Day 14 of 100 days of blogging
In 2014, I co-facilitated a group of women from Sweden and the United States to write a story in the book Sensual Voices: True Stories by Women Exploring Connection and Desire. Women wrote stories from the body about childbirth, puberty, menopause, and sexuality. My story was called: Slut: A woman with the morals of a man. (This is the definition from the Urban Dictionary) I processed a lot of feelings and emotions to write this story. A journey of sexual exploration. It was a bigger “coming out” to family, friends, community with a topic that is hidden for most of us. When I released my story into the book, I felt free.
This is an excerpt from my story where I wrote about an experience in an OM (Orgasmic Meditation:
Inside of me were these different parts that seemed incongruent, the mother, the slut, the nice girl, the bitch, the soft feminine, the determined warrior. Most of the time, I felt I had to shut down the desires of the slut. I rarely let her take charge and claim her lusty, natural desires.
At the age of 56, I entered a world of sexual exploration consciously and took one step at a time; pausing, trying something new, reflecting, checking in to see how it felt in my body and willing to experience everything. I decided to become a living research project. Over a two-year period, I practiced Orgasmic Meditation (OM) with multiple partners, had an intimacy research partner to explore sex and vulnerable conversation, lived in a conscious community with a morning OM practice, and took a year of coursework in a Desire-based Leadership Program and Orgasm Mastery. I kept a journal to record my experiences and feelings.
OM #28: A moment in an OM
Have you ever had a man place his full attention on your body?
Me, quietly: “I feel sad,”
Him calmly: “I’ve got you. Let it out.”
Laying on my back, legs spread in a butterfly position, his finger lightly stroked my clitoris in this 15 minute partnered practice. This time I released sadness. His attention and my surrender allowed wave after wave of sobbing outbursts to erupt from the cells of my body and through my voice. After the first five minutes, I could feel the sobs welling up again like a wave in the ocean building to a crescendo. I shout out to him:
“DON’T LEAVE ME””
Him: “I’m right here. I won’t leave.”
In this, my 28th OM, I am releasing so much emotion, I cannot believe a man will stay connected, will keep lightly stroking, will hold a space calmly while I get to feel and release everything!
I was raised with the idea that men were incapable of holding my emotion. I had to tone it down. Be a nice girl. Cry silently. Alone. The idea that a man could place all of his attention on me without asking me to immediately turn and place my attention on him is amazing.
After the OM, he asked if I was okay. Did I need anything? Water? Food? Bathroom? Another OM? Yes to water and bathroom and OM. Get back into the OM nest of blankets and pillows and integrate what just happened.
I lay down in the nest again; legs butterflied open. Trusting him even more. Going into deeper surrender. Throughout the OM, the only thing that emerges is connection, heightened sensation and more pleasure than I have ever felt in my life. I am cracked open.
The experience changed us both. I felt a man place his full attention on me. Holding all of me. And going into the deepest surrender I have ever felt. He experienced a woman trusting him enough to let him hold her, all of her. Maybe the things we were taught about women and men while growing up are not true. We both saw a glimpse of what is possible with greater connection, trust, surrender and support.
He later described me as one of the chambers of his heart. For breaking his heart out of his prison and putting it back together. This was a moment in time that cracked both of us open to be more of who we are in our separate lives. I am grateful that our paths crossed with so much intimacy and healing.
I am grateful for the practice of OM and for the people who have the courage to try it.
*****
Andrea Hylen believes in the power of our voice to usher in a new world. She is the founder of Heal My Voice, an organization that inspires women and men to heal a story, reclaim personal power and step into greater leadership. Andrea discovered her unique gifts while parenting three daughters and learning to live life fully after the deaths of her brother, son and husband. In addition to serving as Heal My Voice’s Executive Director, Andrea is an Orgasmic Meditation Teacher and Sexuality Coach.
She is following her intuition as she collaborates with women and men in organizations and travels around the world speaking, teaching and leading workshops. Her passion is authentically living life and supporting others in doing the same. To connect with Andrea and learn about current projects go to: www.andreahylen.com and www.healmyvoice.org.
