Learning Love & Pleasure from Audre, Adrienne and bell

During a week when many of us are wondering, “Do I like Valentine’s Day?” “Do I not?” or “What does Valentine’s Day mean to me?" I wanted to check in with some inspo from Audre Lorde, Adrienne Maree Brown, and bell hooks. These individuals are all love and pleasure radical thought leaders giving a road map to a world that prioritizes pleasure, equity, self-actualization, and humanity. While I could never do their work justice in a short post, I wanted to direct you to their powerful words.

The current version of myself is a big fan of this external holiday.  It’s a time to study love, eroticism, and pleasure and how this shows up in my life and my work as a sexuality OT!  For me, it’s a way to center the joys of my giving and I plan out how to intentionally share a little love with my people.

But Audre, Adrienne, and bell, using Black feminist perspectives, offer us very special considerations on love and eroticism that is expansive and empowering, while at times uncomfortable to confront.  This morning’s deep dive has been an erotic journey for me that I have found to feel like a warm sweater being draped over me followed by a deep exhale.  I feel warm inside while outside is what Audra Lorde calls a “racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.”

These three Brilliant Stars discuss topics of love and sexuality intersected with, to name a few, race, gender, disability, capitalism, and sexual orientation.  I encourage a self-reflective exercise of reading or listening to their work and jotting notes on how you relate to the material, as well as how some of your clients might. When do you think of yourself and when do you think of a client you might work with? With this knowledge, can it inform some of your clinical work? Your personal life?  

Grab a hot mug of something warm and enjoy! 

“For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.” From Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde

Click the image to listen to a recording of Audre reading "Uses of the Erotic."

“We learn to love by loving.  We practice with each other, on ourselves, in all kinds of relationships.” 

“This Valentine’s Day, commit to developing an unflappable devotion to yourself as part of an abundant, loving whole. Make a commitment with five people to be more honest with each other, heal together, change together, and become a community of care that can grow to hold us all." from "Liberated Relationship" in Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown

“Time and time again when I talk to individuals about approaching love with will and intentionality, I hear the fear expressed that this will bring an end to romance.  This is simply not so.”

“The very people (many of them men) who had heretofore claimed that “too much talk” made things less romantic find that talk does not threaten pleasure at all.  It merely changes its nature.  Where once knowing nothing was the basis for excitement and erotic intensity, knowing more is now the basis.  Lots of people who feared a loss of romantic and/or erotic intensity made this radical change in their thinking and were surprised to find that their previous assumptions that talk killed romance were wrong.”

“Perfect passions usually end when we awaken from our enchantment and find only that we have been carrier away from ourselves.  It becomes perfect love when our passion gives us the courage to face reality, to embrace our true selves” from Romance: Sweet Love in All about Love by bell hooks.

Whoa! I need a cigarette!  I've added this resource to my curated resources section on the website and we will have some discussion in the Facebook group (link below).

If you'd like to connect organically with other sex + intimacy champions, we'd love to have you in our Sexuality and Occupational Therapy Discussion Group.