Jennifer Eve: Stir the Soul

Ross Tayler (00:55)

Today on Sacred Sundays, our guest is Jennifer Eve. She is a poet, newly published author, ecstatic dance DJ, playful sexuality and intimacy guide, sacred space holder, mother, wild woman, and deep soul diver.

She walks in the shadows with courage and brings it all into the light. Jennifer's work meets you at the intersection of desire and depth, where suppression ends and liberation begins. Her life has been perfectly crafted to face shame, and it's why she calls herself a shame shifter extraordinaire. And it's the work that has transformed her life. Through her movement, Eve of Global Grace, she shares this path with others, and her experience is rooted in the truth that our fullest, most authentic, most sensual expression can only emerge when we lovingly bring our shadows into the light. Welcome, Jennifer.

Jennifer Eve (01:49)

Thank you. It's good to be here.

Ross Tayler (01:50)

So happy to have you here for the conversation.

Jennifer Eve (01:53)

It's lovely.

Ross Tayler (01:55)

Jennifer is actually going to begin by sharing a poem with us, and the poem is called Stir My Soul.

Jennifer Eve (02:05)

[Jennifer reads her poem Stir My Soul, about two minutes]

Ross Tayler (04:00)

Beautiful.

Jennifer Eve (04:02)

Thank you.

Ross Tayler (04:04)

Is there anything you would like to say about that poem before I comment?

Jennifer Eve (04:08)

I think that, you know, it's one of the scariest things to go into the things that we consider ugly and unworthy of love, the things that will put other people off, the things we don't want to admit. But my experience is that it's been the most powerful liberating force of my life. And so that poem was really like a visual. Even though I'd reached this part of my life where I had a million reasons to be happy, there was still this pain that I was ignoring. If I was really honest, I needed to literally, or figuratively, get the flashlight and go down to the bottom of that well of what's been hiding down there for perhaps lifetimes. We can't even just say it's from this one lifetime. My visual is this swampy mess where the stones are lying in there. If you just lift one up, it's like, I didn't want to look at that, but I have the courage because I have enough love of myself now to do that.

Ross Tayler (05:18)

Yeah, it's definitely clear, the focus on the relationship between the light and the dark and how they coexist, and doing our shadow work and going into those hard to reach places and looking at the things we don't necessarily want to look at. Even though with shadow work, we're walking through the world and projecting it onto everyone we interact with in our relationships anyway, and we might not realize that we're doing that.

Jennifer Eve (05:45)

No, and I guess that becomes the most empowering thing. It's running your life, but you're not necessarily recognizing it fully. But I think more and more of us are getting that sense that you can't run from it.

Ross Tayler (06:00)

Absolutely. And in many ways it is the work. It's the core of the work. And it's so powerful when we realize that the fingers we're pointing at another, or the situations outside of ourselves, are actually something happening inside of us as well. And it's hugely liberating.

Jennifer Eve (06:20)

It makes all your relationships so much more real and deep. You can own the parts that you didn't want to admit were you before.

Ross Tayler (06:31)

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing that poem, it's beautiful.

Jennifer Eve (06:36)

Thank you.

Ross Tayler (06:38)

When I was looking at your bio, there were definitely a couple of things that jumped out at me. One of them was the energy of calling yourself a shame shifter extraordinaire, which is part of what we were just talking about. I kind of loved the playfulness of that. And I think it's Brené Brown who very clearly describes shame as the swampland of the soul, right? And that's where shame lives.

Jennifer Eve (07:04)

When I think about my own journey and life, I was 180 degrees opposite to who I am now. The word vulnerability was not even in my vocabulary. The word intimacy was not in my vocabulary. I had a very closed heart. I lived very closed up. And life crafted the greatest situations to bring the shame out. I tried to run from it as many times as I could, but I just got it glared back in my face so many times. I think life does that to you, where you're given the same situation enough times that you either stay in the pain, and you're consciously staying in the pain at that point, or it's like, okay, I'm going to take the lesson and finally shift. And for me, it was shame shifting. It was, stop letting the power be in someone else's hands, that someone else is going to shame me. And because I already felt that way about myself, it was very easy to be shamed, right? Because I agreed. I was like, yeah, I'm a horrible person, I'm a disgusting person, I'm this, I'm that. So who am I to argue with that? And then there was this quietest soul whisper in me that started to give me a sense of, you're worthy, you're worthy no matter what you've done. It was such a tiny voice that I had to start to listen to it more than the other voices. And so yeah, the shame shifting happened organically over time.

