I’m always surprised when I hear from women who think that I’m fearless and have no doubts. I respond by telling them that when I write a blog post I feel like my chest has been ripped open and my heart exposed. I sit with it for sometimes hours, days or even months until I finally get the guts to post. Then as soon as I do I message one of my best friends to ask them to like it so that I can feel like I’m okay and breathe again. I’ve posted probably 30 times and, while it gets easier each time, I still experience feelings of self doubt and fear.
Before each Bodysex workshop I lead I go back and forth between feeling completely elated to completely inadequate. Will Betty be proud of me? What if the women expect more from me than I can live up to? Am I enough to do this work? Will they accept me when I also share my fears, inadequacies and self doubts? Will they accept my naked, imperfect body?
Sometimes well meaning people ask — “If writing these personal stories or leading these workshops makes you feel this exposed and vulnerable— why would you do it?” The answer for me is in the correlation between being vulnerable and feeling powerful. It isn’t at all that I am unafraid, it’s more that I’m making the choice not to let fear rule me.
Choosing this means to me the difference between walking INTO life or staying on the sidelines.This might mean that what I’m walking into feels like a hail storm where I’m being pummelled repeatedly in the face. Or it could feel like walking into something mildly uncomfortable like sleet. Other times though I feel like I’m walking into the sunshine on the most beautiful day you can ever imagine.
No matter the circumstances, each time I walk into it, I always get through it and continue walking — feeling stronger and caring less about what people think about me. I laugh harder and deeper than I’ve ever laughed before — even and especially at the things about myself that I used to be too horrified to admit existed. I can lose myself with complete abandonment in sex and not worry about what I look or sound like or if I took too long to cum. I can dance like Elaine on Seinfeld and feel like the girl in the room who’s having the most fun. I can, I can, I can.
I’ll never be perfect and — looking back on my life so far — I’m sorry that I spent so many years shielding myself in the hopes that no one else would realize that simple fact. I will never be fearless, or without doubts. I will however continue to make the decision to choose vulnerability over fear and walk INTO life.
This is the story of a little girl shared with me by her mother who attended my first Bodysex workshop. There her mother learned about and identified the parts of her sexual anatomy, began to feel comfortable in her own skin and expressed this newfound comfort with her daughter.
She expressed it by taking better care of her body, not covering up while changing, showing appreciation for parts of her self that she had previously disliked and by sitting down beside her daughter naked. With the little girl watching, her mother identified and named all the parts of her vulva and their different purposes. Her daughter —fascinated by this — looked at her own vulva and did the same alongside her mom. A year later this happened:
“Mom come here, I have to tell you something!” said the little girl from her bath. Her mother walked in to see her daughter smiling up at her.
“I was just looking at my vulva.”
“Oh yah….And what did you see?” asked her mother.
“Well my clitoris looks like a little hill, and my labia look like peas from the garden.”
Smiling her mother asked if she saw anything else.
Dear Natasha,
I am 26 years old and have been dating a guy for the past year. I really like him and the sex is good but my problem is that I am terrified of him seeing my genitals. There is something wrong with my inner lips and I think that if he sees them he won’t want to have sex with me anymore. One of the lips is longer than the other and it sticks out a bit from my outer labia. I think it got stretched from me playing with it when I was a kid. I have read that women get surgery to correct this and I am wondering about doing this myself. He keeps wanting to go down on me but I’m afraid that he will see this deformity. I let him do it once in the dark but I couldn’t relax at all because I was so scared he’d somehow notice. What should I do? He is starting to get annoyed that I want the lights off during sex and foreplay and I am worried that our relationship won’t last unless I get this fixed.
– H
Dear H.,
First of all you are not deformed at all. Nothing on your body, and I repeat NOTHING, is symmetrical including your eyes, arms, legs or labia. If you were to draw a line down the centre of yourself and compare the two sides you would see that nothing matches. Men’s testicle’s are a perfect example of this as they are very rarely the same size or hanging side by side. Should we call that a deformity? Of course not – it is just how they are. As for the idea that this difference in size came from playing with yourself when you were a kid that is completely false. You would have to hang a bowling ball from your labia for months on end in order to stretch them permanently. The way they are is the way they were when you were born and, as you grow, they grow as well. This is normal. I like to frame it this way to other women who come to me with this concern.(there are many!) If you were to notice asymmetrical labia on your daughter would you love her as she is or think that there was something wrong with her?
In my work I see so many different “styles” of labia and every single one of them is normal. Many are asymmetrical, and about half of them the inner lips are longer than the outer lips. The more inner lips you have the more nerve endings you have in them, so don’t stop touching! I am constantly saddened to hear women speak of shame and misconceptions about the way their genitals look and I wish that we all could see other REAL women naked to know that we are normal and beautiful as we are.