Day 13 of 100 days of blogging
In college, I studied Human Sexuality as part of my Social Work degree from Temple University. Reading the book, “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” written by the Boston Women’s Health Collective was the first time I can remember hearing the voices of women sharing their experiences with vulnerability and information about a woman’s body. One evening, I sat in a woman’s circle where every woman was handed a plastic speculum, a mirror, a flashlight and lubrication. We were taught how to do the breast exam and pelvic exam on ourselves. All of the women took off their pants and underwear, lay down on blankets and pillows and prepared to follow the step-by-step instructions to touch and examine our own bodies. I remember the exclamations of awe and joy and tears when a woman saw her cervix for the first time. Women empowering women in a circle gathering. That was 1978 and I was 22 years old.
During the late 90’s, I taught medical students at Johns Hopkins University how to do the pelvic and breast exam, first with words and instructions. Then I gave each of them a hands-on-experience, using my body as a practice patient. Dressed in a hospital gown, I taught them how to hold and use the speculum, guiding their hands to insert the speculum into my vagina with me as their first patient. I talked about the importance of creating a safe environment and using a gentle touch to preserve each woman’s dignity. In five years of teaching, I had over 500 pelvic and breast exams with 500 different medical students.
In 2013, I entered a new experience with my body when I was introduced to a 15 minute partnered practice called Orgasmic Meditation (OM). In this partnered practice with a man, I experienced the potential for us to heal our sexuality through better communication, attention and connection. No goal. 15 minutes of connection, sensation and the awakening of desire. I practiced OM with multiple partners in a safe community environment and learned how to teach the technique by taking courses with a company called OneTaste. I have now taught individuals and partners around the world how to practice Orgasmic Meditation.
My deepest desire has been for women to have a place to connect, have conversations, share vulnerability and support each other; to heal their relationship with their bodies and with each other. In the ninth Heal My Voice book program, I finally had my wish. For nine months, twelve women from Sweden; eight women from the United States with Marie Ek Lipanovska from Sweden and me from the U.S. co-facilitating an on-line gathering in a secret Facebook group. We stoked the emotional fires to stir up the burning embers of desire, connection and sensuality hidden within our souls. In conversation and writing, we explored universal experiences of a woman’s body. Menstruation. Childbirth. Menopause. Sexual Desire. We discussed body sensations of sensuality, power, grief, abandonment, trauma, life and death with courage and vulnerability. Our experiences included writing and speaking, healing, reclaiming power tied up in an old story, connection with community, intentional space, deep listening and at the end of the process, clarity around the next step in leadership.
You must do the things you think you cannot do. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
When we started to write, I thought I was ready, really ready, to reveal my story: a journey of sexual exploration. It wasn’t until I began to write this personal story that I felt a new vulnerability and resistance to writing and exposing my story even to myself. I found my hands hovering over the computer keyboard afraid to write anything. I had a flood of fearful thoughts: Can I really tell this story? How will it affect my business? Will my organization, Heal My Voice, lose all credibility if I write a sensual story about desire and sex? Can I really write about looking at Playboy magazines when I was 11 years old? Can I write about the desire to have sex now that I am 58 years old and a widow, a mother, a grandmother? Can I write about the sensuality essence that is waking up in me? I had to walk my own path by diving into the places in me that held the darkness of shame and fear around my sexual desire and to write my own story.
This was the ninth personal story I had written in a Heal My Voice or Heal My Voice Sweden book program and it was the first time I was afraid to put my words onto paper even in the privacy of my home with no one watching. That was a clue that I am not the only woman who feels vulnerable to admit my desires, embrace the sensations and to have open conversations. I knew I had to write a story about Sensuality that connected to my Sexuality and to make the conversation visible.
It was the women in this community of co-authors who read the drafts of my story, who acknowledged my courage and who told me to just write the story without the need for approval and without justifying why I felt the need to write it now. Each woman was held with the same love, care and encouragement. And as each woman completed her story, it opened the door for the next woman to keep writing and complete her story. We held each other, shared our voices, one word at a time, until twenty stories were completed. We are in this together…
As part of my 1500 word story for the book Sensual Voices, I wrote about my 28th OM (Orgasmic Meditation). I shared the sensations, the healing, the emotion that was released and the connection with my OM partner. Tomorrow, I will share that experience with you in the next blogpost.