Ross Tayler (08:38)

And I find that guilt and shame are interrelated energetically, but they're very different energetically. So I'm wondering, how would you define shame as opposed to guilt? Because I think we mix them up a lot.

Jennifer Eve (08:51)

Yeah, I think I've understood that shame is more like you're saying, I'm a horrible person. You're taking that incident and you're making it mean something about you as an entire human. And guilt is like you can separate it. Yes, I've done something wrong, but it doesn't make me an entirely despicable human being. So I think that's how it's made sense to me over the last while. Do you agree with that?

Ross Tayler (09:16)

Yeah, I totally agree. That's well said. And what would you say to someone that's like, it's so hard to go there, it's so hard to go into these pieces? Because effectively, like what you were saying, our inner critic is the voice of our shame.

Jennifer Eve (09:38)

Yeah, it is hard. I almost feel like you're ready when you're ready, in some ways. I don't know if you can do it any earlier than when the impulse finally arises, but knowing that it's an option and knowing it exists, and having the tools around you so that you're ready to pick up the tool when you're ready. Sometimes I think having a good circle to join, where it's normalized that everyone's doing that work, probably makes a really great entry point. And if you're resisting that, it's almost like just loving your resistance. I think everything is about loving. So your inner critic might be saying, I hate shadow work, it's so stupid. If you can step outside that voice and be like, I love how resistant I am to shadow work, gosh, I'm trying my best and I have a lot of resistance and I'm going to honor that. That softens everything. It's coming from more love.

Ross Tayler (10:41)

Yeah, because it's a journey for sure. And you mentioned being in circle. That's where I, through men's work and men's circles, learned so much about my shadow and also my shame. The other thing I wanted to highlight from what you said is that there are other areas. I think about the relationship between shame and our power, and shame and our creativity, and how it really suppresses our expression in so many ways. What would you want to say about that?

Jennifer Eve (11:15)

That's interesting for me. I don't know if I feel that so much, because as a poet, I was able to create from those angry, embarrassed or ashamed places. But that was me. Sometimes an artist's biggest creativity is from their pain, so that can happen. I think that your creativity and your expression just get more refined. The more work you do, the more wisdom, the more gifts you have to share because you're on the other side of it. But it's nice to be an artist that somebody can relate to. My poetry book spans decades, and I chose to include a chapter one from my twenties, a chapter two from my thirties and forties, and a chapter three into my fifties now, because I think what's almost most valuable is the journey. I can be very hard on myself, and that's probably why the journey took such a long time for me. If I see someone living their best life now, I'm okay with that. But at a time when I was less embodied in my authentic strength, that was very triggering, to see someone doing the thing, which is obviously part of that shadow work, right? Seeing someone do that thing and not knowing how long it took, what the process was, what their life story was and how they got through it, is hard. I like to see the whole story so that I can say, I could do that too, because look how hard their life was, and look at the resistance and the negative talk they had. So I think the fact that I have my twenties in there, when I was legitimately stuck in it, writing about the pain, shows how much of a process it is to unfold. And for me it was a lifetime.

Ross Tayler (13:12)

And for some of us, we may feel like late bloomers, but it literally is the experience that we're going through that informs everything that we bring out into the world. So both are valuable.

