By Grace Pernecky • Photos by Susan Ayer

Editor’s Note: We asked Grace Pernecky to go out and write a story about Leslie Blackburn, who has been a practitioner of sacred sexuality in the greater-Ann Arbor area since 2009. Back then, Blackburn had realized that the impact of what they had been learning about their own sacred sexuality in their own life needed to be shared with the rest of the world. Their work has integrated multiple different modalities, and ultimately seeks to reconnect individuals with their sexuality, their spirituality, and each other. In more recent years, Blackburn has also been deeply concerned with issues related to the violent impact of white supremacy embedded in our bodies, systems, and structures and with ancestral grief, healing, and community.

Within the past year, Blackburn’s work has pivoted to involvement in the local political scene, where they recently ran in the primary for Lodi Trustee. Blackburn states that this transformation is an extension of the empowerment work they were already doing in sacred sexuality. They ran under the campaign mantra “Protect the land, share the process, and empower the people.” This article explores how the arc of Blackburn’s life story allowed them to translate their previous life experiences into fuel for building a community based on our relationships with nature, community, our ancestors, and our bodies.

Blackburn, who is 53 years old, was born in rural northern Ohio and moved around a lot as a kid (enrolled in five schools by the time of sixth grade), and eventually ended up in southeastern Michigan, where they have lived for the past 31 years. They have a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio State University and spent 15 years in automotive engineering/product development. Blackburn then became a sexuality educator and spiritual coach.

Blackburn’s daughter, Hannah, 22, a professional tattoo artist, lives with Blackburn. Blackburn’s long-time life partner, Dixon, (“he is the amazing creator of Dixon’s Violin—DixonsViolin.com”) also lives with them.

The First Arc:

A White-Knuckled Grip Begins to Loosen

The sun beat down as I pulled up to Leslie Blackburn’s house. I glanced down at my phone as I turned off the car. “Come around to the back,” stated a text from Leslie, complete with a tree and a purple heart emoji. I smiled and stepped out into unseasonable heat.

As I poked my head around the back corner of the house, Blackburn looked up and called me over with a smile in their voice. They sat at a table on a wooden back porch under an umbrella faded with sunlight and many happy years of use. Their current companion at the table was an old typewriter.

“Sorry, this is just a project I’ve been tinkering with lately. Be right out!” Blackburn said with their paint-spattered hands in the universal surrender pose that signals the need for a washing.

I made myself comfortable relishing in the warm breeze that flowed through the lush backyard. The natural, outdoor setting for our conversation was full of the sunshine, authenticity, and the philosophy of interconnectedness that Blackburn themselves is so heavily steeped in. I breathed in, breathed out, early summer pollen making my head fuzzy with its perfume.

I had initially asked Blackburn if they would be willing to speak more about their work in sacred sexuality. They had told me that they would love to be interviewed, but had a different direction they would like to take the conversation in. I didn’t know what to expect, so I showed up with an open mind and a healthy dose of curiosity.(what I always bring to a deep conversation with a new friend).

Blackburn opened the back door with clean hands and a kind face. We began.

“I started as a ‘socialized girl/woman person’ who walked a corporate heteronormative life,” Blackburn began their saga. For years, they were an endurance athlete with a master’s in engineering. Blackburn went on to describe the power that their socialization held on the values and “to do” list that they chose to uphold. “I thought I was supposed to get married, have a car, and do [The Next Thing, and then The Thing After That].” This checklist mentality was pervasive in Blackburn’s earlier perspective on life.

About 15 years into their “first arc,” as Blackburn referenced it, they reported that they had a spiritual awakening connected to the pregnancy and birth of their daughter. “This woke me up to seeing the white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel that I was doing with life. [I saw that] the attempt to ‘drive my body was not the only answer. I had to let go and start listening to my body.”

Blackburn’s story is one that is accompanied at each pivotal moment by a lesson learned. At this particular juncture, Blackburn learned to surrender. Through months of trying to force it—“fertility treatments and all these things”—Blackburn eventually reached a point of surrender, expression, and release of grief. It wasn’t until they had given up their facade of control that their daughter appeared.

