Sensual, Not Sexual
This week’s spill: let’s get intimate.
Reading music 🎧: Naked by MALIA
*When this song played during my massage, this piece came into my mind*
When you’ve spent years over functioning — holding, planning, carrying — it takes your body a minute to realize you’ve changed the game plan. Like your body doesn’t know what to do with the silence after you stop managing everything.
I’ve been softening my grip on things, giving myself permission not to fix or anticipate every little detail and I found myself this weekend: not sad, not tired exactly, just… at a wall.
In the pursuit of “auto-pilot” I forgot to tell my body that I updated the user manual.
It was a normal Sunday, I had my biweekly lash appointment, but I woke up feeling disconnected. My brain was still dedicated to whimsy, but my body was still in grind mode.
It’s like I needed to connect my head back to the rest of me and I needed to do it fast.
So I booked a massage. Not as a treat, but as a reintroduction.
A quick 30 minute hello. Just me, semi-naked, a warm table, the smell of oil, and R&B in the background.
As the masseuse wiped my back with a hot towel, I didn’t feel just relaxed, I felt in tune. I felt alive and and dare I say, I felt sensual.
And to be clear — when I say sensual, I don’t mean inherently sexual.
But somewhere between my shoulders unclenching and my breath finding its rhythm, I remembered that sensuality is just intimate attention.
Attention that asks nothing of you. Like the warmth of tea between your lips, the texture of clean sheets, the way lotion sinks into skin after a shower.
It’s not indulgent — it’s data.
A reminder I’m a woman who gets to feel.
Feel sexy. Feel rejuvenated. Feel tended to.
That massage was the first time in a minute I wasn’t performing care — I was in it. Skin, sound, breath, all of it. And once I let myself feel, I realized how much I’d been missing it. The weight of my own body. The sound of my own breathing. The privilege of being here.
I’ve noticed a lot of articles on here have viewed sensuality through the lens of self pleasure or sex.
Valid channels. 😋
But I implore you explore the sensuality in solitude.
It’s quieter, heavier, and delicious in the best way.
It’s when you stop “doing” and realize your body has been waiting for you — not someone else — to notice her.
So next time, you shower, throw on your favorite love song, light a candle, and let the water hit every part of you that’s been waiting for attention.
Exhale.
XX
LVE
“The spill” - a recurring series that is exactly what it sounds like. Dating stories, messy moments, confessions I maybe shouldn’t say out loud but… here we are. This is the part of wine night where someone says, “okay, so don’t judge me, but—”.