Pleasure, Power, and Taking It All Back
by Jennifer Cooper
Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Unsplash
cw: this essay contains a mention of sexual assault
For my 46 birthday, my husband gifted me an oracle reading. I had wanted one ever since a friend told me about her experience.
The oracle had told her she’d seen my friend, who is an artist, painting on a large canvas while wearing a “power necklace.”
“What’s a power necklace”, I asked? “I have no idea,” my friend laughed, “but she said I needed to get one and it should look like me.” Then we both laughed.
It seemed absurd. But then, by now I’ve seen that lots of life is absurd.
A year or so later, my friend called. “You’re not going to believe this but I found my power necklace!” She’d been visiting a boutique in Seattle and there, in front of her, was a large mother of pearl looking wavy arch suspended between two necklace chains.
We hopped on a google meet so I could see this thing for myself.
“What’s it look like?” she asked as I moved in closer to my computer screen. “Um, it looks like a 2D version of your hair.”
“Dude!” she said, “I know! It’s me! And here’s another thing. I’m starting to work with large canvasses.” Then she got up to stand next to a painting leaning against the wall of her studio. The colorful, vibrant piece was nearly as tall as she was. There was already a buyer.
Now, I don’t consider myself a mystic per se. Have I, at times, gotten swept up in the crystal craze, even knowing what selenite is supposed to do? Yes. Have I enrolled in writing workshops where the instructor calls in the energy of the cardinal directions and asks Mercury to make our writing swift and clear? Sure.
I’m a middle-aged woman seeking a direction after playing by all the “traditional rules” and seeing they were designed to end, at 40, in stagnation. Who in my demo hasn’t done this stuff?
So I texted my husband and said, I know what I want for my birthday.
The day of my reading, I was instructed to clear my calendar, hydrate, and relax. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I was carrying around the heavy weight of skepticism. But I tried to remain open, energetically at least.
As I understand it, being energetically opens means you suspend your disbelief. In religious circles, it’s called faith.
At the time of my reading, I opened up my laptop, sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor—the one place I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed—and clicked the zoom link I was sent. I felt nervous. What if the oracle said something awful? My fears came in like an army.
The oracle had a gentle voice and asked if I had any specific questions. I said no, other than wondering if I was on the right track.
I’ll admit, it’s a pretty vague question, but I think I was too scared to ask something specific. Specific questions often lead to specific answers and I wasn’t ready to hear them yet.
“There’s something… I’m getting a message… It’s telling me you need to stop trying so hard… does that mean anything to you?”
Tears pooled in the corners of my eyes.
Yes. Of course it did. Not only was I a 40-something woman with two teens, living through a pandemic during the greatest upheaval in our country’s history, I felt like a failure.
I had no stable career. I had no independent income. I had tried multiple businesses, and going back to office life, and each one failed.
I was a grown ass ambitious woman who didn’t know what to do with her life. Although I had tried to know. I had tried very, very hard.
I would give you a list, but honestly, it doesn’t matter what’s on it. What matters is what’s not, which was to stop seeking outside validation for my worth.
As trite as that sounds, there are real reasons it’s taken me this long to understand, not just in my mind, but in my heart and soul too.
I don’t know a woman who hasn’t been shamed for looking a certain way. It started with dress codes, apparently spaghetti straps would be distracting for the boys; moved into puberty, when it was our boobs that were distracting; young adulthood when we heard stories, or were the victims, of women being accused of attracting sexual abuse because of the way they walked, danced, flirted.
I was 40 when I was groped at a wedding. The father of the bride, who I hadn’t seen since I was 15 or so, walked by me on the way to his daughter’s table and grabbed my ass.
The first thought I had, after the initial shock of what happened, was is it because my dress was too short?
The programming runs deep.
And this is doesn’t even begin to address the lessons we’re teaching other groups of people we try to cast in a hyper sexual light: Black women, Asian women, transgender women, lesbians.
All of this damage for what purpose? It is all designed to disconnect us from our bodies, minds, souls so that instead of embracing our power, we have been taught that we have to rely on a select few for theirs.
It’s fucked up.
It’s a system built on fear and shame and the burden of carrying those two is largely on women.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We as women can take our power back. And how we can do that is by radically investing in our pleasure.
What’s the first thing you think of when someone says pleasure?
It was sex, wasn’t it? That’s by design. Authoritarians want us to confine and restrict the concept and practice of pleasure to something singular they can shame us for.
Because pleasure is powerful. It destroys shame, encourages us to think more creatively, creates a pathway to connection, teaches us to trust ourselves and what we experience to create new worlds.
Pleasure is our guide.
It’s also completely natural for us to want and enjoy.
How do we do that in a culture that built on things that destroy pleasure: toxic competitiveness, a system that denies basic humanity, sexism that has a man feeling they can grab a woman’s ass without repercussions, and the fact that to “get by” in the U.S. you need an average net worth of $934,000 [source]?
(I know it might seem like I’m kitchen sinking these observations but there are intersections when we look more closely. That intersection is obscenely imbalanced power dynamics.)
How can we unlearn these things, and learn how to, quite frankly, feel good about life?
First, we need to look to the wisdom of the sages and stop trying so damn hard.
Second, we need to unlearn the idea that our minds are the center of our experience, and relearn how to be in our bodies, trust what they have to say, and lead them to safety.
Third, we need to unlearn the idea that bad thoughts lead to bad experiences. We can learn how to reframe or redirect our minds to see things in a new way, a way that allows us to settle, enjoy, open the portal to creativity.
Next, we need to learn how to listen to our soul’s desires, and honor it.
Finally, we need to see our pleasure as something that includes physical sensation, but expands beyond it, both inward towards our soul and outward towards our world.
Pleasure is power. And I want you to go after it.
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