What would you do if your doctor told you that if you had sex you could die?  No, he didn’t say this because he was a sadist with a sex fetish, but because sex or coming close to orgasm, would probably kill you.  He wasn’t kidding.  Well, this was exactly what happened with my second, high-risk pregnancy.

I recently posted a heart wrenching story that I’d been carrying around as a silent wound for nine years.  Sharing the incredible birth saga of my son, whose birthday was this past weekend, on my Diva-Mama blog was cathartic.  My recounted survival story was not just about my son’s birth but my rebirth which became the foundation of my spiritually sexy awareness.  

For me it started while staring down the barrel of death in a horrendous relationship with a card carrying psycho, the likes of which I’d never encountered, and the depth of which I didn’t realize until after divorce proceedings began.  

I was sitting alone, like Maria in the Sound of Music, trading the abbey for a house in the Pittsburgh suburbs.  For the first time since I became sexually active many years prior, I was unable to make love or even orgasm in any way, shape or form.  And that’s even if I had wanted to with the man I was married to at the time.

When it comes to staring into the darkness of your soul facing these kinds of extreme circumstances, we are tested.  We either have to grow and connect to SOMETHING or else... (and I shudder to think what that “or else” would have been).

So I attached to what was safest - a few dear friends, music and my rapidly expanding understanding of faith.  I had to put sexuality on hold and focus instead on a deep personal connection with myself. 

I like to think I went into self-protection mode and maybe that’s why I lost every ounce of libido I had.  But I wasn’t concerned whether or not my sex drive would return.  I innately knew that what I was going through was connected to this specific period of time and would eventually pass.  

For those of you who find yourselves in a similarly trying situation, whether it’s health related or because you don’t have the right person in your life right now, there is no shame and no judgment for not having the sex life you used to have, wished you had or hope to have.  

Perhaps right now your focus and responsibility is to cultivate a deeper connection to yourself, whatever that looks like - prayer, meditation, journaling, long walks, spending time with people who make you laugh, cry and just remind you why you’re alive!

In assessing what Spiritually Sexy means, I have decided that it has less to do with sex with someone else and far more to do with our relationship to ourselves and whatever higher power we choose to believe in, if any.

Maybe we are destined to go through these dry spells, because like it or not, they create the perfect opportunity for growth.  The Universe doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle so if you’re going through one of these “sexless” periods, realize the next chapter, if you so choose, could be more tantalizing and titillating than anything that’s come before.  

In my case, after the birth of my son and my divorce, I blossomed in all ways and some of them, by the way, were quite naughty.  But more on that another time.  

[Photo credit: allerair.blogspot.com]