Why I Write About Sex — Even When it Makes Me Squirm in My Seat

I credit Mr. Rogers for the motivation

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”

In January 2019, I read the above quote in Fred Rogers’ book called Life’s Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way. It’s a beautiful idea and one I wished was true.

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.

I love that Mister Rogers believed this, but sadly, my life experience has not been that ‘anything that’s human is mentionable.’ In fact, many of my human experiences are considered too taboo to mention in so-called polite company. Especially the ones related to sex and sexuality.

Being raped is human. Drinking to excess every day for months to ‘forget’ the experience is human. Finding out you’re pregnant is human. Having an abortion is human.

But none of those human experiences were mentionable when I was 20-years-old and experiencing them. At least, not without having to face shaming, blaming, disappointment, and judgement. It was so much easier to stay quiet. Or so it felt at the time.

I don’t doubt that Mister Rogers was correct in the second part of that assertion, that anything that is mentionable is more manageable. But the flipside of that is that everything we feel is not mentionable becomes less manageable. Which was a hard truth I learned several times in my twenties and thirties.

When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.

This sounds so obvious that it must be true. But what happens when we talk about our feelings to a close friend and are shut down with a phrase like, “too much information. I don’t need to know this”?

What about the spouse we confide our feelings to and who tells us to “grow up,” to “get over it,” to “stop being so dramatic”?

What about when we confide in a therapist about our sexual hang-ups, admit that our solution was to encourage our spouse to find sex elsewhere, and are told that in twenty years of counseling they’d never heard such a bad idea?

What about when a hospital psychiatrist, after pumping a teen’s stomach of pills and booze, convinces the youth that she is suicidal even though she knows she’s generally happy and was simply bored and looking for a feeling beyond high school ‘meh’?

Certainly, some of us have the perfect people to share our feelings with. But for those of us who don’t or haven’t had, talking about our feelings can make them more overwhelming, more upsetting, and more scary.

The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.

Unless they can’t. More often than not, having those important talks about my feelings, even with people I trusted, made me feel more alone. The irony is that I knew I was not alone in having the feeling of being alone.

The gift of turning fifty

I’m not sure why this was such a profound milestone, but when I turned 50-years-old it was is if my body and mind gave me the gift of self-compassion. It took about a year to fully unwrap that gift but once I did I released the shame, guilt, embarrassment, and fucks about caring what other people thought of me and my life choices.

While friends bemoaned reaching middle-age, getting old, I felt young for the first time in decades. I embraced the freedom that I decided came with this age — the age of a crone, a wise woman. And I wanted to actively honor her.

So, I started to research and write about the unholy communion of sex, religion, and politics, intending to write a book. My goal is to normalize and point at the causes of all those negative feelings about all the human experiences so many of us feel was can’t talk about, experiences that are overwhelming and upsetting, that make us feel alone.

The book is a work-in-progress that will take years to complete. I decided six months ago that that’s too long — that I want to work to make Mister Rogers’ vision a reality now.

That’s why I started to share the stories I’ve never spoken of or written about before. I made a conscious decision to believe that “anything human is mentionable” because now that my experiences are manageable for me, it feels like it’s my responsibility to help make others’ human experiences more manageable, too.

I share, perhaps over-share sometimes, because the more people who write about experiences and feelings that have been considered unmentionable, the more quickly they will become mainstream and natural to talk about without shame or fear of judgement.

I write about sex, even when it makes me squirm in my seat when I think about people I know reading my stories, because I want to prove Mister Rogers right.

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”

Thanks for reading. Here’s an action you can take to help Mr. Rogers’ cause:

And the scariest story I’ve published: