EPISODE 143 - Dr. Saida Desilets

Harvey Weinstein, Brett Ratner, Louis CK and James Toback did not respect it. And the women who are now coming forward about their sexual abuse at the hands of these men are only now truly claiming it. It is their SEXUAL SOVEREIGNTY the right to control their own sexual and physical fate. "Do you realize that in no country in the world, or even the United Nations Human Rights Charter, is there any stipulation that women have the rights to their own bodies?"says Dr. Saida Desilets, Ph.D. A thought-leader and speaker on the growing edge of researching ways women can use their minds, bodies, and spirits to create richer lives through their sensual selves, Saida serves as a guide to women who believe in transformation as a lifelong path of learning, discovery, and walk to freedom. But it was a violent rape that nearly cost Saida Desilets her life that put her on this path. Self-described as a a street-savvy, equipped with feisty farm-girl strength and the grace of a dancer, she was by no means naive. In fact, this French Canadian native was raised on a First Nation's reservation in Manitoba where sexual abuse of children, teens and young women was common. Yet, despite seeing that openly, she never expected to be so violently attacked by a man she was actually dating. The shocking violation left her in such excruciating physical and emotional pain and damage that, upon waking up after emergency surgery, she was told she had only two weeks to live. But live she did! She chose to defy the surgeons diagnosis, and instead, chose to live. Life after rape, after near-death, takes on a different quality, she says. Either you become a shut-down, just-getting-by version of yourself or you suddenly feel like you. "Ive been given a new ticket on life. I felt the latter. My journey started in defiance. I defied death. I defied the badge of victim. And I claimed myself in ways I never knew possible". After two decades of work with women on their sexuality and sensuality, a PhD, two books--plus one more on the way, and the development of a proven psycho-sexual method that is now being used in female medicine, she has come to recognize that this journey, this coming home to ourselves, is an act of rebellion. Rebellion because women must defy their conditioning, their wounds, and the inertia of social mandates.