Ep #142: Bonus: The Lit Clit Club Team

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast episode 142.

Welcome to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast, the only show that combines a fun personality, medical knowledge, sexual counseling, and life coaching together. To create unique sex coaching that helps busy women awaken their libidos, address intimacy issues, and learn how to express their sexuality for the rest of their days. Here is your host, certified life coach and sexual counselor, Dr. Sonia Wright.

Hello, hello Diamonds. This is a bonus episode. I’m so excited to bring this bonus episode to you. This was originally recorded on Gretchen Hernandez My Freedom Grove podcast, but it has all the members of The Lit Clit Club, the three main sex coaches. Gretchen on this. We’re missing a couple, but it was such an amazing conversation that I just wanted to bring it to my Diamonds as you get to know more about our passion, our motivation, the reason why we’re so excited about The Lit Clit Club.

So I just wanted to bring this bonus episode to you, and just let you share in the joy and the excitement that we have over The Lit Clit Club. Remember that the founding members pricing is only available through May 31^st. So please join us. We’d love to have you, and go ahead and enjoy this podcast. Okay, love you so much. Enjoy the bonus podcast, Dr. Sonia out.

Gretchen:  Good morning, everybody. We are going to have some fun today. So we’ve got a whole bunch of us on the call, and I’m going to have Sonia go first and tell the audience why we’re all here. So Dr. Sonia, can you please introduce yourself?

Sonia: Hello, everybody. I’m Dr. Sonia Wright. I go by Dr. Sonia. I am the midlife sex coach for women. I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much Gretchen for inviting me and the whole team to get together so we can talk to you about our mission of improving the lives of women inside and outside the bedroom. 100 million women across the world. We are so dedicated to this mission. we’re so excited that you’re inviting us all so we can sit and talk about it and whatever else.

But just in case you don’t know me, I am a medical doctor, a pediatric radiologist. I’m a trained sexual counselor. I’m a master certified life coach. I’m also a toys enthusiast. I love the toys. Like I bring it all together, and I focus on making sex, intimacy, connection, all of that better. Like whatever I can do to help women in the area of sexual intimacy, I’m down for it. my team is down for it too.

Gretchen: So fun. so I want to give the opportunity for all of your teammates to be introduced today and to learn about everybody, and I’m one of them too. So I’ll share a little bit about how I’m going to contribute. But Lisa, can you introduce yourself, please?

Lisa: Yes. I’m so happy to. I’m so happy to be here with these wonderful, all of you wonderful women. Okay, so please excuse me. I’m getting a little bit of the sniffles. so if I sound a little stuffy, that’s what’s going on. Yeah, I’m Lisa Hatlestad. I am a master life and intimacy coach. I have been a co-parent-instructor with Dr. Sonia in the advanced certification and women’s sexual intimacy course for a group of really wonderful coach students. it’s just been such a pleasure.

A little bit about myself as a coach, I tend to focus on the spiritual side of things.  Like spiritual not meaning any particular dogma or religious, but just us getting in touch with us, getting in touch with the core that makes us unique and beautiful and is our creative expression in the world. I also am a big proponent, a big fan of body image work. Because as human beings, we’re all embodied. Our body is part of our experience here, and I just want women to love the house that they’re in.

Gretchen: Nice. So good. So good. You took us through an exercise like a week ago. It was so good that I shared some of it with my daughter, and like her mind was blown. I was like I gotta get you in front of Lisa. This is great.

Lisa: I love it. I love it. Yes, in The Lit Clit Club, more in store.

Gretchen: All right, Donna, tell us all.

Donna: Oh, well, you got a while? All about me? No, anyway. So I’m Donna Jennings. I am also a health care provider like Dr. Sonia, but I am a Physician Assistant. so can appreciate that background when it comes to women’s health and wellness and all things that can kind of contribute an impact that intimacy.

I have been on both sides of that exam table, if you will, or desk were been a provider trying to solve these needs in a quick visit with information I was never provided with in training, and been a woman who was looking for these answers. so I can appreciate the value of what Dr. Sonia brings to the table and what she’s created and the need for that.

I am the midlife mastery coach for women. my passion is helping women understand that they can make peace with their past and have an extraordinary future. They were made for more, and that their yesterday doesn’t have to dictate their tomorrow. in doing that, they can create what I refer to as their dream life. it’s better when they, as themselves, are in it, not who they have come to be because of conditioning and experience and all of that.

So helping women make that step into deciding for themselves who they’re going to be and just embracing that and creating the life that they want. Within this container, I’ve gotten to coach with Dr. Sonia in her programs in the past. Now I get to coach and work with the women in the advanced certification for women’s sexual intimacy. then inside The Lit Clit Club, we are going to be talking about all things to help you become your authentic self. that’s what I bring to the table, and I am ready to bring it with his crowd.

Gretchen: All right. All right. So I’m going to share what my contribution is gonna be. So most of the people listening already know who I am, but I’m Gretchen Hernandez. I’m traditionally known for helping with business and mental health. I’ve been helping Sonia for like the last year or so behind the scenes with the business stuff. I’m so grateful that Sonia has given me an opportunity to come in support on my other passion, which is all things LGBT.

So I am part of the LGBT community, or as I like to just call it the rainbow community just to make it nice and easy. I have a huge rainbow family, and almost every letter of the LGBTQI+ and all of the things are represented in my family. I like to joke that in my family, it’s the only one you have to come out as straight.

So I’ve had quite the experience throughout my life. I’ve been an LGBT advocate since at least middle school when I was in my first relationship with a gay man. it tends to like follow me through my life. I was engaged to a man for five and a half years before he came out as gay, and we decided not to get married. It can really take a toll on a person’s life when they’re in a relationship with someone that they absolutely love, but it turns out that orientation wise, you’re not attracted to each other in that way, in a sexual way.

