What’s the purpose of pleasure when life is hard. Like really hard. Like “I’m on my last $100 and I have $2400 worth of bills due tomorrow” hard.
It’s in these moments when pleasure feels fancy and only for those women who have fancy businesses or partners with tons of money and have the safety and space to create pleasure.
Or the women who look like supermodels or real-life pin-ups.
Not for an ordinary woman like me. Not for women who are struggling in real time.
I used to fill my life with earning, striving, working hard to get somewhere, and stress-eating. I bear the scars of burnout, of debt, of chasing a million shiny things and catching nothing but ashes.
Recently I’ve realized there is no place to go. There is no destination to get to. I’ve been chasing a myth and fantasy created by patriarchal white supremacist culture to sell things that no one necessarily needs but somehow still deeply wants. It’s been rough to embrace this truth.
Even someday having a fancy car, a business that provides generational wealth and brings me millions, and all the suitors, something would still gnaw at me and eventually take over my thoughts and feelings.
This I consider to be the overwhelming hopelessness. The pit in my stomach, the lingering doubt, the heaviness in my limbs and mind. The hopelessness contains wisdom that speaks to the dangers of consumerism, the loneliness of my inner child, and the hope of finding a way home to myself, to others.
But home doesn’t look like it does on the movies.
Real home is gritty. Scary sometimes even.
I talk about creating a place for all parts of us to come and sit. I imagine a table in the middle of my heart. But those unruly parts are not well-behaved. The table is messy. Things go unresolved at times. Food is thrown, arguments are rife, insults are heaved.
There is order, yes. But there is no perfection, or hierarchy, or destination.
So where does pleasure fit in here?
Pleasure is what makes life worth living.
Pleasure spans across love, spirituality, sensuality, sexuality, expression. Pleasure supports our nervous systems and gives us reasons to continue to play throughout our lives.
Pleasure is the prescription I give to clients healing from trauma, grief, depression.
Pleasure is the prescription I give to myself at the end of hard days and never-ending weeks.
Pleasure can be free and there are numerous ways to access it.
I.e. Through the senses, through the connection with others, physical touch, orgasms, play, enjoyable activities, spiritual practice, nourishment and many many more ways.
In the book Pleasure Zone, Dr. Stella Resnick recommends cultivating pleasure across eight aspects- timelessness, pain relief, play and humor, mental, emotional, sensual, sexual, and spiritual. In this way, we won’t be dependent or addicted to one element/aspect of pleasure that ceases to be pleasurable and acts as a coping mechanism and way of avoiding pain. (I’ll go into more detail about these in a future post!)
Pleasure becomes accessible when I look to it as an act for this moment. As a way of honoring where I am now and where I might go in the future and because it’s my birthright and its my now. Pleasure is my reality and yours too.
I deserve pleasure now. You deserve pleasure now, not only when everything is perfect and in order.
What holds you back from experiencing pleasure now?
What reasons do you give yourself for delaying pleasure?
What is one way you can embrace more pleasure now?