Susan Hardwick-Smith - Sexually Woke: Awakening the Secrets to Our Best Sex Lives in Midlife and Beyond

Susan Hardwick-Smith, M.D. is an award-winning OB/GYN physician, author, and life coach based in Houston, Texas. She was previously the Founding Partner and Medical Director of Complete Womens Care Center, one of the largest all-female OB/GYN groups in the United States. Dr. Hardwick-Smith recently opened the Complete Midlife Wellness Center, the first private practice in Houston dedicated to menopausal health, nutritional medicine, and sexual and hormonal wellness. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including membership in the Texas Super Doctors Hall of Fame.

Awaken the Secrets to Your Best Sex Life in Midlife & Beyond

Dr. Susan Hardwick-Smith, OB/GYN

Copyright 2020 by Susan Hardwick-Smith, M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

This is a work of nonfiction. The names of women interviewed for this book have been changed to honor their privacy, and some interviews have been edited or combined. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Published in the United States by Cedar Lane Press, LLC

Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-950934-44-7

E-book ISBN: 978-1-950934-45-4

Audio book ISBN: 978-1-950934-71-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020942577

Printed in the United States of America

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Cedar Lane Press

PO Box 5424

Lancaster, PA 17606-5424

www.CedarLanePress.com

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DEDICATION

To Liam, Isabel, and Lily, who taught me how to love unconditionally.

To Taranatha, my father, who bought me the Dharma. To my sister Liz, whose death showed me how to live, the courage to be my best Self, and the example of how to love with an undefended heart.

T he end of my life in a trance was on a Sunday morning in March 2014. I woke up from a dream. It wasnt just any dream; it was an extraordinary, happy dream of being completely whole and making passionate love with my true soul mate. Still damp with perspiration from a night of hot flashes, I bolted awake, sat up, and proclaimed defiantly and joyously, I dont have to do this anymore!

My then-husband stirred in half-sleep and mumbled, What?

What, indeed. Was I still dreaming? The voice seemed to have spoken through me from a higher source. Nothing, I replied and then headed downstairs to brew a cup of tea.

Yes, that was the end of my life in a trancebecause once you wake up, you can never go back to a numb, robotic sleep.

Weeks later, I mustered the courage to leave my 18-year relationship, marking both one of the hardest and easiest things Ive ever done. Hard, because turning lives upside down caused a lot of temporary suffering for a lot of people. Easy, because I felt like I had no other choice. The life force inside me was directing the way, despite the short-term cost.

Then came my aha momenta true spiritual awakeningabout the questions that had percolated silently for years as Id watched and listened to my gynecologic patients struggle with midlife. What was the connection between a womans sex drive as we age and the degree of relationship intimacy and spirituality? Why did my sex drive come back with a passion post-divorce? Why had so many of my patients experienced the same, whether tied to a new perspective of an existing committed relationship or at the onset of a new one? What did spiritual connectedness and sex have in common? Could the dots be connected? Could I connect the dots?

Around the time of midlife, women face what feels like the perfect storm as our meticulously arranged lives start to unravel. Disappearing fertility brings with it the stark realization of our own mortality. Personal illnesses or physical limitations may set in. Our bodies are changing in ways that can be devastating to accept. That voice in our heads questions our relevance, even if we have no desire for childbearing, asking, If Im not fertile, then who am I? Am I officially old now? (I didnt know whether to laugh or cry when I received an introductory mail offer from AARP right after my 50th birthday.) Our children are often struggling or leaving; aging parents may be sick or dying. Relationships are changing, and our careers are either as far as they will go or coming to an end. Combine these forces with a raging storm of hormonal change, and we are standing at a fork in the road. We have a choice. Either wake up, accept, and embrace the wondrous possibilities of this new reality or pile on more delusion and denial.

Like most of my patients, I had been stuck in the latter until I suddenlyliterally overnightbecame intensely aware of the optimism and hope that had been a giant blind spot for me. Instead of seeing the second half of life as an end to everything I valued, I sensed a vast openness of limitless possibility and freedom from the endless hamster wheel that had occupied most of my previous life.

This is an idea worth talking about. After more than 20 years as an expert in womens health, I can tell you with absolute certainty that most of us are missing out on this great truth and the hope it offers: our best life, including our sexual life, doesnt have to end at 50, 60, or 70. The truth is, it has the potential to grow richer and fuller with every moment were blessed to be alive.

When I was growing up, discussing sex was off-limits. Even saying the word s-e-x was an offense that would get me sent to my room, which turns out not to be the ideal strategy for stamping out sexual behaviors in teenagers.

You might remember that 70s book The Joy of Sex. One of my older sisters somehow snagged a copy from a progressive friends parents, and my early sex education happened while hidden under the covers in my bedroom, poring over the peculiar pencil drawings of what was intended to represent a regular 1970s couple. Visions of that chubby bearded man and his partner with hairy armpits still pop up at inopportune times.

Fast-forward 35 years to our current world with unlimited access to seeing people having sex, and most of us are still under the covers with our fears and shame. There are few places for real, open conversations about sexuality, particularly in what I politely call our middle years. As the leader of a sizable, all-female obstetrics and gynecology medical practice, thousands of intimate accounts of intense suffering and confusion about midlife have been told to me behind closed exam room doors. My office became a literal sacred place where all the things women are most afraid to say have permission to come out without fear of judgment.