will be to death.

Christina Louise Dietrich

My mother’s death isn’t imminent, but it is inevitable, and even though only in her early 60’s she has had a fair share of medical scares. Cancer. Stroke. Falls with broken bones. A choking incident that brought her dangerously close to asphyxiating if it hadn’t been for my stepfather finding and resuscitating her. All these events remind me of her mortality by keeping it in the peripheral vision of my mind’s eye. Watching. Waiting for each of us to advance another rung on the generational ladder.

On Day of the Dead, I set up an altar to the matriarchs in my family; I put my attention on my maternal great-grandmother, my maternal grandmother, and my mother. I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy the last four years talking about these women and the not-insignificant effects they had not only on me but each another. As an ancestral line, I can clearly see the traits handed down to me courtesy of them, some of which include strength, anxiety, determination, a high need for control, frugality, tenacity, and a deep sense of familial duty/sacrifice/obligation.

The altar is still intact and I continue to feel their presence, hear their voices. Even more strongly now than before—I think, because I’m calling out for their support and wisdom. Because I can feel myself beginning to prepare energetically and psychically for the death of my mother. Even if it’s only theoretical at this stage, as a planner who is finely attuned to transitions, doorways, and liminal spaces it’s a transformation that’s especially potent for me during this season of darkening.

What I’m feeling into right now is how the process of her dying will change the dynamic of our relatedness; how she will take on more child-like qualities and I will assume the more parental role. I see the possibility for me to support her more in the coming years; to take the skills I’ve learned through parenting Avery and re-parenting myself, and leveraging those to hold a more compassionate, patient space for her. After all, she has a high need for control just like I do and as she loses control over more of her self, I anticipate the need for a lot of patience on my end.

As if sitting with the impending death of my mother weren’t intense enough, it’s also bringing up older, deeper body memories for me. Because this isn’t the first time she and I have danced with power dynamics and leaned on one another for support.

Embodying the Masculine as a Girl Child

When I was 5 years old, my mother and I (and my 3-year-old sister) were in a pretty shitty situation. My sexually, physically, and emotionally abusive biological father had just left us for the last time because my mother stood up to him, and told him to get out and never come back. An act of strength and courage I have since thanked her for many times. An act that while freeing us from him, also left us in a position of needing to depend on one another more directly, more concretely.

Like many women who had been trapped by domestic abuse, she was literally at rock bottom; overwhelmed, exhausted, deeply wounded, and also needing to care for two small children. Even with the local support of her parents and brothers, it was still really hard at home. She needed me to be her “big girl,” to be strong and help her with baby Theresa when she got overwhelmed. She needed me to carry a lot more emotional and psychic weight than was appropriate given my age and equally vulnerable position.

I was naturally precocious in the ways of care-taking and helping; I was a sensitive, empathetic, deeply-feeling child from a long line of caretakers and emotional baggage handlers. And so, when my mother needed someone to be strong for her, someone she could count on to always be there and love her, I became a source of support, reliability, and certainty for her in a world that seemed bent on hurting her. She could talk to me, share her feelings, and cry about how much it hurt. She could count on me to be relatively independent, capable, and self reliant.

I believe that I embodied the masculine to protect her from falling deeper into dysfunction, to protect my primary source of security, safety, and love. And yet none of it could be acknowledged as such; it was an unconscious resonance between us. She wasn’t consciously awake enough to recognize what was happening and I was a little girl desperate to ensure Mommy wouldn’t abandon or stop loving me.

And so, in a sense, we became psychically married, she and I. Co-dependent. Enmeshed. Tied together because of the wounds the patriarchy and my father inflicted, and we jointly had to recover from. As a result, I have always felt responsible for her well-being; responsible to be a sturdy framework against which she could drape her tired, bruised limbs and cry.

Being Told to Put on the Girl Suit

At the same time, despite how masculine and grown-up I felt in the relationship with my mother, I was obviously in the body of a young girl. I knew I was a girl and I’ve never felt any confusion or disgust about that fact; it’s just that I’ve never been comfortable or confident in my ability to perform femininity. The world was telling me to put on the pink suit and its myriad complicated accouterments, but at home I was clearly wearing something that approximated the blue suit, at least in function. Thus began my internal dissonance around gender and society’s expectations in regard to it.

As a cis-female born in 1971 America and raised by a traditionally-valued family, I’ve been handed a lot of narrowly-defined programming about how I’m supposed to look, what I’m allowed to do, and how I should conduct myself. As an androgynous, 6-foot-tall, anxious, suspicious woman with an advanced case of “Resting Bitch Face,” I’ve had a damn hard time manifesting those programs in ways that convince people.

