STARFISH

sensuality, female arousal, pleasure, love & relationships, stigma, sexuality, birth right

“A starfish, a celestial being of the deep, adorned with five radiant arms reaching like fingers towards the heavens, embodies the very essence of renewal and rebirth, its body a living constellation capable of regenerating lost limbs, a shimmering testament to the ocean's boundless magic, each tiny suction cup a whispered promise of resilience against the tides of change.”

To be a woman is to perform.

It was in the middle of the cafeteria of my junior year in high school when I first heard, “it sucked man, she was a total starfish.”. My buffalo chicken wrap stopped mid way down my throat because I forgot to chew as I was ease-dropping on the boys across the table from me. In classic nosy-me-fashion & with a mouth full of chicken I blurted, “what does that mean?”. They rolled their eyes & scoffed, “it means she just fucking lays there during sex, like a starfish. She doesn’t do shit.”. Sadness washed over me for the girl who was most likely nervous in the act & now spoken of so ungraciously. Young & naive, I was petrified that a boy could think the same of me. Or even worse, he maybe has said it about me before. I tried to recall every romantic encounter I had experienced up until that point trying to rack my brain for any recollection of so-called “romantic laziness & incompetence”. The term maintained expeditious momentum & by the time I reached college; Starfish, was a slandered star. With the defamatory nickname haunting the back of my brain, every sexual encounter as a young adult downgraded from what should have been a mutual exchange of humanness to an audition to the “world’s greatest show”. Constantly trying to achieve the woah’s, OoOo’s, & ahhh’s; it had never dawned on me that this act was also for my own pleasure. If I left an exchange with compliments fawning over my performance, that was my pleasure… that was my accomplishment. “Thank god I am not a starfish!”. I was 20 years old when I experienced my first orgasm, & I had been sexually active for 7 years prior to. That means for SEVEN years, I was cultivating a one-sided experience through the use of my magical voodoo clam. The portal to my essence; to my spirit, was being wielded for someone else.

Not being able to shake the pleasure out of my body, I was ravenous. In search of that & more, I needed to see how much pleasure was achievable. It was a game I played with myself on how much magic I could create. So I spent the next 7 years of my 20’s exploring that power, & researching everything I could on the subject matter. With guidance from brilliant minds such as; Regina Thomashauer’s. Her novel; my bible, “Pussy: A Reclamation” altered my brain chemistry. She dives into orgasms lasting hours, pleasure breaking the codes of the universe. I knew there was more on this out there & that I could find it for myself. I awakened the philosophy that pleasure is my birth right. That I am not existing to perform yet to awaken, unlock, & ignite. That I am the prize, I hold the power, & I can achieve that power as many times as I want to. With this new sorcery added to my arsenal, my performances turned into education for self & each party involved. I felt as though the only way I could reach my completion was when I felt as though I was not surrendering whatsoever, but in full control. Which that in itself, is immensely powerful but not the sentiment at hand. I knew that was also a power trip & a dance I didn’t want to continue. “Who am I in this when I am NOT in control?”. It eventually morphed into forms of celibacy in desire to create only this magic with a soul deserving of it. Cue in, my lovely husband.

What was initially a meteor of instantaneous passion, our connection continued to soar & break through multidimensional realms as our love blossomed. As our union grew deeper & as my body surrendered into peace & safety, I began to recognize this string connecting my most soul shattering moments in the sheets...

I was STAR-FISHING.

It was a cool winter evening in Florida, & I was laying in the ecstasy after what was essentially; our spirits transcending quantum realms, projecting into the past & future, & downloading the codes to each other’s souls. Left gawking at one another in recognition & disbelief at what had just transpired; we took a moment to puff-puff-pass & once our bodies returned to Earth, we debriefed. We love a post transcendental sex debrief. In its simplest form, what we discovered is that when we are both COMPLETELY surrendered, open in mind & body; we achieve this state. There is not a single ounce of performance. There isn’t a drop of insecurity, questioning, wavering, or selfishness. It sounds & appears straight forward, but if we are disgustingly honest with ourselves… it is almost impossible to execute full surrender to another. We have been conditioned on both ends to perform, judge, criticize, & mock the sacred act of sex. So much so that one of the most majestic sea creatures currently has the worst PR in the animal kingdom. We have strayed away from what sex is meant to be, soul shattering & life giving magic bonded by love. What we experienced prior to our union paled in comparison to what we had just unlocked. Women have been conditioned to fear surrender in the act & feel untrusting to do so due to the uneducated & selfish ideologies of their partners. Only one so deserving of such a thing could access that power, & not take it for granted. We are the alchemist of such & through the fear of performance we have disconnected entirely to its purest form & intention. When we fully surrender & relax our bodies, we are open to receive… everything. When they do the same, the dance begins. The pleasure can exceed your wildest dreams. To be so fucking frank, it feels like you’re on psychedelics… literally tripping. Better than any drug I have ever tried, better than any natural phenomena I have ever witnessed. This goes for not just you below or above, but everything in between. It is switching performance off & primal on. It is releasing shame, fear, judgement, & ulterior motives. It is truly allowing connection to form & transcend the physical to access the emotional/energetic/spiritual.

What is a woman called when she “just lays there” in sex? A starfish.

What does a woman have to be to achieve mind bending, portal opening sex while under her trusting loving partner? A starfish.

With no personal desire to dive into where the term originated from, the why is simple. We as women are continuously stripped of our primal powers. The powers to create immeasurable pleasure, bear children, create life… In almost every area of our existence we’ve been conditioned to act as servants; when we are in fact, The Sorceresses. We are alchemist of love, connection, desire, magic, life, & death. We have been programmed that sex is for the pleasure of another & that our own is an after thought (if at all). We are raised that a well pleasured man is a loyal one, a happy one. Well, a majestically fucked woman is a goddess with a portal of never-ending love & gifts to give. That unity cannot be achieved without her, her pleasure, & without her feeling safe to do so. The chicken or the egg, do we as women step into our pleasure power first or do boys grow into men & rise to occasion of selflessness & devotion. It makes me wonder how many married couples; people bound for life, haven’t even allowed each other to experience such magic.

It is powerful ( when safe & in trust ) to Starfish, to journey to beyond this plane. It is powerful to melt into another & allow them the same. There is no shame, in exercising your humanity in it’s purest form. It is your birth right to explore the unlimited magical potential of your body. It is your God given gift to exercise your sensuality without fear of demonization. It is Tantra & it is a devotional experience. It is educated in ancient sensual practices that women are like a pot of water on the stove; it may take while for the water to begin to boil… but when it does, she & her pleasure can go forever. A philosophy dating back 5000 years, this is far from news. To ponder on how we have strayed so far isn’t the key, yet how can we awaken a new chapter in humanities sexual power. Awakening through honesty, open communication, education, & self liberation. An ode to reframing; Starfish, when two souls allow their bodies to dance in honor of each other’s pleasure, a consummation of spirit & love where Self is erased. A surrender to each other’s powers, trust in the journey, allowing them to transcend time, space, life, & death as we know it.

A Woman, a celestial being of the deep, adorned with radiancy transcending towards the heavens, embodies the very essence of renewal and rebirth, its body a living constellation capable of creating another, a shimmering testament to the world's boundless magic, each day that she walks this earth a whispered promise of resilience against the tides of change.