Lidia-Anain

Sep

18

the sweet spot…

Big heavy tears flowed down my face and no sound came out of my mouth but I could feel the cry at the core of my soul.

In a room of about twenty strangers, several colleagues and two very important people that I have looked up to for some time, it seemed like the wrong time for my emotions to completely escape my body. Crying silently and uncontrollably was not what I thought I would be doing in the moment that I realized that there was a sweet spot in the field of human sexuality that was meant just for me. It was so surreal that when I found myself in that moment all I could do was let go and cry and listen and accept the permission that these two experts were giving me to… just be myself and do things how they work for me.

As that day went on, I thought that maybe blogging regularly was not for me, that maybe writing erotica would take a backseat and that definitely I should keep the personal out of my writing as much as possible but then the truth of that moment revealed itself to me. I am able to reach those of you that I do because I lack the ability to hide my vulnerability and to me keeping my emotional journey private seems like lying to my readers.

So, here I am asking you to hopefully continue to love me as a woman, as a writer and as everything that I am as I grow and add new things to my journey. As I am finally able to say I no longer suffer from depression, I am now a happy purpose driven woman and I am ready to take my life and writing to new levels.

I have decided to reveal my in-the-very-near-future plans.

What’s next for me…

In no particular order…

I am putting together a best of Sex Love Joy book together that will be available for free download.
I am publishing all the erotic stories that I haven’t ever put on the site plus previously published stories as an e-book available for sale.
I am going back to school full time.
I am letting go and going to stop homeschooling my sons. Very soon.
I will be doing a SARs training this year.
I will be helping more with SFSI.
I will be doing something extremely special with the domain bornsexual.com but what I don’t know yet.
I will be finishing a non-fiction book that I will publish next Fall.

I did come through the other side of completely falling apart and now only the best in me is left to cultivate the woman that I am meant to be… for myself, for my children, for my partners, for my friends and for my readers.

Sunday, September 16, 2012 at 9:24 am PST was when I finally realized that I’ve always known my path, my vision was always clear but I didn’t know until that moment that all I needed was permission to act on it. My heart is extremely heavy in a great way in this moment as I type this because I realize that the date is almost exactly sixteen years since I tattooed Sex Love Joy on my skin, since I lost the daughter I always wanted and since my life began falling apart. Yes, it took me sixteen years to get out from the cloud of loss of self, sixteen years of falling apart, sixteen years of doubt to finally get to that sweet spot.

But after all the pain…

I stand here with a clear vision of what good sex love joy looks like and what is my place within the field of human sexuality and also the permission to fight with every breath it takes to claim my place and produce the work that will matter.

Thank you for being part of my journey. Thank you for reading about all the tough moments and I hope that you’ll continue to read the next chapters in my life.

I appreciate you! Dearly.

Lidia-Anain signature

Aug

28

thoughts on suicide

diary / introspection / sex love joy archives

Earlier this month I ended my longest relationship when I finally parted ways with Depression.

Breakups aren’t easy, especially when you are breaking up with the you that helps you hurt yourself. Breaking up with depression requires hitting a wall of sadness that is the realization that you’ve always been enough and do deserve more. Letting go of depression for those that have always had romantic thoughts of suicide requires believing in the you that knows that there is a best you could ever dream of being already with you. A you that knows that suicide is never an option. Ever.

Finding that for me I’ve had to face a lot of sadness as I’m making an effort to understand that joy comes & goes.

Breaking up with depression caused me to have a full blown breakdown. As several dreams were coming true and new possibilities presented themselves instead of celebrating I panicked and wondered if deserved them and whether or not I was enough woman to follow through and live what I had dreamed. Instead of celebrating, I often found myself breaking down in tears as I prepared to leave my house to step into the bigger role that life now had for me. In those moments of panic and tears, I had to look forward and tell myself that I could do what was now expected of me and that I did deserve these things. It was in these moments that I realized that I might have been hiding behind my depression before.

Hiding behind depression? There was a time when irrational thoughts and emotions paralyzed me, causing me to quit on everything that I really wanted. Completely quitting life often felt so right that I believed that I belonged to a certain troubled group of people for which suicide is the only option. For this troubled group it wasn’t a question of whether they would commit suicide or not but a question of when they would. It just seemed better to figure out when was the perfect time to quit on myself than to feel my emotions or fully listen to my own negative thoughts. Sounds insane doesn’t it?

