crown of violets

One night, I sat alone in my apartment with a heavy heart, surrounded by piles of books about courtesans, priestesses, and goddesses. For months the universe had been sending me messages about the need to explore the mystery and magic found in the realms of beauty and pleasure. I was being drawn again and again back to images and attributes of the goddess Aphrodite, seeing her symbols everywhere, drawing the Empress card repeatedly from my tarot decks. I knew the path I was being pointed towards was both a spiritual and physical journey, and while I wasn’t ready to work as a prostitute, I knew it was something I wanted to do and that it would mean more to me than simply being paid for sex. I needed to learn about the sacredness in beauty and pleasure.

I felt frustrated and confused. I was being called to serve but what did I have to offer? The aspects of life ruled by Venus (beauty, happiness, pleasure, success, luxury, delight) were my weaknesses, not my strengths… I didn’t feel beautiful, or happy, or charming. I was intellectual, good with stories and symbols. The physical world was tough for me. I struggled with feeling closed off and disassociated from my life and I had a hard time giving or receiving love. Yet, I felt desire to be all those things Aphrodite and Venus represented. I felt hungry for it – to feel loved, to feel beautiful, to be sensual and experience life as pleasure, instead of pain.

Tearfully, I gave up trying to find the answer in my texts and finally started talking out-loud to the goddess of love and beauty. I lit a small stick of incense that smelled like roses and closed my eyes.

“I don’t know what I have to offer or how I can serve you, but show me, ask of me and I’ll try my best.”

It wasn’t the most eloquent prayer I’d ever spoken to the divine, but it was a genuine offering of my heart. I dedicated myself to her service.

I’ve changed a lot since that night. My world now revolves around that decision to serve love and beauty, to cultivate and spread it. I kept my promise by trying to find out what the real the meaning of beauty was. I learned that beauty was the quality of something that gave pleasure, which has helped me release limiting beliefs about what is beautiful. I cultivate a sensual environment for myself through colour, texture, and music. I garden and work with plants. I dance every day and hula hoop as ways to enjoy my body and play. I’ve worked hard to heal my relationship with food, by cooking for myself and my roommates, trying different diets and being involved in community groups like The Good Food Club. I express the love I feel for those around me and let myself feel loved in return. I try to make decisions from a place of love instead of fear. When it crosses my mind, I take a moments during my day to simply experience a sense of gratitude.

That promise I made opened my heart and mind to transforming my life into one full of love, pleasure, and beauty. It helped me shift my focus and energy from my perceived lack and build new strengths. All it took was desire and effort.

Warrior Princess; Originally uploaded by carpe_diem_terry

The first full moon of the new year is tonight and after attending a community kitchen at The Good Food Club, I’m planning to continue the weekend’s festivities and celebrate and cement what I want to cultivate for the coming year.

Going back to work escorting doesn’t feel right. I don’t agree with the laws, but am bound by them and don’t want to put my roommates, my clients, or myself through more drama like this summer. Early last month, three sex workers launched a constitutional challenge against Canada’s prostitution laws, which endanger workers by denying them the right to work legally indoors or even hire security. While it could be quite a while before a resolution is reached, I’m hopeful and grateful that I live in a country that such a thing is possible. I don’t want to give up my profession completely. I’ve found a lot of growth in this path and it speaks to me spiritually. I want to continue to challenge myself and learn more about my sexuality and explore the sacredness, healing, and beauty in experiencing pleasure. I can continue to do that, just not as a working professional. I’ve decided to continue the course of study I charted out for myself when I first wanted to be a companion. In this way, I’ll still be honouring my path and putting my energy towards the pursuit of growth, instead of trying to continue working “underground” or with a fake name.

This opens up the area of career in my life. I love working with food security and feel passionate about the cause, which had me wondering if community development is where I should be. But after sitting with that thought for some time, thinking about how most jobs in the area are structured and investigating my school options, I didn’t feel excited about the idea of making a career out of community work. I want to continue to volunteer my time and resources, but choosing it as a primary outlet/source of income doesn’t suit. My heart still desires a path influenced by Venus.

One of my joys of the summer and autumn was the opportunity to attend festivals and shows around my city. I took in plays and a few burlesque shows, attended a lot more parties, planned my own events and performed a drag-to-femme striptease at a housing co-op fundraiser. I’ve been noticing a growing interest in entertainment and special events, as well as costuming and performance art. It seems like a natural off-shoot of my other interests (design, writing, marketing, the arts, etc) and my desire to learn more about entertaining and other social skills as part of my companion studies. I’m not sure how this will manifest in the coming months, but it sparks my interest and creativity and feels… congruent.