The journey continues…
*****
Andrea Hylen believes in the power of our voice to usher in a new world. She is the founder of Heal My Voice, an organization that inspires women and men to heal a story, reclaim personal power and step into greater leadership. Andrea discovered her unique gifts while parenting three daughters and learning to live life fully after the deaths of her brother, son and husband. In addition to serving as Heal My Voice’s Executive Director, Andrea is an Orgasmic Meditation Teacher and Sexuality Coach.
She is following her intuition as she collaborates with women and men in organizations and travels around the world speaking, teaching and leading workshops. Her passion is authentically living life and supporting others in doing the same. To connect with Andrea and learn about current projects go to: www.andreahylen.com and www.healmyvoice.org.
Day 12 of 100 days of blogging
(Originally this was published on the OneTaste site https://onetaste.us/a-life-powered-by-orgasm/)
A Life Powered by Orgasm
By Andrea Hylen
I used to connect the word orgasm to the act of climax during intercourse. As I have been exploring the power of orgasm as an energy source over the last year, I have found that I like this definition better:
Orgasm: A similar point of intensity of emotional excitement.
Orgasm is the energy that pulses through me when I am fully engaged with life. It’s the excitement I feel when I am free to be myself. It’s feeling a wide range of emotions. In all these states, I am in the flow of orgasm.
It is the Power of Orgasm that:
…fueled me to leave my first husband and break free of old beliefs and find my voice.
It is the Power of Orgasm that:
…inspired me to home school my children with creativity and adventure.
It is the Power of Orgasm that:
…compelled me to go to 78 Jonas Brothers concerts in 2 1/2 years with my teenage daughter.
It is the Power of Orgasm that:
…moved me to host 44 internet radio shows in 45 days—when I had never hosted a radio show before.
It is the Power of Orgasm that:
…pulsed through me to start the organization Heal My Voice.
“Orgasm” to me is a superpower energy that encourages me to say, “YES!” It pushes me into the world and inspires me with the juice of my desire to experience as much as I possibly can while I am living life.
Do you want to know how to access this superpower for yourself?
Three tips on how to live powered by orgasm:
Feel the Sensations and Listen to Your Body: Develop a daily practice that cultivates your ability to focus and listen to the sensations in your body. Journaling, walking in nature, yoga and Orgasmic Meditation (OM) are all superb practices.
My daily OM practice has increased my ability to feel and hold more sensation. I support trauma survivors in my work. A few years ago, I could only coach one survivor a day. The sensations of their emotions were too intense for me. Now, I coach five survivors a day, three times a week, and I have coached over 200 women writing stories of trauma, loss and grief. My practice has helped me be able to hold more sensation in my body.
Take Action: Start with one step—one stroke, one phone call, one task—and keep building that momentum with the next inspired action step.
My daily OM practice has unleashed more of my desire to speak my voice in the world. When the president of a women’s organization asked me to speak at her conference I felt the orgasm pulsing through me and I said yes—even before I knew what I would be speaking about! All I had to do was take the next action step towards what I wanted.
Ask for Support: It is more fun to share the adventure with other people and receiving help will exponentially increase the orgasm!
An OM practice is inherently a partnered practice. We literally can not do it alone. And I don’t want to do it alone. Asking for adjustments and receiving requests from my partner within the container of the OM teaches me how to connect, how to ask and receive support for my desires, and how to live in high sensation while in connection to other people.
I AM POWERED BY ORGASM! You can be, too.
*****
Andrea Hylen believes in the power of our voice to usher in a new world. She is the founder of Heal My Voice, an organization that inspires women and men to heal a story, reclaim personal power and step into greater leadership. Andrea discovered her unique gifts while parenting three daughters and learning to live life fully after the deaths of her brother, son and husband. In addition to serving as Heal My Voice’s Executive Director, Andrea is an Orgasmic Meditation Teacher and Sexuality Coach.