Aside from the fact I live in a rape culture as a second-class citizen—which means I’ve been raped, get paid less than my male co-workers, and still have a hard time getting people to take me seriously—living in a female body has been pretty cool. I actually like being a woman, especially now that I’m in my 40’s. What I find so distasteful is trying to embody and perform femininity. Lace. Mini skirts. High heels. Makeup. Push-up bras. Smooth legs. An hourglass hip-to-waist ratio. An inviting smile. A willingness to be told what to think.

I worked hard to adopt the mannerisms and affectations of Society’s Desirable Feminine, or at least someone whose appearance shouted I’M READY TO GET FUCKED, which is essentially the same thing. These attributes and the dogged pursuit of them are what I hate about the mainstream definition of culturally-acceptable femininity. Because every single one of them is about oppression. Getting smaller. More contained. More malleable. Hobbled. Agreeable. Compliant. Tortured. Objectified.

What about the Christina suit? It’s contains an entire spectrum of colors and would allow me fluid movement. Does anyone want to see me wearing it? No?

Finding my Authentic Orgasmic Rhythm

One of the things they don’t tell you straight-away about performing femininity is the fact it’s arbitrary, often conflicting, and designed to keep you off balance. Embarrassed. Competitive. Ashamed. Inadequate. Because horizontal violence and oppression. For example, let’s look at the female orgasm.

Over the last few months I’ve discovered that my body doesn’t want to climax every time Brendan and I have sex. She actually prefers to do so every 2-3 times; a rhythm that allows Her to be literally fed by both our combined sexual energy and His semen. She wants to hold that energy inside her and use it to fuel all manner of erotic undertakings like blogging, cooking, and remembering how amazing it is to live inside this beautiful body. To fuel the remembering that Her pleasure is worth building and worth waiting for.

I’m standing in the shower one morning, seeing the truth of this newly-discovered rhythm, and wondering why it feels so revolutionary. I asked my body, “Body, why do you feel so amazed, relieved, and empowered to have discovered this?” The answer came, “Because I’ve been expected to have an orgasm every time we have sex.” Oh. Why? Because that’s a crucial part of performing femininity. According to popular media/porn, we all “know” when a woman has an orgasm because she’s loud and makes a big deal out of it, yelling and flailing around because the pleasure is just so epic.

The pleasure that the man is generating with his amazing, big, fat cock. OBVIOUSLY. So, once she has been thoroughly pleasured, that’s his signal—the sign that he’s “done a good job,” that he’s “earned” his release. That he can now cum, secure in the fact his penis is desirable, he’s an amazing lover, and he is worthy of further love and attention. His ego is intact. For the time being.

As the woman, what if I can’t or don’t want to have an orgasm? Well, now I’m coming dangerously close to bruising, crushing, or invalidating his ego and suffering the consequences. Because there will certainly be consequences and I’m the one who gets to clean up the emotional/psychological fallout. In this construct, preserving/protecting the male ego is MY responsibility and ensuring that ego feels secure all hinges on my ability to perform a convincing orgasm. Every time. Or else.

That’s a lot of pressure and my body has decades of it tamped down inside. Like I said, I’ve never been confident in my ability to perform femininity convincingly enough to ensure my safety.

Fortunately for me, I now have a partner whose aware of all that programming; both sides of it. He knows exactly what it’s like to have a fragile masculine ego that depends on near-constant feminine reassurance for its survival. And because he’s also committed to deep, bilateral healing in our relationship, he has given me a lot of space, time, and reassurance to find my rhythm. He doesn’t ask me to perform feminine sexuality for him unless I choose to do so. He wants to see pure, unadulterated, androgynous Christina and to discover what kind of sex SHE wants. What a fucking relief!

Loving Her as Loving Myself

So, my mother is going to die and with her will go the physical connection that my masculine has to her. How do I want to experience her in the time we have left? Over the years I have shared with her some of my childhood experience; how I’ve felt wounded by her inadequacies, how I’ve felt oppressed by and responsible for her pain, how it felt to be her daughter. Those were anxious, gut-churning encounters for me because holding up a mirror so my mother can see how she inadvertently wounded me took a lot of courage for me to do and for her to look.

It also hurt her. Because she knows she wasn’t the mother we both needed her to be. She couldn’t be. This world ensured she was broken by the time I came into her life. And I no longer feel the need to punish her for that, to try and get her to take responsibility for all the ways she let me down. For the ways she leaned on, squished, and controlled me. If she had the skill to be more respectful, validating, and supportive she would have been. I believe that with all that I am.

