Who is she?
If you have lots of questions about who I am and what qualifies me to help you, I love and applaud your curiosity. You are asking great questions! Consider this first blog post the most intense first date ever. You’re about to get a lot of information thrown at you and if some of it sticks and resonates with you, maybe it’s worth exploring why. I’ll start by turning back the clock to a collectively triggering moment in time: March 2020.
When the reality of what had happened set in, that all of my work had been effectively terminated for the foreseeable future, I had my first emotional/existential crisis of the year. In the stillness of depression and unemployment, I realized that this was the first time I could remember that no one had any expectations of me - I didn’t even know what I could expect from myself. For me this meant that ever since my first job as a salesperson at PacSun (ca. 2004), I had only ever asked about others’ needs and not my own. Finally I slowed down and thought “okay, Meryl, how do you want to spend every day of the rest of your life?” I thought back to 2019 when I watched the brilliant show Sex Education and saw the great Gillian Anderson playing a sex therapist; “Holy shit, that could actually be a real job for me.” I had been working in hospitality for ten years while simultaneously pursuing creative and professional endeavors both in and out of the industry, leaving me little time to stop and consider the path I was on. Rather, I had let my socially conditioned laser focus keep my blinders up and continue down the path that I thought was already written for me. Instead of my mind being cluttered with thoughts like “fuck, I never gave table 5 their blue cheese,” I was asking myself questions and reflecting on my choices, or lack thereof. I realized that I had never made an embodied choice about how I wanted to live my life. I started singing when I was nine, started bartending to pay my bills, continued doing so when I didn’t want to sing anymore, and there I still was ten years later. Yes, I loved my work very much but I hadn’t really chosen it.
“So, how do I want to spend every day of the rest of my life?” This question was shockingly easy to answer. I want to talk about sex, I want to connect with people, I want to help people have a more fulfilling, joyful, and pleasurable experience of life. I felt that all of my experience up to this point, personally & professionally, had led me to this moment when I decided to dedicate my life to becoming a sexuality professional. The overachieving, Type A performer in me wanted to return to my roots, go back to school, and do the most intense thing (more about this to come), but I found myself drawn to coaching and the larger number of tools I would have to choose from as a coach rather than as a clinical therapist. After an agonizing spreadsheet comparison of graduate programs vs. innumerable coaching syllabi and everything in between, I found the Somatica Institute. Their focus on the body really resonated with me and after lots of hemming, hawing, and motivation from my bestie, I decided to make the investment in myself and submit an application for enrollment in their Core Curriculum Training. I had already begun on my journey of self-discovery and care several years prior, but the practices within the Somatica training required me to examine my core wounds, the roots of my attachment, and some of my personal landmines (aka triggers) in a totally new way. When I reconnected with my Inner Child (capitalized because she’s a lil’ Queen), I met her in the moment when I was told that my grandfather and best friend had died. Sitting next to my young self on my little daybed with the green and white quilt, I discovered that the message she needed to receive at that moment was “This is not the end of unconditional love in your life.” And it hit me that I had been living my entire life with the innate belief that I needed to do a lot in order to be deserving of love, and I needed to be doing all of it well. I traced this belief all the way back to my earliest memories of my upbringing and saw how my pattern of over-performing affected my entire life, including my perception of myself & my own worthiness.
If we’re talking tropes, I was the funny fat kid: a “mature for her age” bookworm with a few friends and coke-bottle glasses. Since my coping mechanisms of choice were overachieving and humor, it made perfect sense that I became a theater kid fairly early on. My first role was at 6 years old as Jane in a child-friendly spinoff called “Poppins Pops In Again". (TBH, my first role was as Skunk #2 in Snow White - we all start somewhere.) I absolutely loved being on stage. Transforming into a character and being able to make people see someone else when they looked at me made me feel so safe, like a huge sigh of relief from expectations. Even though I had lines & songs & blocking to remember as Jane, I felt more supported in those expectations than I did in mine as Meryl. And so, I grew up a theater kid. I couldn’t find comfort, joy, or validation in my own body, but on stage I was the confident and boisterous Dolly Levi in a custom fit, red- & black- sequined, ballgown with matching feather headdress, gazing down at the faces of my classmates dressed as waiters and awaiting my grand descent down the staircase. Embodying the life and experiences of the characters I was playing allowed me an escape, and one I received standing ovations for at that. Eventually, I discovered my love for singing opera. I mean… the drama, come on!! The first soprano I vividly remember hearing was Lily Pons, a small French miracle of a person with the highest, fastest voice I’d ever heard. Like Minnie Riperton or Mariah Carey but totally un-amplified and in French. I watched YouTube videos of different opera singers & listened to CDs, and I remember thinking “I can’t believe the human body is capable of that.” Reflecting back, I’m amazed that this is what initially drew me to singing opera at age 13: I want to learn how to make my body make sounds like that.” I guess for me, it’s always been about the body.
