Sexual Healing

It is time to reclaim my sexuality. It has been orphaned for far too long, floating around, untethered and unavailable. Such a big chunk of who I am - so much color and light and warmth and creativity - has been circling around me looking for a place to land.

Sexual energy is the creative force - the generative force - behind all things. And whatever possibility lies within has been hidden from me because I have ignored its existence, completely rejecting even the thought of it. Whenever, wherever it has appeared in my life, it has seemed to be a cyclone, immense in proportion, potentially swallowing up everything in some inevitable cataclysmic disaster. Melodramatic perhaps, but truly my sense of it. I have developed amazing finesse at deflecting anything sexual whether in the abstract, the casual or (especially) the deeply personal.

I would like to say that I have spiritualized my own sexuality, but I haven't. I have simply abandoned it, rejecting it and especially rejecting my body in so far as it being a vehicle for sexual attention or expression. And all the stuff that got cut-off, locked-out and ignored in the process has suddenly shown up and is demanding attention.

Very early on I was happy to simply let go of the notion of myself connected with or interested in sex in any way. It wasn't some noble sacrifice - it was just the easier choice. Most folks think of celibacy as a discipline beyond their capacity. For me, it just simplified relationships in the exact way I needed simplicity. And I love that simplicity; I don't know that I'll ever want to abandon its beauty and ease, and all its wonderful gifts. It still offers me a sense of safety and protection that I treasure, and opportunities for meaning in relationship so much richer and deeper than sex can offer.

But I know now that I want all of who I am residing in one place, where I can explore and own every piece of myself. Whatever I do with my sexuality, whatever choices I want to make, cannot be made until I reclaim myself. I can't make choices about what isn't mine. So making choices requires healing, healing requires wholeness, and wholeness requires belonging - of every part of me...what I like and don't, what I admit and won't, what's safe and scary, what I accept and reject. And that seems to be the overriding requirement at the moment...healing.

Sexual healing too, I guess. Ironically. Sexual healing of one who practices celibacy. Now that's some great irony!