The Beneaths.

Through life experiences, we understand what our soul most longs for and desires.

If I look at the experiences that I have accumulated in my life, I would say that holistically until recent moments, I have manifested a life of imprisonment.

—>I experienced my mother’s self-entrapment, the imprisonment of my own mind, the imprisonment of my desires, the imprisonment of my vulnerabilities, and - out of habit - passed down + nurtured into me, I continued to enforce this imprisonment upon myself through the echoes of this foundational seed of imprisonment.‍ ‍[NOW PLEASE READ THAT LAST SENTENCE AGAIN BEFORE PROCEEDING. THANK YOU.] —> I carried with me, my own laws of guilt and shame that “properly” kept me imprisoned from pursuing my desires.

Not only did I keep myself tied up and straight laced when I was born to be f e r a l; I imprisoned myself from dancing in a strip club when I -yearned- to be a stripper since I was around 8 years old. I knew that the spirit I saw in the character of the dancing Esmeralda [The Hunchback of Notre Damn] defending outcasts under a corrupted regime lie unexpressed yet dormant within my young vessel. —Even though I didn’t understand the deeply-seeded contradiction the world has around an Empowered Woman: loving her yet simultaneously wishing + almost aroused to witness her demise or end— as we also see unfold for Esmeralda.

I imagine those who possibly hope to see a fallen Empowered Woman, are truly seeking their own imprisoned or disempowered reflection, as their confronted feelings actually demonstrate their internal desire for Liberated Empowerment. There seems to be an almost a knee-jerk reaction to desire to see her put back back into line, reflecting society’s favorite historical archetype — the submissive, + thus-controllable Woman.

—Yet isn’t it peculiar that we desire this binary edge?

We desire to witness Her wildness + ferality,

—yet seek to keep her tamed.

We are aroused by her confidence + power,

—but we hope for her to always remember her place in our “ordered, civilized world.”

We are lured in + enchanted + moved + healed through her Sacred Art of Arousal,

—however, we cage, outcast, drain, + villainize the Courageous + Empowered Woman who embodies the Sacred Slut + Honored Whore?

…

Thus, I can imagine you have questions similar to those asked of me in late nights under the neon glow of a VIP room:

Does my Family still talk to me? What does my Father think of all of this? Does my Mother know?

—questions that I’ve reflected on in the arms of many strangers.

…

Not all of my Family speak to me, but I live my life transparently + the ones that do - love - what I do. +Yes, not only does my Mo☥her know about my career, She proudly tells her friends at work + sometimes show them videos of her “baby” dancing. My Abuela also knows what I do + loves to watch me dance. +I believe that the highest version of my Father [the Him at the end of life] would be immeasurably proud of me, especially if he ever saw how I can express music’s complexity through movement.

—But,

All in Divine Time.

Most people would - not - desire to have their daughter in any facet of the SW [S.E.X. Work] industry.

The idea would be abhorrent

+ bring shame.

You,

my Dear Reader,

may even confront these feelings yourself in this moment

or when reading along.

…

While many might see my father as a negative catalyst for who I am, I prefer the perspective that my father - perhaps - subconsciously + intuitively knew who I would become + unknowingly nurtured it in the only way he was humanly capable of doing, being unprepared to be a Father + running towards a combination of religion + distrust of authority. While he played tug-of-war within himself, he simultaneously played psychological tug-of-war with me.

He shamed the examples of Empowered Women that got anywhere close to me but allowed me to glimpse + view films in which Empowered Women were erotic creatures. I dreamed of wielding a whip like Cat Woman + stripping like the beautiful dancers I took in while walking by our TV during scenes of strip clubs I “should have” looked away from.

As a teen, I once committed to memory a film clip of a steamy shower scene where a woman was washing herself erotically [i.e. a film our family had rented from Netflix’s mail order rentals]. Furious, my father [who definitely was the only one who had added the film to our Netflix Queue] demanded to know which of us added the film as he slammed the pause button. — Alas, it was too late, somewhere in the future, I was already choosing to film myself doing the same thing for my OnlyFans + PornHub pages.

Growing up in church, I wasn’t allowed to be erotic in any sense unless it was in spiritual subservience to a man. Otherwise, I deserved guilt, shame, or even death, as I was told very clearly not only by the males around me, but in the Bible passages we read: Jezebel was violently murdered. Eve was shamed + punished. Esther could have been killed for speaking up for her People, but was spared by her husband, the King of Persia.

+ through these limited examples of Women in the Bible, I began to consider: perhaps I, too, [like Esther] was born for a time such as this?

—A time to liberate others.

I could see clearly the constant double-edged sword of the dogma I was nurtured through.

