With the close of 2011 and the birth of 2012, I can’t help but breath a sigh of relief that I am here. Finally here. It has been a year of challenges and blessings. And I am so thankful that the anticipation of my new memoir is, for the most part, now behind me!

Since Beauty, Disrupted was published in October, I have traveled to New York and paid my dues on the talk show circuit. Despite the obvious and consistently anticipated questions regarding my ‘previous lifetime’ I have been thrilled with the greater discussions my book has elicited.

Anne and I on the Today Show

I will never forget being backstage in the ‘green room’ of the Today Show. I had about an hour before I was to go on live with Anne Curry, so my PR team used that time to schedule a phone interview with a women’s magazine. I had sat across from journalist after journalist and  been asked again and again about my first marriage. The questions were all the same, and I was beginning to wonder if anyone had bothered to read any other sections in my book! I would try to meet each question as if they were the first brilliant person to ask me but towards the end of my tour I was becoming a bit exasperated. Finally, in that green room phone call, a lovely British gal dropped the bomb;

“So Carré, I know what everyone is asking. But what I want to ask you is about something else in your book.” She giggled.

“Please do”, I replied, eager to hear what had her so excited.

“Can we please talk about the orgasm?” she roared.

Finally! I thought to myself. At last, someone wants to dive in to the good stuff! I laughed out loud.

“Thank you! Finally someone wants to talk about the ORGASM! Oh my goodness, lets please do!”

That was the first of many future conversations I’ve been able to have around sexuality since the book was published.  In Beauty, Disrupted, I note that I never had an orgasm with my first husband or with any other lover.  It was not until I met Matthew, and did some intense and important inner work, that I at last got to the place where I could experience that level of intimacy with another human being.  It was a tremendous breakthrough.

Hearing other women’s reactions to my story showed me how much hunger there is to talk about “the orgasm.”  This now seems to be the wonderful centerpiece of almost every interview and conversation I have with women in response to my book. It’s as if the invitation has been accepted and there is no turning back. From women in my Pilates class who have been married 30 years and have always faked an orgasm to girls in their teens and 20’s who have never experienced orgasm (even by themselves), left and right I seem to be engaged in one of the most exciting, insightful and honoring dialogues of my life!

Here’s a shameless plug: if I have lost any of you here, please go and buy yourself a copy of my memoir! Part of my journey I share is about recovering sexual intimacy. I decided to be bold and to write about this because almost every woman I know has experienced some aspect of sexual dysfunction. (Can we even call it that?) Many of us have, unfortunately, endured sexual abuse in some form or another. And on my path of healing, although I have recovered from so much, that last door of sexual recovery was perhaps the most terrifying one through which I had to walk.

As a result of these conversations, I am focusing my energies on a new book on this subject.  I am excited about taking this dialogue about sex — and the Big O — a step  further.  It’s time to tell the stories that aren’t getting told.  It’s time to write about how we stop being performers and start learning how to accept pleasure.  We all deserve to be in loving and intimate relationships — first and foremost with ourselves, and then with a partner if we so choose.

Here is to a prosperous and safe 2012, full of love and clarity and healing for all!