photo of dancer Albertina Rasch, 1915. via the amazing Shorpy.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.
-Pablo Picasso

It’s always a good idea to ask an expert. So let me introduce to you Becky Knight, Clinical Sexologist. Today Becky is helping us make the connection between our guiding values and our sexual choices. Making that connection will help us feel more confident about our sexual choices, calm the voices in our heads that lead to self doubt, and quite the old tapes we don’t need to listen to any longer. Becky, take it away…

Living with Sexual Integrity

Sexuality is a part of life. From the cradle to the grave, we make choices about how to live our lives as sexual beings. We choose beliefs about our bodies, about our desires, and about our behaviors. We choose who to pursue or rebuff. We choose the words and images that inform our sexuality and that give it context.

How we make those choices can be influenced by any number of things: our childhood messages about sexuality, our time and place in society, and the dynamics of the relationship we have with ourselves and with our partners. How healthy those choices are, I believe, is impacted by how closely they align with our guiding values.

When Rachelle’s *8 Things challenge was to create a list of guiding values, I had to pause. Could it be that I had never thought about it before? And could my general guiding values also be at the core of my sexuality? It seemed so obvious, and yet more than a little intimidating. I could have pondered that question for hours, trying to create the ‘perfect’ list. Instead, I shot from the hip and wrote down the first *8 Things that came to my mind. I trusted that if I took a moment to look inward, that I knew what I value most. And you know what, my list looks pretty good! It is a reflection of how I want to live my life.  

Here’s how you can use your guiding values to shape and direct your sexual self:

Write It Down: If you haven’t already done this exercise, I suggest you pause right now and do it. Calm yourself and trust your heart, and write down your guiding values. There is no right or wrong list, there is only your list.

Look Within: The next step is to sit back and look at your list. Look at it, and love it, and ask yourself some questions: 

• Are these values guiding my sexual choices? 
• Which of my values is it easiest for me to express in my sexuality? Which is the hardest? 
• Where has my sex life been inconsistent with my guiding values? How might my sex life be better if it matched up to my values? How can I make the changes I need to? 
• How can I use these values to support my sense of myself as a sexually whole and vibrant person? 

Take a Step
Move towards Sexual Integrity. By that, I don’t mean some religious morality or adherence to a set of rules. I mean, fix the places in you where your guiding values are not guiding you. If there’s an aspect of your sexual life that leaves you feeling anxious or weak, perhaps it’s because the choices you are making are not supported by your self-knowledge of what gives your life its shape and meaning. Be brave, and make a move.

Buddy Up

• It’s okay to ask for help. Reach out to a friend and tell her about your desire to be brave in this part of your life. She probably wants to be brave too. 
• Talk to your partner. Tell them that you want to create a sex life with them that reflects your values. Invite them to share their values as well. Make your intimate life more intimate by being brave together. 
• Get expert help. Find a coach or counselor who can help you move towards sexual health and wholeness.

Our sexuality should add great comfort, passion and humor to our lives. It should give us security, while at the same time allowing for vulnerability and the risks inherent in knowing and being known. It should strengthen and deepen our values as we see that our lives, sexual and otherwise, are better because we’ve lived with integrity.

Becky Knight is a Clinical Sexologist, Educator and E-Coach. She can be found blogging at LivingSexuality.com and she’s a twitterer. Don’t miss her current project,  Best Blog Series Ever. Periods.

More from Magpie Girl: 
The Blessings (on integrity)
Why I’m Not Teaching my Kids Abstinence-Only
God Sticks and Shame Caves
Abstinence, Kids, and Faith: Thoughts from the Comment Gallery

One of the things I’ve been doing on my crisis is regretting much of my youth. I’ve been naming a lot of things as “wasted” and wishing I had a fistful of do-overs. 

Until today.

Today I decided that instead of regret, I would mine my past for wisdom. I would stir these longings around and use them to create some advice for the lovelies coming up behind me.

I’ll be giving this unsolicited advice decade by decade over the next two Thursdays. Here’s my first installment on thing sthat will prep peeps for life ahead, and let them seize their teenage day.

 *8 Things I Highly Recommend You Do in Your Teens.

 1. Do It. If you are over 15, and you are seriously in love with a boy/girl–for more than a few weeks, please–and you want to sleep with them, feel free. (More on this theory here.)

2. Wear a bikini. I know you may feel fat, but you look goddamn fantastic. Celebrate the body you have now while everything is UP where it started.

3. Learn how to write a research paper. I cannot tell you what decent writing and research skills will do for you.

4. Forget the ‘dictorians. Get good-to-great, not great -to-fantastic grades. The Ivy League is overrated. For most people, 4.0′s will not be required. You might as well enjoy your youth.

5. Learn to drive a stick shift. (Have someone other than your parents teach you.)

6. Take a foreign language — not one year, every year of high school. If you live in California, Texas, Arizona, or New Mexico this language should be Spanish. (Respect!)

7. Do what you are afraid of: sports, drama, circus training, spending the summer away from home. This is the era of carpe diem.

8. Carry these things with you: a tampon, a condom, enough money to cab home, and a few reliable phone numbers WRITTEN ON PAPER. (In a crisis I can virtually guarantee your cell battery WILL run out and you WILL discover you don’t have anyone’s phone numbers memorized.)

What *8Things Do You Highly Recommend People Should Do in Their Teens? Grab a button and play along. Don’t blog? Drop your list in the comments below or help me start a rage on Facebook.

I’ve written/podcast before about the importance of stories and the power that lies in their telling. It’s a theme that keeps occurring and re-occurring around me – a strong theme of the postmodern cultural milieu in which we all dwell. Last week I went to an expat’s writers group here in Copenhagen and the talk turned to the topic of truth and storytelling. The personal essayists were struggling with the reality that whenever they told a story it was but one version of the truth. Another person telling the same tale would have different true things to say about how the whole thing went down. So were we, in fact, writing ‘true life tales,’ or a form of fiction? Furthermore, how should the very knowledge of that question affect our storytelling? Then again, the novelists among us were using real people and situations to form the basis of their characters and scenes – so perhaps they were not creating fiction, either but telling a version of the real, of the true? And which was more honest – calling the real fiction or calling the fiction real? Which is it then…all truth, or all fiction? Ah, there’s the rub. In a postmodern world, the answer is: both.

When we tell our stories, they intersect with the stories of others. There is overlap there, between my experience and yours, and that makes the telling of the tale tricky at times. This is never more so then when we write about the people most embedded in our hearts: mothers and fathers, children, soul mates, lovers. So when we tell stories that involve the hearts of those who are dear to us we tread lightly, trying to be faithful to our truth, without trampling the experience of the other. This doesn’t mean we don’t tell the hard stories – the failures or the confusion or the break ups or the fights. It just means, that on our best days, we try to balance being as honest with ourselves and our memories, with the act of treading with kindness. After all, it is not all that often that people invite us into their hearts. We should be a careful while roaming around in there.

