Sex, Grief and Seniors in Training with Joan Price

 

Sex, Grief and Seniors in Training with Joan Price

Joan  

I don’t mind you being in the dark with these strange—what looks like streetlights behind you—but you might consider getting a little mini-ring light so future interviewees don’t think you’re meeting in a dark alley.

August  

I love the way that you speak the truth and always in such a helpful way. That is that is so meaningful to me. Seeing you in this Van Gogh painting, I could see why you might not want to feel like you’re in a dark alley talking about Girl Boners.

Joan 

Well, I don’t mind. I’ll talk anywhere about Girl Boners, and I’ll go anywhere with you so it’s not a problem. But then, we have a history. [laughter]

August (narration)

Joan and I do have a history together, and I am so grateful for that. I was already a fan of her work when we met at a conference a few years ago. There, she joined me for a conversation you might recall, about her personal sexual self-discovery journey—from growing up as the daughter of a gynecologist when the clitoris literally didn’t appear anywhere in medical books and women were considered “frigid,’ to finding a love of a lifetime as she’s built a career equally full of heart. We recorded that chat in her hotel room and I have a vivid memory of her teasing, “Would you like to see my clitoris?” then pulling out a 3D model of the organ, wrapped in silky material, from her suitcase. 

Joan rapidly became and has remained one of my favorite people and experts in the sexuality field. She’s authored four books about sex and aging, including the award-winning Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex and Sex after Grief: Navigating Your Sexuality After Losing Your Beloved. At age 76, Joan continues to talk out loud about senior sex—partnered or solo. And I really believe that we can all learn from her teachings, no matter our age. 

She joined me recently through Zoom, as I sat in my new home audio setup — which will soon have a halo light, thanks to Joan’s sharp advice. She’s right; I really did look like I was talking in a dark alley. We explored sex after grief, an explict educational film she co-created with adult film star and educator, Jessica Drake, and what we can all learn as “seniors in training.” With Erin Tillman’s help, we also weighed in for a listener who’s wondering how to deal with “dad bod” anxiety in the dating realm.

August  

I’m so grateful that you’re willing to join me, specifically to talk about grief today as one of our topics because, first of all, it’s so important. Your book is so beautiful. And we’re also in a really unique time as far as this kind of widespread national grieving. People are grieving loved ones moreso than other times. We are also grieving changes in our lives, not being able to see people. So thank you for bringing light to this topic.

Joan  

Oh, you’re so sweet to say it that way. And it’s just occurred to me, hearing your words, that may be the reason that I feel like I’m dealing with this pandemic experience with more ease than many people I know, having been through—well, 76 years of life helps—but also the experience of knowing what grief does. I can feel a certain way and then go, Oh yeah, I remember that. That’s grief. 

Right now, I’m grieving what’s happening to our world and what people are suffering and grieving. The news I read every day and being isolated and caged, in a way, yet I’m also aware, Well, here are the tools I’ve learned to deal with grief. And maybe that’s helping me, and maybe I can help other people that way.

August  

I believe so. What you said was really profound, I think, that you were able to put a name to it. . . I know that for me, when I was able to put, for example, the word shame to certain feelings I was experiencing, how healing just that alone can be to understand, Oh, this is a natural response to really challenging circumstances.

Joan  

It makes us less isolated if we have the words, don’t you think?

August  Yes, I absolutely think so. 

So your book is called Sex After Grief: Navigating Your Sexuality After Losing Your Beloved. Last time we spoke for a full episode you shared, in part, your personal journey. And also, as you know it’s one of my favorite love stories, your journey with Robert. I wanted to share a little excerpt that struck me just so much. You wrote in chapter three, which is called, “My Own Struggle with Sex After Grief,” on page 26:

Jan. 5, 2009: I was with a new man, a stranger. He was behind me, his arms around my waist, and suddenly I could feel his erection through our clothes. I felt the stirrings of a sexual tingle, then I woke up and discovered I really was aroused! I sat up in bed, calling out, “I am alive!”

