After the passing of their partners, widows are left alone to deal with grief. But despite the sadness and loneliness, they should not be deprived of enjoying a good sex life. I chat with sex coach Lexus Powell to find out how widows can enjoy pleasure and intimacy unapologetically – even while navigating grief. Inspired by her own experiences as a divorced person, Lexus explains the benefits of dating yourself and acknowledging your sexiest aspects to reclaim your sensual self. She also breaks the stigma and shame surrounding self-pleasure, emphasizing how this solo activity can empower and boost your sex life.

I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.  

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

How Widows Should Deal With Their Sex Life With Lexus Powell

Voices Of Widowhood: Healing Through The Holiday

My guest is Lex Powell. Through her brand Talk with Lex LLC, she creates safe spaces for conversations many are afraid to have, whether it’s about pleasure, intimacy, divorce, or healing. Her work blends faith, humor, science, and soul-guiding women to find peace, unlock pleasure, and live unapologetically free. This conversation and the voices of widowhood healing through the holidays are about sex.

It’s because sex is part of being an adult. This conversation with Lex, you don’t want to miss. Even though our spouse has passed, there are many of us who still want to feel sensual. We want to reclaim our body. We want to understand what it’s like to take ourselves on a date and much more. This conversation with Lex is important because the holidays bring something different. This is a point of rediscovery and finding the new you. Let’s get into this conversation now.

 

  

Lex, welcome to the Widowhood.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for the widowhood. If there were a ticker tape that would show what the real pressure is when you’re thinking about that?

Widowhood?

Yes.

I think it would be love. It’s like the opposite for me. Love, whether it’s loss of love or newfound love. It’s just a healing journey of love.

When I think about when I asked you to have a conversation, it’s predominantly to an audience or community that are widows and widowers and talking about sex. What did you think of that?

I immediately went to my experience when it comes to experience and loss. A loss of love through divorce. It immediately made me think of how the loss of love through divorce and the loss of love through whatever unexpected situation may occur can mirror each other.

Experiencing Isolation, Guilt, And Identity Crisis After A Divorce

They can. Thank you for bringing that up, and thank you for being willing to share. In our pre-podcast conversation, we discussed the similarities and the differences between divorce and widowhood, because oftentimes people will say, “They’re the same.’ They’re not. You and I were very much in tune with that reality. To your point, grief often has very common core experiences. They may be heightened, obviously, based on the loss itself, but some of those core things are similar. I want to share some things that I know that I experienced on the widower’s side. If you would tell me your version of that, from being divorced, isolation.

Isolation in terms of divorce looks like you may lose your married friends because they don’t want to pick sides. No one reaches out. No one checks on you. No one wants to get in the middle of it. Some friends you find out you had because you were married versus single, and you learn the difference in single and married, and divorced. Divorce is like its own conundrum of people. It’s its own category, its own bucket. When people discover your divorce, is like, “Oh.” It becomes something that it feels like they don’t want those cooties, so to speak.

I will counter that with sometimes people who are widows feel like they’re married friends, like they’re going to get the death cooties or something’s going to happen to their spouse because I’m in proximity with you. Not being able to talk about it.

It feels like they think that because you went through a divorce or you may be in the process of one, that now their relationship or marriage is going to be in jeopardy or have some problems. Their partner may not feel that way, but their partner may feel, “I don’t want you to talk to her anymore or go over there with her anymore.”

What about something like the third wheel or the appearance of the single friend that’s available and not wanted around their spouses?

Yes. The one if you’re dating after a divorce, it’s like you feel unsure whether or not to share your experiences with your friends who are married. For that reason, you feel guilty for having a good time dating and excited to share it because of the fear of judgment, because they knew you when you were married.

Most people refuse to share about their dating life after a divorce because of the fear of judgment from other people. Share on X

They knew you when you were happy and married at some point, and now you’re happy and dating on the tail end of a divorce. If you’re not sad as they think you should be, that is something that you go through, of feeling like it’s just a guilt that they try to push off on you. Sometimes you do fall into that bubble of, “Maybe I’ll just keep it to myself.” Ultimately, starting over.

Your friend circle, starting over. You have to rediscover the qualities in a friend you want in the single life, and whether you’re dating or you find that person, even if it’s for a brief moment, even your single friends you met at the tail end of divorce, you wonder if, “Can I share my new relationship with you? It’s because now I’m not in that bubble with you anymore.’ It’s like a, you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.

I also talk to many people, and I’ve experienced this myself, a loss of identity because of being a widow. When you have a loss of identity because of being a widow, how does that look on the divorce side of the house from your perspective?

