This is one of my favorite questions to ask folks when we’re doing pleasure work and investigating where some of our stories came from: Whose pleasure and ease was centered or primary in your household when you were a child?

Who cooked and cleaned for holidays and birthdays? Who got up early to get everyone else ready? Who did the grocery shopping and errands and managed the family schedule? Who got to engage in conversation and watch games while others did labor? Whose feelings and wants were tended to most?

Often when we take a look back at the early dynamics of the households and communities we grew up in, we begin to see where some of the stories we inherited about worthiness and usefulness came from.

Do you feel you only deserve to feel satisfied and rested after a long laundry list of To Do’s are crossed off? After everyone else is settled and busy so you can have some peace and quiet?

Did you see adults avoiding certain foods or working to never seem lazy? Did you see adults prizing how things looked over how things felt?

How does that inform the ways you now feel about food, ease, and performing versus experiencing?

We are rich with stories and meaning, and so much of what we now carry isn’t actually ours at all. If you were to set down certain stories and rules that don’t feel like yours (even if you’ve been living by them), what might you pick up and offer yourself instead?

Your pleasure matters. You deserve to feel supported, rested, nourished, and satisfied. Your yes is as important as your no and neither ever need to be justified.

If you’d like to explore these stories and deepen into your hungers and desires, your relationship with body and pleasure, join us for the next cohort of Power in Pleasure. Check out when we begin.