Jennifer Eve (13:25)

It's true. Late bloomer has been a big piece for me, because I was maybe 46 or 47 when I left a very toxic, abusive relationship that I stayed in for 20-ish years. My first take on it was disappointment. Why did it take me so long? And now I'm this age. I was upset with myself in some ways, even though I was starting to cultivate the practice of more love [?] and understanding and compassion. And then I was blessed with a Human Design reading. There's something very soothing when you're told, this is your timeline. You're one of those people that literally comes off the roof and typically finds your love and your soulmate at 48 or 50. And that was exactly my timeline. It took the weight off the judgment and gave me permission to be on my timeline.

On top of that, a few other things have helped me make more peace with my timeline. I've had some past life work done, and it's undeniable that it was addressing things that I've been living in this lifetime and didn't know where they had come from. So it was very easy for me after one of the readings to say, this is not me bushwhacking through one lifetime of difficulties. This is lifetimes. So give yourself some bleeping credit and time, and honor that this is lifetimes of a victim mentality that takes time to overcome. So that was a real blessing. And I also love being in my fifties. I've had other beautiful lightworkers and spirit workers saying, you know, when we arrived in the early seventies, it was a very different world and we were raised in a very different way. So in some ways we were literally bushwhacking. To be standing where I am now and saying, it took me 30 years to realize what maybe a 30-year-old is understanding, that's just the way of the evolution of this divine feminine rising, and it being an inkling of an idea 30 years ago, and now it being a conversation.

Ross Tayler (15:43)

Absolutely. I was laughing because when I was saying late bloomers, I was speaking about Human Design without naming Human Design, because I'm a 6/2 profile as well. So I was picking up on that, I guess, because that's the journey we go through, right? We go through those three phases that line up with our Saturn return. And I can relate. When I hit 50, it just made so much sense. I could feel myself stepping into that wisdom phase. And I'm still going through stuff, I'm still learning. And like you mentioned with past life stuff, I had a reading last week that revealed a bunch of stuff, and I was like, oh my gosh. I was aware of it. I could feel this undercurrent that's been working under the surface. And to have that message, it was just like, okay, now it makes sense why there's so much resistance underneath.

Jennifer Eve (16:33)

Yeah, it's amazing. So I'm exactly a 6/2 as well. That's funny. And the past life thing, I had relationship struggles, deep, ugly relationship struggles that I couldn't make sense of in this lifetime. And when they connected the dots to another lifetime, it again lifted off all this pressure. Amazing.

Ross Tayler (16:59)

And it's hard to go through those things, because ultimately we're wired for connection, we're wired to be in partnership in some way. I can speak from my own experience. When I've been in those situations in relationships that are very hard, and I hear this story a lot, like what you said, it's sad to spend that much time. We lose ourselves completely. I'm blessed that I had shorter experiences like that, not the longer ones, but they still erode your sense of knowing who you are, to the point of having to rebuild from scratch a lot of the time. And then of course there's the shame that comes from, how did I allow myself to be in that situation? I was in a situation where I left, I think, four or five times and went back, went back, went back. And afterwards I was like, why did I do that? One time I actually left the island, because I was on the island at that point, and I still came back.

Jennifer Eve (17:58)

Yeah, it's fascinating. I'm grateful for my experience now, in this interesting way, because I recognize the amount of resistance I had to self-love. There was so much resistance that I feel like I chose a very difficult relationship that was going to, like I said, blame and shame me. Their shadow wasn't integrated either, so everything that I felt about myself was just going to be shown a thousand times harder. I recognize I did that. I don't know if I could have woken up to my self-worth otherwise. You have to be pushed to this point where it's like, what the actual fuck is going on? I can't possibly deserve to be treated this way. And then suddenly there's a switch that's finally flipped. For me, it had to take a lot of moments like that for me to wake up. And I do agree. I hear a lot of people say that the training ground is a toxic, really painful relationship.

Ross Tayler (19:04)

Yeah. And you mentioned both self-love and self-worth, and I'm curious what you want to say about that. A lot of people I talk to, and even in my own journey, it feels elusive. Maybe it's because of the perception that we might have about what self-love is supposed to feel like or look like. So what would you say about self-love and self-worth, and maybe the difference between the two, and how we might relate to it in a more flowing way?

