The hard stuff

I thought this blog was going to be a documentation of what it was like to be a submissive for the first time in my life and what I was learning and experiencing with Daddy.  I thought it would be filled with sexy shorts and erotic musings, filled with hot little snapshots of my life with him and his influence upon it.   So I was surprised when he suggested I write about my challenges with my brother.  My brother? What could this possibly have anything to do with D/s, with the erotic?  Well, all I can do is tell you my experience and then you can decide.  I have been struggling with my relationship with my brother for a long time.  I love my brother but things have gotten messy in my family as they often do,  and I, as per usual am the one who gets in the middle, stirring the pot so to speak, of course with the best of intentions but often with disastrous results.  This past summer we got into a heated fight, which for me is extremely rare in my life and things have not been the same between us since.  This has been years in the making but alas, the challenge between he and his wife and my parents is not my struggle but I can tell you, I feel it like its mine and their struggle and pain with each other over all these years has affected the family as a whole, that I am sure.  The life of being an empath, feeling everything as if it were your own, it a challenge a lot of the time.  But that is part of my trip in life so here I am feeling and dealing.  I feel, and I care so it can be hard for me to sit back and not try to "help."  I see now the error of my ways, as has been the case many times in the past.  Anyhow, I have recently tried to decide just what to do.  I want to have a relationship with my brother, I love him and always have but I am at a loss for how to go about doing it at this point.  From my perspective, he has never been able to take any responsibility for his actions and has essentially pushed us all very far away and he blames everyone else.  He is very hurt and he clearly, does not want to talk to me.  So what do I do when I am stuck and need advice?  I call Daddy.

In short, Daddy teaches me to love people and myself, fully.  He teaches me to really listen to people, fully and to acknowledge them and their feelings regardless of whether I agree or disagree or have a different point of view, which in this case I clearly do.  He teaches me to love others that I care about with an undefended heart which means letting someone have their say, their emotions and ALL their stuff, as long as it is not abusive to me, and to not only allow it,  but to be with it without trying to fix, do or add anything.  Ok, sure, I get it but...with my brother!  So that is the work at hand, to let go of the story, to let go of old patterns and just hear him and all his pain.  I, being at a total loss, of how to reach him, was willing to try it.  So that is where I sit.  Instead of trying to talk, trying to engage him in a conversation or an understanding of where I am coming from, of what I see, I just simply said, "I am sorry for hurting you."  He has not responded, he may never.  I don't know anymore if he really wants a relationship with me but this is where I am, sitting in the discomfort of not knowing,  of not trying to make it any certain way and of grieving the brother that I miss.  How that fits into the erotic life of a submissive learning how to surrender I can probably guess and I am sure I will find out over time.  If I had my guess, Daddy would say, "You are learning how to surrender to love and you are learning how to love well.  What else is there?"    

Another day in the life of

a dirty little girl

Eros in sex and death

For a time, in this past year of changes and challenges in my life,  I thought that maybe I had taken a departure from the erotic for a time.  My sex drive seemed lower and less important perhaps, as I navigated my way through the stresses and struggles of my life which were plenty, 2014 was a tough year it seems, on many levels.  Then at the end of the year,  I spent a period of time in the throws of dealing face to face with dying and transition of a woman that I was caring for.   A large part of my energy was given entirely to this process and I was deeply affected by my experience being with this beautiful woman throughout her entire process and the days that followed.  My thoughts then turned to the realtionship between sex and death, and I realized I had not taken a departure from the erotic at all, I was just flowing with the ride that Eros was taking me on, the ride through struggle, growth, loss, grief, death and the transformation of it all.

So how does Eros intersects with death and dying? With a grin, Eros is a trickster, perhaps like Death who sometimes smiles when we are not looking.   Eros, not always what we think it is, is the life force energy that is transformative in sex just as it is in birth and death, all seem to be moving always in the direction of each other somehow.   Life after all is what feeds death and death is what feeds life, one just has to look to nature to see it, the cycle is continuous, what is there to say?  In sex, as in death, when we can be open to the all that is true and alive for us in the moment, in our passion, our pleasure, our pain, our orgasm or lack there of, our confusion, our fear, in our most vulnerable places, in the unknown, unpredictable and great mystery of it all, we can then be open to the transformational gift of what each moment has to offer.

Eros doesn't always have to look sexy, unless you find death sexy, and some of us do.  I think back to all the times I lured my boyfriends to the cemetery that I lived next to, for sexual encounters and I have to laugh.  Eros can look like many things.  As one who considers herself an erotic explorer, an educator of sexuality,  I have felt at times, like I have to always be sexually "on,"  pushing the boundaries of sexploration if not in the flesh, at least in my mind, scheming up my next sexy plan or task or thing to experience or become "better" at.   I have now come to see it in a different light.  I never really took a departure from the erotic,  I have in fact, been doing some of the sexiest work of all.  The work of being present to every moment life, sex and death have to offer, with an open heart as a willing sacred witness to exactly what is, no turning away, in all its beauty, it's humanness, its messines, is erotic.  Become deaths lover, and you will find beauty where you least expected to see it.

