This past year of my life, I’ve been working through and exploring the emotion, the experience, of rage. Rage and anger are normal human emotions. At least they should be. They’re what signals that a boundary needs to be put in place. But for so many women, myself included, we’re taught that anger is not okay. We’re taught that rage is not okay, and if you exhibit it, you must be crazy, or emotionally unstable, or doing things wrong, or not taking accountability for your side of things.

I realize now, after a lot of therapy and work on this, that I’ve had a lot of rage and anger in my body for a really long time. But it really got uncovered this past year, when I finally had the tools to let that rage and anger come out instead of staying in.

The Relationship

Last year, I left a relationship, and that relationship has been one of my biggest initiators in understanding my rage and my anger. There are slightly kinky elements to experiencing rage and anger, but I’ll get to that later. What I remember most is the craziest experience of being in that relationship and leaving it, and not experiencing a single drop of sadness. Only deep, deep rage.

The first month of leaving, I felt deep rage and anger toward this person. The second and third month, I actually felt a lot of deep rage and anger toward myself. How did I get swindled into this? How did I ignore the red flags? I help people. I literally help people get the tools to avoid these kinds of situations, and yet I found myself in one. How did I get so catfished? Why did I put up with this for so long? Why could he not access his rage or anger to draw better boundaries with me? Not to mention the deep anger and rage at who I became in that relationship. Bitter, resentful, disrespectful. All because, honestly, I wasn’t channeling my rage and my anger early enough.

How I Talked Myself Into Staying

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Every single day I open my email or IG DMs with the forbidden, most annoying question on earth: “Where do I find a Dom?” “I can’t play because I don’t know where to find a Dom”. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a dominant partner, that’s a completely reasonable thing to want. What’s wrong is how almost everyone is asking the question.

90% of the time, the way this gets asked treats finding a Dom like walking into an apple orchard during peak season. You show up, you look around, you pick the ripest one off the tree, and you go home satisfied. That’s not how this works, and the fact that so many submissive women are waiting around for that orchard to appear is the actual reason they’re not playing.

Nobody Is Getting Delivered to Your Bedroom

Here’s the part that makes me genuinely angry about this question: what most people asking it don’t actually want to do is put themselves out there, meet people, and build a real connection. They want a dominant partner to just appear. Fully formed, fully vetted, fully compatible, with zero effort on their end beyond scrolling and waiting.

If that’s genuinely what you want, someone who shows up, does exactly what you ask, and requires nothing from you relationally, that thing exists, and it’s called hiring a professional. A pro-Domme or a professional Dom is a completely legitimate way to get exactly that experience, on your terms, on your schedule, with no pressure to be intimately involved. There is nothing wrong with wanting that. But that is not the same thing as “finding a Dom,” and conflating the two is where people get stuck.

Because outside of paying for it, a Dom is not a service. They’re a person. And people don’t show up in a curated aisle for you to select from. They’re everywhere else, though, genuinely everywhere. They’re on the street. They’re in your grocery store. They’re in your apartment complex. They’re on the dating apps you’ve refused to make a profile on. They’re at the kink events you keep telling yourself you’re too shy to walk into. They’re at the workshops you talk yourself out of registering for because it means you’ll actually have to talk to a stranger. They’re the person you strike up a conversation with at Starbucks who turns out, three conversations later, to share this exact interest with you.

Finding a Dom is finding a connection. It is dating, with a spicier edge. And this idea that the right one is just going to plop into your bedroom like you ordered it on Amazon Prime is not just unrealistic, it’s the entire reason you’re stuck.

How to Actually Open the Door

If you want to stop waiting and start actually meeting people, here’s where to put your energy.

1 – Get on the apps, and actually fill out your profile. Kink-friendly dating apps exist, general dating apps have kink communities inside them if you know how to signal it, and FetLife still functions as a genuine hub for finding local events and people. None of this works if your profile is blank because you’re scared of being seen. Being visible is the cost of entry. Try Feeld, #open, to name a couple.

2 – Go to a munch. A munch is just a casual, non-sexual meetup for kinky people, usually at a normal restaurant, usually low-pressure by design. If you’ve never been to one, it exists specifically to lower the stakes of exactly the fear that’s keeping you stuck. Google “[your city] munch” and you will very likely find one already happening near you.

3 – Take a workshop or course if you say you don’t know what you’re doing. I teach workshops and courses for exactly this reason, and I promise you the room is full of people in the same position you’re in. If your excuse is “But I don’t know how to X”, it’s time to ditch your excuses and learn how.

Also, find in person workshops, again, by googling them. You might meet a potential partner there as well, and it’s a easy way to connect.

4 – Don’t rule out vanilla spaces. My best Doms, the ones I actually built real dynamics with, I did not meet in kink spaces. I met them at a concert. At a rave. On a completely vanilla dating app. What got me there wasn’t luck, it was being upfront, early, about who I am and what I want. You are an adult. It is your responsibility to talk about your sexual needs and preferences as you go through the normal process of meeting people, not to hide them and hope someone reads your mind.

5 – Stop treating this like it’s underground. This isn’t the 1970s. None of this is hidden anymore. It’s on Instagram. It’s on Google. If you don’t know where your local scene is, the information is one search away, and “I don’t know where to look” stopped being a real excuse a long time ago.

How to Actually Vet Someone (Not Just Vibe-Check Them)

Vetting is not scrolling someone’s profile and deciding they seem nice. It’s an actual conversation, and it should happen before anything sexual or kinky does. Vetting is the process of verifying who someone says they are, and seeing if your desires and needs align (I have a free vetting checklist you can download here to set you up).

Ask directly things like: What does consent mean to you? How do you practice consent with your partners? What are you into? How do you typically negotiate a scene? What does aftercare look like for you? Tell me about a time a scene didn’t go the way you planned, and what you did about it? Anyone with real experience can answer these without flinching, because they’ve had to think about them before. Someone who gets defensive, vague, or annoyed that you’re asking has already told you something important.

If you’re meeting someone through a shared community, munch, or workshop, use that. Ask around about this person. Kink communities gossip exactly as much as any other community, and a reputation, good or bad, usually precedes someone by the time you’d actually be alone with them. Don’t skip this step because it feels awkward. Awkward is cheap. A bad scene with the wrong person is not.

And watch the response to a small no before you ever get to a big one. Push back on a location, a time, a text you don’t feel like answering right away. Someone who can’t handle “not tonight” gracefully was never going to handle “stop” gracefully either.

How You Actually Build the Connection From There

Vetting tells you whether someone is aligned to build with. It doesn’t build the dynamic for you. Negotiate specifics before you play, every time, even with someone you’ve played with before. Start smaller than you want to. A dynamic that can hold a low-stakes scene well is one worth trusting with a bigger one later; a dynamic that jumps straight to your biggest fantasy on date two is not usually one that has established trust and connection.

Keep talking outside of scenes and play too. The Doms I’ve built the most with are the ones I text about nothing, about my day, about a dumb thing that happened at the grocery store. We are friends at the core, and share a deep respect and connection with and for each toher. If the connection only exists when kink is happening, it can leave some people feeling off. Real dynamics are built the same way any real relationship is: consistently, in the boring moments, not just the intense ones.

A Dom Is Not a Kink Dispenser

If you take one thing from this, let it be this: a Dominant is not a kink dispenser. They’re not a prolific little machine that pumps your desires out on command. They are a full human being with their own needs, their own limits, and their own life, and the two of you have to build something together. That building requires you to actually show up.

If you meet someone, in the wild or on an app, and you want to start something, you can just say it. Here’s what I want. This is what matters to me. Then you listen to their needs and wants - that’s how CONNECTION is built.

If you’re not willing to show up and create connections, you’re being lazy, not submissive, and no amount of searching is going to fix that. But if you are willing, the people you’re looking for really are everywhere, and this is exactly the terrain I walk women through inside my dating and vetting workshop, how to actually meet people, read them accurately, and build something real instead of suffering over a fantasy that never comes into fruition.

Last week I had anal for the first time in ten years, and the thing that still has me sitting with my jaw on the floor isn’t the act itself - it was how easy it was. It’s how much you open up physically and emotionally in the presence of a truly grounded, Dominant partner. I know how that sounds. It sounds like the kind of line I’d write specifically to get your attention. But it caught me off guard too, and I was there for it.

The Decade In Between

Ten years is a long time, and I want to be clear that this wasn’t some aversion. I lost my anal virginity at seventeen, with a partner who spent six months slowly, patiently helping me open my body up to it. I was truly the definition of a tight ass - I was SOOO sensitive, and it took weekly anal training for me to succeed. My second real relationship after that, we did it once or twice a week, easily, and if I’m honest I preferred it to vaginal penetration most of the time. This was never foreign territory for me. My body knew this road. I fucking loved anal.

Then I married someone where we explored it a few times, but he never quite understood that anal sex has a prep period, that you can’t just show up and go. We had a couple of accidents (unsurprisingly) and after that we just stopped trying. I don’t think either of us decided that on purpose. It just stopped feeling worth the hassle.

Butt play in general never left me, though. A finger, a plug, anything back there has been one of the most reliable paths to pleasure for me. Wearing a plug alone is basically a guarantee I’m having one of the best orgasms of my week. But full penetration specifically got filed under complicated, especially after an attempt with my last boyfriend, who was extremely well endowed, to the point that even an experienced anal enthusiast would’ve called it a stretch, literally and figuratively. We got the head in. That was it. My body refused to open the rest of the way, and I still don’t fully know if that was fear, discomfort, or some wiser part of me making a decision that this person shouldn’t get access 😂 After that I sort of assumed getting back into anal, at all, was going to be a whole project.

Then He Came Over

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Boundaries on my page before we begin. I am sharing my personal experience and train of thought - there is, as always, mounds of nuance and exceptions to everything. I will automatically delete any comments trying to be “devils advocate” because ironically, it confirms the point of my entire article and I’m not open to discussion.

Something’s been sitting on my chest for a while, and it’s really a culmination of years in this space plus something that happened recently. I posted a video about a submissive experience I had a while back: a date where a beautiful man gave me commands on how to sit, where to look, during a dinner. I told the story with full enthusiasm, because it was fully consensual, fully negotiated, and genuinely one of the best times I’ve had.

What I forgot to do was add a disclaimer for anyone newer to this world, letting them know that yes, this was consensual, this was something I was fully open to, and nothing about it happened without me choosing it.

The comments that came in weren’t cruel. Most of them came from a place of real concern. But a few landed differently than the rest. One insinuated that the man I went on that date with was predatory, that this crossed boundaries, that this was a consent violation. That I was lucky that I processed this as a good experience instead of a traumatic one, as if my own enjoyment was a lucky break rather than the actual point. A third said it sounded unconsensual because I looked surprised by what he said in the video.

That last one deserves unpacking, because here’s what they didn’t know: I was the one who asked him to command me. I told him explicitly to go with his own flow, to catch me off guard if he wanted to, and that I’d use my safeword the second anything felt off. I wanted to be surprised. That was the whole ask. Did I lay out that entire negotiation inside a two-minute video? No, and that’s fair to flag. It’s genuinely hard to compress days of negotiations into two minutes, and that part is on me.

But look at the framing underneath all three comments. My good experience got filed under luck instead of evidence I knew exactly what I was doing. The reaction I’d specifically asked him to give me got read as proof something had gone wrong instead of proof something had gone exactly right - even if they didn’t have full context. And the story of a night I loved got quietly rewritten, by strangers, into a story about a man they’d decided to be suspicious of. And I do mean re-written, people were shocked this happened on a “first date” - I had never mentioned it was a first date… there was heavy projection and assumption 😂

If this hadn’t been consensual, of course they’d be right to be concerned, and again, I fully agree I should have added more context for anyone new to the lifestyle to better depict consent and safety. I’m not mad that they left the comments, since it was genuinely from a place of concern, and this has become the culture around it. But something about the pattern across all three comments sat wrong with me for days, and it took a while to actually name what it was.

Here’s the part that got under my skin once I sat with it: when a Dom speaks about a scene, gives an order, sets the pace, I almost never see anyone ask if he consented to that role. Nobody scrolls through his comments wondering if his submissive pressured him into it, or calls her predatory for asking him to command her. On my post, instead of commenting “Hey this sounds like you really enjoyed it! Just to be clear, was this pre-negotiated? That could be useful info for beginners”. No, it was… thank god you weren’t traumatized. That discourse runs in exactly one direction, and once you notice that, you can’t unnotice it.

Lady Vesper wrote a wonderful piece, “Who gets to decide which D/s is Healthy?” that touches on this. I will be quoting her again later in this piece.

What actually stung

It wasn’t the ask for a disclaimer. That part’s fair. What stung was what was sitting underneath it: I am a grown-ass woman, clearly telling this story with enthusiasm, with a page full of 100’s of posts of me in the lifestyle and how I help women. And still, the assumption wasn’t “she knows exactly what she’s doing, but some more info would be helpful”, It was “she might be a victim who doesn’t know it yet.” That I’m an irresponsible educator for not mentioning the pre-negotiations. That comment didn’t just question the man’s behavior. It took my agency and handed it to him instead, as if whatever happened to me was entirely a function of his power, not a choice I made with my eyes wide open.