I’ve had other friends that have also gone through something similar, but I’ve also been the one that helps them to come out at any age. So my background in business coaching also involved cultural transformation. so learning everything about change management and how to get other people on board has really helped me to help the LGBT community to come out in either supporting themselves or their partners or even their children because I know how to help with all of the change management and the loving and embracing of your authentic self and celebrating.

so I’ve heard way too much about well, we have to just allow people to be who they are. I’m like oh no, we’re celebrating. So it’s like everything is a celebration. I also have gone into the schools and helped educate the schools on transgender. So everything about transgender and trying to help improve the culture. So I am super excited to come on and be a member of the Lit Clit team and helping the LGBT component of that. So Sonia, thank you so much for that.

Sonia: Sure. I realized that I didn’t specifically introduce the Lit Clit Club.

Gretchen: Please tell us all about it, Sonia.

Sonia: So you were just introduced to the majority of my fabulous team. There are some additional members, but The Lit Clit Club is basically a monthly coaching club or monthly coaching organization. basically, because we have this mission to positively impact the sex lives and overall lives of over 100 million women, we wanted to make sure that it was such that it was affordable for everyone.

so sometimes with private coaching and things like that, that could be thousands of dollars. We wanted to make sure that there was a price point where anybody could get the coaching that they need. So that that’s how the Lit Clit Club came about.

So it has weekly coaching on sex and intimacy coaching, but it also has coaching on every month on these different topics that we’re just talking about. So Lisa handles, everybody here is basically a sex coach. So they can all do the sex coaching part of it, but they have something that’s near and dear to their hearts. Things that they really love.

So for Lisa, it’s spirituality. It’s embodiment. It’s body image. So she handles that side of things. For Donna, it is about the dreams, making the dream life, going on the journey to your authentic self. That’s important for her. For Gretchen, Gretchen’s just amazing. You all know this. Everybody on this podcast that listens to her knows how amazing she is. So how could I not ask her to be part of this team and handle the LGBTQ plus area and make it such that really we put a focus on that as well?

Then I also have coaches that handle relationships and intimacy. I have other coaches and sexual counselors that are specifically handling sexual health. then we also have a group for a coach that handles the over 50s crowd. I’m 56. It’s a special way of being, but we deserve women deserve to continue that sexual intimacy, all women throughout their lifespan, but things need to be addressed as we get older. So as we’re going through this, that’s part of The Lit Clit Club.

We also just have like this girls session where we get together once a month, and we just shoot the boot. The bull? The boot? The boot? What? Because we just love talking, and we love each other. Like we’re a family. this is a mission that we have as a family that we are coming together to impact and change.

We have created a container that is a safe container for women to ask all the questions that they want to ask. I have to say also since I love the toys, we do have a monthly session on toys. So you can get all your questions asked about toys. I used to do like this one session on toys that lasted 60 minutes, and then I had to get to 90 minutes.

now I have to get to the point where I separate out different toys because it might be two or three hours. You can’t see, but I have so many toys in this area. it’s just we want to make sure that we’re addressing all the needs of women. So The Lit Clit Clubs, it officially starts June 1^st. We want to there, and these people on this team are just amazing. we’re just dedicated to making a difference in your lives. So thank you for allowing me to go on about that, Gretchen.

Gretchen: That is perfect. That is exactly what I wanted you to help share with everybody because this is an amazing opportunity.  me, I’m a mental health advocate. I know that at least I’ve had some challenges for mental health when my intimate life wasn’t all what I wanted it to be. so can you shed some light on that to, maybe all three of you, because you have been supporting women in their intimate lives for years now. what’s the impact on a woman’s mental health when her intimate life is not working out how she wants it to?

Sonia: Yeah, so we cannot separate sex, sexual intimacy from the rest of our life. It’s an integral part of it, right? if things are not working quite right in the bedroom, you can bet they’re not working outside of the bedroom. Because intimacy is established first outside the bedroom with communication, with respect, with consent, with love. All those type of things have to be there, right?

If you’re stressed out of your mind about your job or juggling family responsibilities and things like that, that is all going to impact intimacy. So we also like in the Lit Clit Club, we also just have life coaching as well. Because we’re not going to focus just on the sex and leave the rest of your life kind of hanging over there in crazy land. We’re going to work together. We’re gonna address all the different issues.

So mental health is definitely something that’s important for us. it’s something that we need to impact. Honestly, when I talk about a safe container, it needs to be a place where women can come with whatever problem they have and know that they are going to get the help that they need. This is so important.

So often we spend time looking like we’re perfect from the outside. inside we’re dying. We’re so sad. We’re lonely. We’re sad. We’re depressed. We have a lot of issues going on. those issues are impacting our life in general, and it’s also impacting our sexual intimacy.

So it’s so important that we address the whole woman. I think this is really what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the Lit Clit Club is the holistic aspect of it all. I think that every woman here that is part of the team comes from a holistic perspective. so individually, we’re holistic, and then we come together and we make a bigger, it’s something that like it cannot be defined. It’s so amazing.

we just really want to be there for women and be there in whatever way we can. Anxiety impacts sexual intimacy. Stress impacts sexual intimacy. Exhaustion impacts sexual intimacy. Your health overall impacts. So, so many different areas will impact sexual intimacy. So my Lit Clit team is here for you. Not just for your clit, but for all of you.

Gretchen: That’s so great. Donna, what has been your experience? So you’ve been working with women for quite a while. How have you seen their intimate life and mental health intertwined?

Donna: If I may actually start with what came to mind when I heard you ask the question was actually my experience that began, that actually really kicked off my connection to coaching and getting a coach. I was losing my mind, and I’m sure my husband thought I was.

I, at first, even being a health care provider had no idea what was going on. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was easily aroused, but not sexually. Like I couldn’t sleep. The dogs snoring, a husband snoring, anything woke me up. I blamed them. I was gaining weight. I was exhausted. I was moody. I noticed I could switch on a dime, which really perplexed my husband and made him like, “Wait, I don’t, should I? No? How is it now?” He was so totally lost in how to relate to me. I was annoyed inside as well. Try living in here, right?