This balance of brave truth telling and tender care is but one of the reasons I love the way Sarah (not her real name) brings honesty and gentleness to this complex story which is, among other things, about loss. Here she must tell the story of herself, her lover, her child, and her mother –each on embedded deep into soul territory. This is no easy task. Yet as she begins to sing her hidden tale here in spare and simple prose, she brings to us all important thoughts about surviving loss, confronting expectations, and mothering our own hearts. I hope you will receive her story with kindness, and give her encouragement for the telling of this tale. May Sarah’s story be a good with mate for you on your journey today. Namaste.

—

Mothering, Lost and Found
Guest Blogger: Sarah

A little over two years ago I almost became a mommy, without forgetfulness, planning or expecting—just loving and some magic dust from the Universe. For a long time I wondered why it was sprinkled on me and why it didn’t last.

I can remember the moment when the magic dust evaporated into thin air very vividly. At the time I didn’t know it was (had been?) nesting in my body. Looking back there had been many signs but I didn’t pick up on them until the very moment it was over. In the blink of an eye I knew. I knew what all those weird feelings had been; those moments of crying without a seemingly good reason, why my body had been so tired and why I felt more resistance to food than appetite. As soon as I realized that I was no longer alone, fate conspired to make me ‘one’ again.

Of course I thought, “this isn’t a big deal”–although it scared the person I loved at that time so much that he ran away and never looked back. Even though I was hurting and read about this kind of loss and knew how it can have a very big impact, I still thought it wasn’t a big deal –or at least that’s what I told myself, because that is what I was told by my mother.

After telling me that I probably imagined the whole ordeal, in spite of what the doctor had said, she acknowledged it in the end. But at first, she told me to just get over it. Because really, who wants to become a mommy at twenty two? “I do,” I thought. I had always wanted to become a young mommy and even though there had not been any planning and even though there was no more loving between him and me, there was still lots and lots of longing inside of me. But I soldiered on, without grieving, without acknowledging the sadness in my bones.

Looking back I haven’t taken good care of myself these past two years. I poured all my love in taking care of others, ignoring those feelings of hurt and anger inside of me. I felt that not only had I lost a chance of being a mommy, but that I had lost my own mother as well.

I wondered for a long time how I could take better care of myself and I think I’ve finally found out what the purpose of the magic dust was. I no longer act according to what I was taught, instead I teach.

I teach myself to love myself like I would tell my child of my love for him/her. I tell myself to sit with my feelings, that they are genuine and sacred, like I would tell my child that his/her feeling are genuine and sacred and should never be pushed back. I take care of myself like I would take care of my child.

I have no idea what it is like to mother a child, but I do know that mothering oneself is harder than I ever could have imagined, but more rewarding too. In the end this is a lesson that I think I’m learning so when I do become a mommy I can mother by example. I never felt I truly had one, but now I do.

Katrina sent me this story in response to the post “God Sticks and Shame Caves, which has moved many of you to tell your tales. She is someone I trust, whose wisdom is not theoretical but lived–hard won from experience and reflection. I’m grateful to Katrina for guest posting today, and feel confident that her story will give many of you hope and inspiration for the journey.

Sensuality Recovered
Guest Post: Katrina

I was staffing at a women’s retreat a few months ago, and a woman who had been an exotic dancer in a younger life and who was trained in various “tantric healing” techniques led us in some fascinating processes. She told us her own story of being lured into prostitution as a young girl, and of her escape, as well as her journey of fully embracing herself as a sexual, sensual woman who has truly freed herself from shame. She led us in a long exercise of breathingand meditation designed to cleanse us of our own shame, whether assigned to us by ourselves or others. We held hands and talked each other through a variety of memories: from the disquieting sensation “not feeling pretty enough” to the violence of rape and molestation.

After some tear-shedding and embracing, the energy in the room was lighter, freer. From that perspective, we moved into movement and dance, and eventually into sensual dance. Many of the women were overweight and/or middle-aged, and there was, at first, palpable resistance. The facilitator told us stories of how sensuality has been taught in other, older—surely wiser–cultures. It was the women, the elder-women, who had taught the younger women how to move, how to dance, how to be sexy, how to feel sensual. It was not the pressure of the media or the men, or the market forces felt by women to compete for scarce resources of desirable mates. We marveled at the thought… what if sensuality could be like treasured knowledge, passed down at the appropriate time from woman to woman, like sacred family recipes or heirlooms?

We were all instructed to get a chair. Yes, we were going to do “chair dancing.” (i.e., using chairs as a prop for dancing, see Cabaret or Flashdance for suggestions…) We began to use our new props with some hesitation and awkwardness. Thenthe facilitator did something brilliant. She instructed us to blindfold ourselves. With our self-consciousness visibly muted and with a little help from some encouraging music, we were transformed into smokin-hot middle-aged goddesses. Then the blindfolds came off, and we gathered in a circle and danced for each other. We danced individually, in pairs, in groups, with and without chairs, sarongs, and other props. We encouraged each other on to be as sexy as possible, sexier than we thought was possible, egging each other on with whoops and catcalls. Women who would barely dance an hour earlier were “shaking what their mommas gave ‘em” with joy and abandonment. The women who left that night were not the same women who came in. They had regained, or perhaps even discovered for the very first time, a treasure buried deep within themselves: their own sensuality. Not the crude sexuality of an X-rated film or the performance of a stripper seeking tips from bachelor party participants, but the sensuality that represents our true sacred, feminine, creative selves. Through our dancing, we had celebrated ourselves as women created in the image of the Divine, and declared this creation “good.”

Katrina has gracious agreed to write a follow up post with her thoughts on connecting the dots between this experience, what she was taught as a young person, and what she is teaching her teenage daughter. Check back next week, or follow me on Twitter and I’ll let you know when it has arrived. Thank you for your presence here. -Rachelle

Follow this Series:

This I Believe: Why I’m not Teaching My Kids Abstinence

Thoughts from the Comment Gallery: Abstinence, Kids, and Faith

God Sticks and Shame Caves

Beyond Fear, Encouraging Each Other Towards Escape

The Care and Keeping of Sacred Stories

As I wrote in my previous post, I’m not teaching my kids that abstinence until marriage is the best, only, or even necessarily the most preferable sexual option in the universe. Abstinence Only was taught to me as a child, and while it did keep me from joining the statistics on teenage pregnancy, the side effects of this puberty-long fast were pretty damaging.

Since beginning this conversation, I’ve experienced a virtual mind-flood of memories and ideas which have been floating around trying to organize themselves into a cohesive whole. Slowly they are settling into a couple of themed collections. Today’s Memory Collection: Messages of Shame.

Liz Hurly and the Ta-Ta’s of Death
In the first memory that’s been nagging at me to be told, I’m sitting around a conference table at a region-wide gathering of pastors for the denomination in which I am a minister. It’s a moderately conservative denomination and the particular congregation I have been hired to work at is urban, hip, and more willing to flex than most of the others in the area. I am the only woman in the room and several of my colleagues, most of whom are middle aged white men, are uncertain-to-down-right-sure as to whether or not I should be there. The leader of the meeting is on the fence at best, but to be fair, he is making tentative attempts at including the new girl in this fraternity of long-time buddies.