The Second Arc: Sacred Sexuality and Inner Healing

“That’s what started the process,” Blackburn reflected to me as I sipped my water thoughtfully. “As I started to question who I was [after everything I thought I knew didn’t get me pregnant], I started to seek out teachers, guides, and lovers. I started to wake up to my own sexuality. I started to dance in the journey of ‘how do I even identify?’”

In their experimentation in self-exploration, Blackburn describes a number of awakenings and self-realizations, including an especially pivotal one which they refer to as their G Spot Awakening. Blackburn reported that they held a molestation trauma from an inappropriate touch they had received when they were 10 years old. “I’d never unblocked it; I hadn’t acknowledged and processed it and let it move through me and leave.” Blackburn reported that every time their G spot would come into contact with sexual partners, the traumatic memory would surface.

“In my book, I call them fruitflies,” Blackburn said lightly. “Fruitflies are these annoying little flying things that seem to come at random but they’re not. For example,” they continued. “Every time someone would come into contact with my G spot, this memory would come up.”

When Blackburn was able to stop and listen to the story that was coming up when their G spot was activated, they were able to start to unwind themselves from it and open the path to female ejaculation (“a word that uses a binary that I’m not a fan of, but it’s the best descriptor we have right now,” interjected Blackburn).

“I wanted to just stand on the mountain and shout [this information] to the world! Nobody talks about this stuff and every person needs to know about this!” Blackburn recalled passionately, referring to the great lack of sexual education involving sexual pleasure and joy. This realization launched Blackburn into the work of sacred sexuality. They knew then that they would soon transform from student to teacher.

“Another White Woman on a Spiritual Healing Journey?

During this time of self-exploration, connecting with guides, teachers, and lovers that taught Blackburn the foundational aspects of sacred sexuality and approaches to healing, Blackburn began to write a book. “In those first few years, from 2009 to 2018, I didn’t see the privilege in it,” Blackburn lamented. “There’s so much privilege in that journey, to be able to take these trips to Peru and Egypt that I talk about in my book. So, I wrote this whole book, and in 2018, when I had my own awakening to my whiteness and to the work inherent in being anti-racist, I was like ‘Gahhh! I can’t publish this thing now! It’s just another white woman [talking about self-help]. People will just be like, ‘Another one, really?’’”

And so, Blackburn painstakingly returned to the book over the course of the next several years, heavily editing and footnoting their work in order to include the next arc of their journey and lessons learned. Blackburn plans to publish the book within the next several months.

Along with their realization of whiteness, which Blackburn writes about in a previous Crazy Wisdom Community Journal article entitled, Meeting Our Discomfort to Support Collective Liberation (in issue #79), Blackburn took intentional time for reflection and action to understand “what being an ally” actually looks like. “It took time,” Blackburn wrote. “I slowed down and listened. I observed my habits of thought and my body sensations in different situations. I also redirected my attention to teachers, influencers, healers, and artists of color in my social media feed. I began studying with folx experienced in unpacking racism from our bodies and started to really unwind the way my body carries white supremacy.”

Blackburn also started to realize around this time that individual healing and growth was only one pillar of what they wanted their life to incorporate. They spoke about what they call the Four Foundations. On their website, Blackburn writes the following: “All the work that I’ve done over the last two decades I now see clarified into four resources of support—key relationships that are often ruptured in our experience.” Those four entities are nature, community, ancestors, and our own bodies.

At this point, the last thing on their mind was politics.

The Third Arc: “Om-ing” in Office?

Within the past few years, Blackburn has retired from their work as a sacred sexual healer to “listen in.” “It’s been wonderful to start to meet and deeply connect with friends and community and lovers that aren’t just beings that look like me,” they said.

In 2023, as a result of this work, Blackburn found themselves involved in a land dispute in Lodi Township. The land in question was forested land with an intact ecosystem that has been unchanged in character by humans from pre-settlement, and it was under threat of development. “So, it’s not like this land, which was clear cut for agricultural work at one point has now grown back; this is forest that hasn’t been touched yet [by colonization]. To be at risk after all these years?” Blackburn shook their head, “I said, ‘hell, no.’”

Blackburn became heavily involved in doing the work to protect the land within the township, attending city council meetings and the like, and found themselves hitting a lot of barriers; between trouble finding and being able to access what should have been public data, to feeling “berated, demeaned, or shut down [at council meetings]… my interactions with the township were so painful,” Blackburn reflected.

