Can you feel it?
That blizzard of uncertainty?
How the f*ck do we holiday in a pandemic with no reliable tracks to follow?
Do we break out of our homes, and risk gathering?
Or stay indoors and isolate?
I hosted a Q/A on Zoom a couple weeks back for roughly 100 women, and I was struck that not one of them really had a question for me. We just wanted to be together, huddling on Zoom, feeling the sisterhood.
Each of us was craving the same thing: a sense of relaxation that comes from community, a space to recognize and be recognized; a dedicated place where there is time and room for sex, laughter, and outrageousness.
The thing about holidays is that whether we like how we usually celebrate or not, we have ‘frame’. Meaning that, for many of us, there is a structure that usually gets to be followed. We are either expected at our family’s holiday celebration, or we choose to blow it off, but the holiday frame is there.
And when it’s not, it can feel disorienting or confusing.
Like when you are driving and all the traffic lights go out.
When do you know to stop? Or go?
And since none of us has done a holiday like this before, it’s time to experiment.
So, here are my top three favorite ways to use Zoom as a point of connection. To gather with your tribe, or to create a tribe, and give yourself that much-needed feeling of holiday frame:
- Pick a friend, pick a movie, and click play together. I had the best movie and popcorn date with my friend Lauren last night. We decided to watch The Prom together. We picked a time, bought snacks, hopped on Zoom for a fun catch up beforehand, and then spent the duration of the film sending commentary back and forth via text. Why was this amazing? Because she lives in Maine, I live in New York, and there is no way we could have actually been together, but we were together, and had a blast.
- Host a lingerie dinner party on Zoom. Grab a handful of your people and have everyone collaborate on the menu. Cook – in hot lingerie, or naked with aprons on – and then, at a designated time, light the candles, pour the bubbly, and have an even hotter lingerie dinner party. You will be so surprised at how naughty and nice this feels. If you love to cook, you get to plan menus, share the progress and creativity of the prep time, and fill the house with the fragrances of all you are creating. If you hate to cook, then yes, just do take out! The most important thing is to show up tricked out in your holiday hotness. For extra fun: Start the dinner party by asking each guest to share something we call a “Holy Trinity” – a brag, a gratitude, and a desire. (Read my book Pussy: A Reclamation for more details on how this is done!)
- The Love Bomb. Gather a handful of girlfriends, and each woman in the group (yourself included!) will pick someone else to ‘love bomb’. You will send a love letter to your chosen girlfriend, telling her every little thing you appreciate about her, every drop of how she rocked this year – despite the challenges, despite the pandemic – and what you envision for her in the year ahead. Choose a small secret santa-ish gift for your GF that is guaranteed to make her feel great. Here are some fun websites to check out: Adore Me, SavageXFenty, Thistle and Spire. Send her the gift and the note, and either the two of you Zoom together, or get the whole gang involved as you each read your notes and show off/try on your gifts. Tears, laughter, gratitude, appreciation, and flirtation are the ingredients that make this love bomb festival irresistible.
- My friend and Pussy Mastermind grad, Jennifer, created a fantastic little holiday tradition. She suggested that we replace the word “Christmas” with “Pussy” in all the Holiday songs we hear. So, for example, “We wish you a Merry Christmas” would become “We wish you a Merry Pussy”, “It’s Beginning to look a lot like Christmas” would become “It’s beginning to look a lot like Pussy”, and “Have yourself a Merry little Christmas” would become “Have yourself a Merry little Pussy”, and so on…I know you can take it from here!! And yes, you can sing your Pussy Christmas carols on Zoom!
I think it’s important to do whatever we can to connect with one another during this holiday season.
Even if you don’t want to. Even if it feels hard.
Why? Because when you create turned-on, tuned-in connection with others, you take not only yourself higher, but everyone in your orbit right along with you.
With so much love and pleasure,
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.