Content Warning: This episode discusses loss, addiction, grief and self-pleasure

Episode 2: Grief, Orgasm, and the Courage to Feel

In this deeply personal episode, Kelsey opens up about the recent loss of her brother to addiction, exploring how grief intersects with pleasure, embodiment, and healing. She and Kate discuss the courage it takes to feel all emotions fully, the importance of staying connected to our bodies during profound change, and how pleasure practices can be acts of resistance and self-love. They share vulnerable stories about rediscovering sexuality after paralysis, creating sensory experiences for self-pleasure, and finding joy amidst overwhelming grief. This episode honors the complexity of being human - holding both sorrow and celebration, loss and liberation.

Resources Mentioned:

Book: "Come As You Are" by Emily Nagoski

Podcast: Emily Nagoski's podcast

Song: "Older" by Lizzy McAlpine (from Platonic Season 2)

Song: “Drip for Me”  by FREAQUE

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[0:00] Content warning and dedication to Nathan

[18:25] Redefining safety, and discovering new norms

[56:50] The body holds trauma we don't express

[58:00] Finding safety in your own body

[1:00:00] Shadow work and unveiling what's hiding

[1:01:1] Episode wrap-up

[1:02:22] Tales from the Clits - pleasure homework

[1:03:28] Kate's kink event adventure

[1:04:00] Kelsey's sensory dream night challenge

[1:06:30] Closing and credits

What happens to pleasure when your body changes forever?

In this opening episode of Pleasure Bound, hosts Kelsey and Kate—two quadriplegic women living full, sensual, complicated lives—introduce themselves, their stories, and the why behind this podcast. Together, they open an unfiltered conversation about disability, sexuality, grief, embodiment, kink, shame, desire, and the radical act of reclaiming pleasure in bodies shaped by trauma and paralysis.

This episode reflects on life before and after spinal cord injury, the grief of losing familiar sensations, the cultural forces that desexualize or fetishize disabled bodies, and the courage it takes to re-enter pleasure—without comparison, without apology. Along the way, they explore kink, shadow work, adaptive tools, orgasm myths, brain-based pleasure, and why connection—not perfection—is the true medicine.

This episode sets the tone for Pleasure Bound: a space for messy, erotic, hilarious, deeply human conversations about coming home to the body—again and again

• Meet Kelsey (C6 quad, dancer, writer, filmmaker, sensualist) and Kate (C5 quad, mom, triple Taurus, pleasure activist)
• Living in “two worlds”: able-bodied identity vs. life after paralysis
• Grief, desexualization, and the shock of how the world’s gaze changes
• Why pleasure practices matter—especially in disabled bodies
• The difference between self-care culture and true embodied self-love
• Kink, shadow work, and why stillness can unlock new forms of intimacy
• Fetishization vs. desire: navigating devotees and objectification
• Why orgasm is not the only (or ultimate) goal
• Brain plasticity, new erogenous zones, and adaptive pleasure
• How comparison to your former body can block healing
• Creating pleasure practices that honor energy, capacity, and consent
• Why community, storytelling, and curiosity are revolutionary

• Move Me (film by Kelsey)
• DanceAbility Method
• Disability After Dark (Andrew Gurza)
• Adaptive pleasure tools & sex education spaces

Music by Freaque 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6xmxsU99bvYcGrvdsw3pFk?si=GSH_oqRIRmyb-I9Y5_-hXQ

Content Warning:
This episode contains candid conversations about sex, disability, and trauma.

Pleasure. Power. Peace. In every body.

Pleasure Bound is a juicy, honest podcast about reclaiming joy, desire, and embodiment—especially in bodies shaped by disability, marginalization, trauma, grief, and profound change.

Hosted by disabled storytellers Kelsey Peterson and Kate Steele, this show blends vulnerable storytelling, cultural truth-telling, laughter, and lived wisdom to explore what pleasure really means—and how to access more of it on your own terms. We talk sex, yes—but also sensuality, nervous systems, self-advocacy, embodiment, and the radical act of loving your body as it is.

Each episode offers real conversations, practical tools, pleasure practices, and experiments in joy. We unpack shame, ableism, toxic cultural narratives, and the stories we’ve been handed about whose bodies get to feel good—and then we rewrite them together.

Pleasure Bound is a space for curiosity, collective care, softness, and spice. A place to say the quiet parts out loud, celebrate our differences, and remember that pleasure is your birthright.

New episodes weekly.
Come curious. Leave more turned on to life.