Overcoming Religious Sexual Trauma

Suzanne Noble: I'm very excited to welcome our new sponsor, Higher Nature, who have created Rekindle, which I'm currently trying out and is working a treat. A 100% natural libido-enhancing supplement for women, which contains clinically backed ingredients to give your sex life a boost, and who doesn't want that? This week's episode has been sponsored by Oh My Bod, shifting the evolution of pleasure. Hi, this is Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. Oh, I'm so excited to speak to the person I've got as a guest today. Firstly, she's all the way in Austria, and I've never spoken to anyone in Austria before, but she's not Austrian. Her name is Lucy Rowett. She's a sexologist. She works with women, vulva owners, vulvo— vulva owners especially, and we're going to talk today really about some of the shame that many women experience around sex and how they can release that shame and enjoy intimacy again Welcome, Lucy, to Sex Advice for Seniors.

Thank you so much for having me. It's really lovely to be here.

Well, let's start by talking about, um, let's talk about shame, actually, and why specifically you wanted to focus on that area in your practice.

Um, well, I think that whenever we choose like a field that we work in, it's inevitably tied to our own personal stories. And any therapist who puts on their website that I was just interested in this topic is lying. It's always to do with our own personal stuff. Um, so shame is something I'm intimately familiar with. I grew up in the church. I grew up in the Church of England, and I was very heavily involved in evangelicalism as a teenager and young person. And evangelicalism, there's one big component of that, are purity culture teachings, which are very shame-based around sexuality, around bodies, female bodies, bodies in general, desire, and sexuality. So this is something that feels very intimate to me, something I am, I say, very familiar with. It's something that has been part of my own development, and it's something, one of the things that I'm passionate about in helping particularly women and vulva owners. And you don't have to have come from a faith background either, but to understand how shame can really impact us and how we can, I say, slowly and gently release it. I think when we think about shame, we think, right, I'm going to bust my shame, I'm going to get rid of my shame. And I think it's a bit more complex than that. Sometimes we need to befriend it, and often we need to go very, very gently with ourselves and hold ourselves with a lot of compassion and a lot of forgiveness. So this is one of the topics I love working with, which is shame, sexual shame, shame around our bodies and desires and fantasies. That was a long answer. Yeah.

And I think, you know, one of the things that I've certainly recognized from speaking to people who come from some faith-based background is often that faith-based background informs all aspects of their lives. So it's not just around sex, it's around kind of everything. It's around how they relate to people, how they consider the world, their value system. There's so much to unpack if that's how you were brought up and you decide that you want to perhaps move away from that. And sex is one component of it. But obviously, unlike some other areas that might just be trauma-informed from very specific circumstances, seems to me that this is like— this could be a lifetime of, of, you know, indoctrination, if you like, that then you need to think, okay, well, how does that sit with all the other stuff? That you're, that you're dealing with. So it seems like in itself it's quite challenging. So yeah, how do you even begin to unpack all of that?

I, I really love what you said where if you come from a faith background in particular, it colors everything. And I think that's really important for if you're not from— if you're a clinician or a practitioner working with someone from a faith background or just a general person they can't fully understand that it literally is the filter through which you see the world. It's a filter through which you see yourself. It's not just about maybe going to church on Sundays or saying a couple of prayers, depending on how deeply you go into it. But even if, um, I always say that you don't have to have grown up in a religious background to be impacted by it because it impacts the laws that are made, it impacts the full culture. I was saying on another podcast, you know, you think about your grandparents. Like, if you're from a Western background or a European background, your grandparents went to church and it was just a regular thing, or they went to another religious practice. And so when it comes to unpacking all of it, I think I always say that there's no, like, formula. There's no, like, uh, what is it, my 5-step formula to releasing all that shame? Because anyone who says that is— that's not accurate. I have, I think, some pillars that are really important, and one of them is that I think is really important is education. And that can sound quite cold and quite clinical, you know, fuck, I left school years ago. But especially around sexuality, you would have been taught so much bullshit and lies, and it's really important. And also, as humans, the way that we tend to learn things and integrate things we tend to need the theory first because when we have the theory, it gives our brain something to latch onto. It's not that it's everything, but one of my former mentors said it's like a map. It gives us a map to understand. It gives us that permission to be like, "Oh, right, that's why I think like this. This is why we're doing this." And I also want to add on that sex and sexuality, they're topics loaded with shame anyway, even in secular society.

