Kindling Joy

It’s the summer here in Scotland and I’m feeling the benefit of the sun’s rays on my body and on my life energy. Tomorrow will be the solstice, the longest day and shortest night of the year.

I love it when I can sit in the sunshine fully present to the experience, enjoying the sensual pleasure of delicious heat, tempered by a gentle breeze through my loose clothing. All the more so when I can experience all that without any sense I should be doing something else more productive. It is a joy and a privilege and I am grateful for every moment of it.

Since I last wrote to you there has been lots going on and I find myself in a new chapter of this Red Velvet Revelry project. Thank you so much to all of you who have shared stories with me so far. Don’t worry-there are more to come and you will now find me writing here more regularly once again.

Over the last few months I have been reflecting on how many women I know are living lives where they barely have capacity to enjoy the summer sunshine or read a book, never mind have enjoyable sex. Even very privileged women I am aware of are harried and exhausted, oppressed by the circumstances of their lives. I don’t think it’s just that we all have too much to do. I believe it’s as a result of social and power structures and conditioning anyone belonging to a marginalised group is subject to in our prevailing culture. Many women are increasingly fearful that political trends in different parts of the world are making life worse for women and people in less powerful social groups everywhere. This fear reduces our capacity to relax, to enjoy, to hope. I feel that fear and I understand it. I also refuse to give up my inner joy.

One of the many books I've been reading recently includes adrienne maree brown’s writing on Pleasure Activism. It has affirmed for me something I have always intuited around the importance of erotic energy. Pleasure is something we all deserve and is valuable in its own right. Being in touch with our creative sexual energy can also help us resist damaging beliefs we have been taught about our bodies and our rights to pleasure, power, resources and so much more. Owning the right to pleasure can be a political act. Pleasure can build our resilience and our capacity to push back against injustice and work for a fairer world.

When I think of women who cannot assert their own needs, let alone desires, because of the ways those options are curtailed by their lived circumstances I feel sad. When I think of the ways so many of us have internalised stories and other cultural communications which cause us to have beliefs that limit who we can be, even when we have opportunities to do them I feel angry.

I am not alone in believing that the process of arriving at midlife can present a women with an opportunity to revisit and question stories she has been told about who she is and who it is possible for her to be. (For more on what the second half of life is from a Jungian perspective read Sharon Blackie’s essay on this topic https://hagitude.org/individuation-and-the-second-half-of-life/)

Red Velvet Revelry came about because I needed to re-examine and challenge what I had accepted about sexuality in the first part of my life. I had to work out what I believed for myself. Since then I have also spent time examining my beliefs about anger and money too.

Now as a collector and teller of stories I feel drawn to use my skills to share tales and create events which are nourishing particularly for women in the second half of life. Not just tales around sexuality but life-giving stories of all kinds which can affirm other neglected parts of ourselves. If in the second half of our life we can reconnect and integrate aspects of ourselves which we left behind to be acceptable to others in the first half of life we will need to hear stories which affirm this. These are the stories I want to share. I call this project Kindling Joy.

Tomorrow is the day when the Kindling Joy project will emerge gently, blinking in the full sun but filled with love. Lets see how she develops…!

Next time we will have a story from Kirsty McNeil on First Love.

Until then wishing you joy,

Marie Louise

Queen of Revelry

www.redvelvetrevelry.com