Thought for today

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Teaching Sex in a Healthy Way: How I Hope to Keep my Kids From Growing up Naked and Ashamed….

Work.in.Progress

In her essay, Naked and Ashamed, Amanda Barbee critiques the way the Christian Church has dealt with the physical body and sexuality. Barbee discusses the ambiguity with which the Church has handled the human body in general, and then presses in to discuss the consistency with which women’s bodies have been maligned in Christian tradition. She lands more recently upon recent research that reveals  abstinence curricula like “True Love Waits,” increases shame responses for children/adolescents. This shame has been found to have similar effects on intimacy later in life to childhood sexual abuse.

Wow.

Shame is a potent tool and one that has been used by parents, churches, and teachers–especially in the realm of sexual development/exploration–far too often. It worked, or at least appeared to on the front end. I’d like to believe that those pushing for abstinence only sexual education may not have known of the damaging effects…

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Something a bit different…

I used to write a lot of poetry, mostly free form, but for years I haven’t had much inspiration for it. I wrote this one recently – still working on it…

The noise never stops, it never slows,
The constant vibration of thought in my head.
Sleep doesn’t calm it.
Work and wine are no help.
Friends’ simple talk adds to the cacophony.
I’ve organized, finalized, deputized the thoughts,
Hoping to find a moment of peace.

In the midst of this whirlwind
The solution came to me.
I fought against it.
Something strange and taboo can’t fix it, I reasoned.
Complicating my life further can’t fix it, I chided.
But what if… what if…
And the pull of possibility won.

I wait in this room for you,
Naked, nervous, naive.
I fight my old self, doubting who I’ve become.
“I should go, I should go,”
My mind races for control,
to keep control,
to keep the noise in control.

You’ve entered the room
And my thoughts go silent.
They wait. All of me waits.
One singular point of focus is all that’s left.
What do you desire?
You give me the gift of silence;
And in return, I will give you everything.

Today I am grateful for Vixen

I have been reading Vixen’s gratefulness posts for a while. She has taught me a great deal, and has often inspired me to get moving, work harder and recognize the little things in daily life that are valuable. But Vixen is hurting now, a pain that overshadows everything, that would make any of us lose hope and joy in the moment. So, because she needs to walk through this time, I want her to know that I am grateful today for her and her blog. Thank you, Vixen. Hugs.

A Good Day

Today is a good day. I’m not sure why; I simply woke up to it. My body is trying to argue with me about it (it’s cold and cloudy and “that time of the month”), and trying to convince me I have valid excuses to not be productive. But the rest of me is feeling positive and purposeful and wanting to spend the day with a smile on my face and end it well.

If I can’t be where I really want to be, doing what I really want to do, with the person I really want to be doing it with – then at the very least I can take all this energy and do something great with it.