Are you getting the amazing ripple that must happen when You Have Optimal “Self Worth”

It’s an Interconnected Spiral After All… 

As we journey through the dancing lotusworks of the later chapters, you’ll be able to see the sequence of repeating patterns, the consequences of the choices you’ve made, and our shared spiral of life.

There is a process of mastery that happens when using these tools which you will get to practice as you read and write in this book. 

And you will discover that you are even more easily able to dismantle past patterns of victim hood, stuckness, and sorrow that had accumulated from our collective dark years.  I cannot emphasize enough how powerful it is to share your story and be witnessed in it.  

As such, I have designed this book to be a collaborative process, to be used as a complete safety net to collect your own victim story, and set yourself finally free.

There is an energy stream that is imbued into this book as well, that of JoyGasmic Alchemy, and this book and the accompanying online community is designed as a safe container to hold the collective wound that has been created by the failure of the nuclear family, and the swath of children and parents who have been raised in this isolation from culture.   

You will be given space to read, to write, to cry, to share your story, and to practice, the tools that will set you free from the cycles of victim, struggle, overwhelm and stress that currently hold you hostage in your life.

I know the power of these processes.  I am the product of receiving these teachings and sharing them with you.  

I guarantee that if you actually take a dedicated approach to the 6 minutes that are included at the end of special chapters, by the end of the book, you will have set yourself free from all your past conditioning, 

and have stepped even more clearly into your destiny, and the life beyond your wildest dreams.

I cannot emphasize enough how powerful it is to share your story and be witnessed in it.  

When you do this exercise, choose one story you’ve shared (if you haven’t yet, go here and do that first)

Once you’ve decided which story to start with, take a moment and write down a response.

I know that my attachment to my old story had blinded me from many of the spectacular moments that have passed along the way.  The pain of the past holding a cloth over the eyes of each moment, blurring the sunsets, and the sweet cuddles with my son.  Preventing me from seeing them clearly, and stopping me from being in this moment now, in the full bliss that I am capable of.

Being born into to the privileged west, where we are raised in families with the resources to let us believe that we really can do anything, I’ve realized that this comes with it’s own challenge.  First World Problems.  Those problems that live in the space between our ears, that torture us, and keep us from being present in the day, and keep us up at night. In a world where we are supposed to have everything, our cars and houses and high paying jobs have taken us away from something crucial that we don’t even realize we are missing.  

Happiness in THIS moment, and someones to share it with. 

As I began my journey of recovery from the experiences that you are about to read about, I wondered:

What did it all mean? 

What was the purpose of it?

Why had I put myself through such torture?

What had become of my life?
How could I possibly make sense of it all?

I knew I had to share the story, to bring light to the pain, to help other see that they weren’t alone, to help some avoid the mistakes I had made, and to share the powerful tools I had created to heal from my misery.  After all, isn’t that the point of a good story?

So when I sat down to write this book, and asked JoyGasm, “what is the best way to serve” I knew then that the intention for this book is to create the most powerful tool of transformation for the women and men who read it.  To offer you the gift that this experience created for me, without you having to go through all the shit I did.  To tell you my story, and to let it help you understand yours, act as an opening catalyst to help you access the emotions you’ve locked away about the experiences we’ve shared.  To help you see and feel those emotions, to give you the tools to process it, the community to support you, and by the end of the book for you to have the magic of The JoyGasmic Path at your fingertips.  

I will ask you to walk with us 
as together we go through the fire of shit that were our worst, 

While we do that, I’d encourage you engaged with the online community.  There, you’ll find written outlines of the tools, play along videos, and printable copies of the worksheets and mandalas so you can create your own daily practices.  

I said I’d go first, so I’ll go first *gulp*

I mean um, Hi! I’m Elena, your author.  Since we’re just meeting for the first time, and this is a super vulnerable process I wanted to open the doorway for healing by sharing this “first time story” because it’s sweet and sour, and makes you think and sets a good mood for revealing ourselves. 

Just clarifying that this is not my worst #meToo, or the worst thing that ever happened to me sexually, (if you want you can read about that day later in the book, but for now, I thought I would open with something that I feel carries the essence of the wound we all cary. 

If you haven’t already, you can dive right in and share any story you want to be heard, which could be your deepest most intense story right away, or just something small that still sits badly in your memory.

In fact, I may encourage to you to share all the stories that your remember that carry the shadow of rape, because when we heal we get out what we put in x10, and you want to be 100% healed by the end of this experience!

I know not every first time is perfect…

So it’s Thanksgiving and we’ve been dating for eight months now, and it’s been full of joyful exploration, sensual play and delight. 

We’d been busy getting our hands and mouths all over each other, trying everything our 15 year old selves could think of in the bedroom in the basement, we decided to jump deeper into the fires of passion, and give our virginity to each other.  