At some point, their friends began to ask them if they’d ever considered running for office. “Hell no, have I considered running for office!” Blackburn laughed. But after checking in and listening to their body, the land, the trees and the ancestors, the message was clear: “no questions—you need to run,” Blackburn heard.

From the get-go, Blackburn knew they couldn’t do this alone. “But then, the person who’s running for another township position shows up and he says, ‘Hi, my name’s Eric and I’m running for township clerk, and my husband’s running for trustee.” Once Blackburn saw that their “fellow Queerdoes are here” (as they put it) they took it as a sign. Their campaign as a Democrat running for Lodi Township Trustee was launched at the beginning of 2024.

The three pillars of Blackburn’s campaign are “protect the land, share the process, and empower the people.” “It brings all of it full circle,” Blackburn reflected aloud. “I just never thought it would happen this way.”

Protect the Land. Share the Process. Empower the People.

It was around this time in our conversation that I started having a coughing attack.

“I’m sorry… There’s a… speck of pollen… in my… in my throat… or something,” I spluttered, frustrated that drinking water wasn’t cutting the mustard and that our conversation might need to come to an early end.

Instead of accepting defeat, Blackburn looked at me with concern yet also with confidence and asked if I would like to try taking some goldenrod tincture. They noted that they make this particular tincture from the goldenrod that grows on the land at their house, as herbalism is also an important aspect of their spiritual practice with the land. “It can be really helpful in calming pollen-related allergies,” they said hopefully.

“I would… I would be open to that!” I heaved desperately.

Within seconds of taking the tincture, my coughing stopped. Not only that, but I felt overall better than when I’d initially stepped up to the porch at the beginning of our conversation; the fuzziness in my head subsided. Blackburn practices what they preach—both relational and practical support through human community and through the resources available to us from the land.

“Anyways,” I heaved a sigh of relief that we were able to continue our chat. “Leslie, you are such an authentic person. How does running for office align for that? Is it challenging to be authentic when you have to campaign to an audience whose values and beliefs may not align with your own?”

“If I can have my truth and be heard, then I might make more skillful choices around how I’m communicating because then something can [actually] happen. Whereas if I just stay “om-ing” on the side of the mountain, which is a valid path, [no progress is made in society]. I got pretty clear early on that I don’t just get to take my spirituality off-grid somewhere and be alone. My calling in this lifetime is to be in our society in community with it. Right now, that means running for office. Which still somehow boggles a part of my brain,” Blackburn answered.

For much of Blackburn’s voting contingency in this township, Blackburn is not leading the campaign with “Hey, I was a sacred sexuality educator!” “Am I hiding it? No. I’m leading with what’s available for people to hear. Sometimes, there’s a piece of it that can’t be seen immediately because someone will have a trauma reaction to it and [immediately cut off further conversation].”

Blackburn brought our conversation full circle in relating back their current political endeavors to their beginnings in sacred sexual healing:

“There is a lot of power in working with sexual energy as a spiritual practice, or as a practice in enlightenment. But the most profound shifts I saw, and certainly that I saw in myself, was developing the ability to stay present.

That’s how it’s connected. The way that sacred sexuality, anti-racism, grief work, ancestral healing work, and even politics and campaigning work is connected has to do with being with big energy in the body and building our capacity and resiliency in our body and subtle body to stay with it. To be with big energy as it moves through. Not only in our individual practice, but also in our dynamic relationship with other beings.

Whether it’s the pulsing rise of orgasmic energy or the wail of grief, I need to be present with my whole body to let it pass through. That is also true for the discomfort of anti-racism work—it is not comfortable to recognize when we’ve created harm. We cannot disappear when we notice this but [need to]stay in relationship with and be in reparations of our own self-care in how we treat ourselves when we’ve created harm. Politically speaking, the big energy moving through me is the voice; being in my truth and having my voice move through me with authenticity and love.

The more we can be true to who we are and let that energy come through clearly, cleanly, authentically, and reliably, the better our lives and the lives of those around us will be.”

If you’d like to contact Blackburn, you can email them at friends@leslieforlodi.org.

Blackburn will be advancing to the November general election after a succesful primary performance, earning 752 votes on August 6th.