Yeah, absolutely, 100%.

And so when I speak with people from religious backgrounds, I'm saying, yes, that did impact you, but it was already built on a baseline of shame and misinformation. So you— unfortunately, we just had extra layers of awfulness on top. So it's education. And then another big part that I do is I think it's really important to have— to start with the foundation of how does my body tell me it likes something? How does my body tell me yes? How does my body tell me no? And whether you're from a religious background, from a difficult childhood, from if there's maybe been abuse there, or just living as a woman or a person in the world, um, we would have been taught that we can't trust ourselves, that we have to override our needs, override our boundaries. And so starting with more of a foundation of how does my body actually communicate with me, How does it tell me it doesn't like something or it does like something? And this is something that we often have to keep coming back to, but then it starts to take more of that ownership back with yourself, especially from religious backgrounds. And it can also be from abusive childhoods as well, where you would have either lost that ability or had that ability to listen to yourself kind of— I was going to say rubbed out— stamped out of you. And so learning how to listen to yourself again and dare I say it, trust yourself a bit more is how we start to build that foundation. Especially in— there's often this myth that when we are healing sexual shame or working with religious sexual shame, that the, the opposite of that, or healing, means to be like totally all out and like swinging from the chandeliers and doing everything and being like, yeah, I'm gonna have sex with everyone and do everything in all my holes. And actually it's about Can I build that relationship with myself where if something doesn't feel right, I'm going to honor that and I can voice more of my boundaries and I can say, actually, I don't want to do that, I don't enjoy that. So this is another pillar that I work with. I also— this is why I love running groups. I think groups are really, really powerful in healing. Sometimes you can have a lot of breakthroughs in healing just from listening to somebody else share their story, especially if you've been struggling with it on your own and thinking that it's just me who's weird and feels like this. These are just some of the things that I work with. I always say it's like either unpeeling an onion or it's a spiral. I'm not saying that it has to take years and years and years because that's not true, but more that there's always different layers that are unfolding. I love this belief— I like this idea. I took it from a trauma specialist called Rachel Maddox. And it's this idea that we all have an internal drive, an internal blueprint towards health and vitality and wellness and wholeness. And how can we amplify that more rather than telling myself I'm broken, I need to be fixed? And I think that's a much more affirming way of working with ourselves. I'm already whole, I'm already glorious and wonderful and sexy, and how can I start to remove the things that are blocking that and amplify the life force that's already there. So this is some of how I work.

Yeah, and, and I suspect, you know, going to thinking about older people who may have been brought up over decades with, with these belief systems, is there any hope for them?

Oh my God, yes. And it's interesting because often when I work or I speak with older clients, another big part of how I work is understanding your story. And that means— it doesn't mean, by the way, when I say I'm telling your story, it doesn't mean you have to go through every single awful thing, but just get a rough idea of what you learned growing up. And because it just bringing that to the focus of like, oh God, I remember when my mother wouldn't talk about sex at all. She wouldn't even talk about uteruses. There was no such thing as a body. That starts to bring normalization. I always say there's absolutely, there's never not hope. And I think part of it is really acknowledging the background that you've come from and understanding that— what was I going to say? I was going to go on a tangent there and it's completely gone now.

But knowing, yeah, knowing that Knowing you were saying it's about knowing your own body and yeah, acknowledging where you came from.

