Rewriting Sexual Narratives with Tamica Wilder
*TW: Discussion of s*xual assault.
Consent, boundaries and conditioning - these are topics of sexuality that are rarely explored until it’s absolutely necessary. But, they have the potential to be incredibly empowering. In this episode we are joined by author of newly release Wild Honey, Tamica Wilder in a candid discussion about how we can rewrite our own sexual narratives, what’s missing from sex ed and the ways i which we can approach our own sexuality through a somatic lens.
Tamica Wilder AKA The Orgasmic Mama is a Melbourne-based somatic sex coach and multiqualified therapist with a deep passion for teaching humans to re-attune to the wisdom of our bodies, while giving full permission to shamelessly prioritise pleasure and play.
She believes that our current cultural narratives around sex, intimacy, pleasure and relationships need a damn good shake up! Never one to shy away from a challenge, Tamica is committed to leading the charge. Working with our sexuality, intimacy and the less mastered parts of our human nature can be a tricky and intricate piece of the personal development puzzle. Tamica brings more than 18 years of facilitation and group-work experience and guides with compassion, humour, gentleness, love and curiosity, in all that she does.
As a mother of two little critters, she is also well attuned to the importance of creating sex-positive families and helps parents build the confidence to have ‘those chats’ with their kids and other family members. Tamica’s work will arm you with the tools you need to create lasting and meaningful change inside your intimate relationships, your somatic understanding and reminds you of all that’s possible inside your full and authentic sexual expression.
This podcast is for YOU, so if you ever have any questions you’d like me to answer on the show, or topics you’d like me to cover – reach out to me on email here or over on instagram @eleanorhadley
Links & Resources
Buy your copy of Wild Honey here
Find Tamica on instagram @theorgasmicmama
Join the waitlist for The Art of Seduction here
To work with me 1:1 head here
The Sensuality Academy Podcast is edited and produced with thanks to Lucy Arellano. You can find her work at @lucy_podcastva
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Episode Transcript
Hey there my loves and welcome to another episode of The Sensuality Academy podcast. I recently had the absolute pleasure of being invited to be one of the first people to read a brand new book all about reclaiming and embodying your authentic sexual expression. Have you heard a topic more me? So of course, naturally I jumped into the opportunity and completely devoured this book in just one sitting. Today I am so pleased to have the author of ‘Wild Honey’ join me on the show to discuss their brand new book with us. Tamica Wilder who is also known as the Orgasmic Mama is a Melbourne based author, sexologist and multi qualified therapist with a deep passion for teaching mums how to reconnect with their pleasure and sexuality.
Tamica’s work arms women with the tools needed to create lasting and meaning change inside intimate relationships and reminds what is possible inside our full sexual expression. As a mother of two. As a mother of two little critters, she is also also well attuned to the importance of creating sex-positive households and helps parents build the confidence to have ‘those chats’ with their kids and other family members. And now, from words taken directly from the book blurb itself - Wild honey is living life in such a way that it feels impossible to hide. It’s about allowing the full spectrum of your humanness to shine and thrive — riding the waves of uncertainty and being truly awake for it.
Authentic sexual expression has nothing to do with your partners, your gender, genitals or sexual orientation. Our opportunity to create a private pleasure field and dynamic sex life is a fundamental human right.
Welcome to Wild Honey, a journey towards radical self love & acceptance.
Drawing on her work as a somatic sex coach Tamica Wilder takes the reader on a journey from conversations around consent, boundaries to rewriting sexual naratives embodying your core truth. Tamica approaches it all with a no-holds-barred attitude to help break through the barriers of social conditioning.
Wild Honey is full of wisdom, story, poetry, and practical activities to get you out of your head and into your body.
Now, if that doesn’t sound like a book that is so up my alley I don’t know what does. It is so beautiful and I highly recommend checking it out.
In my chat today with Tamica we dive into discussions prompted by her words in Wild Honey and so much more. I hope that you enjoy listening to our discussion as much as I enjoyed having it and of course, check out the show notes for details on how to buy yourself a copy of Wild Honey today, I know you’ll love it. Enjoy!
