Let's talk about sex baby...In a fun, informative, and empowering way
Photo by Diana Simumpande on Unsplash
The summer temperatures keep rising and it’s getting hot in here! Heat can spark our senses, especially the sexual senses. Sexual communication and empowerment have many different meanings, and sex itself can sometimes be an awkward and or triggering topic depending on someone’s past experiences. Our sexual preferences and how we communicate our sexual desires can change as we evolve through life experiences and relationships. For our next held event, we are partnering with Jennifer Wiessner, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Sex Therapist. Jennifer will help demystify the cultural reasons why we struggle to express our sexual desires and discuss methods to overcome those barriers, including past trauma, to become better communicators. We chatted with Jennifer below and asked her a few questions on the topics you will hear more about at our July 25th event. To register for the event, click here.
Can you tell us a bit about your journey to becoming a certified sex therapist?
JW: After becoming pregnant with my second son unexpectedly and opening a private practice with another mom where we both worked with adolescents and couples, I attended a training with a colleague without inquiring about the content. I love a good training and being social! It turned out to be with a renowned sex therapist out of MA who was educated about her book, where she explored the intersection of spirituality and sexuality. In my upbringing, these two things never shared the same space! I was mesmerized and was having strange body sensations throughout the training. Although I have a chronic illness, these felt much different. After lunch, an older gentleman approached me, and we started chatting. I was very excited about what I was learning, and he informed me that he was the only certified sex therapist in Maine. I told him before today I did not know what a sex therapist was. In this epiphanic moment, he said, "I am 67 years old, and one day I will retire, and all that I have learned will go with me. How about you take this over from me.” WHAT? Without a thought (to this day, I am still amazed), I stretched out my hand and shook his. To this day, I wonder where that courage came from other than this being my mission and purpose on this planet, which I now know to be so deeply true. That weekend, I began my journey and was in Cambridge, MA, at that renowned sex therapist’s home with other sex therapists, stepping into the scary unknown. Almost four years later, I learned, mentored, and supervised that gentleman I met that day in 2009; in 2012, I became the only female certified sex therapist in Maine. There is nothing else I could hope for in a calling since this is most certainly not a job but my purpose for my time here.
What does sexual empowerment mean to you? Could you provide a few steps that can help a person become more sexually empowered in their life?
JW: Sexual empowerment, to me, is an integration of one's sexual self as part of one's humanity, to feel at ease in one's sexual self, and having the knowledge, skills, and awareness to make healthy decisions about the body without fearing the judgment of others. It’s being able to love our bodies for their mysteries, unique qualities, and frailties and, if we choose, to be able to share our sexuality with others without shame.
A few steps to move towards sexual health and embodiment could be:
Seek medically accurate, shame-free sexuality information that fits with who you are. Most of us have little to no healthy sexual information (or shameful messages!) and have struggled with the effects of that. Allow yourself some grace to be a learner regardless of age. LEARN, learn from books like Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski, The Sexual Healing Journey by Wendy Maltz, and Sex, God and the Conservative Church by Tina Sellers for those who have lived with religious shame.
Acknowledge that you are a sexual being. We all are; from womb to tomb, the level does not matter. One person’s fire is another person’s ember. There is no shame in acknowledging all of who you are and all of that magic within you.
Realize that energy is energy. We are made up of energy, and it isn’t separated out. So creative energy and sexual energy can occupy the same space and feed each other. Use your creative energy to boost your sexual energy and vice versa. Sexual empowerment is how we cultivate our energy and use it for life-filling pleasure, love, and body joy. Seeking this from within and cultivating what you may have been taught is “bad” or not what women do, but it is self-love and moves us towards greater self-actualization by fully realizing all of our inner potential.
Shame is like pine pitch. We wash our hands, and you can still feel the sticky residue. Sexual shame is similar. Work on your shame by talking about it with someone you trust or in therapy. Shame is an intense, painful feeling of being unlovable, and that feeling, if unresolved, can remain sticky forever and impede things that could bring us joy, pleasure, or abundance. This happens often in our sexuality and we declare ourselves as “bad” or “flawed”. Shame is not healthy and can lead us to never fully appreciate the joy, potential, and connection of our sexuality. Knowing our shame can help us to conquer it. Always remember, we are not born with shame; it is taught, and no one “deserves” shame. Note the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is focused on behavior (not on self) and can help us look at our behavior and change it.
When we fully honor all the parts of who we are, especially our sexuality, we can love ourselves, creating a greater likelihood that we attract relationships that honor all of who we are, allowing us to live a more sexuality-embodied and intentional life.
Each generation seems to have different sexual communication techniques (how my parents talked about sex is different than I do, and how they explained sex to me - if they even did! - is different than how I want to approach the topic with my children) - have you seen any generation to have better skills on the subject and any predictions on how our sexual communication behaviors will evolve?
JW: First, I am an optimist, so my response will reflect that. I tend to see the critical work that goes on in so many pockets of our society as sex-positive progress, even amongst some of the most sex-negative cultural shifts we are experiencing. For example, over 5,200 adults have attended my Raising Sexually Healthy Children workshops in Maine since 2012. Every person I educate has the potential to positively impact their children and other adults these adults come in contact with. From my perspective, the potential is limitless. For those who attend the held event on July 25th with me, there is the potential to shift the mindsets of attendees that can further bring sexuality out of the dark, shameful corner our society relegates it to. Youth today are expressing themselves more in their identities and expression in the light of day, and in my opinion, we see healthy sexuality and expression reflected in persons of notoriety around the world standing up for who they are. This reflection can empower those who have felt unseen and oppressed. We also have many sexual justice organizations advocating for adults and youth more than before. We have so far to go, but that does not mean we overlook the great strides we are making. For me, in Maine, I feel I am making a difference, and I hope to continue to do so alongside so many other organizations and professionals to move toward equity, understanding, and celebration of our bodies and the reflections they put out into the world.