Then I learned about coaching, and actually began to take my life back. a big part of that was getting a grip on my expectations. What did I have control over? then I took that control over my health and then ultimately, my intimacy and sexual experience and realized that was mine to create. That was mine to own, not just roll with it. If I rolled with it, and this is something we do see a lot with clients, if we rolled with it, I’d never have sex again.

On one hand, from the standpoint like I’d be fine without it, right? A number say that. If you’ve got to choose between getting some extra sleep or having sex, like so many of our clients are like sleep please, right? Because trying to figure out how to juggle life and all the expectations on them.

So getting, as Sonia said, getting things in order outside the bedroom, getting a grip on things on me led to a much more fulfilled experience inside the bedroom, the living room, the shower, the kitchen, wherever. It didn’t matter. So anyway, that was my walk. that’s what I also see playing out with women, and I can so empathize with their experience of our clients. I also know that it gets better. It can be better. that’s what we’re here for.

Gretchen: Thank you, Donna. Lisa, can you tell us what your experience has been?

Lisa: Yeah, I can. I always love listening to other people talk because then my brain is formulating on its own, just spinning in the background. So Donna’s talking about getting a grip on. So I’m going to come from the other angle, which is like letting go of, right? Because it’s always both. I think when it comes both to our mental health and wellbeing and our sexual, our intimacy health, the health of our intimate life and wellbeing, there are things that we could consider letting go of.

Number one being that there is a definitive level. There’s a definitive way to be in life that means that you’re mentally healthy, that means that you have a great sex life. Right? Like the primary question I get, one of the primary questions I get asked by my clients around intimacy coaching is like well, how many times, like what’s a healthy amount of sex to have? How often should I be having sex?

There’s no answer to that. There’s no answer to that. I don’t think, I really don’t see that there’s an authority who actually knows what that is. But to me, it’s more symptomatic of a way that we’re taught, enculturated, to think in terms of am I hitting the right level? Am I doing this right?

one thing that I always help my clients with is like letting go. usually it’s like finger by finger, and sometimes the fingers come back down, and we’re hanging on again because we grew up with this, right. We come by it completely naturally, but letting go of definitions that are out there or that we’ve carried with us since childhood because of our familial culture, because of religious culture, or anything else that’s touched and impacted our lives. defining those things for ourselves and making it okay to live by our own definitions.

Gretchen: So good. I recently started rewatching the series Sex in the City. I don’t know if you guys watched that at some point. to see sex talked about openly, it was so great, but at the same time like all of a sudden, it was bringing up a lot of old beliefs that I had that I don’t have anymore, luckily.

But the idea that women can actually enjoy sex, as opposed to it being a duty, or as Sonia, I’ve seen you list out a few times to-do list sex. I wonder if you can talk about that? Are there still a lot of women that are more in the to-do list camp as opposed to having sex because they actually enjoy it?

Sonia: Yes, like 100%. In a lot of ways, women are taught in the society that sex is about an exchange system, right? It’s about pleasing other people. It’s all about somebody else. It’s externalized. We’re looking somewhere else. So if we’re focused on everybody else, it’s going to get to be a point where it’s on the to-do list, right? Because it’s not focused on us and our own pleasure.

our reasons for doing it are not going to be about us. They’re going to be about am I pleasing somebody else? Am I going to be secure in this relationship? Like that type of thing. So if we’re thinking about it as an exchange system, it gets to be a to-do list. I cannot tell you how many women have honestly said to me that they’re lying on their back in the middle of sexual intimacy thinking about their vacation, or their grocery list, or what they have to do next, right? They’re just kind of waiting for it to end.

It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s not really great. Because to them, the concept was never introduced in their mind that this is about you, and this is about your pleasure. Right? So for them, how they define sexual intimacy is this is about somebody else’s pleasure. This is what I do because I love somebody else. This is what I do because it’s a duty that that I have to do as a woman. This is what I do to secure my place in this relationship. They have a thousand reasons why it’s on the to0do list, but it’s not necessarily about them.

when I ask them what about you? Like so many women will come to me and they’re like, “My libido is off. My partner wants more sex. There’s something wrong with me. How can I have more sex?” Just like Lisa’s saying, it’s about the frequency. They don’t come into the equation. Their partner wants more sex so they’re trying to figure out okay, how can I do this thing I don’t really care to do either way. But let me just do it so that I can get it off the list so they stop complaining. So yeah.

There’s so many women that it’s about efficiency. It’s not about intimacy. they get more pleasure from checking that box than they actually do from having something in their box. Now, there is a problem here. So like, let’s switch this around. Let’s figure this out.

Let’s figure out like when I asked them but what about you? What do you want? They don’t know what they want. Because that’s not how they have been taught to think about sex. Like if you think about it, if we think about how in our society, if we’re taught anything as young ladies, young women, in our teen years or whatever, we’re talking about sex in really a negative connotation.

We’re taught you can get an STI, you can get pregnant, you could get a bad reputation. Nobody ever talks about pleasure. Right? If they say pleasure, then people will be having sex, and but they’re still having sex but they never learned about the pleasure side of things. If it were more about the pleasure side of things, I wonder what would actually happen. I bet it would shift more over to oh, it’s about me. I’m not really in the mood for sex right now. This is not what I want.

But because we’re teaching our young women that it’s about somebody else, and somebody else’s needs. This is how you get approval, this is how you get love. This is how you get, when you’re like a sexual object, not a sexual subject where it’s not about you, we get to this place where we’re in the situation where we have grown women that don’t really have this concept that they get to have pleasure. Or don’t know about their body and don’t know what pleasure looks like and feels like to them.

Or they’re expecting their partners to know for them and to tell them what. Or they’re expecting their partners to be responsible for a woman’s pleasure, for their own pleasure. So there are so many ways and so many reasons we really need to shift this around.