ELEANOR: Welcome to The Sensuality Academy Podcast Tamica, it is so wonderful to have you here. Thank you for joining us.
TAMICA: Thank you, you’re welcome. Thanks for having me. This is one of my favourite things to do, talk!
ELEANOR: Me too. That is the good thing about having a podcast. We get to talk the whole day about things that I find very fascinating and that is definitely your book. I devoured Wild Honey in one sitting, it was absolutely wonderful and resonated very deeply. Thank you for writing about it. I'm very happy to chat all about it.
TAMICA: You’re so welcome. Thanks for reading it. Glad you liked it because I know some people won’t and that’s the way it is when you put out something creative isn’t it? It’s not for everyone but I said what I said.
ELEANOR: Exactly. Yes, creatively not everyone is going to love what you do but especially when we do things around sexuality and different types of relationships and trauma. It’s definitely going to be something that hits home for a lot of people. I think that it’s incredibly inspiring. I think that if you have a few people here and there who aren’t vibing with it, it’s a sign that you have done something right. It’s fine if people don’t like what you do sometimes. So, tell me first of all what was the inspiration to write this book, where did it come from? Has it been awhile in the making?
TAMICA: I always knew that I was going to write a book if not many books, I didn't know when or how. I thought that it would only be when you reach a certain level in your life when you have a certain amount of privilege of time or money or expertise that I didn't necessarily have. So Catherine from Debut Books wrote me an email and I thought that this lady was asking me to write all my unique thoughts and feelings and values and ideas about things. I agreed to do it as it felt like a great idea. I was very lucky to be asked to have my voice uplifted and in terms of what I was going to write about felt really natural to start from some of my most difficult stories, what I felt difficult to tell throughout my life because I thought this is the stories that I thought needed to now be in print.
ELEANOR: Absolutely. There’s a lot you go into in your book, quite in depth and it's a beautiful way to understand the importance of sexuality and sexual healing and somatic relationship to sexuality as well which I think a lot of us don’t necessarily connect to, it’s the way that we were raised. I wanted to ask about the somatic relationship. For me, in my work in sensuality. I came to this quite organically being of the senses, tuned in to all 5 senses. It is quite a somatic approach and reading your work about the 5 foundational somatic tools it takes sexuality into such a different light than the mainstream.
TAMICA: Another way of explaining that is being with our body and the tools that we can connect with our body is an amazing starting place for people looking to reclaim and heal their sexual selves because it’s really personal, it’s really private and so so specific and unique to us, to you and your body. Very often our sexuality is linked to other people, relationships, the way that we learnt about sex and other. Whereas our somatic understanding and awareness is just about us and you can’t get it wrong it’s just about what your body is feeling, how you’re breathing, how you’re moving, how you’re sounding, how you’re self touching, self engaging and it’s really the main way we can get our sexual energy from others outside and bring it home and ground it and land in our senses. A lot of people dealing with trauma, you’ll find that working with our somatic understanding is powerful way of rewiring, repatterning because the body remembers and the body stores and holds onto all of our stories and so the direct route to the body and to repatterning and rewiring is through somatic understanding.
ELEANOR: I love that you really touch on that in the book, the body does remember and that you mentioned that talk therapy is an important part but the somatic approach is something that really needs to go hand-in-hand when trying to heal from trauma because the body remembers. You talk about those five tools and I’d love to have you elaborate more on using those tools as a way of self healing and the ways that people will be able to use them if they have experienced trauma in the past as well.
TAMICA: I guess it is important to go over that point again, that talk therapy is actually the first step because before we come to the body we need to understand what beliefs and behaviours we are looking to adjust or to transform. So instead of just jumping into somatic work, especially on your own, without a real understanding of what there is to heal and release. Getting clear on what you have inherited and what is there to release is the first step. The five tools that I talk about are: Breath, sound, movement, touch and placement of awareness. A lot of us might have done conscious breathwork before but it’s a bit more simple than that. Breath is about learning to understand ways you can breathe very simply that are super profound for your body and that can calm your nervous system. I don’t think we learn enough about the simple ways of being in our body, actually taking care of our nervous system and breath is an amazing one. So often we breathe high up in our chest, we breathe super quickly, we breathe in ways that keep our body in a sympathetic dominant, which is the nervous system - flight or fight - slowly our breath, conscious breath is a tiny invitation to start taking that awareness up.
