I didn’t grow up talking about sex. I grew up knowing it was something you kept quiet about, especially if you were a girl.

As a woman raised in a conservative Afrikaans community in South Africa, I was taught how to be modest, polite, and proper. But I was never taught how to be in relationship with my body. Pleasure wasn’t part of the conversation. Sexuality lived in the shadows, either shamed, ignored, or neatly reserved for marriage.

Years later, when I started exploring my sexuality on my own terms, I found myself on a pendulum swing. From silence to overexposure. From holding it all in, to pushing myself to be wild, free, and expressive, because that’s what I thought empowerment looked like.

It was confusing. I’d see women who were openly sexual and feel both admiration and resistance. Was I inspired? Or uncomfortable? Was I liberated? Or still performing? I didn’t know yet.

This is the story of untangling that confusion, of finding the space between repression and hyper-sexuality, and learning that true empowerment isn’t about how you look or how much you share. It’s about how connected you are to yourself.

 

Breaking Free: From Sexual Repression to Sexual Overindulgence

I grew up in an Afrikaans community where silence wasn’t just a norm, it was a form of control. Especially for girls. The rules were absorbed early: be polite, be modest, don’t talk about sex, and above all, don’t want anything. Especially not attention. Especially not desire.

It wasn’t explained outright. It didn’t need to be. It lived in the subtext of everything, in how women were spoken about, in how girls were dressed for church, in the way my questions were ignored with a look, not a word. Desire, especially female desire, was dangerous. If you expressed it, you risked being labeled. If you suppressed it, you were praised. That was the currency.

I was never taught how to relate to my body. I was taught how to manage it, discipline it, deny it. My body became a source of tension.

I still remember the story of a 15-year-old girl in our community. She was pregnant. Abused by her uncle. Her parents kicked her out, as if her pregnancy made her the threat, not him. No one protected her. No one called it abuse. The story dissolved quietly, absorbed into the community’s collective amnesia, while the warning remained loud, if anything like that happens to you, you’re on your own.

So I became good at disconnecting. I wore modesty like armor. I never learned to say no, but I also never learned how to feel a real yes. I didn’t know the difference between safety and silence. And that confusion stayed buried until I finally broke away.

Escaping into Sexual Exploration

Everything I had been warned about became the thing I chased. Sex, desire, visibility, being wanted. I told myself it was healing. That this was my reclamation. That this was power. And for a moment, it did feel like that.

But underneath the freedom was a different kind of disconnection, one I had never expected. I was saying yes to everything except myself. I needed to discover my own sexual desires and pleasures, to explore what truly brought me joy and fulfillment.

I mistook being desired for being in control. I let attention fill the gaps where intimacy should’ve been. I called it empowerment, but it was something closer to exhaustion. That’s what no one talks about when you come from sexual repression. The first version of “freedom” you find is often just the opposite extreme. You think you’re liberated, but you’re still disconnected.

It took me a long time to understand that being sexually active didn’t mean I was sexually empowered. That saying yes wasn’t the same as feeling aligned. That I could be touched without feeling connected, and that I could perform pleasure without ever experiencing it.

 

The Struggle With Other Women’s Sexuality

I used to study women. Not in a casual or admiring way, but in a measuring, anxious, almost obsessive way. Every woman who owned her sexuality felt like a mirror held up to everything I hadn’t figured out in myself.

I’d watch a woman post a lingerie photo on Instagram, and my reaction would split. One part of me felt awe, like, “Yes. Take up space. Be seen.” Another part of me wanted to shut my phone off and mutter something judgmental, like “Why does everything have to be so performative?”

At the same time, I judged women who stayed hidden. Women who still spoke about “saving themselves,” or who blushed when the word “orgasm” came up. I felt frustrated by them.

But the truth was, I didn’t know how to hold either end. The hypersexual woman felt like too much, and the modest woman felt like a threat to the version of myself I was trying to build. Because neither one felt safe to me.