My advice to you is to turn on the lights and let your boyfriend really see you. You can tell him how you feel if you want to and that you are nervous about this. If he is a decent guy he will appreciate the vulnerability it took for you to speak up and let him see, and he will adore your vulva with his words, his touch and his mouth.
Here is a link to an online labia library where you can see the variety in women’s genitalia. //www.labialibrary.org.au We are all unique and there is nothing “wrong” with any of us.
Take care and give your vulva some love.
Love, Natasha
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Maryanne Williamson
A friend messaged me this morning saying that she was experiencing a “vulnerability hangover” about something that she had shared in a group. I mirrored back to her similar feelings about something that I had also shared and, while we talked, it became evident that what made us feel the most vulnerable was that we had shared our successes. We had shared a strength in something that we were overcoming, and by doing so, we felt exposed.
My story growing up was that I was dumb. I don’t think that anyone told me that story but my sisters were exceptionally smart and I was seen as the “people” person. All of my adult life I’ve felt inadequate around “educated” people. I would shrink in academic conversation – every once in awhile sticking in something that hopefully sounded a bit smart??? – while thinking that I was a complete idiot and they must be thinking the same thing. Going to school for counselling was terrifying for me and with each class I was sure that my instructor would see how dumb I really was. But it never happened. Academically I excelled and with this “success” I began to see myself in a new story. I am smart. I’m not stupid and I do have valuable things to add to conversations. With this realization also came fear. Staying small, quiet (yah I know everyone is laughing at me using that word) and hidden meant that I couldn’t disappoint others. Being exposed is a double edged sword.
As the conversation with my friend unfolded I was struck by the reality of what we were saying. Our stories, our inadequacies, our traumas, our broken parts are our ARMOUR. Some we have chosen for ourselves, some were told to us by others, and some have been brutally forced upon us. We may desperately want to let them go, but we may also be desperately afraid of letting them go. Without our armour we have no excuse to not shine.
As children we learned to protect ourselves from the uncomfortable feelings of rejection, dismissal, anger shame etc. We made ourselves small so that we couldn’t be noticed, we made ourselves helpful so that we couldn’t be punished. We hid, we faked, we went deep inside ourselves – essentially doing whatever it took to feel safe. This protective mechanism kept us alive when faced with real or perceived dangers, and safe when we didn’t always feel that the big people in our lives could protect us. But as we grew, these mechanisms held us back. They limit our chance at being hurt but they also limit our chance at greatness. In that way they no longer serve us.
I hear women so often saying that they are scared to sit in the Bodysex circle because they are afraid to face their own reality. Afraid that once they take off their armour – their clothing and their stories – they won’t be able to be small anymore. It is a valid fear and one that comes at a real cost. Not everyone will be okay with your greatness and many will feel insecure around you. But this is only because they’re afraid of their own greatness and of being reminded that they are holding back from it as well. Realizing and actualizing our greatness doesn’t mean that we no longer have the less great parts. I’m perfect testament to that. I fuck up daily and maybe sometimes I fuck up to have a reason to hide – reason to not do this work, and to run. Or maybe I fuck up just cause I’m human. Who knows.
But what I do know is that sitting naked in the Bodysex circle is a profound act of bravery and in doing so you will be changed forever. In that circle you aren’t the victim, you are just you. By simply being ourselves – “liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” See you in the circle.
The smell of: my mom’s homemade spaghetti sauce, wood smoke and cow dung, baking bread, my son’s unwashed hair after a week in the sun, rain storms, breast milk breath, digging dirt, wild flowers, herbal essence shampoo, my fertile pussy.
The taste of: berries freshly picked, honeysuckles, cherries that we only got to eat once a year, mango’s on the beach, pineapple weed, peach schnappes, chai on a rainy day, salty sweat.
The sound of: children playing, babies sucking milk from my breast, a tea pot whistling, leaves click clicking together when the wind blows, coyote’s and hyenas at night, sex, 90’s sitcom theme songs, birds waking me up outside my tent in Kenya, my breath while I build to orgasm.
The feel of: my dad’s kiss on my forehead before bed, the curve of my children’s soft round bums, the pages of my favourite book between my fingers, someone having my back, strawberry seeds in my teeth, a warm mug of tea, sand in my toes, compassion, skin touching skin, the family bed, sun on my naked body, lips on lips, my hand between my legs in just the right spot.
The sight of: wheat blowing in the wind, true empathy in the eyes of my child as I clean the mess from an overflowed toilet, someone I love ugly crying, red dirt, Acacia trees, babies on mama’s backs, hard working hands, my 37 year old self, women orgasming in the sacred Bodysex circle.
