Between the busiest work week of this year so far—ya, it’s been a slow drip financially, thanks to consumer/economy fears—I steadily consumed the hottest new show on Hulu over my late-night dinners and couch editing sessions. Maybe you’ve seen it already. Ya know, the one where Michelle Williams portrays the former Molly Kochan - a real woman who was dying of cancer and truly on a sex and emotional fulfillment quest during the last of her days on a show called Dying for Sex.

Spoiler alert for this whole article. She dies. You can still listen to her podcast online and read her post-mortem death letter here.

The entire show is a build-up to her, well… death. And in a show that was centered around achieving ever-fleeting life climaxes, the finale 8th episode felt purposefully anti-climactic as a chipper and blunt Nurse Amy holds Molly’s hand and explains the nuts and bolts process of dying, with Jenny Slate and Sissy Spacek listening on as Molly’s best friend, Nikki, and Mom, Gail.

I think it was the peace of it all that flipped the grief switch for me and had me weeping all my mascara off at the end of the night (that, and the PMSing that now has me cobbled to the couch with cramps and the need to poop every 20 minutes - so sexy, I know!)

Sudsing off my makeup mask, a twinge of anger crept up under the base layers of sadness: no woman should reserve her pursuit of a partnered orgasm until that great equalizer, cancer, puts a timer on the achievement.

But a vast majority of hetero women don’t lobby to close the orgasm gap or test the boundaries beyond the vanilla sex they’re having with their “safe” partners (if any sex at all). The show covered a whole range of kinky, sad, and silly topics ranging from long-term relationship endings, Mother/Daughter estrangement, female friendship, sexual “taboos” (with lots of quirky scenes that included full male frontals - yummy! - BDSM, Porn, Puppy Play, Sex Parties, Golden Showers, and recounts of Childhood Sexual Abuse), and the power of community grieving. However, the driving theme that stuck with me was Molly’s deep inner work she had to do to overcome her immediate fight or flight mental switch at each frustrating, almost partnered climax moment.

As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse from the ages of 10-12 (read here), I witnessed with familiarity on screen the faceless thief of our female joy, our safety, our release, that creeps in every time we choose to pursue our bliss, not just placating our partners while they get theirs.

While Molly finally overcame one of her biggest life hangups in episode 7, I was left musing on the hangups I’ve had in making my own orgasms a non-negotiable with past partners and exactly how I’ve gone about changing course on that in my own life. Even without the time crunch of terminal cancer, death is inevitable, and it has never been more imperative to throw the narrative to the wind that we must accept a more meager measure of joy and desexualize ourselves as women to make others comfortable.

Click the upgrade button to become a paying subscriber and learn my secrets to unlocking my rights to Orgasm Equally from the cage of adverse childhood traumas and an ultra-religious Purity Culture background and why I think purely hetero relationships will always be prone to pinpricks of disappointment. Read to the end for a visual reward at the end of this post and also discover what MY next promise is to myself. ;)

*Please note, I want to recognize the complexities of childhood sexual abuse for both women AND men as survivors or partners to survivors - this article is written from my unique perspective as a female and not meant in any way to downplay or dismiss the trauma of male survivors of SA.*