Joan  

I love how you read that, August. That was so beautiful listening to it.

August  

It sounds like it was beautiful to experience.

Joan  

Yes, it was. It was beautiful to experience because I had not felt alive. And I can’t say that that was then a turning point and everything from there was much better. Because grief is not linear. Grief strikes us down and we get up, and it strikes us down, again, and we get up but each time we get up, maybe we’re closer to being able to surface, if that makes any sense. 

I sometimes liken grief to trying to bicycle through peanut butter while an elephant kicked me in the chest. It’s profound. And it’s unlike any other human emotion. And when we’re hit by it maybe we think we’re the only ones; that no one’s ever experienced it the way we are. And we’re right, because every person’s experience of grief takes a different form and takes a different strategy and stabs us in a different spot, perhaps. But there are some ways that they’re similar. And if we can understand how other people went through it, then that can help us—not to get out of it, because how do you get out of it—but to deal with it, to get back on the bicycle and bicycle through the peanut butter.

August  

You share stories of many people in your book, because as you’ve said, everyone experiences grief and other emotions differently. And I also so cherish that you share about your personal journey. It really sets this foundation of trust. You really bring us into this intimate place in your life. I know that Robert was sick for a while. It wasn’t a sudden passing. Did your grief process start before he was gone?

Joan  

Yes, it did. When we first got the diagnosis, which was four years before he died, he had blood cancer. At the time he was diagnosed, he had leukemia and lymphoma. And by the time he died, he had multiple myeloma, which is a really hideous bone marrow cancer. But when he was first diagnosed he was in the watch and wait stage, where we didn’t need to do anything about it, where treatment wasn’t warranted, but we had to keep getting him tested. And at that point, well, we decided a lot of things. 

He decided first to move. Then later, we decided to move in together, which was a separate decision. And we didn’t decide to marry until a few years after that. We were married only two of our seven years together, but that wasn’t the part that mattered. What mattered was really seeing how first he would make different decisions, knowing that he didn’t have forever, and none of us has forever. But we don’t usually get a sentence that says, at the time he was diagnosed, You may have 10 more years. 

Well, he didn’t have 10 more years. He had five, but at each stage of both the physical and the emotional understanding of what was going on in his body, we would have to plan not for forever, not for 10 years. Who knows how many years? Each time we decided, Let’s act as if this was only our last year. What would we be doing now? And he made some very practical decisions. Let me get rid of stuff I don’t really need. Let me sell some valuable artifacts that I’ve been collecting. Let me move to a place that feels more healthy for me. Let me decide about whether we should get married. 

And when we got close to his death, when he was already in hospice, and we knew we would only have a little bit of time more, I thought I could make decisions to handle it better if I already had my new work set up so that when he died I could switch into this and I could try that and I could cope this way. My friends were all on alert. And what I discovered, August, is we can’t be prepared. We can do the best we can with what we know. But we also need to realize whatever it is we did, in the end, it won’t be enough. It won’t make a difference.

August  

There’s something about hearing you say that that is soothing in a way, because I think most of us have some amount of fear around losing people we love, especially right now. It might be at the forefront of our minds for all kinds of reasons. And I feel like there can be a bit of almost a surrender to there is no way to plan so that everything goes as “perfectly” as possible. If you know you can’t do that, all you can really do is be in the now and do your best at each step, which I feel like could feel frustrating and depressing at the same time. But right now, in this moment, that feels like, Oh—ahhh—less responsibility.

Joan

There was something that he did that I really would suggest everybody do, and I say that although I haven’t finished doing it myself. He spent part of his last week on Earth putting together a binder with all the information I needed—his bank accounts, his insurance—because even after we married, we did not mingle our finances. Some we mingled, but mostly we kept them separate. So, I didn’t even know what he had. And so he put this binder together: These are my accounts. This is what I have. This is my life insurance. This is the phone number to call when I die. We also arranged for a pre-arrangement to get cremated. We both did that together, for whichever of us died first. That information is in the binder. 