That’s the wound this touched, and it’s an old one. Submissive women in this space get infantilized and pigeonholed as potential victims constantly, and it happens in ways so normalized most of us stopped clocking them. It’s the well-meaning stranger who jumps into your comments to “make sure you’re okay” after a story that was never a cry for help. It’s the friend who hears “he told me exactly what to do and I loved it” and files it under concerning instead of hot (often times a projection of their own discomfort or differing desires, which, is not truth for someone else).

It’s the fact that submissive women are expected to over-explain, over-caveat, and pre-emptively defend a choice that a Dom would usually not be asked to justify in the same breath. Somewhere along the way, “informed consent matters” turned into “submissive women can’t be trusted to have actually consented,” and those are not the same sentence, even though the discourse treats them like they are.

This isn’t new, either. Women’s desire has been treated as something to be managed, monitored, or explained away for about as long as women have been allowed to speak about it publicly. While kink gave us more tools to feel empowered in our decisions, it still carries some of the same societal shadows.

The Most Common Ways I Feel Infantilized and Victim Labeled as a Submissive Woman

Once I started actually paying attention, the pattern showed up everywhere, not just in one comment section on one video. So here’s the list, plainly, because I think naming it plainly is the whole point.

1. My Agency Gets Treated Like I’m a Clueless Child

This is really the theme underneath everything else on this list. People assume I don’t have real agency, that every decision I make needs to be second-guessed, cross-examined, run through a set of checks and balances before anyone will believe I actually made it on purpose. My judgment doesn’t get trusted the way a Dom’s would, or honestly the way any grown woman’s judgment gets trusted in literally any other area of her life. Set a firm boundary and instead of it just being respected, you get congratulated for it, like boundary-setting was a small miracle rather than something you simply do as a matter of course. Somewhere along the way, being submissive got quietly translated into “She’s like a child and doesn’t truly know what she’s doing” and I don’t think most people even realize that’s the translation they’re making.

2. Normal Relationship Trouble Gets Rebranded As Victimhood

Have a fight with a Dom? Feel let down? Get betrayed by someone you trusted? None of that gets read as what it actually is, a person going through something hard, the same as anyone in any relationship, kink or not. It gets read as proof I was in danger the whole time and simply hadn’t clocked it yet. The assumption that I can’t handle my own relationships, that any normal friction in a human connection automatically means I’ve become a victim, is genuinely one of the more insulting parts of this. I’m allowed to have a bad week. I’m allowed to be disappointed in someone. That doesn’t make me a victim. It makes me a person who dates other people, which comes with risk regardless of what anyone calls themselves in the bedroom.

3. Excitement Gets Met With Uninvited Warnings

I’ll say I’m excited to try something, and instead of just getting to be excited, I get talked at. Someone jumps in to educate me on the risks, to fear-monger me about how dangerous it could be, to make sure I’ve really thought this through, as though I hadn’t. I didn’t ask. It feels like getting the annoying “just be careful” convo from a parent before going out with your friends. I wasn’t soliciting a risk assessment, I was sharing something I was looking forward to, and the assumption that I need the warning anyway, that I couldn’t possibly have already thought it through myself, is exactly the problem I’m describing.

4. My Preferences Get Filed As Symptoms

Want something rougher or heavier in a scene, degradation, objectification, being used exactly the way I asked to be used, and it gets quietly filed under “wow I wonder what happened to her” instead of “she knows precisely what turns her on.” Nobody says that about a woman who likes being praised and adored in bed. The moment the desire points toward being controlled instead of worshipped, people start hunting for the wound underneath it, as if wanting one is only acceptable when it can be explained by the absence of the other.

5. My Wins Get Credited To Luck, My Losses Get Credited To Naivety

Whichever way it goes, I somehow don’t get to be the reason. If something goes well, I got lucky. If something goes badly, I should have known better. And when a dynamic ends, even one I chose to end myself, the story that gets told so often isn’t that I made a decision. It’s that I finally got out, like I’d been in danger the whole time and simply hadn’t noticed. The one outcome that never seems to get much airtime is the actual truth: I made an informed decision, and it played out however it played out, the same as every decision anyone makes about anyone else in their life.

Vulnerable, but not from myself

Here’s the distinction I keep coming back to, because I think it’s the one that actually matters. Women are absolutely vulnerable in this world. We live inside real structural inequality — economic, social, physical — and that produces real danger, real statistics, real reasons to stay alert. I’m not disputing any of that. What I’m disputing is the leap from “women, as a group, face structural vulnerability” to “this specific woman, making this specific choice, in front of you right now, must be a potential victim of it.”

Those are two different categories of risk, and this discourse collapses them constantly. One describes the world women move through. The other is about whether an individual woman standing in front of you is capable of assessing a situation and deciding what she wants from it. I have my own vulnerabilities. Everyone does. None of them cancel out the fact that I’m capable of listening to my own gut, setting a boundary, walking away, or saying yes on purpose….or…choosing to take risks. Structural vulnerability describes a general landscape. It doesn’t describe my judgment, and it definitely doesn’t describe yours.

From this space it’s infuriating when my decisions are constantly questioned.

For example, I just had anal sex for the first time in 10 years with a partner I’ve only been with twice. We have fabulous chemistry, I feel so fucking safe with them, we have a friendship outside of this. I was a FUCK YES to this, and had a fabulous time having every hole used and played with.

But I can see the narrative now from people’s lens (or frankly, their projections):

“OMG, anal so soon? Did you get pressured into it?”

“What type of vetting did you do to decide on anal so quick?”

“Are you sure you’re not doing this out of pressure?”

“What does that say about him that he wanted your ass so fast?”

“You must have been manipulated into - there’s no way you went a decade without successfully doing anal, to doing it so soon with a new partner”

I’m sorry, but why can’t you trust that me asking for, and desiring to have a dick in my ass, is enough?

And I don’t need to explain reasonings that simply don’t exist for me? I felt like it. I wanted it. We had a GREAT time. That’s IT.

Where the fear actually lives

And here’s what gets me: nobody talks like this about vanilla dating. When a woman goes for lunch with a stranger she met on an app, nobody assumes she’s a potential victim who needs a public disclaimer explaining that she consented to the date. We don’t fear-monger her the same way (although, I am seeing more and more visibility on vanilla dating safety). But the second kinky submission enters the picture, suddenly every interaction needs to be triple-checked, triple-questioned, wrapped in warnings, extensive checklists, and signed contracts as if wanting to be commanded automatically downgrades a woman’s ability to consent to it.

The truth, if we’re actually looking at where women experience abundant violence, is that it happens overwhelmingly in the “safe,” vanilla, unremarkable spaces: homes, relationships, situations nobody ever thought to flag as risky. Kink, if anything, is one of the only spaces where people are forced to say the quiet part out loud before anything happens: what they want, what they don’t, where the lines are, what the safeword is. That’s not a red flag. That’s the opposite of one. I have never felt safer in an interaction than the ones where we sat down beforehand and named, explicitly, what was and wasn’t on the table, a conversation the vanilla world barely trains anyone to have at all.

This doesn’t take away the cruelty of humanity and dangers of connection. People in kink DO get hurt. There are predators in kink spaces, who want to play with power in the wrong ways. Who corrupt systems of safety and manipulate them and people to get what they want and swindle their agenda. That is very, very real - but it happens in more than just Kink.

The vulnerable-sub, dangerous-Dom package deal

Here’s the part I think actually does the damage, and it’s bigger than hurt feelings over one comment. “Submissive women are inherently vulnerable” is never a standalone claim. It’s a package deal. You cannot call the sub vulnerable without insinuating her potential partners are dangerous, because vulnerability in this context tends to mean something in relation to a threat. So every time this narrative gets repeated, it isn’t just telling submissive women to be careful. It’s telling the people who love commanding, leading, and holding power that they are, by default, a little bit suspect. Guilty until proven otherwise, just for wanting the role at all. Assume the absolute worst of them, until they prove themselves to be perfect and “safe” (whatever that even means to you, considering your idea of safety is highly subjective).

That poisons connection before either person has said a word to each other. The number one question I get asked is “how to find a safe Dom” because submissive leaning women have the fear of god instilled into them before they can even attempt to explore.

A woman walks into a dynamic already braced for danger instead of curious about a person. A Dom walks in already aware that his desire to lead reads, to a lot of the world, as a red flag rather than a preference. Neither of them is meeting the other person.

They’re meeting a checklist to make sure nothing goes wrong, so they don’t face potential risk from each other. Real D/s asks for the opposite of that: presence, trust, attunement, the willingness to actually see the specific human in front of you instead of the category they supposedly belong to. It also asks to navigate repair if things DO go wrong.

Human connection, in whatever amount of leather you choose to explore it in, is dynamic, mysterious, and messy. No checklist or “safe enough Dom” on paper can fully mitigate risk and discomfort.

You cannot build that inside a story that’s already decided one of you is prey and the other is predator… and then try to connect from that space.

Responsibility creep

There’s a version of this same problem showing up on the other side, too, and I think it’s downstream of the exact same paternalism. I read on Lady Vesper’s Substack Article “📌 Where Does Ethical Responsibility in D/s Actually End?” , Doms have started to feel responsible not just for a scene or dynamic, but for their submissive’s entire well-being: mental health, finances, health. I understand the impulse behind it. If the culture keeps insisting subs are fragile and need protecting, of course some Doms are going to overcorrect into playing guardian instead of partner.

But if a Dom is fully responsible for a sub’s entire life…at what point does that stop being a negotiated power exchange between two consenting adults and start becoming something closer to custodianship? A healthy dynamic asks a Dom to hold specific, agreed-upon responsibility inside a scene or a relationship, not to become the sole architect of another grown woman’s entire existence. Handing that much away isn’t usually submission, even in TPE dynamics. That itself feels like a dangerous narrative to give submissive women, and exactly what happens when nobody trusts a woman to run her own life in the first place.

What kink actually gave me

Look, there are bad Doms. Just like there are bad people, bad partners, bad men, full stop, and discernment matters regardless of what kind of relationship you’re building. But I work with submissive women all day, every week, and I can count on one hand the number I’d ever describe as genuinely vulnerable in a way that made me want to pump the brakes on them exploring this. The rest of them? Powerhouse women.

Women who you would be shocked at how submissive they desire to be. Women who run companies, raise families, negotiate contracts, and then come into a scene and choose, on purpose, to hand over control in whatever way they desire - because they know exactly what they’re doing and exactly why they want it.

For a lot of us, kink was never about finding someone to protect us. It was about finally being trusted, by ourselves, to hold every part of who we are. The parts that want to be praised, and the parts that want to be used. The parts we’re proud of, and the parts we’re still working through.

Submission, done well, asked me to take full responsibility for both, my light and my shadow, instead of handing either one off to someone else to manage. That’s what actually made me more independent, not less. Negotiating exactly what I wanted, out loud, over and over, taught me how to know my own mind everywhere else, too, in my business, my friendships, the relationships that weren’t working. Choosing to surrender, on purpose, to someone I’d vetted for my own safety needs and trusted, taught me the difference between giving something away and losing it, which turned out to be a lesson I needed in almost every part of my life, not just the bedroom.

So here’s what I actually want to ask you, instead of telling you: Has this happened to you? When’s the last time someone assumed you were fully capable in your kinky decisions, instead of assuming the worst?

Someone messages me almost every week with a version of the same fear: “I want to tell my partner what I’m into, but every time I try, I either chicken out or it comes out sounding like a confession. How do I bring this up without making it weird?”

It doesn’t have to be weird, and it definitely doesn’t have to feel like you’re admitting to something (yes, that guilt you feel for having desires can be real)

The reason this conversation feels so loaded is that most of us learned, somewhere along the way, that wanting something specific in bed (especially Kinky shit) means there’s something to explain or apologize for.

There isn’t. Desire doesn’t need a defense. It just needs a little structure so it actually lands the way you want it to.

Why This Conversation Feels So High-Stakes

This convo feels high stakes because it’s a vulnerable window into your sexuality, and it can be very exposing. It’s laced with fears of rejection, the potential judgements, and a possibility you could not get your needs met - I get it!

(My beginners guide to sexy conversations will save your life when it comes to communicating your desires. You can get it here)

I see two large culprits for what makes disastrous into to kink conversations:

Timing and Setting: Bringing up kink mid-argument, right before sex, or over text at 1am almost guarantees it lands as pressure instead of an invitation. Your partner’s nervous system reads context before it reads content, so the same sentence said calmly over coffee on a Sunday afternoon lands completely differently than it does whispered in the dark right when you want something to happen. Choosing a low-stakes, low-pressure moment does more work than almost anything you actually say.

The other piece is language. Vague hints (”I’ve been curious about some stuff”) create anxiety because your partner’s imagination fills in the blank, usually with something bigger or scarier than what you actually mean. Specific, calm language does the opposite. It gives your partner something real to respond to instead of a mystery to worry about.

How To Actually Have This Conversation

1 – Pick The Moment On Purpose

Choose a time when neither of you is stressed, rushed, or already emotionally activated. A walk, a car ride, a lazy morning, anywhere low-pressure where eye contact isn’t mandatory, tends to work better than sitting face to face on a couch, which can feel like an interrogation for something that isn’t a crime.

