LETTER

Ena’s Museletter #001

November Pain

It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure

Ena Dahl
Ena Dahl
Nov 8 · Unlisted

Dearest reader,

First, welcome to Essensually Ena; a place for sensuality, sex, conscious kink, and BDSM — the sacred and the (not-so) ordinary — expressed poetically, as erotica, articles, short stories or something in-between.

Essensually Ena welcomes discordance

I created this publication as a place to embrace the multifaceted and dispersant; the things that we’re told shouldn’t go together, like sex and healing, pleasure and parenting, the sacred and the mundane — the Madonna and the whore.

What to expect

I’m especially interested in the area where healing meets sex — and I’ve experienced, first-hand, the healing power of connecting to my own sensual self.

I believe that as a society, this is a relationship that needs mending — we need to heal the father wound, not necessarily (just) in relation to our own fathers, but to the patriarchy as a whole. We need to return to the womb; to the divine feminine.

I talk about this in Father Thinks I’m a Satanist in P.S. I Love You.


Current Topic: Pain

Just recently, I had an experience where I struggled to be present in bed; my mind was buzzing with thoughts and I simply couldn’t relax, so I asked my partner to hurt me. Nothing excessive, but I requested that he pinched my nipples really hard — and just like that, he pulled me out of my head and into my body, and I was able to be present.

There’s a lot of talk about being mindful, but what mindfulness really means is getting out of our minds to be more present in the moment. To be mindful is really to be ‘bodyful’.

Exploring pain, or sensations linked to pain can help us do just that.


In my article for Sexography, Healing Pain with Pain, I write about how I found BDSM and used it as a way to usher my internalized pain to the surface by making it visible:

While neither conventional nor the kind of treatment the doctor would prescribe, allowing myself to feel on the outside what I felt on the inside, gave me something concrete to relate to.

Having been a red thread through my work for a while, the topic is vast and intriguing. I’m fascinated with the different shapes and forms pain can take from physical to mental and how one influences the other, how our pain and pleasure centers are connected, and how we humans can use pain consciously to connect deeper with our bodies — and how this again can heal our minds.

I recommend Octavia Morrison’s amazing and educational article for further reading.


Essensuals 01: Pain — Call for Submissions

Apart from writing, I’m a freelance creative director and designer with a background in print design. Inspired by everyone’s writing, I’m scheming to combine my skills and connections to start a printed literary journal.

I’ll be looking for submissions in the form of poetry, scholarly articles, and short stories, on the topic of pain to enadahlwrites@gmail.com. More info to come, but please don’t hesitate to contact me!


Ask me anything!

Lastly, I’m working on starting a Q&A section, so feel free to ask me anything (related to the topics of the publication), via enadahlwrites@gmail.com.


Thank you so much for being here and for reading, and I wish you all a sensual Friday and weekend ahead.

Essensually yours,


Recent on Pain

Healing Pain With Pain
On how I use(d) BDSM as a remedy for healing

Algolagnia
A poem about longing for pain

Blazed & Defused
A poetic recount of a morning, floating at the edge between pain and pleasure

Ode to The Master
A poem from the muse to her painter

Essensually Ena

A place for sensuality, sex, conscious kink & other curiosities

Unlisted

    Ena Dahl

    Written by

    Ena Dahl

    Sensualist, storyteller, artist, muse | Space alchemist & transmuter of trauma through self-expression | Topics: sex and/or healing, pleasure, pain & poetry

    Essensually Ena

    A place for sensuality, sex, conscious kink & other curiosities

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