Sound is one that is really difficult for many of my clients because people think in order to make sounds that aren’t language you need to be able to sing, to sound really lovely. We put all these rules on ourselves. We actually come into a raw mammal like, non-linear, non-rational version of our sounding and vocalling is super freeing for the body, super connecting so it helps us connect with the vagus nerve, connecting to our cervix and yoni.
ELEANOR: Absolutely, you talk as well about those sounds and voicing yourself, your desires having conversations, I loved that you talked about that extension on the sound element because it is actually about being able to voice what you want, what feels good, what do I need to feel desired and it’s so much more than just some sounds.
TAMICA: Absolutely, being able to say what we mean, mean what we say can have different conversations and free our voice in ways that would otherwise have us disliked or misunderstood or kicked out of the group. That’s an amazing way to reclaim life and I do think that reclaiming sexuality and fully claiming our life is kind of the same thing. We try to live our lives that are compartmentalised in all the aspects of our human nature. I am looking at really putting it all together and being able to run the full spectrum of our human existence. Sometimes that means saying hard things, sometimes aggravating somebody else or fully claiming your truth and being able to stand in the flames that come afterwards.
ELEANOR: Yeah, absolutely, I feel like this book is even an extension of you and speaking your truth and actually making it known.
TAMICA: Totally, it is.
ELEANOR: I have a lot of things to flow on from that but I would love for you to continue on with the somatic tools, the five foundational tools.We have the breath, the sound.
TAMICA: Movement is another, it is one that we pop in a box where we think that movement means dancing or looking in a certain way to move our body that feels really good and nourishing for our system which means letting go of the way we look actually. Coming into reverence for our own bodies and having the awareness that if we have four working limbs and the blood is pumping through you and your heart is beating and you can breathe we are blessed. We sit around and we make ourselves so small in our movements thinking that this is the way that is acceptable and what is not acceptable. What I am asking inside of movement is that we park all that and go with what feels good for my body, what's unique to my body, what’s going to make me feel alive, what cracks me into a full bodied expression of this magnificent vessel? The movement piece is taking it down a notch from that. Put on a piece of music that makes you feel good and move your body in such a way that is not performative, in a way that feels connective, that feels blissful, that is real and true for you. And that movement will unlock and keep unlocking the connection to your body's wisdom and your self-soothing.
ELEANOR: Everything that you said, gave me chills. For me the movement piece is the most wonderful powerful way to connect. As you say as well, getting out of your head and into your body and for me, I teach so much of sensual movement and allowing ourselves to get into that flow and do what feels good and I love that you mentioned that you can put a song on and just move in a way that feels embodied and not performative. This is the cornerstone of my work, embodying that, what is it that your body wants to do, what feels good. You don’t have to worry about what it looks like, what our body can do and what feels good. Following that is just so powerful.
TAMICA:That’s it. It could even be stretching to begin with, it could be moving or stretching in a way that is weird where we might be - ooh, this is an abstract version of a shape that my body wants to make. Allowing that is important.
ELEANOR: That is really powerful. The word that you use there - allowing - actually allowing that, not holding yourself back and thinking, i'm not meant to do this. You talk a lot about this conditioning that we go through and at the start of the book you talk about childlike innocence and sexuality being wrapt up innocence because it is, I don't need to think about these expectations, these judgements, or perceptions that have been placed on me just be curious and allow yourself to move or do anything in the way that feels good purely because it feels good. I noticed even when I was reading the book, I was laying in bed. I just wanted to do a little movement side to side when I was reading the language, it was quite poetic the way that you write. It’s really juicy, so I’m swaying and you have the little voice at the back of my head ‘what are you doing? don’ t be silly, just sit there and read like an adult’. I was like - No! I will not.
TAMICA: No, Good, Yes. Child-like innocence play. Yeah, letting go of whatever is trying to keep us small. I love the idea of breaking the rules and rewriting right and wrong and detangling from habits, there’s no use subscribing to those. Sit and read like an adult, what for? who said? Who is watching that said it’s not ok? It’s not about creating moments in the world where you feel like you are unsafe or you feel a direct threat or you are threatening anybody else. In those moments it’s self talk, are you by yourself? Yeah! Let’s reclaim that, let’s have fun with ourselves.
