I've been listening to a beautiful song called "Ascent" by Ludovico Einaudi. This piece of music is having me all in my feels. And it's reminding me of a time when I looked at myself in the mirror naked for the first time. Like really looked at myself. I was in high school at the time, and while I was someone who was very slow to develop physically, my body was definitely undergoing many changes.
That day was the first experience of smoking weed out of a bong. My friend was dropping me off at my house and encouraged me to try it before I went inside. I figured, why not? I was definitely open to going back to that giddy and creative place I went to when I got high for the first time with a joint. So he lit it for me, and told me when to start sucking in the air once he pulled the bowl out of the stem. My lungs died that day, but came back to life after a few minutes of coughing and barely being able to breath. "Oh shit," he laughs. "You're going to get stoned as fuck."
From an early age, I found ways to create a sense of home inside myself with all the chaos and violence inside my physical home. So when I got home from school everyday, I would take my clothes off, lay on the floor of my bedroom and stare at the ceiling for hours with piano music playing in the background, filling all of my senses. I always felt so safe and comfortable doing this.
As I stretched out on my bedroom floor, I started feeling the effects of the marijuana. I started "hearing" each piano note in different parts of my body, as if every area of my body that the music note touched turned into warm and thick honey. With every inbreath and outbreath, I felt as if I was an ocean wave that kept on flowing into and around itself.
I began to cry. My hands ran all over my skin, as a profound sense of gratitude settled in my body. I could literally feel how every cell and organ in my body was there to protect me, to keep me alive. I apologized to my body, for the ways I constantly put myself down for how I physically looked, how ashamed I felt about the scars on my butt from my parent's abuse. Turning over and opening my eyes, I froze when I saw my naked 16-year-old self in the mirror. Tentatively, I scanned my own body. At this point I had already started touching myself. Yet there was always so much shame and guilt around it. Yet in that moment staring at the mirror, high as a kite, I realized that the shame and guilt I felt was less about the fact that I saw masturbating as a "bad thing" and more about the fact that I never actually related to my body in loving and compassionate ways when touching myself. It was always quick and fast to "get it over with." Because to slow it way down and really feel things is a whole different territory of sensing and being. And who am I to feel that good? Who am I to deserve pleasure?
In that moment, I felt a sense of freedom with the realization that it's okay to feel good in a body that's experienced harm and is not physically perfect. And that we can invite our fears in, and tell them that it's not only okay to want pleasure, but that it's safe to do so.
What good is freedom if we don't feel it? Fear wants to cast a really wide blanket over everything, it wants to have us withdraw, protect, and I think that embodiment helps us ask the questions where we didn't think questions were possible.
Recovering the capacity to feel, for me, it's been a kind of thawing, I think, in a lot of ways I was taught that I couldn't feel, it wasn't time to feel, it was inappropriate or dangerous to feel, or honestly impossible to feel everything that I might feel if I opened myself up to it. And so for me, it's been a journey of getting curious about myself, you know, I feel my freest when I can be present.
- Prentis Hemphill on Choosing Belonging
However, over the years, I found it hard to maintain this sense of freedom in my body. In a hypersexual, hypermasculine world, I struggled to find romantic or sexual partners who could help invite this level of safety and vulnerability. My own shame and traumas from my childhood abuse deepened this struggle. So the sexual experiences I had through my early 20s were basically being in service to my male partner, trying to be that "sex kitten" who could orgasm anytime and who would never get sore, not fully knowing how to relax or ask for what I want during sex.
At this point, I don't find this struggle to be dominant or even that present in my life. I've done a lot to heal my past. And the last partner I had is a deeply loving man who created such a beautiful and space for me to be myself over the years we were together. Yet the sexual attraction never fully actualized in our relationship.
Healing our relationship with our bodies, and unlearning damaging social assumptions and constructs on sex and gender... will be a lifelong journey. I'm grateful for the process, and how far I've come.
One of the main things that have helped me further heal was being naked in public. I remember the first time I went to Harbin Hot Springs, a clothing optional space. I was overwhelmingly anxious at the thought of being naked in front of others, and therefore being known and fully seen. The paradox is that I believe each of us deeply long to be known and seen, yet we're also afraid of being known and seen too. Especially since our culture isn't very good at creating safe spaces of belonging, where differences can be celebrated.
Taking my clothes off and walking out to the pools, I felt so exposed that the first few hours, I had my hair rearranged to cover my breasts at all times, with my legs crossed to hide all my private parts. Yet over time, I noticed something interesting starting to happen. Looking around, I saw people's wrinkles. Their skin folds. Their scars, bruises, and spots. No one was sucking in their stomach or posing in sexually suggestive ways. None of the women were eyeing each other critically. None of the men had erections, even in the presence of attractive people. People were just themselves.
Slowly, I began relaxing and letting go of my fear. Eventually, I began to walk around without needing to cover myself or slouch. Then, I felt a big smile emerge on my face. Being naked with others in this way reminded me of how vulnerable we are, in a childlike, playful way. I realized that we're all such lovable creatures of Earth.
The implications of what I experienced had me thinking about how practicing being naked with others in safe settings could really heal body image issues, hypersexuality, trauma, jealousy, competition, toxic masculinity.
We hide behind clothes, we hide behind social "norms" that are comfortable and familiar, yet they oppress and divide us. Not to say that we all need to burn our clothes or that every space is appropriate to abandon mainstream norms, but even just to recognize the way that these constructs only serve an aspect of us, and not our whole selves. I'm reminded of my time in the Holistic Health Studies program at San Francisco State where there were many studies showing higher rates of anxiety and gastric problems in women than men because of the tendency for women to wear tight clothes and pants and feel a need to constantly suck in their stomach to "look good." This would restrict the ability to breathe fully, which would disrupt digestion and keep the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for our fight, flight, or freeze response, activated. I know many women, including my mom, who won't leave the house without garments like Spanx, which push into your skin and belly to make you appear thinner and more shapely. These learned behaviors and countless other cultural, historical examples point to an inherent belief that we are not okay as we are, that we must hide who we are.
I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to look good, but how might we align the desire to look good with what is healthy, whole, and natural? How might we create safe spaces for ourselves and others where our natural, vulnerable selves are loved and celebrated? I'm committing to living a life that serves this way of being in the world... where I am increasingly more comfortable in my own skin. Where I can open up to intimacy and pleasure, and ask for what I want. Where I can relax and soften, and not tighten and contract based on unchecked fears or on behalf of other people's perceptions. Where I can get naked in the right spaces to remind myself of my humanity. Where my lifestyle choices, like what I eat and what I do to exercise and move my body, nourishes my mind, body, and soul.
What does natural mean to you?
Oregon, sometime back in 2018!
