Woman on Fire: 9 Elements to Wake Up Your Erotic Energy, Personal Power, and Sexual Intelligence

by Amy Jo Goddard Narrated by Amy Jo Goddard, Kate Turnball

Overview

Based on her sought-after sexuality workshops, the coauthor of Lesbian Sex Secrets for Men shows women how to master the nine elements of sexual empowerment to reclaim their desire and live the sexually fulfilling lives they want.

The prevalence of low sexual desire ranges from 26.7 percent among premenopausal women to 52.4 percent among naturally menopausal women. That is an enormous segment of women who are frustrated about their lack of desire and wonder what's wrong.

But in Woman on Fire, Amy Jo Goddard shows us that the more whole we are as sexual beings, the more fulfilled we are as human beings. In this accessible, prescriptive book, Amy Jo reveals her holistic, inside-out approach to developing sexual empowerment. Women from 20 to 70 come to her workshops with issues like these: "What am I missing?" "I don't like sex the way everyone else seems to." "How do I maintain desire after having kids?" "How do I build sexual confidence?" In answer, Amy Jo shows us how to master the nine elements of a sexually empowered life and includes stories from the thousands of women she has worked with. She shows us how to get (back) in touch with desire, explore vulnerability and play, and push the boundaries of what we think is acceptable. We will not just have better sex; we will have more pleasure throughout life and more intimate relationships, whether we have many partners or one.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Woman on Fire is a compassionate, loving, and tender guide that will assist all women in owning and operating the life force that is our erotic energy and sexual intelligence.”
—Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Goddesses Never Age

 
“My long-term friend and colleague Amy Jo Goddard, offers powerful guidelines to expand women's sex lives so we can become decisive orgasmic women who are able to state our pleasure and get what we want—from the bedroom to the boardroom.”
—Betty Dodson, sexual pioneer and author of Sex for One
 
“Amy Jo Goddard's new "you can have it too" book, brings together the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of sexuality in a way that is easy to understand and implement into any woman's life who is yearning to set her life aflame.”-
—Pamela Madsen, author of Shameless, Founder Back to the Body: Sensuous Retreats for Women
 
"I want every woman, young to old, to have access to this beautiful and compassionate book––and there’s much insight here for people of every gender who want to heal their relationship to their bodies, their ability to experience pleasure, and to the cultural stories about sex and gender we are so deeply affected by." 
—Carol Queen, PhD 
Co-founder, Center for Sex & Culture
Staff Sexologist, Good Vibrations
Author of Exhibitionism for the Shy and The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone
 
“As someone who has also been privileged to travel this terrain with women, I love Amy Jo’s easy way with ALL of who we are as women—never losing sight of how much our own sexual liberation will lead to our joy and success in life.  Her program is deep and profound and I believe that many women will benefit from her knowledge and expertise.”
—Rachel Carlton Abrams, MD, author of The Multi-Orgasmic Woman

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171228835
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	09/29/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,199,530

Read an Excerpt

MORE, PLEASE!

I absolutely love my tribe, and I’m so glad you are a part of it. I would love to connect with you further.

Your place to go for everything about this book: womanon firethebook.com

I write and produce weekly articles and videos about sexuality and relationships at amyjogoddard.com and would love for you to join the juicy conversation there. There are tons of free resources for you.

Sexual empowerment is a process, a practice, and an experience. You’ll want some tools and juicy resources to help you along your journey. At womanonfirethebook.com, find all kinds of goodies to keep your fire blazing, including:

SPARKS

This book is birthed from my desire to help you come home to yourself and live a sexually empowered life. I hope this book will inspire you, be a harbinger guiding you toward the sexual wholeness you dream of, and help you live the fulfilling sexual life you deserve.

I believe that having healthy, nonviolent relationships and working toward a pleasure-filled, creative life for all are the keys to changing the world. This vision comes from a place of knowing the world can be so much better, so much sexier, and more beautiful. And what peace, magic, and joy we can experience when we live in this more delightful, loving place. Healthy relationships are essential.

Sexual empowerment has to be holistic. It can’t be partway. Your sexuality exists inside of a larger life and a larger world. A person does not become sexually empowered because they start having good sex, although good sex can be a very good start. Plenty of women know how to “have good sex” without fully realizing their own power. You’ve got to look at the whole package to become empowered sexually, emotionally, and spiritually.

