the secret my body carried into adulthood

a reflection on sexual healing and the story buried in my body

trigger warning: mentions of childhood sexual trauma (non-explicit).

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the idea for this piece began the way so many of my pieces do, as a whisper from somewhere just beyond, my soul nudging me to tell another part of my story.

this one came to me on my morning walk through the foothills, under the big colorado sky, that always makes me feel connected and grounded as child of the universe.

and so it felt like the right moment to begin writing about my sexual healing, something i’ve circled for years. i’ve known for a lifetime that i would need to speak about this someday. i just didn’t know when the doorway would open.

today, it did.

i’ve written about my healing journey in many of my other posts, but the more intimate aspects of my sexual healing are ready to be told now too.

this is my story, but unfortunately it’s a story far too many of us share.

the thing about sexual healing is that we still don’t know how to talk about sex in honest, grounded, everyday ways. we talk about it publicly when we’re trying to make a point, shift a narrative, or challenge the culture, but not in the simple, human ways that would help us the most.

what we don’t have enough of are the simple conversations. the honest ones that aren’t always dramatic, they are just part of our personal biography. the ones that acknowledge that sexuality is part of being human, part of healing, part of becoming whole again.

instead, the topic of sex so often gets pushed into the same corner as death, which, is to say it becomes taboo, awkward, and often swept under the rug. and it’s not just discomfort, it’s the patriarchy, it’s religious conditioning, it’s the way american culture sexualizes everything while refusing to actually talk about it in a human way that might help us all feel less overwhelmed.

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i’ve always been aware of my sexuality. i just didn’t know why.

because i was in my mid-forties when i finally recovered the memories of what happened to me as a very young child, i had already built my own narrative around why i’d always been a highly sexualized child. i had to do this, because when the truth isn’t available, the mind pieces together whatever it can. it builds something close enough to survive, something to explain what would otherwise feel incomprehensible.

most often, that narrative ends up placing all the blame on the only person it can reach: the self. that’s why survivors carry so much shame and self-blame. a young mind desperately wants to create order when life feels out of control, so it pulls the locus of control inward. if the danger feels too big and too terrifying “out there,” the mind rewrites the story into something it thinks it can manage.

this must be your fault.
there must be something wrong with you.
you must have caused it somehow.

it’s heartbreaking in a way, but it’s also the nervous system trying its best to protect a child who had no power and no language. and that self-blame becomes a self-destructive narrative we carry for decades, until the truth is finally ready to reveal itself.

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before finn got sick, and long before everything i had buried came flooding back through the dissociative amnesia that had protected me for decades, i had already begun writing future memoir about this. i was trying to make sense of myself with the pieces i had.

at the time, my explanation was simple: just like some children come in remembering past lives, such as details about towns they lived in and how they died, i believed my sexual memories had somehow carried over intact from infancy. i thought i had arrived knowing things most infants don’t.

i didn’t realize those memories had been awakened in infancy. i didn’t know they had been put there. so in my mind, i had just always known about sex.

i had always felt arousal. that was the story i told myself.

except for my earliest memory, the one that never matched the emotional tone of my childhood. i see it now as a kind of beacon, left for my future self to return to when i was finally ready to face what had once been unfaceable.

now i understand why that very first memory was always so such a strong one, it was the last memory i have from the world before the abuse.

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in this memory, i’m two and a half. i know exactly how old i am because it’s my sister’s first birthday party. i remember my parents had friends over that day to celebrate and everyone was already gathered outside in the backyard. i woke up from a nap, still warm and groggy with that sweet toddler confidence, and decide that although i liked my top, i was absolutely not going to wear the pantaloons that matched it.

so i go to the party completely naked from the waist down.

i can still feel that sense of freedom, like i’m on top of the world, tiptoeing around the thistles that grow through the gravel on the side of the house. i remember the sunlight, the rough gravel on my bare feet, looking up at my bedroom window as i walk by, and the quiet feeling of certainty in my tiny body that this was the right decision for me.

i even remember the thought that drifted through my mind as i made my way toward the backyard:

who needs underwear or pants anyway?

that memory has always stayed with me, bright, innocent, whole. i used to share it whenever people talked about their earliest memories. i didn’t know then that it was a marker. the last place i stood in my body before everything changed.

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after that, everything feels different.
all my early memories carry a tension i couldn’t name. my parents fought constantly, voices rising and crashing. and beneath that chaos was something darker, something that made me small, hyperaware, always on alert. i learned to read a room before i learned to read a book or ride a bicycle.

but i always felt sexual. and for decades, i didn’t understand that either.

i’ve since learned that children who experience sexual trauma often develop what looks like early sexual awareness, but it isn’t sexual in the adult sense. it’s the body trying to regulate itself. self-stimulation becomes a survival mechanism. the body searches for anything predictable, anything that might soothe the terror it can’t escape. that’s not desire, it’s the nervous system trying to survive.

i remember climbing the laundry pole in the backyard, shimmying up until the pressure hit just the right spot. i remember sitting on the washing machine while it shook beneath me. i remember using my favorite stuffed animal. and every time, afterward, the wave of shame came. not just arousal, but shame. the two were always intertwined.

i had no memories of trauma. just a body carrying the aftermath. a body shaped by sensations it didn’t understand. a body remembering what my mind had locked away.

i wasn’t born knowing any of this. it was forced onto me. imprinted into me before i had words, before i had memory, before i understood anything at all.

and like many children without language or guidance, i was curious. i remember playing with the neighbors, the innocent curiosity kids have about bodies. but somewhere inside me, i “knew” things i shouldn’t have known, and that confusion became its own kind of burden. i carried a shame i couldn’t name. it wasn’t from anything we did as children, it was something deeper and darker, something that lived in my body as a quiet, constant heat and a heaviness i didn’t understand. i remember thinking growing up that i must have just been unusually sensitive to society’s guilt around sexuality.

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watching my younger two growing up today, i am acutely aware of just how different things are now. prevention experts come into their classrooms. my son recently brought home a simple handout that said:

no. go. tell.
say no.
go somewhere safe.
tell a trusted adult.

i cried when i saw it. i cried at the parent meeting too.

because all i could think was: what if someone had given me even one of those words?

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i remember in third grade, i finally decided it was time to tell my deepest darkest secret to my best friend. So i told her this secret that i’d carried for as long as i could remember. it wasn’t the abuse, it was what my conscious mind could wrap itself around. it was the memory of playing “doctor” and “mommy and daddy” with the neighbors.

this day i remember so well we were playing in her basement where we often hung out together and danced to madonna songs or slid down the stairs on a mattress. after working myself up for quite a while to finally share, i remember finally telling her i wasn’t a “virgin.” that was the only language i had for the weight inside me. she laughed and told me she’d played little curiosity games like that too. but after getting it off my chest the shame didn’t lift.

because how could it? i didn’t know then that what i carried wasn’t from childhood play, it was from the repression of something much more violent and violating, the forgotten imprint of betrayal at its deepest level.

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and the truth i carry now is the hardest of all.

for years, that amnesia held me so tightly i couldn’t see what i needed to see. i couldn’t access the part of me that understood danger. i couldn’t protect the ones i love more than life itself, the ones i should have been able to shield.

this is the truth that closes this chapter of the story.

i was living with a locked door inside me, and because i couldn’t open it, i couldn’t see the danger until it was too late.

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thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