And when he gave me that binder, I felt so relieved. I felt, Okay, I will be able to go into that dark place of my emotions. But I don’t have to worry about not knowing what he had set up, where to find things. I won’t have to go rummaging through his private desk to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s all there. It’s all in that binder. And that was the most beautiful gift that he could have given me.

August  

That’s really beautiful. That sounds like, as you said, such a relief. And something that we can all do: keep our information in a Google Doc where somebody has access to it. Because when you’re going through grief, the exhaustion, I’m sure, makes everything feel so much more challenging. 

You talk about it taking time to reconnect with sexual desire. And I really appreciate it that you talked about, you know, you’re a sex educator, you’re a professional. People think you know everything there is to know about this, and you’re continually learning. I’m curious if you could share some of the things that were surprising to you that you’re now teaching others about sex when you’re grieving.

Joan  

What was the most surprising to me is that even being a sex educator, and my joy is being a sex educator, it’s not just a job, it’s a joy. It’s a choice to do this with the rest of my life. Even with that being my world I did not feel sexy, and I did not have any interest in sex for a very long time after Robert died. That was a surprise to me. It was also a surprise that I had this struggle. 

I knew that all I needed to do was keep my body sexual, even if my brain was somewhere else. I could just grab my favorite vibrators and make a decision to use them. Schedule sex the way I suggest to other people. Schedule sex with myself. I couldn’t do it for a long time. I couldn’t do it. It just didn’t feel like I was connected to my body at all. I also had this feeling that I didn’t really deserve pleasure. It was impossible, and even if I could work on it, what was the point? 

And this “what was the point” serious depression that I went into. Once I decided, with the help of a grief counselor, the grief counselor told me back the things I tell other people. If you use a vibrator, it will work, she told me. Oh, yeah, I tell people that. Why don’t I do that myself then? Once I started using that advice, and it did work, and it was such a relief once I had discovered how to pleasure myself again, and it worked, and it was peaceful. Oh, it made me cry. The first thing that happened after my orgasm is I broke into tears. Because it wasn’t Robert. Robert wasn’t there. Robert would never again help me get there. 

But I discovered, Oh, I can. My body’s still willing. Oh, my gosh, what a revelation that was. . . It took me years before I decided I was ready to write this book, Sex After Grief. I didn’t know I was ever going to write it. It was just me and my private time, me and my journal, and me and my vibrators, and then crawling out of grief enough to try online dating and to try friend with benefits and crawling back under the covers and coming out again and all this stuff I went through. I didn’t think I was ever going to share that. It didn’t really occur to me until last year, until 2019.

August

And what was it that prompted that? Was it a specific epiphany, a moment, a turning point or just…you just felt right? 

Joan  

It was a turning point that came from Brenda Knight, who, when she was my editor at Cleis Press had encouraged me to write The Ultimate Guide to Sex After 50. We worked together on that book. Then she contacted me when she was at Mango Publishing, a new publisher that I didn’t know about until she told me about it. And she said, “Is there a book that you want to write that you’re passionate about writing and you’re the one who should write it?” 

And my first reaction to her was, no, I don’t want to write any more books. I don’t want to take a year writing a book. I don’t know how many years I have left. And then as I thought about it, what came out of my mouth instead of no was, “Yes. Sex after grief. I’m finally enough passed the worst of it to be able to write this book.” And she was on it in a second. And I said, “But I still I don’t want to spend a year writing a book. I don’t know how many years I’ve left. And she said, “It doesn’t have to take a year. It can be a shorter book. It doesn’t need to be a 300-400 page book. It can be a slim book with your knowledge and what you’ve learned from others and what others have shared with you. 

And I went, “Yes. Let me write that book right now, please.” And so it went through right away. I’m so grateful to Brenda Knight and to Mango Publishing for saying, Gee, you know what? There isn’t another book like this. And I said, “Right.”