We need to get to this place where like okay, you don’t want to have sex. Now, this is about consent. So let’s start from a place where don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to do. So let’s start from a place of if you don’t want to have sex, you don’t have to have sex. But if you choose to have sex, and you’d want to figure out ways to be into it and to enjoy it, let’s start from there. What does pleasure look like for you? Like how can we get this off of your to-do list and make it a for you thing? Instead of to-do list sex, it’s a for you sex. So this is kind of where I try to shift the focus.

Gretchen: You have a whole section on anatomy too, right?

Sonia: Of course, like you can’t, and I’m going to bring my friend here. So this is Iris, my vulva puppet. for those of you that are not necessarily on the call, maybe Gretchen, or we can’t see the video. Maybe Gretchen will get like a screenshot or something so you can see my vulva puppet.

Gretchen: I can share a picture.

Sonia: Yes. But basically, Iris, and a lot of other material that I have, will help with the understanding of what our vulva looks like. Our society talks a hell of a lot about a vagina, but nobody wants to say the word vulva. Like we think that the main event is in our vagina. Hey, it’s fun in there, I’m not gonna lie, but we need to understand that the majority of a woman’s pleasure is associated with her clitoris.

Now her clitoris, that is analogous or similar to the penis on the man is the clitoris. It starts from the same embryo logical origin. so we need to focus and make sure that women understand it’s about stimulating their clitoris somewhere in this process, and it’s not all about the vagina.

if we’re talking about this famous g-spot in the vagina, the goddess spot, that actually is innervated and entwined with the nerves in the clitoris. So like your pleasure zone is your clitoris. So we do need to understand about anatomy and understand how it works for us, understand what our vulva is.

like those people that I make sure that we’re all at the same starting point, and we understand about anatomy because some people might not know anatomy, and they might think well pee and everything comes out of the same place, like the vagina. Just basic stuff that we want to get down. People think that the clitoris is the size of a pea, a little teeny, like blueberry, when in all actuality it’s the size of three or four inch wishbone, right? So we need to understand our anatomy so we can go from there. Don’t get me started because I might never stop.

Gretchen: Well, I love that you’re talking openly about this, and creating this safe container where people can come in and have these discussions and create a community, create a family so that we feel comfortable all talking about it out loud. I was so excited when I saw the Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret movie come out. Because, as a kid, that was really my only like introduction to sex and masturbation. There was stuff in there. It wasn’t everything.

so then we’re just left on our own to figure it out, or we have a little bit of trauma from other kids being teased. I know that there was a girl in my middle school that there were stories going around of someone seeing her masturbating. Then all of a sudden, it was like for two years just constant criticism about her. it’s like I don’t think that’s how the world should go. so I’m grateful that you’re creating this environment where everybody can come in and talk about things.

Sonia: 100%. let me just stop for a second. When you’re looking at these situations like this, this girl that was teased for two years in the middle school. What if we switch the gender on that, right? Would that even make like the middle school news? Like nobody would care.

Oh, Bobby was like feeling up his penis. Well, yeah. What else is Bobby supposed to do, right? But Bobette might be feel – Who knows? Maybe she had a UTI, and she was itchy or something. We don’t know what happened. But just the fact that she was caught, caught, like touching herself in some way. Suddenly she goes through two years of being exiled, right? This is strong stuff.

If you think about it, what message is that telling every other girl in that middle school at that age, right? Like, I am fucking not, sorry for swearing. I’m not touching anything down there, right? There’s no way in hell I am touching anything down there because that girl is going through two years of hell. Whereas if they were Bobby, it would be like hey, Bobby. Like bro. Hey. So we need to recognize what we’re doing to our girls, even to this day. That girl, now old is that girl now?

Gretchen: She’s probably around 50/51.

Sonia: Yeah. What kind of ramifications is that having for her or every other woman that was in that class that’s like 51 years old? Are they going to be coming to The Lit Clit Club? I hope they are.

Gretchen: Yeah, I hope so.

Sonia: They may have been really scarred. We need to recognize what is happening and how we’re impacting. our society also thinks that like oh, well, they’re in their 50s. It’s over for them anyway. So let’s not worry about it. Let’s understand, we’re going to be sexual into our 90s and beyond. So this is 40 more years of shame and anxiety and things like that, that that that person may be feeling.

so we need to understand that The Lit Clit Club, we’re all here because this needs to end. I have helped women in, and we all have, women in the 60s, 70s, and beyond. their lives have changed so much. change so much. Right? So this work, it’s essential. It’s so necessary, and it leads to freedom and peace.

Gretchen: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lisa: Can I jump in for a second?

Gretchen: Yeah, I was.

Lisa: Like, I’m all on fire now.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lisa: The girl that you were you were sharing about, Gretchen, like this, to me, it feels so indicative of what it’s like to be a woman in the world. It’s not just the touching of one sexual parts. It’s the, a girl, a woman giving herself pleasure. How do we look at that in our culture? It’s like oh, we’re self-indulgent. We’re selfish. We’re self-focused. If it’s sexual, then it’s like oh, they’re gross, or they’re whatever.

I don’t know that society, like I believe in systemic change. I also know that it creeps along, right. we women doing this for ourselves really is what is going to create change, but it has to be created within ourselves first. so the whole time Sonia was talking, I was like we’ve got to get after this girl. We have got to get after this.

Because we already have the right to our own pleasure, but if we want to fully own it, and have our sisters own it, and our daughters own it, and our mothers and our grandmothers and our neighbors and everybody on it, like we’ve got to own it openly. that takes courage. It takes courage, and it takes work. that’s why I will plug The Lit Clit Club forever because this is a community where that is the focus.

Gretchen: You did a great job of pointing out a word that I had used to describe myself at one point in my life as promiscuous. you had some really great stuff to share on that. Can you share it with everybody here?

Lisa: Yes, absolutely. I wouldn’t have shared it without your permission. So you opened the door. Yeah. So in one of our advanced certification in women’s sexuality classes, we were just talking about like who are you as a sexual being and what shaped you? What cultural shaping did you have? Who said what to you? Who taught what to you? What did you learn?