2 – Lead With Curiosity, Not Confession

Frame it as something you’re curious about exploring together, not a secret you’re finally revealing. “I’ve been curious about exploring some rope play, would you be open to talking about it?” invites a partner in. “I need to tell you something about myself” puts them immediately on alert, bracing for bad news before you’ve said anything at all.

3 – Get Specific Instead Of Vague

Name the actual thing. Rope, impact, power exchange, whatever it is. Specificity gives your partner something concrete to say yes, no, or “tell me more” to. Vagueness will generally leave people more confused, and you create the very tension you have been trying to avoid.

4 – Make Room For Their Reaction, Whatever It Is

Your partner might need a minute. They might have questions, or their own nerves, or genuine excitement they don’t know how to show yet. None of those reactions are a rejection of you, they’re just a person processing new information in real time. Give them room to respond without needing them to have the perfect reaction immediately.

5 – Treat It As An Ongoing Conversation, Not One Big Reveal

This almost never needs to be a single, high-stakes moment. It can be a conversation that continues over days or weeks, with more specifics added as trust builds. Removing the pressure of “getting it all out in one go” tends to make the whole thing feel dramatically less scary for both people.

Why This Skill Is Worth Building

The women I work with who end up with partners who actually understand their desires are rarely the ones who found some magical, shame-free version of this conversation on the first try.

They’re the ones who got comfortable enough with their own wants to talk about them plainly, without over-explaining or apologizing for having them in the first place.

That comfort is a skill, not a personality trait, and it’s exactly what I help women build inside Activate Your Submission, where we identify your concrete submissive desires (it’s free btw).

If you know your desires and need scripts to say them, get my Beginners Guide to Sexy Communication here (and thank me later).

The goal was never to make you brave enough to confess. It’s to help you talk about your desires like the completely normal, worth-having things they actually are.

It’s a fair question, and it might be the most important one to ask yourself before you go looking for a partner, because the two things can look identical from the outside and feel completely different from the inside. Most of the heartbreak I’ve watched women move through in this community didn’t come from a scene that went too far. It came from never learning to tell these two things apart before handing their power to someone else. So let’s actually tell them apart.

What’s Actually Happening In Your Nervous System

People-pleasing is a survival strategy, not a personality trait. It’s a pattern your nervous system built, often a long time ago, when it learned that being agreeable, easy, or invisible kept you safe. It can also be considered a fawn response to not stir the pot.

Maybe it kept the peace in a house where conflict felt dangerous. Maybe it kept you loved by someone whose affection came with conditions attached. For myself, my people pleasing used to be a mechanism to combat feeling like I disappointed someone by having my own needs.

Whatever built it, the mechanism runs the same way everywhere it shows up: you scan a room, locate what someone else needs from you, and become that before they’ve even had to ask. It’s automatic, and it doesn’t feel like fear from the inside. It just feels like being nice, or easy, or chill - let me guess, have you ever said:

“Oh don’t worry about me, I’m easy”

“You choose, I’ll adjust”

“Whatever you need, I’ll make it happen”.

Submission, the kind that actually feeds you instead of hollowing you out, is a different mechanism that from the outside, looks like people pleasing: But it’s not.

It isn’t scanning for safety. It’s choosing surrender from a place that already feels safe enough to let go. It’s choosing surrender for our pleasure, which can feel slightly selfish. That distinction sounds simple, but it’s genuinely one of the hardest things to feel in your own body until someone points you toward what to actually notice.

The Three Signals Worth Checking

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My students message me often after having some of their first successful kinky scenes, saying something along the lines of: “I felt so out of it after that scene…but in the best way, like I was high and floating. Was that normal? Did I black out? Is something wrong with me?”

While we have studied this in my programs, it’s a whole different ball game to experience it.

What you felt has a name, subspace, and it might be the single most talked-about, least-explained experience in all of kink. People throw the word around constantly, but almost nobody actually walks you through what’s happening in your body, how to get there safely and on purpose, or the part that comes hours later that catches so many people off guard. So let’s actually do that properly.

What’s Actually Happening In Your Body

Subspace is a real, physiological state, not just a figure of speech. During a kinky scene, your body releases a specific combination of chemicals: endorphins and dopamine from pain and pleasure processing, oxytocin from touch and trust, and adrenaline and cortisol from the stress response itself. Together, that combination is chemically similar to what athletes describe as a runner’s high, an altered, euphoric state your body enters when it’s been pushed past its normal operating range. I’ve personally also felt it like the sweet come up to MDMA, where things get light and fluffy.

This is why subspace can feel floaty, dissociated, hyper-focused, or like time has gone strange. When I’m in subspace? Time is VERY distorted, and hours can go by and feel like minutes. Your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for planning, self-monitoring, and constant internal narration, quiets down significantly. That’s not a malfunction. It’s your nervous system temporarily stepping back from its usual job because it’s decided, based on the trust and safety in the scene, that it’s allowed to. For me, that was so shocking at first, since I am always ON. When my brain turned off an I turned into a marshmallow during a scene, I was rightfully concerned lol.

But, it’s worth knowing that subspace exists on a spectrum. Some people feel a mild, pleasant floatiness. Others go much deeper, becoming nonverbal, disoriented, or unable to track time accurately. Personally, I have subspace in each scene that feels unique and different from other times, and I can’t predict what I’m getting.

Neither end is “better,” but the deeper end requires more attentive aftercare, because someone in deep subspace may not be able to advocate for their own needs in the moment, which is exactly why a partner’s awareness matters as much as the scene itself.

How To Actually Get There, Safely and On Purpose

1 – Build Trust Before You Build Intensity

Subspace requires your nervous system to believe it’s genuinely safe to stop monitoring the situation. That belief doesn’t happen instantly. A slower buildup, real conversation about limits and expectations beforehand, and a partner whose patterns you already know all do the quiet work of showing your body it can actually let go instead of staying half-alert the whole time.

In many ways, I believe that if people stopped seeking subspace and they sought out this level of trust first, subspace is a natural side effect.

2 – Lean Into Rhythm and Repetition, Not Intensity

Contrary to what a lot of people assume, subspace usually isn’t triggered by the most extreme sensation available. Steady, repetitive input, consistent impact, a predictable rope pattern, a sustained rhythm, tends to get people there more reliably than anything sudden or unpredictable, because predictability is what allows your mind to stop tracking what’s coming next and simply be inside what’s happening now.

For many, softness and consistency makes them feel safer than intensity, and could be what sends them into their delightful subspace!

3 – Keep Communicating During The Scene, Not Just Before It

Ongoing check-ins, a specific word, a squeeze, a particular sound, let your body stay surrendered without needing to supervise itself. This matters even more as you go deeper into subspace, since the further you drop, the less reliable your own self-monitoring becomes, which is exactly why this system needs to be established before you need it.

I always explain to my students that playing in subspace is like playing while slightly high - it can skew your ability to make decisions, so important to check in and use your consent methods throughout.

4 – Understand and Plan For Sub Drop, Not Just The Peak

What goes up chemically comes down, and sub drop, the comedown that happens sometimes hours later, sometimes the next day, is a real, measurable neurochemical crash as those endorphins and oxytocin metabolize out of your system. It can look like sudden sadness, irritability, exhaustion, or feeling emotionally fragile for no apparent reason. This is not a sign anything went wrong. It deserves exactly the same seriousness you’d give any other physical comedown, which means planning for it in advance rather than being blindsided by it.

I am a person who has very low aftercare needs, and don’t subdrop often. If I do, I find that my sub drops feel more like vulnerability hangovers - I went DEEP with someone. They saw ALL of me. I feel exposed, small, and usually need tender emotional care after intense scenes - and I usually need close to zero physical aftercare. Everyone is different, and it’s okay if you need more or less.

5 – Treat Aftercare As Essential Infrastructure, Not a Nice-to-Have

Real aftercare means water and food, because blood sugar and hydration take a genuine hit. It means warmth, because a body coming down from that kind of chemical flood often can’t regulate its own temperature well for a while. It means physical touch if that feels good, or space if it doesn’t, and having already talked about which one you tend to need. And it means unrushed time, real minutes, and literally “landing”.

For example, I bake in 20-30 minutes of aftercare landing time in my rope sessions since people are usually pretty physically or emotionally wobbly after we have a rope scene. It wouldn’t be wise to send them packing on their scooters without coming back to real life - and as the rope top, I also need aftercare! You just did something beautiful and intense together, let it come down and marinate.

Why I Actually Teach This

Subspace isn’t a talent some people have and others don’t, and it isn’t luck. It’s a physiological state your body already knows how to access, the same way it knows how to fall asleep or catch its breath after running. It just needs the right conditions, and understanding those conditions is what turns subspace from something that happens to you occasionally into something you can access, and come down from, safely and on purpose.

That’s exactly the kind of embodiment education I teach inside Empowered Submission Academy, because the goal isn’t subspace - it’s creating the safety, conditions, and tools to feel safe and equipped to go into subspace and enjoy the magic of scenes!

Eat, Pray, Sub 2.0

When I came back to Barcelona this summer, I had one intention.

I wanted this to be my Eat, Pray, Sub 2.0.

The first time I did my Eat, Pray, Sub, I was 22 years old, freshly divorced, and completely consumed by curiosity. I packed my life into two suitcases, moved to Europe, and spent that summer devouring every kinky experience I could get my little hands on. I explored. I experimented. I made mistakes. I discovered entire parts of myself that I never knew existed, and those experiences ultimately shaped the woman and kinkster I am today.

Now I’m older. Wiser. Dare I say... sexier.

Coming back to Barcelona felt like returning to the place where I first gave myself permission to explore. Only this time, I wasn’t arriving from a place of chaos. I wasn’t trying to figure out who I was. I was arriving with a much stronger sense of self and a much clearer understanding of my desires.

What I didn’t expect was that one evening a few weeks ago would reaffirm my faith in men, dominance, and kink all over again. To be erotically held in my edge, roughness, softness, pleasure, and pain in a way that would restructure my cells.

That someone would do things to me that were NEW, and left me surprised.

Let’s get into it.

Starving for Dominance

The truth is, I’ve been starving to be HEAVILY dominated.

Ever since my breakup, I’ve been playing with people. I want to be clear - I’ve been having SO MUCH fun. I’ve had beautiful experiences and connected with wonderful humans. I’ve been kinky with some of them, and we are building experience and trust. But there has been one piece that has consistently felt missing.

There is a particular quality of dominance I’ve been searching for for a very long time.

I certainly didn’t find it in my last relationship, although I know my former partner genuinely wanted to give it to me. His intentions were beautiful, but intention and embodiment are not the same thing. Looking back, I can see how often he was trying to dominate me to please me, rather than being in his own power for his pleasure.

He was soft, deep, and so sexually attentive and caring - but there was no edge.

And that’s on me - I so deeply believed someone could grow into this role, but ultimately, it wasn’t their nature - and that was a huge incompatibility. It was out of integrity of me to expect more, or drown in dissatisfaction from something I knew wasn’t going to work.

After this recent experience, I realized what I actually desire and thrive in: The presence of a man who Dominance is their nature, not a learned role.

Before We Ever Touched

Before coming to Barcelona, I reconnected with a man I’d met here the previous year. He’s deeply rooted in the kink community and incredibly experienced, but more importantly, this isn’t something he performs when it’s convenient.

This is simply who he is.

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When I arrived in Barcelona a few weeks ago, I made a promise to myself.

I wanted this summer to be my Eat, Pray, Sub 2.0.

Seven years ago, after my divorce, I packed up my life, moved to Europe, and said yes to everything. That version of me was bold, reckless, curious, and completely devoted to discovering who she was. Some of the most formative experiences of my life happened during that period. I traveled constantly, explored my sexuality with enthusiasm, stumbled into adventures I never could have planned, and learned more about myself in a few short months than I had in years.

This time, however, I wanted to approach things differently.

I wasn’t arriving in Barcelona fresh off a divorce. I was arriving seven months after a breakup that had left my nervous system absolutely wrecked. Over the past year and a half, I had slowly become more withdrawn. I stopped going out as much. My energy was low. I found myself staying home more often. The version of me that used to enthusiastically chase experiences had slowly started retreating inward.

And honestly, I needed that season.

Tulum held me beautifully through it. It gave me a place to rest, to nest, to grieve, and to slowly come back to myself. I spent months healing. Months rebuilding. Months getting nurtured by my friends and family. But by the time I boarded the plane to Barcelona, I could feel something changing.

I wasn’t craving isolation anymore.

I was craving experience. I wanted to challenge myself again. I wanted to remember what curiosity felt like.

I wanted to see what happened if I started saying yes again.

So naturally, I ended up signing up for a mummification workshop in a dungeon.

A Completely Reasonable Decision

Like any responsible kinkster, I opened FetLife and clicked on the events tab, which remains, in my humble opinion, the only useful feature on that website. The rest of it is a lawless wasteland that I prefer not to discuss.

That’s where I found a mummification workshop.

Now, if you’ve never heard of mummification before, it’s an extreme form of bondage where someone is wrapped from head to toe using duct tape, plastic wrap, or other materials until they’re almost completely immobilized. Depending on the style, the face may be covered as well, with breathing maintained through the nose or through some sort of breathing apparatus like a straw.

If you decide to Google it, I’d like to apologize in advance.