August  

Yeah. The book that needed to be written and that you were writing all along. 

Joan  

I was! You’re right! I was writing it along with my journal entries because then when I decided to write, I went back into those journals. And here I was at the rawest part of my grief, crying and bleeding the ink, writing in longhand in my journal.

August  

That must have felt really powerful. And I was thinking what a beautiful, full-circle arc to your writing career because I remember you talking about Robert really encouraging you to go for this. I’ve told you before, you’re just such a prolific person. We talked about your empire last time we spoke. I think it’s really lovely that it started with this true love all this self-discovery, and evolved all the way around back to that same love story that still is involving so much self-discovery. You’re learning more about you all along the way and then you put it forward to help other people.

Joan  

Oh my gosh, you’re so right. I never realized the full context of it until you said that. When I first started writing about senior sex, the whole impetus for that was I had just fallen in love. And now here I was in 2008. And by the way, as we record this, I’m just a few days from that anniversary of our first kiss, which was the same as the anniversary of losing him seven years later in 2008. So, thank you. This is your anniversary present to me, I think.

August

Oh, my goodness. Well, it feels like a gift to me as well. 

I’d love to quickly touch on a few of the myths that you bring up in your book about sex when you’ve lost somebody, when you’re grieving, because I think, again, these are so relevant to our current times, and I know many people are grieving right now. One myth you mentioned is it’s not really sex you’re missing, it’s touch.

Joan  

Yeah. So much of the advice that we get in the other books about grief, because I read as many of the books about grief as I could handle looking for the sex parts and usually I didn’t find them at all, but when I did it was usually a very dismissive paragraph that said, in essence, you’re not really missing sex, you’re missing touch. Well, no, yeah, we’re missing touch but we’re also missing sex. We are missing the kind of intimacy and the kind of skin sensation that we don’t get from our hairdresser or a massage therapist.

August  

I so appreciate that point. Because if you don’t realize that you’re missing sex or allow yourself to admit that to yourself, you’re not going to grab the vibrator, you know?

Joan  

Well, that’s right. That’s right. And yet our society is so sex negative. And we’re being given all these myths about how we’re supposed to grieve and how long we’re supposed to grieve and how long we’re supposed to wait before dating someone new or going to bed with someone new and what it says about us if we do it too soon or we wait too long. 

And this is so destructive, August. That’s why I wanted, in this book, to have a lot of different people’s experiences. Because I could say how I did it and how interminably long my grief journey took. But that doesn’t mean that if instead of waiting years to have sex with someone new you wait 20 minutes to have sex with someone new. Doesn’t mean you did it wrong. It doesn’t mean I did it wrong.

August  

Yes, absolutely. That’s such a great point. Which brings me to another myth. I think this one is one that a lot of people probably experience in their own minds as well as hearing from other people. Sex with someone new, after you’ve lost someone, is disloyal to your deceased loved one.

Joan  

This is something we carry with us. And I would like to suggest to everybody, right now, if you have an intimate partner, that you say to that partner or you put it in writing—even better put it in writing—I give you leave or I bless you or I would love to see you make yourself happy with someone new when you’re ready, after I’m gone. It would bring me joy were I there if I could know that—or it will bring me joy now—to know that you are not going to shut yourself up in a room for the rest of your life grieving me. Grief takes the time it takes. But please find your solace with someone who can give you what you need when I can’t.

August  

That’s really beautiful. I love that. It should be right up there with if you’re going to share a password to your bank, give them that, too.

Joan  

Exactly. I know someone I’m very close to was told that while his wife was dying, while she was in the last stages of her life. She said, Don’t be a hermit. Go out and find joy. And he had been her caregiver for several years so he had been grieving for years already. And knowing he had that from her let him go out and capture joy, even while he was still grieving. There’s no you don’t have to wait until you think “grief is over” before you go out and look for what you need.  On the other hand, don’t feel you have to rush out, either. There’s no one way of doing it. 