It's that, and it's also, I always say that whenever I work with older clients, they say the work you're doing is very boundary breaking and it's very generational breaking. I'm sure there's a much more fancy term for that. This is incredibly courageous work that you're doing. You know, if you think about maybe your peers, you might be the only person doing that. So can we reframe this rather than, I'm so broken, I'm so old, there's no hope for me? Oh my God, I'm a radical changemaker, radical person who's smashing the chains of the patriarchy and everything that I've been taught. Bloody hell, go me! I'm a wonderful, fabulous person and I'm gonna do this for my sisters and everybody else.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I think that One of the challenges must be, and, and what I, I did a little survey on my Substack a couple of days ago to ask people what they want more of and what they want less of. And one of the things that came through was that most of my, the people that responded, so I don't know if it's representative, but most of the people that responded were married and most of the people that responded were men. And, and I think that they want to know how they can support their partners, and they want to know what they can do to help them to be more sexually satisfied. And obviously many of those women will have gone through or be going through the menopause, and so they're experiencing this change and On top of that, there may have been, you know, these guys are, are, are maybe suddenly thinking about pleasure in a way that they haven't thought about it before, because that's part of what— why I'm doing this, right, is to go, you know, it's never too late to experience sexual pleasure. It's never too late to learn new techniques. But of course, one of the issues, and this goes to your thing that you want to talk about, about people pleasing, is that of course of course, within many, many people that come from a faith background, female pleasure was just never acknowledged, right?

Female, female pleasure, just lie back. You know, we say like, there was a saying, lie back and think of England. And it's like, yeah. And I also want to say that often for older clients or for older women, I mean, I haven't been through the menopause myself yet.. But I know from all my friends and colleagues, it's a complete— there was a word I was going to say and it's not coming out, but it's a complete life-changing event. It's not just, oh, your hormones stop. No, it's like a complete rewiring of everything you thought and felt about yourself, how you experience your body. I'm suddenly a brand new person. I'm not the person I was anymore. My body is changing, plus ageism, plus most doctors don't have a fucking clue.

That's right.

Yeah, especially when it, you know, also with vaginal atrophy as well. Most doctors, even gynecologists, useless. So you have all of that, and it's, it's also why we know that a lot of divorces are often initiated by women in menopausal ages, because they're realizing they've been spending their lives and marriages overcompensating. Yeah, I've lost my train of thought. I'm going in all directions. I'm not even menopausal, and I have menopausal We're talking about people pleasing.

Yeah, people pleasing is something that, you know, I think lots of women do just generally, because we're not really focused so much on our own pleasure. Then, then you stick in all the shame around, you know, whatever faith you were brought up in that told you whatever bullshit they decided that they were going to tell you about. And, you know, it's a bit of a shit show. And then you've got it, and then you've got the menopause on top of that. I mean, sometimes I It's a shit show, frankly.

It's a shit show. And like, the way I'd reframe it is it's a big life— not big life-changing event, like, it's— I was going to say a milestone, but there's something coming up where what if it could be an invitation, like stepping through the portal of this is an opportunity to completely change my life, to completely change and rethink who I thought I was. Because we know that during the menopause, when all of the hormones drop, all of your old coping strategies and masking strategies, they don't exist anymore. They're not there. You can't do the overcompensating anymore, the people pleasing. It's less— you're less able to do it. Your bullshit tolerance is like paper thin. And so like behaviors that you might have tried to brush under the carpet before— also remember that even men of my age and my generation, there's still that hangover where men are expecting women often unconsciously, but sometimes consciously, to be taking care of everything. Like, one of my former mentors, Tammy Thomas, is saying that a lot of women inherit sons, not partners, where there's this unconscious expectation from a lot of men, especially older men, because generational stuff, because their mother did everything. Like, my, my dad's mum, she was the perfect 1950s housewife. She did everything. And a lot of men are still unconsciously expecting that. Also with emotional caretaking, a lot of women don't realize how much fucking emotional caretaking they've been doing, especially also from religious backgrounds, until your hormones hit, shit hits the fan with your hormones, everything else, you cannot do it anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's also, you know, I'm thinking of so many things. If I think about the women I grew up with in my church, obviously everybody's different and with different dynamics, I remember with my parents, I think my dad was one of the few people that we knew in our community where he did quite a bit around the house. And partly that's because my mum had to house train him, which is terrible because she was— my mum was very ahead of her time in many ways. She's like, I'm not your mother. I'm not going to be your mother. You're going to be doing your fair share. And I was talking to someone called Leanne Herron a while back because she went through a divorce because she came from a fundamentalist background. You can't underestimate how much a lot of religious communities, not just the church, really push and emphasize gender roles. That women, we are the caretakers, we are the givers. Like, this is me going on very much on a tangent, but if you go to any church, most churches are run on the free labor of women, and that gets my gall a lot of the time when it comes to events, when it comes to all sorts of things. So Coming back to the original question, I think it's really important to acknowledge just how much you are up against or how much you're facing, because it helps you stop gaslighting yourself and it helps you stop telling yourself, "I'm being silly. Why can't I get over this? This is just in my head. Why can't I just be the sexy goddess?" Well, no, of course not. It makes complete sense. Think about your conditioning, where you came from, the church's teachings, being a woman in general, that we are expected to be the, the caretakers. Of course, is it— this is a lot. And also, if you've got vaginal atrophy and your gynecologist refuses to prescribe vaginal estrogen, there's a lot that you're facing. So yeah, acknowledge that.