We have already spent a month or more discussing if we felt ready, what we wanted for the experience, how we would practice safe sex, and what we would do if the unthinkable happened and I got pregnant.  It was one of the most conscious and informed decisions I had ever made.  I knew I wanted to, I was ready, and that I was excited to explore the depths of pleasure that were possible for us.

We wanted to create a safe space, and planned to have an empty house for our first time.  

Thanksgiving day, his parents were going out of town, so the date was set.   In the morning before they left we went on an adventure to get condoms, 2 busses and a train, to a clinic that offered free supplies to teens.  When we got there, we excitedly put our hand on the handle of the door, and pulled.  Nothing.  Tug again, the door was locked.  The clinic was closed, and we were faced with the unthinkably embarrassing act of having to go buy them from a store.  

We walked across the street to a nearby convenience store.  Muddled our way to the right isle, and made a choice amongst a dizzying array of different packages, sizes and colours of condoms.

We wandered through the store for quite a while with the package in hand.  Embarrassed beyond belief to be going through the checkout with JUST condoms.  “Let’s get skittles too” he said.  “I love skittles” I replied.  We wandered the store a little longer with skittles and condoms in hand, before we managed to find the courage to face the checkout.   With skittles in hand, we were sure that no one would think we had come to the store JUST for CONDOMS. 

An achingly long journey back to his house, we giggled, hugged, and felt the excitement of what we both knew we were about to do.  When we got there, his parents were still at the house, and not running on time. 

“Will they ever leave?” I wondered.   We went downstairs and lay together and read Garfield comics.  There was too much sexual tension aching through the room, for us to consider starting to “play”.   We knew exactly what we were going to do when they left.   When they finally left, it was like a bubble burst, they would be gone until tomorrow afternoon and we now had all the time in the world to enter this new experience together.  

Like most of my memories of sex, the memory of our first time consists more of the before and after, than the actual details of the act itself.

I was as quenchless at fifteen as I am now, and the younger version of my self cried, “More, More, More”, and so we did.  For a whole month and a half I was blissfully enamoured with the act of intercourse.   I had entered a new realm of adulthood, I was blissed beyond bliss.  I couldn’t imagine life could get better than it was.

We went back to that Teen Sexual Health Clinic when it was open, and helped ourselves to handfuls upon handfuls of condoms.  In my mind they were still always called Skittles.  

On one such day, having just returned from the clinic and excited to go celebrate my boyfriends birthday with him “in the best way we knew how”.

Then I lost my wallet. 

Having searched everywhere I could think of, I asked my mom for help finding it.  She listed 15 places I’d already looked and sent me off to re-check.   We eventually found my wallet, and on the drive to the train station the energy in the car was tense, but I couldn’t figure out why.  

Just before I got out of the car, she said “I found your Con-dohms.” then silence. 

I can hear the disapproval in her voice.  My mind raced to my backpack, and a visual of my mom in searching for my wallet, opening the zipper of my backpack, to an overflowing stash of over 100 condoms freshly acquired from the teen clinic.   I can see her face contort in shock, as she realizes that her teenage daughter was having not only sex, but obviously a lot of sex.  I can see her close the pocket, close her mouth, and keep looking for the wallet.   I can suddenly incredibly deeply feel the pain in her heart, and my heart sinks.  I feel I’ve done something terribly wrong, and my inner space is conflicted.  I get out of the car, thank her for the ride, and spend the next hour riding the train to my boyfriends house.   I don’t know what will happen next.

I was shamed, scared, and doubt began to creep in.  Could the decision I had made been wrong somehow? Why did my mother obviously feel so intensely about something that was SO beautiful for me?  Did she still love me?  What was it going to be like at home now? 

These feelings clouded the joy I felt that day in our intimacy.  The seeds of doubt as to the goodness of what I had previously seen as the best decision I’d ever made had been planted.

Three days later I was delivered a sealed envelope from my parents.  In it was a letter saying that they loved me very much, that sex before marriage was a sin, and they did not condone my behaviour.  The letter reeked of pain, sexual shame, powerlessness over my behaviour, guilt at being bad parents, and the culture of the Mennonite religion we had all be raised in.  I cried and was furious, I thought they were stupid, I knew that I had made my own right decision, and was being told it was wrong.  They said they loved me, but the disappointment and disapproval over arched all of it.  I was no longer allowed to have my boyfriend over at the house unsupervised.

A few days later the four of us had an incredibly awkward and painful conversation about it.  It was the first time I remember seeing my mother break her iron face of non-emotion and cry.  Even at 16 I thought the ideas of marriage and sin and sex were out modeled and caused a lot of pain for people.  I had seen my parents struggle with each other for years already and had accepted in my heart that if they wanted to get divorced it would be sad, but probably good for everyone.  

I was steadfast that I was not changing my ways, but the poisonous seeds of disapproval had begun to take root.  My teenage rebellion had a focal point now. 