Jennifer Eve (19:33)

Yeah, it's true. It felt very elusive to me, that one and self-trust. I got out of those relationships and I'm like, I don't even know what any of this means, but I feel like I'm supposed to do it. I think the biggest thing these things mean to me now is, I am caring for myself and I'm not going to betray myself or abandon myself. We each get familiar with what our scariest core wound is. And I feel like if you love yourself, you're taking care of those wounds and you're not going to keep putting yourself back in situations where you're unsafe. That's demonstrating how much you love yourself, how much you revere yourself, and that you're worthy of being taken care of and being safe.

What I recognized from that long relationship is that it's really an abandonment that you don't even know you're doing, over and over. Whether you trace that back to your family in this lifetime or some other lifetime, how often were you betrayed that it's just a theme? You wouldn't know anything else. You just keep putting yourself in places where you're uncomfortable, but you don't even know you're uncomfortable because you're just not familiar enough with a baseline of safety.

So somehow maybe they're all tied together for me, the love and the worthiness and the trust. It's about putting myself first in this healthy way that isn't selfish, but is really self-caring. Even right now, with the love of my life, I finally fell in love for the first time, in this life for sure, and who knows how many lifetimes, and I was 48. It's beautiful and it feels like this divine sacred union. But I know that I will always put myself first. And if it's ever not supporting my growth and evolution, then I will lovingly step away from it. That's a shift in me that is a world of difference from who I would have been.

Ross Tayler (21:46)

I love how you describe that. I think on that journey of losing ourselves, part of the confusion that I remember experiencing, and I think you've said it, is, why would someone be like this? I don't understand this behavior. And it's also rooted in this belief that I must be able to change this, I must be able to help this person, and then really realizing that there was nothing we could do. That pattern, I guess, is born early in our lives, in terms of trying to externalize a way of getting love. And yet it doesn't work, because we need to love ourselves, and that's eventually the piece that we get to. And loving ourselves looks like, I'm going to set a boundary and I'm going to speak my truth, and even if that causes further strife, I can't not. But the journey to get there is quite an interesting journey, because it goes against everything we thought was the right way to be in the world, right? So it's so confronting.

Jennifer Eve (22:51)

Yeah, it really is. Perhaps it's the really empathetic, compassionate soul that just wants to see the best in the other, and understands why they're behaving in these ways that are painful to you, and keeps trying. But I think the beautiful sign, if you're in a challenging dynamic with a partner, is when you claim your self-love and your self-worth and you put up a boundary: can it be honored? In those toxic situations, that's so jarring to the person. How dare you put up a boundary? It just shows you right away that you can't grow. You can't heal together. And when I see couples who have gone through the pain and are both able to start a healing journey together, I'm like, wow, that's a special path too, to be able to actually heal where you are both in so much pain.

Ross Tayler (23:51)

Right. And I think it's one or the other, really. I remember in that relationship specifically, I was already doing shadow work. I was already aware of the formula. But I also saw that there was a willingness on my side, but not a willingness on the other. And I always thought, if we could just be conscious about this together, we could probably work through this, right? But some personality types or some core wounding just does not allow for that. Sometimes you can work on it on your side and it shifts the other person, but other times not. But I always had this vision of, wow, if two people were conscious and having these conversations and working these things out, it would be such a beautiful dynamic, because we're actually aware of what we're seeing in the other person and helping each other instead of being triggered by each other.

Jennifer Eve (24:44)

Yeah, exactly. And there might be some mainstream counseling ideas that I've heard that say, as long as one person is doing the work. But I don't see that as a very realistic way, because it's so painful if you're the one doing the work. That's a lot of work. And then you're still betraying yourself, because you're accepting some behavior that you know isn't fair.

Ross Tayler (25:10)

I wonder if the paradigm there is actually that when we do our work on our side, it clarifies what really needs to happen. In other words, we can focus on the other person and point fingers and try and change them. But when we change ourselves, the road that we need to travel becomes very clear, because that person on the other side is not going to come with us, inevitably.