ELEANOR: Absolutely. I actually taught a class recently and had a student say to me - I always wanted to move like this, even when I’m at home in my bedroom but I get embarrassed even when there is no one around. I understand because we are constantly self censoring. Right?
TAMICA: Totally.
ELEANOR: And that permission piece is what’s missing, we have permission to do what feels good.
TAMICA: If there is a belief there, for that person it is like what belief do you have in that moment about yourself? What are you making more true than how you want to move, how you want to be in this moment? We make these beliefs more true than our desire so we need to contact those beliefs sometimes.
ELEANOR: Yeah. Absolutely, that’s so powerful. I love that and one of the things that you mentioned in your book about these tools and use of the tools you said the most simple practices are often the hardest to carve out time for. They are also often the most powerful.
TAMICA: Yeah. Because we get bored with ourselves.
ELEANOR:Yeah. This one just hit me
TAMICA: We get addicted to the need and the intense. My coach told me that I had to do it like this so I better make sure it’s a two hour practice and I'm lighting candles. The simplicity I think we need to remember is simple and is more important at times more powerful. Simple breathes and simple movements, simple sounds that break the mould. I work a lot with mum’s. If you set a timer for 6 or 7 minutes and put your hand on your belly and breathe you may think that it’s nothing but actually doing that everyday is rewiring.
ELEANOR: Those little practices can be so much more powerful in many ways than those two-hour full on rituals. I think in many ways we can use that as an excuse for not doing it, because we think that it needs to be perfect during the full moon and I have to face east and I have to do all these things. We need to chill out and smell the flowers.
TAMICA: That’s right, simplicity. It’s in there because I need to remember that. TAMICA, be slow, do less, it’s ok. It’s perfectly imperfect.
ELEANOR: I’m the same. I go through ebbs and flows where I need to do more, more, more then I get overwhelmed and I remember simplicity, that’s where it’s at. Then I enjoy the slowness but somehow there’s this internal capitalism creeping in telling us that we need to do more, you have to prove. Then I think I need to do small things, then I burn out. It’s an interesting cycle.
TAMICA: It is. I think our sexuality appreciates us doing the small and the subtle. Again, it’s outside of us, in the media, in pop culture, in our culture, sex is so big and raw and dynamic and provocative and taboo and I think we often we get stuck in the ideal of what looks sexy. How can I buy another vibrator, how can I get bigger with my sex and more expressed. The subtlety is where it’s at when reclaiming our sexuality, gently.
ELEANOR: Absolutely. It’s a similar thing where I often talk about, the more that you can be sensual in everyday life, the better your sex is going to be because you are going to be tuned in and turned on. It’s like you have turned everything into technicolour. You notice those subtle things more.
TAMICA: Totally. It sounds like you use the word sensuality like I use the word eroticism. Talking about everyday eroticism, the erotic potential in ever single moment can be so much fun and really brings us into presence in every moment.
ELEANOR: Amazing. Can you talk a little more about your definition of eroticism and how you can make every day things more erotic? And what does that look like?
TAMICA: It’s almost like someone who is not used using the word eroticism or someone who doesn’t have an understanding of erotic being specificaly about sex or sexuality or if you think erotic you think genitals. It’s less about that and more about allowing you to be in wonder about everything, allowing yourself to use your imagination, allowing you to come into enough presence in everything around you where you are engaging your senses and it’s permission to allow your erotic lens forward in the medoicre and the mundane. I am sitting here at my desk and it’s pretty dusty and messy and there are cords and stuff but I can engage with everything on this desk erotically and it might mean me closing my eyes and rubbing my hands along one of these cords and feeling the temperature and coming into some breath. It’s allowing play to guide us. This is how I see eroticism. From that place, we can move it more into a sexually focussed eroticism which can then inform the way we show up in our relationship and for ourselves sexually. A lot of people I work with want to know how to love sex more so they can connect in their partnership more authentically so it starts with re-understanding your relationship with erotic in everyday life.