I want to see us stop defining ourselves by forces outside ourselves, forces that tell us what to like, rather than defining ourselves by our own internal desire. I want us to embrace our desire fully without fear and to wholly express our own erotic being. I want women to demand healthy, mutually satisfying, fully lived relationships and to stop settling for less than they want or deserve. I want women to inhabit their bodies, take back their power, and claim their birthrights of pleasure, passion, and desire. I want each of us to be a Woman on Fire.

IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY OR TOO LATE

Women are the focus of my current work as a sexual empowerment coach. I have coached women via video conferencing from Switzerland to New York and Jamaica to Ohio. I’ve worked with women of different cultural backgrounds, class backgrounds, and sexual orientations. I’ve worked with women in countries where gender and sexual norms are very different from those in the United States. I’ve coached women in their early twenties who want to heal, women in their thirties who are feeling a dissatisfied itch telling them they need to focus in on their sexuality, women in their forties who are ready to address the famine in their sexual lives and the post-divorce women who are dating again and re-creating their sex lives, and women in their fifties, sixties, and seventies who want to do the work before it’s “too late.”

I’ve coached so many women who are single and know they must unlock the buried treasures in their own sexuality—and that they must do it for themselves. It’s a tremendous honor when they show up. I’ve coached women who are married/partnered and don’t want to have sex with their partners, women who are partnered and desperately want to have sex with their partner who can’t or won’t, women who are about to get married and are scared they’ll never get to have the sex life they dream of. I’ve worked with women who are pregnant and are opening the capacity of their bodies to new experience, who are excited and also fearful of losing something they haven’t quite found yet. Women who are lesbian or queer and refuse to succumb to the lesbian stereotype of companionate-not-sexual love, women who are becoming aware of their attraction to other women and want to explore it—and who know that something about exploring that love of other women is about learning to love themselves more fully. I also work with women who have big sexual wounds, who feel like they lost something at an early age and are saddened that now, in their thirties, forties, even fifties or sixties, they are working to get it back—or to have it for the very first time. I have worked with many powerful women who are doing extraordinary work in their lives, who are power players in the world, yet nearly mute in sex. They want to find their sexual voice and experience their sexual power. They want more pleasure.

In this book, I am honored to be able to share some of these women’s stories with you, in their own words. I know you will appreciate if not relate to their tender, vulnerable, and honest tales. I work with creative, self-aware women who speak eloquently about their processes and growth, so I will quote them as much as possible to privilege their voices. This book is for all women—however you identify with your womanhood. We are not all the same kind of woman and I honor that. My perspective comes from my experience as a queer, white woman from the United States, with a middle-class, military family upbringing. I will speak to women directly in this book and talk about the socialization of girls and women, although people of other genders may also find it powerful.

THE NINE ELEMENTS

It is out of this intensely personal and powerful work with women that a framework for sexual empowerment revealed itself to me—growing organically from something unformed taking form, as a tribe of women expanded in this work. I teach with frameworks to make it more easily understood, accessed, and integrated into one’s life.

In this book, I detail what I have found to be the nine essential elements of sexual empowerment. In chapter 1, I define what it means to be sexually empowered, which is the foundation and my approach to sexuality. In chapter 2, I lay out my Core Energy Model of Sexuality, which helps to organize sexuality as the powerful force it is in our lives. In the chapters that follow, I detail my Nine Elements to wake up your erotic energy, personal power, and sexual intelligence, which to me are the core components we each have to develop in order to make our sexuality as powerful as it can be. These elements are the ways we can animate, expand, and dance with sexuality. They are:

ELEMENT 1. VOICE:
ELEMENT 2. RELEASE:
ELEMENT 3. EMOTION:
ELEMENT 4. BODY:
ELEMENT 5. DESIRE:
ELEMENT 6. PERMISSION:
ELEMENT 7. PLAY:
ELEMENT 8. HOME:
ELEMENT 9. FIRE:
I believe we can use these elements of ourselves to develop our erotic energy, improve our sexual intelligence, and step fully into our own personal power. We can and should approach sexual intelligence the way we approach emotional intelligence: as something that requires knowledge, understanding, and the development of skills. Most of us are missing the information we need about the things we don’t discuss. We need to ramp up our emotional skills in order to have the fully blossoming lives and relationships we most want. Our erotic energy is often our most untapped resource, and yet it is there inside us as a wellspring of juice we can use to direct our lives, and as we do, step more and more into our personal power. In the modern world, it’s easy to spend the entire day in our heads in front of a computer, almost entirely disconnected from our bodies, eroticism, and desire, and then we want to turn back on when we are with our lovers. Our well-being and sexual fulfillment depend upon taking seriously improving our sexual intelligence and lighting up our core erotic energy.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