It is not exactly beginner-level imagery.

This is a fairly advanced form of kink and not something I would recommend casually experimenting with at home. Part of the reason I felt comfortable exploring it was because I would be doing so under the guidance of an experienced facilitator, surrounded by other participants, inside a workshop environment specifically designed for learning.

What’s funny is that mummification has never been a kink that particularly turned me on.

I wasn’t sitting at home fantasizing about becoming a human burrito.

What I felt was curiosity.

And I think that’s one of the things I love most about kink. Not every curiosity has to be erotic. Not every experience has to end in arousal. Sometimes something simply fascinates you. Sometimes you explore because you’re interested. Sometimes a kink gives you something entirely different than sexual gratification.

So with wide eyes and a healthy amount of skepticism, I made my way to a small dungeon in the south of Barcelona.

The Moment I Realized I Was Scared

The workshop was exactly what I’ve come to expect from kinky spaces.

Warm.

Friendly.

Welcoming.

One of my favorite things about kink communities is how normal everybody looks. If you’ve never been to one of these spaces, you probably imagine people dressed head to toe in leather, dramatically lurking in corners. Instead, it looks like a collection of ordinary people who happen to have unusual hobbies. Lovely couples. Single people. Friendly humans chatting over coffee before voluntarily wrapping each other in plastic.

As the workshop began, the facilitator asked whether anyone had experience with bondage.

I raised my hand.

I’ve spent years in Shibari. I’ve tied people. I’ve been tied. I’ve taught classes. I’ve facilitated experiences. Bondage is not new territory for me.

And yet, as the facilitator started explaining what we were about to do, I realized something important.

Shibari and mummification are not remotely the same experience.

Shibari is about restriction.

Mummification is about immobilization.

Even in a restrictive rope tie, there is usually still room for movement. You can adjust your position. Shift your weight. Wiggle slightly. You still possess some degree of agency inside the restraint.

Mummification is different.

When you’re wrapped tightly from your toes all the way to the top of your head, there is no adjusting. There is no repositioning. There is no deciding you’re uncomfortable and casually shifting your body two inches to the left.

You are exactly where you are.

And I won’t lie to you.

That realization scared the shit out of me. I immediately started having all the thoughts.

What if I panic? What if I feel trapped? What if I need out immediately? What if I absolutely hate this?

For a moment, I genuinely questioned whether I wanted to continue.

And strangely enough, sitting there feeling nervous gave me an enormous amount of compassion for my own students. I’ve spent years introducing people to Shibari, yet I suddenly found myself standing in their shoes. I understood what it feels like to be curious and terrified at the same time. I understood what it feels like to trust another person’s expertise while your nervous system quietly asks whether this is actually a terrible idea.

I don’t know that I’ve ever empathized more deeply with my students than I did in that moment.

Becoming a Cocoon

Once we finished the safety briefing, I was paired with a wonderful woman and volunteered to go first. And I need you to understand something.

Getting mummified is not sexy. At all.

There is no elegant choreography involved in wrapping a human being in plastic wrap.

There is no sensual flow. There is no artistic grace.

There are simply human beings rolling each other around on the floor like oversized burritos.

If you had walked into that dungeon, you would have seen eight couples flipping, rotating, maneuvering, and repositioning floppy human bodies while trying to get plastic wrap underneath them. It was far less “dark erotic dungeon” and far more “competitive arts and crafts.”

I chose bright hot pink wrap because if I was going to become a human hot pocket, I was going to do it with style.

For my own comfort, I decided to begin conservatively and only be wrapped up to my neck. As the layers accumulated, I noticed something surprising happening.

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I’m currently sitting on my Barcelona balcony listening to the buzz of people below me and watching swallows overtake the morning sky. My cat is cautiously exploring the balcony for the first time, taking one hesitant step forward before immediately reconsidering every life choice that brought her here. I’m wearing a dress and heels, drinking my second coffee at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday because frankly, nobody can stop me.

Barcelona has always felt sensual to me. Not romantic. Not beautiful, although it certainly is. Sensual. It’s a city that constantly reminds me there is an opportunity to experience pleasure. The long lunches that become dinners. The wine that appears before you’ve even decided if you’re staying. The way people linger. The way nobody seems particularly interested in rushing through their life. Every time I come here, I remember that life is supposed to be tasted.

As I sit here this morning, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been here before. Not physically—I come back every year. I mean here, at a threshold. At the edge of a life change. At the beginning of something I can’t fully see yet but can absolutely feel. There is a particular sensation that arrives before a major transformation, and it feels a little bit like standing at the shoreline watching the tide pull back before a wave arrives. You don’t know exactly what’s coming, but every part of you knows something is.

The last time I felt this way, I had just gotten divorced.

The First Eat, Pray, Sub

Seven years ago, I arrived in Barcelona with two suitcases and absolutely no plan. One suitcase contained my clothes. The second suitcase was filled entirely with sex toys because at the time I was reviewing them for brands and getting paid in products far more often than I was getting paid in money. I had a blog that maybe 200 people read, an Instagram account with around 1,000 followers, and I was making roughly $1,000 a month managing social media for someone else’s business. I had maybe $3,000 in savings and absolutely no logical reason to move across the world.

And yet I did.

Looking back, I genuinely don’t know where that confidence came from. Maybe it wasn’t confidence at all. Maybe it was intuition. Maybe it was desperation. Maybe it was the realization that staying felt more dangerous than leaving. Whatever it was, it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

That summer became one of the most defining chapters of my life. I only started calling it Eat, Pray, Sub recently because the truth is I never related to Eat, Pray, Love. I wasn’t coming to Europe looking for enlightenment. I wasn’t searching for some pristine spiritual awakening. I came to eat incredible food, reconnect with myself, and somewhere along the way I became gloriously, unapologetically kinky.

What followed was one of the most expansive periods I have ever lived through. I traveled constantly. Amsterdam. London. Switzerland I went to kink bars and sex parties. I had my first threesomes. I slept with people I probably shouldn’t have slept with and said yes to opportunities that both thrilled and terrified me. I stopped asking whether I should want something and started asking whether I actually did. That distinction changed my life.

Every lover taught me something. Every adventure reflected a new part of myself back to me. Every risk revealed another edge of my desires. I wasn’t simply exploring sexually. I was learning who I was when nobody else’s expectations were dictating the answer.

But alongside all that freedom was an enormous amount of grief.

People hear stories like this and imagine endless adventure, but what they don’t see is the emotional undercurrent running beneath it all. While I was expanding, I was also purging. I was grieving my marriage. Grieving the future I thought I was supposed to have. Grieving old identities that no longer fit. There were mornings spent crying into coffee and evenings spent dancing until sunrise. There were nights I remember vividly and a handful that I only remember through photos. There were hangovers, heartbreaks, revelations, mistakes, and lessons that I still carry with me today.

Somewhere in the middle of all that beautiful chaos, I became myself.

Or maybe I met myself for the first time.

When Barcelona Stopped Feeling Like Barcelona

Last year, Barcelona felt different.

On paper, it should have been one of the most magical summers I’d had in years. I was back in my favorite city in the world with someone I loved. We were walking streets I knew by heart, sitting in plazas with coffee and pastries, eating at restaurants I’d spent all year looking forward to revisiting. From the outside, everything looked beautiful.

The problem was that I had already entered what I now lovingly call the death portal of my relationship.

Things were unraveling, although I wasn’t fully willing to admit it yet. Some of it was us. Some of it was individual. Some of it was simply life. But underneath every conversation, every plan, every beautiful moment was a growing awareness that I was becoming increasingly unhappy.

What made it painful wasn’t that I knew.

What made it painful was that I knew and desperately wanted to be wrong - but like little 20 something year old me, I felt this way when I entered my divorce portal.

I loved this person. I wanted things to work. I wanted the relationship to survive. But as the summer unfolded, I found myself feeling increasingly trapped, disappointed, and apathetic. The city that had always represented expansion suddenly felt small. The freedom I normally experienced here felt limited. The spontaneity I loved felt inaccessible. I was waterboarding myself in work to avoid the very evident unease that was growing within me. I suddenly didn’t want to socialize or go out. I was sleeping, a lot. I can see now that you would probably call this functional depression - as I had to energetically hold the structure of the fort for a very long time. `

Looking back now, I don’t think Barcelona had changed.

I think I had.

Or perhaps I was finally becoming aware of how much of myself I had slowly compressed in order to remain inside a relationship that no longer fit.

What Freedom Feels Like

The thing I’ve been noticing most since arriving isn’t the city itself. It’s the freedom.

Not the grand cinematic freedom people write books about. The small freedom. The ordinary freedom. The kind that sneaks up on you while you’re drinking your second coffee of the morning and suddenly realize the entire day belongs to you.

This morning I found myself debating a question that felt both ridiculous and strangely profound: do I want to masturbate before I work out, or do I want to work out before I masturbate? After that, do I want to take a nap? Do I want to sit in a café for three hours and write? Do I want to wander through the city with absolutely no destination in mind? The answer to those questions isn’t important. What feels important is that they’re mine to answer.

Over the past year and a half, I became so accustomed to orienting my life around someone else’s limitations that I forgot what it felt like to move entirely from my own desires. We spent so much time in the weeds of constant emotional labor and exhausting discussions that I lost sight of the toll it was taking. You don't realize how much energy you're losing when it's all allocated toward keeping a fragile machine running. You stop asking yourself what sounds exciting, nourishing, adventurous, or pleasurable because your attention becomes consumed by what needs fixing. My life trajectory was moving fast, my dreams were big, and I had to keep slowing it down.

Sitting here now, I can feel how many parts of myself I quietly placed on a shelf. The woman who loved wandering aimlessly through cities. The woman who rarely had any worries. The woman who books flights randomly because she was curious. The woman who flirted shamelessly. The woman who treated life like something to participate in rather than something to manage. The woman who danced more, and had light in her eyes. I didn’t lose her completely, but I certainly stopped prioritizing her.

And perhaps that’s what feels so emotional about being back in Barcelona. The city itself isn’t giving me anything new. It’s simply creating enough space for me to hear myself again.

Eat, Pray, Sub 2.0

This is why I’ve started calling this chapter Eat, Pray, Sub 2.0.

Not because I’m trying to recreate what happened seven years ago. Honestly, I hope I don’t. The point isn’t to become 22 again. The point is to see what happens when the woman who survived that chapter gets another opportunity to reinvent herself.

This version looks different.

It looks like healing my body after spending too long disconnected from it. It looks like repairing my hormones after my body practically staged a protest against a relationship that wasn’t aligned. It looks like learning how to rest without feeling guilty. It looks like sitting in beautiful cities and actually enjoying them instead of hiding behind my laptop trying to outwork my emotions.

It also looks like being open to connection again, trusting myself to see red flags or misalignment early and without people pleasing. It looks like anchoring down on the present, and not something or someone’s potential.

There’s a difference.

Before I even arrived in Barcelona, I had already started recruiting. I have dates lined up with interesting, intelligent, diverse men. And what’s fascinating is how differently I approach dating now. Seven years ago, I was still trying to understand myself. I was still learning my desires. I was still figuring out where my boundaries lived.

Now I know.

I trust myself in ways I couldn’t have imagined at twenty-two. I know what I want. I know what I don’t want. I know what makes me feel alive. I know what makes me shrink. I know what I am willing to tolerate and what I absolutely refuse to entertain.

That self-trust feels tattooed into my soul vs theory from before.

The exploration is still there. The curiosity is still there. The sexuality is certainly still there. But it’s all being filtered through a woman who knows herself far better than she did the first time around.

The Initiation

As I sit on this balcony, I keep thinking about how strange it is that life sometimes circles us back to the same places when we’re ready for the next lesson.

Seven years ago, Barcelona became the backdrop for one of the biggest transformations of my life. It witnessed my grief, my liberation, my mistakes, my adventures, my sexual awakening, and the earliest versions of the life I now live.

Now I’m back.

Older.

Wiser.

Heartbroken in entirely different ways.

Stronger in entirely different ways.

And once again I have the feeling that I’m standing at the beginning of something.

I don’t know exactly what Eat, Pray, Sub 2.0 will become. I don’t know who I’ll meet, what adventures I’ll stumble into, what mistakes I’ll make, or what lessons are waiting for me around the corner. What I do know is that the last time I listened to the voice telling me to come to Barcelona, it changed the trajectory of my entire life.

That voice brought me here again.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past seven years, it’s that when my intuition starts speaking this loudly, I should probably listen.

So here’s to another chapter.

Here’s to possibility.

Here’s to freedom.

And here’s to finding out who I’m becoming next.

When most people first get into Shibari, they become obsessed with what it looks like. And honestly, I understand why. Shibari is visually intoxicating. You open Instagram or Fetlife and suddenly you’re staring at impossibly intricate harnesses, dramatic suspensions, beautiful bodies wrapped in elaborate patterns, people hanging from ceilings looking like art installations dipped in eroticism. The Japanese mystery, it pulls you in immediately.

I remember when I first started learning, I thought the goal was to become technically impressive as fast as possible. I wanted to learn the complicated ties. I wanted things to look beautiful. I wanted to recreate the visuals I had fallen in love with online. I thought the people who were “good at Shibari” were the ones creating the most elaborate designs, the cleanest shapes, the most aesthetically striking scenes.