Gretchen, who was always so generous in her personal shares, which I think is just a foundational thing for the whole group. Like opening the door to make it okay for us to share those things. But you, Gretchen, mentioned that, and you said it so innocently. Like I could see that I don’t think it was something that you even thought about, but you described yourself in the past as promiscuous. That, of course, lit up my brain, right? Like oh, I’m curious about that.

Correct me if I’m getting this wrong because I’m totally going by memory, but that’s what I remember. so in the class what I had asked you is I just said I’m really curious about you describing yourself, your past self as promiscuous. I think the whole time I was thinking about it I’m like are men ever described as promiscuous? Has there ever been a teenage boy that’s described as promiscuous? We all know as women, there’s other words that are applied to women who are sexually uninhibited, or perhaps sexually active and not hiding it, or somebody knows about it, right?

When do men get called those things? I think it’s just so important to point those things out because it is a part, just the fact that we say those things so easily and so naturally and don’t think of them is just a symptom of internalized patriarchy and even misogyny. The more that we can bring those things up to light, right, and just see that oh, this is so deep. It’s just internalized in this way. so I’m thinking this way about myself. I didn’t even know I was thinking it. I just thought it was a fact.

it’s so liberatory. I’m really curious, Gretchen, what occurred to you when I said that. Because your face just in class was like boing. You got it.

Gretchen: I did. I did. Because really, what is the definition of promiscuous? When did we decide that that was a bad thing?

Donna: Ah, amen.

Gretchen: Right? That was kind of my aha moment. It’s like oh, I am labeling myself with a word and making it seem like a bad thing. it’s like is it a bad thing? I think that we can challenge that. We definitely can challenge it. I mean each individual, right, because there’s many of us that never saw that as a bad thing. They had that enjoyment in their life, and it was a joy. they were allowed to have it as a joy. I was not one of those people.

I was enjoying myself at the time. But to the outside world, most people would think that I was a total prude because I had learned to hide that for the longest time. so people never knew that I had these different partners. Because yeah, I was taught that that was bad thing. You’re only supposed to have sex with the person that you fall in love with and you spend the rest of your life with. Yeah, no.

Lisa: I have other clients who have said similar things about themselves. it’s just interesting to sit with like how it feels. it’s just internalized cultural thinking. Like how it feels to think I was a promiscuous teenager or promiscuous 20 year old or whatever versus I have always been sexually curious, and wanted to use my body in an intimate relating to somebody else to explore that curiosity.

Can you feel the freedom in that? Now, we don’t have to think about either of those things, or we don’t have to think about it in either of those terms. But to play with the polarities sometimes helps us find a place in the middle where we can actually dump some of the shame or the guilt or anything else that we might have been carrying because of just what we did with our bodies, and why when we were younger.

Sonia: I’m also going to bring up in this concept. Often I like to play, you’ll find this out, that I like to play by taking these labels and putting them on other genders and other age groups and things like that, right. so we did talk a little bit about what men are labeled promiscuous, right. But what women over 50 are labeled promiscuous?

You start to realize that this is about controlling. I’m going to say this is about controlling fertility and a woman’s body. Because if you look at when these labels come, they’re during this period of time that you could get pregnant essentially. then after you are not like fertile anymore, it’s almost like you’ve been like put out to the corner dumpster or something like that. Right?

Suddenly, nobody cares if you’re over 50 and promiscuous. They call you a cougar, but nobody cares, right? Like, you need to recognize that these labels are being used to control women in one way or another. So if you’re being called a bitch, I love the terminology bitch because it usually means that you’re a woman that is just doing what you want to do.

If you see any situation where a woman is called a bitch, it’s because she’s doing what she wants to do as opposed to catering to other people. it’s the same thing with any time that these labels slut, whore, promiscuous, any these labels are put on women, it’s because somebody or something or society is trying to control a woman’s action. So be very careful with this and with this understanding.

It’s to the point where we call it police ourselves. We put these labels on ourselves so nobody has to externally keep us in our place. We’re very good at doing it ourselves. So this is when you see that a society has been very successful.

Now, since we’re also talking about LGBTQ+, I’m queer. when my sexual freedom really started is when I had my first relationship with a woman. That’s when there was no rules in place. This is when there’s no like say how it has to be, right? Where you actually make this up as you go, right? in order to get to that place where you are in a relationship with a person of a gender that society says is not the norm, you have to get to that place where you are making a choice for yourself and saying no thank you to the rules of society.

when you do that, you also get to say yes, thank you. yes, please to yourself and what you’d like to do. then you recognize that you can actually do anything. then this is for like any women, whatever their sexual orientation is, you get to make the rules for yourself no matter what, right? This is the part. As long as there’s consent involved, everybody’s over 18, adults, nobody’s being harmed, you really get to make the rules for yourself.

so, this is not going to cause chaos and the world to end. There will still be order in this world, right? But it does not have to be at the expense of women not being able to do what it is that they wish to do in life.

Gretchen: So good. So good. Donna, have you noticed changes in people’s lives after they’ve had changes in their intimate life? Have they gone out in the world, and they present themselves differently?

Donna: Oh, absolutely. what really stands out is a client who when they were able to examine their life and their relationship with their spouse, what was happening. They came for coaching on what was happening in the bedroom, but then as we looked at it, they had together created an ideal life that from the outside in where they lived, the work they did, the environment they were in, they’d be the envy of anybody. Anybody would want to live where they live, do what they do.

they realized the people they were, were exactly the opposite. As opposed to being logical, they were artistic. As opposed to living in the city, they wanted space. then they realized this. She came to the realization and then came back to me and shared that they had discussed it and realized they bought into something and become what was desirable, what were goals that had been assumed by them that I have no idea where they came from, right. We could dive into that, but that wasn’t what she was there for. then they were liberated.

with that freedom, then they were back to expressing themselves openly, freely with one another, and they charted a course to move their life around to what aligned with who they were. So looking at the big picture, making those adjustments, their connection improved, that improved in the bedroom, and they charted a course to correct for them or to adjust, adapt, the life they’d created to a life that they wanted.