Yeah. And I think one of the nice words that I heard you use that I, I think we don't do enough of is the word an invitation. This is the invitation to you to take all that stuff that you're not going to be able to go back to anymore because of the changes that are going on in your body. And it's an invitation to reconsider and rethink how you want to go and behave moving forward. And I, yeah, and I think not enough of us— I certainly have spoken about in the past the fact that my 50s were really a time of grieving over letting go and just letting go of some of the behaviors and the thoughts and the libido and all the stuff that characterized my 40s and just saying, okay, we're gonna have to rethink this whole thing 'cause my body isn't doing the same stuff it was doing before. My mind is certainly not doing the same stuff it was doing before. And how can I, rethink that and, and invite myself to be able to think about all of this in a different way. And I think often we just, we don't do that. We just say, God, this sucks. And I, and I don't know what to do now. I know a lot of people that just go, this sucks, I don't know what to do, I'm not feeling sexy anymore. And obviously some of those people whose backgrounds may have been informed by belief systems that now no longer require them to have any sexual feelings whatsoever, maybe actually relieved by that. You know what I mean? They may actually just say, do you know what all this was about ever? Was about his pleasure, about procreating, about making babies and all that kind of stuff. I don't need to do that anymore. And I can— and many of the choices that I see women make are around not having sex.

Yeah, and that— it makes me really sad. And it's like also knowing that asexuality is a legit thing, that for some women they could, they could be asexual. And it's also like, this is why I often talk about the topic of the concept of duty sex, that for so many women their marriage was characterized by duty sex.

Yeah.

And, you know, even not, not just menopausal women younger women as well. This idea that because I'm married or I'm in a relationship, I therefore owe him sex. And it's so ingrained. And of course, you're not going to want to have duty sex anymore. And then when your body no longer allows you to, thank God for that. Don't have to do that anymore. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, Dr. Kelly Casperson talks about coercion, the— how little is spoken about the coercion that goes on, um, within relationships to have sex. And, and, and as you said, it's not, it's not just from religious backgrounds, it's from people who have mismatched libidos and who think that, you know, I better do this from time to time just to be able to, you know, keep this all going, right?