I got an email from someone just the other day and he said I’ve read Sex After Grief. I lost my wife. I didn’t know what to do with the sexual feelings I was having. They were raging through me. And as I read the book, I realized that your way is not my way. I have religious beliefs that don’t let me go forth the way you did but you also did not demand that people change their beliefs to do it your way. And for that I’m grateful. I learned a lot from your book, even though I’m not going to do it the way you did.

August  

That’s huge. I imagine that’s feedback that feels very fulfilling to you because that was part of your mission to say there are so many different experiences. There is not a wrong way to grieve.

Joan  

That’s right. And that meant so much to me. That was one of my most precious letters from readers because that was the thin line I was trying to know how to straddle:  how do I give my situation and my grief journey authentically without ever making people feel that if your way is different, there’s nothing wrong with your way. 

August  

Yes, and obviously you did that very successfully, which is, I think, we learn so much from other people’s experiences, too. So, to have that variety is tremendous. 

Speaking of people’s stories and people’s experiences and learning and the ways that you lift other voices up, the last time I saw you in person we were at Woodhull, the conference, and I had the privilege of seeing your fantastic film, and I would love to chat a little bit about that. 

So, you have a film with sex educator, Jessica Drake, Guide to Wicked Sex: Senior Sex. I also had the privilege of stopping by when you were filming it. It was such an elegant set, and I could feel the compassion and, I would say, love in the air. This real respect for everyone who was there. So much respect for the wonderful performers who were putting themselves in “positions” …I didn’t mean it that way…. 

Joan

Yeah, you did. [laughter]

August

…to be more vulnerable than they’re probably used to because they weren’t performers in adult film prior to this. Would you share a little bit about this film, starting with the inception? When did this idea sprout?

Joan  

The idea sprouted about two years before we did it. Jessica Drake has, as you know, an educational series called Jessica Drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex and there are many different topics within that. There’s BDSM and threesomes and solo sex and people of size. There are all these different areas of sex education that she deals with in the series. These films are educational; however, they’re also explicit, meaning that people get naked and they have sex on camera to illustrate the points that Jessica, or occasionally her guest experts, are imparting to people. 

She asked me a full two years before we did it, if I would do the senior sex edition with her. And at first I said, Oh, I can’t imagine myself doing that. Not because I had any reticence about the value of her series. I thought it was wonderful. But because of the age group of my followers. I didn’t know if they would be accepting of my sex education going into the explicit arena. So, I finally asked them. 

I have a newsletter that goes out to my subscribers. And I asked them in the newsletter if I were to do a sex education film that also had exclusive scenes where seniors demonstrate how they have sex, authentically, and I gave tips that would enrich your sex life, how would you feel about that? And what would you want me to be sure and address? 

So many people wrote to me and said, Please. They said, I’m a visual learner or they said, I have your books, but there are ways that I just can’t picture how to do what you’re talking about. And they asked me questions. They said be sure you address this. Be sure you address that. Be sure you address this or that. And oh, my gosh, I thought, I better do this. 

It wasn’t until probably a full year later after she first asked me that I said, let’s talk about how this might happen. And this was again Woodhull and we sat down together, and we hammered out some ideas. And then we worked on it via email. And she sent me the format for writing a script, and she said you’ve written a script before, right? And I said, Never. Never even seen a script. Doesn’t matter. That’s okay. She told me that she always knew that she wanted to do this with me from the first time she heard me speak and that she knew she would never do it with anyone else. Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know she had that thinking. But then I also thought, I don’t want her to do it with anyone else. I want to be that person! 

When we were figuring out the couples I said, Jessica, here’s what I would ideally like. I would like one couple that’s been together for a long time, that shows how they make love together, how they communicate about it, what they like to do, what they truly like to do, not telling them what to do. The script is only for what I’m going to say, not what they’re going to do. 