Gretchen: Nice. Very nice, very nice. I know people pleasing has been one of the topics that we’ve covered a little bit. How is it that when someone starts to change their people pleasing tendencies in their bedroom that it changes out in their professional life? Maybe Lisa you can answer this one?

Lisa: Sure. Yeah. I work with people pleasing a little bit differently, and I won’t get into it all, but like we are all interconnected. so it’s only natural that we want to make our and other people’s lives flow more smoothly, a lot of times by going along.

I think the challenge for women who will have been brought up and socialized to be the ultimate peace keepers, boat stabilizers, all of that, people pleasers. Our challenge is to find a way through where we’re not giving ourselves away, right? Where we’re not giving ourselves a way to social convention for the sake of peace. Because not everybody’s feeling peace. We aren’t, right? We count. We count on those scales.

So when we stop people pleasing in the bedroom, and what that can look like is going to vary for everybody. A lot of times it’s having sex when you don’t really want to because your partner does. You might do it out of fear that they’re going to be angry, disappointed, that they’re going to have hurt feelings, whatever. It can be a lot of different things. That’s just one example.

But when we start taking back our sexual sovereignty, our own sexual joy, and our right to pleasure, it’s going to probably rock the boat. Our partner might be like hey, that’s wonderful. But at the same time, if the power dynamic has been one way, when it starts to shift, we can go through this period where we got what Coach Martha Beck has called change-back attack because now there is identity on both sides of the scale at stake.

So anyway, we need to find the capacity to see our way through that. Nobody has to win in these situations. It isn’t somebody over somebody else. But when we stay with it, and we put our stake and our right to claim our own sexual sovereignty and pleasure and all of that, it is, I’ll circle back around to what Sonia said in the beginning of this conversation. We can’t separate our sexual lives from our personal lives.

So no matter where we’re taking back our pleasure, and I think the bedroom is such a right beautiful place to take that back. We are going to expand. We’re going to see in our own, all of these other places where the scales haven’t been balanced. I think women are kind of taught to be, I’m using my hands everybody that’s listening to this.

Women are taught to be the scale holders, right? We’re all like the ultimate Libras balancing the scale, but we’re habitually not putting ourselves on the damn scale. We need to be on that scale. once we start balancing the scale out in the bedroom where we’re getting our please. I think that it just overflows into our life. We’re like oh, here and here and here. Right? Does that make sense?

Gretchen: Yeah, we can be on the scale in other parts of our lives too.

Lisa: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Gretchen: That’s so important. So important. Sonia, you’ve brought on someone who specializes in trauma too. so unfortunately, women have experienced sexual trauma in their life. I think they say, what is it, one in four women have experienced sexual trauma?

Sonia: Yes. Yeah. So I’m actually going to go back to what Lisa is saying, and then I’ll add on to your question. So I love what Lisa has to say. that’s one of the reasons we have a relationship coach. Because that change-back, I don’t know exactly what the phrase was, but I know the reality of it in terms of what we do the coaching. We’re not here to destroy relationships. We’re here to actually improve relationships.

it’s okay if your partner is like what the heck is happening here? This is not the way it’s been. so there is this time of upheaval where the boat is being rocked, and things don’t seem like they’re normal, but that’s okay. so I have Dr. Kimmery Newsom that handles the relationship side of things.

so we invite all partners to come to the relationship coaching calls as well. So they can be like what the heck is happening with my partner? What is going on here? What is this my focus on mutual pleasure and all this stuff? How do I handle this? Usually it’s a two second one and done, and I’m done. Now it’s like wait, what’s the clitoris? Things are changing.

So we recognize what, and we’re not here to destroy relationship. We are here. My focus is, and I’ll tell you honestly, I was in a sexless relationship for almost 10 years. I know the pain that happens when you don’t have that connection with a person, and you want that connection. we’re not here to destroy. We’re here to enhance relationships.

so we have the relationship coaching with Dr. Kimmery Newsom, and she’s a marriage and family therapist. She has been doing this for 30 years now. But I also want to, actually not 30. Closer to 20 years, but I also want to say that she’s also our trauma coach because she specializes in trauma as well.

so we’re also making sure. you’re right. Like one in four women has some sort of issue around sexual trauma, just trauma in their life just in general. But there’s so many women that come to me for coaching, and they’re not sure what has happened. They’re like this has happened. They wouldn’t necessarily call a date rape or whatever, but they will describe a situation that’s very traumatic to them. But somehow they think that there’s some guilt, or they did something wrong in some way.

so they don’t know what to do with this. it’s been like coated in shame, I’d say. it’s just sitting there like this heaviness, this sadness, this pain. so we do need a trauma coach. Anybody, of course, that’s dealing with trauma or abuse or anything like that, definitely go see a therapist and get that help, but we will also be addressing some of those issues as well in the Lit Clit Club. So yes.

Gretchen: All of that combined creates this wonderful feeling that you’ve called a soul burst. So can you share with us about soul burst? I think each of us can add in our thoughts on that too.

Sonia: Well, I have like, when I talk about soul bursting, I talk about it in two different ways. So I talk about soul bursting with my clients, with anybody that would be in the Lit Clit Club, you get to have the amazing life that you want. When you’re in alignment and the desires of your heart and your spirit are actually allowed to be free, and to be let free, and you are in alignment, and you’re going on the path to your authentic life that you really want to live, you will honestly feel your heart is singing. Your soul is singing.

so that’s what when we talk about a soul burst, that’s what we’re talking about. that’s what we would like for our clients. this is why it’s a holistic approach. Because we recognize it’s not just about the mind. A lot of thoughts are up there, and they do impact sexual intimacy, but your heart and your soul, your spirit are part of this too. so we want to make sure that that’s addressed. So that’s for my clients.