From my perspective, it’s scary, it’s lonely. It is, who am I outside of being a, and I don’t want to trigger anybody, or get anybody hyped up being a servant to this person, being this helpmate of this person, being a partner, my other half. Who am I now? I don’t have to cook his dinners. I don’t have to be mindful of him. I don’t have to be in regard to someone else being here. I now have to think of everything versus some things.

Even in that identity, it’s now, no matter how long, if you were married and covenanted with someone, you too become one to lose your arm and your leg, so to speak. Now I have to figure out how either grow one through the growing pains of discovering, “I didn’t know that this bill was paid through this vendor or this place where we got this. It was handled through whatever situation.” It’s trying to learn how to walk again. Life goes on, and it doesn’t always give you time to figure it out, to sit and collect your thoughts, emotions, and feelings. It doesn’t give you time to sit still.

Life goes on despite grief. It will not give you time to collect your thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Share on X

The Impact Of Faith To A Divorced Person

It doesn’t. Life keeps moving. It seems like sometimes it’s going faster. Sometimes it’s slower when you’re in the fall of this situation. The impact of your faith in widowhood. Some people have felt like other people have blamed them for their spouse no longer being here. Some people feel like they’re mad at the creator for their spouse no longer being here, or what does their faith look like if they prayed for their spouse to be here and they’re no longer? Those are things that I’ve spoken with people about, losing spouses, what that grief looked like. Does your faith have any impact on being a divorced person?

For me, it does, but I also found peace in the ending. My grieving started a little bit before. It just looked a lot different from any others because I had also suffered postpartum depression at the end of my marriage after having two kids back to back. I didn’t wake up to divorce until a year after I was divorced, if that makes sense legally.

I was in a fog through the whole process. I was a high-functioning, depressed person because I had two toddlers. I had two under two at the time and was trying to discover how to be a new mom. Now, being a single new mom was very tough, but I didn’t have time to sit in it because I had to keep going for my kids, which I’m sure, in losing someone, you have to try to figure that out as well. It took me a year after I was actually divorced to realize I was divorced.

When you said that, thank you for sharing that, that there’s a thing called grief fog or mental fog that people go through. From the loss of a loved one, the prefrontal cortex has experienced a profound loss. When you’re used to being in your logical brain and thinking stuff, you’re more reactionary, you’re more fight or flight. The amygdala, the back of your brain, has a more prominent role in your decision-making.

You can often feel like this just happened, or what’s going on, or feel sluggish, and the weight of the grief makes your body tired, lethargic, and all these things are going on. I appreciate the willingness to share the similarities in that because it’s often a big conversation in the community of grievers about when people say they’re divorced, but you have experienced the grief, and that should be respected. Is it the same? No, but it is a loss. The thing that I often think about that is uniquely different compared to being that you have to see them.

Yes, I was thinking that same thing.

Maybe you don’t want to, but you may want to write. The thing that I think is profoundly more difficult with a divorce is that you have to see them, and they can choose to start another life.

Another family has kids and lives what you may feel is the life that you guys talked about. The life that you guys dreamed about, the house that you guys drove around neighborhoods manifesting together, they may now have with someone else as you’re processing through the grief of the loss. The way they grieve, or if they grieved at all, is different.

We don’t have a say in how they grieve. We don’t have that place of judgment to say, “I already moved on. It’s only been X amount of months or years or weeks or whatever the case may be in that situation.” It is hard to keep seeing it over and over, as you or I myself was processing. “I’m divorced by that time. My ex-husband was married to his other person.”

When I woke up, it was like, “Dang,” when I have two kids and I have to figure out. Now I’m on one income versus two. Even in the process of divorce, the finances are paying for a divorce attorney and paying for things that, at one point, it was a two-person household income. There is no insurance for divorce.

There are so many people who don’t have life insurance. The financial conversation is relevant. You’ve had this two-person income life, and they have this person’s last paycheck or a lack of social security. If you were not making a decent wage, now you’re trying to figure out that there was no life insurance. There was none of this, and I have to keep living.

Rediscover Yourself By Going On A Date On Your Own

In this conversation that we’re having for healing during the holidays, it’s important to acknowledge that these things can happen. We can go through this, but at the same time, the duality, life can continue going on, and life can find some joy in the process of that. Just because these exist, it doesn’t mean that other things cannot exist simultaneously. When I thought about us having the conversation, I’ll let you elaborate on your specialty, and then we’ll dive in a little bit.

  

  

I am the creator of Talk Sex with Lex. I am a certified sexologist specializing in pleasure for men, women, and couples. What I love most is helping women discover who they are sexually and becoming more liberated, and who they are and how they show up sexually.

Thank you. Now I know my listening audience, my community, it’s 75% women, and there are 25% men. In this conversation, men take notes on how you could show up well, and women get ready to liberate themselves. Sex is something that people like, “I don’t want to talk about, but I want and know.” I’ll put myself on French Street.