My decision to stick with opera very much tracks with my intensity in that it’s the hardest possible choice I could have made for myself. I took it as a challenge to be the best at the hardest thing rather than asking if I even wanted to do the hardest thing. I had, without question, always loved musical theater and dreamed of being a Broadway ingenue. I was also fascinated by biology, forensics, and genetic engineering. In short, I had all the privilege, other interests, and I was smart; and I chose opera. To give you some context: there are about 30 Broadway musicals produced every year in NYC; there are hundreds, maybe thousands of distinguished schools and labs for research and scientific progress; there are maybe five opera houses, globally, that singers dream of performing in. It’s the Olympics of the performing arts. I felt the intense pressure of needing to know what I wanted to do for college & the rest of my life, along with the weight of people’s expectations that I would go into opera, so I stayed the path and did what I knew I was at least good at. My worth had already been proven in this field, so it felt safer to stay.
It’s really hard not to take criticism personally when people are commenting on what your body is doing. In developing my singing technique, I didn’t have reeds or bows or mouthpieces to adjust; I only had my body: my breath, posture, resonance, articulators, diction, legato, phrasing & artistic choices, knowledge. Professors & coaches & instructors all had something to say about what & how I was doing, all in the name of my development as an artist and musician. I didn’t realize how much of that I was internalizing, and began to feel like I couldn’t do anything just right. That I wasn’t (doing) enough. Along the way of learning what was wrong with me.* I tried to seek validation for and with my body. I had been a very precocious child and began exploring my sexuality in middle school. Now I was out of the house, autonomous, and single (my HS sweetheart had broken up with me via FB message early in my junior year). Let the sexcapades begin!
*This was my perception of what was happening at that time based on my childhood trauma, but perception is reality!
While I wish I could say that my 20s were a joyous exploration of my personal eros, they were more like a scavenger hunt for scraps of validation for my body. A lifetime of messaging that I was simultaneously not good enough and too much left me desperate for anyone to say “yes” to me. Unavailable men were my sweet spot because since, for one reason or another, I couldn’t have them, I could never really be rejected by them. The alternative to the rejection was the fantasy of them overcoming the obstacle (be it a relationship, long distance, emotional unavailability etc.) and choosing me instead. Given that one of my core desires is to feel chosen, I’d say that’s a win-win. The catch is, sex isn’t fulfilling if your needs and desires aren’t being met. What I really needed were things like self-love, self-compassion, empathy & care for my Inner Child. As Florence Given says, I was existing for the male gaze. Sex became an expectation, and I followed suit as I had done with my singing. Don’t get me wrong, I love sex and have enjoyed most of the sex I’ve ever had. And I was blissfully unaware of the pattern I had fallen into and thought I was a sex-positive kinky freak who was the HBIC of FWBs. But, as my Bubby would say, the body knows.
“Am I even enjoying this?” I didn’t ask myself that question until I was about 28 and left a job that had become toxic for me. Sex was a habit, albeit a fun one. I used to love the chase, flirting & seducing until I knew I had them and felt the adrenaline rush/serotonin burst/validation hit of their acceptance. But I had started yearning for more connection, to be seen authentically, for someone to want to know the rest of me. I started resenting men for seeing me solely as a sex object but I wanted to be seen as sexy, in fact I still feel contradictory feelings around this that I’m working through. Sufficed to say, I felt the distinct lack of connection between me and the partners I was choosing. Sex felt totally impersonal and predictable, and I felt stuck in the standard sex routine: kissing, hand stuff, blowjob, if I’m lucky he’ll go down on me, he’ll make sure I have an orgasm by any means necessary, and then he’ll go on to focus solely on his own pleasure and orgasm.
“There’s a point where doggy style starts to feel like a read.”
-Trixie Mattel
I realized that I was performing sex rather than experiencing it. I’ll even take it a step further and say that I was performing life rather than authentically experiencing it. The high I felt was not only the rush of the hit, but the comfortable and repeated pattern of fulfilling other people’s expectations. Upon the advice of my best friend, I started answering honestly when people asked how I was doing. Rather than the deeply engrained “I’m good, how are you?” that we so often regurgitate back at people, I tried on my real feelings. Things like “I’m frustrated about my clogged shower drain but otherwise, great,” or “I’m feeling a little nervous about a big career risk I took recently," or “I dunno, I’m a little sad today.” People’s responses were astounding. So many folx found new ways to relate to and connect with me now that I was bringing my embodied feelings to the surface and sharing them. I think this was probably the first big step I took on my journey to embodiment, and I will always thank my friend for that advice. Over the next few years I connected more deeply to my body and my desires, but there was something missing. Some deeply engrained programming that still caused me to feel body shame and prevented me from taking the best possible care of my Inner Child. This brings us back to the global pandemic of 2020, and my discovery of the Somatica Method.
Now, I feel the comfort, joy, and validation that I had found on stage as a young girl in my body - it is always with me. I’m not saying Somatica was the answer to all of my problems, in fact it was questioning the tools, teaching & practices of the method that helped teach me to trust myself and my own process & coaching style. I feel so excited & empowered to share what I have & am continuing to learn, and to witness people’s growth as they begin or continue their journeys with me. No one has it all figured out, myself included, but by harnessing the wisdom and power of our bodies, and deepening our connection to it, we can learn to live in pleasure and joy every single day.