Sexual trauma is an issue that nearly every woman experiences and struggles with.
I am no different from most women I meet and work with. Also, I know the struggles that come from sexual trauma. Through my years of experience, I have learned that this story is painfully real for many of you.
I recognize how this trauma can wound us, making us forever wary of certain situations and people. And, I am painfully aware of the handicap this imposes on us when we are in the bedroom with a man or woman we love.
The Steps on My Journey from Sexual Trauma to Forgiveness
My story today is about my journey over the last several decades. A journey beginning with uncovering my deeply buried childhood sexual trauma – later in life as an adult – to achieving forgiveness.
This story I share about myself is about how I was guided toward genuine understanding, forgiveness, and healing, even though it is not possible for most of us, including myself, to ever fully forget those traumatic incidents.
Step One: The Journey Begins with Uncovering the Memories!
One of the great mysteries of sexual trauma is how it can hide inside our subconscious or unconscious minds for decades without giving us the slightest hint of its existence. Especially when the trauma happened to us when we were very young.
In my case, it hid inside of me, undetectable, through three marriages. Even though I had been through many different types of therapies and psychological counseling, I still insisted, in fact, I was adamant, that I had never had any sexual trauma in my childhood.
It wasn’t until my fourth marriage to Charles Muir that my childhood trauma bubbled up to the surface of my consciousness. This was due to the fact that Charles was, and still is, a gifted Tantra teacher. And at that time, he was actively working with women in the healing process from sexual trauma.
A big part of my life together with Charles was learning about myself and others as sexual beings. Charles and I were open books to each other with 100% trust. Because of that trust, Charles noticed one day during our lovemaking that there was something about our sexual interaction that was not enjoyable to me.
Step 2: Own the Experience! It happened! I’m going to face it head-on!
At that moment, I could feel that Charles was right. I was NOT enjoying honoring his wand of light, his lingam. In fact, it felt somewhat disgusting. At that moment, I knew that I had to look deeply into this feeling of disgust for his wand since it was a very important part of him, the man I loved.
We both knew a hypnotherapist we liked, so I decided to go see her. In our first few sessions, she broke through all my barriers and had me realize that the source of my sexual trauma was my father.
My father would dangle his penis over my face when I was very young. He was the reason I found the sight and the smell of a man’s wand of light almost sickening.
Once Charles understood that my trauma came from my father, he knew that we had to do some work right away. We had to create an alchemical transmutation of the malignant emotions my father had caused in me regarding men and their penises. We had to change the baser emotions into gold.
Step 3: Do the Entry Work – start with a woman, a sister, a divine mother
For a woman just starting into the work of seeing, understanding, and finally overcoming the long-term effects of sexual trauma, the best place to start is by working or talking with another woman.
The woman you start with can embody a sister or a divine mother. She can help to liberate you from the imprints of rape or early abuse from a man – be it a father, an uncle, the mother’s boyfriend, or a family friend.
Step 4: Take the Work to the Next Level – understanding the sacredness of sexuality
One of the things that were key to my forgiving the source of my trauma was seeing and understanding our sexual organs as sacred.
This was something that I worked on with Charles quite often – seeing and enjoying his Wand, or any other’s, as sacred. One question I asked myself constantly was, “If a man’s penis was called a Wand of God or a Wand of Light, how could I continue to reject his Wand of God as a bad thing?”
When I learned that the female sexual organ, the vagina, was called the Yoni or Sacred Space, it knocked my socks off. The fact that ancient yoga cultures referred to each other’s genitals by sacred names blew my mind!
Those teachings of the sacred began to grow inside of me. I began to revere every man in our classes, from their crown chakras all the way down to their passion centers. I could revere the women as well, and I could see beyond their beautiful bodies. I could feel into their longings and into their progression as sexual people.
Step 5: Receive sexual healing work from men who are Certified Tantra Educators – men of 100% Integrity
My journey took years. It’s hard to say how many years. One of my biggest blessings on this path was my spiritually conscious beloved, a man whose work was dedicated to the Art of Sexual Healing. This work is still being taught to men, women, and couples.
With my beloved’s support in the art of sexual healing, every time I encountered a new and different Wand from a different man …
… I would step deeper into my forgiveness towards all men and freedom from the old trauma.
I am forever grateful to Charles, who empowered me to love Lingams!!! He assured me they all need to be loved and empowered.
As a teacher, he was the best. His Non-Ejaculating Discipline was exceptionally healing for my issue. In fact, his practice of love-making was primarily non-ejaculatory, which was a huge part of my learning about sex, love, and intimacy.
We also had fun, making light of the lingam, which had caused me so much distress. Sometimes we would have a big laugh when Charles would put a pair of sunglasses on his Wand of God or other funny jokes. My healing was much easier with love and laughter as the foundation.
I knew I needed to love other men, not as husbands, but as a woman determined to heal her early conditioning and past.
I never wanted to move beyond my beloved’s lingam in my healing, but looking back, I can see how brilliant it was for Charles to recommend that strongly.
My beloved would say, “I cannot do all the healing you need. My brothers need to assist me as they would assist another brother in the healing of his beloved wife.” Whew! It was a lot to take in.
There were many moments of healing and many rituals among the men and my beloved. The men my beloved chose to help me always promised to return me better than they found me! These were high, advanced states of healing which I pushed myself to do.
Final Step: It never goes away completely. We can forgive totally, but we still are not able to completely forget.
I will always have to work with the blame against men that I carry, as well as nurturing forgiveness and love. We can never fully eliminate our past or completely dump it. The darkness and the light are always present. Thankfully, I am more conscious than ever of my reactions and judgments.
Like all of us, I am not perfect and have never claimed to be a saint. I still find times when I blame men in general for their addiction to ejaculatory orgasms.
And there are still layers of blame towards our society’s conditioning of men. It’s been going that way for millennia. Consciousness is still unfolding and evolving in the global community of both men and women.
The Future
One of my passions is to have conversations about how we can educate young people about sexual energy. Both young girls and boys.
It doesn’t matter what we call it, Tantra or not. What I care about is what kind of a future we will create as our world proceeds forward on our major re-set following the Covid pandemic. Our whole world is changing and evolving into something new.
The important thing is that we learn how to proceed with respect and reverence for each other as we mature.
You can find more resources about this subject on our Resource Page.
Conversation with Caroline adaption and writing by Wordsmith – Peter D. Black