For a long time, I believed there was something wrong with me.
I had access to pleasure. I could experience clitoral pleasure and orgasm. My body knew how to respond in that way.
And yet, internally, something felt distant. Quiet. Sometimes numb.
There had been internal pleasure in my life. Moments, sensations, glimpses. But over time it became harder and harder to access.
Looking back now, I can see why.
When I moved away from my own rhythm
I remember being with a partner and wanting to move very slowly. My body wanted gentleness, presence, time. But that pace did not work for him. He would lose his erection, and so, without really noticing it at first, I began to adjust myself.
I moved faster than my body wanted.
I stayed connected to him, but disconnected from myself.
And slowly, over time, my body responded in the only way she knew how.
She went numb.
Not because she was broken.
But because she learned to prioritise someone else’s experience over her own rhythm.
This kind of self adjustment is so common, especially for women. We often do not even realise we are doing it. It can feel like care, like love, like staying connected. And yet, over time, it can quietly take us away from ourselves.
The quiet belief that something is wrong
As internal sensation became harder to access, shame crept in.
For years, I searched quietly for answers. This was before the internet made information easily available. Later, when it did, I searched again. I wanted to understand my body. I wanted to know why this place inside me felt so unreachable.
What I found often led to comparison.
Some women can experience pleasure this way.
Some women another way.
Some women not at all.
Instead of relief, I felt pressure.
I began to believe I should be able to access all of it, and that if I could not, something must be wrong with me.
At one point, a Tantra teacher even told me that something was wrong with me. That it was trauma.
And while trauma was part of the picture, it was not what he named.
Consent with my body
What I later came to understand was this.
The deepest wound was not what had happened to my body.
It was how little consent had been present in my relationship with my body.
So many of us have learned to override ourselves.
We insert tampons without feeling.
We lie back during medical procedures and disconnect.
We allow penetration, with ourselves or with partners, without checking whether our body is actually a yes.
Not because we are broken.
But because no one taught us how to listen.
And neither were our mothers.
Nor our grandmothers.
There is so much held in the pelvis. Personal memory. Relational memory. Ancestral memory. Endurance. Silence. Survival.
So when a woman experiences numbness or pain internally, it is not a failure of the body.
It is the intelligence of her.
A different question changes everything
Everything began to change for me when I stopped trying to achieve an experience and instead began to build a relationship.
I stopped asking, “What’s wrong with me?”
And started asking, “What do you need from me to feel safe?”
That shift changed everything.
Internal pleasure is not something that opens through pressure or technique.
It opens through trust.
Often, the journey does not begin with pleasure at all, but with sensation. Numbness, tenderness, emotion, resistance, grief.
All of that belongs.
Letting pleasure support, not override
One of the gentlest doorways for me was to allow the pleasure that was already accessible to be present. Not to force anything internally, but to let my nervous system feel resourced and safe.
Slowly.
Patiently.
On my body’s timeline.
This was not about pushing for more, but about allowing what was already there to support what wanted to emerge.
Kate and I did not create our wands because we had mastered this journey.
We created them because we were in it.
Out of curiosity.
Out of humility.
Out of learning to listen rather than override.
You are not broken
This work is not about having a certain kind of orgasm.
It is about reclaiming relationship with a part of the body that has been rushed, misunderstood, or ignored, and allowing her to reawaken in her own way, when she feels safe enough to do so.
And if you recognise yourself anywhere in this, please hear this clearly.
You are not broken.
You are not failing.
Your body has been protecting you.