I have created an online portal for you with play sheets, exercises, and resources that will help you to get the most out of this book. Go to the portal at womanonfirethebook.com now to get a sense of what is available to assist you on this journey. I like to think of assignments as “home play.” There are play sheets for all of the exercises that are included in this book and additional exercises and resources you won’t see here. I RECOMMEND THAT YOU PRINT OUT THE DOWNLOADABLE PDF OF THE WHOLE WORKBOOK. All of it is designed to help you go deep into your sexual exploration, expansion, and healing.

You might choose to do some of the exercises or all of them as you go, taking in each aspect of the work and exploring it deeply. You may want to read the whole book through and then go back and do all of the home play. You might read the chapters in order or you can skip around. I have put them in the order that made the most sense, as one will build on others; however, they are not linear, so you can read them in the way that works for you.

I suggest you read this book with a friend, partner, therapist, or group of people so that you can have live conversations about the material and what it brings up in you. This journey is yours, and you can do it in community and with guides. Many of us are used to doing things alone. Not having been mothered properly, or busy caretaking everyone else, we often feel isolated in our own internal process and crave the support we typically give to others. The learning can often be deeper when you grow in a community. You have an opportunity to give your sexuality the attention it deserves, bring others into your journey, and find a new tribe. Even if you choose to read the book solo, know that many other women are on this powerful journey too. However you choose to do it, there is no wrong way. Engage with this book in the way that works best for you.

You picked up this book because there is a desire in you, in your sexual being. Your desire could be to figure out what you want, and to learn to get it. Your desire might be to go deeper in your relationships and in your life. It might be to become a sexually self-actualized being who lives her life in unapologetic ecstasy. Your desire might be to heal and develop a new relationship to sexuality. Your desire might be to more fully understand your sexuality and how to express it in powerful ways. Your desire might be to experience pleasure more wholly.

I can help make some sense of the vast terrain of sexuality. I’m going to define sexuality and sexual empowerment in a useful and practical way. I will give you tools. And a lot of encouragement and permission to explore your sexuality, to claim the sexual power that is yours to claim, and to live vibrantly at full capacity. I’m going to do my best to make it relevant to your life, and to share all of the things I wish someone would have shared with me when I was feeling pain and searching for answers. I hope that the framework of sexual empowerment I use in this book is powerful for you. I hope that it will allow you to see many of your blind spots, to heal your wounds, and to take on a new way of being that allows you to have the sexuality and life you desire.

1

THE BIG ROUND BALL

All of us have a desire inside of us for more. We want to experience more, to grow more, to have more, to be more fulfilled, to be more of who we are meant to be. Women come to me in this place of wanting more, knowing it is intrinsically connected to their own sexual being. I am a guide. It is their journey. This is your journey.

You know there is more. Sexuality is at the core of the longing in us all. It is the core. It is the seduction of life itself, the texture of rain on your face, or the dry, cold air you feel in your nostrils on a winter walk. It is the creation of beauty and the meeting of the divine in you, in life itself. It is the enjoyment of being, the pleasure of creating your dreams, and it’s there in the expansive space when you pause to appreciate your process. So many women have this hunger inside of themselves, this magic wanting to birth itself into life. To have your “more,” you will have to claim your sexual power or there will always be a gap between what you want and what you have.

THE FEAR

I hear many of the sentiments I experienced at a young age from so many women: that fear of being the only one. The only one to experience shame, to have unfulfilled desire, to have deeply ingrained fears of being “broken,” of never having experienced orgasm, or of being the only one who needs “this” particular form of healing (whatever “this” might be).

So many people fear they are sexually broken. Unfixable. It’s a tremendous fear—that their sexual history, sexual functioning, sexual problems, or sexual trauma is so bad, so impossible to fix, that they must be permanently damaged. Yet I have watched client after client change her life entirely—change her experience of sex, her sexuality, her body, and her relationships dramatically—because she committed to the process and worked through those parts that made her feel hopeless and lost.

You are powerful and nothing is impossible for you no matter what your experience has been. Your journey might look different from everyone else’s, yet it is possible to achieve your vision. You may have gotten messages from your family, friends, or culture that something about you is broken, because we live in a society that likes to tell us how imperfect we are (gasp!) so we stay stuck feeling bad, buying products to help us fix ourselves, and choosing not to rise up and use our power to challenge the systems that oppress us. You are whole and capable of healing the things that you are not at peace with.

