Ep. 048: Sexuality, Boobs, Breast Implants, Body Image, Birth Control; Understanding the Spiritual Relationship with Our Bodies and Sexuality // a Conversation with Sophie Jaffe, Sahara Rose, and Ali Bonar

Earlier this year I sat down with Sahara Rose (www.iamsahararose.com), Sophie Jaffe (www.thephilosophie.com), and Ali Bonar (www.kween.co) to chat all things boobs, body image, sexuality, birth control, and having a spiritual relationship with these things. Today’s episode of #shadowlightpodcast is the audio from this conversation.

All three of these womxn are incredible, loving powerhouses who share so openly and directly about these topics from their experience and understanding. I am so grateful for this conversation—for the content and the candor—and am thrilled to be able to share it with y’all! And really hope it inspires the other womxn tuning in to have these kinds of conversations with your friends!

Of course, there is a backstory to why this conversation is so dear to my heart. And it’s an important one for me to start sharing more about even though it honestly still feels uncomfortably embarrassing and vulnerable for me.

In 2012 I had breast implants put in. After years of disordered eating and losing 20 pounds the month after my mom died (when I was already below average weight), my boobs completely deflated. I also didn’t have a period, lost a bunch of hair, and had a myriad of other health issues.

But, at the time, my titties were my biggest concern. That is just a display of where I was at in life. (Hint: it didn’t work; actually complicated things even further.)

Desperately trying to fix everything on the outside, in hopes it would make me feel better on the inside.

I wanted implants so badly that I packed my apartment up into a storage unit and moved in with my grandma for 6 months so I could afford them.

6 months after having the implants put in I started experiencing autoimmune symptoms. And have been in and out of chronic pain, inflammation, hormonal issues, thyroid and adrenal issues, and more ever since.

My intuition told me the implants were related and I asked multiple doctors about whether they could be related.

Which, I should note, is not to say that they were THE cause… I also had a lifetime of chronic stress and trauma that certainly contributed to my body’s breakdown… but at least the straw that broke the camel’s back?

BUT EVERY SINGLE DOCTOR TOLD ME THAT WASN’T A THING. The implants aren’t related to the symptoms, there is no reason to think that would be true.

So I believed them. Because, obviously, doctors are smarter than me?

This was also a theme for ~4 years of my life, as I went in and out of doctors office for my autoimmune illness and was given different diagnosis after different diagnosis and basically written off like it was all in my head.

2 years ago I started hearing about Breast Implant Illness. And was like WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK! So I started researching it and so much clicked.

Why did I never even think about all of the plastic and CHEMICALS sitting INSIDE of my body?

Especially as a highly sensitive person.

By this point, I had already stopped eating out of any plastic and had stopped purchasing anything wrapped in plastic (to my best ability) … and to be totally honest, that didn’t start because of my concern about the environment. I started doing it because of my concern about ingesting chemicals that leaked out of plastic.

AND HERE I WAS WITH PLASTIC TITTIES.

Plus, they felt totally out of sync with who I was anymore. I had purged so much emotionally, moved across the country, purged my physical belongings, purged friendships and family members that were toxic … total clean out … except for these heavy bags of old pain on my chest.

So in December I had them removed.

And the aftermath has been far greater than I could have imagined.

Mostly emotionally.

Realizing how disconnected I had been from my body. And my heart. Literally blocking my heart off from the world with a plastic wall. After having my heart shattered by the loss of my mother.

And then from openly sharing my experience with other people.

Since having them removed, I have had SO many conversations with other womxn about the topics in this podcast episode.

Some who had implants, some who wanted them, some who admit that they judge people who have them, some who were totally impartial or hadn’t given any of this more thought, the whole gamut.

But a constant amongst EVERY womxn I have spoken to has been the deeper understanding and connection with the larger message, the body image issues, putting things in our body that can disrupt our health without appropriate information (birth control, other meds, etc.).

And I started realizing how much more of this we ALL need.

Honest, direct, vulnerable, REAL conversations about the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual realities of how we relate to our bodies and what we put in and around them.

Without shame or blame or judgment or assumptions about another person’s experience or story.

This conversation is just a small piece of that. It goes deep from the drop-in, and stays there all throughout. It is short (around 30 minutes) but powerful.