What Would "Bad" Theresa Do?

“If I were a bad girl, I would…..”

The first time we had to finish this sentence in my Mistress group, I was at a loss for words. I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make me seem like an evil, selfish bitch.

And that’s the point.

Kasia Urbaniak invites us to do this “bad girl protocol” in order to unearth the desires that exist below our good girl conditioning. The desires that we would allow ourselves if we could break all our self-imposed rules, and the potential judgments of those we care about, and those we don’t even know.

With practice, I was finally able to speak to some of those bad girl actions, or even bad mother desires. It felt awkward. It felt selfish. And then it felt freeing. The shame of having these desires melted away, until I could openly speak about that which I truly wished for in the world. It revealed so much more than I could have imagined.

Kasia says that she has gotten flack for using the word “girl” instead of “woman,” but say that it’s intentional because when we are young we don’t live from the same restraints.

Yesterday, my daughter made a batch of these amazing Brownie Cookies. She stuck her finger in the bowl, licked it, and dove in for more. She ate the dough with abandon, and still ate the cookies once they are actually cooked. She didn’t think twice about the hygienics of dipping her finger in the dough again and again. And she didn’t think about the fact that she was going to “ruin” her dinner afterward.

She simply followed her desires.

Unfortunately, too many of us have been trained OUT of our desires. We’ve been taught to believe that asking and getting what we want is not okay. It’s selfish. It’s self-indulgent. It’s lazy. It’s greedy. It’s frivolous.

Yet behind every complaint is a desire, and behind every desire is an ask that’s waiting to be put out into the world. Most of our desires can’t be fulfilled in isolation, so we must rely on our community to help fulfill them.

And that’s why we stop. We are too worried about others judgments that we never ask.

My questions to you as we start this new year are these:

What’s the ask behind your most consistent complaint? Are you willing to be “bad” enough to ask it?

Originally posted on Substack with comments.

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