Erotic Journal Challenge: Intimacy, Romance, and Sex, oh my!
What messages did your caregivers give you about intimacy, romance, and/or sex as a child?
The only sex education I had growing up was in the ‘we don’t talk about it’ category. I don’t even really remember my parents ever kissing in front of me. My mom was pretty… I don’t know how to describe it. Like… you did not ask and you did not tell. You didn’t do it before marriage. And then when the math was done for my sibling, we realized that was not absolute truth. Then it became a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ situation.
Truly, that didn’t help make things any better.
There are some traumas in my family, and I think that’s where the entire ‘we don’t talk about it’ came from. If we don’t talk about it, then it doesn’t exist. Which just caused even more trauma and turmoil in general. It took me a long time to understand that wanting sex and having sex wasn’t shameful and enjoying sex can be part of a healthy lifestyle.
Which would you like to take with you?
I still carry a lot from then. Occasionally, I have some emotional issues being comfortable in my skin, being who I am, and it takes a lot of work for me to remind myself that it’s okay. I am enough.
Thanks to the people I’ve met on Twitter, and subsequently, in real life, I feel better about letting things go when it comes to shame and discussing not only sex, but how awful sex education is in the world. We’re working so hard to change things and it’s so damn hard, but we aren’t going to shut up and go away.
Because of how I grew up, I made sure that my daughter was able to come to me any time with questions about sex. I didn’t want her to experience the same things I did, especially since education about sex is still about diseases and pregnancy and abstinence.
I do my best to let go of the things I was taught as a child. Never seeing your parents hug or kiss… it’s difficult because it makes you question so many things. I wish everyone could leave this form of sexual shame behind. It’s an awful thing to grow up in and then have to deal with all the trash emotions as an adult.
Which would you like to leave behind?
All of it. Every time I learn something new or experience something exciting about sex education or sexual wellness or something positive happens in the community, it lightens that load. It may be another lifetime before we finally experience true sexual freedom on this planet, but we will get there, inch by painstaking inch.
Don’t give up.
