Clearing the Nightstands: Somatic Reclamation & Taking His Body Back

The response to my last journal entry was profound. I sat here on the sidelines and just let it all sink in. Y'all really heard me. We talked about the medical mistrust, the quiet fears our men hold, and that ultimate boundary of shame.

 But knowing the why isn't enough. We need the how. 

 I said I was going to use this month to clear off the nightstands and chip away at this shame, and I meant it. You cannot protect a body you do not understand, and you certainly cannot heal what you refuse to look at or touch. It is time for what I call Somatic Reclamation—the radical act of taking our bodies back from the fear and getting deeply connected to how they actually work. 

 I was going to write pages and pages about product toxicity, skin permeability, fabric choices and the anatomy of the perineum, prostate and anus. Some things you just need to see and hear.

 So, I put my pen down and decided to talk. Get comfortable, drop your guard, and hit play on the recordings below. Let's get into it.

To explore safer options right now on your own time, click the link below to view my independent recommendations.\

View My Curated Shopping List

                                                                                                                                                                      

Ready to experience a completely judgment-free upgrade?

Navigating luxury, non-toxic products, anatomical tools, and intimate care shouldn't happen in a sketchy adult store or a confusing internet search. Let me guide you. I host private, Curated Shopping Gatherings for couples and trusted co-ed groups, as well as private Virtual Sessions to help you find exactly what your body and your relationship dynamic need.

How to get started: Look to the right side of this page and follow the instructions on how to connect with me. 

To explore safer options right now on your own time, click the link below to view my independent recommendations. View My Curated Shopping List

Musing from the Sidelines: On My Father’s Tears, My Homeboys' Fears, and the Black Male Body

June is here, and my mind is just incredibly heavy. Father's Day, Pride, Juneteenth, Men's Health Month... and honestly, just living. Everywhere I look right now, corporate marketing is just loud. The celebrations are in full swing, and the world is moving so fast. I seriously cannot believe June is already upon me! But while all this celebration and awareness is happening out there, I keep finding myself sitting on the sidelines, just thinking. Thinking about all the beautiful Black men in my life and those I’ve crossed paths with at some point along this journey. I see them. In ways that I simply can't put into words. I love them. Simple. That's it.

When you love, you care. You assist. You protect. So as I sit here writing in my journal, my hope is that the people reading this can actually feel my love and hear me louder than the silent crisis that is quietly drowning our men out. I guess this is just a segment of my love letter to you, Black man.

I’ve been sitting here really thinking about what it actually means to care for a Black man's body. I see how society just consumes them, builds whole industries off them, and expects them to be completely indestructible, but rarely does anyone actually check on their internal wellness. Social media algorithms are so fucked up, too. I watch friends vent about their men, and suddenly their whole feed is showing hate... video after video. I’m thankful my algorithm is the opposite. I have the feed of a hopeful romantic lol.

What We Were Taught About Cleanliness… But Not Touch

A lot of us grew up being told to stay clean, smell good, and be presentable… while simultaneously being taught that touching our own bodies was something shameful.

That contradiction shaped how many of us learned—or didn’t learn—our bodies.

As a young girl, I remember quietly trying to figure things out on my own. I would go into people’s bathrooms, open cabinets, and look through products trying to understand what could help me smell “better.”

A nosey ass kid. Lol.

But looking back, I realize I wasn’t just being nosey.

I was searching for answers.

No one really explained my body to me. When I got my cycle, I wasn’t fully prepared for the changes happening to me—new scents, new moisture, new insecurities. So like many young girls, I started trying to “fix” my body before I ever learned it.

That confusion followed me into my teenage years. I used feminine sprays and heavily scented products thinking they would make me “cleaner,” not realizing some of those products were disrupting my body more than helping it.

What became clear to me was that this affected how I experienced touch.

There were moments in my adult life where I struggled with being fully open to intimacy because I didn’t fully feel comfortable in my own body yet.

That’s something we don’t talk about enough:
how hygiene, confidence, and touch are deeply connected.

As a sexologist, one thing I’ve learned is that many people are disconnected from their bodies long before they ever experience healthy intimacy with someone else.

A lot of us were taught presentation before body literacy.

Especially Black millennials.

Reclaiming March 14 as Ritual, Not Obligation

So what is so significant about March 14, Ziakeya?

Let’s start here.

Every year, right after Valentine’s Day, something starts circulating online:

Steak and BJ Day

If you’ve never looked into it, here’s the short version.

Valentine’s Day is marketed as the day men go all out for women — flowers, dinner, romance, gifts. So sometime in the early 2000s internet era, Steak and BJ Day was created as the “men’s turn.”

You cook him a steak.

You perform fellatio, head, a BJ, that sloppy toppy lol… whatever y’all wanna call it.