The more I explored my own sexuality, the more I realized I had no clear internal compass. I was still navigating my sexual identity through comparison. I was trying on other women’s expressions like costumes, seeing what fit, and discarding what didn’t, without ever stopping to ask, Do I even like this?

The Breaking Point: My Pregnant Realization

I remember the moment that I broke that loop.

I was seven months pregnant. My body was changing every day. I was starting to feel this primal shift inside me, something tender and alert. I was slower, more intentional. My energy felt protective, sacred. Not closed off, but selective.

That’s when an old friend came to visit. She was someone I had long admired for her boldness, she was polyamorous, expressive, and had no hesitation. At the time, she was sharing her sexual unfolding on Onlyfans with a couple of hundred people, and she also live streamed herself on Twitch regularly, where she gained most of her male following. I had spent years convincing myself that this was what freedom looked like.

Knowing her caused me to wrestle constantly with the question of value, my own value, as a woman. I did everything I was taught would lead to success: worked hard, kept my head down, played by the rules. But I was always just surviving, especially financially.

Meanwhile, my friend was thriving, earning more in a month on Twitch and OnlyFans than I could in a year. Her content was provocative, bold, hyper-visible. And I couldn’t help but think: How is this fair? I suppressed myself to be accepted and loved, and she revealed herself and was rewarded.

We had a small housewarming gathering at my home, just a few friends, a fire, some music. At one point, she got up, took off all her clothes, and jumped into the pool. No warning. Her poly partners watched her like worshippers, and then also stripped naked and joined her. Everyone else looked mildly stunned. My partner was polite but clearly uncomfortable.

And there I stood, seven months pregnant, and something cracked.

This wasn’t empowerment. This wasn’t liberation. This was something else entirely. This was an intrusion masked as confidence. This was boundarylessness dressed up as self-expression. This was someone using the language of freedom to justify her lack of regard for other people’s space.

I realized I had spent years admiring a kind of freedom that had no roots. That kind of sexuality, loud, constant, unfiltered, wasn’t grounded. It didn’t know when to pause. It didn’t know when to ask, “Is this the right time? Is this the right space?”

In that moment, I didn’t feel threatened by her nudity. I felt embarrassed for all the times I had mistaken a lack of self-regulation for empowerment. I thought, if your sexuality requires that others make space for it without question, is it really yours? Or is it still proving something?

 

Embracing Sexuality Means Coming Back Into the Body

There’s a cultural illusion that continues to confuse and exhaust women, that embracing your sexuality is either about hiding it to be “respectable” or putting it on display to be “liberated.” The performance changes depending on the environment, but the pressure remains the same, prove your worth through how you manage your sexual visibility.

For many women, this becomes a silent battle. But neither path leads to real connection. That’s because embracing your sexuality has nothing to do with how much you show, say, or do. It’s not a public display.
It’s an internal relationship.

To embrace your sexuality is to build fluency with your own body. To actually feel what arousal, tension, numbness, or resistance are telling you, and to respond accordingly. It’s about knowing the difference between what you want and what you’ve been taught to tolerate. Between being desired and feeling safe.

It’s about being able to sense:

• “I’m open” vs. “I’m overriding myself.”

• “I want this” vs. “I think I should want this.”

• “This feels nourishing” vs. “This feels like self-abandonment.”

And most importantly, it’s about honoring what you find, even when it challenges what you thought sexual empowerment was supposed to look like.

The women who are truly empowered sexually often aren’t the loudest in the room. They’re the ones who feel at ease in their body, know their limits, and have the tools to expand pleasure without sacrificing themselves to get there.

Self-Acceptance Is the Foundation

Without self-acceptance, it doesn’t matter how many techniques you learn, how many orgasms you chase, or how open-minded you try to be, because if your body still feels wrong, too much, not enough, or broken… pleasure won’t land.