In my two decades of teaching sexuality I have witnessed the transformations of many people. I have developed an understanding of the sexual and emotional devices that keep women from coming home to themselves, of the struggles and heartbreaks that keep them feeling alien to their own sexuality. I have listened to and learned about the stories and secrets women keep—the ones they are terrified of other people discovering or of showing to themselves. The stories I hear over and again are each precious and unique and yet so many threads of similarity are woven into this collective sexual herstory.

In this collective vision, I hear many of the same wants. Women tell me that they want more sexual confidence, the ability to get their needs met, to explore, to be more playful, to have more orgasms and pleasure, to have deeper intimacy, more emotional connection, more desire, and more time for their sexuality. They want to feel more alive, vibrant, and juicy. They want freedom.

THE POWER

We have a deeper idea about the power of sexuality. We know there is something more to it than our glossy sexualized media world has shown us. This power can feel like a secret that has been kept from us because they didn’t know how to talk to us about it. After all, how would we teach the magnitude of this powerful force in school? Its true grandeur is so big, so beyond this mundane world and what we can see with our eyes, that it scares many people—so that’s what they end up teaching children. Be afraid. Don’t get this disease or be that girl. Don’t let them “take it away” from you. Hold on tight.

And if you feel pleasure, you might like it far too much, so don’t feel too much of that, because then you’ll go too far and we won’t know how to help you. Don’t trust boys. Don’t trust your body. Don’t trust anyone who is interested in you sexually. Don’t trust this terrain of sexuality because it’s a scary, complicated place, and since we can’t explain it to you, let’s just not talk about it.

A lot of women ask whether true power and pleasure is really possible, and fear that it’s not—not for them, anyway. If you’ve had the thought that “maybe it’s just not going to happen for me” or that maybe what you want is not really possible, let me assure you.

It is.

I can tell you with confidence that you are not the only one. Whatever your story, whatever your experiences—you are not broken, you are not “unfixable,” you are not going to be left out of having the things you desire or the healing you need because of your history, desires, body, size, age, identity, or any of the other untruths they reinforced. If you want these things, they are here for you.

It’s possible you might not even know exactly what you want, but you know it’s not what you have right now. Most women are socialized to be led sexually, to be chased and to follow the desires of their partners rather than to tap into their own wants and express them. That paradigm has to shift, and it begins with identifying your own desires and figuring out what skills you could develop to make them real. You won’t magically know what to do when you feel a great big attraction, land yourself in a sexual situation, and declare you are ready.

THE BIG ROUND BALL

I remember one day speaking to a woman who had been in conversation with me for several years about doing some work on her sexuality, and she said, “It’s like my sexuality is a big round ball and I don’t know what to grab on to or how to get in.”

I think a lot of people feel that way about their sexuality. It’s complex. Where do you begin? What is the first thing to touch? How do you make it concrete? How do you explain some of the feelings you have that are so profound or intangible you aren’t sure how to access them using human words and emotions; or the longing that feels like such an amorphous craving and yet feels so important and rich, the one that would transform your experience of life itself if you could meet it? How do you share with a lover or a partner how magical and big you know this energy to be—and how do you go there with them? How do you access the orgasm that you know is waiting to be born inside of you? And once you do access it, how do you bring this energy into your everyday mundane life and make your life extraordinary?

ADULTS NEED SEX ED TOO

Many adults anguish in the myths about all we “should” know and the kind of sex we “should” be having and the sexual lives we “should” be living. The reality is that our culture chronically underprepares us for fulfilling sexual lives. Since most young people never get adequate sex education, we all grow up into adults who think that just because we are grown, we are “supposed to know” how to have sex, how to do it well, how to orgasm, and how to not have any hang-ups. We’re supposed to have a ravenous sexual appetite, healthy desire, and clear sexual communication. We should be confident in our bodies and sexual abilities. A tall order if you’ve never had any real sex education or developed your sexual intelligence. How exactly are people supposed to learn how to be sexually healthy adults? Even if you were lucky enough to get quality sex education in primary or secondary school, it’s likely that the word pleasure was never even mentioned. Sex ed is too often taught in that fear-based model of everything you need to avoid and with little about what to pursue besides abstinence and “virtue.”