The already sometimes distant relationship with my mom became bleak.  I had always been close with my dad, and felt I could talk to him about anything.  In a late night conversation about what was going on, he shared that he personally felt it was important that I feel safe to explore sex, but that as parents they had decided it was more important to provide a unified front.  I was horrified, confused, and madder than a hornet at my mother for corralling not only myself but my dad.  For being shamed in myself by my father, for something he didn’t even really feel was true.

In a later chat with my dad, where he tried to give me his frank version of the birds and the bees, I realized that I knew more about sexuality already at 16 than my dad did at 46.  He revealed that my mom had been absent in intimacy for years, and that he was incredibly frustrated with it.  I felt pity for him.  Even stronger was the anger towards my mother for depriving him of the beauty that was love and physical intimacy.  I vowed in that moment to never be her.  To never leave a partner wanting more of me, to never create the dynamic of love but no sex, and to never be a prude in bed.  At the time I had no idea the far reaching implications of this vow, and how it would shape my sexuality and my relationships as an adult. 

From then on the guilt of my parents was always with me when I had sex.  I gave myself more fully to my intimacy, not wanting to be my mom, and knowing that I could find approval and love with a man between my legs at least.  I avoided their house as much as I could considering I lived there, going straight from school to my boyfriends house and returning home just before bedtime. 

After our awkward letter moment, there was no more discussion of it.  Silence on the topic was a bandaid solution, but every time I passed my mom in the house the underlying tension of “You’re no good, you’re a sinner.” permeated every moment I spent within their walls. 

Living between the disapproval of parents and my new selfless sexual giving in sexuality without regard for my own desires and needs eventually created an end to the relationship.  

I remember vividly the moment that would haunt me for years.   Laying on my back, legs spread wide, fully in my mind, thinking “I’m not having fun at all, and I’m not going to say anything.”   

I know it’s over.  
Silence and shame have poisoned 
what was once been beautiful. 

Have you shared yet? Click Here to share YOUR Story

Already Shared? Simply turn the page, and we’ll journey onwards together.

But Did I even Remember it Right?

After writing my “virginity letter of doom” story out, I figured I should fact check and see what my dad remembers of the story.

So nearly 15 years later he and I sat down to talk openly and honestly about this incident.

Part way through the conversation he says “oh that letter, I bet I still have that” and goes clicking through his folders to find it.

  I wait with baited breath, 

…and he comes back to our conversation.

“I think I found the letter, but it’s not quite how you remember.”

My impatient self just wants to know what this document that has defined my adult sex life with misery actually says. I want my hands on a copy of that letter!

“What do you mean you think you found it? Shouldn’t it be obvious?”

“Are you ready to hear it?” He asks?

“Yes!” I can barely contain myself, I’m excited, and terrified.

He reads the letter aloud.

I remember parts of it, but for the most part, it’s a foreign document. I listen to the words, I can hear that they were obviously crafted with care, it speaks volumes of their love and consideration for me as a teenage crazy creature.

It also speaks deeply to a sexuality awash in Mennonite upbringing and I can feel the moments of shame and blame that hurt me so much as a teen. As he reads it to me tears begin to stream down my face. They express their concerns, they ask me to talk to them, and they raise quite a few good points about relationships and sex and exploring intimacy.

This is a profound moment in my life to have finally been able to hear this letter. It throws some really powerful insights into my awareness.

First is that, the idea that they told me I was a sinner was a story in my mind.

My entire perception of everything they wrote, had been filtered through the energy of everything that I had seen them demonstrate in relationship, everything I’d heard in church, everything I’d seen in media. All of that took the carefully worded letter, and turned into the fateful words: “You decided wrong, you’re a sinner, that makes you bad, so we don’t love you anymore.”

In this moment it is incredibly clear, how the “story of my life” is really “the meaning I’ve given moments in my life” that letter, and my memory of it were like day and night, and yet at 15 I didn’t have the communication skills that I now do, and so I saw a loving call to conversation as a source of resentment that would drive a spike between us lasting well over a decade.

I had used that moment of “I made my best decision, and my parents shat on it” as an excuse:

• for not trusting my decisions,
• as the reason I couldn’t follow through with things,
• the reason I struggled to achieve orgasm for years,
• the reason that I had put myself into a shitty abusive relationship,
• and as the reason that I held so much resentment towards my mother for years and years.

None of this is true. I can see clearly in this moment that it is all based on my response to a letter.

So if I was wrong about that, what else have I turned from a molehill into a mountain?

It suddenly becomes clear to me that I’ve been living in a story, a big old story about how a white middle class girl was supposed to grow up and be in the world, how she fucked it all up, made bad decisions, and ended up with a rough gig as a single mom with a struggling business.

