Entries from March 2008 ↓

by Tracee Sioux

“Olivia said she had sex with a boy,” my six-year-old daughter Ainsley reported. Sex has been coming up a lot lately. Her friends are a year older and all have older siblings.

“What do you know about sex?” I asked.

“It’s about boys and girls and taking off their clothes and kissing and stuff,” she said.

“That’s very good. They do take off their clothes and kiss and stuff. But, that’s not all,” I told her. “Sex is how mommies and daddies make babies,” I said as nonchalantly as possible while pouring cereal.

“Oh.”

“You can see Zack has a penis and you have a vagina right? Well grown ups do too. Daddies put the penis in the Mommy’s vagina and some stuff called sperm comes out and Mommies’ have an egg in their uterus. When the sperm and the egg meet in the Mommies’ uterus the woman gets a baby in there. And you already know how Zack came out,” I finished.

“Oh, and there’s kissing and stuff,” she said.

“That’s right, but the kissing and stuff is called ‘making out’ and it’s part of sex but it’s not sex. Children should never have sex. I don’t think Olivia had sex and I don’t think that’s a nice thing for she or you to say. She may not understand what sex is,” I said.

“Sex is sacred and you should talk about it with respect. It’s not really for joking. It’s special and it’s for Mommies and Daddies who love each other,” I went on.

“I want you to remember the safety rules.”

“Nobody can touch my body except for me. Just like hugs and stuff but no touching my bottom or vagina and stuff,” Ainsley recited.

“Right. When anyone talks about sex I want you to come and get me so we can talk about it together,” I added a rule.

Flash forward to afternoon when Olivia has come back to play.

“Girls were you talking about sex last night?” I asked with a neutral blank tone.

“No, but the boys were,” says Olivia.

Ainsley blushes. I think back to the night before when we had families from church over for dinner. We had left the children playing outside alone, the boys were a few years older than the girls. Maybe 10.

“What did the boys say?”

“They said, ‘have you ever had sex?’ And we said ‘no.’ And they said ‘you probably don’t know what it is.’ And we said, ‘it’s like kissing and taking off our clothes and stuff,’” informed Olivia.

“It’s when mommies and daddies,” Ainsley started. . .

“Ains we have to let Olivia’s mom tell her that,” I said.

“Sex is nasty!” Olivia said.

“When mommies and daddies do it it’s not nasty, it’s special. But remember it’s not something children or teenagers do,” I replied.

“Listen girls, when anyone like those boys start talking about sex I want you to come and get me so we can all talk about it together,” I said again.

“Yes Mam. Yes Mam.”

“Those boys are lots older than you and we only kinda know them,” I reminded. “I want you to remember the safety rules. There’s no touching, kissing, holding hands or showing each other your bodies, right?”

“Right. Right.”

Overall, I felt the sex talk was a little anti-climactic considering the anxiety my husband and I had leading up to it. We consulted the experts, read informative books, even spoke to a sex educator/marriage counselor and realized that we didn’t want to be the only two people in her life not talking about it.

We wanted to make sure she understood the facts, rather than the misinformation from friends, television, advertisements, etc. We wanted to apply our morality to it and make sure she understood that it was special, not something to be shared with everyone, nothing to be taken lightly and nothing she should be concerning herself with now. We also wanted to prevent and avoid any psychological shaming damage.

More sex talk:

• Third Base Ain’t What It Used To Be
• Sexy
• Kinda Knows

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****1001Petals is the winner of a copy of A New Earth for subscribing to So Sioux Me during the 5 Minutes for Mom Ultimate Blog Party.

*** Don’t miss my debut discussion of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61) on Lisa.fm Book Club, online radio at 3 PM Pacific next week on March 25.

by Tracee Sioux

In church this Sunday I became more animated than usual. My belief system is not always consistent with typical Christian surface beliefs. I live in the deep South and people in these parts aren’t known for their open minds, so out of self-preservation I generally make surface comments and keep my real feelings to myself.

But the glamorization of suffering came up. We must suffer like Jesus.

Suffering is highly over-rated and glamorized,I said. I frankly, think there is very little value in the suffering itself. I’m intimately familiar with fear and suffering and I have no high regard for it as a moral or religiously good concept. The overcoming of suffering, the joy, the transcendence – this is life.

I have always found the scriptures both difficult to understand and offensive. By offensive I mean, I get upset, frustrated and angry when I read them. Perhaps I’m not alone in this reaction.

Since reading A New Earth, however, I find them coming alive for me. I read a passage that I normally would have found very little meaning in and it’s speaking to me, easy for me to translate and understand. It’s like this book, A New Earth, serves as a sort of translation of The Spirit for me. You know, as in The Spirit or Holy Ghost frequently referred to in The Bible and all other spiritual works.

I believe it’s because before I was always hindered by dogma and ideology and the Church’s collective ego.

I always knew this attitude of “rightness” was offensive and missed the mark of the true intention of scriptural works. But, the “rightness” would produce so much anger in me that it was best not to delve to deeply.

Dogma and ideology and politics and close-mindedness was in my way. I had no real tool to get passed it.

I’ve been to churches that tout domestic violence as acceptable. Churches that claim Jesus came to set everyone free – except the half of the population that’s female – who should let their husbands make all the decision because he has a penis which is synonymous with authority.

I’ve sat through sermons shouting about the whorishness of women who seek abortions – damning them to hell without compassion for their lack of access to healthcare. I’ve sat through homophobic gay-bashing as straight couples refuse to take responsibility for the decline of their own institution caused by being bad at marriage. It’s not us, it’s the gays endangering the family, they claim.

I’ve listened to calls to arms against all other faiths – they are wrong because we know we’re right – Muslims, Mormons, Nation of Islam, Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists – all claim the truth as their own and tout the need to defend their own ideologies and dogma from the others who are so wrong they might be lead by Satan. It’s enough to turn me off to the whole thing.

Thanks to this book I now know it’s the collective ego of these religions that are distorting the sacred and truthful message with their own intolerance.

Even more profound is the knowledge that it is my own ego that knows they are wrong in their judgement of others that produces anger in me. That knowledge somehow makes their egoic righteousness easy to forgive and overlook.

Somehow the knowledge of how my ego reacts to their ego releases me from all the dogma and ideology and now reading Scriptures feels enlightening.

Genesis Ch. 1 – Let there be light.

It truly is an awakening.

If you missed any of the online classes you can download them for free at Oprah.com.

Please share how you’ve awakened since reading the book. I would love to hear your experiences.

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