Women, Sexuality, and the Sacred

Reclaiming What Was Never Ours to Be Ashamed Of

What does it actually mean for a woman to inhabit her sexuality as her own?

Not sexuality designed for the male gaze.

Not sexuality shaped by religion.

Not sexuality performed for attention.

Not sexuality suppressed in the name of spirituality.

Not sexuality marketed back to us as “empowerment.”

But our own.

Our bodies.

Our desire.

Our boundaries.

Our truth.

Our sacredness.

We Have Been Given Contradictory Messages About Our Bodies

For many women, it can feel almost impossible to “get it right.”

Be sexual — but not too sexual.

Be desirable — but don't invite the wrong kind of attention.

Enjoy your body — but don't be promiscuous.

Be modest — but don't be frigid.

Be liberated.

Be pure.

Be attractive.

Don't seek attention.

Own your pleasure.

Control yourself.

No wonder so many women arrive in adulthood confused about what they actually want.

What is actually true for me, in my body?

Not what have I been taught to want.

Not what will make me desirable.

Not what will make me spiritual enough.

Not what will make other people approve of me.

What is true for me?

That sounds simple.

It isn't.

Because women have been swimming in cultural, familial, religious, and sexual messages since before we were old enough to recognize them as messages.

Sexual Power Is Not the Same as Sexual Performance

Adolescence can bring a startling realization:

Sexuality gets attention.

People notice you.

Men respond to you.

Suddenly there can be a sense of:

I can create a reaction.

For a girl or young woman who otherwise feels powerless, that can feel intoxicating.

But attention and power are not necessarily the same thing.

A woman can learn how to dress, move, speak, and behave in ways that attract desire — and still be disconnected from what she actually desires.

She can become incredibly skilled at being desirable while remaining a stranger to her own erotic self.

That distinction is enormous.

Perhaps one of the deepest pieces of women's sexual reclamation is moving from:

How am I being experienced?

to:

What am I experiencing?

From performance to presence.

From being watched to inhabiting.

From getting attention to knowing oneself.

Spirituality Can Add Another Layer of Shame

There is another part of this conversation that doesn't get talked about enough.

A woman may reject sexual objectification...

only to enter a spiritual culture where sexuality is treated as something lower.

Something distracting.

Something to transcend.

In some traditions, celibacy becomes the ideal.

Desire becomes evidence that one is not spiritually evolved enough.

Women cover their bodies.

Men and women avoid touch.

Relationships may be tolerated, while sexuality itself quietly disappears from the conversation.

And once again the woman receives the message:

Your sexuality is a problem.

The packaging has changed.

But shame remains.

This is where the relationship between sexuality and spirituality becomes so important.

What if sexuality is not the opposite of spirituality?

What if the body isn't something consciousness needs to escape?

What if desire itself isn't dirty?

What if our work is not indulgence or repression...

but consciousness?

Pleasure Is Not the Problem

Sexual liberation does not have to mean:

Do whatever you want and nothing has consequences.

Nor does sexual purity have to mean suppressing desire.

There is a vast territory between those two extremes.

Sexual experiences can involve vulnerability, attachment, expectations, bodies, emotion, meaning, and very different interpretations of the same encounter.

Two people can participate in the exact same sexual experience and carry completely different stories about what happened.

One may consider it casual.

Another may attach enormous meaning to it.

One may remember pleasure.

Another may later experience regret.

This is why honesty matters.

Consent matters.

Clarity matters.

And self-awareness matters.

A powerful question might be:

What am I actually seeking through this encounter?

Pleasure?

Connection?

Love?

Validation?

Escape?

Attention?

Adventure?

Comfort?

Power?

To feel wanted?

To feel alive?

There isn't necessarily a morally correct answer.

But there is tremendous power in knowing the truth.

Sometimes Shame Arrives Afterward

Many women carry shame about their younger sexual selves.

Looking backward and thinking:

Why did I do that?

