Ep #107: Worthy of Rest

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women^TM Podcast, episode 107.

Welcome to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women^TM 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, hello, Diamonds. I kind of feel like I should say it a different way like hello, hello, hello Diamonds because today I’m going to be talking all about rest and relaxation. Well, all right, Diamonds let’s just get real.

This week was an amazing week. I was in Disneyland. I was in Louisville with an amazing coach. I was in Nashville with two additional amazing coaches. In a seven day period of time I traveled all across the country, I had amazing experiences. I had mind blowing revelations.

I was gonna say mind blowing sex. I didn’t actually have time for that because I was traveling, right. But I had mind blowing revelations. It was just an amazing time in my life and something that I’m forever grateful for and just really feel lucky to have this opportunity to work with these different coaches and also to finish up celebrating my time and relationship with my ex-husband, Edward.

Okay, so let’s get real. It’s time for rest. I need a rest. I’m kind of exhausted here. I’m the type of person that likes to do and go and be. So it takes me a lot to get to that point where I’m like yeah, I need a break. But at 56, well, I’ll be 56 tomorrow. So at 56, I’ve decided that it’s time to cultivate rest and relaxation and all that that means for me.

The fall is coming. I live in Minnesota. So the fall for me is kind of like easing into the winter, which is my renewal time. That’s what I would kind of call it. My renewal time. So I’m looking forward to this. I decided that rest is going to be something that’s important to my life.

That’s another reason why I decided not to do the Own Your Sexuality group this fall, but to wait until January and actually only do it once a year. Because I’m really listening to my body and listening to what I need. At this point, I have other projects that are in the works for coaching and other things. I’ll talk more about that later. But I do love doing my Own Your Sexuality Now group, the intimate group.

So as part of listening to my body and my mind, I am going to be resting it, which means that I’m going to do Own Your Sexuality Now just once a year, and that’s going to be in January. I’ll let you know more about that in the coming weeks.

So rest. For me, rest is listening to my body. Listening to see what it has to say to me. It’s also about listening to my mind, and recognizing when there’s brain fatigue, when my brain needs a rest. That might look different to you or might look the same to you and your body. Because each one of us, our body is different, and it responds differently. But I know when it’s time to rest. I haven’t necessarily listened to in the past, but I’m at this point in my life where I do want to listen.

So how do we do that rest? If I decide I’m going to do this rest, how do I do it? As I said before, I kind of tap in and sense what’s going on with my mind. I have like the traditional ways to relax my body, which is mindfulness and meditation and relaxation and yoga. It also looks like walking in nature healing. Nature is so healing for me. I think it’s just naturally healing for most people. So check and decide what is it that makes you feel like you’re rested and you can rest? What is it that you do to initiate that process, right?

Of course, don’t forget about sex because it can be very cathartic and can release a lot of stress. It can help you relax. It can definitely help you sleep. It boosts your immune system. There’s so many good things about sex. But what I actually want to talk about, and this is probably going to be a short podcast. Short and sweet and to the point, or I could drone on and on. One or the other. We’ll soon see what’s coming.

But what I did want to talk to you about is what do you need in order to give yourself permission to rest? Now this sounds like a similar question that I often ask you, which is what do you need in order to give yourself permission to focus on your pleasure?

So I’m turning around a little bit. What do you need to give yourself permission to focus on your rest? I kind of put rest and pleasure in the same category because women tend not to get either one of those. It’s kind of interesting. Not all men, but a lot of men do think it’s okay for them to get pleasure and to rest. But the way we’ve been raised in society as women, it’s not necessarily the same for us.

I want to talk about making sure, be aware or beware that you don’t label yourself lazy. As soon as we stop moving, women have a tendency to label themselves as lazy. Like something’s gone wrong. They’ve done something wrong if they’re not moving all the time. So beware. Don’t start calling yourself names. Don’t start beating up on yourselves. Remember, we’re trying to be kind to ourselves.

Remember, I talked about that self-love stuff. If you need to go back to the self-love podcast, go back and read that and listen to it again. Don’t call yourself lazy. Give yourself the gift of rest.

You know, there’s an expectation in this society, that women are meant to carry the load, and that there’s no time for rest. In fact, we have a tendency to define ourselves as good girls and good women and good daughters and partners and wives or whatever by the amount of effort we put into never sitting still. The amount of effort that we put into taking care of other people’s needs. It’s almost like if we are sitting still then somebody is going to deem us unworthy.

What do you do and who you are, are two very, very, very different things. Your worth is not correlated with the amount that you do. This is when we start to get into the world of people pleasing. If we focus on our value and our worth is based on what we do, then we’re focused externally for validation. We’re focused externally for someone to say that we are valuable enough. What I’m asking you to do is to focus internally, and to give yourself that validation and approval, and to give yourself that permission to just rest and just stop for a minute.

Society has taught us that we’re not valuable if we’re not doing something. If we’re not working all the time. So we tend to extend our working and our busyness into all of our waking hours. Like we don’t sit still at all. I just want to be the one to tell you, you don’t need to validate your existence by being helpful and being productive all the time. In fact, you could do it like none of the time, and still be valuable.

Be aware and beware of the thoughts that you may have around taking up space. It’s almost like women apologize for taking up space. In order to earn our space, we have to do something. Beware if this is something that you’re teaching your daughters and the young women in your life, that they have to do something in order to take up space. We don’t have to. Not at all.