All the same negative thoughts and feelings of despair that had plagued me since forever were with me as my dreams came true. Sadness still filled my soul no matter what was going right or wrong, but this time around instead of backing down, quitting or not following through I allowed myself to fully experience my emotions and sit with the negative thoughts. I would not be the shadow version of me that wasn’t strong enough to live through the self-hate.

My moods do not control my life anymore, even when I am fully in my feelings I am in control of my actions.

I wasn’t hiding behind depression. What I was doing was not allowing myself to sit in my feelings or listen to the awful thoughts that I had. When depression set in I would retreat into the darkness and not work through my emotions or thoughts. I had to redefine what self-love was for myself because sometime ago somewhere someone had convinced me that if I really loved myself I would not allow myself to have negative thoughts. They were wrong! At the age of thirty-five, I learned that the fastest way towards happiness sometimes is through the sadness. Making it through the negative thoughts and terrible feelings is how I reach joy.

It is in my greatest moments that I am often fighting sadness the most. It is in my saddest moments that I reaffirm my commitment to living. These things are true for me now yet I know that for many there often seems to be no better option than suicide.

As I decided, that even though I would always have moments of depression I wouldn’t allow myself to suffer from it anymore, people I love started to tell me about friends that recently “suddenly and unexpectedly” had committed suicide.

Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Committed. Suicide.

It might seem sudden or unexpected to the people on the outside but to many of the people that follow through with suicide it was a long time coming.

Some of these people were the same people that when they expressed their feelings of sadness or irrational thoughts of unworthiness their friends responded with, “You can’t be depressed. You have a great life.”

You cannot see the internal struggle that those that are part of the group that believe suicide will be their tragic ending.

You cannot see anyone’s inner struggle but you can be vocal about how you work through your negative emotions and irrational thoughts to more friends so they can see that everyone experiences these things.

My emotional truths…

Never imagined the emotional strength it takes to step into the big stilettos that I always dreamed life would have for me someday.
Having much needed breakdowns are a part of realizing that I’ve always been enough and that I do deserve to live the life I’ve dreamed.
Breaking up with depression has me in an extreme cloud of sadness as I walk away from it. I don’t need/want to hide behind depression anymore.
I definitely have a blessed life filled with a lot of happiness but I will always have to battle depression and mental illness.

Share your emotional truths with those you love!

Lidia-Anain signature

Feb

03

find a happy place

diary / sex love joy archives

Having feelings of wanting to run far far away. Feeling completely restless. So incredibly restless that I cannot study or get much done on the novel that I should be editing or the reading I need to do for this or that. The feelings of restlessness are quickly followed by anger and I don’t like myself when I become that person. The anger is followed by an emptiness and overbearing feelings of guilt. I don’t know what to do to make these feelings go away.

I know that I’ve hit a wall. A big wall that is going to take a lot of work to break through. I know exactly where the disconnect is within me and I also know what the internal and external things I need to change to make my life flow again are. *Seeing* the problems clearly doesn’t make them any better, any easier or any less painful. Sometimes in the seeing is where the most pain resides; where feelings have the most power and I don’t know what to do to make these feelings go away!

Hell yeah it hurts when you realize what the fuck is wrong with yourself or the life you’ve created!

I think that so many people stay unhappy or don’t move on because just the pain of seeing the problem becomes so big that the realization alone overwhelms them. What you see seems bigger than anything else so taking all the tiny actions you as a person need to fix things just is too much. Where do you start attacking the problem?

That’s exactly where I am right now…

Dec

22

Loss by Wookiesgirl

naked candor / sex love joy archives

Loss.

…such a small word and yet, for some, its meaning is unfathomably huge. So much so, that it can be the only thing we see, feel and breathe.

Today marks the two year anniversary of the death of my cousin, Jacob. He died as the result of a drug overdose. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him. He is by far the biggest loss I’ve had in the last three years.

I want to talk about what loss means to me, what it looks like and how it feels right at this moment.

Dec

02

almost a year ago

diary / introspection / sex love joy archives

What follows is the transcript of my journal entry from December 31, 2010. I have not written in my journal since that day because instead I wrote here. I guess I am sharing it because it was this journal entry that gave me the strength to share more than I thought was possible with strangers.

I was very weak then but not so much these days. The power I have found in candor is endless and incredible. If it hurts my advice to you is write it down and let it go.