I’m a mother; I know how hard it is. And because we both know, it feels like I can now begin the final stages of individuating from her and claim my full identity. Every time I share space with her, feel her love for me, and feel my love for her, I can also step away from her with compassion, with respect. I can complete the process that allows me to transition past, through and with her.

Christina Louise Dietrich, a technical writer by trade, says of herself: “I write because I am claiming the voice my family and my society tried to silence, the voice that was my divine birthright. I am a woman, a mother, a feminist, a wife. I am compassionate, judgmental, loving, a bully, empathetic, obstinate, caring, rigid, and creative. I’m passionate about systems, beauty, process, experience, trees, interconnections, transitions, logistics, balance, and clarity. I manifest the Amazon, the Androgyne, and the Mother-to-be-Crone.”

Editor’s note: PW friend and researcher Carol Van Strum sent this piece to us today. She writes, “This was written by a prisoner who was Jordan’s cellmate for some years early on; a black man from rural Alabama. At the time he was in his early 50s and didn’t know how to read. Jordan started reading to him from the books and articles we sent daily, and taught him to read; a few years ago Paul sent a picture of himself proudly holding the GED certificate he’d earned. Since then I’ve continued sending him books and articles, and recently he sent this essay, which he asked me to type for him to give his son. The whole piece amazed me, as the only changes I made were to fix some spelling and break it into paragraphs. I hope others might appreciate it, too.”

Jordan wrote several pieces for PW under the name Enceno Macy while he was incarcerated. — Amanda P.

By Paul Grice

There comes a time in your life when you finally get it. You realize that it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change or for happiness, safety and security to come galloping over the next horizon. You come to realize that any guarantee of happily ever after must begin with you.

Paul Grice, holding the GED he earned in 2011.

In the process a sense of serenity is born. You have awakened to the fact that you are not perfect, and that not everyone will always love you, appreciate you, or approve of who you are. You have learned that not everyone will always be there for you, and that it’s not always about you. So now you are standing on your own.

In the process a sense of safety, security, and a new-found confidence is born. You stop judging and pointing fingers, and you begin to accept people as they are and to overlook their shortcomings.

A sense of peace, forgiveness and contentment have been awakened within. You realize that much of the way you view yourself and the world around you is the result of all the messages and opinions that have been engrained in your mind. Now you have to redefine who you are and what you really stand for. You have learned the difference between wanting and needing. You find yourself discarding the doctrines and values you have outgrown. You have learned to distinguish between guilt and responsibility, and the importance of setting boundaries. You have learned that the only cross to bear is the one you choose to carry.

You have learned that God isn’t punishing you or failing to answer your prayers. You have learned to deal with evil in its most primal state, “the ego.” You have learned that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected, or they will suffocate the life out of you and poison the universe that surrounds you.

You have learned to admit when you are wrong and to build bridges instead of walls. You have learned to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things that we take for granted. Slowly you begin to take responsibility for yourself. You make a promise to try never to betray yourself and to never ever settle for less than your heart’s desire. You make a point to keep smiling, to keep trusting, and to stay open to every wonderful possibility that comes your way.

With God by your side and courage in your heart, you have learned that what is most valuable is not what we have in our life, but who we have in our life. You have learned that a rich person is not one who has the most, but one who needs the least. You have learned that anything worth achieving is worth working for, and that wishing for something to happen is different from working toward making it happen. More importantly, you learn that in order to achieve success, you need direction, discipline, and perseverance. You learn that no one can do it all alone, and it’s okay to risk asking for help.

You have learned about romance and familial love, how much to give, and when to stop giving, when to walk away. You have learned to look at relationships as they really are and not as you would have them be. You have stopped trying to control people and situations and others’ outcomes. You have learned that just as people grow and change, so does love.

You have learned that fear has no more hold on you. You have learned to step right into it, because you know that whatever happens, you can handle it, and to give in to fear is to give away your right to live.

You have learned that true happiness is not just achieving our goals, but learning who we are through striving towards them. And the greatest feeling is the feeling of triumph and knowing that though you have fallen into the biggest and deepest hole, with God’s help you dug yourself out and flipped it to make you a better person.

We are often judged by what we go through and encounter in situations. People often look down their noses on how we fell, rather than look at how we got up. Now that I have been awakened, they can’t hurt me any more. Everything is there to help me to become a better person — not just for myself, but for you, too.

This is my awakening.