I didn’t grow up wanting to be a Relationship & Sexual Wellness Coach.
I actually wanted to be Pat Benatar! Unfortunately, after I hit people with my best shot, be it my voice or violin strings it was clear being a musician was not my calling.
Instead I set up my teacher desk, supplies and classroom in the basement. I wrote my lessons on the concrete walls with chalk and taught to empty chairs. Lines of the alphabet in print and cursive, an A + B = C or whatever math I knew in 4th grade. (Starting what I had no idea would be a Hard School of Love Knocks.)
What I never could have imagined is that 40 years later I would be teaching how to be your best self, have healthy happy relationships and live your best life!
…You have made such a difference for us! We can't wait until our next session to see who we've become! Love you!
…I acknowledge you for causing us to take on this work and create an amazing, extraordinary and beautiful relationship together!
… we’ve gotten more out of our first session than we did in a year of couples therapy…
…we would have paid four times what we did had we known we could feel like this and save our relationship!
At the time, none of that was a reality in my world. I was 13 and hated myself and my life.
I also wasn’t around what I consider healthy relationships. I was the product of a divorced, dysfunctional middle class family, Happy Days on the outside and Archie Bunker on the inside. Born from from teenage parents, products of their own dysfunctional Mad Men families, and in an era of That Girl! As well as Laverne of Laverne & Shirley and “…bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan… “ narratives.
The iconic Lucille Ball, in I Love Lucy forever trying to step outside the shadow of her husband. Or Edith, scurrying her mousey “I’m not worthy enough” hunchback to Archie who always screamed for her to serve him. Not unlike my own family where women cooked, cleaned and waited on the Fred Flintstone men who watched TV or napped. I heard “…get your fat ass in the kitchen and get me some pie…” long before South Park writers were born. Despite all this, expectations were clear.
Get married, have babies and serve men in exchange for being protected and provided for. A + B = C.
Yet, on the other side of the hand was Marlo Thomas conquering New York City as a career girl on her own! She didn’t need anyone. Neither did Laverne who went out on a limb being more of a “hussy” and “sexually free” than nice proper girl Shirley. Or Samantha of Bewitched who worked around her husband, twitching her magic and solving things without him all while letting him remain the “King” of his castle. Even better was Daphne, of Scooby Do who just used her own smarts. And I can’t leave out Ginger of Gilligan’s Island who even in a shipwrecked life managed to wear sequins and work her sexy.
Now expectations weren’t so clear. Do we wait for prince charming to rescue us off the island? Or do we just let him think he is rescuing us and play the part while we do the work? Or, do we not need him at all to conquer our inner and outer feminine landscape? Our parents weren’t living it, schools weren’t teaching it and yet TV and marketing promoted it. The ultimate Generation X mind fuck.
I lived a version of each of these female archetypes in my personal school of knocks for the last four decades. This included a 9 month marriage and divorce to an alcoholic at 23. Many toxic, addictive and unavailable boyfriends; random sex partners, one night stands, friends with benefits, or being single while married friends had babies. This wasn’t without stints of celibacy, two as a matter of fact… four years each. Yep, you read that right… 4 + 4 = 8. Eight years of celibacy and a personal gold medal to prove it. Despite that, I’ve still fallen in love and had more sex than 99.9% of all the women I know it just wasn’t with the same man. Something I finally embraced in my 50’s as an amazing gift. I just go to my friends kids events, showers, weddings, and reunions because while I’m a good dog mom… I just can’t put a birthday hat on my poodles and send invites for a jump house.
And pre internet, I fell in love with a writer after a year of hand written letters. When I met him at the train station I was shocked! Prince Charming showed up in a black Cloke and Dagger rain coat not a white horse. I was further crushed when he passed up dinner overlooking the river for a dark coffee shop and getting stoned. My dream was dying before it ever started. In the early years of the AIDS crisis I at least knew to ask if he’d had sex with men. What I didn’t think to ask is how he dressed or if he did drugs, mostly because I apparently had another 20 years of addictive partner lessons to learn. When we arrived at the bed and breakfast (because AirBnB wasn’t even an idea yet) sleeping in the same bed was unavoidable. Out of nowhere a beautiful cross fell off the wall and landed right on top of my foot with a painful stab. I took it as a sign of what sharing that bed with him would look like. The fantasy weekend that started as finding my happily ever after ended up with me shopping the Sunday Farmer’s Market alone.
He was just one of the many heartbreaks from around the world. I left pieces of my heart and soul in Italy, Venezuela, Florida, Suriname, Las Vegas, Texas, Los Angeles, New Mexico, and the Caribbean to name a few. Italy could be a best selling book and movie in its own right. Those years of tears weren’t without a few good men. The innocent science TA who had no idea what an emotional train wreck I really was. The college football player who stole my heart for years. The weight lifting, X-Boxer who was not a safe and secure relationship, but full of laughs, love, and even more failed communication and therapy. He taught me it takes a lot more than love. They ALL taught me something as do the two men in my life right now. Yep, 1 + 1 = 2.
… now I can ask for what I need inside and outside the bedroom!
… I’ve never felt this close or loved by my partner.
… what we are doing in relationship isn’t conventional, but it works and we are happy.
… I’m having the best sex of my life in my 50’s!
…we finally know how to communicate… I’ve never felt more authentic, vulnerable and connected to my partner!
… we did it! We had sheet clenching sex!
How I got to the other side of the couch was more the Universes doing than mine. “Coach us, please…”. But I’m not a relationship coach… but we NEED you. You UNDERSTAND. It probably helped that in that third decade I studied and researched a lot of male psychology and sexuality for my doctorate. Which is where my interest in sex questions and healing took shape and eventually molded itself into my future career. My soul purpose started calling me and I just listened.