We can use me as an example. I had been with my husband for 32 years. He was the only person I had been having sex with. He passes. I didn’t. It took about a good year and a half before there was anything below the belt talking about, “Girl, what are we doing? We were all gone together.” I met my current husband, and he said, “We are awake, honey.”

I was like, “I thought we were going to be a nun. I wasn’t sure.” This is not the eighteen-year-old version that my late husband had. This is the 51-year-old Tina who’s endured breast cancer, surgery, a complete hysterectomy, birthed out a couple of kids, and we’re trying to be cute again. How do you help that person? That’s like, “I’m much more of a plump girl than I was or this or that. Now I’m talking about getting intimate.” I was, how do you help us?

It starts with self, even through divorce, through loss of a loved one. I remember my reclaim, my first step, even if they’re in therapy, was to take myself out on a date. When I tell you, it may sound simple, but I fought with that so long and hard that it was like, “Where am I going to take myself? What am I going to wear? Am I going to do my makeup, or am I just going to walk out of the house? I was dating myself?

What I’m going to do is sit there and talk to myself. Why am I going out? Why do I have to do this?” Many questions, so many emotions behind it while grieving. Why am I even in this place to have to go by myself was a big question. In that, I remember I was living in Ocala, Florida and I took myself to, I went to Disney Springs in Orlando. I dressed up, talked myself in and out of that “I’m not going to go, I’m not going to go.”

Dressed up, did my makeup, made sure my hair was cute, got some heels on, and drove myself to Orlando. In that drive, so many thoughts. I just put on music to try to drown out my own thoughts. When I finally got there, I had made reservations at this restaurant. In my head, I kept feeling like people were looking at me. I kept feeling like, “Should I even be here? I’m the girl who’s by herself. How pitiful is that? I’m the woman who’s here by herself.”

In that, I discovered I just want to be home. I want to be anywhere but there because I’m out here, and I see couples having a good time on dates. I see families enjoying each other. I see a husband and wife holding hands with the strollers. I see just everyone having a good time, and this is the last place I want to be.

No one’s talking to me. I see kids playing at the tables, and I’m like, “I miss my kids.” I remember just before my food came, I told him, “Can you pack? I need to go.” I was fighting tears on a date with myself, and I said, “Who the hell does that? Never doing that again.” In sitting with myself, probably in hindsight and reflection, self-assessing, I cannot do this. I hate doing this by myself. I started to hate the person who put me in that space of doing this by myself.

Also in that thought, I said, “Maybe Disney’s place of fun and family is not the best place I could have gone for a date for myself while grieving and going through a divorce. That’s probably not the best place I could have gone.” I said, “I’m going to try it again.” I even took to Facebook and groups I found for divorcees and people who were either going through a divorce or were divorced. There was a sense of healing in just reading their stories, not so much as, “I’m here, this is my story.”

Just reading, and I hate to say it this way, but there’s always someone else worse off. In reading some of it, it helped me understand and gave me give myself permission that this isn’t all my fault. I started to become more accountable for my part that I did play in my divorce. That’s when I said, “I’m going to go on a date. Where do I want to go? What do I want to experience that I have never given myself permission to? I had the time as a mother and as a wife to go and do what?”

When joining some of the Facebook groups I joined, I stumbled across an Orlando group of black people, and they all seemed to be in my age group. I saw there was a meetup, I dressed up, and I went. There were some married and some non-married, some in relationships, some not. I had the best time laughing and meeting new people, and feeling beautiful, to where when I got in the car, I laughed out loud and I cried at the same time because I gave myself permission.

That’s where it started. You have to give yourself the permission to get out there and to rediscover who you are. Not so much as finding someone else, but rediscovering who you are today in this light, in this role of being either a widow or a single person, a divorcee, or what have you. That was my first step, dating myself to where I started to go out more. I started to make those new friends because it was lonely. I didn’t have the same married couples.

  

  

It would be about five of us married couples out on a date with our husbands as a joint dinner. Now, all of these singles, and I was like, “It’s a lot of single people out here having a good time.” In that, I continue to do it and I continue to meet new people and new connections and network and do the things I like. If I wanted to go to the beach, damn it, I went to the beach. I didn’t have to ask, and it’s bittersweet because now I have time, because now we have this joint custody thing.

I don’t have to be in the house with the husband and the kids, and hoping that, “Can you watch this one, and I’ll watch this one?” It was starting to see the good in it. Now I have free time. What am I going to do with this free time? How do I make the most out of my time to enjoy it and choose because it’s a choice to be happy?

I want to interject a little bit in there. For my widows and widowers, we’re not happy that we have free time. I understand that. I understand that we don’t want to go on a date by ourselves. I understand that we want our person back often. I understand that harsh reality. This conversation, healing through the holidays, was purposeful because just like when Lex mentioned she chose to go to Orlando to the family thing, we didn’t notice all those people.