And then I started actually tying people - and myself. That story? Completely different.

The Shibari experiences people remember most are almost never the flashiest ones. They remember the feeling. The exhale that leaves their body when tension finally settles correctly across their chest. The anticipation before the next knot. The way their nervous system slowly starts melting underneath your hands.

I’ve tied people in technically simple positions who cried because their body finally felt safe enough to let go. I’ve had someone start sobbing from a mouth rope because of what it psychologically unlocked in them. Not because the tie was complicated, but because the experience was.

And I’ve also seen the opposite. Beautiful, complicated Shibari scenes that looked stunning in photos but felt completely empty in person because there was no pacing, no presence, no actual connection happening underneath the technique.

That was one of the biggest shifts for me as a Shibari artist.

I stopped asking, “Does this look impressive?”

And started asking, “What does this make someone feel?”

Because Shibari is not just visual art sitting on top of a body. It changes the body. It changes breathing. Posture. Attention. Emotion. Arousal. Vulnerability. Presence. You’re taking away someone’s ability to move. There may be S/M involved. And once you understand that, the practice becomes infinitely more intimate than simply learning how to tie pretty knots.

So if you’re new to what I jokingly call “spicy macramé,” these are the five things I genuinely think matter most to make an impact.

Learn Technique Before Aesthetic

I know it’s tempting to skip ahead. Trust me, I understand the urge. You see gorgeous chest harnesses on youtube and immediately want to recreate them, but one of the biggest mistakes I see beginners make is prioritizing aesthetics before understanding fundamentals. I call this “white girl Shibari”, or honestly just western bondage, because some people focus more on design work vs the practice - it’s like doing complex macrame on the body, but, it doesn’t really have actual use. It will collapse at the touch.

A simple tie with beautiful tension and intentional placement will almost always feel better than a complicated tie done poorly because bodies can immediately feel the difference between handling that is mindful and handling that is rushed.

People underestimate how physical Shibari actually is. This is not passive decoration. It compresses. Restricts. Supports. Pulls attention inward. Every adjustment changes sensation. Every pull changes how someone breathes, how they hold themselves, how their nervous system responds.

I remember one of my students once recreated this wildly elaborate harness she had seen online, and visually it honestly looked pretty good for a beginner. But the second I touched the rope, I could feel how uneven the tension was. Some sections were crushing into the body while other sections were loose and floating. And you could immediately see it in her partner too — fidgeting, mentally checked out, trying to “endure” the tie instead of melting into it.

Then we stripped it all back.

One rope. Simple chest harness. Slow tension. Intentional placement.

And within minutes her partner’s body completely softened.

That’s the difference.

One was trying to create a photo, The other was creating an experience.

And honestly, one of the sexiest things in Shibari is competence. The feeling of someone handling your body with awareness and care is infinitely hotter than someone rushing through a complicated tie they barely understand.

So if I could actually recommend something for your practice, it would be this: spend a month focusing on basic ties and tension before learning anything flashy. Seriously. Learn how to make a simple wrist tie feel incredible. Learn how your rope feels when it’s too tight, too loose, supportive, grounding, restrictive, teasing. Your future Shibari will become infinitely better because of it.

Stop Trying To Memorize Shibari And Start Trying To Feel It

I think beginners often approach Shibari like they’re studying for an exam. They obsess over memorizing tutorials, sequences, wraps, exact hand placements, trying to perfectly recreate what they watched online. And yes, technique matters deeply, it was my first tip, but Shibari changes completely when you stop treating it like information and start treating it like sensation.

Because Shibari is sensation.

It’s pressure, pacing, anticipation, resistance, release, tension, stillness. It’s noticing how someone’s breathing changes when you tighten tension slowly instead of all at once. It’s realizing that moving rope slightly higher or lower on someone’s body can completely alter the emotional and physical feeling of a tie.

I remember tying one of my close friends during Rope Sundays after she had come in carrying an enormous amount emotionally. We ended up exploring a mouth rope together, and what struck me wasn’t the technique itself. Technically, it was actually quite simple. I just put rope into her mouth.

What mattered was everything around it.

The slowness.

The trust.

The way I gathered her body first.

The way I held her.

The way the rope altered her psychologically the second it entered her mouth.

Within seconds, tears started streaming down her face. Her body flushed warm. Her breathing changed completely. And suddenly all this grief she had been carrying started pouring out of her body in waves.

That moment had absolutely nothing to do with flashy Shibari. It had everything to do with sensation, psychology, pacing, and presence.

That’s why I always tell students that the magic of Shibari usually happens before the final tie is even complete. It happens in the transitions. The pauses. The anticipation. The eye contact. The gathering of wrists. The drag of rope across skin.

Bodies tell you everything if you slow down enough to listen. I highly recommend self tying to get more attuned to this.

And honestly, if you’re practicing right now, I would challenge you to stop trying to learn five new ties this week. Pick one simple tie and explore ten different ways of creating feeling through it. Change your pacing. Add pauses. Experiment with anticipation. Pay attention to someone’s breath. Watch how their body changes when you slow down and actually relate to them.

You’ll learn more from that than endlessly consuming tutorials.

Slow The Fuck Down

I mean this lovingly, but most beginners move way too fast. This isn’t Nascar.

I think nervousness creates rushing. People want to finish the tie. They want to prove competence. They want the final result as quickly as possible. But Shibari has taught me that slowness is one of the most powerful tools you can possibly use because there is so much eroticism hiding in pacing and so much intimacy hiding in pauses. My own Sensei stopped me once and told me to slow down, and I’m glad he did.

Some of the hottest Shibari scenes I’ve ever had barely involved movement at all.

I remember one scene where I had someone in an incredibly simple tie, and honestly the thing that absolutely moved both of us was not the tie itself. It was the pauses. The moments where I would tighten tension and then just stop. Looking at them. Letting them feel it. Tickle my hand down their neck. Letting anticipation build until their entire body was trembling waiting for the next movement.

That’s the thing people miss about Shibari.

The rope is a TOOL. Rope doesn’t feel like anything without your energy, movement, and touch.

The waiting is part of the experience.

The stillness is part of the experience.

The way someone’s body starts mentally spiraling because they don’t know what you’re going to do next is part of the experience.

When I tie someone slowly, I can literally feel their nervous system changing underneath my hands. Their shoulders drop. Their breathing deepens. Their thoughts quiet down. Their body softens.

And honestly, I think that’s part of why Shibari can become so emotional for people. Slowness forces presence. You cannot deeply feel something while simultaneously rushing through it.

So here’s something I genuinely recommend trying: the next time you tie someone, spend five full minutes just with their wrists. Don’t rush toward the final harness. Gather them slowly. Pause often. Let the tension build naturally. Watch what happens to their breathing. Watch what happens to yours.

I think you’ll be shocked how much intimacy exists before the “real” tie even begins.

Build Your Own Style Of Shibari

One of the best things I ever did was stop trying to tie exactly like everyone else.

In the beginning, imitation is normal. We all learn from people we admire - I am certified under a Japanese Master, and practice his style for the grand majority. But eventually your Shibari has to become yours, otherwise you spend your entire journey chasing someone else’s expression instead of discovering your own relationship to the art. I’ve been able to pair what I’ve learned, and apply my style and ethos to it.

And I don’t just mean visually. I mean emotionally, psychologically, energetically.

Some people create Shibari that feels nurturing and grounding. Some people create Shibari that feels primal and possessive. Some people create playful experiences. Some people create highly psychological experiences. Some people love meditative slowness. Some people love heavy restriction and intensity.

For me, Shibari stopped being just about aesthetics a very long time ago. What obsessed me was the feeling of it. The way it changes body language. The way it creates tension psychologically. The way it can make someone feel held, exposed, restrained, desired, unraveled, softened, or completely overwhelmed by sensation. My personal style is a juxtaposition of softness, tenderness, and encouragement with pushing edges around pain, and embracing edges.

I think that’s also why my teaching style became what it is.

I’m honestly less interested in creating Shibari robots who can perfectly mimic tutorials and way more interested in helping people discover what kind of rope artist they actually are. Because the second someone stops trying to imitate and starts paying attention to what genuinely lights them up, their Shibari changes immediately.

It becomes alive.

And honestly, I think this is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself in your practice:

What kind of experience do I actually want to create?

Do you want your Shibari to feel nurturing? Possessive? Playful? Psychological? Restrictive? Tender? Meditative? Edgy?

Because your answer to that question will shape your style far more than another chest harness tutorial ever will.

Focus On Presence.

This is the biggest lesson of all, and honestly, I think it’s the thing that separates technically decent Shibari from experiences that actually stay inside someone’s body for years.

Because presence is what people remember.

Not the knots. Not the pattern.

They remember whether they felt handled. Seen. Felt. Desired. Held.

I have seen people completely transform underneath rope. I’ve seen loud, overstimulated humans suddenly go quiet the second their wrists are gathered slowly and intentionally. I’ve seen people start trembling from anticipation before a harness was even finished. I’ve seen someone cry because for ten minutes straight, another human being was fully paying attention to them without distraction.

That’s presence.

And the thing is, presence is not some vague spiritual concept. It’s incredibly practical. You can actively practice it.

For example, stop multitasking while you tie. I see beginners constantly tying while talking endlessly, checking tutorials every thirty seconds, mentally rushing toward the next step, or trying to “perform” competence. Meanwhile, the person underneath the rope can literally feel that your attention is fragmented.

The next time you tie someone, try maintaining physical contact with them almost the entire time. Keep one hand resting on their body while the other moves rope. Let them feel where you are. Let them feel your pacing. Let them feel your confidence.

Another thing I highly recommend is learning how to pause without panicking. Most beginners rush through transitions because silence makes them nervous. But pauses are where anticipation lives.

The next time you tighten tension, stop for a second. Just stop. Look at them.

Watch what happens to their breathing when you don’t immediately move on to the next step. You’ll start noticing that Shibari is deeply psychological. Someone’s body will often react harder to anticipation than the tie itself.

And honestly, one of the biggest shifts you can make in your practice is learning to pay attention to the person more than the tie.

Watch their jaw. Watch their fingers. Watch their breathing. Watch how their body responds when tension increases.

I can usually tell within seconds whether someone is dropping deeper into themselves or mentally checking out. Their body tells me everything. Sometimes their breathing slows and their shoulders soften. Sometimes they start fidgeting or talking too much because they’re nervous. Sometimes they go completely still because they’re overwhelmed in a good way.

So, in a nutshell:

Take a basic wrist tie or chest harness and ask yourself:

• What happens if I slow this down?

• What happens if I add more eye contact?

• What happens if I add silence?

• What happens if I build anticipation before tightening?

• What happens if I focus entirely on how their body responds instead of how the tie looks?

That’s how you develop presence. That’s how your Shibari becomes alive.

Because at the end of the day, people are not craving perfect knots nearly as much as they are craving experiences that make them feel deeply inside themselves.

If you’re ready to get started, my beginners Shibari course NawaFoundations is your place to start. Online, self-paced, and perfect for couples or singles to learn the foundations while focusing on presence, embodiment, and creating your own style.

https://www.julietachiara.com/nawafoundations

There are certain loves in your life that do not arrive peacefully.

They do not arrive mature, grounded, healthy, or whole. They arrive like a storm front rolling in over the ocean, dark and magnetic and impossible to ignore. They arrive already carrying destruction inside of them. And the worst part is… somewhere deep down, both people know it.

That was us.

Or perhaps, more accurately, that was me and my Heathcliff.

And yes, I am intentionally referencing Wuthering Heights, because when I watched it recently, I felt physically ill with recognition. Not because our story was beautiful in the traditional sense, but because I understood the madness of it. I understood what it feels like to love someone in a way that bypasses logic entirely. The kind of connection that feels less like compatibility and more like possession. More like being haunted.

The kind of love that makes you ask yourself terrifying questions.

Did I choose the wrong person? Did I choose the wrong life? Did I abandon something that was actually meant for me?

And the dangerous thing about those questions is that once they enter your body, they change everything.

When Forbidden Becomes Erotic

By the time I watched the scenes between Catherine and Heathcliff sneaking away together, obsessively finding each other, being consumed by something they knew would ruin them, I was engulfed with nostalgia, because I had been in it before.

And by now, you probably know exactly what I’m implying.

I am not proud to admit that some of the most erotic experiences of my life were born from my only experience with infidelity. I am not proud of the secrecy, the dishonesty, the ways people could have been hurt by the choices we made. I am not proud of how unethically everything unfolded during that chapter of my life.

But I would also be lying to you if I pretended it wasn’t intoxicating.

Because it was.

It was one of the hottest, most psychologically charged, most deeply kinky experiences I have ever had in my life.

And what made it erotic was precisely the thing that made it wrong.

It was forbidden.

It violated my values. It violated the structure of the life I was trying to maintain. It cracked open this terrifying realization that I was capable of being overtaken by desire in a way that did not feel rational or responsible or safe.

And ironically, I think that was one of the moments I truly realized how kinky I actually was.

Because beneath all of it—the sneaking around, the obsession, the unbearable yearning—was taboo. Pure taboo. The psychological charge of wanting what you are not supposed to touch. The unbearable intimacy of looking at someone and knowing both of you are actively crossing lines to be there.

