Beyond the Birds and the Bees

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or bookmark the page in your browser. Also, please consider submitting your story for inclusion on the site. Thanks for stopping by.He just touched me first. It was light enough to be an accident, his control of movement tenuous most days, [...]

“What is HIV?”
We had passed a city bus with an advertisement for free HIV testing on June 27, which is National HIV Testing day. And I know we have had this conversation before. But it doesn’t hurt to have it again. He turns thirteen on Saturday.
As far as we know, he isn’t too interested in [...]

My mum always made her sex-positivity clear.  There were not many actual discussions just small gestures and disclosures.
I remember when I got my first period and my mum was so exited and congratulated me and all I wanted was a pad and to get on with my day because thanks to her I knew periods [...]

Now that I am an adult, my relationship with my mother has shifted from one of parent and child to more like mentorship. My mother has done all the parenting she can and now my life is up to me. The honest openness that always existed between myself and my mother has now grown even [...]

I am the daughter of a sexual assault survivor. I have been aware of this fact since before I actually understood what sex - much less sexual assault - was.
When I was about six years old, my mother was going through therapy. She’d kept the secret of her assault from her family for nearly two [...]

No matter how prepared (or smart) you think you are to talk to your children about sex, sexuality, love, puberty, etc., they’ll always throw you a curve ball at one time or another.
When my daughter was about eight years old, we were watching the movie “Carrie.” During the shower scene when Carrie gets her first [...]

“How big is your bladder?” my dear son asked me one night a few weeks back.
I told him it all depended on how much urine the bladder was holding. “It’s like a balloon. If there’s a lot of fluid in it, it gets big. If there’s not a lot in there, it’s smaller.”
“So, if it’s [...]

“Mom, What’s fifty-six?”
“Ah, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I think it might be a… a…”
“Mmm-hmm?”
(Whispered) “…a sex thing…”
Long, long pause.
“Honey, do you mean sixty-nine?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s it.”
“Where did you hear about that?”
“Some kids at school…”
This is the kind of conversation one has when one has children on the verge of teenager-hood. The kind [...]

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but the world isn’t such a nice place and it seems to be less nice every day. Discourse in our country is conducted in escalating measures of power-plays, swears, and various stripes of violence. And I’m only just referring to queuing up at Ben and Jerry’s on [...]

I was raised in a weird combination of conservative Christian values and comfortable honesty. I was never ashamed of my body.
Growing up I spent more time naked than I did clothed. My parents never told me to cover up. I didn’t start wearing shirts around the house until my breasts grew in. I developed [...]