One of the trends that I’ve noticed in so many spaces around pleasure is this “just do it” approach. There’s an assumption that pleasure is easy and folks should just, well, do it already. But I’m interested in a deeper, more nuanced conversation around pleasure and bodies.

Pleasure work is worthiness work. It’s accountability work, lovability work, visibility work, and it is vulnerable work. And…pleasure work can be a way to find powerful new ways of being with ourselves.

Pleasure can be difficult to access for so many of us. Maybe we rarely feel safe in our lives. Maybe we are so busy doing so much emotional labor that we have nothing left for ourselves. Maybe our body feels foreign or like a place we can’t really arrive because of trauma. Maybe we don’t feel worthy.

None of these things are personal failings. We live inside of deeply harmful systems that ask us to treat our bodies like machines, our lives like businesses – seeking ever greater output on dwindling resources while needing to make it look effortless, and we have so little real support. The kind of support where we can get messy, where we can fall apart, where we don’t have to know or be anything because the love will still be there afterwards.

I love pleasure work. I love it because pleasure work is about worthiness, lovability, accountability, boundaries, taking up space, and it’s vulnerable. But it’s also where we can find deep truths and even deeper power.

To know your body, to know what brings you a sense of aliveness, to trust the yes and the no and the thrill of longing? These are what it means to be rooted in your power because once you know these things, you won’t tolerate less.

So what kind of pleasure are you hungry for? What would it mean to begin the adventure of learning what you like?