There is something deeply erotic about forbidden fruit.

Not because it is healthy.

Certainly not because it is aspirational.

But because taboo has a way of electrifying desire until it becomes almost unbearable.

And ours was unbearable, lustful, and insanity - and I can’t wait to share this truth wth you.

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My phone buzzes.

It’s either early in the morning, when the world is still quiet and my body hasn’t fully woken up yet, or late at night, when everything has softened and my mind starts to wander…

And I know it’s him. I don’t even have to check.

There’s this immediate shift in me. My body reacts before my mind catches up. A quiet pulse, an urge to rock my hips, wet on command. What’s crazy? I don’t know what he’s going to say.

That’s part of it.

But I know what it’s going to do.

Because when I do open it, when I finally read his words, it’s like he reaches through the screen and turns on a lightning switch deep in my pussy. The way he speaks, the way he fucks me with nothing but language, the way he guides me into my own body… as if he has his hand on my throat the entire time…It moves me.

It interrupts me.

There are moments where I have to stop what I’m doing completely, because ignoring it isn’t an option. Because once that feeling starts, does my work matter? Does sleep matter? Barely.

And that’s the part that still surprises me. That something from so far away can feel this close. So real and ALIVE in my body.

This is the long-distance lust, and it started as a friendship.

Before Any Of This, He Was Just My Friend

And the wildest part is, there was a point in time where this didn’t exist at all. Where he was just a friend (and he still is). The kind of friendship that builds lovingly over years, without tension sitting underneath it, without that lingering curiosity of what if.

We met nearly seven years ago, and for most of that time, there was absolutely nothing charged about us. No flirting, no blurred lines, no moments that made me think this would ever turn into something like this. He was someone I loved, someone I respected, someone I trusted deeply — but not someone I saw through a sexual lens.

There was one moment, though.

Just one.

We shared a kiss. In that moment, I got a small taste that something was alive - there was a spark to be explored that surprised me. Something that could have easily gone further. But there were too many moving pieces in both of our lives at the time, things that would have complicated stepping into that space.

And I remember being the one to annoyingly pause anything going further (even though my curiosity and libido had a chokehold on me).

To say, not now. And we didn’t touch it again. Not for years.

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The Shift

When we opened the door to exploring again, there wasn’t a dramatic moment or a clear turning point. It was subtle, but it was undeniable.

I remember looking at him and feeling something in my body that hadn’t been there before. Not new attraction because he has always been stunning, not surprising, but recognition. Like something in me suddenly saw him differently, and once that happened, I couldn’t unsee it.

We started flirting with ease, and suddenly spoke freely of our desires towards each other. And what made it so easy was that nothing about our foundation had changed. We were still safe with each other. Still the best of friends. No weird vibes, no pressure to be anything other than exactly who we already were.

Yet even with the spoken desires, we both chickened out when we reunited and had the opportunity. I laugh thinking about it now because…. that could have been an even MORE fun weekend than it was, but I digress.

The wait was worth what came next.

When We Finally Let It Happen

Years later, when we finally explored it, everything made sense in a way that almost felt fucking comical and unfair.

Because I have had every type of sex you can think of. Every type of deep, safe, tender, sexy connections you can think of. I have explored kinky and open dynamics, all types of BDSM, fantasies, orgies, threesomes - you name it. The list of what I HAVEN’t done is shorter. I know my body. I know what turns me on. I know what creates chemistry.

And our connection caught me completely off guard.

Because it wasn’t just good…It was explosive. He brings out a slutty side of me I’ve never seen before. His sheer energy and essence simply trumped the “variety” of things and people I’ve experienced.

It felt like something had been building between us unconsciously for years, without either of us touching it, and the moment we did, it came alive all at once. No awkwardness and not something we had to figure out - all my spicy theories about him catapulted 10 fold. It was immediate, like our bodies were simply reuniting.

But what struck me the most wasn’t just the intensity, It was the fucking ease.

I didn’t feel like I had to be anything different with him. I didn’t feel like I had to prove anything, or guide him, or adjust myself to fit into a dynamic. I didn’t have to dial down my slut. I didn’t have to be quiet. I didn’t have to worry about what I looked like, how I was showing up, or what to say or do.

It was suddenly a friendship with the ultimate benefits. The laughing at tiktoks after getting fucked deeply while he holds his fingers in my mouth. Being goofy and talking about life like besties before feeling inspired to choke on his cock for my own pleasure. Going to get coffee casually the morning after I spent riding him while he grabbed my throat firmly and tells me what a good job I’m doing. Ugh, I’m melting lol.

The only thing that was different was finally seeing each other in this new light (and my kicking myself in the ass for not initiating sooner).

I’ll Never Forget This Night

I’ll never forget one of the last times we saw each other.

We had gone out that night, nothing out of the ordinary. Drinks, walking around the town we were in, seeing friends. But I ended up going home early because I was tired, and also because I felt a little sensitive, a little emotional, and I can see now I was generally drained from our travels.

So I got into bed and tried to sleep, but to no avail, my eyes stayed open.

I heard him come home later. I could hear him moving around, showering, getting ready for bed, and I honestly expected us to just go to sleep like any other night.

He got into bed and slid right over, spooning me immediately, like there was no question about it. He cradled me from behind, his hand resting on my chest, pulling me into him, and said, “come here, sweet girl.”

I cannot explain what happened to me in that moment - something in me melted instantly.

The way he said it wasn’t loud or aggressive, but it carried an energy of ownership, presence, and a man holding me and acknowledging I was a sensitive little bean in that moment.

I backed my ass into his torso, snuggled in, and enjoyed his body heat and smell.

His hand moved from my chest to my throat, slowly, deliberately, and it was so delicate at first that it almost surprised me. But the second his hand was there, something in me gave way. My body started moving on its own, responding in waves, like there was a rhythm already there waiting to be followed. His hand got tighter, and tighter on my throat as I couldn’t control my moans.

“Good girl… just like that.”

And that was it.

There was no pretending to be asleep, or to care that I was ready for bed with my glasses on. I ripped off my oversized T-shirt, and it was on.

He flipped me around, and for the love of all things holy, fucking TOOK ME. Not in a way that felt disconnected or forceful, but in a way that felt fully present, fully aware, fully attuned to me. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been fucked like this in my entire life.

Time disappeared completely as I went from sleepy to being treated like the most prized, claimed slut that ever lived. The most well fucked, celebrating woman. There was no structure, no beginning or end, just this continuous unfolding of sensation, movement, and animalistic ravage.

It felt endless.

Like he had no off switch, and I was flowing to his command with pleasure.

We moved through the bedroom, the living room, the couch, and the only reason it stopped was because my body physically couldn’t take anymore.

And I remember looking at him, seeing that look in his eyes, that hunger, that presence, that absolute certainty, and thinking… this is what it feels like to be fully fucking chosen. A man who shows his desire so vividly.

and yes, if you’re wondering, I still think about this when I touch myself.

The Way This Lives In My Body

This is the part that still feels almost unreal.

There are moments in the middle of my day where I completely blank out. I’ll be doing something normal, something mundane, and suddenly I’m not there anymore. I’m somewhere where he’s behind me pulling my hair, replaying something he said, as I salivate to the thought of him fucking my face with the most respectful disrespect. The way he spoke to me, the way he held me through his words.

And my body responds instantly.

Suddenly there I am, wet, and close to cumming without having a single finger laid on me.

And what’s wild is that I’ve never experienced this with long-distance or digital connection before. I usually get bored, lose steam, or can’t coordinate my schedule.

But with him, it doesn’t feel distant at all.

It feels immediate.

The Tension That Never Leaves

We interact multiple times a week, and the tension makes me squeem everytime.

It doesn’t fade or dull or become routine. If anything, it sharpens. It sits underneath everything, waiting, building, ready to come alive at the smallest shift.

We can be completely normal one moment, just friends, laughing, talking about life, and then something changes. A sentence, a tone, the way he speaks to me, and suddenly I feel it in my body again.

That switch.

That pull.

That version of me that is made of pure animalistic, carnal desire that is allowed to exist in her slutty totality.

What This Has Shown Me

We are still fabulous friends, live across the world from each other, and have not entered romanic territories. We love and celebrate each other’s life wins, new relationships, and respect when boundaries are put into place.

The more I sit with this, the more I realize this isn’t just about lust.

It’s about what becomes possible when two people have build quality safety first. When there is safety, when there is respect, when there is years of knowing and being known before anything sexual ever enters the picture.

This wasn’t a connection I was chasing. It wasn’t something I was trying to create. It came from friendship, from time, from comfortability so deep that there was never any pressure to be anything other than exactly who I am.

And from that, something incredibly erotic was born.

It makes me think about how many people don’t realize that on the other side of safety, there are parts of you that don’t come out anywhere else.

Because that’s what this has been for me.

Not just him (because he is so fucking incredible), but who I become with him. What comes out of me when I am fully safe, fully respected, fully met.

And maybe that’s the point - That some of the most consuming, unexpected, deeply satisfying connections don’t come from searching for them.

They come from what you’ve already built… finally revealing itself.

I recently got kink-shamed.

And normally, that doesn’t touch me. I’ve been in the kink space for over ten years. I’ve built a career, a life, and an identity around exploring my sexuality openly, deeply, and without shame. I pride myself on creating spaces where shame and sexuality do not coexist, where people get to be fully expressed in their desires without being made wrong for them.

Shame, when it comes to my sexuality, has never really been part of my story.

I was raised in a sex-positive home. Sex wasn’t taboo, it wasn’t hidden, it wasn’t something whispered about behind closed doors. When I became sexually active, I told my family, and they supported me and took me to get birth control. When I casually mentioned I might like girls too, no one flinched—they just passed the salt at the dinner tableand kept the conversation going. There was no coming out, no big reveal, no rupture. It was just… normal.

So when I stepped into kink, it didn’t feel like this massive, shame-filled awakening. It felt like a continuation of something I already trusted in myself. The only thing I ever felt around my kinks was some questioning curiosity because of the contrasts it highlighted within my “street persona” to my “bedroom persona”.

Why do I want this? Why does this turn me on?

Because if you really look at kink, so much of it is contradiction. If I am a strong, independent, in-control woman, why do I want to be objectified and treated like a sex object? If I have a loving, stable relationship with my father, why do I enjoy calling someone daddy without it feeling weird? If pain is something we’re taught to avoid, why does it feel so charged in the right context?

These weren’t shame-based questions. They were explorations.

And over time, my kinks became something I knew, something I trusted, something I embodied fully. My kinks are the reason I am so connected to my sexuality. Why I have a thriving business. Why my partners adore me so much.

Which is why what happened next really rocked my reality, and made me question my judgement.

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Solo Submission is a term tossed around often in kink, but does anyone know what it means? For many, it’s been reserved for those who couldn’t find partners, who were too scared to connect with others - but this was different.

I didn’t do this because I couldn’t find a partner. That explanation is too easy, too surface-level, and honestly, it strips the experiment of what it actually was. I did this because I was curious about my own capacity—my capacity to lead, to desire, to follow through, to meet myself in the exact ways I say I want to be met. I’ve spent years exploring kink, power, submission, devotion inside relationships, inside dynamics where someone else holds the structure and I get to respond to it.

But I had this lingering question that wouldn’t leave me alone: what happens when there is no one else to create the container? What happens when I am both the one giving the command and the one surrendering to it?

So, I committed to a month of Domming the fuck out of myself. Not casually and softly, not in a “let’s see what happens” way, but in a real, intentional, structured way. I became my own Dom, and I invited over 250 women to do it alongside me in my 4 week challenge, Devotion (which you can join and do here).

I thought it would be playful. I thought it would be a little edgy, a little different, maybe even empowering in a light, self-development kind of way. I did not expect it to be confronting and invigorating. I did not expect it to expose all my shadows and self-betrayals. And I DEFINITELY didn’t expect it to reorganize the way I relate to my own desire so completely - having more fun with myself, than anyone else.

I Realized I Had Been Waiting My Whole Life

The first realization came quietly, but it hit me hard once it landed. I had been waiting.

Waiting for the right partner to initiate something. Waiting for someone else to create the mood, to build the tension, to pull me into that familiar drop of surrender that I crave so deeply. I had built this subtle narrative that my slutty, submissive desire needed to be activated by someone else, that it needed to be met in order to become real.

And then I sat with myself, fully inside this dynamic I had created, and realized there was nothing missing.

Everything I had been waiting for—the energy, the charge, the seduction, the feeling of being led—was already accessible to me. I am, a fucking fabulous Dom to myself. I could create the moment spicy moments with tease and tension. I could create the experience of dirty, lustful surrender. I could drop into the exact feeling I had been associating with someone else’s presence.

And once I saw that, I couldn’t pretend I didn’t. Because the “Waiting for the perfect Dom to sweep me off my feet” stopped feeling romantic…and started feeling like avoidance.

Desire Was Never the Problem—Devotion Was

I’ve always known what I want, or been willing to explore new desires in kink. That has never been the issue. I can articulate my desires, I can feel them in my body, I can talk about them in a way that sounds convincing, even powerful. But what this experiment revealed, almost immediately, was the gap between desire and devotion in my day to day life.