Everybody laughs. Cute joke.

But let’s pause.

Because if we’re being honest, we already live in a world that centers men most of the time.

When people say “patriarchy,” they’re not talking about some abstract theory. They’re talking about a system that, historically and culturally, has prioritized men’s comfort, authority, and access — including access to women’s bodies… in this case our tongue, lips and mouths.

So when March 14 rolls around and the message is, “Ladies, it’s your duty,” I have questions.

Not judgment. Questions.

As someone who has a passion in sexual health and wellness as well as advocating for pleasure I’ve watched this holiday pop up every year. And as I’ve grown, I realized if I was going to participate in the conversation, I would do it in my space which allows me to talk about pleasure the  way many of us actually experience it...in real life

So I renamed it.

Not to take the pleasure out of it.
But to put intention back into it.

Because pleasure, when shared between two people, was never meant to move in only one direction.

Reciprocity matters. Choice matters. Enthusiastic consent matters. And while sexual health education has given many of us the language and anatomy to understand pleasure, real experiences are what teach us how to practice it with care, curiosity, and respect for one another’s bodies.

So instead of treating March 14 like a one-sided obligation, I see it as an opportunity to turn intimacy into ritual.

A moment where nourishment and pleasure meet.

The Morning After Valentines Day

It’s Sunday. The day after Valentine’s Day 2026.

I’m standing in front of my mirror, oiling my scalp slowly because it feels good. Old R&B is playing — love songs from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. The kind of music that reminds you that Black people have always known how to sing about love. How to long for it. How to fight for it. How to survive through it.

Yesterday was roses and reservations. Promotions and pressure. Soft launches and hard expectations. The annual performance of romance in a country that has mastered the art of commercializing love.

And this morning, I was sitting with the aftermath.

Because Valentine’s Day — as we celebrate it — didn’t start with us. Its popular form grew out of European Christian traditions and expanded through Western capitalism until love became a product category. Cards. Candy. Lingerie. Limited-time offers.

And yet, Black people — whether brought here through slavery or arriving through migration — have shaped the emotional, cultural, and economic fabric of this country in ways that rarely get named. We built industries from basements. We created innovation in underground markets. We contributed to sectors that were stigmatized, criminalized, and unregulated.

Including sexual health.

So as I was greasing my scalp and letting the music move through me, I truly wrestled with how to begin this conversation.

Pleasure without protection is incomplete.
Celebration without education is hollow.
Love — REAL LOVE — requires responsibility.

We are living in a time when immigration is politicized, weaponized, and misunderstood. Yet the very foundation of American industry — even in spaces people don’t talk about openly — has been shaped by immigrants and descendants of enslaved people who refused to be erased.

Boundaries & Betrayal: Understanding Consent and Predation

I love to talk about pleasure — desire, sensuality, freedom, connection. But pleasure cannot exist without safety.

Our ability to trust, to relax into intimacy, to feel our bodies as our own — all of that depends on a foundation that too many of us never received: protection.

For Black communities especially, silence has been a survival strategy. We keep family business inside the family. We protect the people we love from systems that were never built to protect us. We bury the truth so deep that sometimes we even forget it happened.

---

But silence has a cost. It protects the wrong people. It leaves harm unchecked. And it teaches generations that betrayal is something you must learn to endure.

We don’t talk enough about the adults who deliberately cross boundaries — the ones who exploit youth, trust, and vulnerability. We tiptoe around the uncle who “gets too friendly,” the coach who lingers too long, the older boyfriend who preys on insecurity. We defend them as “family” or “just being supportive.” Meanwhile, children and the young are left to protect themselves.

The Pleasure of a Home

There’s a certain type of peace that comes from closing your own front door.

That click… that silence… that moment where the weight of the world stays outside and you finally get to exhale.

I didn’t always know how deeply housing and pleasure were connected. I thought pleasure was something you created through candles and body oils and soft sheets. And yes, those things help. But pleasure, the kind that lives in your nervous system, requires something much more basic: safety.

Consent as a Lifelong Skill

“Consent isn’t just about sex. It’s about how we learn to live in our bodies — and with each other.”

Have you ever heard of Dr. Joycelyn Elders? She was the first African American and second woman Surgeon General of the United States.

When I first learned about her advocacy — especially her insistence that young people deserved honest, age-appropriate sex education — I felt two things at once: admiration and heartbreak.

Admiration, because I thought she was so cool and brave enough to say what so many people were afraid to admit.
Heartbreak, because her leadership was cut short for prioritizing the safety, health, and education of children.

Dr. Elders wasn’t being reckless. She was being protective. She understood that education is prevention, and that silence has never kept our children safe.

This article continues that conversation — not just about sex, but about consent as a lifelong skill, and how many of us are now unlearning what we absorbed in childhood.