We have come to the portion of the meeting where the pastors share any new resources they’ve discovered. One man in particular is highly energized by a new sex-ed video he has been showing to his Jr. High youth group. He is relaying his favorite part of the video, in which the young, male, youth leader holds up a poster of Elizabeth Hurley and says something like this:

“Do you see this woman? This is a sexy, smokin’ hot woman. She has great legs. She shows a lot of cleavage. Her clothes are skin tight. Do you know who she was dating? Hugh Grant. And do you know what Hugh Grant did while he was dating her? He had sex with a prostitute. What does that tell you? I know what it tells me. It tells me that being with a woman who is smokin’ hot in the eyes of our fallen society only drives us to want more. Being with someone provocative like Elizabeth Hurly, just drives us deeper into sexual sin.”

Yes ladies and gentlemen—Hugh Grant engaged in prostitution not because he has issues; not because he was sexually addicted; not because he failed to respect his girlfriend or the woman he paid to have sex with, but because Elizabeth Hurly’s cleavage is dangerous.

I was having a hard time believing my ears. Here was a couple whose common law relationship had lasted longer than most of my college friend’s post-graduation “Christian” marriages. In spite of Grant’s truly bad betrayal, he and Hurly repaired their relationship and later their friendship to such an extent that even after their break up Hurly asked Grant to be the godfather of her child. Their relationship—at least the portion of it related to us in popular magazines—turned out to be a pretty stunning example of forgiveness, reconciliation, and compassion. But forget all of that, the real thing to remember here is that this woman’s ta-ta’s drove a man so wild with desire he had to pick up a prostitute.

If only she had worn more turtlenecks.

I held my tongue as the meeting went on, trying to formulate my thoughts in a way that would let me express them without being tagged as an “angry feminist” (a neat semantic trick which effectively prevents a woman’s story from being heard.) I waited to see if an appropriate opportunity would come up to shed some light on the topic.

Eventually the meeting moved into a discussion period where the staff could advise each other on things that were providing sticky in their individual congregations. One of the men raised a problem he was having at his church – the women wanted to introduce liturgical dance into the morning service. He wasn’t sure about this. Liturgical dance certainly didn’t speak to him, and he wasn’t sure there was a point to it. In an attempt to engage me in the conversation, this man turned to me and said, “As a woman, what do you think Rachelle?” My reply was something like this:

I understand that you don’t connect with liturgical dance. It’s not something that speaks to everyone. It’s not something that particularly speaks to me. But I think you should invite the women to introduce it to your congregation and I’ll tell you why. It will allow women to use their bodies as an expressive instrument in the midst of their community, and it will indirectly convey a message that women’s bodies are not inherently sinful. Women get the message in church quite a bit—that there is something wrong with their physical selves, that their bodies are dangerous and sinful. Can I give you and example?

I went on to explain how sex-ed video that had been mentioned might be consumed by the teenage girls. I pointed out how it took the burden of error off the shoulders of Hugh Grant, and planted it firmly on the um…shoulders…of Liz Hurley. I mentioned how this message – that women’s bodies were a temptation to men and should therefore be restrained, covered up, and hidden from view as much as possible, was a common message in the church. I explained that the only time women were mentioned as physical beings was in some story about how tempting they were, or perhaps to instruct them on a less revealing dress code while singing in the worship band. I explained how healing it is for some women to engage their bodies in dance, and how holistic it would be to introduce that option into their worship services. I tried to help them capture the idea that the dance of a few women might bring healing to many in their community.

The room was silent. Not the kind of silence that accompanies disagreement, but the kind that happens when a group of like-thinkers is introduced to a totally new concept. I think the word I’m looking for here is:stunned.

God Sticks and Shame Caves
This story about Liz Hurly came back to me of late while watching this Jon Stewart clip about the success (or lack thereof) of government funded Abstinence Only programs in schools. (Warning: this clip is NSFW and in the words of Ira Glass “does mention the existence of sex.”) In this footage, a female sexual health educator who had traveled with one of the abstinence educators testified that reluctant girls were repeatedly pulled to the front of the class and shown a dirty toothbrush that “looked like it had been used to clean a toilet.” The instructor then continued to say, “If you have sex before marriage, you are like a dirty toothbrush.”

So glad to see my tax dollars at work. (1.3 billion dollars over the past 11 years)

Jon Stewart’s response to this and other parts of the abstinence only assessment reports was to say: “Of course, we all know that! Boys have a God Stick and girls have a shame cave.” Now obviously, this was a joke and Jon was employing exaggeration to make a comic point. But I’ve got to tell you, he’s not far off. This is the message many young women receive when they are taught that the only acceptable course of action is for them not to have sex until marriage. Even if they are in love. Even if they are mature. Even if their body is screaming otherwise. Even if they don’t marry until 25, or 35, or 45.

True, in these abstinence programs, boys are also taught to refrain from sex before marriage. But somehow they are not shamed the way girls are. For instance, it’s not that boys that are not hauled up front of the class and told they are a dirty toothbrush. The language is different for boys than for girls. Boys “sow their wild oats.” Girls are “fallen women.” Boy’s may “lose their virginity,” but the girls “lose” their virginity tothe guy, who then gets to claim that he’s “popped her cherry.” It’s all just so discouraging. And speaking of how we use language, here’s one more story…

Bye Bye Miss American Pie
In college I read a piece about premarital sex in a religious magazine. The article began by telling a story. A group of girls were meeting in a dorm room. They were gathered around one girl’s bed, pouring champagne and toasting her success at having ‘lost’ her virginity the night before. In the article, this story was meant to be disturbing – it was pitched as being a sad way for these young women to behave, another example of “the world” celebrating sin rather than living a life of piety.

At the time I was well entrenched into my conservative religious world. Still, I can remember thinking, “That doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, that seems like a pretty good rite of passage to me.” Twenty years later I still think it’s not a bad idea. But I’d change the language. What is this crap about “losing” one’s virginity? Did it fall out of your purse when you went to pay the check? Did you forget it with your umbrella on the bus?

In the case of consensual sex one doesn’t ‘lose’ one’s virginity. One moves from being a virgin to being someone who has had sex. “Loss” connotes something regretful. It doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to lay that guilt trip on our girls—or on our boys for that matter. We don’t have to start our young people off on their sexual history with a tick in the losses column. We could, perhaps, celebrate his or her budding maturity. We could, perhaps, use language which honors moving into a new stage of sexual, emotional, and relational development. We could, perhaps, create a reality in which it is possible to have sex for the first time (married or otherwise) without a sense of loss, but rather with a sense of pride.

It’s just and idea. I’m just saying.

There’s a scene in the film Real Women Have Curves where the teenage heroine Ana, played by America Ferrara, decides to have sex for the first time with a boy she cares for and admires. They are graduating from high school and will not see each other anymore. She’s not fooling herself about that. She’s looking at the situation very clear-eyed, realizing that there will be no romantic movie ending. They will drift apart. They will find other people. But in the now, in the well considered now, Ana wants to be with him. While they are together in the bedroom, Ana gets up and walks to the mirror. She says something like “This is me. This is what I look like.” The moment is so real, so honest and confident. I remember being quite struck by it.