Jennifer Eve (25:31)

Yeah. So it clarifies that it just might be time to walk away.

Ross Tayler (25:37)

Yeah. You mentioned, again in your profile, the suppression, and then when that ends, we become liberated. So what is it that you think is being suppressed, and what is it that emerges when that suppression is no longer there?

Jennifer Eve (25:53)

I think there are so many different things, and everybody has their specifics in their own story, but you're suppressing all the things you think are unworthy and unlovable and shameful. Let's use the sisterhood wound as an example for me. I've had that my whole life, this really painful, jarring feeling. And for so long I felt ashamed that I would feel that, because intellectually I know it's unfair, it's untrue, and we're all doing our best. But about three years ago, I decided to name it, instead of suppressing it and pretending I don't have it and acting like I've just got it all together. I started to admit that I felt it, and I wrote poems about it. I gave myself permission to not have it all together and not be perfect, and maybe have someone else go, oh my god, she still feels that way, and to not care about any of that.

And I've seen such a transformation in a few years because I stopped shoving it down and pretending. How I see it is, because I named it, I brought it out of the darkness. It didn't mean it stopped triggering me, but I was more loving and compassionate when it did trigger me. And I was more able to work with it, with all the tools of self-love and not abandoning myself. And so now it's created distance, so that it's not a really big pain point. And if it is, I've learned all these wonderful lessons because I chose to name it. What I've learned is that for me, if that is a trigger, it's because I've fallen out of my center. I've fallen out of loving my own authentic, unique expression, and I'm feeling like I'm just a nobody. So of course, when someone else is shining their light, it triggers me, because I'm not shining mine.

And then of course it's liberation, because I'm no longer pretending anything or shoving it down. Now that I've named it, if it comes up and I feel it, I'm not ashamed that I feel it. I'm not embarrassed. It's part of life. It's things like that, that I've just gone in and started naming and bringing up into the light. And as long as they're not shoved down, they're not doing the same damage that they were doing for me when they were unconscious.

Ross Tayler (28:25)

Absolutely. You're making me think of my connection with men's work and how long it took me to even trust the men. Even though I conceptually loved the idea of sitting in circle with other men, there was all the wounding that had happened at the hands of other men that was real. It wasn't just the shadows that I was projecting. There were real experiences. But to realize, these are actually loving, caring, kind men that want to support each other, and that's not the old paradigm. It's so healing, right? For me, it's been about 14 years of sitting in circles, and it continues to blow my mind, the things that are possible when we let go of those old shadows and pain bodies.

Jennifer Eve (29:11)

Yeah. And I think part of why I wasn't comfortable naming things or admitting them is, well, even in my book or the poem I just read, I'm admitting my jealousy and my pettiness and my fears. And you feel like you should have it together, because intellectually you know it doesn't have to be that way. So you feel like, I should know this by now, I should have this together by now. And for me, that's all shaming the shame, right? We've got to stop. I'm so good at that. We're already upset with the way we're behaving, and now I'm upset that I'm upset with the way I'm behaving. It's never-ending. So that's really special to remember. If you just start to catch the patterns that you have, and you can just love the fact that you're upset with yourself now, that softens it, right? It's all these layers of habit and pattern.

Ross Tayler (30:13)

So I'm super curious about your work as an intimacy guide, because I've had some conversations recently about that, and I feel like there's a lot of suppression in our intimacy in our relationships, in being intimate but also being sexual. There's a lot of shadow there, culturally. If I think of my own history, it's something I haven't talked about in partnership: the lack of knowledge that I might have, or the lack of experience, and just kind of fumbling through it, because to talk about that requires being vulnerable, requires being seen. So I just have all this curiosity about what you've witnessed, what drives you in that work, and what message you might share with listeners around that, because I think there's a lot of work to be done in that realm, based on what I've experienced alone.