Why did I give myself away?

Why did I need so much attention?

Why didn't I value myself more?

But what if healing does not require us to hate the younger woman who made those choices?

What if we became curious about her?

Maybe she was desperate to feel beautiful.

Maybe she was lonely.

Maybe sexuality was the only place she experienced power.

Maybe she wanted love.

Maybe she wanted adventure.

Maybe she simply loved sex.

Maybe she had no idea yet how to distinguish desire from validation.

Both truths can exist.

I can honor the wildness of the woman I was.

And:

I can acknowledge that sometimes she abandoned herself.

We don't have to turn our past selves into villains in order to grow.

Reclamation Is Not About Becoming “More Sexual”

Women's sexual empowerment is sometimes spoken about as though the goal is simply becoming more sexually expressive.

More orgasmic.

More sensual.

More provocative.

More liberated.

But what if reclamation has nothing to do with quantity?

For one woman, reclamation may mean allowing herself enormous sexual pleasure without shame.

For another, it may mean discovering that she doesn't actually want sex very often.

For another, it may mean celibacy — freely chosen rather than imposed.

For another, it may mean learning to receive.

For another, saying no.

For another, finally allowing herself to initiate.

For another, leaving a relationship in which her body has continually said no while her mind kept saying yes.

Sexual sovereignty means the answer belongs to her.

Not to patriarchy.

Not to feminism.

Not to religion.

Not to pornography.

Not to spirituality.

Not to her partner.

Not to a teacher.

Not to a cultural movement.

Her.

Perhaps the Sacred Begins With Listening

Women's sexuality is powerful.

But perhaps its power is not primarily the power to attract.

Perhaps it is the power to feel.

To know.

To create.

To experience pleasure.

To recognize when something opens us.

To recognize when something contracts us.

To know when we want to move closer.

And when every cell in the body is saying:

No.

Maybe the reclamation of women's sexuality is inseparable from the reclamation of women's inner authority.

The ability to stop outsourcing truth.

To listen inward.

To become intimate enough with ourselves that we recognize the difference between:

desire and desperation,

freedom and rebellion,

connection and attachment,

sexuality and performance,

spiritual devotion and repression,

intuition and conditioning.

Sexuality and Spirituality May Not Be Opposites at All

What happens when we stop dividing ourselves?

Sacred over here.

Sexual over there.

Spirit good.

Body suspicious.

Purity good.

Desire dangerous.

What if wholeness requires us to bring them back together?

Not making sexuality into another religion.

Not claiming every sexual impulse is sacred.

But becoming conscious enough to meet sexuality with the same reverence we might bring to prayer.

Presence.

Honesty.

Listening.

Discernment.

Respect.

Responsibility.

Wonder.

Perhaps sexuality can become one of the places where we encounter ourselves most truthfully.

Because the body is often much less interested in maintaining our carefully constructed identity than the mind is.

And Maybe We Don't Need to Understand Everything

Healing does not always come because we intellectually understand every piece.

Sometimes something moves.

Something softens.

A sentence lands differently.

A memory loses some of its charge.

We realize we no longer believe something we spent decades believing.

And sometimes the work is simply to live...

and notice.

Notice what feels different.

Notice what we no longer tolerate.

Notice what begins to feel pleasurable.

Notice where shame loosens its grip.

Notice when we stop performing.

Notice when our body feels like home again.

Perhaps this is part of reclamation too.

We do not need to manufacture another perfect version of womanhood.

We don't need to become the perfect sexual woman.

The perfect spiritual woman.

The perfect empowered woman.

We can stop performing even that.

And begin asking instead:

What is true for me now?

What does my body know?

What am I ready to release?

What belongs to me — and what never did?

What would sexuality feel like if it were no longer organized around shame, approval, rebellion, or performance?

And perhaps the most important question of all:

Who am I when my body, my sexuality, and my spirituality are finally allowed to belong to the same woman?