Make no mistake, my sexual wellness journey is rooted in my own experiences of childhood sexual abuse, violations and the teenage rape that stole my virginity. Being a 35 year old academic instructor and sexuality researcher was the safe, smart way to navigate traumas I didn’t iron out in therapy in my 20’s. I used to think there was an end to this journey, but at 53 I’m a firm believer it’s a lifetime of growth and healing. When it comes to self, we never really arrive.
I’ve been working out all the BS trauma, ego, wounding, stories, patterns, habits, beliefs… you name it, every single damn day for the last 18 years. I haven’t stopped and I haven’t looked back. The more I healed and empowered myself the more I was able to help empower others to heal. I had to do the work first.
With a lot of good people and self development along the way, I did just that. I spent years working full time and nights in self development courses, programs, workshops. I’ve tried speaking in tongues, living Christianity, studying ACIM, or attending Science of Mind. The new thought church based on science, religion and philosophy, at least until I found Buddhism which is my go to philosophy. I’ve been to many psychics, tried hypnotherapy, acupuncture, supplements, witchcraft, spells, affirmations, tarot card readings, astrology, EMDR, therapy, EFT, biofeedback, meditation, writing, breath work, pilates, or Yoga Nidra. I even did Yoga Teacher training.
I worked on Native American reservations for years, attended ceremonies, feasts, traveled back roads on spiritual land. I slept in the back of my pathfinder alone, in the enchanted red mountain forests of New Mexico collecting sage, or doing womb healing ceremonies. I’ve been a part of sexual healing circles, done energetic pelvic therapy, fascia work, and attended Sexual Consciousness workshops in Sedona. I’ve scouted out medicine men, healers, massage therapists, Reiki Masters or Rolfing to heal. I collected old books, tarot decks and crystals when woo-woo stores like these didn’t exist and Amazon was just a forest.
I’ve done sound/ gong healing, arial meditation, tobacco or Jape ceremonies, light code healing, or talked to mediums who channeled dead family members. I’ve done Quodoshka classes where I got my medicine name Jaguar Fire, Puja’s, Orgasmic Meditation, given a TEDx talk on orgasms and happiness, tried CBD, THC and Ayayuasca in the endless journey to heal and be the REAL ME.
I’ve eaten a lot of potato chips, brownies and dirty martini’s with three olives. I’ve tried every diet, Dr. Atkins, detox, juicing program, HCG, Keto, and even the Master Cleanse of lemon water, maple syrup and cayenne for 13 days. I have one Emotional Support Poodle and I’m working on a second. I hav boxes of journals and notes from sermons, workshops, retreats and dreams. Not counting audiobooks, I have paper books in every crevice of my life… enough to fill over 90 stackable moving boxes. But only 1 friend who states they can’t wait to help me move my books!
When I say I’ve done the work, I’ve done the work. Which is why I don’t have trouble asking and expecting my clients to do the work. My doctoral degree in Health Education (or the Science of Behavior Change) is the theoretical knowledge to the experiential accomplishments of my personal behavior change. They are the front and back of the transformation hand. I understand how to change behavior. I’ve done for myself for 40 years and that is exactly what I help people do… change their behaviors for life long happiness, connection and intimacy to themselves and with others. It’s their results that inspire me the most!
… I have never felt this authentically myself or as free sexually!
… I never thought I could feel this happy and free and love life so much…
… my life is more peaceful, calm and mindful. There isn’t anything that I don’t feel like I can handle.
… I don’t care what size I am or what I look like… I love myself exactly as I am. For the first time I love myself.
… you gave me my soul back and taught me how to love and pleasure women.
…I found my fucking power! Nothing can scare me… I know who I am now!
It might have been easier to stay an audiologist, teach from text books or be a slave to the corporate dollar, but it was never enough. My own type A-Adrenaline seeking, ambitious, controlling, addict brain of excess needs a lot more excitement. What better voyeurisitic opportunity than seeing the inside of another humans psyche or sex life? I can’t think of anything more rewarding or exciting as a single, childless mother of two poodles. Witnessing a person or two people heal and forgive their transgressions and restore pure unconditional love is the ultimate experience for me in this human journey.
I’m often asked how or why I do what I do. That is why. LOVE. It’s all for Love. It is for that rare moment in a persons personal journey, or when a couple hits that sweet spot, the AH-HA, the light bulb of conscious clarity that goes on and never goes off and that person knows who they are. Whole, perfect and complete. Pure Love, Joy and Bliss. Not their stories and not their traumas. It’s their successes.
It’s about watching them fall down, get up and get up again to build self confidence, heal wounds and thrive.
It’s about the happy phone call when they’ve conquered their own egos, manage their emotions and breathe.
It’s hearing about their new job promotion, increased salary, or leaving a 80 hour a week career.
For many it’s starting the passionate career they dream of or finding their soul purpose.
It’s watching them have better relationships with parents, siblings, children or how they end the toxic ones.
It’s witnessing them create happy, passionate and toe curling partnerships or leaving ones that hurt them.
It’s holding their broken hearts, catching their tears, watching their truest self light up that makes it all worth it.
But more than anything it’s about the little boys and girls today, tomorrow and generations to come that will wake up in a healthy happy home, full self expression and sexual wellness. This is the mission I created for myself in 2010 and what still wakes me up today! I may not see a world without sexual death, disease or violence but I said it would stop with me. I never remarried or had children which was the high cost of this path. Nevertheless, I do my part day after day by teaching men and women how to Make Love to Life and living my own legacy of Love. This is the Sextacular way… healthy, sexy ecstasy in self, relationships, intimacy and life!
If you want to live this kind of life I would love to help you… I can’t think of a better way to World Peace than one orgasm at a time! I offer a free 15min triage call to anyone who is serious about living their best life, just go to my website at www.DrLoriEbert.com !