And I’d also like a couple that has just met, because so many of us are negotiating how to have first time sex with new people, and we need to know how do you bring up what you want, what your boundaries are, what you’d like to do, what you’d rather not do. How do you introduce your favorite vibrator? How do you ask for what pleases you? How do you talk about, for example, positions that you can’t get in because they hurt your knees? Or how do you talk about Well, I might not have an erection. Oh, don’t worry about that. Here’s how I like to give and receive pleasure and what do you like? 

Well, we were lucky enough to get exactly what I was asking for. We have Bonnie and Joel, who are the most wonderful couple. They are really the face of the video, literally, because their faces are on the cover. 

When they were making love on camera and I will say they were making love, we, the crew and the other all the people involved, we found ourselves holding our breath while we watched these beautiful people show how they have sex so intimately, and how they laugh together, and how they know each other, and how they understand what turns them on, and how Bonnie can say, “I don’t think I can do this for much longer. So, let’s stop now.” And how they can giggle about little phrases they use or Bonnie says, this was our favorite, “My pussy needs some attention now.” Oh, my god. Oh, we fell in love with them. 

And then we had Galen and Marlene, who had never met until the day of the film shoot. Did you know that?

August  

I didn’t know it was the day of. I remembered that they were not a couple. That’s amazing.

Joan  

Yeah. So, we put them together. Well, the direction we gave them was talk a lot: Let us hear how you negotiate this. How you figure out what each other likes. And we were surprised at some of the things that came out. I had no idea what was going to happen from them. And I don’t know if they had much of an idea either. So it was thrilling to see what they did.

August  

Yes, thrilling is a good word. And now I’m realizing why I felt love in the air. When Makenzie, my engineer, and I came to the set, we walked in to the holding your breath. It was completely silent except for them and the intimacy was just. . . it felt like this beautiful, intimate bubble that you didn’t want to want to pop. You wanted to just honor it.

Joan  

And thanks to Jessica and the film crew who knew how to. I mean, these were people who were hand selected, and they had experience with filming adult films before—that was what they did—but they never had this experience before and to have them feel, because I was sitting right there next to one of the camera people, and I could feel everybody holding their breath. They held it, they held it, until they just had to breathe, again, and as a breeze very gently, held it again. It was such an experience.

August  

Ah, that’s beautiful. What a team and unit and family it all seemed that you developed with this incredible crew. I remember seeing a scene in the actual film where Bonnie is talking about physical pain, and I thought that was such an important piece. All of the points that are brought up are so relevant, especially later on in life. And I also found myself learning, at my age, to hear her articulate things like, “This part of me hurts when we’re in this position. I need to move this part of my body.” Also talking about the changes in desire. That they still have this wonderful desire for each other. And that it’s also natural to have shifts and ebbs and flows and all these messages that I think we all need. 

Are you getting responses from people who are not seniors as well?

Joan  

Oh my gosh, I am. I’m getting love letters about this film. That’s what I’m getting, love letters by email. And I do welcome that. I love hearing from people who have watched the film and want to tell me their reactions. I just love that. And I also want to hear from people who watch the film and want to tell me what’s missing that should be in volume two, when we’re free to do this, again. We’re already talking about volume two. And it really depends on when and how we’re able to film again in the future, and also whether this film continues to sell as well as it sold in its first year. It’s only a year old now.

August  

It is such an extraordinary film. It’s educational. It’s inspiring. It’s moving. It debunks so many different myths that again, I think, are very universal. If people want to check out the film, how can they watch it and let you know what they want to see in the next one.

Joan  

If you’re in the United States, I sell the DVDs, personally, from my website from joanprice.com, and you’ll see the slot that’s the tab that says film. And there is where to order it directly from me. I ship it out first class shipping immediately. If you are not in the United States or you want to purchase a streaming version instead of a DVD, I have links from that page, from my own page, of where you can do that. So, if you go to joanprice.com and then look for film, you’ll see on that page how to order the film, no matter what your situation. 

