Ezra sits at a dimly lit oyster bar, staring at the glistening shellfish. Each one is a world unto itself — the jagged, weathered shell giving way to the silky flesh within, shimmering like a secret barely revealed. A faint scent of brine rises, evocative of distant shores and ancient tides. Around her, conversation flows easily, laughter rising and falling, but her mind drifts into a quieter, more contemplative space.
The oysters, raw and delicate, feel like tiny mysteries — paradoxes of hardness and vulnerability, the sensual and the sacred.
A memory surfaces: nineteen years old, feet sinking into wet sand on a beach near home. The sky is a swirl of tangerine and grey, dusk folding into night. A friend hands her an oyster, freshly shucked, nestled in its rough cradle. It glistens with seawater, alive with possibility. She hesitates, her fingers trembling slightly as she lifts the shell to her lips. The oyster is cold, slippery, almost too alive — a strange combination of exhilaration and discomfort, like holding something at once fragile and powerful.
She swallows it anyway, a small act of defiance and curiosity. The taste is a revelation: briny and metallic, an electric charge that lingers on her tongue. It is not entirely pleasant, but it is unforgettable. She feels the sea in it, the weight of its history, the mystery of something formed in darkness and salt.
In that moment, the oyster became more than a culinary experience. It was a symbol of initiation, of awakening to her own complexity — her desires, her vulnerability, and the defences she had carefully built. Years later, as she reflects on that memory, she sees the oyster as a mirror of her own journey: the hard shell, the soft centre, the irritants that became pearls.
The Oyster as a Shield: Protection and Persona
Growing up, Ezra learned to armour herself against the world. Like the oyster’s ridged, impenetrable shell, she constructed a façade to keep out judgment, rejection, and pain. Jung (2009; 1953) would call this the persona — the mask worn to navigate the expectations of others, to belong, to be accepted. It was the version of herself she presented to the world, polished and composed, even when it felt far removed from her true feelings.
For Ezra, this shell felt essential, a kind of survival mechanism to protect the tender, hidden parts of her that longed to be seen but feared exposure. Beneath it lay her vulnerability, her dreams, and her fears — delicate and unguarded, like the oyster’s soft flesh. The persona became her armour, a way to withstand the slights and criticisms that threatened to wound her. Over time, the lines between the mask and her true self blurred, leaving her feeling disconnected and unseen.
She lived, like the oyster, in dark, murky waters, her true self buried beneath layers of caution and defence. Yet even the strongest shell cannot entirely shield us. Life has a way of intruding; irritants find their way in — grains of sand that stir and agitate the soft interior. These irritants, whether in the form of heartbreak, failure, or societal pressures, are often small at first but persistent, forcing their presence to be reckoned with. For Ezra, they were reminders of the cracks in her armour, the places where the mask no longer fit.
Her journey became one of learning to sit with the discomfort of these intrusions, to soften her defences and allow the parts of herself she had hidden away to breathe. Like the oyster, she discovered that transformation begins with irritation — the process of turning pain into something meaningful, something beautiful.
Pain and Transformation: Making Pearls
Ezra’s irritants were many: societal pressures to be perfect, the silent shame surrounding her burgeoning sexuality, and the wounds left by relationships that cut deeper than she dared admit. These irritants stung, lingering beneath the surface as unacknowledged pain.
Jung’s concept of individuation — the process of facing one’s shadow to become whole — resonates deeply with her. Transformation, she learns, is not about avoiding discomfort but embracing it.
Here, Barbara Turner’s (2005) work in SandPlay therapy comes alive. In the sandbox of her life, Ezra’s therapist held space for her to lay bare her irritants — fear, shame, and trauma. Through this process, the oyster became a recurring image, a metaphor for creation through pain. Slowly, she began to see her struggles not as burdens but as catalysts for growth.
Turner emphasises the importance of a safe, nurturing environment for healing. For Ezra, this meant a space where her protective shell could soften, where she could explore her pain without fear. And in that space, she discovered her capacity to turn those grains of sand into pearls.
The Sexual Connotations: Embracing the Erotic and the Sacred
There is no denying the sensuality of the oyster — its soft, glistening flesh, the way it feels almost forbidden, both vulnerable and provocative in its presentation. For Ezra, the oyster became a potent symbol of her fraught relationship with sexuality. The act of consuming it felt intimate, almost taboo, as if crossing an invisible boundary between innocence and awareness.
Raised in a culture that shamed women’s desires, she internalised a profound discomfort with her own erotic energy. From an early age, she learned the unspoken rules: desire was dangerous, self-expression risky, and any overt claim to sexual agency could invite judgment or rejection. These societal messages taught her to armour herself, to suppress the ripples of curiosity and passion that stirred beneath the surface, even as they remained insistent and alive. The oyster’s sensuality, its openness and rawness, mirrored the parts of her she had been taught to conceal.