Since seeing that movie, I have logged more than a decade raising children—raising girl children, as a matter of fact. Now, years later, that scene floats up through my memory. I consider it and I decide, if my children have that kind of confidence, that kind of assuredness, that kind of certainty the first time they have sex, I’ll be a happy mom.

What about you? What kind of stories have shaped your sexual identity?….What have those stories given you to carry—a shame cave? A glass of champagne? Something in between? ….What kind of stories do you want to give your children about themselves as sexual beings?….What language will you use to talk about their bodies and their virginity (or the lack thereof?) The comments are open!

What I Think About Kids & Abstinence

“Don’t you remember at church, when they told us it was better for us to come home in a pine box than to lose our chastity?”

-Sarah Henrickson (18) to her brother Ben (16)
Big Love

I grew up in the church. The conservative evangelical church to be exact. Sundays and Wednesdays were spent at the Lutheran Church, and Monday-Friday at the Assemblies of God private school (chapel three times a week, Bible class every day, choir, and optional 7am prayer meetings.) If you’ve ever seen the fantastic dark-comedy Saved, then you have seen my life. It’s like a hidden camera reality show based on my high school, only with better hair.

Growing up, the message I received was that the absolute worst thing you could do was to have sex outside of marriage. It was worse than getting drunk. Hell, it was worse than DRIVING drunk. Sex, actual intercourse, was totally forbidden. All the other bases were either totally verbotten or pretty damn bad. Oral sex. Very Very Bad. Groping of all kinds. Bad. Making out in your boyfriend’s car. Not great. Kissing. Tolerated –but not on school grounds, of course, or you would be given a two day suspension. Holding hands? Well, okay, but only holding hands; certainly not putting your arms around someone’s shoulder. Anything and everything you might do with someone of the opposite sex was cloaked in shame. Tickling? Shoulder rubs? Boy-girl stunts in cheerleading? It was all highly suspicious. (Do I even have to mention that doing anything with someone of the same sex was completely off the charts? You might as well pick up a ‘go directly to hell’ card.)

We had sex education, once, in fifth grade. It was mostly to make sure everyone was in the know about getting your period. I suppose the boys had a similar filmstrip about unwelcomed erections, but I’m not sure. It was the 80’s and AIDS education was huge, so even in Christian school you got a little mention of condoms. You never actually saw one, no one ever demonstrated how to use one on a banana for instance, and they were definitely NOT distributed in health class. The main idea was, “Abstinence is the Answer”, and everyone from teachers to pastors to parents was 100% on-message. And the teens, well, everyone had to sign on. (Or at least pretend to.)

Over and over again the messages we received were distilled in our hormone-soaked brains down to this one echoing refrain:

“Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.”

I recall one youth group session in which a cartoon was placed on the overhead projector. It showed a pit dug into the ground with a ladder in it. Each rung of the ladder had a physical act on it. The top rung was holding hands, the next one down was kissing, then making out, petting…you get the idea. The last rung, in the bottom of the pit? Yep. Sex. This kind of illustration was pretty common, and usually came along with a sermon about how “your body is a temple” – followed by a round of fast food and artificially sweetened cola. One of my favorite variations of this youth-group sex scenario was told to me a few years ago by a fellow seminarian. He told me, in all seriousness, that he was teaching his youth group that “Sex is like a wild, vicious, hungry lion, and you DO NOT want to go putting your head anywhere near that lion’s mouth.” (How he got away with using “sex” and “head” in the same sentence in a room full of teenage boys without the place exploding into laughter is beyond me.)

I know that the intentions of my teachers, youth group leaders, pastors and parents were good. I know they were trying to protect us from getting in too deep, too fast. I know they wanted to save us from harm, hurt, and, I suppose, hell. But the reality is, all they did for me was create a space in which to grow shame, guilt and dysfunction. And oh, how it grew! Here’s a short list of the messages I carried away from my abstinence experience:

-Every physical impulse you have towards a boy is wrong–probably even sinful.

-All the natural, normal parts of growing up and falling in love –physicality of any kind—are wrong and unnatural.

-If my body want this, then my body is bad. (This combined with the typical magazine spreads with size 0 models and pimple-free skin, and you can see what that did for a teenage girl’s body image.)

-If you don’t plan for sex, it’s not as bad of a sin. (Therefore, don’t own birth control or condoms.)

In spite of this, there were boys who got lucky and girls who went all the way. There were girls swept off to the Crisis Pregnancy Centers and expelled from school—or worse yet, allowed to stay but banned from all extracurricular activities–like going to the basketball games or walking down the aisle at graduation. (The boys on the other hand, never seemed to get into much trouble. I don’t recall any of them getting kicked out or shamed out of leaving.) And if anyone ever had an abortion, well, they kept it as a dark secret, and went through the experience without any help or counseling.

Because of my experience in abstinence programs– and because of the way my experience was echoed again and again in the shameful tears full-grown women brought to me during my tenure as a pastor –I am not raising my children under the banner of abstinence. Being physical and having sex are natural normal parts of growing up. We are physically and chemically programmed for it. We are culturally conditioned for it. It is a part of our healthy emotional development. I want my children to grow up in an atmosphere that acknowledges this reality—one that is shame free, where their bodies are seen as being ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,” and where their hearts can be trusted to lead them in the right direction. My intention, my deep hope, is to raise them in such a way that they will carry with them these messages:

-Your body is amazing. You can trust it to tell you what you are physically ready to do.

-Your heart is your guide –you can trust the wisdom of your own intuition in making choices.

-Sex is something you move into one step at a time. Each step is good. Each step is appropriate. You– and only you–get to choose when you are ready for that step.

-As a romantic relationship grows deeper emotionally, it’s natural for it to grow deeper physically.

-Planning for sex and being prepared to protect yourself and your partner is smart, responsible, and essential.

-You have the right to say NO. And conversely, you have the right to say YES.

Rather than telling my kids “Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.” I want the messages I give them to be able to be boiled down to this:

“You are capable of building a relational history you can look back on without regret.”

A friend of mine bequeathed that turn of phrase to me. We were drinking margaritas and talking about sex. (What else do you talk about after you’ve had a couple of margaritas?) She was telling me about her major high school boyfriend, and being in love, and what her parents and his parents thought about them having sex (or not). She said, “I never wanted to have sex in the car. I always wanted to build a sexual history I could look back on without regret, and I didn’t think I could do that if I had sex in the back of his Camero.” That’s pretty self aware, don’t you think? Pretty well-reasoned for a seventeen year old. Build a history you can look back on without regret – or at least, with as little regret as possible. I think, all told, that’s the best we can do. That’s what we humans can hope for: safety, respect, and a collection of memories held without shame.

So when it comes to sex and all its accoutrements here’s my parenting pledge:

-I promise to make talking about sex as natural and open as possible. (We’ve already got quite a track record.)

-I promise to help you access birth control and protection. (Yes, even for the masculine kids in the family.)

-I promise to help you assess what your heart and body is ready for, if you want to talk to me about it.

-I promise to give you accurate information about your body and its needs, to the best of my ability.

-I promise not to shame you for wanting physical contact with someone you care about.

