Pleasure isn't allowed

"How dare you."

The words came like a hiss

As I sank into the soft, aching pulse of my cervix this morning.

How dare you feel arousal in the face of suffering.

This voice...

...not mine,

but old.

An echo of generations of women who swallowed their pleasure

because the world was hurting.

Their pain washed over me like bone-deep memory.

My legs went numb.

A deep ache spread across my hips.

My cervix erupted.

Nausea rolled through my gut like ancestral grief.

Shame wrapped around my spine like a chain.

But instead of shrinking,

I breathed.

I opened.

I went deeper.

And in that descent,

The Mother invited me into arousal.

I drew its elixir into my body.

The voice screamed louder.

The ache exposed itself.

Pain, tangled in the belief that we must suffer to prove we care.

That joy is betrayal.

That aliveness is dangerous.

"If others are hurting, you must hurt too."

This is what it means to be good.

This is what it means to be woman.

And then, the Mother

The Great One whispered

“Suffering is bliss, beloved.”

“They are not opposites. They are lovers.”

In that moment, I let my pleasure rise.

And it did not run from the suffering

It met it.

Consumed it.

Loved it.

Pleasure kissed the ache.

Arousal held the shame.

Orgasm whispered into self-hatred:

“You too are welcome.”

I gave myself five minutes.

Five minutes of unfiltered, unjudged freedom.

And the world kept spinning.

The paradox unfurled its sacred truth:

That we have hated ourselves

for feeling light when others live in dark.

For embodying bliss when others are breaking.

But I remembered

This is the holy rebellion.

To not shrink.

To not collapse.

To not sacrifice our flame in the name of false belonging.

I wasn’t trying to fix anything.

I wasn’t transcending pain.

I simply said:

“Yes.”

“You too.”

“This too is love.”

And in that moment,

Energy moved.

Reality softened.

Everything became sacred again.

Suffering, not resisted,

Became sensation.

Sensation, loved,

Became source.

Source, remembered,

Became bliss.

This is communion.

This is the remembering:

That our arousal is not selfish.

It is devotional.