Healing Sex Gives Survivors the Confidence to Open Up

A great deal of survivors tend to have a difficult time with closeness with another person, finding themselves having to teach themselves boundaries and when any of us run into a little trouble and need help, there are shelves full of psychological insight, self help books, audio books, films and so on at our disposal. Healing Sex is a DVD that at first glance, you would think is just like the rest of the “self help” market, but once you watch it, it has the potential to really change your life and the way you look at intimacy.

Staci Haines has vast experience as a workshop leader and somatic practitioner and presents hands on exercises for you to practice either alone or with your partner for battling a lot of hurdles that survivors deal with when it comes to intimacy, such as disassociating during sex which I, as well as a great deal of survivors I speak with now have had problems with in our adult lives. Haines welcomes you into her workshops and one-on-one sessions and works with people to help them set boundaries in relationships and intimacy and teaches them how to express their desires, likes and dislikes. She gives us so much knowledge and draws upon her extensive experience to present educational and often triggering material in a comfortable and accessible way that will make you actually want to open up to your partner, now that you know how.

This DVD did wonders for me. I absolutely loved the way in which the material was presented and I especially loved that Haines doesn’t think, act or teach with the sense of false hope that she is a miracle worker. Healing from any kind of trauma takes a long time and a great deal of dedicated, hard work and the effects of childhood sexual assault have a tendency to follow survivors throughout their entire lives. This film shows you realistic ways to cope with your past and your present in terms of intimacy and overall relationships.

When You Get There

When you get there, it will not look like healing. There, where exactly is that? There, where are we going? There, she says, as if it exists on a map. THIS WAY TO INCEST HEALING. RAPE GOES AWAY THIS EXIT. There, there, as in, to the place of new Earth. You have never been here before, away from the evil of your so called elders, unenmeshed from the black-widow-spun-incest-web. This is healing. It is barren at first. You will look out over the land and think to yourself, why am I here, where there is nothing?  It hurts. It is scary. You will feel alone. Maybe you will feel nothing as you approach the precipice. You will jump, free falling. You must jump, girl. Jump into that nothingness you see, feel, and hear. 

Nothing. Upon landing, you will turn around and see the demons retreat. You will be free. Lonely, yes, aching, yes, but free. Yes, free of lies, of intergenerational poison. Free of Daddy, with his raping heart, Mother who took flight, others who deemed you unseen, unheard.  But this is not nothing, this unexplored place. There is YOU. You are never nothing. 

But when you get there, it can feel and look like nothing, you may want to run into the past, cling back to the old tree vines, rotten and slick as they are, for fear of this seemingly barren nothingness. 

But, if you listen deep and hard and still, you will hear it, you will feel it; 

something….

You are a human seed. You are life springing anew. You are the reason. At first this uncharted territory is blindingly lonely, you look for Proust’s new eyes to guide you, Maya’s strength to rise, Alice’s purple fields to speak to you. Where is everything? You are the first, woman. You are the roots, the branches, the trunk, the rings within the body, the sap, the bark armor. 

At first, it looks like fucking Chernobyl, so vastly damaged. But your eyes become newer all the time, your strength rises toward the sun daily, and in the long, slow future, purple blossoms.  Life herself is what you are. 

Grow your new tree. Your soil is beautiful, your seedlings whole, babies bursting into Earth like light through a prism, all miraculous color and light and reflective. You are a pioneer, Woman, you have led yourself through a quaking terror so sharp and piercing most would have given up, given in, gone along, saying,” There is no other pill to take, so I swallow the one that made me ill.” But not YOU, for you are life herself.  YOU are never nothing.  The trees know this, as do your children and spirits yet to be your children. The light kissed dawn knows this, you are surely something, surely within you a teeming garden awaits germination, the robust, fully grown oak tree within the acorn. THERE, that’s where ‘there’ it is. There lives in YOU. That child inside of you, the one you were, sacred and innocent, curious and free, THERE is the place you are going. And You will know the wonder of it all, when you get there.