Have you come across Miranda July’s book All Fours? This book is a piece of art.It’s one of those books that you WILL talk about with any other person who has read it too. I don’t think it’s possible to read this book and not have a reaction or an opinion. While I was reading this book I was asking everyone select individuals around me – have you read this? (Because I wanted to talk about it too)
The main character (who remains nameless) is a semi-famous artist who has come into some money for her work. She decides to go on a road trip from LA to New York, but gets sidetracked when she meets Davey at a gas station just outside of LA and ends up staying at a motel and sort-of stalking him. She’s in her 40s and lets her desire lead her next steps.
If you’d like to read an excellent summary by the BBC – read this: Some love it and some tore it apart: How the erotic novel All Fours captured the zeitgeist and divided readers.
This book is both loved and hated. Some people resonate with the main character and others have found her to be un-relatable. I found that I didn’t relate to the character’s journey or choices, but couldn’t help but lean into the shamelessness of her choices. There is a Thelma & Louise type of energy of not listening to any societal norms and making decisions on impulse and desire. Except – she doesn’t die at the end.The ages old myth is that if a female follows her desire, then she will die or be punished for it.
In the book All Fours – Desire is valued. I’m going to write that again: Desire is VALUED. It’s not an easy or safe journey, but it’s a rich and vibrant one.
Shamelessness
In the broad culture, women who act shamelessly are generally not put on a pedestal or taken too seriously. The wonderful thing about All Fours is that the main character has depth – she is processing birth trauma, she is a wife & mother, she struggles with the highs and lows of being an artist. She doesn’t shy away from her sexuality but leans into following her most interesting sexual path.
Shadow Work: But Make it Sexy
Now for a book pairing to All Fours, lets bring in Carolyn Elliott’s non-fiction book Existential Kink. Carolyn also explores all those parts of ourselves that we bury or feel shame about and invites the reader to own the unconscious pleasure that they’re getting from their choices (or lack thereof).
Carolyn Elliot hooked me in at the start of her book with a re-telling of the mythical tale of Persephone from a tragic tale of her rape to an empowered tale. I’m not even going to try to summarize how she did that – but worth a read.
A lot of psychotherapy is often unravelling and releasing shame. I’ve found that most us have parts of ourselves that we don’t share with anyone. We often normalize our shame and think we deserve it until we sit in the presence of a person who doesn’t shame us at all. This can feel like a revelation and release tension & energy we’ve buried or held tight.
A Brief Exercise
Take 5 minutes and think about one thing you feel shameful about, then spend a few minutes and notice what happens to you physically in your body. For me it shows up as tension – how does show up for you?
Sometimes the approach to releasing shame is the presence of unconditional acceptance from a therapist or another person. Sometimes it’s using humour to lighten the seriousness of that shameful item, and then there’s the book Existential Kink which invites the reader to lean into the unconscious pleasure they’re getting from that shame.
One thing I love about this approach is the invitation to play with something so serious – this is the kink part of this work. “I’m willing to stop pretending I don’t enjoy feeling this amount tension & self-judgment”. “I’m crushing it at self-judgment today and it feels so good to feel this bad”.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” Carl Jung
The book Existential Kink delves into topics like war & abuse through the lens of collective shadows and distinguishes this from individual shadow work.The book provides many exercises for any reader to jump into the process of exploring their shadow on their own with a journal.
Existential Kink & All Fours are a book pairing that encourage conversation about women & desire and not getting stuck in the cultural shame around this topic. It’s like the transformation of Stefani Germanotta into Lady Gaga, but at a regular person’s level.