I would say I wanted to go deeper, to feel more connected, to explore more, to play more intentionally. Maybe that’s spending time self-pleasuring, sticking to an exercise routine because I want to look and feel good, or read to stop endless scrolling.

What would I do?

I would half-show up. I would delay or even give up on those desires. I would negotiate them, and find sneaky ways to not honor my word. I would let myself off the hook in small, almost invisible ways.

When I became my own Dom, that behavior didn’t hold up.

Because I had to ask myself something very simple and very uncomfortable: would I submit to someone who operated like this? An all hailing Dominant who talked about how they wanted to guide me and take care of me but didn’t follow through? Someone who set the tone one moment and dropped it the next?

Absolutely fucking not.

And that was the moment I realized that my desire was never the problem. My lack of devotion to that desire was.

So I had to change. Devotion is showing up to a commitment regardless of the excuses, because the integrity, mission, and connection is more important. I had to rebuild this trust since my inner Dom was used to me being a very shitty sub who doesn’t follow through or listen.

I Dropped Into a Depth of Surrender I Didn’t Expect

Now, for the kinky stuff. How on earth was I going to be able to get into subspace alone? I severely underestimated how powerful this could be.

There is a belief, especially in kink, that surrender is something that happens in response to someone else. That it requires another person holding the power, creating the structure, guiding you into that space. And while that is true, what I discovered is that it is not the only way.

There were moments during this month where I was so fully inside my body, so deeply immersed in the experience I was creating, that I stopped noticing the absence of another person entirely. The tension was there as I tied myself up and gagged myself with my fingers, rope, or ball gag. The anticipation was there when i touched myself and wouldn’t let myself cum as a punishment for breaking protocol. The edge, the taboo, the curiosity—it was all there.

What made it different was being with myself, and no shyness. No subtle awareness of how I might be perceived. No holding back, no shaping my response for someone else’s experience. It was just me, meeting myself fully, without distraction - it also meant I couldn’t bullshit, lie, or hide from myself.

And my body responded in a way that surprised me. It let go faster. It dropped deeper. It trusted the process in a way that felt almost cleaner, almost more direct.

That experience alone changed the way I think about what is possible in my own body. This is now my NORTH STAR on how I want to feel with someone.

My Inner Dom Became Unapologetically Clear

My inner Dom stopped being a concept and became a presence. She is an entity that walks side by side with me.

She was not soft. She was not negotiable. She was precise, direct, and deeply committed to what I said I wanted. She didn’t entertain excuses. She didn’t allow me to drift. She didn’t let me abandon myself in small, socially acceptable ways.

She required me to show up.

And not just in my play, but in my life. The way I spent my time, the way I gave my energy, the way I prioritized my attention—all of it came under her scrutiny.

There was no more “I don’t feel like it.” There was only, “I said I would.”

And that level of clarity was confronting at first, but it quickly became grounding. Because for the first time, I felt what it was like to be led by something inside me that didn’t waver.

This also came with grief - of all the times I’ve dropped the ball on myself, let myself down, and could have shown up with more conviction in the name of bettering or taking care of myself.

I Set the Standard for How I Get Met

The hardest to admit - I fucking love expecting others to meet my needs. To outsource like a fucking victim, and hope others would complete me.

I stopped hoping someone else would get it right.

I stopped waiting for someone to understand me perfectly, to lead me perfectly, to intuitively meet me in all the ways I desire. Instead, I showed myself exactly what that felt like. I created the kinky experience. I embodied the erotic standard. I let myself feel, in my own body, what it means to be led well, to be held inside structure, to be met with intention.

And now that I know that feeling, there is reallly no going back. There is no confusion, no ambiguity, no settling for almost. The amount of men I’ve been shooing off since my Inner Dom has NO BIZ allowing any half-assed energy to come in my direction.

This Was Never Just About Play

What started as curiosity to turn on my eroticism turned into a love affair with myself I couldn’t predicted.

Play opened the door, but kinky devotion is what transformed me.

Kinky tools were simply the portal. The beautiful, flawless dance of Dom/sub within myself, with the structure that helps so many of us surrender, release, and connect. But, now it’s a life tool. Because when you stop outsourcing your desire and start leading yourself inside of it, something fundamental shifts. You become more grounded, more clear, more connected to your own capacity. You stop waiting to be chosen and start choosing yourself in real, tangible ways.

And somewhere along the way, you become a woman who knows exactly what she wants, exactly how she wants it, and exactly what it feels like when it’s right.

If You Feel the Pull

If something in you is reading this and recognizing yourself in it, even just a little, then you already know what this is about.

This isn’t about replacing partnered dynamics. It’s about deepening your relationship to yourself so that when you do step into those dynamics, you’re not waiting to be led into your own desire.

You’re already there.

This is your invite to Devotion, the solo submission challenge. It’s self-paced, online, 12 mini spicy lessons, and an experience that will change how you relate to your desire, your discipline, and yourself. The lessons are live demos of myself, so, you will see what it’s like to lead yourself with vulnerability, care, and intention.

Join Devotion The Solo Submission Challenge Here

But warning, Your reality will shift. You will become unfuckwithable. You will fall in love with yourself.

Proceed with caution 🖤

I tied up my friend and put rope in her mouth, and within seconds, she started crying in the most beautiful way.

I know what you’re thinking, tears? Are you hurting her? Not in the slightest. There was no panic, no sense of something going wrong. It was the kind of crying that looks like relief finally finding its way out of the body. The kind that feels almost inevitable once it begins, like something had been sitting just beneath the surface waiting for the exact right moment to move.

What stayed with me wasn’t just that she cried. It was how quickly it happened. How immediate her body’s response was. There was no hesitation, no buildup, no need for explanation. The moment the dynamic shifted, her body recognized it before her mind had time to catch up.

And that’s the part that always fascinates me.

Because rope, when it’s done well, doesn’t force anything. It reveals what is already there.

The Intention She Brought With Her

Every other week in my rope studio, I host something called Shibari Sundays. It’s a space for women to come together, learn rope, and explore what it feels like to be in their bodies in a different way. Sometimes that looks like technique. Sometimes it looks like connection. And sometimes it opens the door to something much deeper.

That day, my friend didn’t come in casually. She came in with intention, and I could feel that from the moment she walked into the room.

She had been going through a rough patch - so many emotions at once, things boiling up, and needing to move through them. She said she needed a release. She wanted to feel held. She wanted to drop out of her mind and into her body. And she said with full conviction: She needed to CRY.

There’s something about that kind of honesty that already tells you where someone’s body is at. That whatever they’ve been holding isn’t far from the surface, it just hasn’t found the right conditions to move yet.

And that’s where rope becomes something more than just rope.

The Moment Trust Becomes Real

The session itself started like any other. There was a lightness in the room, people learning, asking questions, practicing ties. I didn’t tie her right away. There’s always a settling that happens at the beginning, where the space finds its rhythm and people begin to arrive in their bodies.

Towards the end, the energy shifted. Some of the participants started asking about more advanced techniques, the ones that feel a little more intense, a little more binding, the kind that carry a different psychological weight, such as rope on the neck.

I asked her if she would be open to modeling.

That question only works when there is already trust. And we had that. She said yes without hesitation.

I demonstrated the first technique in a straightforward way, keeping it grounded and accessible, gently running rope around her neck as I tied a Takate Gote. This is not meant to hurt, but to tease. Her body responded well, she was dropped in, so I had another idea come to mind.

So I looked at her for our second tie and asked, “Do you trust me?”

She said yes.

And in that moment, the rope stopped being a demonstration and became an experience.

Slowing the Body Down

I shifted the pace immediately. Instead of moving quickly, I slowed everything down and let each step land in her body.

I sat behind her and let my hands move along her arms, not rushing, just tracing, gathering her wrists together into a prayer position. There’s something about that gesture that naturally softens the body, that invites a kind of quiet surrender before anything has even happened.

I tied her wrists gently with a single column tie, giving her just enough containment to feel it. Then I moved to her elbows, guiding them back behind her into a bent position, opening her chest, changing the shape of her body in a way that subtly shifts her awareness.

The rope wrapped under her chest and around her ribcage, one round, then another, creating a sense of structure, of being held in place. Everything about it was intentional, but unhurried. It allowed her nervous system to follow, rather than react.

Up until that point, everything was still within the realm of what she could anticipate.

And then I changed one thing.

The Threshold

I brought my hand to her chin and asked her to open her mouth.

There’s a vulnerability in that alone. Something about being asked to open yourself in that way, without fully knowing what’s coming next.

With my other hand, I placed the rope inside her mouth, trailing it back and securing it.

Her arms were bound behind her. Her chest was open. Her mouth was gently held open by the rope.

And her body responded instantly.

Tears formed in her eyes before she could process what was happening. Her breath shifted, catching in her throat. Her skin flushed, warmth spreading across her chest and neck.

There was no delay.

It was as if something inside her had been waiting for that exact moment.

The Drop

Many see tears and think something is wrong, but I didn’t interrupt what was happening.

I moved her hair away from her face so I could see her clearly, and I checked in with her presence without pulling her out of the experience. She was there. She wanted to stay.

So I stayed with her.

I held her.

I let my body be something she could lean into without having to think about it.

And she dropped.

You could feel the moment her body stopped holding itself together. The shift from control into release. The quiet sobs that began to move through her chest, growing into something fuller, something that carried weight.

This is the part that is hard to explain to people who haven’t witnessed it.

It wasn’t about the rope anymore.

It was about what the rope allowed.

Her mind didn’t need to make sense of it. Her body had already decided it was time.

Being Held Through It

The room went completely quiet, with full presence on her.

Everyone could feel what was happening, even if they didn’t fully understand it. There’s something about witnessing someone in that level of honesty that pulls you into presence whether you want it to or not.

After some time, I began to bring her back.

Slowly.

I removed the rope from her mouth first, giving her back her freedom. Then I unbound her arms, letting her body regain its range of movement.

I folded her into herself, bringing her into a small, contained position, pressing her body into mine like a little egg.

She kept crying.

And I held her there.

What Actually Opened

Moments like this always leave me with the same question.

When something forces your mouth open, what opens inside of you?

What happens to the words you haven’t said, the emotions you’ve held back, the tension that’s been sitting in your body waiting for a way out?

The rope didn’t create any of that.

It gave it a pathway.

It created the conditions for something that was already there to finally move.

And when the body recognizes that kind of opening, it doesn’t hesitate.

Why This Matters

What I hold with so much care in moments like this isn’t the technique… It’s the responsibility of what happens when someone opens that deeply.

Because that kind of release doesn’t come from force. It comes from trust. From timing. From the body recognizing that it is safe enough to let go.

And when it does, it deserves to be met with presence.

That’s the power of Kinbaku.

Not as something to look at, not as something aesthetic, but as something that allows the body to access what it’s been holding and finally let it move.

And being able to hold someone in that moment will never stop feeling like an honor🖤

The story of my objectification kink is multifaceted and nuanced, so I’m going to try to do it some justice here.

Because I know what you see.

You see the juxtaposition of a strong, powerful woman — and that same woman, me, telling you that I get turned the fuck on when I’m consensually objectified. And I mean it. I mean being treated like a fucking object. I mean being treated like a sex toy. I mean being dehumanized and seen as something to be used, or adored.

There’s more to it. But let’s start here.

The Taboo Is the Turn On

Why would being objectified be something a woman desires, when it’s something we’ve spent so much of our lives trying to move away from?

Because in my day-to-day life, if some random man were to objectify me, I would probably try to kick his ass.

And maybe that’s part of the kink.

As women, we have worked so hard to not be objectified. We’ve pushed against being reduced to our bodies, to being judged, to being seen as pieces of meat or just sexual objects. This is something we’ve been actively resisting since we were young.

So to consciously step into that — to choose it, to embody it, to play inside it — feels like stepping into something forbidden.

For me, the kink lives in that contradiction.

The strong, capable, respected woman choosing to drop into being nothing but a sexual object… there is something so charged, so taboo, so intoxicating about that contrast that it’s hard to fully explain unless you’ve felt it.

I remember when the appeal first clicked for me, it was exactly that. The taboo. The shock of it. The feeling of being used sexually, of being treated like an object, of having my partner focus purely on their pleasure through me.

And I loved it.

I loved being called a useful little object. I loved being called a good-for-nothing sex toy. I loved the mix of degradation, humiliation, and even adoration that could weave through it. Being told that my only purpose in that moment was to feel good for someone else… that did something to me.

It still does.

Objectification as Freedom

But what surprised me most wasn’t how hot it was.

It was how freeing it was.

And I know that sounds contradictory. How the fuck does objectification make a woman like me feel free?

Yes, part of it is the freedom of the taboo — of doing the thing you’re not supposed to want, of stepping into the shadow and realizing it doesn’t destroy you, it actually turns you on.

But the deeper layer for me came when I started really playing with it.

Because in objectification, I don’t have to be anything.

Read more

“In this episode, I sit down with Julieta Chiara, a certified Shibari instructor trained under Japanese master Hajime Kinoko, who went from studying to be a sex therapist to running a sex blog, to teaching Japanese rope bondage from her studio in Tulum. Julieta breaks down the difference between Shibari and Kinbaku, why self-tying is the most underrated way to learn, and how rope bondage can be a somatic meditation even when kink isn't the goal. We also get into her identity as a bonafide submissive who only takes a top role in rope, why she refuses to tie strangers for money, and how psychological kink rather than physical tools is where her submission actually lives.”