She is following her intuition as she collaborates with women and men in organizations and travels around the world speaking, teaching and leading workshops. Her passion is authentically living life and supporting others in doing the same. To connect with Andrea and learn about current projects go to: www.andreahylen.com and www.healmyvoice.org.
Day 11 of 100 days of blogging
New York City
An Introduction to OM class
There was a moment at the end of the day when 30 men and women sat in a circle to share a few frames from an experience of their first OM. It was a class from 10am-5pm with an optional lab, after the class, where people can stay, connect with a partner and have an experience of an OM.
After the lab, we all sat in a circle and one by one finished the prompt, “Right now, I am grateful for…” The answers came in a gentle wave of vulnerability, tenderness, connection. A soft, smoothness wrapped the room where for a moment, our innocence returned. I am grateful for… community, my partner, connection, the power of this practice, humanity, courage to try something new, the teachers, the support staff, authenticity, a real experience of connection.
In a community space, in the middle of Soho, something had shifted in each of us.
Let’s Back Up for a Minute
OM is short for Orgasmic Meditation. It is a fifteen minute partnered practice that involves stroking the upper left hand quadrant of a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes. OM is a practice between two people that has no goal except to feel what is happening in the moment. Connection. Sensation. Simplicity. Attention.
A frame is a moment in time during your OM, when you felt a physical sensation in your body. This includes temperature, texture, motion, pressure, color, and speed. Sharing a frame is a way to anchor the experience of the OM and the connection. One moment. Focusing on what is present vs what is not.
It is a practice
I have been OMing for almost three years now. For two years, I lived in a community and had a daily practice. OMing is a form of meditation and it is a practice. So, every OM is different. There is stillness and excitement and feelings of pleasure, anger, sadness, agitation, and did I say pleasure? OM is a purification process. The practice empties out your thoughts, old stories and conditioning and helps you to release emotions. The practice also fills you up with pleasure, connection and nourishment.
While I was in New York I decided to attend the Intro to OM class again. Probably my 20th time as a student. I entered with Beginner’s Mind as if this is the first time I am hearing the information. I received it personally and as a teacher of Introduction to OM classes where I am co-teaching in Washington, DC. I asked myself questions to set an intention for the day:
What can I learn to deepen my practice?
What can I learn about teaching that will serve the people I am working with?
I saw it in the eyes of the new participants in the circle and I remembered.
*It takes courage to try something new and this practice is changing the way we connect.
*Every time I OM, enter as if it is the first time.
*No goal.
*Focus on connection and sensation.
*Regular consistent practice.
*Breathe
I will be sharing more about Orgasmic Meditation all week. Check out the blogs all week.
(Photo of circle is from a smaller class in San Francisco. Credit Noah Berger for The New York Times)
*****
Andrea Hylen believes in the power of our voice to usher in a new world. She is the founder of Heal My Voice, an organization that inspires women and men to heal a story, reclaim personal power and step into greater leadership. Andrea discovered her unique gifts while parenting three daughters and learning to live life fully after the deaths of her brother, son and husband. In addition to serving as Heal My Voice’s Executive Director, Andrea is an Orgasmic Meditation Teacher and Sexuality Coach.
She is following her intuition as she collaborates with women and men in organizations and travels around the world speaking, teaching and leading workshops. Her passion is authentically living life and supporting others in doing the same. To connect with Andrea and learn about current projects go to: www.andreahylen.com and www.healmyvoice.org.
Day 10 of 100 days of blogging
Queens, New York
October 10, 2015
Watching Bob’s Burgers with my granddaughter Lucille this morning, I was inspired to write a blog about the episode when it is Linda’s birthday. Linda is the Mom. (Episode is called Eat, Spray Linda. Season 5. Episode 18)
Linda wakes up remembering it is her birthday. She tries to bury her head under the pillow and stay in bed to avoid the day. When the family tells her they are working on a surprise and she has to leave the house, Linda goes out to the grocery store where a series of mishaps occur. Keys locked in car with her cell phone and purse. Pants rip in the butt. No one in the grocery store will help her. Catches a bus going in the wrong direction. Sprayed by a skunk twice. It is a day of total chaos and Linda digs deep and conquers one challenge after another.