They were with their families and all, blew it up. We were in our own lives and were not focused on those other people. Those are glaring situations. The reality, and this is from my lived experience from talking to other people, there’s a widow named Tiff, and she told me something. She said, “Choosing to be an active participant in our own life is something we choose.”

I can tell you there have been countless days and weeks Tina did not shower. I lay in the bed. I was sad. I was trying to measure how long I could stay in bed without going to the bathroom by myself and getting into there and coming back because my husband, whom I spent 32 years with, died. I made a decision that slowly I would learn how to live.

That would require me to go on a date by myself. I remember taking myself to go to the movies and then also going out to eat. I know this is hard, but if you’ve gotten this far in the conversation, you want something different than what you have been sitting. This conversation is intentional to give you the steps in the way that you may fashion it to start living this version of your life.

I don’t want you to think that I am ignoring how you may be listening to this conversation in tears because this is not what you wanted. This is a conversation to give you the tools and to have a vision of what it would be like to start moving forward in this version. I intentionally wanted her to have this conversation, but I want you to be aware of that.

I also want to mention that, although I was dating myself and out there and meeting all these new people, triggers came up. Things would happen. I would see something or notice something, and I have to take those deep breaths. I have to step away from the crowd I was in front of or the friend that I had made, and go to the bathroom and just get myself together.

Take some deep breaths. You don’t know what triggers you to your trigger. You don’t know what may come up. I want even the listeners to understand that. Give yourself the grace through your triggers, because it’s not something that you should just get over. Triggers happen. Depending on what you do with those triggers, are you going to heal through it and discover, “Why is this happening right now?”

Give yourself the grace to sit in it and to feel. Sometimes we try to be hard and we try to just, “I’m okay. I’m going to be all right. It’s going to be all right.” It will be, however, this is going to come up again. It’s going to come up again. It’s better if you feel it and experience it whenever it happens so that you can take that time to digest and reflect and say, “I don’t like this feeling. I don’t like where I’m at. I need to tap in and see why, how, and when this became a thing. You may walk through the mall and smell his cologne or their cologne or perfume.”

That can be a trigger that you did not expect while you’re on a date with yourself, not saying, “Check noted, don’t go to the mall.” I’m not saying that, but think of these things if you know. Similarly, my trigger was seeing families and all of this in one place. I didn’t realize that. I had to sit and say, “That probably wasn’t the best place right now, but I’ll get there when I can get to those outings and not be so overcome with emotion.”

Even so, like I said, I was triggered. However, when the holidays came around, when Christmas and Thanksgiving were maybe a month away, the thought of it was overwhelming to the point of, and I don’t have a close, my immediate family is not very close when it comes to relationships. I had to sit with the thought, it’s probably best when I think about my boys. It’s best that they experience a great Thanksgiving surrounded by love and family. To have to swallow that is probably not the best thing they can be with me because I’m just going to be me. I’m just going to be by myself.

What I hear you saying, I need to permit other people to enjoy what I’m not ready to enjoy. One, the idea of taking yourself on a date. The difficulty of just getting out of the house to do that. Packing the food, realizing the first place may not be the best place to go, and going somewhere else. It’s important for us to get familiar with this version of ourselves because who we are now is so much different than the person that coupled with our late spouse.

We changed, we grew, part of who we are is because of the time we spent with them, or not. Before we can introduce ourselves to somebody else, it may prove helpful to learn who we are at this point. The idea of what restaurant would I want to go to if no one else were part of the decision? That’s a whole different question than when you’re going, where do you want to go? Wherever you want to go, back and forth.

You just go, “I want to go to X, Y, and Z,” and doing that and taking yourself there, there’s some empowerment in that process of doing that. During the holiday time, you may have people who want to do things, and being honest, “I don’t.” I’m going to let you do that. I’ll pick it up on the backside. There’s nothing wrong with that. It may be good to go out at least once and not be isolated the entire time, but you have the right to pick and choose because the holidays do bring a different sense of excitement and a lot of other different things.

Determining The Things That Make You Feel Sexy

As you mentioned, the triggers, it’s okay to go to the bathroom, breathe, get yourself together, because my late husband’s cologne was gray flannel. Somebody walks by you at the party wearing that, or there’s something about the brain that makes you feel like you saw that person that you know they are nowhere to be found, but you see them. Step one in the sex talk the dating yourself. I master dating myself, where do I go next?

In that, dating yourself, there’s quite a bit in there. I do want to unpack that, just a little of what do you feel sexy? What do you feel most presentable in? What do you feel your best in that makes you comfortable, and how are you going to show up wherever you’re going? A lot of times, when we were married or had a significant other, a spouse, we went with what they would like to see us in. We went with, “He doesn’t like it when I show my legs. He prefers my back out or my shoulders.” Now it’s time to think, what do you like to accentuate in your curves or your shoulders? What is your best feature that you like about yourself? Whether it’s your tush, your ass.