It's also like, I, I can't remember what I read, I saw it somewhere where because I consume a lot of social media, and unfortunately now we have a rise of self-proclaimed experts and TikTok pastors sharing really, really misogynistic shit under the guise of relationship advice and relationship expertise, whatever. But like, how there are some, you know, there's always this thing about what, what is the right amount of sex to be having to be having a healthy relationship for a healthy marriage. And, you know, some, some people say it should be 2 to 3 times a week, or at least once a week. And I'm saying, but we're missing out a huge part of that, which is, is it wanted sex? Is it enjoyable sex? Or if I think about the women that I work with, is it another stick to beat yourself over the head with that I should be having the requisite number of sex to keep my husband happy so he doesn't get pissy with me? So we're having a healthy relationship but it's not wanted, it's not enjoyable. You're kind of gritting your teeth and making yourself get through it, and at the end saying, right, tick, that's done. That is not going to last in terms of— that's going to build up a lot of resentment. And it— I say there's a lot of undoing to do, but it's like understanding that even within the medical system or the therapeutic system, I've had clients say that they had a therapist saying you really should be having sex more, otherwise he'll leave you. And I'm thinking, oh my God, where do we start from here?

Okay.

And it's, it's like, it's— there's so much undoing in terms of, can we take the number of sex, like the, the how much time, how much sex you should be having, can we throw that out and strip it back to, are you actually enjoying it in the first place? Because sometimes just asking that question, are you enjoying it, Do you look forward to it? And if the answer is no, then of course you don't want to bloody have it.

Yeah, yeah.

So what would make it enjoyable for you? Can I have this moment of— can I come back to my body as to what actually feels good for me? And, you know, I, I talk about how sex can always be a lot— I say a lot, it's a highly potent topic anyway. Also remember that women's bodies you know, especially vulvas and vaginas. We don't tend to see vulvas and vaginas in the wild. It makes a lot of sense to me that when you have this kind of clusterfuck of your body has completely changed, you're no longer seen as desirable within the wider world, your breasts are probably changing, you might have vaginal atrophy, so there's dryness and there's pain, maybe you're not used to being nude anyway. It makes sense to me, and maybe pleasure is a concept that's just like What is that? What's pleasure? And even stripping it back to what even do I want, not just in bed, but what do I want in life? Do I know what my wants and my needs and my boundaries are? And that can be a lot to think about, realizing that maybe you've lived a lot of your life not allowing yourself to have wants and needs, because what the fuck are those? I shouldn't have wants and needs. I'm Superwoman. I take care of everybody, and I'm the martyr, and I take care of everybody before myself. It's not as sexy as like a 5-step plan to get your sex drive back, necessarily. Yeah.

And also what I'm hearing is that I suspect when, when you're dealing with somebody who is an older person, has been, has gradually realize that they haven't really been having sex on their own terms. They haven't really been thinking about their own pleasure. They're, they're kind of— it can be quite traumatizing, I imagine, to suddenly come to that sort of realization that you've lived your life pleasing others but not really looking after yourself. And yeah, that can be really hard.

It's really hard and it's something I've seen, like, again, because I love that so many people are talking about menopause and making it mainstream. About fucking time. And it's knowing that it can be a complete— there's a word and a phrase that's coming up and it's not coming out, but it's like not just a big life change, but like a complete life 360. Where you realize that you need to evaluate everything in your life. And that's a good thing. That's that, you know, when they talk about the concept of midlife crisis in a very bad term, actually that's a good thing. You know, if you're spiritually minded, it could be a spiritual journey. Like, actually, this is awful, but maybe it's an invitation to completely restock and reevaluate my life. Yeah.

And realize, oh God, Yeah, I mean, look, I do know people that have come to that turning point in their lives, and sometimes it's with a partner, and sometimes it's a result of, you know, some chronic health challenge that they may have suddenly discovered that they have that means that's going to impact on their sex life. That often happens with men, you know.

Yeah.

Or, or having to rethink what intimacy looks like, because as you say, the menopause can bring up loads of things. And, you know, as you acknowledge, the medical profession is massively undertrained when it comes to being talked to, talking about intimate issues with older adults. They just don't really know how the hell to do it. And, um, but I think I, I went to a, a, an event a few days ago earlier this week that was incredibly inspirational with all women working in the National Health Service at a very senior level around menopause, mainly around menopause and around that. They were talking about you know, just being one of the few women in a leadership role within a big organization like the NHS and how difficult it is for them to get through to the medical establishment that menopause is an issue that needs to be more— that needs to be properly funded, needs to be properly researched, needs a lot of money spent on it. So, you know, there's a whole system that sits behind all of this that needs supporting people of a certain age that are— that, that do want to be sexual. Um, and, and as you said, the double whammy is that if you've got shame that's attached to all the other shit that goes on, then it makes it even harder.

