Devotion, Delayed

There was a time I didn’t know how to receive touch without contracting, let alone to receive worship.
Not because it wasn’t offered—but because I had been taught to fear that depth of attention.

When I first started allowing myself to open to deeper pleasure—to really take in the invitation from lovers to receive and be cherished—it felt selfish.
Dangerous, even.

That kind of unguarded receiving wasn’t safe in my young body. Long before I ever chose to explore the Sacred Erotic, I had already been shaped by early childhood sexual violations—where touch was confusing, consent was absent, and my body’s arousal was something I was made to feel ashamed of.

Those early experiences informed and shaped me in such a way that I had trained myself to not want, and to feel hesitant to ask for the pleasures I deeply craved. Those violations taught me to feel that I wasn’t deserving of sinking in and losing myself in pleasure, or of being held there safely and with celebration.

As I grew up, I became hyper-aware of how others felt around my desires, and I learned to make myself easy to be with—

Low maintenance.
Undemanding.
Safe.

So when lovers began offering me true forms of reverence—hands, mouths, eyes, and hearts—all hungry to serve and adore me, I froze.

I didn’t know how to receive it.
I didn’t know if I deserved it.
And even worse, I didn’t know if I could trust it.

Ironically, it was the withering of my central romantic relationship at that time that opened the door. Up until then, I had reserved the deepest, most tender core of me for that relationship—offering only him the part of me that longed to be cherished, and chosen. But he had grown comfortable with the version of me who asked for very little. He didn’t know what to do with the part of me that wanted to be met in my divine radiance.

So I began to open myself more to my other lovers—attuned, reverent, devoted—and began to taste a new kind of possibility. The reality of being met in that reverence elsewhere illuminated just how parched I had become inside the anchor relationship I called home.

I ended that relationship and leaned in for a time, opening more and more to receiving worship from others, and to my own unbound pleasure.

Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t just longing to feel that devotion from someone else. I wanted to feel it from the inside out. So I started turning toward the mirror. I started asking: what would it mean to give myself the very things I was seeking from outside of myself?

This is when I began to create sacred ritual.
To make offerings of beauty, care, and ceremony to me.

It began simply: the way I chose an ornate goblet to drink from, the way I touched my body in the bath, the way I adorned myself for no one’s gaze but my own.

These small moments became a kind of high protocol. High protocol is a set of intentional behaviors, rituals, or gestures—most often referenced in the world of kink or D/s dynamics—that signal reverence, presence, and devotion. Rather than being about obedience or control as so many people assume, high protocol is about treating the connection as sacred, and using ritual to remember the meaning behind the moment.

This version of high protocol, rather than being in the context of a D/s relationship, was in the context of my relationship to me. A way of telling myself: You matter. You are sacred. And I will not abandon you again.

This is what I now call D/S with the Self—Devotion and Sovereignty in sacred union inside our own being.

In this period of turning inward, I developed some amazing, nourishing practices that have transformed me entirely. It also fine-tuned the speed and precision of my manifestations. The more I anchored into devotion and self-honoring, the more the universe rearranged itself to deliver the people, resources, and experiences aligned with my highest love, wealth, and success.

I’ll be sharing an example of my full Goddess Night Ritual in this week’s paid offering, along with small, specific ways I honor myself in everyday life—things I hope you will feel inspired to try yourself.

Because the truth is this:
When we learn to honor ourselves in the small things, we change the frequency of what we allow in the big ones.

And if someone is going to worship you—
Let it start with you.

In high sovereignty,
-Sharon

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