*Hannah is a divorced woman in her mid 50s, with a teen daughter, living in the US. We have been working together continuously for three years. Name have been changed to protect privacy.

Her life was already great: she was at the top of her career and well connected socially. There was no time or space for her sexuality, however.

Hannah shares her story in her own words:

When I reached out, I had been divorced for about five years. There was this whole part of me that I have not paid any attention to — and that I wanted to pay attention to it. I hadn't felt sexual in years and years. I wanted my sexuality back. I wanted to be in a relationship. I wanted love and intimacy with a partner. That was the longing. 

My friends were all bugging me to get on dating sites to jump start the process. I tried and it was not a good experience. 

My last sexual experiences were from my marriage. It was good in the beginning, like for most people. Then we had a child — and once my daughter was born, everything started to go downhill. It was a lot of dealing with the craziness of being new parents, plus having a very big job on top of it. Eight years into our relationship, sex was mediocre, at best. Leading up to the divorce, our sexual life had completely disappeared. Then there was the divorce itself and the aftermath.

There was no space, time or place for me to even have sexuality on my radar. I was so busy and consumed with grieving and the aftermath of the divorce, not to mention work and single parenting. My sexuality just did not exist; it was not even on my mind. I certainly wasn't sexually active, but I was also not having sexual thoughts. 

Then Hannah heard the call.

I heard Irene on a podcast, I remember that just really spoke to me. I was having chills go down my body as she was saying ‘You're not broken. Even if you've had a loveless marriage, that completely can change. You can inhabit your sexual being.’ 

Irene was painting a picture of what is possible, and that spoke to that longing I had. I had said to myself ‘really, you can get someone to help you with sexuality and intimacy and relationships.’

Breaking out of decades of conditioning of giving and neglecting herself, Hannah dared to get intimate with her own desires.

The most important big shift had to do with my work life and making space for my sexuality and for myself. It was REALLY big. It’s funny because I remember Irene saying in our consultation “I usually spend the first four months helping women have space for sexuality in their lives.”

Then 14 months later, I finally found space in my life. I joke that I was a slow learner — but I had to clear a lot of space!

There were little shifts along the way that were very significant, like starting to know that I could connect with my own pleasure. Or even that I had desire! I remember this very striking moment when Irene asked me to make desire lists (what did I want?), and I couldn't come up with anything for weeks and weeks … until I finally began to ask my body: ‘what do you want?’ 

It was a real breakthrough. 

Then listening to that pleasure — and even considering that my pleasure could be primary — blew my mind. I started asking ‘why am I working so hard? Why have I abandoned this part of me?’ More practical questions followed: ‘How do I create time and space in my life?’ and I began to take action to make it happen. 

A year in, I started to look around at my life and realized ‘Oh my God, I have space in my life. This is something I've dreamed of for years.’

I was saying ‘no’ more, I was delegating more. I was stopping work earlier … and it was all happening very organically; I was not trying so hard. Then I found dance classes nearby. They were magical and became a way for me to express myself through my body, and not just get caught up in my work and my responsibilities with my child. 

Creating space in her own life allowed Hannah to preparing the soil to welcome a new partner

I continue to feel very spacious in my work life. I feel much more aligned with how I want to live in the world. I take on projects that interest and excite me. I say ‘no’ to things that don't interest me, and I don't feel obligated to do them or like I’m the only one who can do it. I step more and more into a mentoring role in my work, and invite other people to get involved. These shifts are huge for me.

Another piece that we really worked on was healing the part of me that didn't feel was worthy of a relationship, or couldn't find love. The part that believed that everybody else's needs were more important than mine. I was letting go of the old stories of ‘I don't deserve love, I'm not capable, there's something wrong with me,’ which was big for me.

It was doing the heavy trauma healing as prep work that led to the new phase that I've been in in the last year. 

Once my life felt more spacious, I loved that time for myself, and at first I didn’t want to date! I wanted time for myself. Once I gave myself permission to enjoy and linger in that spaciousness as long as I wanted to, something shifted. 

Getting back into dating this time around meant leading with what Hannah wanted.

I started dating, and then our work shifted more to the reality of dating and looking at the patterns and habits in which I was short changing myself by not asking for what I wanted. And I was learning how to ask for what I want too.

I approached dating different men with intention and as an experiment, which put me on the path of clarifying what I wanted. When it didn’t work out, I would realize ‘this is actually what I do want instead.’ 