-I promise to do whatever I can to make sex a wonderful, beautiful, joyful thing you give to the one(s) you love.

What will you teach your kids about sex? Any conversational tricks to share? Stories that worked out well? Do tell…

Further posts on this topic:
Follow the Discussion here.
Thoughts from the comment gallery.

It is in this milieu that we are raising our children.

In the face of so much overt sexuality, it is easy to default to a defense position wherein the most radical steps are taken to keep our children ‘safe.’ Ironically, our very attempts at defense and protection can also create much dysfunction.

There may be no definitive answer to the question, “What should I convey to my children about sex.” And there is certainly no quick chapter and verse that will give us an easy answer. In an issue this nuanced and complicated no parent or mentor will have a perfect track record. Each approach will have its pros and cons, its detractors and its supporters. Because of the complexity of our situation, and the centrality of our sexual identity in defining ourselves as humans, we must find a way to enter into an honest dialogue with one another. The language of debate will only dissolve our opportunity to create new and re-newed approaches to sexual education and sexual identity for the upcoming generations.

That is why I am so pleased by the tone of the conversation going on in the comments around this topic. Chris Brogan, a guest writer at Problogger has said that the best material on his website can be found in the comments. This is a sentiment with which I whole heartedly agree. I want to say ‘Thank You’ to everyone who is participating in this intriguing conversation. Furthermore, I’d like to invite you all to continue on with this important discussion.

There were a couple of themes that emerged out of the comments that I want to think through together a little bit more.

Physical. Relational. Emotional. Phsyical.
Bob and Beth both brought up the idea that perhaps sex is not only physical and relational, but also spiritual in nature. This is something that has intrigued me recently. In the past few years I’ve expanded my friendship circle beyond the walls of the evangelical church. Now, many of my atheistic and/or scientific friends insist that sex is all about brain chemistry and physical relief. (This is the initial argument of the intriguing film, Dopamine.) Meanwhile my artistic and/or spiritual director friends insist that there is a scared component of sexual union that cannot be ignored—especially for women, who hold within their own bodies the power to bring into existence new people! (Ten years after first bearing children this creative reality still blows my mind.)

Which is it? Brain chemistry or emotional and spiritual union? I think the answer is both/and. As the women on Sex and the City are sure to attest, sometimes sex is just a physical release–a hedonistic pleasure that lasts for a moment, and then passes by. Other times, as is captured halfway through the movie Fever Pitch, sex does connect people on an emotional level, and sometimes in a sacramental dynamic. (No good example there…anyone else got one?) If sex is–at least sometimes and perhaps at all times—more than a physical act, then the question becomes: How do I communicate to my children that sex and physical intimacy can contain some, all, or none of these aspects; and that an awareness of this is necessary in order to make good sexual decisions?

When Do I Have to Decide?
Monica brings up the concern that as her children age, her time is running out to log an opinion on abstinence vs. responsible sexual activity. Which raises still more questions such as: When do we start talking to our children about sex? Is there an age, a stage of development, or a certain number of candles on the birthday cake when the topic becomes daily news? Or, is everything we communicate to our children about their bodies bedrock for a growing collection of topics about physicality and sexuality? Is there a way for us to include our children in our own evolving understanding of sex and intimacy? Or must we have all of the answers prior to the time our kids hit their teens? What do you think?

The Message or the Method?
DD asks two good questions: Is it the message of abstinence that causes dysfunction, or the method? Is there a way to teach abstinence until marriage that would not carry with it a subtext of shame and guilt? Here I’d like to proffer a fairly clear opinion. No, there isn’t. Or perhaps a more gentle way of phrasing it might be, if there is, I haven’t seen it. Insisting on abstinence until marriage for every person on the globe does not take into account the human reality of personal individuation and cultural diversity. It treats people as objects which can be placed into the proper equation for optimal health and wellness, and not as humans with differing needs and with varying ways of interacting with the world. In a culture where people may marry at 18 or 45, procreate in their teens or in the 50’s, a one-reality-fits-all is simply inadequate.

Jesus, Sex, and Culture
Which leads to DD’s next question: is Christianity here to acquiesce to culture or to transform culture? Yes, Jesus spoke about transforming culture. But not in the way the Christianity has tried to transform culture. Christianity has spent it’s long years trying to transform the minor issues such as drinking, smoking, swearing, gambling, and sex; while systematically ignoring the major transformational needs Jesus focused on—providing for the poor and the widow; inviting the outsider to the table; spending time with the marginalized; releasing captives; and seeking justice in the face of religious legalism and political tyranny. Sure there were and are break-through moments where Wilberforce and his community used the convictions of their faith to end the British slave trade; or where Wallis and his community got modern America to think more widely about political and economic justice. But overall, we’ve just spent a lot of time preaching to the choir while the rest of our culture was left to its own accord. As my friend Mr. Jim says, sometimes the question we should ask is not only WWJD, but WDJD—What didn’t Jesus do? Either way, it’s pretty clear he didn’t worry too much about sex.

I have just typed 1,095 words –far too many for a blog post. And of course, being who I am, there are plenty more to come. But I am a firm believer that one voice from the pulpit is an imperfect model at best; and I wholeheartedly embrace the benefits of a teaching-learning community. So please, carry this conversation on. What thoughts come to mind for you on these ideas? What questions have they raised? Has this helped you reach any decisions about how you will present sex to your kids? Are you revisiting stories from your own coming-of-age years and seeing them in a new light? I’d love to hear what you have to say, here or on your own blogs. Drop your ideas in the comments below, or leave us a link to what you have to say about the topic over at your place.

There’s a lot more burning in my brain about sexuality and faith, and I’ll still be posting again on this topic in the days to come. I’ve got a story about Hugh Grant and another about America Fererra. There’s something in there about pouring champagne to celebrate the end of virginity, and thoughts about the language we use to describe that experience. The issue Susan raised about the difference between glossy sex and earthy sex seems pivotal; and Monica’s questions and Another Rachelle’s experience has inspired me to work up a post about the myths Christianity teaches about sexual ‘consequences.’ A thought or two about the current Miley Cyrus ruckus is also in the offing, along with whatever else comes up in the comments. So please, stick around. It seems like we have some work to do–and it’s work that can best be accomplished together.

Yours in the Journey,

Rachelle

I’m working on a follow up post focusing on the ideas you have presented and hope to have it up in the next day or two. I’d love it if y’all could come back and keep this discussion going. I think it’s important for our kids, and perhaps for healing ourselves.

If you want a very brief head’s up when I have new posts online, you can follow me on Twitter. It’s free and painless. Click here to link.

Yours in the Journey,

Rachelle

-Sarah Henrickson (18) to her brother Ben (16)
Big Love

I grew up in the church. The conservative evangelical church to be exact. Sundays and Wednesdays were spent at the Lutheran Church, and Monday-Friday at the Assemblies of God private school (chapel three times a week, Bible class every day, choir, and optional 7am prayer meetings.) If you’ve ever seen the fantastic dark-comedy Saved, then you have seen my life. It’s like a hidden camera reality show based on my high school, only with better hair.