IT’S THE (not so) LITTLE THINGS
Tenaya and Mare share their sexual experiences and journeys. We hope our community finds the July 25th event and entries below helpful in taking the first step or recommitting to becoming more sexually empowered.
Tenaya—I’ve never put pen to paper about sex before, nor have I shared my young adulthood sexual experiences with an audience. But writing this and developing content for the July 25th event with Jennifer and Mare has been unexpectedly liberating.
As a young woman, I was highly sexualized and harassed—experiences that deeply shaped how I viewed myself and connected sexually. In high school, I was stalked by a man a few years older who was attending a local college. We had never spoken a word, but after seeing me at a holiday party my sophomore year, I became one of his targets. It started with him driving past my house daily, harassing my friends for information about me, and even calling my school administrators to try to get me out of class. Eventually, the situation escalated to the point where the local police and my high school principal devised a stakeout. I was instructed to sit in the parking lot, waiting for him to come for me, while officers and school security hid nearby. That day, he never showed—but his stalking continued on and off for two more years. It only ended when he took his own life.
In college, an ex-boyfriend who had graduated would break into my dorm room and even email my advisor, seeking advice on how to rekindle our relationship. The Dean of Students and campus security had to step in. There were countless other moments—the creepy friend of my uncle who hit on me at a family party and asked to visit me at school, the family friend in his 50s who made a pass at me in my 20s, the ad executive at work who whistled when I walked past the creative department. It was confusing, unsettling, and, yes, traumatizing. I felt exposed and unprotected, like I had somehow done something to invite the attention. Years later, when I was living in New York City and pregnant with my first child—a daughter—I went to a shaman, desperate to shed the weight of those experiences. I wanted us both to be free, unshackled by the past.
Until I met my husband, sex for me was more focused on my sexual partner’s needs than my own, and I never felt like I could be vulnerable enough to connect deeply with someone. I had built an impenetrable wall that only started to come down after years of therapy. It was in those therapy sessions that I started to process the unsought advances and unfulfilling sexual experiences so I could be more present, emotionally available, and free to communicate my needs and desires. For me, sexual communication and empowerment will always be a journey and one that I’m committed to for me, my husband, and my daughters.
Mare - I don’t think I’ve ever really explored my sexual experiences and that journey over the years. I guess there’s a time for everything! I am a little apprehensive about the overshare, but. here. we. go.
Growing up in an Irish Catholic household sex was rarely discussed and if it was brought up there was a lot of whispering, and oh, heaven forbid it was shown in a movie, I was immediately told to leave the room. I have vivid memories of humping pillows as a child and being told that was wrong to do to my body. Over the years, that resulted in a lot of shame. It was also a time of being hugged by sometimes creepy uncles and priests and being told it was impolite not to hug them back. Into my adolescent years, my parents discussed puberty with me but never really got into the sex talk. I should add that I don’t fault them for this. They were older parents (my mom had me at 46 which was unheard of that time) and were part a different generation of learnings on the subject.
High school Mare (on the left).
Fast forward to high school, and I wouldn’t say there was a lot of interest in this lanky-legged-Ensure-chugging athlete. I was also intertwined in a Will & Grace-ish relationship that got a bit complicated, and now, looking back, I can see where my self-esteem started to tank due to a couple of less-than-supportive coaches. What a time to be alive! Once I moved to NYC for college, my sexual curiosity began to peak, as did my alcohol intake to often numb any insecurities I had around my body and lack of sexual experiences. My virginity was lost to a random band member I met at Pianos on the LES. That opened the floodgates to a promiscuous decade for me. My 20s were filled with several one-night stands that sometimes led to longer-term relationships that I would eventually sabotage somehow. In my late 20s, I started more serious dating but nothing long-term - I was having fun, though! At 30, I met my husband, Mike. I came into that relationship with a bit of guilt for my sexual behaviors in my 20s (including more sexual partners than him). This was something created by me, not him, and perhaps a few comments I had heard over the years. I had looked back on my early 20s as a bit of a mess - jumping from job to job, boy to boy, eating disorder to eating disorder, and even though by the time I was 30, things began to calm down, I still felt guilty for being that “mess.” It took some time and therapy to work through. Through my 30s and being in a more serious relationship with my now husband, I began to feel more secure in my sexuality. Fast forward to marriage and a couple of kids later, my sexual desires and how those are communicated have changed. Sometimes, actually, most times, they need to be given a bit more attention than they get these days, and that’s okay! Life is busy, sometimes watching The Bear is more appealing, my body feels different post kiddos and in my 40s, but I think just acknowledging that and communicating it to my partner and myself helps! Comparison is the thief of joy (and we know from Inside Out 2 we need to hold onto Joy!), so it’s not helpful to overthink anyone else’s sex life. I believe that it does take work, though, and maybe trying new things. One thing I’ve never embraced - toys! So this is the decade I give toys a whirl - why not? A good friend recently recommended Sex with Emily. Her Instagram is a great follow, and I’ve dove into a couple of her podcasts and products. While the toys are fun, doing the work of just being open to myself and honoring my own sexual journey is a good start for me. I hope working through this myself helps create a more open and positive dialogue about sexuality for my girls.