My Chamber of Secrets (or My Relationship with My Vulva)
No one told me that sex was wrong. I just knew it. I knew that sex was wrong before I (inaccurately) learned what sex was.
Before the age of seven, I had internalized the fear and shame around sexuality before I had the language to describe it.
I was also (and still am) very curious about sexuality.
As a little girl, I desperately wanted to know what sex was, but I feared that even knowing what sex was must be a sin.
I secretly eyed magazines like Cosmo at the grocery store, equal parts fascinated and mortified by their alluring covers.
Finally, in near panic-attack mode, I approached my mother sobbing, desperate for answers to my humiliating interest.
I couldn’t even say the word. “What is S-E-X?” I asked in the tiniest whisper.
To my mother’s credit, she responded with gentleness and sensitivity to my distress. Sitting on my mom’s bed surrounded by snotty tissues, she patiently explained intercourse to me, using the medically appropriate names for body parts. As a labor and delivery nurse, she asked if I wanted to see pictures that she could get from the hospital where she worked, so that I could better understand the process and physiology of intercourse.
Side note: intercourse (vaginal penetration with a penis) is one type of sex and not inclusive of all sex and certainly not the pinnacle of sex. In later blog posts, I will explain the many reasons that defining sex by vaginal penetration is problematic.
I was shocked when my mom told me that sex (intercourse) was not a sin. In this conversation, I learned that sex is fun and pleasurable; I also learned that God designed sex for one married cis-man and one married cis-woman—any sex outside of these confines was sinful.
Although I am grateful for the way that my mom responded in a non-anxious way to my questions, these rigid boundaries around religiously sanctioned sexuality informed my worldview of relationships, gender, and marriage with devastating consequences.
About a year later, I sat in the bathroom, my eight-year-old hands gripping the side of the toilet seat. Tentatively, my right index finger grazed the inside of my labia. I gasped; I had never touched myself. In this situation, I wasn’t trying to masturbate—my anxiety around masturbation would develop later—I simply was curious about my body, as many children are. I was frantic with fear, wondering what could possibly exist in that mysterious space between my thighs. After my finger wandered between these strange folds of skin for a few seconds longer, I started to panic. This must be wrong. This must be a sin. My psyche soaked up the messages about my female body being dangerous like the best damn sponge you could imagine.
At 13 years old, I was once again on the toilet, gripping the edges of the seat—this time with my braces freshly removed and sparkly green nail-polish in the shade labeled “sinful”, which caused my friends and me to feel quite scandalous. Bright red blood dripped between my legs—the inevitable period had arrived, and I didn’t quite know what to do. Pads were self explanatory, but my friends used tampons, and I had no idea how to use them. Where did they go? I was pretty sure that I was supposed to somehow get the tampon into my vagina, but I didn’t actually know where my vagina was…my vagina existed somewhere in between the folds of my vulva that I was too terrified to further explore, but where? With trepidation I used the same index finger to try and find some sort of opening but with no success. I resigned myself to bulky pads, too humiliated to ask for support from my mother, friends, or anyone else.
My vagina (and vulva, for that matter) remained an enigma for the next several years, and since my very limited sexual experiences didn’t involve intercourse, I wasn’t particularly concerned with that unsolved mystery until I got engaged at age twenty-two.
This post is about my vulva. This statue on the Greenway in downtown Boston, also looks like a vulva. #themes
As a follower of purity culture principles, engagement meant that I would soon be having intercourse with my fiancé following our wedding ceremony.
Purity culture teaches that sexual experiences (including masturbation) outside the confines of marriage between one cis-gender male and one cis-gender female is both sinful and harmful. Sexual exploration through either masturbation or with a partner detract from the wonders of sexual discovery with your spouse.
I was confident that my strict adherence to purity culture values would reward me with magical sex after marriage. I wasn’t able to orgasm on my own, but I just assumed that I would orgasm through sex with my husband.
My only sexual concern at this point was that I still didn’t know where my vagina was…and if I wasn’t able to use a tampon, would an erect penis fit inside me?
Bravely I sought help from multiple gynecologists who told me that all was fine with my vulva and that I simply needed to relax and “not be anxious”. They didn’t hear my questions or distress; they invalidated my physical and emotional pain. Despite being woefully disconnected from my body, this was my first lesson listening and trusting my body. I knew that I was experiencing a problem that required more than the simplistic and dismissive instructions that I received.
After confiding in my mother, she suggested that I reach out to a pelvic floor physical therapist. I learned that I was experiencing vaginismus, which is the involuntary contraction of the vaginal muscles. Even if I knew where my vagina was (I still did not), I would not have been able to use a tampon or have intercourse without pain because the muscles of my pelvic floor were trying to protect me by blocking the entrance of any foreign object.
I arrived at my first physical therapy appointment and followed the nurse’s instructions to undress and wait for the physical therapist; I was terrified, relived, and hopeful that the stranger I was about to meet could help me.
While anticipating the therapist’s arrival, I gripped the edges of the medical table, just like I gripped the toilet seat during my childhood and adolescence. I was twenty-two and feeling all the same vulnerability, shame, and fear that I experienced about my body as I did at 8 year old, thirteen years old, and all the years before and after.
As a sexual health professional who now specializes in vaginismus and vulvodynia, I can tell you that these are complicated phenomena. Each person’s story with pelvic pain is different.
For me, vaginismus and subsequent vulvodynia were the manifestation of trauma rooted in the body.
In later blog posts and podcasts, I will share a bit more about the links between trauma and the body—both in terms of my own story and my work as a psychotherapist. As the psychiatrist Bessel Vander Kolk writes, “The body keeps the score.”
For today’s post, the important message is that we internalize the messages (both explicit and implicit) that we receive about our bodies in our bodies. I learned that my body and my sexuality were dangerous to myself and others.
Don’t touch. Don’t explore. Don’t desire. Don’t look. Don’t feel. Don’t.
If purity culture had a theme song, it would be “Toxic” in reference to all forms of sexuality outside of the married context. I committed the lyrics to memory and practice.
My body held onto those messages too and didn’t let go. My body actually held onto those messages long after my mind and heart had released them.
My healing from religious trauma took years. I am still healing. We heal, we re-heal, and we keep on healing.
My first physical therapy appointment was the start to this process.
The physical therapist held up a hand-held mirror, and for the first time, I saw my whole vulva. I learned where my vagina was. I felt the muscles that were working so hard to protect me, even when they didn’t need to protect me.
My fingers relaxed their grip around the edges of the table. Soon my pelvic floor would learn to let loosen their grip too.
At twenty-two, I met my body. I met myself.
Hello there, I am looking forward to getting to know you.