Organic Healing through Cyberspace!

[click on bold for more depth]

I was reminded, once again, that organic happenings take time, the very personal as well as the professional. The Graceful Guidelines for Sexual Healing text from articles page on this web site was first written for a magazine ten years ago this month, it has been re-edited and reprinted in many venues. What a delight for me to receive the below email acknowledgment this week and to reflect that the message still resonates in a such good way for folks:

Hello Dr. Picucci,

I wanted to write to thank you for your article "Graceful Guidelines for Sexual Healing." I found so much of it to be relevant to my own experience, and am grateful for it.

I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and have been in therapy for about two years now. I began in traditional cognitive therapy, but didn't begin making the strides I am now making until I began seeing an Somatic Experiencing practitioner. I found SE to be completely transformative and I'm now actually training to become an SEP myself.

As far as your article goes, I found that I'm really having to emphasize the sacredness of sex to myself as I begin the somewhat awkward journey into starting to have sex from a loving place rather than a compulsive place. It is scary to be in my body for the very first time while being sexual. It's taking a lot of time to process and integrate, but I chose a loving, intuitive and conscious partner to take this journey with me. The moments in which I've succeeded in staying present with everything that goes on in me, I have been amazed by how beautiful sex can be, and how raw and pure intimacy can be. It's also interesting what you say about revisiting adolescent awkwardness---I've discovered, by tracking myself somatically, that each developmental stage is alive in me and wants to experience being sexual (without my interference) and that that is how I can manage to be fearless and stay embodied during sex. I didn't know that that was possible, or that there was a part of me that was still childlike, whole and intact after what happened to me. I am so glad that that part still has healthy curiosity and wonder, and will develop with my support.

Anyway, thank you again for your wonderful article. I imagine it would be important to anyone interested in healing sexually, but to people for whom there's no choice but to develop loving consciousness about sex if they want to have it at all, it really means a lot.

All the best, Salima

[thank you, Salima]