At the end of the day, bathing in a tub filled with tomato juice, her husband (Bob) tells her, ” Sorry your birthday was horrible.” She says, “Hey! Don’t be sorry. This was the best birthday ever!” She goes on to tell him that this is a new tradition. “Every year on my birthday, you blindfold me. Drop me off at a location with no cell phone and no money and I have to find my way home.”
I love Linda! She has this way of seeing the sunshine in adversity. Linda made the best of the chaotic situation and ignited a part of her that had been dormant. She came alive!
What if we all embraced adversity and challenges with this exuberance? What could we create in our lives and in the world?
You Decide.
The show reminded me of something I shared in the 30 days of writing program for this month:
It may feel like you have had no choice at different times in your life. You didn’t decide your life circumstances. You had another plan and it looked nothing like this! You may feel as if you lost control of your life. And at the same time you still have choices. You get to decide who you are going to be in this moment. You get to decide how you are going to respond and to be in the moment of what is happening.
On the community call yesterday I talked about my son and the power of the gifts I learned from his birth and his death and his illness. He was my teacher. Twenty-two years later, I continue to reach into that bag of gifts over and over. I may have moments of sadness. That’s okay. When someone you love dies, you will have moments of sadness. Even twenty years later. Reaching into that time period also reminds me of things that were revealed about who I really am.
When we are presented with challenges, we can find the gifts.
I first found out about my son’s heart condition when I was seven months pregnant with him and I was driving to drop off a report for a consulting job. When I got off the cell phone, I started pounding on the steering wheel and crying out in pain. Why God? Why me? Why him? Haven’t I had enough challenges in this lifetime? More than my fair share? Why, why, why?
After a few hours of feeling like this, I made a decision. I am powerless over this situation and I can still take charge of my life. I decided I was here to support my son and I would cross- stitch angels. Every stitch would be a prayer. It would be a blessing to Cooper, to our family and friends, to everyone who we would meet. In the 19 months of his life, I cross stitched elaborate angels with tiny, tiny stitches and big, big prayers.
This is actually how you change and transform. You are presented with a life experience and YOU DECIDE who you are going to be. Then you practice it. Over and over until one day you are transformed. Caterpillar to butterfly.
New Perspectives
Like Linda on Bob’s Burgers and the challenges she had on her birthday or the experiences we all have when we feel powerless or out of control, we have a choice. To embrace the experience and find out new things about ourselves or to shut down and give up.
I encourage you to get a new perspective and challenge yourself. You never know what surprises are laying within you!
*****
Andrea Hylen believes in the power of our voice to usher in a new world. She is the founder of Heal My Voice, an organization that inspires women and men to heal a story, reclaim personal power and step into greater leadership. Andrea discovered her unique gifts while parenting three daughters and learning to live life fully after the deaths of her brother, son and husband. In addition to serving as Heal My Voice’s Executive Director, Andrea is an Orgasmic Meditation Teacher and Sexuality Coach.
She is following her intuition as she collaborates with women and men in organizations and travels around the world speaking, teaching and leading workshops. Her passion is authentically living life and supporting others in doing the same. To connect with Andrea and learn about current projects go to: www.andreahylen.com and www.healmyvoice.org.
Leading up to this birthday was not fun. It actually felt pretty scary and I had a lot of feelings and fears and confusion in the last year. In the past, I have embraced every decade. Turning 40 and 50 was exciting. I have always felt like things were getting better and there was an adventure around every corner. Until this year…
My 59th birthday yesterday was a turning point. A willingness to transform the fears and
live fully right now. When my husband turned 59, he already had an aversion to turning “60”. I told him, why don’t we celebrate every month and ring in the next decade?
It is not the end. It is the beginning.
*****
Andrea Hylen believes in the power of our voice to usher in a new world. She is the founder of Heal My Voice, an organization that inspires women and men to heal a story, reclaim personal power and step into greater leadership. Andrea discovered her unique gifts while parenting three daughters and learning to live life fully after the deaths of her brother, son and husband. In addition to serving as Heal My Voice’s Executive Director, Andrea is an Orgasmic Meditation Teacher and Sexuality Coach.