Sex, Death and Transformation

In the last two months or so I have been fully immersed in another kind of learning, Eros has taken me on a different kind of ride.  I had the honoured privilege of caring for a woman throughout the last two months of her life, her death and the days that followed after she took her last breath.

I was asked to be a care giver to a beautiful 72 year old women with advanced cancer.  When I first met her, I felt like I had already known her, it seemed to me divine timing was at hand.  She was solidly under the belief she would heal and had ever right to think so as she had kept herself alive years past what was thought possible by her doctors.  She was a "medical miracle,"  as her daughter said.   Occasionally she did talk about the reality that dying could be a potential.  In any case, I set about to helping her with her daily needs, as at this point she required 24 Hr care.  Although she could still walk very short distances, it was with great difficulty, and she was in extreme pain most of the time.  I seem to have a gift for working with people in this capacity which I am now no longer denying to be true.  I became, as I so often have in the many years of my work with others, a devoted witness to her process.

I have long had an interest in the death and dying process and in palliative care since my early twenties when I first worked for hospice.   She gave me a great gift in allowing me into her life.  My job description as care giver quickly began expanding.  Along with her amazing daughter who I worked with closely during this whole process, we all learned together about how to manage her pain,  how to deal with her changing body as it began to give way, and how to keep it real throughout it all, honouring her and her desires at each step.  In our death phobic culture, we conveniently tuck death away inside hidden rooms,  hospitals, and funeral homes.   We forget the real face of death and in doing so we lose the valuable opportunity we have to learn about what dying is like?  What do the steps and stages look like?   How can we read the signs and in so doing be the best possible witness to their transition, if we are lucky enough to have the opportunity?  And what's more, how can we be willing to view death and dying in its entirety so we can learn for our own selves what we all must inevitably face.   Can we be willing, to not look away, to stay present the whole way through?  This was my task, to look death more squarely in the eyes and be with what I saw there.

We were doing it ourselves, her daughter, myself and a small group of her closest and most loving friends.  We were the hospice, the palliative care team and the funeral home.  The changes came quickly and I could see them happening all along the way.  With each change came a new decision of how we were going to deal with it, and I could sense her recognition or perhaps her surrendering to what was inevitably to come.   A few hours after she took her last breath, her daughter asked me to come and help wash, prepare, and dress her body.  It was perhaps one of the most holy and sacred tasks I have ever carried out and will never forget.  Her daughter and I performed this delicate and sacred ritual together, in total devotion, with the utmost love and tenderness, we did our best.  She was beautiful, still glowing from inside, somewhere, a place I could not truly name.  Afterwards we both had a unique and individual experience of seeing her smile, as if she could somehow embody, for a brief moment, her gratitude of being cleaned and cared for, which I knew was very important to her.  I felt tingles over my whole body as I heard her daughter describe and confirm what I had just seen with my own eyes but kept quiet, thinking it was just a figment of my imagination.

Within the next three days, people would come and go to pay their respects and to sit with her body.  She looked radiant, finally at peace, no more pain.  My job description then expanded once again as the date and time of her cremation were set.  I was asked to be the one to drive her body to the site, where family and friends could be involved in the ceremony of her cremation, an hour and a half away .  I drove her body with the light bearer as my passenger, a long time family friend who was keeper of the flame that had been kept alight for three days and with which the wood pile who be ignited from during the cremation.  Life has a funny way of working out sometimes.  How I came to be such a big part of this women and her daughters life I do not know but it was all perfect somehow.  The ceremony was beautiful, we sang songs and one by one formed a line, each one handing the other a log until her body was covered with wood and the fire was lit.  Afterwards we drank and ate a meal and shared stories and I was grateful to be included in this small circle of loving people.  In the days since, her daughter has called me their death midwife, and it does seem fitting.  To be present with people in their pleasure and pain, their joy and their grief, in their most vulnerable moments, in life and in death is what I do.  To be with the dying, to be present to what is there, without trying to change a thing, is the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and others.  When we can embrace death in its entirety, we can in turn embrace our life more fully and perhaps a bit more bravely too.  I am deeply grateful for this experience, for all that she gave me and all that I was able to give.  I look forward to doing more of this work in the future.  To me, there is nothing more important in this life, but to embrace with open arms the shadow of death that hangs over us so that we can more fully learn how to live.