GIVING IT UP

As girls, we are taught to fiercely guard our virginity, this thing we barter with and will “give away” to someone—almost always assumed to be a male. And many of us have a story of it being “taken away” by someone we didn’t consent to “give it” to. This idea divorces us from our sexuality and our bodies as an intrinsic part of who we are, as if one act of sexual intercourse is more important than a whole lifetime of discovering what this body and heart is capable of and what it really desires. Again, there is this deficit model: we think we lose our sexuality to someone else, and then we wonder why we grow into adults who think we are broken. There are pieces that have gone missing.

Marry and you are “given away” again. Is it any wonder so many women don’t feel like they have agency over their own sexuality? We continually put it in the hands of men. The system was set up that way a long time ago. Many women enter sexually blind into marriage because they’ve “been saving it.” We think the choice to say “I do” will automatically give us the ability to have a functional and fulfilling sexual relationship. You aren’t any more ready to have a marriage without relationship education and self-examination than you are ready to have a child without any birth preparation or child-rearing education. The same goes for sex.

As an adult, you have all sorts of new aspects of your sexuality that you are discovering and new sexual situations and dynamics to work with, so the need for adult sex education remains paramount. For instance, how do you negotiate safer sex in an adult dating world? What do you do if your partner doesn’t know how to please you? What do you do when you partner with or marry someone with whom you do not feel sexually compatible? What if you haven’t had an orgasm? How do you explore new sexual territory or introduce a new idea into a relationship like a new toy, a threesome, an open relationship, or some erotic power play?

SEX ED FOR ADULTS

We need ongoing sexual education for every stage of our lives. Everyone needs sex education. And I mean everyone. In general, people do not treat sex and sexuality as something to work on or put effort into. The assumption is that sex will just happen. This is a harmful myth. Optimal sex and sexuality require awareness, skills, and practice. If you want to cash in on the best sexual pleasure possible to you, you have got to put in the time and energy. You’ve got to cultivate your sexual intelligence. There are many ways to feel supported on your journey and some essential things you can do. Understand that becoming sexually empowered is not magic . . . it’s about dedication to parts of yourself you may have neglected because you didn’t know you needed to do something different. There are no enchanted pills or shortcuts to make it all better. Good thing, because it is one of the most enlivening, beautiful, expanding journeys a person can take. You really want to enjoy the ride.

Simply becoming an adult does not make you ready for a sexual relationship or mean you will automatically have good sex. Becoming an adult does not empower you as a sexual person. What it does do is give you more freedom to make your own choices and to act on your desires. What you do with these desires is entirely up to you. How well you do it is related to your knowledge, skills, self-awareness, and commitment to growth. The fact that you picked up a book about sexual empowerment indicates that you are well ahead of most of your peers on this path. Welcome to the journey.

CLARIFY YOUR “MORE”

Take a moment now to start defining your “more” that you want. You’ll see throughout these chapters just how excited and refined your answers will become. What is the desire in you that made you pick up this book? What needs to happen for you to give yourself permission to want it?

KATHIE’S STORY

Kathie came to me at sixty-five years old wanting to work on her sexuality but was really nervous and in some disbelief that it would change anything. We had many conversations before she decided to step into my women’s sexual empowerment program. I knew she needed it and I wanted it for her. I wanted her to know it is never too late.

Right out of college, I joined a religious order as a nun—a lifestyle that meant giving up two key things: sexuality and money. After two decades in the ashram, I realized I wasn’t happy or fulfilled, so I left. As I moved into normal life, I gradually had to face all I had not done, and sexuality and a money-making career were the two biggest things.

During my forties and fifties, I went back to school and earned a master’s degree, traveled and studied, and opened a small business as a solo entrepreneur. I was surviving, but I still wasn’t successful and fulfilled any more than I had been as a monastic. Something still was wrong, so I started digging—inside.

I did all kinds of therapies. I was always attending workshops, seminars, coaching. I found that old grief and emotional pain from things that happened to me in early childhood were holding me hostage. Underneath all that pain, I discovered the core belief that I was not lovable, not deserving. When I was a teenager, this belief had run through my conscious mind as “I’m not pretty enough.” The body shame and insecurity connected with that had been severe enough to stop me from being social or dating.