Are we on TT? We can use grown-up first.

Your breasts, your ass, your toes. Your nails, your calves, your thighs. I love my thighs. What are those things that make you feel most sensual? Not even sexy, but most sensual. What wakes up your feminine side, for the ladies? What wakes you up? What color? It doesn’t even have to be a body part. What color accents your tone that you feel, “I’m sexy when I wear this.” Girl, ain’t nothing like a brand new matching set of underwear, like the bra and the pants.

I see it. I am filling myself. I also have this necklace that adjusts to size. When I wear it closer, like about right here, then there’s a lot of chain in the back. It’s something about that hitting in the back of my shoulder blades. I found that out after my husband passed. I think my daughter gave me a necklace, and it hit the back of my neck. I was like, “Excuse me?” I’m in a meeting at work. Knowing what is sensual to us and being okay with that. Thank you for mentioning that.

That was all in the process of the day. It comes together because it’s a process.

Reclaiming Yourself Through Self-Pleasure

I know we’re going over this very topical, but what I want to have happen, they to listen to this conversation like, “I need a coach. I heard the conversation, and I think I know more.” We’re not giving everything away. The idea is once this conversation is a widow, you could be 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70. You’re still alive, and you still want to feel good about yourself. This is the conversation, the one-on-one with Lex, and get into those details. We’re not going to dive in, but the central part. Topical, I’ve dated myself. I’m no longer crying every time I go to a restaurant. I’m enjoying this. What should I consider next?

Consider next is if you are someone who was once very sexual with your relationship with your partner, and that’s something you desire, giving yourself that permission to experience those things alone.

Let’s not be vague. I’m like, “Things alone, permission. Girl, I’m not sure what we’re talking about there.” Toddler nearby, I need to know.

I’m used to being so censored and in so many different places.

I’m telling you.

I have little kids. Yes, give yourself, whether you like to touch yourself. If your sex life with your partner was very active and you’re now like, “I need to be touched.” Giving yourself that permission to touch yourself. I’m not feeling guilty because you’re enjoying pleasure with yourself.

I think that you said you have my masturbation, some of them. When you say that, what does that look like?

Masturbation. Having orgasms, discovering whether or not but play, is something you like, because that may have been off the table. You now have no boundaries. You now have nothing keeping you from exploring yourself, the things that you like and dislike, or things you want to try.

You didn’t look at yourself on the day and were like, “Girl, we’re going to finish this.”

Yeah. When I took myself on a date, I said that I had gotten comfortable dating myself. I said, “We’re getting laid tonight.” You’re going to get some showless.

Some people have never experienced pleasure, and they feel like it’s dirty. They feel like this is wrong to do. What do you tell that person?

One of the things that I do with clients is call shadow work. What that is, is diving deep, which is where we discover where your guilt is coming from. Is it you? Is it religion? Is it something your parents said? Is it societal? Where that’s something that you’ve programmed in through social media, or what people say. Ultimately, self-pleasure is just that. You’re the only one who knows you’re engaging in this.

The other part is that you may have done something with your person that you really wanted to know if you enjoyed something else. You ideally want to couple with someone else because your person’s not here. If you don’t know what you like, then you’re stuck. The other thing I thought about, all my pleasure was connected to Mark. He’s no longer here. Now I have to wait for somebody else.

Now they’re going to be getting control of that. What does that look like for me? What are the things for me to be okay about who I am and be all right with that? We do have to permit ourselves and impact our conceptions and why we’re in this space and why we have the thought process we do. Not that it may change or not, but understanding why. In my understanding, is this something I want to maintain?

Whether it was like what you said, pleasure is basically reclaiming your body, reclaiming your pleasure, putting a pleasurable feeling to touching yourself, masturbation, connecting the dots of, “I like that.” Whether you use a toy, your hand, whatever, a vibrator, a dildo.

There are a lot of options out there. Hold on for a second. We’re not just talking about the plastic-looking, weird thing that would only fit one person. The array is large. Just look out and see what exists. Speaking from a friend.

I always say, start off with your hand. You have control over your hand. You don’t have to use batteries or plug-in. You don’t have to control the speed. It’s not unfamiliar to you. You touch and body map what you feel like down there and what feels good to you.

Body man thing.

Yes. What feels good to you is key because if your goal is to be in a place where you’re healed to a point where you can engage with someone else, or you can get remarried or have that partner, you want to be able to communicate what it is you like. You now have reclaimed your pleasure, your sense of self, your sense of sensuality, what makes you feel sexy, what makes you cum, orgasm, and what makes you feel seen in the bedroom. You want to be able to communicate that. If you don’t even know where to start, once you have that person, they’re going to claim your body.