I have left relationships that made sense.

The kind that are easy to explain to friends, the kind that look stable, grounded, and healthy from the outside. These were men who were kind to me, who showed up consistently, who were emotionally available in ways that many people spend years hoping to find. There was care, there was effort, there was a genuine desire to build something real together. These were not chaotic or volatile dynamics. They were good relationships with really fucking good men.

And they knew about my kinks.

Nothing about this was hidden or revealed too late. My kinky needs and desires were part of the relationship from the beginning. They were spoken, acknowledged, and met—at least initially—with curiosity and openness. Some of these men were willing to explore, some were intrigued by what I wanted, and some felt genuinely called to grow into that space with me. There was no rejection of that part of me. If anything, there was a willingness to meet it.

For a long time, I believed that was enough. I believed that openness could become alignment, that willingness could become embodiment, that desire could eventually root itself into something lived and stable.

But there is a difference between someone wanting to be that Dominant man, and someone who simply IS.

And this difference defined everything for me - and showed me my shadowy side.

Read more

For years, people kept telling me about her.

It didn’t matter whether I was talking about my divorce, a breakup, or just that lingering feeling of being energetically entangled with someone long after it ended…someone would inevitably say, “You need to go see this woman.” It became almost comical. I would mention heartbreak and, like clockwork, her name would surface again. I probably heard about her twenty times over the span of a few years.

And every time, I felt resistance.

Not the kind of resistance that comes from disbelief, but the kind that comes from knowing something might actually work. I’ve seen enough “womb healing” content online to be wary - living in Tulum, a lot of these “modalities” seemed so performative.

I wasn’t interested in some random 23 year old nomad with no training who calls themselves a “healer” rearranging my organs in the name of ancient wisdom, nor was I interested in spiritual theater. If I was going to open something as intimate as my womb — as intimate as the place where I have held love, sex, grief, rage, and shame — it needed to be real.

The woman everyone recommended wasn’t marketed like a guru. She didn’t have a polished brand or a curated Instagram presence. When I finally got her WhatsApp and reached out, she responded like someone’s deeply grounded Mexican grandmother. Warm. Direct. No fluff. Within a few messages it’s like she had been energetically waiting for me to hit the send button and take the first step.

She asked what I had been through🤣 and I thought, oh god, here we fucking go.

I told her the condensed version: divorce, patterns of choosing men who needed saving, the exhaustion of being strong, insurmountable rage that I had been carrying for months since I left my ex, and the feeling that something still lived in my body that didn’t belong to me. Oh, and did I mention not having a period for 4 months? My pussy literally SHUT DOWN from my previous partnership.

Her typical time to work on people is 3-4 hours, which I already thought was steep. She validated me, saw me in my story, but gently paused and replied, very matter-of-factly, “You don’t need four hours. You need six or seven.”

There wasn’t an inch of hesitance in her tone - I trusted her, even though I was initially overwhelmed with what I knew I was about to go through. So much so, I almost backed out - I tried to vibe check with friends to see if this was the wrong fit, but, regardless - something in my intuition told me to go.

The apartment where she works sits next to a taco stand in Tulum. It’s an incredibly humble space, filled with Tulum’s wonders: Hot, sweaty, humid, and somewhere that’s the real deal: A place for someone to do their magic, not impress you with an ambiance. A woven tapestry was laid carefully across the floor in the front room, and the back room prepped with a massage table. It didn’t look like someone’s home, but it also didn’t look like a spa. It felt like stepping into someone’s personal ritual space: Something assembled over time that totally makes sense to them, and not styled for clients.

She handed me a large bottle of fresh coconut water and began by cleansing me with copal. Thick smoke moved around my body, curling over my hair, my shoulders, my chest. As she worked, she explained that everything we would do that day would center around fire.

“I work with fire,” she told me. “Fire is earth and air together. And fire renews everything.”

Then she said something that pierced straight through me: “We are 70% percent water. When something traumatic happens, the top layer of us becomes ice. We harden. We protect. But underneath, we are still water. Fire melts the ice.”

The entire session, she explained, would be about melting. Even in the initial copal cleansing, I started to feel heaaaaaavyyyy and tired. Like a light switch in my energy was turned off.

I knew, I was fucking in for it.

What unfolded over the next seven hours is difficult to summarize because it wasn’t a single ritual — it was a progression. She described four versions of the self: the infant, the wounded little girl, the adult woman, and the part of us that carries all of it forward. We would tend to each one separately.

For each phase, she placed large handfuls of dried herbs into my palms. I have personally never seen someone with so many herbs - literally kilos and kilos of the most beautiful flowers, shrubs, and smells to envelop a room. She prayed over them first, speaking in Spanish with the kind of eloquence and gratitude for the universe, god, and spirits that I have never witnessed in anyone. Then she had me pray over them in my own voice. Sometimes we thanked the earth. Sometimes we named what I was ready to release. Sometimes we spoke directly to the version of me we were working with. Afterward, the herbs were placed into a small fire between us and we watched them burn while she read the flames, telling me what she saw reflected in them.

Before we ever touched my womb, she said we needed to clear the first layer of stored tension, and she began with my back.

“Your scapulas hold your shame,” she said calmly, as though this were common knowledge. “They hold what you carried that was never yours.”

As someone who loves painful deep tissue massages, I thought this would be great - I was vividly WRONG.

She wasn’t exaggerating when she warned me it would hurt. Instead of a standard massage where the entire body is addressed in an hour, she spent nearly ninety minutes working only on my back. It was deliberate and relentless as she used a combo of her viciously strong thumbs and burning stones on me. As she pressed deeply into the muscles around my shoulder blades, she instructed me to think about everything I had been carrying — not just in relationships, but since childhood. The expectations I internalized. The guilt I absorbed. The responsibility I took on far too young. The way I learned to hold myself together so everyone else could fall apart safely.

People frequently talk about “moving energy”, and boy oh boy, this was the first time I fucking felt it with 100% certainty. At some point during that work, I stopped being skeptical.

I became nauseous. Lightheaded. Weak in a way that didn’t feel psychological. When I tried to adjust my body on the table, I felt as though I couldn’t lift my own weight. I didn’t fall asleep, but I slipped into something trance-like. Memories began surfacing rapidly — small, seemingly insignificant snapshots from childhood, teenage years, early relationships. They appeared and disappeared like quick flashes in a film montage. I wasn’t actively searching for them; they were simply there. My body was paralyzed, unable to move, as my mind was overwhelmed and my eyes strained from moving back and forth under closed lids.

Literally the phrase: My life flashing before my fucking eyes.

After the first portion of the massage, I stood up and realized I was no longer fully oriented to time. She wrapped my weak body in a simple piece of cloth, tied loosely like a Roman dress, and guided me back to the woven mat on the floor. I remember sitting there and feeling as though gravity had shifted slightly. I was nauseous in a way I don’t normally experience, especially during bodywork. I felt lightheaded, almost hollowed out. When she offered me a piece of cake, I accepted without hesitation, not because I particularly wanted cake, but because my body felt like it needed something solid to anchor itself.

Sitting in this hot, humid room, nearly naked eating a piece of chocolate cake… I felt like a weak child. I no longer felt like I was in my adult body. It’s incredibly hard to describe this warp in my reality.

We sat together while I ate slowly, and she explained that before we could work directly with my womb, we had to address the deeper cords that fed into it. The uterus, she said, does not just store sexual energy. It stores unfinished stories.

The next ritual required me to stand naked over a small fire she built with new herbs that again, she blessed and then had me bless. The herbs were now placed into the flames, and I stood with my legs apart so that the heat rose upward toward my pelvis. She held a feather and fanned the warmth deliberately toward my womb, chanting in Spanish, sometimes softly and sometimes with sudden intensity. It felt both ceremonial and deeply practical: I was riding a wave of spiritual passage, with the hilarious reality of me just standing over an open flame in an apartment 🤣

At first, I was acutely aware of my body, of the vulnerability of standing exposed over open fire. Then something shifted. I stopped thinking about how it looked and began feeling what it meant. The heat rose steadily, not burning but present enough to demand attention. She spoke about releasing beliefs — the belief that I had to bend for love, the belief that strength made me undesirable, the belief that I was responsible for holding everything together. With each statement, she started gently tapping my pelvis with her feather, as though physically lifting those ideas out of me.

Now came the cord cutting - the cutting that I expected to bitch out my past partners, and let them go. But no, this starts with your father.

The cord cutting with my father came unexpectedly early in the process. She explained that before we address lovers, we address the first template of attachment. Not because there was anything sexual in the relationship itself, but because the nervous system learns love there first. She now beat a drum rhythmically, the sound vibrating through the room, and spoke directly about patterns I had never articulated out loud.

“Where did you learn to love men who need saving?” she asked. “Where did you learn to interpret absence as something to earn rather than something to walk away from?”

I felt resistance rise in me…. it wasn’t defensive, but just the deep discomfort of this familiarity.

Then she did something that undid me in a way I didn’t anticipate. She reframed my father not as a villain, nor as a saint, but as a young man who was scared and limited. “He loved you,” she said firmly. “And it wasn’t enough. Both can be true.”

No one had ever allowed both to coexist in my body before. I had always felt pressured to choose between anger and forgiveness, between loyalty and grief. Standing naked over fire, listening to a woman rewrite a story that so many women carry for decades… I felt something loosen that I didn’t realize had been calcified.

After my father, came my mother.

This portion was less gentle. She instructed me to FUCKING SCREAM. To name what wasn’t fair. To acknowledge how young I was when I began carrying responsibilities that were never meant for a child. She placed a doll in my hands that resembled a small version of me and told me to hold her, to speak to her, to tell her that none of it was her fault.

At this point, holding a doll in my hands for the first time in over 20 years, I fucking cracked. Sobbing, blurry eyed, tears streaming down my face and down my body.

There is something profoundly destabilizing about holding an object that represents your younger self while someone insists you acknowledge what she endured. I have spent years being strong, being capable, being self-sufficient. In that moment, strength felt irrelevant. What surfaced instead was a deep sadness for the little girl who adapted too quickly and internalized too much.

By the time we returned to the massage table for the second half of the bodywork, I was six hours in. My body felt both exhausted and strangely porous. She began with my jaw, pressing deeply into the muscles until tears streamed down my face without my fully understanding why. Then she moved to my abdomen.

What happened next is still surreal to recount: she layered cloths over my belly, sprayed alcohol onto them, and lit them briefly on fire. The flames lasted only a few seconds at a time before she patted them out and massaged the heat into my skin. She repeated this multiple times. It was controlled, deliberate, and surprisingly not frightening. I remember looking down at my own body and thinking how symbolic it felt — watching fire dance across the place where I have stored heartbreak, desire, resentment, longing (while also having the slight irrational fear of what if the fire got my hair, lol).

As she worked, she said she was burning out anyone who had left residue in my womb. And in that moment, I experienced something that felt almost cinematic. Faces flashed through my mind in quick succession — men I had loved, men I had dated briefly, even the first boy I kissed. Not with nostalgia, not with yearning, but like a sequence being processed and cleared. With each flash, I felt a LOUD internal “NO!” not directed at them, but at the version of me that had overextended.

It was the heartbreaking realization that I wouldn’t have been with 90% of my ex partners or sexual interactions if I had been in my power, and not my wounding. With every flame, she reminded me to also melt away the guilt.

When we finished the bodywork, she prepared the final ritual: a soul retrieval. She explained that trauma can fragment us, causing parts of us to retreat as a survival mechanism. Using ancestral Mexican corn and flowers, she called those parts back. She shouted my name into each flower before placing it into water, declaring that my soul return fully to my body. It was intense, almost theatrical, yet it did not feel exaggerated. It felt sincere.

By the end, she placed a flower crown on my head and handed me the doll again. She gave me a bouquet of flowers to hold, and we started our final celebration ritual. I was exhausted, slightly disoriented, and aware that something fundamental had shifted. For the first five hours, I had felt as though I was moving through a psychedelic landscape without substances — deeply submerged in memory and sensation. The final hours felt more human. Hunger crept in. Fatigue settled. Integration began.

As we sang, and closed out. I left holding all my goodies and embraced the last bit of sunlight as I drove home feeling like I was on a spaceship.

I don’t yet know all the ways this will change me. It is too soon to draw conclusions. But I do know that as I left that apartment, I felt lighter in a way that was like someone removed 100 kilos of weight inside of me. My body felt less braced. My chest felt less guarded. The rage I had been carrying toward certain people already felt less sharp, as though the edge had been burned down to something manageable.

I went there thinking I was going to “cleanse” my womb.

What I experienced instead was a confrontation with the stories I have stored in it — and a deliberate decision to stop carrying what was never mine to begin with.

This was not beautiful nor trendy. This was fucking RAW. This was you vs you, stripped down from your titles, ego, and clothing - sitting with a fierce grandmother who refuses to let you keep betraying yourself.

….And for the first time in a long time, I feel like me. 🥹

Thank you for reading about my experience. If you would like to connect with my fabulous facilitator, I’m more than happy to share that info privately via DM here or ask me for her info on IG Dm’s @julietachiara.