Jennifer Eve (31:10)

Yeah, so much work. For me, I really am in this work now because I was always a very sexually precocious child, teen and young adult. And I recognized, okay, I have this ability to be sexual when it's anonymous, when I don't know the person. But when I had to connect with a partner that was supposedly my lover, I had this crazy block, because I didn't know how to be vulnerable. I didn't even know what intimacy meant. I couldn't get my head around it. And so part of my long, challenging relationship was that I couldn't bring my whole self to the table. I was so splintered.

And when I met my love now, where it's this healthy, vulnerable, intimate, divine love, I wanted to share what I'm learning in real time. Part of it for me as a woman was that there's such wounding and such a freezing and such a numbing that goes on in our bodies. So we might have a lovely, beautiful love, but we're not tapping into our sexuality. We don't know how to express it. We just keep getting stuck in our heads. We keep going back to, is this good enough? I don't know what I'm doing. What's happening? I don't know what I'm feeling. And so I was drawn to put together all the tools that have helped me to move from, I call it, neurotic to erotic.

Ross Tayler (32:43)

[laughs]

Jennifer Eve (32:44)

Because it's all that stuff that sticks us up in our heads, you know? And my tools are everything from twerking is for everyone, to meet your wounds and love them back into the light, or vulnerability is your superpower. And on the lighter side, wearing the beautiful clothes or the sexy clothes that you save for the party once every few months. It's a whole array. But I think it's about a conversation of bringing sexual intimacy back into your own body first. Do you know what you like? Do you know how to turn yourself on? Can you use your voice with your partner? A lot of us are relying on our partners to spark us erotically. I'm not really in the mood, hopefully my partner can get me in the mood. So part of it is putting the responsibility back on you, to know how to communicate your wants and your needs, and to know how to keep your own life sexy and juicy and alive.

So I think the intimacy piece is, I'm just so passionate about having the difficult conversations, about holding yourself in love and saying the thing. When I left my long-term challenging partnership, the one vow I made to myself in those first few months was, I will from now on say the thing I need to say, as uncomfortable as it is. I will say that thing instead of shoving it down. At the beginning, I would literally have to work myself up before I made the call, and I would choke. I would stumble over the words, and they would literally feel like they were choked up in my throat. But of course, over time, it gets easier. And now if I have something to say, it's just easy, easy, easy. And to me, that's probably the basis of intimacy with yourself and another.

And then the other playful sexuality course I've made is From Nagging to Shagging, because in longer-term partnerships, or even when you first start dating someone, as soon as you start feeling comfortable enough, you might start noticing, they do this differently than I would, I wish they did this thing this way. I personally didn't want to get caught back in the whole nagging dynamic, or being resentful of somebody else. So I turned it into an inquiry for myself. How can I approach sharing with my partner that I wish he might consider doing some of these things in a certain way, but do it in a playful way that's not nagging? And it had to do with tapping into your own sexual dynamics, what turns you on, and how you could create a character that's more playful. So I think it's keeping it playful and honest and vulnerable, which most of us have not been raised to do when meeting our sexuality.

Ross Tayler (35:36)

I mean, it's not like we get any training. I didn't. I think we were all just fumbling our way through it in the dark, trying to do what we think we're supposed to do, or what we've seen on TV. And it's sad really, because there's so much more available. At least that's my belief.

Jennifer Eve (35:53)

Yeah, so much more. As I've been healing in real time, my body is waking up from what I would say was the lockdown of trauma and numbness. And I think so many women, I can speak for women, I know that's where the trauma sits, right? That's our center, our erotic center, and so many of us are cut off from it. So it's like, how do we even begin to feel safe in our bodies? There are so many layers and steps.

Ross Tayler (36:26)

Yeah. Not to go down a Human Design tangent, but a lot of people's design is to be able to say yes or no from an embodied place. And that in-the-body yes or no is not accessible because of all the noes that haven't been expressed, right? I feel it so deeply when people share that. It's like, I don't know how to gauge that.