Sep

23

shit filled septembers

diary / introspection / sex love joy archives

In early May I began wading in a shit filled abyss. My body went limp. My voice grew weak. I couldn’t express all the emotions that had overcome me. All the trauma that surfaced with one visit to Florida. I was supposed to be there for six weeks but only lasted three. I physically fled from that place and those emotions but my voice it had left me and my mind remained in that abyss now all the way in it; swimming desperately trying to escape. It wasn’t until Sezin reached out with an unexpected post that lifted me up above the rip current of worthlessness and despair that I had been swimming against. After the silence I was able to post things that I thought I would never be able to share with anyone. I wrote things down that I hadn’t told some of my best friends. I was heard by so many and felt better for sharing one of my darkest moments.

Jul

14

my heart is sick of being in chains

diary / sex love joy archives

Had a poignant conversation today with a new friend that I trust very much. A new friend that trusts me too. We have been confiding all sorts of things. We started sharing our dreams for our careers and we’ve moved to talking about our childhoods and mothers. My friend is beautiful on the outside but especially on the inside. My friend is balanced. My friend is smart. My friend is ambitious. My friend has it together. My friend is absolutely going places. I wish I was more like her but I am so extremely happy for her because the last thing I want is company in my misery. My friend is the me I could have been had I sought therapy and made better choices.

Apr

25

romantic allure of suicide

diary / introspection / sex love joy archives

Death eventually comes for each and all of us. For some of us it will come peacefully in the night on a night so far into our days that once our family and friends hear of our passing they will comment on what a long life we lived. For others death will be the final gift from a debilitating disease that just wanted to keep on giving. Some will meet death unexpectedly through some unforeseen accident that takes their life before it was time. Death seems to operate on a schedule that he reveals to no one but then again there are those of us that cheat death the pleasure of pulling the life out of us by doing it on our own terms. For some people suicide is the only way out…

Apr

21

depressed, worried, sad – but I have to kick these feelings!

diary / introspection / motherhood / sex love joy archives

I have some crazy shit popping off in my life right now most of which I don’t want to even think about much less write about for others to judge. The one thing that is really bothering me is my father’s health. He has always been a very strong man. He is 71 and proof that black doesn’t crack because he looks much younger. He has always had a pudgy belly but otherwise has maintained a very strong physically capable body. My Dad had not let his age slow him down one bit. On the outside he seemed fine but I guess on the inside he was having problems that we didn’t know about. As I type this he is home in Florida in his bed resting trying to get healthy…waiting on test results. So, I am a mess here in California because when I spoke to him he sounded like death. I have never heard my father’s voice sound so ill not even when his appendix ruptured and I spoke to him before they wheeled him into surgery.

Apr

18

a day off from my commitment to me but not

introspection / motherhood / sex love joy archives

In the dashboard of this site there are sixteen new posts partially written just sitting there waiting for me to finish them, edit them and post them. I really should be editing one of those posts so that we can chat about this topic or that topic but I am not. I have religiously been plugging away at writing both on this blog, in my journal and even the novel I am writing for over a month now. I have done an amazing job of balancing my goals as a woman and my duties as a mother. I have been managing my depression much better than I had been doing for the last two years. I really shouldn’t take a day off from my commitment to me but I am and not at the same time. I obviously didn’t take the day off from writing a post but today I just want to talk to y’all openly about what is on my mind.

Feb

07

he knows if you’ve been sad or depressed. your child lives within your facade!

introspection / motherhood / sex love joy archives

Many mothers who work very hard at giving their very best at work, to their children and the world around them often find themselves surrounded by a cloud of unhappiness they can’t shake. The source of this unhappiness is different for each woman that experiences it but most if not all will do everything in their power to hide the cloudiness from their children. Hiding our sadness from our children is something that us mothers think that we must do in order to raise happy children.

Sep

08

thoughts are the demons who own me

diary / introspection / sex love joy archives

Have you ever been sick? Extremely sick to the point where you can’t do anything for yourself? Depression is that sickness for many of us, a dark cloud that blows into our heads which makes living fuzzy, it distracts us as it takes over each and every single cell in our bodies until we become paralyzed. Once it paralyzes it starts taunting us with all the things we could do if it hadn’t immobilized us. The worst part is that there is absolutely nothing we can do to escape it other than wait for the cloud to drift past us. I have been in and out of this haze for the last couple of weeks and today I have decided that I cannot go on like this; waiting is no longer an option for me. I want to live.

18

28

03

22

02

23

14

25

21

18

07

08

2009-2013 © Lidia-Anain. All Rights Reserved.