My mother had left when I was a toddler, and I had built a shield around myself. I shut down strongly, disconnected from my capacity to love and from my desire. I had a fear of abandonment. As I grew older I disconnected from my capacity to experience sexuality with another person, although I had discovered masturbation when I was eleven or twelve. I dated a little bit as a teenager but didn’t do anything sexual. In college I got made fun of. I had not had any sexual intercourse, and that was part of the shame I carried. I just avoided sexuality. As a young adult I discovered the spiritual life—it was a way of contacting an absolute level of love without it having to be with a person. I fell in love with the universal, you might say.

I still have not had intercourse at sixty-five. A story like that is so far off the cultural bell curve (people make jokes about forty-year-old virgins, right?) that I’ve had people laugh at me when I share it. That’s painful, and it reinforced my own shame about it. In that respect, doing this work where the approach to sexuality is big and broad enough to include even someone with a story like mine has been a lifesaver.

By the time I started working with Amy Jo, I was determined to reclaim my sexuality. I had realized that I must connect with and rescue this part of myself no matter what. I can’t help but run into things that prompt regret.” What if I’d done this sooner, when my hormones were on board?” I see younger women who are confident and beautiful and think, “If only I’d been where I am now when I was at that age.” It does hurt. It does sting. You can’t undo time. But I find that every step I take toward my sexuality overrides those regrets. It’s more powerful to have the experiences I can have in this body now than to dwell on what I could have done.

Amazingly, a partner walked into my life just about the time I started working with Amy Jo. Early on, we would sit on the couch and he would lean over to kiss me and this “No!” would pop up from somewhere inside me. It was shocking, like I didn’t have control over it. So I decided one day to override that, to overstep my resistance and kiss this guy. That was a breakthrough point for me. I redefined myself to myself in that moment. As we began to make out more often, I began to find that I could trust my body’s response to things like his hand on my back. I felt my sexuality waking up in my pelvic area and hips, and I could follow it. I felt like I was following my desire. We’ve had some fun. We’re talking about intercourse now—another point where I will have to overstep resistance and fear.

I now believe that accessing the sexual self and tapping into sexual, creative energy is vital to a woman’s thriving physically, emotionally, creatively, even financially, no matter what her age or lifestyle or life story. Who’s to say that confidence, pleasure, and what the hell, joy, too, can’t be ours right up to our last days on the planet?

DEFINING SEXUAL EMPOWERMENT

The more whole we are as sexual beings, the more fulfilled we are as human beings. I believe this with every ounce of my being. This core belief is what has driven me in my life’s purpose for twenty years and gotten me out of bed every day as a change agent ready to make the world a more sexually healthy place. Sexuality and, in turn, sexual fulfillment is a deeply important wellspring for happiness in all of life.

Sometimes it is easier to know what something is not than to know what something is. We learn to deal with sexuality in deficits. What’s not there. What we don’t have. What we can’t be. What we can’t do. What we need to stay away from.

In the case of sexuality and sexual empowerment, because we lack role models and positive images, it’s hard for many people to describe what sexual empowerment is. We often know what it’s not when we see it or experience it. We can just feel that somehow, this isn’t it. Sometimes that looks like making poor sexual choices or using sex to get approval from others. It might be a person who doesn’t take care of herself sexually or emotionally. It could be a lack of understanding or knowledge of sexuality. Sometimes it’s when you settle for less than what you want that you realize how much more you desire. Most people stop here, telling themselves they don’t deserve more or can’t have it.

Sexual empowerment is what we do want. What we can be. What we can have. What we can do. What experiences we can create for ourselves. What kind of lovers we can be. What types of lovers we can draw to us. It’s how we can expand who we are exponentially when we develop, nurture, heal, and explore our sexuality.

The concept of empowerment, while overused, is an important one. There is no other word that means what empowerment means: to embody power. To live from a place of personal strength, autonomy, and integrity. To hold, embrace, and employ one’s personal power for the highest good. To make choices and take action and feel an impact. It is to be the independent agent of your own life, the architect of your destiny.

Maybe you’ve felt moments of sexual empowerment—times when you tapped into the power and pleasure of your body, clarified a desire and experienced it, or had the best sex of your life. Maybe you’ve also felt moments when you settled, when your desires were unrequited, when you had sex you weren’t into or experienced that disturbing place of self-betrayal. This book is about creating a life filled with moments of power.

In this book, I aim to contribute a clear picture of what sexual empowerment looks like, how to live it, and how it can impact every other part of your life. I want it to touch you, help you to cherish your time, to know that, like sex and pleasure, life is immediate: it’s right now, and you can’t afford to wait any longer to give it the attention it deserves. I hope to help you affirm and to step into your big, bold, dreamy, sexy, on-fire self.