She is following her intuition as she collaborates with women and men in organizations and travels around the world speaking, teaching and leading workshops. Her passion is authentically living life and supporting others in doing the same. To connect with Andrea and learn about current projects go to: www.andreahylen.com and www.healmyvoice.org.
*****
Day 7 of 100 days of blogging
When I first wrote the draft for this blogpost, I was at a crossroads. I had been living in youth hostels and extended stay hotels with my youngest daughter while we explored living in California. I didn’t know if we would stay there or if we would return to Maryland and the community I had known for 28 years. This experience is an example of living in the void, between worlds, where one thing was ending and the new beginning was around the corner. I just couldn’t see it yet.
In the next two months, I would write 70 articles on grief transformation. Two months after that I would be hosting 44 blogtalk radio shows about Grief Transformation. And in January 2011, I would hear the words Heal My Voice and submit the paperwork to start an organization.
This is a picture of what it looks like when you are in the middle of the bridge from the past to the future.
*****
Burbank, California
July 2010
It has been awhile since I have written a blogpost about the journey I have been on since January. The main reason for not writing is I haven’t had the words to describe what has been happening. I have been going deeper into myself and exploring and discovering a new depth of who I am. I have been describing my life with the words silent retreat, inner journey, climbing a mountain and walking on the beach. Asking questions and listening.
I check in on Facebook. I talk to a few people at the coffee shop. There is an occasional phone call. But, most of my time is spent in silence. Listening, observing the feedback from the Universe, taking action and feeling the feelings.
For the past few weeks, I have had moments every day of feeling like a failure. I have had several moments of feeling like I am a f**k-up. I have doubted, feared, questioned and told myself I live in a la-la fantasy world where I should just get with the program. Not sure what the program is exactly but it feels like “get back in the box and do what everyone else is doing.” Not sure what that is either. It feels constrictive because I am looking for the path of someone else and not my own.
Instead of running from the feelings, I have played with them every day. I have felt them, rolled them around in my heart, looked at them and learned from them.
This latest wave of fears and doubts started with a situation with my cats. The couple who have been watching them in Santa Barbara, CA. can no longer take care of them. Their oldest cat is beginning to feel the stress of living with 7 cats in a small house. It has become Urgent for us to find another home for them.
Staying with my theme of Open to Inspiration, I thought that maybe it was time to find an apartment and make a commitment to a specific location. In January, I thought Hannah and I would live in temporary situations for a year. Part of being open to the inspiration and releasing the attachment of timing. I opened to the idea of settling down and planting roots in southern California. With an apartment of our own, the cats could come and live with us.
I started every day by asking the question, “What is the next step in finding a place to live?” I listened and took a step towards the inspiration. Every day I experienced a “failure”. The apartments were too expensive. I don’t have a job with an income and probably couldn’t qualify. I don’t want to commit to a year lease without having a job or solid income. I don’t have enough money in the bank to pay for a year of apartment expenses. The apartment with the lower price was filled already. Every inspired step led me to a closed door.
The next step was to look for sublets that would allow cats. Nothing in the area.
Every day, I took the inspired action step. I felt the place of discomfort within myself. Every day I took an hour walk, felt the feelings and began to shift the energy. I imagined myself feeling a connection to the Earth as I walked. I imagined the critical thoughts passing through me letting all of the critical thoughts pass through me and into dear Mother Earth. At some point, during the walk, I would release the fear, anxiety, doubts. Call it a connection to nature, Spirit, God or a deeper place inside of you. Whatever your belief is fine.
One day, as I was walking and beginning to feel a relief from the fear, a moment of feeling at peace with myself and with life, a thought popped into my head.
I remembered a moment with my son, Cooper. He was born with a congenital heart defect. At two weeks old, he had just received his first open heart surgery. The doctors came into the private room where they would give us an update on the surgery. The doctor said that they had done all that they could, Cooper was weak and would probably not survive the night. After a few minutes, I decided to go and sit with our son. I had made a decision. I sat next to him in PICU. With tears streaming down my face, I began to speak. “Cooper, I love you. You are at a crossroads in your life. I will be here with you, no matter what you choose. If you decide to fight for your life and heal, I will be with you every step of the way. And if you decide that you have to leave now and die, I will stay with you and love you. No matter what you decide, I love you.” Within a few minutes, his vital signs improved. He had chosen to live.