ELEANOR: Beautiful. I love that & I feel that there are a lot of people listening now who will be really rethinking their desk and anything around them.I can actually tune in a little bit more. Another part of your book that really stuck with me was your description - your yes is not a yes if you cannot safely say no. This element of consent and talking about what is an embodied yes and what is an embodied no and what that looks like and how to determine between the two. It was really a fascinating way of seeing the consent conversation, I know that this is a big conversation at the moment and especially reprogrammed this language - no is no but also there is a lot more to it. I would love you to talk about an embodied yes, how do we find that?
TAMICA: Very often when we talk about consent we are using language, we are using yes and no and have a cognitive understanding of what these words mean. It is easy for us to get caught up in understanding consent with our minds when actually teaching people to access their embodied yes and embodied no means teaching people how to access their somatic understanding. Somatic self understanding, access and feel the truth in your body. That is the difference between a yes that comes from the mind and a yes that comes from the body. Incongruence occurs when someone asks to give you a kiss on the cheek and you reply - yeah, sure, I can’t see why not, you seem like a safe and lovely person. My mind says yes because of course why not, that makes total sense. So you say yeah but somewhere inside of your body there is a little twisting in your gut or a tiny bit of evidence for your no. Why does the mind say yes but my body says no? That’s incongruence. In that moment, because of that person in front of you, the way that you have interacted with them before your mind says yes because it can’t find any logical evidence to say no but the whole while your body is saying no. The thing we need to learn is to accept sensation more and to stop and wait and check in with your body - close your eyes and take a breath, and that little tiny twist in the gut or lump in your throat is actually saying - oh no, not today. The yes is actually a no but you didn’t know how to listen to it. I think this happens because of the way that we learn to please people. Vocal language is given the most weight in how we communicate when actually we need to put far more weight in our somatic understanding. Teach young people how to assess how their body feels, not what their mind says.
ELEANOR: Absolutely.
TAMICA: Does that make sense?
ELEANOR: Yeah. It makes total sense. I think that everybody who is listening is really resonating with that as well because I’m sure we have all had experiences where we have said yes or we haven’t said no and it has been a no, truly it has been a no but we haven’t voiced it in some way or another.
TAMICA: Another thing that happens is that it starts off as a yes and then 7-second laters it becomes a no and then we don’t know how to find our voice to correct and to change because we have been taught that changing our mind or being high maintenance or saying one thing and actually changing our mind, flipping, all these judgements on who you are and what that makes you if you change your mind. There is active work that needs to be done to squash all that too.
ELEANOR: Definitely. I think there’s this hyper-focus on logic and rationalism because we live in this quite energetically masculine patriarchy society that puts so much value on being rational and being logical and using your mind and not listening to your body and we are so disconnected from that body. These somatic tools will allow us to tune in and determine what is your yes, what does that feel like and then using your voice to voice it.
TAMICA: That’s it. Absolutely and taking space when we need to. There’s no rush. I think that some people believe that they need to quickly come up with an answer. It takes time and we have to take some extra breaths and slow everything down to get the full embodied response.
ELEANOR: I never thought about it like that. That consent takes time, that’s such a beautiful way of looking at it. I know that a lot of people listening will feel the same way but alot potentially wonder - how do I take my time, when the person that I am with is not willing to wait, not connected to that spaciousness that is needed.
TAMICA: If you are with someone who is unwilling to get enthusiastic, embodied, authentic consent then are you actually with the right person? Are they someone who deserves access to your body, your energy, your time, your frequency, your eroticism, your genitals? Probably not. This all comes back to self-worth. All comes back to - I deserve full and enthusiastic, joyful, pleasure field, pleasure centred consensual, sexual interactions. If you are working with a belief that says otherwise, that's when you start. Take your time. Add the belief that you are worth all this time and my sexual interactions are really profound and meaningful and worth this time having a conversation before you are involved with someone where there is touch. Talk about consent, time, all those things that make me feel safe and feel hell yes, let’s do this interaction.