It’s not my fault (or yours), we all do it. humans are story telling machines, it’s one of the things we do best. We all tell the story of our life, over and over again. The cells that make up our bodies are in fact no more than 3 days old. It is our beliefs that hold it all together, this thing that we call US.

On top of that there is no past or future, only the present moment, which contains everything, and nothing, and we’ve decided to put each NOW on a string so we can make some sense of it.

Life is made of these small moments every day, and then there are these moments of impact, moments that change course of our lives forever.

Sometimes it’s painful, sometimes it’s beautiful. But we never forget them. With the commitment to grow from these experiences we can become better in ways we could never have imagined.

I realize that I had been doing a bang up job of telling the story that I’m a “struggling single mother, recovering from being a victim of an abusive alcoholic relationship” I’ve been telling that story for 3 years, and another 4 before that while I was in it.

So I guess I double raped my life?With the story of what had happened way back when? *OUCH*

And now I’ll get to learn to love myself enough to forgive myself, and the guy I used to do it to me. 

How’s that for 10D wave Feminism. Fuck.

If you feel I’m being a little flippant about Rape I want to apologize from all of us to you, just you. I don’t mean to be rude, I just want to make it really painfully obvious that we make moments of our life have 100x more impact than they maybe need to have. (Not that they aren’t horrible, just that we can transform after it happens)

I’m sorry, whatever happened to you, was not good.  And you deserve better.  We love you, we won’t hurt each other any longer, it’s love time now.

But… The Sex Could Have Been So Much Worse.

Clearly if you read my first time “doing the dirty” was pretty fine, but I still ended up in some pretty horrific cycles of abuse later in life. 

So when I thought about starting to write this book, I felt so fake and so phoney.  Who was I to write about Rape? 

I knew I had not experienced anything horrific like the stories that came in whispers from the deep panting walls of the breath work classes I attended, and the howls and sobs and stories I heard in those sacred chambers of truth.  So what’s the big deal?

There are so many women who’s first penetration is a rape, at a time before they remember.  So many men who feel ashamed and dejected about their macerated circumsized penis’s.  

I had neither of these stories, and so who was I to talk about rape?

Why was this a fascination of mine? 

Was I raped and I didn’t remember?

I didn’t think so, but as my mind wove through memories, seeking for gaps or black holes, places where something unthinkable might live. 

As I asked myself this question, I thought about how I had gritted and bared my last name through Junior High, how the boys screamed “Harder” “Harder” “Harder” in the hallways, or how the girls in elementary started a rumour that I had AIDS, when I didn’t even know what that was. Why was it that my response to my parents letter was to internalize trauma? Where did that come from in the first place?

I was deeply affected by our cultures sex trauma well before I ever knew what sex was. 

Then I got more honest and I thought about my mid 20’s where I repeatedly felt raped by both myself with my boyfriends for months with our sex (that I often initiated) because I was so desperate to find his love through his cock. Then there was that time where got the call and I took that job, and that other time…

What about the art I had done as a teen, seeking in the internet for erotic pictures, tracing and re-tracing, overlaying the words “this is not an invitation to rape me” .. over and over again in these tiny words, scrolling the page. 

I came across dozens of other moments from my life that smelled of rape.  

Moments where I wasn’t wet enough, moments where I didn’t want to, but sucked his cock instead or later “fucked and found a way to make the best of it”.  So many moments where my body had been violated (by my own admission and accord) in ways that left streaks of sorrow and scorn on my soul. 

I think that it is moments like these that strike the true cord of the voice of this book, because these moments are all to frequent for women of all ages, and for young women these turn into distrust of self and body, which we know leads to a whole realm of issues, including obesity, anorexia, depression, anxiety, and more serious illnesses later in life.  

We harm our bodies
because we don’t 
yet know how
to love ourselves. 

I had no idea how to love myself.  

Most people don’t.

Truly because in an era where #MeToo has women’s voices sounding from the walls, and men’s rights speaking about the horrific amount of coach/teen sexual abuse happens, I there must be a time to touch on something more covert.  Something that sits below the surface of the issue, not the bandaid solution, but something that warms right at the heart of the wound.  

Because while millions of women voices are sounding, moaning, grasping, churning, and yearning, their voices are echoing from empty walls, millions more suffer every night in silence, not asking for what they truly want and deserve.

While millions of men unconsciously mourn the loss of the ends of their dicks, while they jerk off to imaginary chicks. Are you kidding me?  Empowered US is what they need, and we need to seek the men who can meet us and know us deeply and hold us as we blossom.  If he knew how exquisite it would feel, he would ask her sooner, she would ask him sooner, if he could just find the courage to ask for her body to be the one that came first.

I mean.  Really I just picked up my parents sex shame, and made it my own for a decade or so before I decided to lay it down and create a new story for myself.  

Have you shared yet? Click Here to share YOUR Story

Already Shared? Simply turn the page, and we’ll journey onwards together.