I have to say there’s soul bursting going on with me because I am alignment. I am an on purpose with what it is that I wish to do in life in terms of positively impacting these women’s lives. So my soul is singing. This is, I have been doing sex coaching for five years and coaching overall for like seven years, right? But this is 100% in alignment with what I am meant to do. My heart is singing. My soul is singing. I am doing this work that is so important to me. So my soul is bursting, and there is joy in my life as well.

Gretchen: I can feel this coming. Donna, tell us about your soul burst.

Donna: I think for me that is similar. You can say alignment, you can say rapport. But experiences when I’m so full of goodness, I don’t mean that I am good. I just mean I’m like the beneficiary of goodness. I am, some people use that flow term where everything is just kicking on all four cylinders. I think that that can be related to like getting to live uninhibited. there is so much joy and energy about that, that I just think I will just pop.

that living uninhibited, being fully alive, is about me being me out in the world. so that who I am externally is consistent with who I am internally. yeah, sometimes when I’ve experienced it, it’s like my feet barely touched the ground. I think this is what it’s like to fly, at least that’s what it feels like from the inside out. Yeah. It just is like fully, fully alive.

Gretchen: Oh, to feel fully alive. Lisa, how about your soul burst?

Lisa: Yeah. I’m feeling this so much. From what Sonia and Donna have already said, I love like, this is what it feels like to fly. Oh, I love that. Yeah it’s so interesting. Like everything they said is my experience of it too. I think, I’ll just say this for all the women listening. If your mind is quantifying this kind of happiness and freedom with like defined definitions, because if we’re living in a definition of success and happiness that isn’t our own, that’s not it, right?

I think, for me, this year, this last 12 months, and especially 2023, even though it’s fairly young still. We’ll, we’re coming up on halfway. But like I’m literally not doing what I thought I would be doing, and I’m not making the same income that I thought it would be making just a couple years ago. it occurred to me one day if all that is true, and I thought that my future was going to make me happier, and it’s not happening that way, why am I so freaking happy?

Why don’t I question, oh am I going to be? That’s it, right? It’s because I’m doing what I want, what I love. I’m following those breadcrumbs to my joy. finally, I think for some of us, not speaking for everybody, but for me, I needed to get into my 50s and kind of embrace that crony type age where it’s like other people fair thing. I’m finally brave enough to just do my own thing. so, for me, that’s my little tack on to everything that Donna and Sonia already said.

Gretchen: So good, so good. so, Dr. Sonia, can you tell us about the Lit Clit Club, the founding members, and also, what about for the people that are too shy to come on camera?

Sonia: Oh, yeah, let’s talk about it. Okay, so I’m going to start with the too shy to come on camera part of it. So the too shy to come on camera. Well, you need to understand that this is a webinar type of style. so your cameras are not on at all. You get to sit back in the comfort of your own home, have this information come to you. you get to learn. You get to ask the questions. You get to ask for the coaching.

If you’d like to come on camera, or you’d like to come on audio, you can do that. But you can also just type your questions in the chat, if you want to, which just goes directly to the host and panelists. You can also use the Q&A, and the Q&A it just goes to the host and panelists as well, but there is an anonymous feature as well.

So you could just type in your question. it doesn’t even have your name anywhere on it. When we respond to questions and coaching, we never say people’s names. So that’s another level of anonymity so that you don’t have to be concerned about that. So that side of it, okay.

So in the month of May, we’re doing our founding members time, and that goes through May 31^st. The regular price of the Lit Clit Club is $97 a month, which is very reasonable. Well, we are actually having a special incentive price for the founding members, for people that have been there with us along this journey that have been loyal to us, have been listening to our podcasts, have been interacting with us doing all the work and been there right with us. We want to serve you. We want to make sure that we are hearing you, that we’re seeing you, that we are recognizing that you have been there for us, and we want to be there for you.

So in that case, the founding membership price is $67 a month, and that price will continue every month as long as you have continuous membership. if you even want to, you can do a yearly membership, which instead of $970 for the whole year, it’s $670 for the whole year. This is like getting down to $50 a month, $55 a month. It is as low as it’s ever going to be, and it runs from now to May 31^st.

So that’s basically after that, it will be at its normal price of $97 a month. But because we want to make sure that you know that we respect and love and the people that have been there for us, we want to be there for you. It’s at $67 a month instead of the $97.

Gretchen: So good. So good. All right. This has been such a pleasure having everybody here on the call today. I can’t wait for us to have the doors officially open and running, talking with everybody. There’s also a really incredible thing you’ve been doing in the month of May that you’ve already started. there’s still more, which is free live Q&A calls with each of your team members. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Sonia: Yeah, so throughout the month of May, the month of May is always a special month here at the midlife sex coach because it is the month that we started my membership, the group program which is Own Your Sexuality now. It started in May of 2020. So it’s always the time that I celebrate.

so the fun thing is that we’re starting the Lit Clit Club in May basically. So this month we have the free coaching. It’s free Q&A, free sex coaching. So we’ve had relationship coaching. We’ve had that sex coaching. We’ve had that sexual health coaching as well. That was an incredible. I am always learning from Evelyn Rush. She’s another person on our team. So I’m still learning years later about different things. so we just had an incredible. All the replays are available.

Then this weekend, we’re having the Over 50 club that gets together and talk. Then we’re also having Lisa. We’re gonna be doing body embodiment stuff. We had Donna kicking it off at the beginning of the month. So all these calls. Gretchen, you’re coming up too. We’ve got like so much. This week is Gretchen. then on the weekend is the Over 50s club. Then next week is Lisa, and we’ve already had the other people.

So just so much in the month of May. All the replays are available. just so you have an idea of what the Lit Clit Club is like and just because we want to give back to you and because we want to celebrate you. Because of all those reasons, May is our month that we always have like our big, our big celebration and exciting time with the free coaching.