ELEANOR: Definitely. I think this is really a total reframe to that we have been brought up and how to many people particularly those who identify as women I think sexuality and relationships for those who may not be fully embodied, a lot of people have not done this work, a lot of people are very new to this work, a lot of us haven’t even heard of this work. It’s understandable that a lot of us are feeling disconnected but the conversation that we are having is that people are listening right now is a step on the journey towards really reclaiming your sensuality, sexuality or eroticism and your boundaries as well.
TAMICA: Yes and boundaries is another conversation because boundaries and consent are lumped in together because they are foundational pieces that we need but I think that. In Wild Honey I talk about the difference between both - having a boundary for things that you will and won’t accept, having a boundary even inside of yourself, a real and amazing ways that will help with healing and levelling up your self sexual relationship.
ELEANOR: Definitely. Boundaries and consent, I feel that there are things that have really been huge topics of conversation in the media lately with lots of different things going on which will we won’t dive into fully but it is something that a lot of people don’t have much awareness on, don’t have much understanding of our own how to assert them and that comes down to a huge factor is a lack of sexual education. I know you say in Wild Honey that you often talk about your work as sex education for Adults, it is filling in the gaps that we missed when we were growing up. I would love you to talk more about what you feel will be helpful for kids being raised these days to actually know about their sexuality?
TAMICA: Firstly, it starts with understanding your body and the sensations of your body and allowing our young people to remain embodied. Instead of sitting everyone down in a classroom and stop wriggling, and stop talking like that and stop squealing, we need to keep everything a little free inside their body so they feel what it means in their body because that is the first step in sex education - what do you feel like in your body, not what are you deciding to explore based on your mind but what you are deciding to explore based on your body. Secondly, adding pleasuring into sex education. A lot of people are going into experimental and curious stages as they go into their young adolescence and they are deciding what feels good and not understanding pleasure. If we put pleasure as part of sex ed then thats where it starts instead of with someone or with a group of people that don’t necessarily have your best interests to heart. We need to educate about pleasure. Sex is not just for procreation any more. Everybody knows that.
ELEANOR: Yeah, we all know that although a lot of people deny it. Sex feels good, and we have a lot of capacity for pleasure and I fully agree that pleasure as part of our syllabus is hugely, wildly important. Bloody hell it’s taboo. Nobody wants to admit that they masturbate and it’s fine and you're not going to go blind.
TAMICA: I know, religion has a lot to answer for and different patriarchal structures and even political structures. It’s a whole new podcast talking historically about marriage and all that kind of thing. I think in order for people to start understanding that pleasure needs to be included, they need to understand their own shame and their conditioning around what has made sex so wrong, bad or dirty or misunderstood inside our culture. I guess that is why we exist, why our work is important because we need to continue to have brave and bold conversations and say - that is expired, enough of this. We need to help future generations.
ELEANOR: Absolutely. Something that you brought up in Wild Honey is you recorded your own experience with sexual trauma and abuse and you recalled to access your no, which we spoke about your embodied no vs your embodied yes. You also what I found quite interesting was that you would have preferred restorative justice for you abuser an opportunity to sit down and have a conversation and get an apology as opposed to the systems that are in place and you wondered what lack of sex education they may have received to enact such abuse on others which I found to be such a fascinating thing because that is the whole point isn’t it? That we might not have received great sex education, pleasure education and there is a lot of shame and trauma around it.
TAMICA: Absolutely. It’s probably even beyond sex education for that person. Who wasn’t looking after that young man, our culture. Who wasn’t looking after his parents or whoever his system or structure led him to believe he got his power and that is how he got love and affirmation. It’s not just about missing sex education for him and for any young person that decides that this is the way they want to go about living their life. It’s like they were born in our culture. We have a responsibility to take care of them and make adjustments so there are safe places for people to go, about their sexuality, about their urges, about their self esteem, about their shame, about their own trauma. Yes, it was difficult with all the values I have around restorative justice and how putting perpetrators in jail, it’s like this band aid, it’s a terrifying bandaid that perpetuates the cycle of shame and violence against another family we need to go 10 steps backwards, when our young boys, how young anyone is, 8, 9, 10 years old is when we really need to be taking care of people because when we don’t they slip through the cracks then these people grow up to have a misunderstanding of their power in the world and those things happen and they go to jail.