  

Your pleasure is now going to be tied to them. You’re going to feel that gap. You’re going to feel unfulfilled because you’re not going to have done the work to where you were once connected to your pledge was connected to your previous partner. Now you’re just jumping to, “He likes it like this. This is how we’re going to do it.”

What if you’ve never had a climax? You never cum, you’ve never done all that because they just got what they want, and they were done. Now you’re seeing this version of me. I want to have an orgasm. I don’t even know what an orgasm feels like. What is the recommendation for that person?

Come to me for coaching. I say that, right? I say that also because it’s different for everybody, of what your blockages may be, what your barriers may be, what your sexual challenges are, because some of them can stem from the guilt of now, “I’m doing this and he and she and that previous person.” Some of them can be as simple as turning the TV off, turning the fan off, turning the music on, or creating a playlist of sexual imagery.

Your mind is one. You go to so many different places. Sometimes it’s as simple as that, or it can be something where we dive deep into the permission or the history of the pleasure. Even when some people, like you said, were married or had that person, it wasn’t pleasurable to them. It wasn’t even good then. Even now, how do I get there? That is where we open the book, and we start to learn the book of you when it comes to your pleasure.

When you talk about permission, I’m glad that you mentioned that because some people are wrestling with guilt that my spouse died, and I’m going to have sex with someone and be happy about it. I feel like I’m doing them a disjustice because why should I be out here enjoying my life and they’re dead?

That’s where the reclaiming of your body and grounding yourself. Speaking affirmations is big for me when I’m speaking with clients of giving yourself that permission daily, because permission can be hard. It’s an invisible fence that we put ourselves in, where it can be as simple as, “I haven’t touched the fruit snacks because that was his snack or her snack.” “You can eat them now.”

If you cry while eating them, I’m so be it. You’re healing. That is your healing. If that’s something you have struggled with, throw the damn things away. You might not even like fruit snacks. Get them out of the house. Reclaiming your pleasure, your body is big, and grounding yourself and speaking life into yourself.

I remember as I went through divorce and I rediscovered myself, I wrote on my mirror with dry-erase markers, “You are enough. You are deserving of love. Pleasure is yours.” It was a few scriptures I’d even put on there. If that wasn’t enough, because I see the mirror every day when I wake up, brush my teeth, or get out of the shower, I’ll have sticky notes. Whenever I thought of something good, I liked the way Abraham is one of those life coaches, manifestation coaches that I follow.

Abraham Hicks said that “I like when Oprah said this,” or “What have you said that?” I will write those down when I’m listening to my YouTube affirmations or speaking life into myself. I just posted them all over my house. Who’s coming over here yet? Nobody. I’m posting it here. I posted at my desk at work. Even just this one, I can just pull right now. This one is “Don’t get weary. Keep going.” Just keeping positivity surrounding you, it becomes infectious.

If you surround yourself with positivity, it becomes infectious. Share on X

Dealing With The Fear Of Connecting With A New Partner

I’ve dated myself. We got paid after our date with ourselves.

Man, it was a good time.

It was. I had candles, had a bubble bath. I set up this space. He just wouldn’t know he didn’t quit. I’m like, “No, we’re going to talk to us and we’re going to have some good music.” Now, now I could see myself engaging with another person. I’m scared of the idea of engaging with another person.

It is also to see that we discovered the pleasure to date and the good, the gushy. Learn what your aftercare is for yourself. That is, after you have engaged with yourself or even with another person, what do you need to? I don’t want to use this word, but I have this, the best thing I’ve got.

“I’m about to get my pH balance back.”

No, what else do I need to not feel less than? To still feel like a person, to not feel dirty, to not feel ashamed of what I just did. What is it to wrap that in a bow and say, “Here you go? What is that final piece of? We have the foreplay, we have the actual do, and the do. What is that aftercare?”

What are some of those?

Aftercare may also look like grounding yourself. Aftercare may look like even giving you, hugging yourself in the bed, touching all of it, just touch. Some people may need that touch. Watching a movie, not jumping out of it so quickly that you have this euphoric drop all of a sudden, because that can happen even with a partner.

Preparing yourself for what your aftercare looks like. Again, communication when that person gets there, “I need this from you afterward, is that okay?” Opening those, because you’ve spent the time, we’ve been doing this, but giving yourself the permission. I also visualize, because I also do manifestation coaching, visualize what that looks like for you. You’re not so caught off guard by, “I’m here now. What do I do? I don’t know what to do next.”

