“There’s no greater vengeance against sexual abuse than to reclaim one’s full sexuality and celebrate it.” ~ Esther Perel

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We’ve gotten it so wrong on social media, thinking we know what sexuality and eroticism are—just by how someone looks.

And we are damaging the healing process for many with our judgment and our shaming of bodies over what is worn—or not.

Being in our bodies, wearing little or a lot, is not about performance or results or sexuality. It’s about coming home to who we truly are, before everything life throws at us and changes us into who we need to be to survive.

Being in our bodies is sensuality that coexists with sexuality—it’s the experience of life through our senses. It’s a pleasurable, sensual connection that reminds us that life is worth living in every moment, even when we are in pain or struggling.

Making friends with our bodies and feeling it all through our senses allows us to find what turns us on—whether that’s at work, in everyday life, in conversations with others, in our relationships, with what we wear, or even with a person we have forgotten how to truly see after so many years together. It is the beginning of the best and most powerful healing relationship we will ever have: our relationship with ourselves, and in turn with life and everything that connects us. This relationship with ourselves will create the most empowering, whole experience of living we could ever wish for.

Healing, for me, came with one of the biggest keys life gives us—but also shames us for. It was not about how society views sexuality, but how it views eroticism.

“Eroticism blooms from the tension between excitation and inhibition and manifests in the things we say and do, by how we act, and by how we think.” ~ Esther Perel

You see, desire is our responsibility and it does not hinder on what someone does or doesn’t wear. Why? Desire is an expression of freedom and our free will. Nobody can make us want something—only we can activate this desire, whether it’s for a person, place, or thing.

Freedom comes with responsibility, as does healing and making a good life for ourselves. We can turn ourselves on and we can turn ourselves off in life. As a person who has experienced deep depression, I know this firsthand. Thoughts can both instantly shut me down and instantly open me up to possibility, fun, curiosity, kindness, and love—so I can enjoy my life. I spent many years being numb, and it took me many years to reclaim my enlivened state.

I repeat, our greatest relationship we will ever have is the relationship we have with ourselves. And this limiting belief that so many of us are taught to have—that sexuality and eroticism are about what we wear—needs to change. We need to reeducate ourselves—that it is instead about what turns us on and off in life, about what enhances healing and our ability for self-care.

How many of you have had a sexual interaction naked and you were not turned on?

How many of you have thought someone was sexy when they were fully clothed?

Have you ever been depressed or felt like you were living a Groundhog Day?

Have you ever once found someone extremely sexy and now you no longer desire them?

Have you ever had a job or activity in your life that you were really excited about and now you find it a chore?

“We tend to think of eroticism as a sexual state shared by two or more people, but really, it starts with the individual. And it requires practice.” ~ Esther Perel

Eroticism is the greatest healer and gift. It allows us to develop self-care, body love, self-love, and the ability to live a whole life—mentally and physically—through the awareness we gain about how to turn ourselves on and off through our thoughts and desires.