Let's dive right in.

I masturbated a LOT as a child. Not compulsively or anything, but enough to feel like I was doing it a lot. 

I don't know when I discovered it was sexual, because at first I only knew that it felt good. I also knew that I should hide it. I don't really know how I knew that, but I knew that my mom and dad shouldn't catch me doing it. 

I did, however, at a young age (maybe 5 or 6) tell the girl across the street what to do and how to do it because it felt good. What did you guys talk about at sleepovers?

No one ever openly talked about it. And I was DEFINITELY not as stealth as I thought I was about it.

I know for sure that my mom knew, because the closest any comment ever came to acknowledging it was when I mentioned, I "was sore down there". But... I really don't even remember what my mom said, I just remember what else was happening. We were getting out of this big red van that we had when I was a child, my older sister had a volleyball tournament or something that we were going to (there's a large-ish age gap there) and both my mom and my sister were making a joke I used to HATE. I used to mispronounce "volleyball", as VALLEYball.  And then they would often (enough for me to remember it anyway) tease me by mispronouncing it the same way. I would correct them, and get frustrated when they repeated the joke. I didn't know it was a joke when I was 7, but I did remember being corrected in the first place. 

The joking was all good-natured and silly, with zero malicious intent. Even so, I remember that part of the story so clearly I can visualize the parking lot we were in, but I couldn't tell you what the response to my masturbating in the van on the way there and then complaining of soreness afterwards was. 

Please understand, my mother is in NO way the villain of my story. Neither is my father. Neither is my older (half)sister or my two even older (half)brothers. There is no family member or family friend or stranger who has sexually assaulted me in my life. There isn't any villain in my story at all. 

You, dear reader, may be thinking, "Well, yeah, small Midwestern town, Christian white girl, OF COURSE you're repressed!"

That is kind of the point. We easily dismiss or push aside pain by categorizing it in a general way. I'm not trying to make a general point. I am specifically speaking about my personal pain that stems from my disconnect from my own sexuality my whole life.  

Why? Because it is important to share pain and then share healing. Because sometimes someone else's pain can help us recognize our own, and then help us heal our invisible wounds. 

Much of my story will sound cliché, I imagine. I lacked any understanding of my own sexuality until AFTER I got married, and suffered major consequences because of that. So I am determined to talk about sex and sexuality in the MOST unflinching and frank terms possible. My hope is that I can help at least one other person who is struggling with a similar sort of burden. 

I am plagued by doubts that any of this is important enough to write down and send out into the world. We need to remember that our story IS important, not more important than anyone else's story, but important. I am valuable, and so is my story, BUT so are the billions of other people and their stories. 

I want to know and understand the pain of others, and help them heal. 

💗

Allow me to introduce myself.

Let me start by saying that I've been thinking about the topic of this blog my whole life, but it wasn't until about 8 years ago that it really mattered. 

Sexuality.

This is a term that is politicized, abused, vilified, ignored, and VERY rarely discussed in a healthy way.

I come from a generation of Christians that struggle with what sexuality is, and to my detriment, I realized what that struggle would mean to me too late.

That is what I want to talk about, write about, share with the world. 

Who am I to talk about it?

I am a 30-something, married, straight woman. I am a product of loving parents who meant well, and the LCMS Lutheran church in my small rural town. I am a student of Lutheran schools from pre-school through college. I am someone who did not naturally engage with my sexuality... ever. I will continue to work on that my entire life. I am a reader of all the semi-toxic Christian literature about how to find a Christian relationship and what to do after I find one. I am a sister, godmother, aunt, daughter, granddaughter, wife, and human.

The stories I am going to tell are my own. I have not researched or compiled data and then synthesized it into vaguely relevant stories with the names changed for anonymity. 

That being said, I am using a pseudonym because I understand that what I say here could potentially affect my employment, and I love and want to keep my job. I also desperately want to talk openly about sexuality and help anyone I can avoid the pain and confusion I have gone through. 

It is important to me that you, the reader, understand that I share these experiences with full understanding about where they stand in the spectrum of human experience. I do not claim, nor will I ever, that I have suffered worse than most other humans. I am privileged in many ways. I hope to share my stories in a way that can help someone, anyone who does overlap with what I am talking about. 

I am not a perfect writer or person, but I am pleased to know you. Thanks for joining me as I roam through my past and present. 

💗