And when I think about everything you were saying, one of the things that comes up for me as a man, working in men's groups and hearing the conversations, is that there's a language that we can't necessarily interpret. When our partner says, I'd like you to initiate, we might not know what to do with that or understand what that really means. To understand that what you're saying is, you're tired of holding the energy of taking action, you'd like to be more in your flow, and you would like me to hold that energy, because you're exhausted from being the one to initiate. Not many of us know that language or understand what's being said. So the nagging to shagging, I think, is so brilliant, because that's what you're talking about, I believe.

Jennifer Eve (37:40)

Yeah, because with language, you think you're communicating something, but... My partner doesn't mind if I share this, but he keeps his home in a very different way than I would, and it's a very chaotic, messy place for me. At the beginning I didn't want to ruffle feathers, and I didn't want to say anything. But over time I was like, okay, I care enough about myself, and we're close enough, that I could start to just mention things. But I could see it wasn't computing, that it was affecting me in a certain way. Because I didn't want to get into that dynamic, I thought, okay, I've wanted to explore a more dominant position in our sexuality, which is not my go-to way to be. So what if I give myself this challenge?

And if you pay attention to your dynamics with your partner, you get a sense of what your partner finds sexy or juicy that maybe triggers you, because you're not really doing that. There's a lot of gold you could discover in the dynamics when you investigate. So I took on the challenge to create a character where I could be more dominant. Instead of coming into the house and going, oh my God, you didn't do the dishes, this place is disgusting, I'm so sick of this, and then feeling crappy too, I would have a certain costume, dress up, and be able to say it in a way that was very sexy. I was actually still saying the same thing, but it was so satisfying. And he's like, that was hot. And then he's doing the dishes.

Ross Tayler (39:14)

[laughs]

Jennifer Eve (39:16)

I have a disclaimer in the course saying it's not guaranteed that your partner will change. But at the very least, it gave me, and I would give someone else, a place to defuse some of that pressure, because you turn it into something playful. And then often things can shift. I know in my challenging relationship, I was on the receiving end of a lot of nagging. So what do you do? You shut down. You're like, I'm not good enough, I'm never going to be good enough. And why would I want to change now, because someone's yelling at me about it? That doesn't help you change. So that was another piece I had: you only want to change if you're feeling a lot of love and support, and your life isn't riding on it, and your relationship is not going to end if you don't change. Those are really uncomfortable things to try to put into a relationship.

Ross Tayler (40:06)

And playful energy cuts through so much, right? It's almost a superpower in and of itself. When we can play, it just lightens things up.

Jennifer Eve (40:12)

Yes.

Ross Tayler (40:16)

And you're also reminding me of the complexities of what's actually going on in relationship. I think of a situation similar to what you're describing, where for years my mental health was contingent upon having a clean kitchen. For me, if I start the day and walk into a clean kitchen, that means I'm going to make a healthy breakfast for myself, and all of these things are really helpful to my way of being in the world. And I got confronted with someone who was not that. What I didn't realize was that the not that was a byproduct of a not good relationship that created it. Let's put it that way. So all of a sudden, when I was pushing for things that helped my mental health, I actually became the perpetrator and didn't realize it. I became the reflection of that old behavior this person was used to, and that became another layer of a problem that didn't reveal itself early enough. And then all of a sudden I was like, if I had known that, I would have been more understanding, I would have been more compassionate. At least I'd like to believe I would have been. It wasn't like we were fighting over it anyway. For me, it was just really hard to be in that situation. So there's so much going on that if it's invisible, we can't shift it or we can't acknowledge it.

Jennifer Eve (41:32)

Yeah, exactly. I can see that for sure. When you're trying to communicate the thing, if you don't know the deeper issues or triggers of your partner, it's like speaking an entirely different language to that person, and it's triggering some old wounding.

The other piece that I appreciate about From Nagging to Shagging, or something along those lines, is that it brings this playfulness that you're mentioning. We lost the innocence of sexuality. We lost the playfulness. I know I did for a really long time. When I think back to children and childhood, that's playful. And when we get to be adults and we're trying to explore sexuality, there is a space where it's supposed to be play. We call them toys, we call them playrooms. There's a space a lot of us lost, because of shame and because of not being guided well as children. We lost the playfulness. So now we get to bring it back, and there's a level of innocence, and it's really healing.