Empowerment is action, and it’s a state of being. There are many essential parts to living a truly powerful sexual life. I want to talk about these essential elements on three levels: our relationship with our self, with others, and with our culture. After all, sexuality does not exist in a vacuum.

Our Relationship with Ourselves

PEOPLE WHO ARE AUTHENTICALLY SEXUALLY EMPOWERED:

Our Relationships with Others

PEOPLE WHO ARE AUTHENTICALLY SEXUALLY EMPOWERED:

Our Relationship with Our Culture

PEOPLE WHO ARE AUTHENTICALLY SEXUALLY EMPOWERED:

It may feel like a tall order. Do not be overwhelmed—be inspired! Your sexuality is vast. There are many parts of it, and different aspects of your sexual self will be prominent at different stages of your life. That’s the good news. You never need to stop growing as a sexual person, or forsake your sexuality for security, a relationship, a new phase of life, or for any other reason. There is always more to learn, room to grow, and a choice to experience your life now.

Sexual empowerment is a way of living life fully, with passion and creativity, and in deep love. We are meant to be expansive as sexual and creative beings, and many gender roles and other expectations limit and diminish our expansiveness. Subscribing to limiting roles is the opposite of empowerment. Breaking roles and rules to be who we really are will bring us to an authentically powerful place.

In this book we are going to talk about the things on the above list and why they are important. We are also going to address what gets in the way of having the sexually empowered life you deeply desire and deserve. We are going to talk about sex and how to create a fulfilling sexual life. And know that when I talk about “sex,” I am not saying intercourse—they are not synonymous. Intercourse is one form of sex, and there are many more ways to have sex. I’m talking about the whole pie. The enchilada with the sauce and the guacamole.

TOOLS FOR BUILDING THE FIRE

Sexual empowerment is not only for people who are having sex or want to have sex. Whether you are in a heterosexual marriage or several relationships at once; identify as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer; are young or old; are asexual; are celibate; or pay for sex, you are a sexual person who can experience sexual empowerment. Your core energy is sexual energy. You do not leave your sexuality at home because it doesn’t match today’s outfit, you are having a night out with your girlfriends, or because you don’t have a sex date planned.

No matter who you are, there are means of support we all need on this journey if we are committed to our fullest sexual expression and expansion:

RESOURCES—Everyone needs accurate resources about sexuality. Books, honest information, websites, and places you can go to get the support you need for your sexual journey. This book is one such resource.

SKILL BUILDING—Remember, sex requires skills. You have got to learn skills. And how do you get better at them? Practice. There is much to say about sexual skills, and we’ll discuss this in depth in chapter 9.

TEACHERS/EDUCATION—You deserve educators who have studied sex and can share information to help you grow and understand the things that confuse you about sexuality. Teachers can be both formal and informal. Some of my greatest teachers were lovers (informal), yet my formal teachers were pivotal for my own development.

RELATIONSHIPS—Relationships are our greatest teachers. That means lovers, friends, coworkers, family—every relationship in your life is a teacher.

ROLE MODELS—Role models of healthy sexuality are important. Some examples of my sexual role models: my sexuality professors, Madonna—powerful woman, unabashedly sexual—was a role model for me growing up in the eighties; my mentor Betty Dodson became a powerful role model; and I had peers who accepted and embraced their sexuality and became role models to me. Who are your sexual role models? If you don’t have any, keep looking.

OPEN DIALOGUE—If you don’t bring sex out of the closet, you cannot actually work on it, and you will stay alone with it on your journey. Everyone has to overcome the messages they have internalized that tell them not to talk about sex and that it should stay private. You will have to learn to talk about it, even if you only talk about it with your partner or lovers. Open dialogue diminishes any shame associated with the subject.

RITUAL—Ritual is a tool that helps human beings enjoy life. Ritual makes experiences special. We have rituals around marriage and death, but how about rituals for our own developing sexuality? In some cultures, there are puberty rituals that can be very empowering for young people. Developing rituals for yourself around your body and sexual expression, pleasure, sex, and other parts of your sexuality is a very helpful way to bring more meaning and honor to your sexual journey. There are more details about ritual in chapter 7.

HEALING WORK—Most people have some healing to do around their sexuality. How we do our healing looks different for everyone. It can be some type of therapy, energetic healing work like Reiki, bodywork, shamanistic ritual, women’s circles, workshops, or being guided by any number of gifted practitioners who can help you to heal physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

LIFE EXPERIENCE—Exposing yourself to new sexual ideas or ways of being and trying new things expands your sexuality. Not everything is right for everyone, but there are new experiences that may well open and expand you at your core.