Gretchen: I’m going to include all of those links on the web page for this episode so that you can opt in, so that you can go and see the replay, and also get a chance to jump on some of those live calls because there’s still some coming up. also the link to The Lit Clit Club because you’ll want to join before the end of May so that you can get that founders price. come and join us. so as we wrap up, I’d like each of you to share what is it like once you have a community of women where you can openly discuss our intimate lives. Donna?

Donna: This is an area notoriously where women feel isolated and have no one to talk to. Where notoriously we don’t talk about it, even within our own family, much less with the world. this is a place to get answers, to get solutions, to ask questions, to finally, in this area of your life, not be alone and be empowered to not just own it, but to embrace it, to experience it, and revive that whole area, and just feel like you have a handle on this whole aspect of your life. You’re not lost. You’re just not left to time and whatever happens, and this is as good as it gets. It’s so powerful to not be alone.

Gretchen: So good. Lisa?

Lisa: Yeah, I think bouncing off of what Donna said, it’s like sisterhood. Right? One thing that I love Donna mentioned is that there just aren’t many places where these things get talked about. even when we get together with our good friends to talk about them, a lot of times the boundaries of that circle haven’t been established. So then we can walk away with some vulnerability shame and worry what our friends might say about us.

the Lit Clit Club has its boundaries. We’re all coming for the very same reason, and we’re there to be sister to one another. So that’s what it’s like for me.

Gretchen: So good. Sonia?

Sonia: It’s like coming home. It’s like coming home to a safe space. Where just like Donna and Lisa was saying that there is this sisterhood. you can have that connection. You can have and find freedom. You can find the safety that you need. it’s really a beautiful place. I can’t tell you the number of women that like the gratitude, the release of the stress and the anxiety where they can just go thank God you’re doing this work. I don’t know how many people have said that, at least just in the month of May alone with the work that we’ve been doing this month.

They’re like I didn’t know. I didn’t know this was possible. I’m gonna go talk to my gynecologist. I didn’t realize this was something I could still do. I thought there was no hope. I can’t tell you, again, like all the words that are coming. All the thankful and the gratitude that’s coming. So yeah. This gets to be a place for you, and it gets to be a place for your friends where you can still have that anonymity. You don’t have to worry does your friends know what’s happening in your life, right?

So you get to share this with your friend, and at the same time, keep the privacy. We just keep the, and we want to hear from you. Like we keep trying to uplevel this and make this everything that women need. so we are here. We’re here to hear you. We’re here to listen. We’re here to give you what you need.

I need women to understand sex does not end in your 30s and 40s. Like it goes on your entire life. Come to The Lit Clit club so that it can continue to be there. I don’t care if your partner has whatever issues going on. We do deal a lot with life partners that have erectile dysfunction, or partners that are not sure about their own intimacy or whatever else is going on. This is your safe place for whatever is happening to you around the issues of like in your life in general but definitely around sexual intimacy.

If you have a low libido and you think you’re broken, this is the place for you. Like just come home to us. We’re here for you. this is this whole network, this whole system. Like we’re here intertwining to be that net that catches you. You don’t have to be isolated. You don’t have to do this alone. you can sit back. It doesn’t matter what part of the United States or the world that you’re in, we can still be here for you. This gets to be your place that you come for your safety, your questions, whatever you need.

Gretchen: Thank you so much. Dr. Sonia, thank you for envisioning this, for creating it, for everybody on the team, for all of our effort to pull all of this together so that we can create this huge family for everybody to come home to. Thank you all so much for coming on today.

Lisa: Thank you so much, Gretchen.

Donna: Thank you, Gretchen. Yeah. Fabulous.

Hey Diamonds, have you heard the amazing news? Dr. Sonia, that would be me, and my team have created a sex coaching and life coaching monthly membership program called The Lit Clit Club. Yes, you heard it here first. The Lit Clit Club was made just for you for all of my Diamonds. It’s a safe place where women can come to create the life that they want. It’s a place where you get to talk openly about your sexual concerns and be heard. There’s no judgment here, no reprimand, no labels. Just acceptance, knowledge, freedom, love.

It’s a place where you get to ask all the questions you’ve ever wanted to ask about sex. You get to dream big and create your life your way, inside and outside of the bedroom. So come to the club for the sexual intimacy coaching and stay for the empowerment and the freedom. Do you have questions about libido, menopause, perimenopause, sexual health, relationships, sexual orientation, pleasure equality, orgasms, religion and intimacy? Wow, I need to take a breath because I’m not finished with this list yet.

Maybe you have questions on toys, BDSM, non-monogamy, self-love, healing from trauma, maybe embodiment and positive body image. Wait, one more breath. Perhaps you’re focused on creating the life of your dreams, journeying to your authentic self. Just stop people pleasing and me please instead. We have the answers and the coaching just for you. So click on the link below to find out more. We start June 1^st, 2023. Did you hear that May is Founding Member Month for all of my loyal Diamonds that have been with me on the sex coaching journey over the years? I want to say thank you.

So in the month of May 2023, you get to be a founding member at the founding member price of only $67 a month as long as you have continuous membership. That $67 a month is a substantial savings off the regular fee of $97 a month. Or you could sign up for one year. So you could sign up for 12 months, and that is only $670 instead of $970. So you get $300 off that. I want you with me. All of my Diamonds, I want you with me as a founding member.

This membership is for you. The Lit Clit Club is your place, your safe haven where you get to come and interact with me, get the coaching that you want, interact with my team. I have an amazing team and you’re going to be meeting them over the month of May and June but you also get to jump in and just click on the link below to find out all about The Lit Clit Club. So join The Lit Clit Club and rewrite your sexual story. Heck, you get to rework your entire life and make it exactly what you want.

So you get a new ooh in the bedroom and you get a new you outside the bedroom. Lit Clit Club is for you. We want you there. We are dedicated to doing this work with you and we’re going to have a hell of a lot of fun. So come join us. Can’t wait to see you inside the club. Love you, Diamonds.