And I was always with him. For 19 months, I took him to doctor appts, sat with him at the hospital until the last hospital stay when it was time for him to leave. Soul mission complete.
In recalling this loss, I am reminded how I discovered strengths inside of me that I didn’t know I had, in the pain of loving and losing my child. Courage, compassion, unconditional love, and my warrior spirit.
Somehow in the depth of feeling like a failure right now, letting myself go into the depths of the emotion, clearing it to see the truth of who I am, I discovered something about myself that I really never understood until now. I see that the way I have lived my life, pushing out of the box, being willing to take a risk, walking on the path when I can only see a foot in front of me, embracing it all, has been the only way I can live.
This is authentically ME!
What I know about myself is that I am showing up. I am living in flow. I don’t know what is going to happen in the next hour, day, week, month, year. I do know that I am courageous, willing, resourceful, loved, and inspired. I will not give up.
I know there is something on the other side of this. Today I am courageous. Today I reignite my curiosity and childlike sense of wonder knowing that anything is possible.
Today I remember who I am.
*****
Andrea Hylen believes in the power of our voice to usher in a new world. She is the founder of Heal My Voice, an organization that inspires women and men to heal a story, reclaim personal power and step into greater leadership. Andrea discovered her unique gifts while parenting three daughters and learning to live life fully after the deaths of her brother, son and husband. In addition to serving as Heal My Voice’s Executive Director, Andrea is an Orgasmic Meditation Teacher and Sexuality Coach.
She is following her intuition as she collaborates with women and men in organizations and travels around the world speaking, teaching and leading workshops. Her passion is authentically living life and supporting others in doing the same. To connect with Andrea and learn about current projects go to: www.andreahylen.com and www.healmyvoice.org.
At an On Purpose Woman Conference this past weekend in Columbia, Maryland, a panel of women talked about the New Feminism. The panel consisted of six women ages 22-60. From the hour long sharing, it became clear that the new feminism is inclusive of all genders, all cultures, all ages, all humanity. We all want connection and authentic communication. We want to be seen and heard. We all have unique gifts to offer the world. AND New Feminism begins with loving ourselves first and sharing that love with each other and the world.
To attend the conference in the future, get on the mailing list! http://onpurposewomanconference.com/
*****
For more exploration of the topic of Feminism, listen to the 30 minute TEDx Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:
We Should All Be Feminists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc
Some of her words:
We must raise our girls and boys differently. Boys are raised to prove their masculinity.
What if we raised boys and girls differently about masculinity and the connection to money?
We teach girls to cater to a man’s ego and the “harder” the man, the more fragile the ego. Girls must not be too smart or a man’s ego will be hurt.
Why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man?
We teach girls shame. Close your legs. Cover yourself. We make them feel as though being born female is something to be ashamed of already. As so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves.
They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think.
And they grow up~and this is the worst thing we do to girls~ they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form. (masks, make-believe, pretending we are something or believe something that we don’t)
*****
The time is now. Feminism is not a dirty word. It is Humanity and it is Freedom for All.
“A Feminist is a Man or a Woman who says, Yes, there is a problem with gender today and we must fix it. We must do better.”
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Andrea Hylen believes in the power of our voice to usher in a new world. She is the founder of Heal My Voice, an organization that inspires women and men to heal a story, reclaim personal power and step into greater leadership. Andrea discovered her unique gifts while parenting three daughters and learning to live life fully after the deaths of her brother, son and husband. In addition to serving as Heal My Voice’s Executive Director, Andrea is an Orgasmic Meditation Teacher and Sexuality Coach.
She is following her intuition as she collaborates with women and men in organizations and travels around the world speaking, teaching and leading workshops. Her passion is authentically living life and supporting others in doing the same. To connect with Andrea and learn about current projects go to: www.andreahylen.com and www.healmyvoice.org.