The most generous thing anyone has done for me professionally

Let us all enrol in the Ruth Ramsay school of raising each other up & workshops I'm teaching & a new mum insult & my brilliant neighbour being brilliant

An incredible thing happened yesterday. I went to Ideas Fest to see my colleague Ruth Ramsay speak on a panel with the legendary Cindy Gallop and the ridiculously cool Calandra Balfour.

Ruth is a sex coach who did a brilliant Ted talk - How to transform your sex life in 6 minutes which has been watched 3.4 million times.

The panel chat was about how sexual empowerment can empower you in business. It was genuinely inspiring. Fire deep in my guts inspiring. There were about 200 people in the tent - mostly women - and we were all whooping.

Ruth was talking about how when her clients start to work on understanding their bodies and what they like sexually, when they practice communication, asking for what they want and learning to say yes and no - they find that everything improves, their family life, their friendships and their professional lives.

The conversation explored about how communication skills, negotiation skills, experimentation and feeling like you deserve good things are great for your sex life and also your business life.

Ruth said that none of us should beat ourselves up for not being sexually empowered yet. If you are forty and feel like a teenager around sex that’s nothing to be embarrassed about, it’s perfectly normal: nobody taught us anything.

But we can learn.

And then Ruth pointed to me in the front row and started talking about my book and how she recommends it to all her clients.

In the space of an hour she name checked me three times. At one point a woman asked a question about sexual fulfilment as a single woman and Ruth said, “you should talk to Marianne Power at the end - this is what her book is about.”

I was stunned.

It is the most professionally generous thing anyone has ever done for me.

We read and hear a lot about women raising other women, and I have never experienced it like this before. I don’t think I would be so generous - if I got an opportunity on a stage like that I think I’d want to grab my chance to shine. I don’t know that I would share the light.

Ruth taught me a lot yesterday. I’m in awe of her class and generosity. I now devote my life to doing anything for Ruth!! And I want to be just like her, bigging up others whenever I can. And that’s how it should be…

OTHER THINGS

Meetings without Masks

This Sunday I’m assisting my friends Jason and Rosie on this gorgeous day of connection (used to hate that word but now I’m using it all the time, oh well) in London. Meetings Without Masks is a dating event in that it’s for singles - but it’s also a place where you can make friends and practice communication. It’s kind of a cross between a workshop and a dating event and a friend making event. None of those things would have appealed to me before I did it but I’ve now done several and they are lush. Most people leave the day beaming. Pls check out if you are interested - they do them quite regularly around the country. Sunday 14th September.

Fully-clothed tantra!

A lot of people ask me about low key ways to try tantra without going on a week long retreat that sounds terrifying and naked. This is the answer. This is a ten week programme on zoom where participants work through Jan Day’s book and start to talk about some of the ideas in tantra: stuff around communication, sex, wants, needs, yes and no etc. I have not done this particular course before but I’ve heard really good things and will be assisting the teachers over the next ten weeks. Join us.

But also if you are feeling the call to do the full week long retreats I could not recommend them more. People have signed up to Jan Day’s retreats after reading Love Me! and so far nobody is suing me for being trauma. Quite the opposite. I just got an email from someone who has just done her first week of tantra and feels ‘reborn’. She reckons it’s changed her life and has now signed up for an 18 month training.

So please, if you have the little urge, go for it, go for it, go for it.

Yes, it is scary and yes, it is expensive and yes, it is totally life-changing. And no, the men are not perverts.

Let’s all become sexually liberated gods and goddesses and make the world a better place!

The Artist’s Way

And finally - our Artist’s Way journey (sorry mum) starts next Tuesday 7-8.30pm UK time. We have 20 gorgeous humans signed up so far and we can probably let in a few more so if it appeals, now is your time!

Just to emotionally manipulate you into it, here is a quote from Mary Oliver: “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

Sorry, that was mean. But also maybe true? Anyway, do join if you fancy spending 12 weeks writing, having fun and seeing what weird and wonderful things happen when you start listening to the little voice inside you. Book here. More information here.

The Ruth Ramsay Generosity Corner

Inspired by Ruth, let me shed light on other brilliant people.

I got an incredible message from Natallia who said that reading Help Me! in 2020 started a whole chain of events that resulted in her ‘rebuilding her life from scratch.’ As well as changing jobs, getting out of a bad relationship, she started drawing “as a way to heal my femininity and sensuality. What began as a personal practice became a creative project: I now have a line of t-shirts and hoodies with my nude illustrations. I’d love to share it with you — just to show how far one spark of truth can go. “

Look at them! They are gorgeous:

Also on Sunday 21st September my neighbour Nelly has a screening of her movie Doppelgängers at the ICA. Nelly’s work is like her - very hard to describe. This movie is about how to build better futures on the moon. She meets her doppelgängers - people who look like her but live in different parts of the world - and together they go on a space mission, literally supported by NASA! At the moment space exploration is dominated by rich white guys which means we would recreate the same crap up there as we have here. Nelly and her doppelgängers go on an adventure to see how could we do things differently?

It is a wild ride of a movie - visually it’s like being on an acid trip, the sound track in amazing and yet she is speaking to these really serious mega-brain people about the future of humanity. I loved, loved, loved, loved it - and not just because I love Nelly. I learned so much and saw the world in a completely different way. I went to see it with Mum, who loved it too. This is an article about it.

Final shout out is for Jenny Holliday, a career coach and former journalist. I first met Jenny at a freelance drinks thing in 2014. I had just started my self-help blog then and it turned out she was reading it. She was booking guests on a daytime telly show called This Morning and asked me if I’d like to go on to talk about the blog - like it was no big deal at all. Er, yes, I said. It was my first time on telly and I was very nervous but also loved it and it got so much publicity for my blog. Jenny embodies the Ruth Ramsay approach to generosity - she is always connecting people. Nelly does that too.

Jenny runs an online group for freelance journalists which is one of the most helpful places for anyone who is freelance in the media. Young people ask older hands for advice, job tips are swapped and suggestions given for tricky situations. Proper community support.

Anyway we bumped into each other at the event yesterday and sat in the rain - as you do at all the best British festivals!

Jenny was asking about my mum and if she had said anything funny lately. I told her that on Wednesday night Gary and I were having a drink outside the local deli and she walked past with my sister’s dog. She is doing her hair differently and looks so young and gorgeous.

Anyway, we were talking about how young and gorgeous mum was looking and she was having none of it. She talked about how much she hated her teeth and how she wished she’d had braces.

Then Gary started talking about hating the gaps in his teeth. Mum jumped to reassure him: “You haven’t got any gaps! Marianne has gaps…”

Gary said it’s a sign that I am in a good place that I found this very funny rather than deeply annoying. Me in a down patch could have sulked about that for a week - me in an upswing thinks ‘Woohoo, that’s a funny thing to write down.’

As may be obvious, I am feeling so, so, so much better after the long covid hell and very grateful to be in the world again.

Love and hugs.

Mx