I knew that I couldn’t be fully responsible for whatever outcome happens when I went to the police station and told my story because it was time for me to hand it back and if I have had held on to it because I would have preferred a restorative justice or didn’t want to be in a cycle of violence then that wasn’t going to be ok for my system and journey of reclamation so that’s how it had to happen. I don’t believe in it. I knew when I made the first phone call, I don’t know if this is in Wild honey, I said what happens if I come in and I tell this story. Can I say what happens next in terms of the legal system. They said no. What happens next is they take a statement and based whatever you say they go and arrest this person and off we go into the system.
ELEANOR: It was such a profound thing to read that reframe of what that looks like and the words you used handing this story back because it doesn’t have to stay with you, doesn’t have to be a huge part of you anymore. I loved that part, that imagery, that poeticism - I'm handing this back now.
TAMICA: Totally, because a part of me holding on to it would be me protecting the perpetrator because I don't believe I want him in jail, to be punished in that way. I was like, cool, I can spend my life in this protection mode which is actually part of what led me to be unable to access, to interact with him the way I did at 12/13 years old. Mind you, I was a child at that point so I wouldn’t expect we have those tools because of education etc. I knew I couldn’t keep protecting.
ELEANOR: Another part of Wild Honey that I really loved were those moments where you almost paused to describe how you were feeling somatically, in your body as you were typing. I noticed for myself it almost encouraged me to stop and consider how I was feeling in my body while reading that. I feel like that was quite intentional.
TAMICA: Yes, as I was writing I was obviously quite aware of my own bodies feelings the whole time. Sometimes it would be really uncomfortable, sometimes it would be really intense and important and deep and meaningful and my heart was racing and I realised it was very important to have all of this if I am encouraging people to be embodied and be somatically aware then having an insight of what somatic life sounds like because I often ask people what it feels like - scared or frustrated - I would ask, but what does that feel like? Somatic language is far less practiced. I feel upset - what is that sensation of upset? Hot, lump in my throat. Better. So, I wanted to give an example of somatic language in the book.
ELEANOR: Yeah, it was really powerful. I noticed it so deeply. I was like oh yeah how am i sitting, how am I breathing and they way that you used it, you were describing how your body was feeling during a somatic experience as you were writing and it gave me an extra insight and added layer of what this recollection is bringing up. It made me understand it better than what I did before that.
TAMICA: Yeah, beautiful I'm glad that worked for you in that way and also to be honest it wasn’t necessarily the content before or after that little snippet. Sometimes the kids could be climbing on me or someone has just spilled milk on my keyboard. It’s literally a snapshot of whatever is occurring.
ELEANOR: I think it was a beautiful way to give a little insight as to what somatic language looks like because like what you said, a lot of people are not familiar with talking about feelings and their actual feelings. We think about feelings as motions and not often as the actual, physical - i feel this in my body - a really powerful way of looking at that and tuning in so much more. I felt the book was a somatic experience as opposed to just a logical, I’m reading some words on a page.
TAMICA: beautiful, great. I'm very glad.
ELEANOR: On that note, I would like to say thank you so much to Tamica for writing this book, to coming and chatting with us today and for anybody who is listening and would like to learn more about you and where they can find you on social media. Can you please share?
TAMICA: Thank you Eleanor, absolutely. Come over to @Orgasmicmama on instagram or https://orgasmicmama.com . I’m opening a 12 day container for mum’s who will like to reacquaint themselves with their sex and their pleasure. It’s a big online course with live events, that’s on my website. Or you can find me on facebook Tamica Wilder. Usually if you search for the Orgasmic Mama, I’m going to come up.
ELEANOR: Amazing.
TAMICA: I would love you to buy the book obviously. I think Eleanor, you will link it and we will spread it all over Instagram.
ELEANOR: Definitely.
TAMICA: One for you and one for a friend who you think is in need of a shake up.
ELEANOR: Such a great idea. What a beautiful gift. I will absolutely link all the things in the show notes for you, the link to buy the book and thank you so very much for coming and joining us.
TAMICA: Thank you Eleanor, I loved it, a really good chat. Thanks so much.