We have our wonderful retailer in Australia, Spicy Boudoir, where you can get them. We have Jessica’s website, which I link to, for Wicked Films, where you can get the streaming version and find other international sales. So, I’ve got it covered if you just go to me first.

August (narration):

Before I share the rest of my chat with Joan, I’m jumping in with this week’s listener question. It came in anonymously, through my latest email list survey, and it said this:

How can you own your age, sexuality, and whatever degree of “Dad bod” we have with confidence to go out and get acquainted with people of similar age without so much anxiety? 

Highlights from Erin Tillman‘s segment:

 

August (narration):

I love Erin’s suggestions. She is so right about how helpful cultivating confidence in other life areas can be — and shifting away from the self-comparison trap. So important. To learn more from Erin, head to TheDatingAdviceGirl.com, where you can check out The Consent Guidebook and The Dating Advice Girl Podcast. I highly recommend both.

Joan and I discussed this question, too.

Joan  

It’s very interesting you got that question from a “dad bod,” when I usually get it from an “old lady bod.” And I say “old lady” only with a great affection and respect, because I am one. I’m 76. So, if anyone’s talking about old ladies, I can do that. 

You know, we tend to shame ourselves for our signs of aging, whether it’s that our body is bigger or baggier or more wrinkled, when actually if we can just own the aging process and say, “All right, this body is not what it was forty years ago or twenty years ago—or in some cases six months ago from our situation—but my body is capable of great sexual pleasure. And I have much I can give another person. And I would like to share the intimacy and the pleasure and the sensation and the excitement instead of hiding until I have that perfect body again.” Newsflash! We probably won’t. 

Let’s own the pleasure we can give and receive. And when we are in a relationship with someone who has not seen our body before, they’re not going to be itemizing those things that we don’t like about ourselves. They’re not going to be saying, this would be really fun if we didn’t have those thick thighs or if there were fewer neck wrinkles. Someone’s going to be saying, Oh, finally. I’ve wanted to see you naked. Oh, finally, I can touch this body and be touched by this person who wants to give me pleasure. Oh, finally, we can do this. 

What do you think, August?

August  

I agree, I think that we are so much harder on ourselves than anybody else will ever be. And I really love your take on shifting it to the “pleasure I can give,” because I think a lot of times when we feel really hard on ourselves about our appearance, to me it’s a sign that we aren’t great at putting our needs first. We’re thinking about external judgments. And so if you feel that way, I’m guessing you have a big heart. You want to give. And so sometimes it’s the giving that allows us to then receive what we really want. I think also small steps, baby steps. It’s easy to leap to “If I go on a dating app, or if I meet one person,” we leap right away to I’m standing there naked and nervous. 

Start with coffee.

Joan  

Start with coffee. And then once you decide that the chemistry is there and you want to get sexual, I always recommend getting sexual in stages, not going from coffee date to naked in bed. But going in stages. Let’s kiss for a while. You know, one of the wonderful things about being my age, and I think there are a lot of wonderful things to being my age, is that I remember when I started dating as a teenager—we would think of it now, maybe, as extended foreplay over a couple of years because we were taught we weren’t supposed to have sex—so we would, using the vernacular for our time, we would neck and then we would pet and we would get to first base petting and then second base petting and finally third base petting and chances are we were experiencing orgasms long before we had intercourse with a partner, if that’s where we were eventually going to go. 

And I’m not saying I wish for the good old days. They were terrible old days because we didn’t understand so much about sexuality. And we were shamed for it and blamed for it. And I won’t get into that right now. Let’s fast forward to today. What we can use from that is it was damn exciting to just kiss for an entire date. And then to think about that and get turned on and anticipate the next stage. Oh, will he touch my breasts this time? What bra should I wear in case he does? To get back to that stage where every step towards sexuality was exciting and a discovery. And then, you see if we are worried about what happens when he sees my saggy breasts or what happens when she realizes I can’t get erections easily. We don’t have to put all that in the first time together. We can discover each other gradually. Keep talking. And we can say things like, I don’t know if I’ll have an erection hard enough for intercourse. And we can respond, I don’t care. That’s not how I get orgasms, anyway.

