Sometimes when clients come to me, they express fear or discomfort with the exchange of money for my time and presence. I try to help them reframe these feelings within the context of our greater culture of abuse: systemic abuse of power, of resources, and of women. This isn’t exactly comforting, perhaps, but I do hope it relieves some of the individual pressure we all seem to share regarding the tension between money and pleasure. None of us have consented to live within such traumatizing systems, with such traumatizing histories. We must simply navigate it as best we can, and this is one of the ways I’ve found works well for me. The first step towards trust in this interaction is you trusting that I am an autonomous person who is in this work willingly: that this work nurtures me in countless ways and enables me to have a life where I am free to create, to live, and to give all I can and want. What a gift.
It makes sense to feel uncomfortable with exchanging money (for anything!), but when it comes to pleasure, I consider it my job to help my clients get out of those Puritan-descended shame spirals and into their actual bodies. The release we’re all craving comes in many ways, in waves, in drops. Just like sweat, or tears, or time.
My lineage is of women, healers, priestesses who stood at thresholds stewarding others into deeper communion with their bodies and with the land. My calling is to create spaces for others to remember their deeper lineages; to reclaim inheritances beyond what capitalism dictates for us. My hands ache to cradle those spaces that buying shit can’t fill. So don’t worry about my pleasure, don’t worry about paying me for my attention. My care for you is bigger than you as an individual, and it is genuine.
Contemporary society (I’m talking post-nomadic) has delighted to shun women like me. It’s criminalized, imprisoned, institutionalized, and executed the guardians of pleasure. So your donations and gifts are really just a redistribution of wealth that’s been allocated to the chosen few, for wounded reasons. Again, it’s not your fault. You never consented to be prized in the patriarchy (nor did I, as the patriarchy’s favorite currency: a white woman). But you can re-examine your shame from these larger perspectives, redistribute your wealth as best you can, and let me join in celebration of your quickened pulse.