Imagine a river.

You’re standing at a bend, your feet bare on cool earth, dappled sunlight making patterns on the ground from overhead. It’s a narrow river and when you lift up your eyes, you can see to the other side.

We all feel pain. It’s an inevitable part of being alive. Our bodies are incredible systems of nerve endings and impulses, wired for pleasure and pain.

I believe that female pelvic/ genital/ sexual issues are common, but not ‘normal’.

… and you do not need to be fixed.

or, what happens when we stop pushing, slow down, and pay attention.

One of things that I’ve been noticing is that there is often a gap between healing and thriving. A really big gap between ‘no pain’ and ‘a lot of pleasure’.

I am part of a Facebook group with over 60,000 members, all women, and one of the most common post reads something like ‘I used to like sex but now I have no libido’, or ‘I’ve never felt turned on’.

If you have ever felt like you were less of a woman because you couldn’t find your arousal no matter what tricks and toys you tried,

Here’s the secret.

The juicy, turned on, alive body that you are looking for?

That doesn’t come from outside of yourself.

It has to start inside.

Before we talk about why we’re not turned on,

let’s talk about our hearts,

and let’s talk about boundaries.

Shame has been shown to be directly related to decreased arousal, orgasm and desire for intimacy.

If penetration hurts even when you are wet and aroused, there are some things that you need to consider.

There are many, many reasons that sex hurts.

Sex should never be painful, ever. (Unless you want it to be!).

Like a lot of you, I was one of those people who had completely blocked out the fact that I had genital and sexual pain.