I also realized in a very deep way throughout the process how much I wanted a relationship and a loving sexual relationship — and that it was okay. It was ok to want sexuality to be primary. That was a big leap for me. On the way there, we had to work through a lot of my issues of disappointment. Because if I don't ask for it, then if I didn’t get it, I wouldn’t have to face disappointment. I realized this was holding me back from connecting with my deep desire to find sex and love. 

I kept getting clearer and clearer and clearer, and then this past fall, I got incredible clarity on what I'm looking for. All of that led me to meeting this man I am with — and it is literally everything that I wanted and I was hoping for. 

Obviously there was two years of work leading up to it … learning to ask for my needs to be met and to talk about things that are important to me … but it really does feel miraculous. Every day, I keep asking myself ‘What is going on? Because this is crazy.’

This was a different kind of relationship than what Hannah has experienced before.

I have never met a man like him. 

First of all, he completely adores me and thinks he’s won the lottery with me, which is a very nice feeling. The way he feels about me compared to the other men I was dating is so different. Before my experiences were of situations where people were unclear, ambivalent, not ready.

Here I attracted a man who has the skills that I was learning and was hoping for in spades. He has incredible communication skills and a willingness to talk about anything. He has his own meditation practice and an authenticity that matches mine. 

We have the ability to communicate and the desire to do so. There is the intimacy of getting to know him as a human being. And then there is the sexual intimacy — and it’s off the charts for me. I've never experienced anything like it. We are talking about sex – constantly! We are learning to ask each other for what we want. 

We've entered this realm of sex play that is … really play. It’s not just intercourse. It's like a journey of discovering where the pleasure is and what is possible. And I'm only in the very, very, very beginning. There's so much that's possible. And he's saying the same thing — that this is just incredible. He had no idea that this type of sex was possible.

So my ability to communicate, ask for what I want, be with someone in this space who also wants that and is delighted to be there, who thinks it's the greatest thing ever, is just new and incredibly fun and joyful and great. 

The Hannah of today is a different woman than when she started.

I'm learning to be in my Queen with him. I could be in my Queen without him, especially professionally.

Here, I am finding myself as a deeply centered, powerful sexual being who is unapologetic and unafraid of her sexuality — and who is adored for that. 

I'm in a relationship with a man as opposed to a boy, for sure, and that’s something that's different. I feel like he's needing me to be in my power, as he's super masculine. And I want to meet him in his King too.

Hannah’s journey has been full of unexpected surprises, things that she did not believe was possible.

One of the big surprises was finding a person I could experience all of this with so fast. I assumed it would be another year or so of mediocre dates and trying to figure it out. So that was a huge surprise. It came on the heels of all of this visioning about what I wanted starting February, clarifying in the summer, and then it happened in the Fall. It felt so immensely fast when it happened. And it’s amazing that at this point, this person appears to have all of the things that I wanted. Really, everything.

Another thing that was surprising was that I really thought that sexuality goes downhill after menopause. And it's been the opposite for me in my experience. That was a wonderful, fun surprise!

Another surprise is how the emphasis on my sexuality, relationship and intimacy would have so many broader implications on all levels of my life. The impact of opening up to my Queen, getting rid of my fears, and making space for my life is feeding into my work, it's going into my parenting, it's going into just about everything. 

To other women in their 40s and 50s, wishing to reconnect to their sexuality, here is what Hannah has to say.

You have to be willing to do the work. That's the bottom line. It takes a kind of rigor and authenticity with yourself that can be hard at times and, but it's so completely worth it. 

We're not educated about this part of life. We are expected to go through it and know how to be sexual, how to have good sex. We don't — and we need support.

We need support with someone who can walk you step by step. I'm feeling really teary because it's so sad how fucked up our culture is, and how sex is this taboo place where nobody learns how to love themselves and love one another. 

You don't have to do it alone. You can be gently guided and challenged in a great way. 

By opening up to this part of myself that was so shut down, I have this sense of bigness and a richness and a vibrancy in my life that I just never imagined.

My life was already great, that’s the crazy part. My life was already great on the professional and personal levels. And now, there is another level of greatness. 

And when it comes to working with Irene … Irene has so many skills that are life changing for people. She asks incredibly good questions that get to the heart of things. She has compassion and an ability to hold people and meet them where they are, including in places that are dark, traumatic and hard.

Irene has a breadth of experience and knowledge that is kind of breathtaking, including how much she has devoted her energy and time to this work and to becoming an expert in sex, relationships, love, desire, trauma healing, pleasure, and more. She is really a true healer. I would not be where I am if it were not for her.