SELF-INTIMACY—This means to know who you really are, how to tap into your own desires or need for boundaries, how to be with yourself, and how to feel at home. Your self-possession reverberates outward to others. True self-intimacy is a deep self-love and comfort in being you, and being with you. That is a great gift in any relationship. Developing your self-intimacy is vital for this journey.

COMMIT TO A SEXUALLY EMPOWERED LIFE

When I talk to people interested in working with me as a coach or participating in one of my educational programs, I often ask, “Are you committed to working on this?” Commitment is such a big part of the equation; it determines who really empowers themselves and who continues to stay exactly where they are, having the same conversations, the same pain, the same bad relationships, the same frustrations.

Ask yourself, “Am I committed?” How will you push yourself when it gets challenging or when you have to face the parts you’ve avoided? Because these moments of reckoning are a normal and important part of the process.

Get Clear on Your Commitment to Yourself

Before you go any further, visualize who you want to be as a sexual being. I invite you to download my guided visualization on becoming your sexually empowered self. You can find it in the Woman on Fire online portal at womanonfirethebook.com.

LISTEN TO THE VISUALIZATION AND GET AN IMAGE FOR YOURSELF

What does it feel like to step into your sexual power? How do you walk in the world, express yourself with lovers, experience your body and pleasure? What do you want from this journey? What will it look like and feel like when you have it? How will you know you have it? What are you committed to?

TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO FIRST SEE IT IN YOUR MIND’S EYE, AND THEN WRITE IT ALL DOWN

Make a list, or draw pictures, write a story, or even make a collage. Whatever works best for you. It might simply be the top five things you want to focus on creating and developing. Keep this image, list, story, description, or collage where you can see it to remind yourself of what you are working to create as you read this book.

This is a journey, and there will be times when you’ll need reminders about why you started on this journey to begin with. Your commitment is the most powerful reminder you have. Your image and ideas of what is possible will evolve throughout your process. This is a starting point meant to inspire you and to act as a reminder if you find yourself feeling muddled.

As you begin, allow yourself to want. Stop pretending about the things you really do know. Dream the seemingly impossible dream and live full-out now. There is no other time but now. Your path to a place of true sexual empowerment (which is also creative empowerment and life empowerment) is one you cannot ignore or avoid. You know sexuality is important and valuable. You know there is work to be done and things to be examined. You know there is space to be made and passion to be lived. You know you have a personal power to claim. You know there is a fire that burns inside of you.

Once you know, there is no going back to not knowing.

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CORE ENERGY MODEL OF SEXUALITY

THE PURE STATE OF PLEASURE

By nature, human beings are fully in their bodies in infancy—in a state of natural joy. Ever seen an infant flirt? They smile, giggle, look away, look back, giggle more, flap their arms. They engage in joyful flirtation with the world. Unadulterated glee. It’s pure. It’s beautiful.

For many of us, that ability doesn’t last long. Soon enough we hear: “Why are you laughing?” “Don’t touch me!” “Don’t touch yourself!” “Stop playing!” “You think you’re so cute!”

All creation holds a kernel of pleasure and joy in it. Conception comes in a variety of ways. No matter the how, within that tiny cellular creation is the joy of life. We start in a combustion of cells and energy that grows and we come into this world open and ready to be all we are meant to be here as human beings.

Sexuality is the nucleus of all life. Before we have any physical form, our humbly magnificent inception emerges from an energetic desire for life. Our very being desires birth, love, and connection. It wants to thrive and to live. This erotic impulse that creates us all—even before conception—gives us a preformed desire for more life. That core erotic impulse is the nucleus of who we are from the very beginning. Within the melding of those two nascent cells that birth us are the requisite components of creation and connection. What is more powerful than that? What is more sexual than that?

The universe gave us this well of energy so that we could fully live and love all of who we are as human beings. It gave us a body so that we had a place to hold this energy and a vehicle for exaltation and pleasure. We would not have been given such a wondrous capacity to feel pleasure through our senses and our body if we were not meant to experience it. Our sexuality is our spirituality in physical form. Stepping into true sexual power is part of the spiritual journey.

SEXUAL AGENCY IN A SEX-NEGATIVE WORLD

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Woman on Fire"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Amy Jo Goddard.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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