Excerpt from "Healing with Pleasure Medicine: PAUSE"
I became aware of this concept in an intensive leadership program. The actual phrase we learned and practiced during this eight-month intensive was, "Ask for what you want and need 100 percent of the time, and then stick around and negotiate." What we do so often is work with the needs of others instead of paying attention to our own needs. I know this habit well.
There was a moment in my life where I was asked, "What do you want, Betty"? And I didn't have a clue of what I wanted in that moment. My life seemed to exist to take care of my aging mother, my three-year-old daughter, my working husband, to name a few. Yes, I was a co-dependent extraordinaire. It was the role that was very familiar for me. Such second nature, that I was in my fifties before I realized fully what was going on. I humbly say “fully,” as there's always more to learn.
This is our history. In the 1950s after World War II, many women in the U.S. stopped working for the war effort, married soldiers coming back from the war and started families. That was my mother. She married my father in 1942, and never worked a day of her life for compensation after that. My prideful father thought that was the best way to support and take care of her. Many women were happy staying home.
The underlying consequence was that these women communicated with children all day and lost touch with other women. And when we lost touch with other women, we stopped collaborating and creatively working together for community. The characteristic of collaboration is very powerful for women. It has been shown that a meaningful conversation between women raises their oxytocin levels (the pleasure hormone). Instead, we moved towards a masculine-based world and a competitive-based society. Women were dumbed down and self-esteem was sinking, so we fell into the masculine, competitive way of being.
In the 1970s, women even wore shoulder pads, which made them look even more masculine. In today's world, I don't know that men have it easy at all. Many women act like a man in women's bodies. To survive in the business corporate worlds, shutting down sexuality is necessary. Catharine Hakim, author of the book "Honey Money," writes that women have missed an opportunity to use their erotic capital in the business world.
She claims we wouldn’t have these pay discrepancies between men and women if women could embrace their erotic capital and use it wisely. Women are sensual and sexual beings. Women carry the ability to bring beauty to the world and vibrate beauty out into the world in a way that is unique and wonderful. What would change if we were conscious of this truth, and also learned to ask for what we want and need?
Excerpt from "Healing with Pleasure Medicine: PAUSE"
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