August  

That’s beautiful. And I feel the intimacy build as you’re talking about that and the anticipation. Also, these topics that can feel a little bit difficult to talk about a lot of times end up bringing you this level of trust and intimacy that increases pleasure and increases relaxation.

Joan  

And I know that most of your listeners, your demographic is not my age, but I want to really emphasize if you learn these skills at your age—you talking to your demographic now, August—if you learn these skills now, they’ll be so much easier when you get to be my age, when you really have to have these skills in order to have sex at all.

August  

Yes, that is such an excellent point. I think of that whenever somebody writes in saying that they are dealing with a chronic pain issue or something in their 20s that they feel that they don’t have this same kind of freedom. I have so much empathy for the struggle there. And I also think what a beautiful time to be asking those questions and to be learning those skills.

Joan  

I would love to say to your younger listeners, You are, as I’ve said before, seniors in training. It’s not you as young person versus me as an old person and therefore you don’t need to listen. Please, listen. Because if you’re lucky, you’ll get old. If you’re lucky, you’ll get old. And the more you learn to put some of these ideas into practice as young people, the easier it’s going to be to stay sexual. When your body starts challenging you and when your relationship challenges kick in, and when you suddenly need the words for something you didn’t think you’d need the words for.

August  

Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. That’s so meaningful. I’d love to wrap up with. . . I always love reading people’s dedications in their books, and yours is so lovely. 

You wrote, “I dedicate this book to my great love, Robert Rice, who lives in my memory and in my heart; Mac Marshall, who shows me that joy is possible after grief; all the grievers who generously shared their stories and opened their hearts so that this book could happen.” 

What is something that someone shared with you that felt really impactful that you think listeners might benefit from?

Joan  

I guess, in answering that, I’m not going to point you to one specific incident. But I’m going to point you to the range if that’s okay. 

There was one person, for example, who talked about being in deep grief and being invited to a wedding and thinking how do I go to a wedding when my husband’s dead. And then she went to the wedding and she had a fling with someone else from the wedding and it made all the difference in the world. She realized, Whoa, I can be sexual again. 

I’m also thinking of waiting a long time and then meeting someone really special who helped them make that transition between being in the dark place of grief and coming out into the light. I’m also thinking of people who had bad first dates, who thought they were ready and So okay, I’m going to start dating again. And then they had the worst things happen, but the thing is they could talk about it and laugh about it now and share it with me and my readers, and we could all laugh about how those things happen. 

I think what I’m getting to is I got so much from my readers who sent their stories, my grievers, as I call them, I got so much about resilience. I got so much about the things you can try and what can happen, what can go wrong, what can go right. And then there are people who write from the vantage point of years who say, you know what, I’m still with a person that I started dating when shortly after I decided I could try this, and there are people who say, I met someone who also was in grief and we could share our stories, and we could be honest about that with the idea that you don’t have to feel you’re over grief. You’re through grief because we don’t get over it. We get through it. 

And I see grief as sort of a spiral. You spiral around. You’re in the dark place and you come up for air, and you sink down but maybe not so low, again. There’s a lot of self-help in this book but there’s also a lot of just sharing how other people have done it and what they think about it now. And one of the main messages is, you don’t love your beloved any less when you move on, because you’re taking with you the love that you had, the love you gave, the love you learned to receive. You’re taking all that with you. You are a different person because you loved that person who died. And you take that with you on your path.

August (narration):

There is no one quite like Joan Price. Here’s to all of us taking her wisdom to heart. Find Joan’s books, webinars, blog, and film at joanprice.com. 

This episode was hosted and produced by me, August McLaughlin, with audio management by Makenzie Mizell, engineer and the founder and organizer of Period, a network of femme and non-binary podcasters. KM Huber provided transcript support. Thanks so much for listening and have a beautiful Girl Boner-embracing week.