Growing up, the message I received was that the absolute worst thing you could do was to have sex outside of marriage. It was worse than getting drunk. Hell, it was worse than DRIVING drunk. Sex, actual intercourse, was totally forbidden. All the other bases were either totally verbotten or pretty damn bad. Oral sex. Very Very Bad. Groping of all kinds. Bad. Making out in your boyfriend’s car. Not great. Kissing. Tolerated –but not on school grounds, of course, or you would be given a two day suspension. Holding hands? Well, okay, but only holding hands; certainly not putting your arms around someone’s shoulder. Anything and everything you might do with someone of the opposite sex was cloaked in shame. Tickling? Shoulder rubs? Boy-girl stunts in cheerleading? It was all highly suspicious. (Do I even have to mention that doing anything with someone of the same sex was completely off the charts? You might as well pick up a ‘go directly to hell’ card.)

We had sex education, once, in fifth grade. It was mostly to make sure everyone was in the know about getting your period. I suppose the boys had a similar filmstrip about unwelcomed erections, but I’m not sure. It was the 80’s and AIDS education was huge, so even in Christian school you got a little mention of condoms. You never actually saw one, no one ever demonstrated how to use one on a banana for instance, and they were definitely NOT distributed in health class. The main idea was, “Abstinence is the Answer”, and everyone from teachers to pastors to parents was 100% on-message. And the teens, well, everyone had to sign on. (Or at least pretend to.)

Over and over again the messages we received were distilled in our hormone-soaked brains down to this one echoing refrain:

“Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.”

I recall one youth group session in which a cartoon was placed on the overhead projector. It showed a pit dug into the ground with a ladder in it. Each rung of the ladder had a physical act on it. The top rung was holding hands, the next one down was kissing, then making out, petting…you get the idea. The last rung, in the bottom of the pit? Yep. Sex. This kind of illustration was pretty common, and usually came along with a sermon about how “your body is a temple” – followed by a round of fast food and artificially sweetened cola. One of my favorite variations of this youth-group sex scenario was told to me a few years ago by a fellow seminarian. He told me, in all seriousness, that he was teaching his youth group that “Sex is like a wild, vicious, hungry lion, and you DO NOT want to go putting your head anywhere near that lion’s mouth.” (How he got away with using “sex” and “head” in the same sentence in a room full of teenage boys without the place exploding into laughter is beyond me.)

I know that the intentions of my teachers, youth group leaders, pastors and parents were good. I know they were trying to protect us from getting in too deep, too fast. I know they wanted to save us from harm, hurt, and, I suppose, hell. But the reality is, all they did for me was create a space in which to grow shame, guilt and dysfunction. And oh, how it grew! Here’s a short list of the messages I carried away from my abstinence experience:

-Every physical impulse you have towards a boy is wrong–probably even sinful.

-All the natural, normal parts of growing up and falling in love –physicality of any kind—are wrong and unnatural.

-If my body want this, then my body is bad. (This combined with the typical magazine spreads with size 0 models and pimple-free skin, and you can see what that did for a teenage girl’s body image.)

-If you don’t plan for sex, it’s not as bad of a sin. (Therefore, don’t own birth control or condoms.)

In spite of this, there were boys who got lucky and girls who went all the way. There were girls swept off to the Crisis Pregnancy Centers and expelled from school—or worse yet, allowed to stay but banned from all extracurricular activities–like going to the basketball games or walking down the aisle at graduation. (The boys on the other hand, never seemed to get into much trouble. I don’t recall any of them getting kicked out or shamed out of leaving.) And if anyone ever had an abortion, well, they kept it as a dark secret, and went through the experience without any help or counseling.

Because of my experience in abstinence programs– and because of the way my experience was echoed again and again in the shameful tears full-grown women brought to me during my tenure as a pastor –I am not raising my children under the banner of abstinence. Being physical and having sex are natural normal parts of growing up. We are physically and chemically programmed for it. We are culturally conditioned for it. It is a part of our healthy emotional development. I want my children to grow up in an atmosphere that acknowledges this reality—one that is shame free, where their bodies are seen as being ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,” and where their hearts can be trusted to lead them in the right direction. My intention, my deep hope, is to raise them in such a way that they will carry with them these messages:

-Your body is amazing. You can trust it to tell you what you are physically ready to do.

-Your heart is your guide –you can trust the wisdom of your own intuition in making choices.

-Sex is something you move into one step at a time. Each step is good. Each step is appropriate. You– and only you–get to choose when you are ready for that step.

-As a romantic relationship grows deeper emotionally, it’s natural for it to grow deeper physically.

-Planning for sex and being prepared to protect yourself and your partner is smart, responsible, and essential.

-You have the right to say NO. And conversely, you have the right to say YES.

Rather than telling my kids “Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.” I want the messages I give them to be able to be boiled down to this:

“You are capable of building a relational history you can look back on without regret.”

A friend of mine bequeathed that turn of phrase to me. We were drinking margaritas and talking about sex. (What else do you talk about after you’ve had a couple of margaritas?) She was telling me about her major high school boyfriend, and being in love, and what her parents and his parents thought about them having sex (or not). She said, “I never wanted to have sex in the car. I always wanted to build a sexual history I could look back on without regret, and I didn’t think I could do that if I had sex in the back of his Camero.” That’s pretty self aware, don’t you think? Pretty well-reasoned for a seventeen year old. Build a history you can look back on without regret – or at least, with as little regret as possible. I think, all told, that’s the best we can do. That’s what we humans can hope for: safety, respect, and a collection of memories held without shame.

So when it comes to sex and all its accoutrements here’s my parenting pledge:

-I promise to make talking about sex as natural and open as possible. (We’ve already got quite a track record.)

-I promise to help you access birth control and protection. (Yes, even for the masculine kids in the family.)

-I promise to help you assess what your heart and body is ready for, if you want to talk to me about it.

-I promise to give you accurate information about your body and its needs, to the best of my ability.

-I promise not to shame you for wanting physical contact with someone you care about.

-I promise to do whatever I can to make sex a wonderful, beautiful, joyful thing you give to the one(s) you love.

What will you teach your kids about sex? Any conversational tricks to share? Stories that worked out well? Do tell…

Have you joined Suzanne’s national campaign over at BlogHer? There’s still time! Maybe it’s a valentine, or maybe it’s a memo from your inner drill sargent. Either way, don’t you think it’s about time you just sit right down and right yourself a letter? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…

Dear Body,

It’s been nearly a year since I promised to be nicer to you. A year since I gave up saying mean things. A year since I stopped overriding your system with stress hormones. A year since I gave up dieting for good. A year since I decided to recognize that you are, in fact, me—that I am, in fact, my body.

I am so proud of you! In that year you’ve eaten mostly what you needed, and only a little of what you did not. I managed to not freak out on your ass every time you put something that actually tastes good in your mouth. You’ve enjoyed food more and felt guilty less. You’ve lost most of the bad language about how you function and how you feel. And you’ve regulated yourself down to your happy, healthy weight. (Bye bye to those 20 freeloading pounds.)

I hope you’ve like your treats of new jeans, shirts that cling a little, and a not unsmall amount of truly awesome lingerie. I’m so glad you’ve welcomed back your libido and embraced your newly recognized MILF status. Oh, and by the way, I really like your new motto: “Cleavage: It’s not just for weekends anymore.”

