my story

I'm M'kali-Hashiki (EM-kah-lee-HAH-she-kee, hear me say it). I am a Griot & Eromancer, tending the erotic as a current of healing, connection, and transformation; shaping it into story, ritual, and living practice.

I am what one of my teachers, Joseph Kramer, calls an erotic ecstatic—someone who can use erotic energy to access mystical states. I’m a Certified Sexological Bodyworker; a Certified Sound, Voice, & Music Healer; and a Certified Tantric Sacred Intimate. I’m also a former Gynecological Teaching Associate (teaching medical students how to perform painless, patient-centered pelvic & breast exams using my body as the demo model), a published essayist, a former professional social justice organizer, and an Ifa devoteé. I’m a fat, Black, queer, womanist, polyamorous, kinky, first generation Northern-born, middle-aged dyke.

I'm also a Burn Survivor, a same-sex Rape Survivor, and a Survivor of CSA, with about 30-something years of undiagnosed and untreated moderate to severe PTSD under my belt. My primary symptoms are hypervigilance and catastrophizing (which makes me a lot of fun at street fairs!). For the past decade I've been on a healing journey to address my trauma, my PTSD, and all its manifestations—work that has deepened and expanded through this practice.

I have a complex sexuality & sexual history. I have personal experience with polyamory, nonmonogamy, BDSM, and achieving mystical states during sex. I am—and have always been—a “sexual outlaw”, as well as being a “triple minority” (Black, female, and queer); this has allowed me to view society's standards on sexuality with a critical eye. As a Scorpio, I have always been curious and intrigued by sexuality, and feel that my erotic sense is the most calibrated of all my senses, and is the filter through which I experience the world.

My cultural upbringing & lived experiences of struggling to love myself in a world that hates all of my identities (some more than others) informs every aspect of my work.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I was part of the nonprofit world. For about ten years, I was deep in the social justice arena doing a variety of work: admin support, conference and retreat planning, writing organizing manuals, workshop facilitation, organizing local and regional activists, group facilitation, and grant-making. I was also a published author during that time—primarily political articles and essays.

Those years were my political education. One of my mentors once said I "lived like a wild child in a world full of radical thinkers," and that's exactly what it was—learning at the literal feet of some of the most radical thinkers of our time. That's also when I was introduced to Audre Lorde's essay "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power." It blew my mind. Here I was, a highly sexual Scorpio who thought I understood the erotic, and Lorde showed me I'd been thinking too small. She reshaped my entire understanding—the erotic wasn't just about sex or desire, it was about power, creativity, connection, life force itself. The essay became my unspoken manifesto, my North Star.

What I learned in those years was foundational: the personal is political. Oppression requires the suppression of the erotic. Pleasure is profoundly healing. Sexuality and spirituality are deeply intertwined. And passion—that renewable, sustainable fuel—is the medicine we need to heal ourselves and the planet.

But I also learned something harder: when you're disconnected from your body, from pleasure, from your own erotic aliveness, you burn out. I watched it happen to so many organizers. I felt it happening to myself. The work was vital, but we were running on empty, separated from the very source of energy we needed to sustain the fight. Eventually, I burned out hard enough to take an "early retirement" from organizing.

I'd already been leading people toward healing through sex as part of my time as a Leatherdyke—informal, intuitive work that happened in private dungeons as well as community spaces. But after my burnout, I began to wonder: what would this look like if it was structured? If it was intentional? If I could link it explicitly to my understanding of the erotic as political, as Lorde had taught me?

That's when my path shifted. I realized that helping people reconnect to their bodies, to their erotic energy, to their capacity for pleasure and presence—that was also revolutionary work. Maybe the most revolutionary work, because without it, none of us can stay in the struggle long enough to win.

The foundation for this work comes from nearly two decades of formal somatic training, combined with a lifetime of learning from radical communities and my own healing journey. Here's what prepared me: