to hold you in your wholeness

pleas·ure

/ˈpleZHər/

noun

• a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment.
  "She smiled with pleasure at being praised."

adjective

• used or intended for entertainment rather than business.
  "pleasure boats"

verb

• give sexual enjoyment or satisfaction to.
  "Tell me what will pleasure you."

The DICKtionary definition of pleasure is devoid of depth. It erases its bounty, glory, power, and impact. The full potential of humankind depends on our capacity to make the conscious choice to experience pleasure, bear witness to the transformative power of pleasure, and to aid in creating pleasure. 

This piece is written as an ode to growth and healing in recovery, resilience, and responsibility from intergenerational ancestral trauma. It is grounded in the love of my ancestral maternal bloodline that runs deep with the complexity of our Dahomey warriors; the skilled hands of African ancestors whose secrets to building civilizations are everlastingly hidden in our double helix ladder connecting our spirits to the seen and unseen; our masculine AFAB ancestors who passed as “men'' to survive transphobic violence; as “white” to survive racism; as “cis-het” to survive homophobic violence; as “illiterate” to survive and appease white superiority delusion; as “Christian” to survive religious persecution; and as “safe” to soothe illogical white violence, devoid of reason and emotion. 

This is to our civil rights hidden figures and shape shifters who were unnamed and systemically erased by default of their feminized figures, who shaped ideological strategies to hold America to account for democracy being actualized; and to our single AFAB caregivers whose creative survival strategies powered generations of innovators and who may be now weary from the wide lens exposing America's imperial, genocidal origins.

Then HOW, SWAY? How can we exist to feel exalted joy and pleasure in and amongst the coarseness of compound pain?

Perhaps beginning with the simplicity of our birthright: Free will. Choosing to hold wholeness as pleasure. Today, in this zeitgeist, and on these lands, we can choose to believe in pleasure as an origin point of creation, as well as a soft, billowy space to land from traversing through pain.

Ease, not struggle 

Black and Queer and Femmes, in particular, are everyday reminders of a full range of possibilities in holding humans in their wholeness:  Having the capacity to carry, expand, morph, survive, create, and shape the weight of this earthly realm's wonders, mysticism, magic-bending beliefs and for some, the now in peril freedom of choice to birth life.

I find myself sitting with exploring the ways I get to experience, create, and reframe pleasure. As a 47-year-old socially conditioned cis-het, and now independently out, self-identified queer poly fem, empty nester and entrepreneur, I feel the freedom of experiencing pleasure in mutual nourishment, as a conscious choice. This is not conditional, but a decision to share my unique essence with nature, other beings, spirit, and myself without expectation. 

At times, I imagine humans as pieces to a complex puzzle. Some pieces conjoin with ease. Pleasure! Some don’t fit together. Struggle! Sometimes the ego becomes so pronounced as to force a fit. Force is violent. The quicker we accept that some things just don’t fit, the more we get to actualize our innovative creativity of childlike wonder. Pleasure! The struggle doesn’t have to be real.

Pleasure is choosing to love people from afar. I can love someone and hold my aversions and dislike for their choices and ways of being. For example, just because someone holds a socially constructed title as a family member, I am not obligated to hold an emotional investment where violence and harm are a consistent experience. 

Intergenerational, familial trauma that goes unnamed can stagnate energy and erode the quality of relationship. I have family members with narcissistic traits. I am keenly aware of how being in a relationship with these members requires me to uphold my own healthy boundaries, which requires high levels of energy management. 

But I get to choose how I share my energy, my unique essence, my time, and my space. I choose to divorce my sense of obligation in familial role play while holding their wholeness as a spirit having their human experience. My actions are no longer for the purpose of pleasing people. I find pleasure in sharing energy with those who have an energy management practice. I get to feel pleasure from accepting who they are, creating space that aligns with my needs, and treating them as a whole human being.

Forgiving self 

Pleasure is choosing how I take care of myself. I know my skin burns in the sweltering heat of direct sunlight. I get to choose to protect my skin or expose it and reap the consequences. Planning for myself is pleasure. Giving myself grace for forgetting to plan for me is pleasure.

Pleasure is choosing forgiveness and acceptance that my heart is big with fissures mending from broken promises. And today I choose to practice Love as a verb, prioritizing honoring my growth and awareness. 

I’ve learned to discern when I feel the prickly sensation of my former addictions as trauma responses. I have forgiven myself for using daggers of deception to appease the hot and fiery sensation of edging risk and reward. Having made mental promises with myself, I made choices that violated my own pacts. Ignoring the red flags, centering fear-based communication, conscious and unconscious omission, I chose the path of destruction and deconstruction. I chose from places of boredom. I chose from places of violence and pain. I chose the hard-headed path. AND forgiving myself is pleasure. Accepting responsibility for the impact of my decision-making is pleasure. Releasing guilt, shame and embarrassment as tools of control that kept me stuck in a spiral of immobility is pleasure.  