You’ve had some grand renewing adventures this year, and I’m planning on more in the future. Already you seem to be enjoying the Danish requirement for frisk luft (fresh air) every single day, and those boots you bought that were made for walkin’? Well I’m pretty damned proud that you’ve already worn out the heels.

In a few weeks your new bike will be here and you’ll be streaming along, your red hair standing out amongst the Danish blondes. And soon enough you’ll find yourself a new yoga class and be a dancing goddess once again.

I’m sorry it took me so long to finally appreciate you, but baby, look at you now! Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Yours (literally),

Rachelle

Are you going to sit right down and write yourself a letter? Let us know in the comments below (don’t forget to link!)

Maybe one of these books will help you find a feel better place in 2008. Here’s to the hopeful!

-Rachelle

P.s. Remember, any purchase made by clicking on a title below helps support this blog. Find more great book, music, and misc. reccomendations over at Magpie Reviews. Thank you!

Intuitive Eating
Evelyn Trioble and Elyse Resch

How many diet books have you read in your life time? I think my list starts with my mother’s copy of More of Jesus, Less of Me –which I copped from my Mom when I was in 8th grade — and continues through The WeighDown Workshop, 8 Minutes in the Morning, You, on a Diet, The Maker’s Diet, and The Fat Flush Diet — some of which have only recently left the shelves of my personal library.

Last year after a failed attempt at Weight Watchers, I hit my 38th birthday and decided that I’d spent enough of my life obsessing about my weight/body/what I ate. At the ripe old age of 38, I gave up dieting for good and decided to start loving my body.(I’m a slow learner.) The catalyst? Intuitive Eating.

This is book that must be consumed slowly, so you can unlearn old habits and adopt intutivley helpful ways of thinking about food and nutrition. The assingnments take time, but are well worth the resulting mental and emotional reprogramming. For the first time I am eating when I’m hungry, stopping when I’m full, and balancing out at a size my body is comfortable with. Within weeks of begining Intuitive Eating, I stopped feeling guilty about food ,and now I can eat anything guilt free. For the first time this year, I didn’t even THINK of making a resolution that involved losing weight! It’s a small miracle.

P.s. If you are stocking your bookshelves on the topic, Women I Respect have also recommended Eating Mindfully and Slow Food Revolution: A New Culture for Eating and Living. Check ‘em out!

Heal Your Headache: The 1-2-3 Program for Taking Charge of Your Pain
Dr. David Buchholz

When my husband handed me this book in our local shop, I pretty much rolled my eyes and sighed in defeat. After years of tyring everything under the sun to get rid of my migraines, I had pretty much resolved to live with pain for the rest of my life. I thought I knew everything there was to know about migraines and migraine meds — but after just a few pages of Heal Your Headache I’d discovered things none of my dozen-odd medical practioners had ever told me. Intially I was terrified of step one, getting off pain medications and most other meds. But within six weeks I was no longer dependent on pain meds or meds like immitrex, and I had discovered hidden trigger foods that no one had mentioned to me before. My migraines dropped from everyday, to 2-7 per month. After getting them down to this more manageable level, a good atlas chiropractor (we like to call him “Dr. Woo Woo”) got rid of the rest of my headache pain and desensitized me from most of my trigger foods. Now I only have the occasional break through headache — and this after five solid years of headache pain! Believe me, this book is worth taking a chance on!

What books help you Feel Better?

Next Week: books for the Budding Feminist.

There is a part of me that misses preaching, and another slice of my persona that desprately wants to be this guy. So here’s a little bit of both captured in my very first podacst — it’s me reading my latest blog post. It mentions a couple of things you can link to like Tweet and this charming get away.

It confuses me – as I’m sure it does you – how I can so deeply love Jesus and be so genuinely grateful for my Christian roots, and at the same time be so clearly scarred by the experience of religious indoctrination. I suppose this is because cult and faith cannot easily be balanced. Because Christianity is a social movement and all social movements eventually metastasize and bulge away from their original intent. Because, in my opinion, “Jesus got ‘jacked.”

When I think back over my religious upbringing there are a string of damaging thoughts that got grafted into my being which came purely from attending church, Sunday school, and youth group. Among the long list are these 7 most-damaging messages:

Any impulse you have towards physical intimacy is naughty. (Result: A lifetime of distrusting one’s body and seeing one’s physical self as the great betrayer.)
You should only date someone to get married. (The worst possible message you can give a fifteen year old)
You are not good enough, but God puts up with you anyway. (Result: A life-long feeling of inadequacy and a lack of self-love.)
Everything you love must be given as a “sacrifice” to God. (Thereby making you feel guilty for anything you feel passionately about that cannot be turned into “church work.”)
There is no wisdom/love/spiritual truth/devotion/generosity outside of Christianity. (Result: A really unattractive and utterly false sense of spiritual/moral/political superiority.)
The devil lurks around every corner waiting to attack. (Instilling a constant sense of anxiety and fear.)
God is only male, therefore women are bad because they are not like God and because they brought sin into the world. (Results: such a plethora of damaging crap I cannot even BEGIN to list it all here.)

These messages, these draining repetitive tapes that I still struggle to rid myself of, prevent me from taking my children to church. As much as I want them to have the beauty of growing up in church – community, religious ritual, music – there is too much ….crap…that comes with the package. I can’t allow my girls to be damaged by this as I was. As much as I’d like to think I can counter these messages with parental chats and at- home lessons, I don’t think I can. After all, my parents never taught me any of these deadly messages. I got those all on my own. From church.

Ideally, I could move out of the evangelical branch of Christianity and avoid these things. But really, it’s not true. No matter where I go—and I’ve gone to a LOT of churches—there are still things that keep me from resting easy: exclusively male pronouns for God; one person holding all of the wisdom in the pulpit; patriarchal models of hierarchy and decision making; and the ongoing staggeringly depressing truth that Sunday morning is still the most racially segregated hour of the week. Being a part of these things from a young age shapes you, moulds you, into a certain kind of be-ing. In spite of the changes many of my ministerial friends are chipping out in this old institution, I still have to take a time out. I still have to protect my children in all their malleable young glory. And I guess, above all, I still need time to be …sad.

May it not always be so. May those with the passion and drive to make changes have the strength to continue the work. May healing come, may truth return. Next year, Jerusalem!

I did walk away from the reduce-your-gas habitude much more enamored with walking places than ever before. I took the “should I drive, or walk” option complete off my plate. If it’s walkable, it gets walked. And with Spring here, what’s not to love about that?

I live in a pretty walkable neighborhood, so none of my outings take more than 15mintues to walk each way. I’d like to up my exercise ante a bit, so my May habitude is to walk at least 30 minutes a day, in addition to my regular walk-to-work-and-the-grocer routine. Thankfully I have both a lovely three-mile urban lake loop nearby and a treadmill in the basement with a steady supply of favorite TV shows on netflix. (Current obsession: Grey’s Anatomy season two.) So I can easily get my 30 minutes in rain or shine.

Anyone else want to commit to a simple exercise goal for May?