Princess Lotus by ~marumiyan on deviantART

I recognize Halloween/Samhain/All Hallow’s Eve as the end of one year and the beginning of a new one and a time to reflect.

Last year saw many changes for me as I sought to align who I was with who I wanted to be. A few months in, I set some goals to help me develop my courage and take more chances. I ended up working as an indoor sex worker, fulfilling a desire I’d been too scared to realize for over a year. I also ended up getting arrested, having to tell my parents about my chosen profession, and learn to navigate through a sea of assumptions, accusations, and stereotypes about the work. I’d been very lucky that my focus on honesty and courage had pushed me to be open about my work to most people I knew.

It’s been four months since the arrest, which literally turned my life upside down. I haven’t taken any clients since, surviving on temporary work in different places while I tried to sort out what I was going to do. I didn’t want to stop; I enjoyed the freedom to work only a few hours a week and having work that I enjoyed and challenged me, but it was obvious I couldn’t continue the way I had been. I’d also been experimenting with a raw and organic food diet for about six weeks before the arrest and unfortunately couldn’t continue without the income from my work.

I crashed, feeling depressed and stuck. I spent about almost two months trying to get myself back together. I felt angry and frustrated, unable to work the job I wanted nor really talk about what had happened for fear of retaliation from the police or attorneys handling the case. Near the end of August, I was blessed to be given the chance to go away for a few days to the mountains to re-center and get a break. During the trip, I had my nose buried in a fantastic book by Starhawk called “The Fifth Sacred Thing”. Feeling very inspired by the co-operative community and soulful living of the characters and Starhawk’s vision on how we can create a society that supports life and beauty, I threw myself back into the volunteering I’d done the year before with food security and community development.

I also felt inspired to become more involved in activism, joining Radical Cheerleaders and helping organize events and rallies on feminist issues. I’ve spent my time going to food security and community development events and networking with different people who have an interest or role in shaping the world into a place that is more fair and nurturing for all.

In my personal life, I’ve been learning what it means to create a nurturing home for myself with a chosen family, as we welcomed another roommate and two more furbabies bringing the total in our house to four humans and three felines. I’ve been trying to keep myself grounded by dancing daily and working through the angry and fearful emotions the events of the summer brought up.

This year brought a lot of new sexual and romantic experience for me, through work, crushes, and short-lived romances, leading me to ask lots of questions about my sexual identity, my female identity, and what inspires desire in me. I also felt the need to re-devoted myself to an earth-based spiritual path, something I haven’t done since I was a teenager. I’ve been working with the archetype of Venus as expressed through Aphrodite for the last couple of years and my focus this autumn shifted to include Ishtar, another divine aspect of Venus, as I felt the desire to learn to access the warrior in me and use that strength.

This autumn marks the end of an important cycle for me. It’s been seven years since my most influential spiritual awakening. I’m grateful for the experiences I’ve had and support I’ve received. The wheel is turning and it’s time to turn my thoughts towards a new year and new beginning.

On September 1st, 2009 I was invited by Shelagh to the University of Winnipeg radio station to do an interview, about my experience being arrested earlier this year. The interview was shared on September 9th, 2009 on Black Mask, an anarchist radio show on CKUW. I’ve uploaded the show here to share. My interview with Shelagh starts about twenty minutes into the program.

Click here to listen!

I hope you enjoy it!

Love And Other Delusions by Tamara Lynn Robert

A little over week ago, I went to a great show at Ragpickers. It was called Love and Other Delusions, put on by a friend of a friend, for a new initiative in Winnipeg to support the health and safety of sex workers. It was fabulous. Poetry, burlesque, humour, adorable outfits, great prizes, charming audience.

It’s a blessing to be in a room full of friends and their friends, watching an amazing show that is fundraising for a cause that is deeply important to me. I felt love fluttering in my chest, like a little white moth preparing to land. I imagined it filling my cupped hands and flying free in a flurry of dusty white wings. Every part of me hummed with an energy that grew with every smiling face, every hug, every kind word from each person that was a reminder of the beauty in my world.

I swear, I feel more thankful every day.

A few months ago, my world came crashing down, when four sex workers, including myself, and two allies were arrested in a raid by the Winnipeg Police and charged. One woman’s two children were taken. It was my first experience with the police and a pretty intense lesson about how some people feel about my work. It was so strange to be in that room with people who were so convinced that they were protecting me from myself, unable to engage or speak to them as peer human beings. I felt at such a loss. My life was changed. I couldn’t work, couldn’t even begin to know how to respond.

