THE GUIDING LIGHT: CLEAR QUARTZ
For clarity when you feel lost, unsure, foggy and misguided. Clear quartz helps by clearing your mind and bringing to light your authentic desires. Like a spam filter, it will help you scan and delete mental ‘garbage’ so you can zero in on what you truly want. An energetic prescription for 20/20 vision.
This is an edited extract from
…TAKING A BOW (OR A RUFFLE) WITH JOANNE TOOLAN’S PICK OF THE PRETTIEST
DETAILS
My grandmother always said it was a tragedy that only one man (my grandfather, I’d like to think) had seen her naked. She was the town swimming champion: tall and shapely with, as she never failed to tell us, aristocratic ankles. Yet, like a dust-sheet-covered masterpiece, her body went largely unappreciated. A beauteous thing seen by so few.
My body, like hers, has not been viewed by many men. I wouldn’t be so boastful as to profess this as a tragedy for all mankind. But, you know, Jack Nicholson once told me I had ‘nice t**s’, so I’m thinking that there might be an audience.
Why so few observers? Well, I was in a 26-year relationship that started when I was 18. You do the maths. Fact: apart from a few forgettable teenage fumbles, I am 45 and have slept with just one man my entire adult life.
I was so young when I got together with my husband that I never had the wild 20s my friends had. The flirtations, the rejections, the uncertainty, the all-consuming lust. The intense highs and lows. While they regaled me with stories of their dates (he wore sunglasses throughout; his size was not proportionate to his… er, size; he rang his mother three times), I listened (sometimes smugly, sometimes enviously) from the safety of my relationship.
And now that safety net has gone. For the first time in nearly three decades I am single. While there are good things about being single (sleeping in the shape of a starfish, no one waking you up with multiple nightly pees, chocolates that can be eked out for weeks), I feel, on balance, that they are outweighed by the negatives (no one to warm your cold feet on or kiss you goodnight).
Which means I’m dating again. Who am I kidding? I’m dating full stop. There’s no ‘again’ about it. So the prospect of getting naked in front of a new man is very real, which is scary and thrilling at the same time.
When I talk to my single friends, being naked with a new partner seems to top their lists of worries. More so than going to parties solo or having to deal with a broken boiler or pest control issues on their own.
Because naked, if you look at a dictionary definition, means ‘exposed and stripped’. The thesaurus lists its synonyms as raw, defenceless and vulnerable.
It’s weird that naked, our most natural of states, conversely feels the most uncomfortable for lots of us. You’d think naked might mean free, liberated, entirely at one with ourselves. And perhaps it does to naturists, the Kardashians and Lady Godiva, but there’s plenty more who can think of nothing worse than stripping off in front of a virtual stranger.
But, for me, getting naked physically is less worrying than exposing myself