We are socialized that as a good girl, as a good woman, as a good wife, as a good partner, that’s somebody that is a good blank that tends to be female in gender, we take care of our family. We take care of our children. We take care of our partners. But nowhere in that definition is the concept that she takes care of herself. She takes care of herself. I’m gonna say that again, that phrase again. She takes care of herself.

How often do you hear that? She is kind to herself. She is loving to herself. She gives herself a rest when she deserves and needs a rest. How often do you hear that? She is kind to herself. She takes care of herself. I say we start now.

I honestly spend a lot of my time coaching on this concept. Be kind to yourself, I’ll tell my Diamond, and then they’ll tell me all the reasons why they can’t. Slow down. They’ll tell me all the reasons why they can’t slow down. I’m interested in why? Why? Why? Why? Like, it’s like layers of why. Just keep asking the why. Usually it comes back to I won’t be valuable enough if I don’t continue to work constantly.

Recognize this society would like you to feel guilt and shame, and that’s kind of the price that you have to pay for rest. So even if you are physically resting your body, there’s an element of guilt and shame there. So your body might be resting but your mind is not resting at all. So you’re still paying a price for something that should just be intrinsic. You should be allowed to rest. You should understand that you’re valuable no matter what. If you sit on the couch and pick your nose or pick the lint out of your navel, you are just as valuable as you are if you’re running all over the place trying to appease people.

So you get to decide do you want to pay that price? You get to decide do I have to pay this price of this emotional turmoil? Do I have to pay this price of guilt and shame in order to rest my body? What would I need to exchange that guilt and shame for in order to rest my mind, to rest my emotions, to rest my heart? Right? How can I feel curious or excited about rest? Or just at peace about resting? Right? These are the questions that I would ask.

Don’t define yourself as a woman, but anybody else’s terms. If you’re a man and you’re listening to this, don’t define yourself by anybody else’s terms. If you’re non-binary, don’t define yourself by anybody else’s terms. That seems like a contradiction. But then society and their systems of oppression out there that everybody’s dealing with that are trying to box us in and label us and get us to this place where we’re not feeling comfortable until we are working and we’re people pleasing, and we’re finding our value in are doing instead of in our being. But recognize that this country was built on the backs of women.

Honestly, if we could monetize the amount of work that women do, if we could monetize it, if we could say that okay if I need a housekeeper and a nanny and a person that budgets all day, if I needed somebody that organized activities and things like that, if I had to pay somebody for all those different things that women tend to do, how much would that cost?

I was just at a coaching event that Kara Loewentheil put on. I just love Kara Loewentheil. So you should look into The Clutch and see what work she’s doing there because she’s just amazing. But I coached somebody on the fact that they never saw their value.

They worked for many years. They basically built their business for their husband, and they never took a salary, and they never valued themselves. They did so much because they thought that they were doing it together. Then that person divorced them and took the business and all the money and did not value her worth and what she had put into it.

So recognize that we need to value ourselves. We need to stand up for ourselves. We need to say we are valuable enough. We need to say that we’re valuable and we don’t have to do anything for that value. But if we are going to be doing things then also recognize it. It’s worth, and it’s value in this world.

So this is a short and sweet one. I mentioned this was going to be. Basically my main point being give yourself permission to rest. Give yourself permission to be valuable and worthy. It’s not based on what you do and who you take care of. It’s just based on the fact that you are breathing.

This is an important one for women. Allow yourself to take up space and not have to apologize for being here and not have to do everything for everybody in order to earn your keep. You’re worthy. You’re worthy of rest. You’re allowed to rest, Diamonds, give yourself permission to rest. Okay, Diamonds, it is short and sweet. That’s what I wanted to talk to you today all about rest and giving yourself permission to rest, and having some downtime at the end of this year as we gear up for next year. Okay, take care Diamonds.

Hey Diamonds, do you want to reignite the passion that’s gone missing from your life? Do you want to want to want it again? You know I’m on a mission to end the emotional pain and isolation that women experience associated with sexual difficulties. And many of you also know that I was once in that place where I was experiencing little to no sexual intimacy in my life. And I kept thinking that there was something that was wrong with me, that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t attractive enough, I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t smart enough to fix this problem.

And I was worried all the time that my relationship was too far gone because of this lack of intimacy. Well, you know what? I was right about one thing, the relationship didn’t last. But even though the relationship didn’t last I committed to doing the work that I needed to do to own my sexuality. And now I have this amazing sex life and it’s everything that I wanted it to be. And I’m also committed to helping my Diamonds by teaching them the same strategies that I figured out in order to revitalize the intimacy in their life.

So, if you want to stop feeling broken, if you want to stop feeling shame and guilt about sexuality, if you want to feel more comfortable with your sexuality and tap into that pleasure then I’m here for you, Diamonds. First of all, know that there’s nothing that’s gone wrong with you. You’re not broken. And you know what? You can solve your intimacy issues. You can let go of that shame and guilt, and you can tap into that passionate person that’s just waiting to come out. Let’s get on a strategy call together and let’s discuss how we can work together and how I can help you.

And know that a strategy call, it’s 100% a safe place, there is no judgment. We’ll talk about your intimacy situation, which is what’s going on right now. We’re also going to talk about your intimacy goals, what you would like your intimacy to look like in the future. And then we’ll talk about how we could possibly work together to come up with a personalized strategy plan for you so you can get the results that you need. So, Diamonds, I’m here for you, don’t wait another minute. Book that consultation call with me today and I can’t wait to talk to you.

You can get that consultation call by going to soniawrightmd.as.me. And the link is also in the show notes. Okay, have a great day. I can’t wait to talk to you. Take care.