It's like, you know, but you're gonna get me going on my soapbox, which I'm not going to step on today about in general, you know, because understanding that the medical profession is wildly underprepared and it's very institutionalized to do with anything with women's bodies or female bodies, anything that affects women or people assigned female at birth, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, it's wildly underfunded and also just institutionally seen as 'Just deal with it.' 'Periods are supposed to hurt.' 'Menopause, you get a couple of hot flushes.' You know, 'Just do— you're making a fuss.' Like, I was interviewing a colleague, Dr. Angela Wright, who's a menopause specialist, and we were talking about just how institutionalized and misogynistic these attitudes are. Like, she was saying that when— even when vaginal estrogen is prescribed, it's only really prescribed for intravaginal use. Even if the clitoris also atrophies. And we want the clitoris, we need the clitoris, preserve the clitoris. So really, you should be putting your vaginal estrogen also on your clit to help preserve the tissue there. And it's, you know, it gets me so mad that this has been going on for so long. And, and another thing that I think is important is, you know, outside of a therapy or coaching session, just the importance of community and people speaking and people, you know, social media, podcasts. It's a double-edged sword, but more women and more people are talking about it. It's becoming more vocal, and I think that is a huge antidote to shame, just being able to have somebody vocalize it and talk about it. And I'm quietly optimistic, you know, Well, do you know what?

Going to this conference earlier this week, I came back buzzing because there were women, there were, you know, probably 100 women in the room and the speakers were all incredible, very diverse as well. People from all different cultural backgrounds. It was such an interesting event to hear about, you know, all the different aspects that go into the fact of why this area is so challenging. And, and I brought up the idea of vaginal estrogen, and one of the doctors went, yeah, but you can get that over the counter. And I thought, that's not the point. You guys are the ones who need to be telling everybody about that. And frankly, you don't really—

they don't know it's an option in the first place.

They don't know it's an option. They don't really understand it. They don't know what it does. And trying to go into the more specific— sorry, the more specialized procedures that go on around things like vaginal atrophy and stuff like that, I was like, we don't need that. We don't need that. We just need, we just need some of this other stuff that's very readily available, and we need to know about it, and everybody needs to take it over a certain age. And, and even younger, frankly, they don't even need to be older, they can be younger. And, and so there was, there was— I was quite a little bit pissed off about that, but I was encouraged by, by what was— by the conversations that were going on and the conversations especially— we were all given a mirror and encouraged when we got home to check our vulva.

And I do that with my clients as well.

I'm— yeah, so there's this whole campaign about what is normal. And one of the doctors there is leading this campaign to try and make checking your vulva as normal as checking your breasts, right?

Yep.

And she's like, it should just be something that you do as a woman all the time because the changes that you were discussing go on, you know, all the time. And when you know what your normal looks like, then you know what abnormal looks like. And it could be things around atrophy. It could be all sorts. There's all sorts of issues. Issues that go on in a woman's intimate areas, if you like. So I just thought that was so interesting.

Yeah. And it's also like, it's— if you think about it, unlike— I think of it very practically. If we want to be having more sexual pleasure, well, if you're not used to looking at your vulva, then there's going to be a— there's going to be an area of dissociation there. Like, if we're not— it's like you're— we're all very familiar with our faces. We look at our faces every day in the mirror, plucking chin hairs. That's me, you know, spots. Oh God, there's another wrinkle here. I'm not saying we have to look at our vulva every day with that level of precision, but it makes sense. Of course it's going to be hard to feel pleasure when this is like a no-go zone. And also, I love to use the thing of, don't— shouldn't you be pissed off that you're either— your gynecologist or your, your partner or your husband sees more of your vulva than you do. And you think, damn it.