Ross Tayler (42:37)

And then there are the deeper layers. On my own journey, I experienced sexual abuse, and that has an impact as well. That creates a whole narrative and a whole belief system. And I think so many of us have our own version of that story, so there's all of that underneath as well. It's so complex, right? So as an intimacy guide, I imagine you're helping to unravel so much of that and create safety and playfulness so that the true essences can emerge.

Jennifer Eve (43:06)

Yeah. Safety is the key foundation, right? Because so many of us have come from that type of trauma and abuse, or our whole culture is traumatic sexually. The messages we're sending men or women, or porn, or whatever it is, it's all very traumatic. You have to be able to speak and own the trauma for yourself, and then to find the safety, to create the safety, and to create it with a partner, is the beginning. Because of what I was coming from, I didn't understand safety until I felt it. And then I was like, wow, that's everything. That's the key to everything. Because then you can unfold and blossom and bloom and feel and make mistakes and say silly things, or be awkward, or be whatever you need to be.

Ross Tayler (44:03)

Without thinking it's going to cost you the relationship.

Jennifer Eve (44:05)

Yeah. Because that's where we suppress, unconsciously. It's like, oh, if I say that or do that or ask for this, that could be really weird, and he or she might think I'm weird, so I'll just shove it down. And then nothing ever grows.

Ross Tayler (44:17)

Right. Whereas the flip side is actually strengthening the relationship by being vulnerable and being honest and communicating.

Jennifer Eve (44:25)

Yeah, because that's ultimately what I've come to understand, even when it comes to kinky things. In our culture everything is so extreme. Some people are afraid of kink because they think it must mean you're tied up on some cross with nipple clamps and extreme pain or whatever. That's one end of the spectrum. But kinky things can often just be a childhood behavior you had that wasn't okay when you were a kid. Some kids were biters, and they'd be in trouble: go to your room, because you just bit Timmy. It wasn't understood, and they shove it down, but it's a real turn on for them. For a long time you wouldn't bring it to a partner, because you were shamed as a child and it's just gone underground. You wouldn't even know to bring it up. But once you do, and your partner's like, thanks for sharing that, that sounds fun, or let's set up what would be comfortable for both of us, wow, your whole world turns around. You've just brought some shame into the light, and you're having a great time, and you're turned on, and your partner thinks it's so great that you have this thing that you shared. It changes everything.

Ross Tayler (45:33)

Wow. All right, Jennifer, we're at that place where we could continue going down all these roads. And I always love this moment in the podcast, because I like to keep it fairly narrow, and it feels good to be at that place of having so many things we could still explore. I think it's always good to leave people wanting more. So I always close with the same question, and I'll ask that question of you, which is: what's one simple way someone could connect with the sacred today?

Jennifer Eve (46:05)

Lovely. Well, I'll choose something that's right down my path, and that would be stream of consciousness writing. Open a journal, get out your pen, sit somewhere cozy and beautiful and start writing. And when you don't know what you're writing, just keep writing. If you write without thinking and just let your hand keep going for a couple of minutes, things are going to come up that you maybe didn't know you needed to think about or feel. My journal practice of over 30 years has been the most sacred way that I've connected with my soul's journey on earth.

Ross Tayler (46:45)

I love that, thank you.

Jennifer Eve (46:47)

You're welcome.

Ross Tayler (46:50)

Well, Jennifer, it's been great to have you on the podcast. Where's the best place for listeners to find you? I know you mentioned your book. Is there anything you want to say about your book? And all the links you share will be in the show notes.

Jennifer Eve (47:01)

Okay, great. Everything I'm doing is on my website: there are links to my book, DJing events and courses that you can purchase. My book's also on Amazon. So go to my website.

Ross Tayler (47:18)

Awesome. Well, it was great to meet you and to have this conversation. Thank you for sharing all that you did. It was a lot of fun.

Jennifer Eve (47:27)

Thank you, it was great to meet you too.