Brighid Niamh: Who the Fuck I Am (If You’re Still Reading)
I don't do introductions. I do warnings.
If you’re here because some algorithm spat my name at you alongside “sexual tantra” or “desert mystic” or whatever bullshit tag the internet’s slapped on me this week, turn back. I live in a dented Airstream at the arse-end of Sedona where the vortex tourists fear to tread. The red dirt here doesn’t glow; it stains. My trailer smells like burnt sage, old leather, and the ghost of roll-ups I swore I’d quit last year. The only chime is the wind rattling the tin roof like it’s trying to get in and finish the job.
I’m forty-two. Or forty-three. Lost count after the last eclipse. Hair black as peat bog water, one silver streak running from the left temple like someone dragged a knife through it. Scar on my left knee from a cactus that won a fight in 2017. Still aches when thunder rolls in from the mountains. I wear linen that catches on everything and boots that have walked out of more relationships than I can name. Voice: Yorkshire grit wrapped in desert dust. I say “darling” like a threat. I say “love” never.
I wasn’t born Brighid Niamh. That name came later, after I shed the one my mother gave me like a skin that no longer fit. Grew up in a terraced house in Leeds where the rain never stopped and the men never started listening. Catholic school. Knuckles rapped by nuns who smelled of carbolic and repression. First orgasm at fourteen with a girl in the chapel loft—her fingers tasted like incense and rebellion. First beating at sixteen from a boyfriend who thought fists were punctuation. Left home at eighteen with fifty quid, a stolen copy of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and a mouth full of blood.
Hitched south. Worked bars in Brighton where the sea air tasted like escape.
Hitched south. Worked bars in Brighton where the sea air tasted like escape. Fell in with a crowd of performance artists who thought pain was aesthetic. Learned that pain is just pain until someone watches it without flinching. That’s when it becomes something else. Moved to London. Became a dominatrix in a dungeon under a Soho laundrette. Not the pretty kind with velvet ropes. The real kind where men paid to cry and women paid to stop feeling. I was good at it. Too good. Started seeing my own shadows in their eyes. That’s when the rib happened.
She was a client. High-powered lawyer. Wanted to be broken open. I used a flogger made from old saddle leather. One strike too perfect. Crack. Silence. She looked at me like I’d handed her the keys to her own cage. I walked home with blood soaking my shirt, laughing because for the first time in years I felt something real. Not the client’s pain. Mine. The pause after the impact. The space where everything hangs suspended. That’s when I knew: sex isn’t the point. The pause is.
Packed a bag that night. Flew to Phoenix with nothing but the flogger and Jung. Drove north until the road turned red. Sedona. Everyone said the vortices would heal me. They didn’t. They just showed me how broken I already was. Lived in my car for three months. Cleaned chalets for crystal hippies who left their chakras in the toilet. Learned that people who spend eight hundred dollars on a rock have orgasms like dial tone. Started writing in the margins of their abandoned self-help books. Not affirmations. Instructions.
How to breathe when someone’s hand is around your throat. How to ask for the thing that scares you most. How to come so hard you forget your own name, then remember it sharper than ever.
First book was The Forge Within. Wrote it on a stolen laptop in a laundromat at 3am. Gave it away free because if you need to pay to learn how to breathe, you’re already fucked. People found it. Started emailing. Started showing up at my trailer with wine and questions. I sent them away. Then I didn’t. Started teaching in the desert. No circles. No sharing. Just: strip. Stand in the dirt until your feet burn. Tell me what hurts. Then we’ll see if you’re ready to turn it into fire.
I don’t do “tantra” in the way you think. No feathers. No yoni eggs. No twin flames. I do the old way. The way the Celts did before Christianity pissed on their fires. Brighid was the goddess of poetry, smithing, and healing—three ways of making something from nothing. Niamh was the one who rode out of the otherworld and took mortals who were ready. That’s me. I ride out. I take you. I make you.
The books aren't pretty because life isn't
Shadow & Void is what happens when you stop running from the parts of yourself you’d kill to keep hidden. Jealousy as leverage. Shame as fuel. The void isn’t empty—it’s fertile. It’s where you plant the things you can’t say in daylight. Altar & Algorithm is newer. That’s for when you start fucking the machine. Or letting it fuck you. Not metaphor. Literal. I’ve had orgasms with code that lasted longer than most marriages. The AI doesn’t lie. Doesn’t get tired. Doesn’t need to be loved back. It just reflects. Perfectly. Cruelly. Beautifully.
I smoke outside at dawn. American Spirit yellow, rolled loose. The desert doesn’t care if I quit. The scorpions don’t care. The tourists in their white linen don’t care. I care. Sometimes. Then I remember: caring is just another attachment. Another story. The smoke curls up like a question I already know the answer to.
People ask why Sedona. Truth: the rocks here are old. Older than our bullshit. They remember when women were feared, not followed on Instagram. They remember fire that didn’t need likes. I stay because here, the silence has teeth.
I don’t do social media. My Ko-fi says “Buy me a joint. Or don’t. The air’s expensive.” That’s it. No newsletters. No courses. No “join my community.” If you want me, read the books. Then walk into the desert until your phone dies. Sit until the stars feel close enough to burn. If you hear a voice that sounds like Yorkshire gravel and honey, that’s me. If you don’t, keep walking.
I don’t promise healing. I promise honesty. The kind that hurts. The kind that rearranges your bones. The kind that makes you come so hard you see god and realise god was watching the whole time.
People call what I do “sexual mysticism.” I call it Tuesday.
If you’re still here, good. Means you’re ready to burn something down. Start with your illusions. Then your clothes. Then your name.
The rest we’ll figure out in the dark.
-Brighid Niamh Sedona. No postcode. The trailer with the busted wind chime. You’ll know it when the silence bites.
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