A younger version of me has started that way. Like, “This is it.” Now it’s like, “I’m a whole grown woman. Hold tight a little bit.” I have some say in this, or maybe the man realizes this version of a woman has a say in it, where maybe you didn’t. Also, the sex, the intimacy, the sensuality with this person, I don’t think it’s healthy to want it to be just like it was with the other person, to have it set up that I want the same thing I had with them. They’re a different person. To just work like that, come into terms with that, may be difficult.

I know somebody who made love for the first time, and they cried. It was good, but they just like, you mentioned, like, I’m really in this situation because this person left this world. All of those things are wonderful ways to have communication. To be, “I need to talk about this.” Being able to work with someone like you. The sex thing, people just get weird when you say it’s like, “I want to talk about sex.” Everybody’s thinking about it at some point in time. Why not be better at it?

If you’re engaging with a partner, and this isn’t just like a hookup or one-night stand. If you’re actually in a genuine relationship of some sort with this person, communicate, “I’m healing, but intimacy is important to me.” You may not have sex right away. There may be levels and stages to get there with that person. You have to give yourself permission and also let that person know so they can show up for you in whatever way that looks like.

Navigating Through Stigma And Shame

When you thought about having this conversation with this particular audience, were there some particular topics that you wanted to make sure that we covered or addressed?

Navigating through stigma and shame was one that I did want to touch on, so much so that shame is a lot of the time in our heads. Sometimes it’s not people shaming you, it’s us shaming ourselves. That goes into that space in that nutshell of giving yourself that permission and reclaiming your body and all the things that I mentioned.

Sit back and ask yourself, “Are there people shaming me, or am I putting more weight on this than it is?” That can also hold us back from pleasure, from sex in the future, even from good sex with ourselves. There was that. Also, that communication piece to the next partner that you may have or will have is that you have that conversation because sometimes, like you said, you may never have that conversation with your husband of 30, 40, 25 years, or even 8 years of sex.

You all just did it, knew how to whatever worked, and left the rest. Now, coming into this new sense of self, I also provide coaching on this with couples and individuals on how to steer those conversations, but can we talk about intimacy? Starting there, what does intimacy look like for you? What does intimacy look like for them? Try to integrate those things into the experience so that it doesn’t have to end in an orgasm right away.

Sometimes it’s more of the quality time that fills our euphoric cup of pleasure. The journey of getting to the orgasm sometimes is better than the orgasm itself. The buildup of the kissing on the nibbling on the ear, the breath, the touch, the warmth, the teasing, the sucking and licking of whatever it is going on.

Give yourself permission to discover and converse about all of these things with the person that you’re going to engage with. I tell divorcees and widowers, you’re not ready for one-night stands. No one-night stands until you’re comfortable engaging with someone else. If you say, “I’m just going to go out there. I’m going to do it cold turkey. I’m not going to do this.” Pump yourself up. Don’t go do a one-night stand because you’re going to scare them and you.

Do not get into one-night stands until you are comfortable engaging with someone else. Share on X

Everybody’s heart is not connected to their vagina. Some people are. Have you ever heard the term widow’s fire?

I have.

Widows, widowers, you mentioned something about the need for touch and desire for mention that now someone’s thinking “My spouse just died a couple of months ago. Why am I feeling like I want someone to touch me?” It’s because you’ve been having somebody touch you for years. Now all of a sudden that’s gone. There it is.

You talked about the euphoric, the dopamine rush that happens during sex, and wanting a part of that. You talk about shame and not wanting to be embarrassed. People who are experienced with widow fire are not the popular conversation in the widow community. People are going through that. They may look like a whole bunch of one-night stands, because I’m really going to another town, because I don’t want somebody to know that this is me and what I’m doing.

I’ve been touched and doing all this for years, and now they’ve died. Boom, cold turkey is over. I’m over here like, “Ain’t nobody else dealing with this?” No one else is looking at somebody’s arm and thinking about their arm being around them or wanting this sensuality. Some people develop coping skills. I think anything in obsession becomes negative. Now you’re looking at it, I am struggling with this desire for intimacy, stacks. I’m not desiring a relationship. I don’t want to be with somebody. I just want you to hit this. I’ve never heard that in grief. Like, “What is wrong with me in that s***?”

The reason I caution about one-night stands because you’re in a very vulnerable place mentally. That becomes now a replacement “That feels good, I want to feel good again.” The fire becomes an illusion of feeling good, of “I’m healing, I’m okay.” Now you keep going to the next town every other day. You’re going to the next town every week.

Finding a reason to go, whereas learning to navigate the fire with compassion instead of shame is the key, whether it means embracing self-pleasure, slowly opening up to dating, or simply acknowledging the feelings without judgment. That to me is the key to navigating widow’s fire. You may not say you go, “Shame on you. You go do that one-night stand.” No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying know what fire is and know what is your replacement for feeling satisfied.

