Who am I? The age old question...

The story-time: I’ve never felt like I fully fit this world, always being too much, too emotional, too sexual, being a girl growing up with a sex drive stronger than most boys, with parents so irrevocably (and sometimes inappropriately) in love in a generation of divorce, being a horse girl that found it easier to understand animals more than people. It led me to developing a deep knowing for the fact that there is more to this world than most ever experience, and a deep curiosity for what it actually means to enjoy being human. And because of that knowing, and that curiosity, I’ve spent the last 8 years studying different modalities based around psychology, pleasure and play, but if I’m honest I’ve spent most of my life dedicated to it. Living it. Becoming it. Becoming what I needed when I was younger. Because it’s a calling, not just a career for me. It’s a combination of lived experiences and learning, it’s sex within both the body and the mind. Some would argue it started in kindergarten, when 5-year-old Chelsea was the one begging to play kiss chasey with the boys, more times than not being the one that was it. It was solidified when I was 15, lucky enough to be blessed with a beautiful boyfriend to share all my firsts with, and then passing on the knowledge to my friends at the time, teaching the difference between cut and uncut cocks, demonstrating how to give hand-jobs and encouraging them to explore their own bodies and pleasures. Though I didn’t start formally learning until my degree in psychology, which ultimately gave me the foundation I craved for understanding human behaviour. ​ ​ But it wasn’t enough. It was heavily focused on the negatives of life, of diagnosing and prescribing, and I wanted more - I wanted to understand why it is we fall in love, what makes human shimmer and glimmer, how art and pleasure and play are intrinsic parts of being human. I wanted the good stuff. Because there is so much good stuff! So, when I went to apply for psychology honours, the stars aligned, and I found sexology instead. It answered all the questions I didn’t know I was asking. Gave me the education and modality I was seeking. One genuinely based on person-centred care, that gave me the permission to connect authentically to my work and to my clients, to be the silly little bestie talking about sex to the people who want to listen or who have the questions. It was around this time that my educational experiences were solidified and put to the test through my lived experiences as I went through one of the roughest years of my life. My own big, bad, breakup, followed by losing most of my friends, selling our family home, and a cancer diagnosis within my family all at once. ​ ​ In hindsight, it broke me. But I’m proud of that fact, proud that I built myself and built my life back up from the start. That I skipped off to Europe and found myself for 3 months. That I had to lean into the things that I had learnt, the medicine and magic I had discovered. I went further than just the science now and instead into the spiritual, leading me on the path to self-love. I didn’t just dip my toes; I went skinny dipping into myself. I became the strong independent woman that didn’t need no man. Then over the years I realised that, yes, it’s important not to need a man… but it’s also completely okay to want one too. Because I do – I want it all, I want my light-eyed, dark-haired, smirky-mouthed Prince Charming. But for now, I am solo poly. I am a wholesome and hopeless romantic that just also happens to be a whore. Then I realised I’m queer too! And along the way I found myself a Princess Charming, my own twin flame and platonic soul mate, my missus that simultaneously is and isn’t my missus. ​ ​ I was blessed enough that my coming out story was never a moment where I ‘came out’ per say, but instead just an acceptance and acknowledgment when the jokes started about going for girls, and I never denied them. I was also lucky enough that my parents very rarely shamed me for my sexuality, that I was raised knowing what healthy love and sex looked like, always knowing that sex could and can be special. It also probably ignited my hopeless romantic side and deep desire for a love like that. Disney princesses probably didn’t help either. That’s not to say there weren’t hiccups and hitches when I hit puberty and my parents struggled with the idea of their little girl growing up. But years later, I’m now studying and teaching about sex as a career, and they couldn’t be prouder of me, or more understanding of me, and know that it’s their love that was a big part of the reason I got myself here. Knowing that I have become what I needed when I was young, someone that they (or no one) could be for me. As far as they got me, as more accepting than most parents, it was still never quite enough. It was the external factors, the not-immediate family members that actively shamed me, the sex education that told me girls got periods while boys got wet dreams, or that sex was something that happened to me rather than with me, the school system that meant I never knew I was queer until I was graduated, or the social and fairy tale conditioning that told me I wasn’t worth anything unless I was loved by a man. ​ ​ So, I said fuck it, and I became it. Someone full of self-love, and sass, and silliness, someone exploring sexual empowerment and liberation, someone embracing female sexuality outside of the expectation often put upon us of porn and procreation. A sexual and mental health advocate and enthusiast. Someone good at sex in both mind and body. Someone who respects that we as humans are a part of nature, made up of stardust and energy, and that souls go beyond the human species or the human experience. Someone who understands that communication is more than just the cognitive, beyond the wordy lyrics and the letters and instead into body language, into the animalistic, into communication that goes deeper, that doesn’t need words, communication between souls, and sometimes between souls that inhabit different species. Someone comfortable in their body and in their skin and in their sexuality. Someone that wanders between the worlds of spiritual and scientific. A somatic therapist and some sort of artist - living life in pursuit of pleasure and wellbeing, weaving art into my every day, into my words, into my body, and into my soul.