Yes, absolutely. And, and, and you're absolutely right. And I think, you know, just one of the things that we haven't discussed, but I think is also incredibly important and goes along with the whole check your vulva thing, is, is the fact that along with all of the religious shame is normally super shame around any kind of self-pleasuring. So You know, so, so not only do we not look at our intimate areas, but we also don't mess around with them either.

So no, don't look, don't touch, just, just sit on it, just shut it away.

Exactly. So, you know, that's another thing that just— and I know that from, again, some people that I'm friends with, it's just we've discussed this and they're like, nope, I do not do that. And I think, well, if you do not do that either, You're, you know, you're going to just— how do you discover how to have an orgasm unless you, unless you're lucky enough to just do something with somebody where it happens? But of course, we know that that doesn't often happen in that way.

It's not often, you know, it's tricky when you know them and you're friends with them. You can't sit them down and say, right, okay, we're going to deconstruct everything you think you know. Because, you know, that doesn't work when you're just having coffee with someone. But it's, you know, to me it's just telling to know that. And it also, I think it depends on their level of readiness as well. It's knowing that there is so much cultural shame, uh, that women especially internalize that masturbating, self-pleasuring, it's something dirty and disgusting that only bad wild women do. And sometimes you're not ready to really unpick that and explore why am I thinking and feeling that? Especially if your whole friendship group thinks and feels the same. And what I love is often when I work with women where they are that one person in the friendship group who doesn't think that and is frustrated and wants to have more people to talk about it. And I think everyone's at different levels of readiness. And unfortunately for some women, that shame is so internalized that it gets projected outwards and can result in a lot of judgment and a lot of all sorts of things. And I think of some conservative women who are very anti-sex and anti-this, and I think, God, you've got issues. There is a lot going on for you that you are projecting outwards rather than really examining within yourself. But yeah, it's a lot to unpack.

Finally, are there any tools, practices, or resources you recommend to help people to reconnect with their sexual selves?

There's so many.

Other than you, obviously.

Other than me? Well, I do, I, I do have a free, uh, meditation that I give out. It puts you onto my mailing list, and it's a meditation to connect to your vulva. And it's one, one thing I love about it is it's very, very gentle. And I think that when we are starting to reconnect to our sexuality, sometimes we can have the this idea that it has to be like vibrators in the air and nipple tassels and lace. And if that works for you, babe, do it, enjoy it with your whole heart. And for some people that can be a bit threatening. And so doing a really gentle meditation to just connect with your vulva again as a friend and ally can be a really wonderful start. Also, can you give yourself permission to explore and experiment? Reading erotica can be a really great thing if you have like an e-reader or a Kindle, you can download it onto there, read it in a coffee shop. Nobody will know. It's a lot of fun that you're reading smut and nobody knows.

Um, they can start with my book. That's a good way to start, frankly.

Exactly. Books. That's another thing. Books. Read books. Because again, it gives your brain that permission. It starts to give your brain something to latch onto. Like I said earlier, reeducation. What you're doing is starting to reprogram all of the shit and the myths and the lies that you were taught bit by bit. And that little permission slip can sometimes be that thing that gives you that level of safety to say, I'm gonna take myself to Anne Summers, I'm gonna go to that sex shop and I'm gonna buy a lacy bra, or I'm gonna buy a little finger bullet vibrator. It feels really naughty, but I'm gonna try it because I want to try, like, um, Maybe one last thing. Don't feel that you have to be advanced or that there has to be like a 3-step formula. Start wherever, start anywhere, but start somewhere. It doesn't matter where you start. There's no shoulds. There's no, well, I can't do this until I've done this. No, start somewhere. Start anywhere. Get your feet wet, metaphorically or not, and explore and treat it like being in a candy shop. Or an ice cream parlour. Lots of flavours to enjoy.

That's a great way to end, Lucy. It's been so lovely to chat with you, and I will point people in the direction of your free resource and also your website. And yeah, have a lovely, lovely day.

You too. Bye.