The oyster also reminded her of the anima — the feminine soul within, described by Jung as teeming with creative, emotional, and sexual energy. The anima embodies intuition, receptivity, and a connection to the sacred aspects of life, yet it is often buried under the weight of cultural expectations that demand women prioritise restraint over expression.
For Ezra, the oyster symbolised the tension between these cultural constraints and her desire to embrace her innate vitality. This tension mirrors a broader cultural paradox, explored by feminist theorists like Laura Mulvey, Simone de Beauvoir, and others. Mulvey’s concept of the "male gaze," in her essay Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema (1975), reveals how women are objectified in visual media, reduced to objects of desire while simultaneously punished or shamed for expressing their sexual agency. This duality, where women’s sexuality is both commodified and condemned, resonates deeply with Ezra’s own internal struggle.
Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex (1949), critiques the historical repression of women’s sexuality, observing that it has long been seen as something controlled by societal structures, reduced to a function of reproduction, and shamed when it extends beyond these limits. Her words, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," reflect how society constructs and confines women’s sexualities, often disconnecting them from their own desires and power. This critique of women’s sexual repression and objectification is something Ezra grappled with, as her culture conditioned her to fear her erotic energy, teaching her to suppress, hide, and ultimately deny it.
When she ate that oyster at nineteen, the experience was both thrilling and unsettling. It was a small but significant awakening, an encounter with her own desires and their complexity. In that moment, the act of eating the oyster felt sensual and defiant, a reminder of the power and discomfort that can accompany claiming one’s own body and pleasure, an act that resists the societal forces that seek to tame or silence it.
Years later, therapy helped her unpack the shame she had carried — not only her own but also the inherited shame of generations of women, conditioned to fear their erotic energy and see it as something to be controlled, hidden, or silenced. Reclaiming her sexuality, she realised, was an act of resistance as much as it was an act of healing. It meant recognising her desires not as weaknesses or liabilities but as sources of vitality and power, integral to her wholeness. In doing so, she challenged the cultural narratives that sought to suppress and control women’s sexual expression.
The oyster became a personal reminder for Ezra of this cultural tension — its delicate interior and exposed presentation reflecting both vulnerability and strength, softness and power, mirroring the conflicting messages society sends to women about their desires.
In SandPlay therapy, the oyster emerged as a recurring image, a symbol of her journey to integrate her sexual and sacred self. It was a reminder that embracing her erotic energy was not only a personal liberation but also a reclamation of something deeper — an ancestral birth right, a connection to creativity and life itself. As Ezra explored her inner landscape, the oyster continued to symbolise the sacred and the sensual, urging her to claim both her power and vulnerability, not as a contradiction but as a necessary and empowering whole.
The oyster’s sensuality, once a source of discomfort, became a celebration of the beauty and depth that exists within the feminine experience.
Holding the Paradox
As Ezra sits in the oyster bar, the shellfish on her plate glisten under the dim lights, tiny worlds of paradox. They are rough and smooth, sensual and sacred, symbols of both protection and transformation.
She realises she is learning to hold her own paradoxes: her strength and her vulnerability; her pain and her potential for beauty; her sexual shame and her sexual power.
The oyster has taught her that transformation is an ongoing process, that the irritants will always find their way in. But Ezra also knows she has the power to turn those grains of sand into pearls. And in this ongoing journey, she is grateful — for the symbols that help her understand her story and for the spaces where her shell can slowly open, revealing the luminous beauty within.
References:
de Beauvoir, S (1949). The Second Sex. Translated by H.M. Parshley. Alfred A. Knopf.
Jung, C. (1953). Psychological Aspects of the Feminine. In Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (pp. 185-246).
Jung, C. (2009). The Red Book. (S. Shamdasani, Ed.) W.W. Norton & Company.
Mulvey, L (1975). Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18
Turner, B. (2005). The Handbook of Sandplay Therapy. Independent Publishers Group.
If you're interested in SandPlay therapy or talking therapy, simply reach out and call, email, or text: 07802418588.
At the heart of my work is a commitment to inclusion, difference, and diversity — creating a therapeutic space where everyone feels seen, valued, and safe to explore their unique experiences. I believe that the relationship itself is where the true work of therapy takes place. It is within this relationship that healing, understanding, and transformation occur.
Differences between therapists and clients — whether in background, identity, or perspective — are not only acknowledged but actively explored and worked with. These differences become part of the therapeutic process, fostering mutual respect, deeper understanding, and genuine connection. Through the symbolic depth of SandPlay or the open exchange of talking therapy, I aim to create a collaborative space that honours individuality and encourages growth.
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