But as the weeks went by and I felt my energy and life force drain away, I was lifted up by the love that was given so freely by the people I share my life with. When I had to tell my parents, I was comforted by family. When I didn’t know where my path lay anymore, I was inspired by the people around me and their response to what was happening: the strength of it, the passion behind their convictions, the love they poured into me. I was reminded again and again that we were all working towards the same dream – bringing more love, courage, empathy, and light into the world.

It was summed up that night in a pub, with some new friends, glasses raised in a toast -

“This is a perfect, blessed moment.”

We are exactly where we are meant to be. This is the world we made.

The last few weeks, I’ve been experiencing many barriers to creating the type of work situation that I want.

The first barrier is the idea of long-term companionship is a hard sell in Winnipeg. I’ve been told time and time again that what I want to do won’t work here and so far, it’s been pretty accurate. For those that were interested, a combination of price and my condition about their partners were often deal breakers. I decided that I needed to take a step back and re-evaluate how I was going to do things if I wanted to work in this environment.

Setting the bar so high has been almost as immobilizing as fear was. What I want is possible, but I needed to adjust the challenge to something more achievable so that I could continue to move forward and build my strength.

Another large barrier I felt was my lack of experience in the industry. There are a lot of skills that I needed and a combination of learning how to screen, set price, market research, advertising and all the other little things that goes into this work in and out of the bedroom was starting to get a little overwhelming. I’d sailed in on a glorious feeling of strength and optimism, pushing hard against the walls that the way I’d lived my life up until now had built and the universe pushed back just as hard.

And I was restless. I wanted to work and I found that there was a strong drive in me to explore sexuality and the reasons why someone sees a companion or a sex worker. A recent conversation on the Qadishtu mailing list posed some very interesting questions about the role of the seeker and facilitator in their spiritual-based work and someone said that the reason visitors see them is for one of three reasons: celebration, exploration, and healing. Those words stuck with me while I questioned what my next move would be.

A week or two ago Alexa put forward an idea for a Code of Ethics for sex workers. I was fascinated and inspired by this as well. Through the preliminary discussions, I met a woman named Sydnee, who also happened to be from Winnipeg. As there was only a handful of us, it seemed pretty coincidental that there were two of us from Winnipeg there! Of course, I don’t really believe in coincidences. She mentioned that she ran a review board and I visited and signed up. Sydnee and I got into a discussion through her board about the fact that I was new to the industry and she asked if I’d like to join her worker’s co-op. I was fascinated and we set up a time to talk about it. I arrived that day for one and didn’t leave until well into the evening, having quite a wonderful time getting to know Sydnee. I knew well before I left that I wanted to work with her, but she encouraged me to take time to think about it.

There were lots of things I had to consider while working with Winnipeg’s Finest. First of all, it would be straight-up escorting and not the long-term situations I’d been courting so far. I had been thinking of a way to get more experience and it seemed natural to get it from working. Sydnee’s role in the co-op included handling advertising, screening, and marketing – all things I was being overwhelmed by and could learn at a slower pace through working with her, while working in a safe environment. She also has lots of experience in many services that I wanted to learn and felt I could learn from her.

The biggest con for me would be the fact that I would, without a doubt, be getting clients who were married or involved with monogamous partners. I turned this one over in my head for a while. I hadn’t thought this would be such a strange condition, but I was learning that it was a big one. In my gut, I knew I wanted to work with Sydnee and I knew I couldn’t make that condition while working with her.

I took the night to think about it. I felt strangely guilt-free about the idea and wondered if that made me a hypocrite. I had just recently spent a lot of time defending my position on not seeing married clients both online and off, based on this post and a few days later, I seemed ready to change that position.

I was experiencing the reality of the industry as it is versus what I would like to see and experience. The two visions were very different and as much as I believed in what I wanted to do, as an active co-creator of my life I had very small muscles that were being pushed very hard.

In the end, I decided that what I needed most right now was to work and build my strength to create the situation I wanted. I’ve always been a perfectionist and have often used the pattern of not acting until everything was perfect as a way of putting off action. I didn’t want that. I wanted to enjoy the experience of learning, to move forward, and achieve my goals. And here I had a safe environment to work in, with an experienced groups of providers who also shared many of my ideas about the industry.

I told Sydnee I would be happy to work with her and made a promise to myself that I would continue to challenge myself and respect the level that I was at, while aspiring for my highest ideal.

Tomorrow is my first day.