—Yet it was in church that I learned that dancing is the language of liberation.

“But Miriam led her sisters in dancing after being liberated from enslavement in Egypt [Exodus 15:20-21].”

I wielded this exact Bible verse to verbally combat our Baptist preacher who would not permit dancing at our church, because “it leads to sex…so does drums,” he would tell me in response, “which is why you will not find any drums on our worship stage.” It was the same worship stage two of my best friends [both were secretly struggling to sort through their sexuality at the same time] worshiped “God” in song, all the while being praised for being “good, young, Christian men.”

Sometimes, I even choose to believe that my father must have chosen the most Authoritarian church, so I would - have - no choice but to rebel in order to become who I am today. —Otherwise, I would be faced with betraying my True Sense of Self to mask + perform through acceptable choices to a belief system that didn’t value me.

So, perhaps…

I manifested a Father who knew intuitively what I was meant to become + nurtured me in the way an Aquarian would most need; which is perhaps why he physically appears as a 6’2” stubborn + unnecessary authority figure blocking human expression + freedom.

—But perhaps this intuitive knowing is why he was “so careless” in the sexual icons I was exposed to, yet so harsh in his control of my femininity + female expression, + then also so intuitively purposeful in the range of musical exploration he gave me access to. Perhaps he needed to be this version of himself, so that I, as a stripper, could enjoy + feel confident to flow + dance to all genres of music no matter where I found myself performing.

Perhaps…

my father knew that I would become an Empowered Woman that embraced sex work. ——+ maybe that’s the soulful reason why I was not permitted as a teenager to watch Pretty Woman [a film that depicts a woman who is saved from the “roughness” of sex work by a “John”], but was encouraged at the same age to watch a film about an alien/Female hybrid [bred to be docile + controllable] escaping scientists who attempt to kill her before she breeds with human males [Species].

…hmmmm…

… maybe…

Of course, I choose to believe that everything matters + happens for a reason.

Truly, at my core, I’ve always been the seed that blossomed into the juicy fruit of the Woman I am today —> A healing witch who made rudimentary elixirs for my Mo☥her as a child from juniper seeds intuitively, not consciously knowing juniper is holistically beneficial for protection, renewal, + resilience. Intuitively knowing she needed these qualities for her reality.

Also not consciously knowing that while I was experiencing my mother’s domestic abuse, I was being programmed to magnetize the same romantic connections that I was accustomed to experiencing. My family fought; my father played psychological games that bruised my emotional + mental framework; he was abusive in many ways; my Mo☥her ran away repeatedly throughout my childhood; + I can recall many days in which we would ride around in our family car with my sister trying to find my Mo☥her again. I experienced a lot of broken dishes + household items where my Mo☥her’s imprisoned emotions leaked into our eye sight. All of this witnessing was reflected in my own experience of imprisonment that I imprinted.

Even while my Father told me bluntly that God would rather an abused woman be killed by her husband rather than divorcing her abusive husband, my father also made sure I rewatched the Hunchback of Notre Damn during a time that I that loved Beauty & the Beast. + as I watched Esmeralda fight religious leaders with her magic + eroticism, I heard my own highest self dance in liberation + whisper, “Thank you for showing Her!” Thus, I prefer to live my life considering my Father as a co-creator of my - now - conscious reality. His shadows planted seeds in my subconscious that I chose to water + de-weed, so I can now experience them blossoming into some beautiful blooms.

Maybe there was soulful purpose to me feeling unsafe to express my innate erotic essence in a family where I experienced assault while simultaneously enjoying pornography that featured similar themes? [see Consent Workshops].

…+ maybe…

I was [within all this time of accumulating these low-frequency experiences] also subconsciously allowing myself to dream up a world with more open-hearted + trusting relationships…

where intimacy is sacred to a Union;

where the family is part of a village where we all nurture + love;

where we have a priority to include + show compassion + empathy for all others;

+ where everyone can express themselves safely,

—even the misunderstood.

—yet it was through the tug-of-war games,

+ the unconscious seeds sown,

the patterns I have unlearned

through weed + whimsy,

that ☥his is the Empowered Woman I watered into today.
…

I have learned to Love Me,

so I may now understand that I deserve to be Liberated.

+ in the Peace of Authenticity,

I feel no shame, no guilt, no fear, no worry.

I am filled with Forgiveness,

For I Give Grace

Forward.

______________________________________________________________________________

To my Mo☥her, Thank you for trying to Love throughout a History of Hurt. For even when you failed to find your Heart, I saw Her beating within you.

To my Father, Thank you for trying to tame the demons. For even from the times you failed, I learned.

Thank you both for the songs in my soul that sing my soundtrack to the Life that I Love.