I have explored and from time to time practiced mentally transmuting sensational pain into pleasure through breathwork and affirmations. This has looked like immersing myself in hot water and then taking a cold plunge. It has looked like relaxing instead of tensing my muscles at the height of working out. It has looked like testing how long I can track the sensation of an itch without scratching. It has looked like choosing not to respond in the midst of being confronted with violence. 

Parasympathetic muscle memory is conditioned for protection and wants to contract and constrict in preparation for action. Yet, the mental acuity of my ancestral warrior bloodline requires precision and clarity, and is best accessed by a flow state, full sensory awareness, released tension, and the ancient wisdom of surrendering to the knowing that I already have all I need. Knowing I am divinely protected is pleasure. Feeling divinely protected in the midst of surrender is pleasure. 

Divine freedom

My capacity is as broad as my shoulders sewing seeds of liberation and possibility for future generations to stand upon and feel supported. I sometimes have cognitive dissonance from my former capacity to my current capacity. I understand my former physicality and what I believed I had to hold versus my current physicality and what I choose to no longer hold. Pleasure is a compass that keeps me from caning and shoulding on myself. Just because I can, doesn’t mean I should. Pleasure feels liberatory when I use language to express, “I have capacity for XXX”; “I don’t have capacity to hold that right now.” Having a practice grounded in awareness of my capacity gives me pleasure.

My practices align with principles of embodying liberation and wading through the messiness of the process of decolonization as well as what it means to evolve interculturally and intergenerationally in the midst of revolution. Whew! I am witnessing the pace of some humans rushing to violence. Time often manipulates my own realization that I get to use time without time using me. I call this alchemizing time. At any given moment, I get to call for a pause, take a breath, stop and pivot. I hold that in some cases, I have the power to change the way I experience some outcomes. By developing my mindfulness practices and strategies, I expanded my access to more practices for holding humans in their wholeness. My practices are resources that fuel my ability to feel the sweet justice of pleasure. 

When friction surfaces in a confrontation, I feel a prickly or sometimes subtle energy rising. Instead of reacting to constructs of time, social cues of niceness or avoiding conflict over naming, my practice invites me not to be quick to ignore the friction. I sometimes forget the power of the pause. I sometimes disconnect from remembering how I can sometimes alter outcomes by alchemizing time to create space for wholeness. And in those times, I get jumped by spirit. Ignoring the initial whisper of spirit, the gentle tap, providing divine guidance has always led me to pain, causing harm and being knocked TF out. Karma is pleasure when I choose to take delight and surrender to spirit early. Karma is a beast when I choose ego and ignore my divine guidance. The relief of not having all the answers, speaking my truth, and knowing I get to call on my ancestors to guide me is a testament to my transformation. Surrendering to divine power is pleasure.

How often have you experienced someone who comes at you hot or sideways? An immediate reaction is to return the favor with the same level of intensity. 

Pause………Breathe……Slow down. 

Let them sit in their own energy. Violent communication does not have to be met with violent communication. The abundance of choice in that moment can be transmuted and grounded in disarming them. Depending on the degree of violence, assess your safety, your exits, your support, capacity, and proximity to resources. Stay in your body, your peace, your way of being. Be a mirror for them to remember their humanness as you prioritize keeping yours in tact. Yes, it is a lot of work. And, I get pleasure from standing on, I did my best to hold my wholeness and be a mirror for them to remember theirs.

Pleasure thrives at the intersection of the art, science, and spirit of practicing wholeness. It is a magical realm that ignites creativity, seeks liberation for all human beings, and holds hope—a key ingredient for the existential survival of the human species. I am bearing witness that collectively, we are in an epoch of experiencing a spiritual crisis. Centering the wholeness of the human spirit as a pleasure practice just might be one of the guiding lights to help us not just survive, but it creates liberatory pathways for our species to thrive. 

Jaz Hines she/they is a visionary artivist, leveraging her role as President and Founder of the Inspower Agency and Amplify and Activate to drive meaningful impact and change historically disempowered narratives about socially constructed identities; such as: race, gender, LGBTQ+, environmental sustainability, and economic empowerment. She has spearheaded innovative campaigns, collaborated with and curated diverse, unique transformative experiences, mobilized resources to address systemic injustices, and promote positive social transformation. With her charismatic leadership, strategic insight, and unwavering commitment to equity, Jaz Hines inspowers people to accept invitations to activate their role and responsibility as creators of a more inclusive and equitable world.

SISTORIES PROMPT

Write in your journal or respond in the comment section below.

Make a list of things that give you pleasure. Like some of the ideas in this essay, what you write may not be considered a 'traditional' source of pleasure. Don't limit yourself.

Review your list and pick 1-2. Make a conscious decision to notice the next time you are engaged in that pleasure practice. Commit to reflecting on how you feel before and after. What did you learn in the process?

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