Let Me Introduce You To Your Vagina

Dispatch #1 in the “Most Important Lessons” series

Eve,

As a little little girl, you used to love to lick me.

You’d snuggle in oh so close, letting your lips linger on my arm or my neck, first giving me little kisses. Two, or three, or ten, I could tolerate, even though you were more comfortable with this kind of intimacy than I was. If I let you be, your kisses would turn to fleshy licks, and I’d giggle and make you stop.

You came into the world so very sensual, and utterly shameless.

You came into the world so very sensual, and utterly shameless. You just loved to lick things. And touch them. Yourself most of all.

If you were resting, your fingers were in your vagina.

I’m sure that reading this now, the thought of that feels embarrassing, and that’s exactly why I’m writing you this letter, because what you were doing was totally normal and totally healthy. Before you were aware that you were you and I was me and the rest of the world was the rest of the world, you knew that you had a honeypot between your legs, sweet and lucious; that dipping your fingers in felt so very good.

Back then, stroking the skin around your vagina, letting your fingers explore the different temperatures and textures inside and out, was not sexual, it was embodied and it was exploratory. You were a little girl, 3, 4, 5, and you were feeling your way through the world.

Now, your body has blossomed.

Very soon, you will have the shape of those most prized women who grace glossy magazines and gargantuan billboards, those who at once drip youth and sex, whose eyes say “I am here so that you might devour me.”

Those will be harder letters for me to write; the ones that must teach you how to carry the weight of all of that without burying your power.

This first dispatch is far more fun. My goal in it is to give you to you.

Touching yourself is called “masturbation.” It’s normal and healthy. There is no right or wrong way to do it. There is a time and a place for it. The time, for now, is when you’re alone and calm, or ready to calm down. The place is a place that you can be naked and feel totally comfortable.

Masturbation in 10 Steps

1. Your vagina is yours alone. It’s perfect. It’s the gateway to life. Though TV commercials will tell you otherwise (good thing you don't watch those…), its scent alone can drive a lover mad. It is the most controversial and most legislated part of you. That’s why this knowledge is so important. Because those people are wrong. Your vagina is yours and yours alone.
2. What is a clitoris? At its heart, there is a golden pearl, firm to the touch, whose sole purpose is to give you pleasure. Called your clitoris, it contains 15,000 nerve endings, a direct link to your pleasure system, high speed access to the deepest yum you could imagine.Though one day, you might invite others to stroke that pearl, it belongs to you alone. The more you can learn its ways, the more pleasure you will know over the course of your life.
3. Hygiene: When you reach your fingers into your vagina, know that you are reaching inside of you, just like putting your fingers in your mouth. So, be sure that they are clean and wet, because the inside of you is wet. Your vagina has a masterful ability to clean and care for itself. Don’t disturb that by adding unwelcome bacteria to the mix.
4. Touch: When you touch yourself, feel it both in your fingertips and your vagina. Notice the different sensation of these two areas ripe with nerve endings, one whose skin is thick and the other whose skin is delicately thin.
5. Variety: Feel that each area of your vagina receives a different kind of sensation, can know a different kind of pleasure. Touch everywhere. Learn the ways that are right for you.
6. Erogenous Zones: Feel that other areas of your body will also change size and shape as you stroke yourself. The more places you touch, the more pleasure you’ll feel. Consider each brush of your hand to be an invitation to another part of you, to join in the pleasure of the moment.
7. Penetration: Feel that it feels good both to tickle yourself from the outside and to put things inside. Explore this. Be careful and hygienic. Do not be ashamed.
8. Mounting Pleasure: Notice that when you let your fingers dance on your clitoris, it changes size and shape, becoming “engorged” or filled up with blood. The more blood that rushes in, the more you can feel. Feel your pleasure mount.
9. Go Slow: Do not rush. Even when you’ve experienced the big finish, do not rush. Let each time you’ve closed your door and removed your clothes become a gift you’re giving yourself. Go slow. It will be different each and every time if you let it.
10. Climax: Once you learn your body, what you like more and less, where to tickle and where to grab, you will learn that if you increase your speed, sliding your finger(s) back and forth on that little pearl, faster and faster, it will eventually take over. Your eyes will become weak. You will forget that it is your hands touching your vagina. You’ll melt fully into the moment, and then, the most incredible explosion you can imagine will ripple through you. It is called an orgasm, and your body was made to feel it. It happens because your clitoris is a direct access point into your nervous system, and when it does, it causes your body to release a slew of chemicals that make you feel calm, happy and balanced. When you bring yourself to orgasm, you are taking care of your own wellbeing.

You’ll melt fully into the moment, and then, the most incredible explosion you can imagine will ripple through you. It is called an orgasm, and your body was made to feel it.

These lessons are the most important ones that I can teach you, because they are the key to your own pleasure. What is more, they have been stolen from women for 5,000 years; in teaching you, I return them to us all.

Know that your body was made to experience this kind of pleasure, that there is nothing at all sinful or dirty about it, even though you may meet people who tell you otherwise.

Know that such pleasure belongs to no one other than you and that you need no one else to experience it. It is yours to give and yours to receive.

I love you, Lilith

Most Important Lessons is a series of 10 letters to my daughter. When she was 1, I helped her learn to walk and talk. Now, these lessons, on healthy sex and pleasure, are the most important I can teach her. In this one, I lay out masturbation in 10 steps.

Dispatch #2