It is not easy to get centered.
Especially now.
A trip through the headlines can whip us all around the whirligig.
Not to mention the sheer daily brutality of living in a patriarchal world culture.
If we don’t buckle up our protective gear, before we head out, we can get pierced by a stray arrow.
And sometimes we get not just one rupture but two or three or four. All at once.
(I’m currently competing for the simultaneous plate-spinning rupture olympics. Anyone else out there rocking more than one?) 

So. I am curious.
How do you get back to center when you have been thrown off course?
The reason I am asking is because you know as well as I do, that so much depends on you being on course. Your impact is huge and powerful. When you are thrown off course, suffering ensues.
Your people pick up your cranky.
Your partner is lost at sea.
Not to mention the free advertising that you do, every single day, to the girls of today, the women of tomorrow, who look to you to better understand what it means to be a woman. The days that you wholeheartedly love yourself, you teach a young girl the promise of womanhood.
The days when you feel like shit, you teach her to fear her pending womanhood.
The days you feel like the world’s biggest victim, you teach her (and all the other women you meet) that.

There is no blame, here. 
Life is….hard. These times are challenging. It is easy to give up your life force, your truth, your passion, your center, when the culture asks (demands) you to surrender it.
But when we succumb and let our self-esteem — or our very selves — take the hit, the consequences are profound both on the inner and the outer. For everyone.

So, how do we find our way back to ourselves and live even better than we live?
(Even and especially when we aren’t feeling it, when we’ve gotten so off course we can’t even see the track.)

The answer lives in pleasure. Your pleasure. Your choice to boldly engage with the erotic feminine that lives within your body and soul.
BTW — Where does the erotic live on your to-do list? For most people, it barely gets a glance.

But you are not most people.
You are a woman who subscribes to my newsletter.
You are a woman who knows there is something more, even if you have never had it modelled for you. Even if you never experienced it, directly.
You can feel, inside your bones and being that there is a better way.

Know this: the ‘better way’ may not feel ‘better’ — at first.
Why?

You may experience the connection to your erotic power as a desire, a longing. And a woman who is in possession of her longings is a dangerous creature to the patriarchal world culture. A woman who feels connected to her erotic, on that level, will hold her ground and live her truth. She will not cooperate. She will not shrink, diminish herself, or play small.  She bites back. As a result, we are continually discouraged from connecting to our deepest longings, our deepest passions, our remarkably changeable emotions. There is no way for a patriarchy to control a woman who is erotically empowered.
So, you can see, that choosing to find your center and choosing to live your (erotic) center require great courage.
It may mean, ultimately, that you change the way you live, the way you work, the way you love.  Which is a good thing. Recreating your world based on your deepest intuitions and your inner knowing will create an even more magnificent world for yourself and others.
But it won’t, in the beginning, be comfortable.

So, how do you get there?
The way there is through exploring and experiencing your erotic pleasure.
Not (necessarily) pornographic pleasure. Not (necessarily) sexual pleasure. The pleasure that I take in writing a newsletter, a poem, a book, for example, is not that erotically different from the pleasure that I might take from dancing, being in my lover’s arms, praying at my altar, taking in the sunset on a deserted beach.
The way back to center is finding what yours is.  

It requires some listening within, some research, some experimentation.
For example, right now — and I know this is going to sound bizarre- — but I find Gucci very … healing.
Especially the Dapper Dan collection.
When I walk around Gucci on Fifth avenue, I get transported. And that is the whole point.
The point is to find something or someone or some action or activity that takes you deeper into your sense of yourself, something that moves you, that connects you to your divine.

Browsing Gucci is not the only way I’m reclaiming my center. I placed myself on a 30-day self-pleasure challenge. Each day, I find new ways to celebrate myself, love myself, pleasure myself. (If this sounds fun to you, follow me on Instagram and I will cook something up for all of us there.).
And then, there is the farmers market on Sunday. The heirloom eggs with baby blue shells and orange centers. The last of summer’s fresh peaches that I love to grill. Corn. Baby zucchini. Tomatoes. Luscious, juicy, sun-sweetened tomatoes.
The world is full of so many roads home.

Sisters, tell me, what taste brings you back to your divine/erotic center? What sight? What feel? What action? What place? Hit Facebook and tell me everything. I’ll read every one.

Love,

Regena Thomashauer, aka “Mama Gena”
The School of Womanly Arts

Regena is a feminist icon, a teacher, a speaker, a mother, a best-selling author, and creatrix and CEO of The School of Womanly Arts.