How Toys Of Self-Pleasure Can Help You Out

A lot of people feel like, “I’m feeling good, it’s fine.” It’s known because you’re doing that. If you’re not feeling good without that, then it is not tangible. It is not real. Thank you for explaining that. I’ve asked you a lot of questions in this conversation. Any questions for me?

Did you experience widow fire?

I did not. I’m so jealous. When I hear these widows talk about it, I tell you, I was dry as sandpaper. My husband and I, when we were together 2, 3 times a week, liked to go mad. “We’re going to have makeup sex, not talking, whatever.” He made love to me and died the next day. I’m like, “Who walks up in here and tells my man, I hit that?” That’s where I was at.

I’m not still recovering.

I’m over here like, “Who does that?” I thought I was going to be skipping to the next town, nothing. It was like, I got cheated out of part of this whole thing, zero.

That is okay, because it looks different for everybody. Even in the fire, they have so many things. I want to touch on some of the toys of self-pleasure. One of the things I love that did help me through some of my pleasure spurts of just needing some was this thing, and I’m going to say it, teledildonics. What that is for me, I’m very mentally stimulated, but I wasn’t ready to let someone in that headspace for me.

Teledildonics, a lot of them are app-based toys where you can play with them without the app on your phone, but they do have a Bluetooth capability to connect. When they connect the app, a lot of times we’ll have stories that are read out loud with masculine and feminine voices. The toy will navigate the scene of what you’re reading to project that vibration and that feeling with the toy.

There are so many options out here.

For me, that was my mental stimulation was listening to this story and feeling the toy go whatever which way as the story or the man in that. With that, you can hear the voice and tie whatever man crush celebrity or even your person to this voice of pleasure and satisfaction to get you there. That, for me, since I’m very sapiosexual, was my stimulation when I didn’t want to bring that other person in yet. When I was comfortable having that permission of going with of having another man in the bedroom with me. There are options out there.

That alone is going to be like, “Where is that’s his email address? What did they say that was?”

I went to work with a smile every day.

Get In Touch With Lexus

How does someone reach you?

A good sex life starts with a choice. Give yourself permission to go out there and try. Share on X

They can reach me on Facebook, Talk Sex with Lex. They can reach me through email. That’s TlksexwithLex@gmail.com. They can reach me on TikTok, the Talk With Lex. They can also reach me on Instagram, which is TalkSexWithLex. Those are all the ways you can reach me. You can also go to my website. If you’d like to see anything I have coming out or book a session, you can go to TlkSexWithLex.com.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Give Yourself Permission To Create Your New Norm

You’re welcome. I’m going to say something to our audience, and then I’d like you to close out the conversation with anything else you may have thought of or something to share. I am proud of you for making it through this conversation. I know the holidays are tough, and I know we are in different situations than we ever probably thought possible in life, but you’re alive, and you are living. Yes, grief and joy, the duality can exist. This conversation is one that I hope you have enjoyed. You’ve learned something, and you contact Lex because I’m sure you have some questions.

Thank you so much for that. I do want to leave them with it through the holidays, create your new norm. Give yourself permission to create your new norm, but also, whatever it takes, make sure you enjoy it. Don’t lock yourself away. Get out there. I know for me, just a quick little tidbit, I said, “I want to see people, but I don’t really want to see families yet. I’m going to go to the Ritz-Calt.” That’s what I’m going to do.

I always wanted to stay there or go on a cruise. This is what I want to do. This is going to be fine. Make it, make that choice because it all starts with the choice. Give yourself permission. I cannot stress that enough to get out there and try. Nothing beats a failure but a try. Something good, when I live by this, everything’s always working out for me. Good, bad, or indifferent. God will make sure it’s for the greatness of Him and of me. With that, like I said, get out there, lead with love, give yourself that permission, love on you, because nobody else is going to love on you like you do.

 

 

Important Links

• Lex Powell
• Talk Sex With Lex on Facebook
• Talk Sex With Lex on TikTok
• Talk Sex With Lex on Instagram
• TlkSexWithLex@gmail.com

  

About Lexus Powell

Lexus Powell is a woman who wears many crowns: A mother, Certified Sexologist, intuitive Manifestation coach, and bold truth-teller. After walking through postpartum depression, motherhood challenges, heartbreak, and her own journey of sexual self-discovery, Lex has dedicated her life to helping other women rise through their own seasons of grief and transformation. 

Through her brand Talk With Lex LLC, she creates safe spaces for conversations many are afraid to have—whether it’s about pleasure, intimacy, divorce, or healing. Her work blends faith, humor, science, and soul, guiding women to find peace, unlock pleasure, and live unapologetically free.

When she’s not coaching, writing, or speaking, Lex is a proud mama of two boys who inspire her daily to live out loud and love without limits.