Let's Get Physical: Consensual Cuddle Puddles

One mission, get the through the fucking door.

I found out about this human connection workshop exactly a week ago. I was searching for workshops with some masculine energy and only looked at it from the corner of my eye when i noticed it on the website. Not clicking on it, only reading the first few words of the description and immediately deciding it wasn’t for me, it was too ‘advanced’ and that I didn’t belong nor did I want to. 

It kept flashing in the corner of my eye. 

Nope, not for me, ya right I would ever go to a cuddle party. A girl who only really learnt how to hug at 32 years old because of a solo trip to Burning Man, who only started hugging people maybe around the age of 26-27. Before that human touch (if I was sober) would cause my whole body to clench up and freeze, my heart would contract, my eyes would go big and I couldn’t speak or move.

So I’m back on the webpage, staring at the title of this event. I inadvertently ended up clicking on it. It was eating away at me. Why was I avoiding it so adamantly??! A ball in my chest at the thought of attending, my heart contracting, a flash of all the times my affection had been rejected, a reminder of why I turned to alcohol any time I had to make myself vulnerable enough to insinuate I wanted to be touched or physically intimate with anyone. 

What if I felt like I had to participate. What if I wanted to but no one talked to me. What if I would just be retraumatizing myself. 

I told my sister about the event and one sentence in, I burst into tears. I couldn’t even handle the thought of going. 

So I knew I had to. 

Part of me thought I wouldn’t be welcome. I have hangups about how people perceive me. Not enough or too much always. In this space I feared I wouldn’t be considered real enough, spiritual enough, hippie enough. I figured they would judge me and reject me, saying that girls who look like me didn’t belong in a space like this. Maybe I was too pretty, too smiley, too english, too something or not enough. That was my story, the perpetual middle child. 

I thought maybe creepy dudes would latch on to me and make me feel like it wasn’t platonic. I was scared I wouldn’t know how to say no, maybe one of the reasons why I avoid dates altogether I thought. 

I walked in, face full of makeup and reeking of hairspray left over from my lingerie photoshoot that day. It was a scent free space... I definitely stood out but no one reacted. Relief. I wanted to turn around immediately, the instant I walked through the door. I almost did. I did not fit in. I never feel like I do though. I just laughed and kept going. I’m here, that’s all that mattered. 

Why is human touch only reserved for romantic relationships??! It’s one of the basic human needs but if you’re single, sorry, you don’t get to have that need met, you are excluded until someone chooses you, deems you worthy. How cruel. 

The flow of the night… Slow steady growth. The facilitators metaphorically held our hand and helped us practice. Split us up into small groups and then let us fly on our own. No shoving off of cliffs. Finally a safety net. THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH A SAFETY NET!!!

The main facilitator… I could feel his integrity, he had no doubt of the power of human connection, no need to make it grow more quickly than it needs to, he let it happen organically. With purpose. An integrity from a place of faith and self-assuredness, a quality I haven’t seen in a man in a very long time. No fear in his eyes.

In this context, I thought fear of rejection would be the main issue for me but something even deeper arose. 

I discovered a fear that I didn’t know I had or that I had never named so explicitly. The fear that I don’t know how to love. A woman asked my group to be held with tenderness and love, authentically. Instantly I felt afraid. Maybe i don’t know how to love. How to give affection. I held her hand with tenderness, caressing it, the most I could offer with authenticity. It felt real when I closed my eyes and thought of her vulnerability and humanity. I felt for her and I tried to express that through the simple act of hand holding. 

I’ve never experienced deep emotional intimacy together with physical intimacy. It’s always been one or the other. I’ve never been in a serious healthy relationship and so I’ve been deprived of this kind of connection and intimacy my entire life. I’ve also feared it. 

To receive I freeze.

We’re placed into small groups. We get to ask for ANYTHING we want and the others get to decide if they consent to giving. A waterfall of hands all over me. When do you have the opportunity to have 8 hands touching you at once? 8 gentle, caring hands. How did these strangers care so much? I feel no fear of being harmed.

I always believed that there was something wrong with me when it came to intimacy and relationships. Like there was an invisible wall between me and every man, unless he was a narcissist or drug addict. They were too self-involved to feel the wall so they crossed it and I, without fail, failed to be seen by them. Men just saw me as this trophy, everything they wanted off a checklist, but they had zero interest in actually getting to know me. And when I showed up and tried to share and connect, they were disappointed and disgusted. Or simply blind. Even in the ‘relationships’ I had, I was alone. 

Heart wall. An energy healer I stumbled onto online called it a heart wall. Mine was thick even though I had been tirelessly working at thinning it out. Is it in my power? The gurus tell you only they can heal you. Maybe you’ve been carrying it from past lives. I think it’s a balance of give and take. Co-creation always. No one person, entity, energy has 100% of the responsibility or the power. A dance between forces.

While I was swinging on the hammac watching the cuddle puddles form in front of me in awe and curiosity, a french speaking man with big brown eyes approached me and asked me in english how I was holding up, if I felt awkward. He shared a bit about his journey, how this workshop helped heal his anxiety, how he transformed, how he learnt to open up. 

I didn’t feel awkward, mostly amazed, mostly just taking it all in. I didn’t know how i felt. I felt well received, I felt like I had permission to do as I please. And if that meant just watching, then that was enough. 

At one point he looked at me and could see I had a lot going on in my inner world, that it was vast and vibrant, that it felt a bit fragile and that I was worried that I would be misinterpreted. Me, in a nutshell. Then he looked me square in the eyes and said, but you know what, how people interpret you is not your problem. 

Mic drop.

I laughed and laughed and laughed. IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM.

So simple, I must have heard it before, but it really hit home this time. Too much not enough. NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM.

I’m just me. My only job is to be me. How I am interpreted is not my problem. How quickly and easily he saw me.

The sight they had. I was shifty eyed. These people never looked away. They had an assuredness and openess and givingness I hadn’t seen very often in people. Practice. PRACTICE!!!

It took me a bit to integrate the experience. Weeks later I still feel the waves of change that washed over me. I felt seen, supported transformed just with the knowledge that open hearted humans exist. 

To feel seen, accepted but also anonymous and just human. It was healing in a way I hadn’t expected. Huge step on the journey to mend my heart wound. And now a few months later I can safely say my heart is wide open and ready for love in a way I would never have even be able to admit before.

A safe container to practice one of the most natural things. Why do we feel so unsafe in the world? So unsafe to share and be human? A woman at the end shared her experience and tears welled up in my eyes as she said that this space felt like solid ground and it made her realize that solid ground could also be found within her. I’ve always felt like I was freefalling through life, through every experience out in the world, every encounter with a man. I’ve never felt safe or at home out there and in myself. This space full of open, willing, heart led people made me think that humans aren’t so scary. That maybe there can be someone there to catch me if I’m willing to be responsible for myself and ask for what I need.