The Cool Girl and the Forest Fairies

One thing no one tells you about emotional intimacy and embodied presence with another human being is how fucking awkward it can be.

I spent years trying to learn how to be socially acceptable. Adjusting the knobs on my personality. How high up could I turn "weird/quirky" and still have some friends? What level of honesty results in the maximum number of approving nods? I created a confident and detached cool girl persona that worked for most situations. I could hang back and watch everyone else having fun with a vague air of smugness. A look that said I wasn't on the outside, I was above it all.

Dropping the cool girl has been hard. She got me through a lot of teasing and bullying when I was young. Yet each time I found a community where the social norms were closer to how I actually felt inside, it got a little easier. The steampunk community taught me how to embrace playing dress up as an adult. The kink community showed me it's ok to prioritize sexual exploration. The burning man community value radical self expression so much, it's one of their founding principles. The pagan community showed me the power in group ritual. All of these helped me find new pieces of myself and all of them were deeply embarrassing the first several times (or more) I tried them out.

I've embraced so many things that made my protective cool girl roll her eyes. I used to hate dancing in public. Now I dance naked around a fire. I used to be afraid to tell people I even had spiritual beliefs. Now I have a blog about channeling a goddess aspect of myself.

But fairies have always been where I drew the line. Tarot, sex magick, and talking about "emotions being trapped in your body" were edgy. I told my husband that if I became someone who believes in fairies, he needs to hold an intervention.

So how did I end up attending The Forest Fairy Festival?

It all started with deeply impactful workshop on Ecosexuality lead by Sarah Belzile at Starwood a few years ago. Sarah is a fellow Somatica Institute graduate and "professional forest fairy" who really helped me understand eco-erotism as a way to deepen my connection to spirit and to the earth. When I found out she was hosting a retreat at Red River Gorge in Kentucky, I overcame my fairy aversion for a chance to experience that connection in a deeper way.

This retreat was different than most sexuality themed events I've attended in the United States. It wasn't just that it was small (around 50 people) and outdoors. It was also the sort of event that I've heard people call "sex positive." A place where sexuality is present but not obligated. There's more focus on healing and community than on creating sexual experiences.

The first time I attended an event like this was a sex positive retreat in Germany. Later I did an in-person immersion with Somatica as part of my training. Both times I was surprised how unsettling I found it to be around so many embodied, emotionally present people. Instead of feeling relaxed and safe, I felt inadequate and exposed. Being around so many people who didn't seem to need my help, who were able to give me the same things I was giving other people, made me feel a lot of shame and insecurity.

That's the other thing they don't tell you about healing. Often the kind of people we are trying to become will make you feel uncomfortable when you're around them.

Despite the discomfort, those events helped me grow more and I wanted more. And I'm beginning to host these kinds of events in Cincinnati; I wanted to see how someone more experienced ran things.

It looked like it was time to get over my fairy aversion.

So I came the event with big hopes and some fairly big reservations about how well I would fit in with everyone. And I'm happy to say that my hopes were exceeded and my reservations misplaced.

I've grown a lot since my last sex positive event filled with embodied and intelligent people. I still felt a little insecure of course, but I also felt at home. Like I was with my peers. It was a joy to be able to talk about my work and my spiritual beliefs with people who shared the same language and relational understanding of the world.

As an example of how different this kind of a sexual event is, let's talk about consent. Every event of a sexual nature has some kind of consent policy. At minimum it's something along the lines of "Always ask, no means no, don't be pushy, tell someone on staff if you have a problem." More thoughtful events have included an event-wide ice breaker activity that teaches consent on a deeper level. Think Dr Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent.

As a comparison this is a photo of the consent and community guidelines of Forest Fairy:

Rather than prescribing what to do or not do, how to feel or not feel, at the event we were given a sheet with best practices for co-creating creating safe, sovereign and connected experiences at the event. Then we were each given a chance to discuss and practice these guidelines with another participant, shifting to a new partner after each guideline. The guidelines were nuanced, thoughtful, and based in reality. The leaders didn't create rules to try to create consent or prevent harm. This felt more like a map to finding embodied consent for yourself, with warnings about where the difficult terrain is found.

Because we all had the same map, we could help each other find the path we were looking for. Everyone's path looked different but it felt like we were all moving together. Trying to find a more lush, vibrant, and connected version of ourselves.

It's hard to describe the impact of being immersed in a community of 50 humans who are all working towards that goal. With that kind of a gathering, the community itself became the teacher. It wasn't just an activity in a workshop that showed me a new way to relate to people. It was conversations I had while walking to the workshop, the small talk I overheard waiting in line for food, the expressions on the faces of people relaxing together.

There wasn't anywhere outside the community for my cool girl to stand apart and judge it. It wasn't that she wasn't welcome, she just wasn't needed. What was I supposed to do with that?

I decided to find a new outer edge of acceptable behavior. Although I didn't come away from the event embracing my inner fairy, I did something much more embarrassing. I didn't just embrace my inner goddess, I let her loose on the event.

I initiated myself. I got naked and baptized myself in a stream. I flaunted my sexual energy while dancing alone. I recruited for Tonic's Free Range Consensual Harem. I gave a sermon where I told people what I really believe, shared what I really find arousing and why.

It was audacious and exhilarating and alive. There was nothing cool about it and I loved it.