P.s. Congratulation to Karla who got the cloth shopping bag for being the first person to sign on to Love Your Mother last month! I’d also like to send a bag to Aola for consistently chiming in with great greener ideas. Aola, shoot me an email with your snail mail. (moi at magpie-girl dot com.)Your package is waiting for you on my desk. Much love!

Every habitude I play with inspires an artful little offering for the Buy Magpie page. This month’s love-my-curves experiement left me longing — as ever — for expressions of the feminine divine.

If you are a praying sort, you might want to check out the Blessed-Be-She rosetta stones. (Sparkly Things! So pretty!) I’m only making 3 or 4 of these, so if you’d like one, order soon.

Tommorrow, the April Habitude! (Here’s a hint…it’s inspiring me to make leg warmers!)

I’ve taken Jen B.’s advice and adopted a mantra for the month. Every time I eat or drink I say to myself “I love my body as I love a child.” It came to me after I realized I would never treat my children’s bodies the way I treat my own. I don’t always remember to say it, but I often do, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how often I am making good choices without even thinking about it. Sometimes at the end of the day I go over my food and movement for the day and recite my mantra over each memory. I’m learning a lot…I have a lot to learn.

Inspired by the book Intuitive Eating, I’ve also thrown away all my dieting stuff and given up dieting for good. My Weight Watcher’s point counters are tossed and my scale is deprived of batteries and lying in the back of my closet. I’m eating what I want when I want it, as along as I’m hungry. The first two weeks I worried about gaining more, but so far all my clothes fit the same and my favorite pair of jeans fear maybe feels a little looser.The hardest part is determining whether I’m hungry physically, or just emotionally, but I don’t think I’m falling off the wagon too often.

I’m still writing my morning letters to my body about three days a week. It’s been surprising to me how sympathetic I feel towards my body when I treat her (me) as a person and not as a mysterious, manipulative entity to be battled.

Mostly pleasingly, I’ve noticed a distinct decrease in the amount of negative self talk I do about my body. I have this huge mirror in our bathroom which makes seeing my body (me) as a whole every morning unavoidable. Sometimes, I even smile.

What’s your mantra this month?

None of us seem sure of how to get there, but that’s okay, I’m pretty good at stumbling around in the dark until we can light one candle.

Here’s my question for today, what are the absolute basic necessities for you as your body. I’m not talking about what you should be doing according to the latest Hollywood trainer or even according to your wholesome good-spirited naturopath. I’m talking about what you intuitively know to be bedrock-necessary for your body given who you are and how you are at this stage in your life.

Don’t know the answer? Do what Jen always tells me to do: get very quiet and be very brave and spend some time with your journal. Or if you are a kinetic learner, try taking a walk without your headphones. It will come to you. Your body – you – knows what you need.

I find I need to do this a couple of times a year, usually when I’ve let one of my bedrock needs fall out of my daily rhythm. Some of the things on my list remain the same, while others change with health, season, and age. I find that there are usually more than three and less than ten. If I get more than ten, I’ve drifted out of “bedrock” and into “preference” or “shoulds.” Here are mine for the present:

What I (as my Body) Need Right Now

Silence while working and driving.

Sleep from 10pm-7am.

Gentle exercise everyday.

To drink water after 3pm.

To honor my fullness and my hunger.

To knit and write every day – and consequently to ice my wrist every night.

What are yours?

For as long as I can remember my body has been my enemy. It was what got me molested. (I can remember trying to wear shirts that buttoned to the neck to that the person who molested me wouldn’t be tempted by my developing breasts.) It was what made me attractive (or not) to boys. (I started dieting when I was 13 because I thought I should stay a size 3. Tiffany Frank figured out how many sit ups we’d have to do to burn off one of the chocolate caramel bars we were selling as a school fundraisers, and we’d eat them at break then all do sit ups in the empty classrooms.) It was what made me a hip, powerful woman — or not. (Hip, powerful girls played sports – girly old fashioned girls sucked at sports and were doomed to a life involving home ec.) I shoved it into pencil thin jeans, laying on the bed to zip them up; filled it with chocolate chip cookie dough binges when I was sad; and forced it to keep achieving and achieving by fueling it with diet coke through riduclous extracurricular activities and late night study sessions.

As I grew older, I became more sophisticated about how I talked about body image, and diet, and the insipid consumer culture that said happiness was a size 0 and plus size was a size 9. Still, my body was foreign to me – at best silent, and at worst a conspirator for my own unhappiness.

When my first child was stillborn, and my second delivery required an unplanned c-section and resulted in a child who lost weight and wouldn’t nurse, I became convinced – my body was out to get me. The separation between mind/spirit and body that had started as a necessity to survive the abuse had morphed into a permanent division that ruled a very large part of my world. The diagnosis of migraines as a chronic condition just confirmed my early assessment. The evidence was undeniable, my body was conspiring against me.

I am rarely happy with my body and I am appalled at how much time and creative mental energy I spend on this issue. Food is always on my mind. My weight is a near constant disappointment. I feel guilty all the time. I never go through a single day where I don’t feel bad about something I’ve eaten, some exercise I’ve not done or not done enough of, some item of clothing that I can’t wear. For instance, every day on my way to work I walk by this adorable boutique and think, “I can’t wear a single item in there.” They stop at size 9. It’s not a shop for petites or anything, it’s just a regular Seattle boutique. (I’m a size 12.) Or here’s another, today I lifted weights and walked on the treadmill, but I’m going about my day with this thought hovering over my head like a cartoon dialogue balloon: “Maybe I should have done yoga instead.” It’s mentally exhausting and embarrassingly ridiculous.

Last week, in yet another show about dieting, I heard Oprah say that she had wasted a large part of her 30’s worrying about food and weight. I’m thirty-seven. Only three years to go before I am undoubtedly, irrevocably ‘grown up.’ Will I still be carrying the neuroses of a thirteen year old? Will I still automatically convert calories into sit ups? Will I still waste precious minutes feeling guilty? Will my body remain my enemy?

I am so tired of being stuck in Jr. High.

A year or two after I was diagnosed with chronic daily migraines (status migranosis) a new friend, Christine Painter, recommended that I read Voice Lessons by Nancy Mairs and What Her Body Thought from Susan Griffith. Mairs taught me that I do not have a body. She writes, “I have a body. I am a body.” Griffith reminded me that “My story is immersed in my body.” (p. 7) This is not a gnostic exercise I cannot separate my “self” from my physical being. I am my body. If I hate my body, I hate myself. If I love my body, I love myself.

I am nearly 40 years old and I still do not understand this. “I am a body”. It’s is a thought that echoes with truth and memory. It shimmers like a mirage just out of reach. I’d like to get there. I’d like to understand. I’d like to bring my body back to myself. I’d like to be my body, and to love my bodyself as I love my motherself and my creativeself and my womanself.

That’s the habitude for the month, I think. Love your body. How shall we proceed?

Update: to find out how this experiement went, follow along by reading posts about body love in the Habitudes category!

Rachelle

I’m not sure what all this is, but I think it might be a clue to next month’s habitude.

And so may this:

Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works

I’ll let you know….