Most women carry years of silent conditioning that tells them their body is a problem to be solved. Too loud, too emotional, too slow, too soft, too needy, too dry, too wet, too complicated.

So they approach sexuality the way they’ve learned to approach everything else, get it right, keep up, be good at it.

But sexuality is something you build a relationship with. And that relationship is shaped by how you treat yourself when no one’s watching.

Pleasure requires presence. And presence requires safety. If your body doesn’t feel accepted, it won’t feel safe. If it doesn’t feel safe, it won’t open, no matter how skilled or willing you are.

This is why so many women struggle with arousal, sensation, and intimacy, even when they “want” sex. Because their body doesn’t trust the environment.

 

Finding Balance: The Healthy Way to Embrace Sexuality

There was a point where I realized I didn’t want to be hypersexual. I didn’t want to be sexually repressed. I didn’t want to be a spectacle or a mystery. I just wanted to be myself. Whatever that looked like on any given day.

Sexuality isn’t a fixed identity or a performance to get right. It’s a relationship, with your body, with your nervous system, with your past, with your needs. And like all relationships, it changes.

Understanding That Sexuality Is Fluid and Personal

What feels right at 22 might feel hollow at 30. What once felt edgy and empowering might, later on, feel like self-abandonment. Sexuality isn’t linear. There is no arrival point. There are seasons. There are pauses. There are waves of curiosity, and long periods of stillness. There are times when your body wants everything, and times when it wants to be left alone.

I had to let go of the idea that sexual empowerment looked a certain way, that it had to be loud, public, or tied to confidence and boldness. Sometimes real empowerment is in the no.

 

Embracing Diversity in Sexual Expression Without Pressure

We live in a culture that likes to tell women we’re free, but then packages that “freedom” into new molds. Be sexually open, but not too open. Be wild, but polished. Be confident, but not threatening.

The problem is, most of us go from one set of rules to another. From hiding our bodies to showing them off before we’ve even asked ourselves if that’s what we want.

The deeper I went into myself, the more I stopped caring what category I fit into. I didn’t need to be modest or explicit. I needed to feel authentic. That became my metric

When I dropped the labels and the pressure to identify as a “type” of woman, I finally found space to explore what my sexuality actually was.

Mental Health and Sexuality Are Inseparable

There’s no version of sexual empowerment that exists apart from a woman’s mental and emotional state. The nervous system and the erotic body are not separate. The mind, body, and sexual experience are constantly informing one another.

When a woman is stressed, her body doesn’t shift into arousal, it shifts into survival. The nervous system becomes guarded, the breath becomes shallow, blood flow leaves the pelvis, and the body’s ability to access pleasure dramatically decreases. It’s the body protecting itself in the absence of internal safety.

An anxious mind makes it difficult to settle into sensation. Even if the desire for sex is there, the experience itself can feel rushed, disconnected, or out of sync. When trust in self is fragile, a woman may override her inner signals. She might say yes when something feels off. She might go along with things to avoid discomfort, or minimize her own needs to maintain closeness.

Many women experience what looks like low libido, numbness, or difficulty with orgasm, but the root is how safe the body feels. It’s how much space she has internally. It’s whether she knows how to be present without abandoning herself under pressure. Pleasure doesn’t disappear for no reason. It gets buried under years of unmet emotional needs, silent overgiving, and nervous systems that haven’t had space to downshift in decades.

Practicing Sexuality That Feels Empowering, Not Performative

Empowered sexuality is about doing what’s true. It feels like choice, not obligation, not habit, not pressure. It feels like being present enough to notice when your body says yes, and safe enough to honor when it says no.

Healthy sexuality is built through trust. Trust in your ability to listen. Trust in your body’s pacing. Trust in your right to take up space or pull back. It’s not about proving that you’re open. It’s about knowing you’re connected. You start recognizing that sexuality isn’t something you owe, it’s something you inhabit.

 

Viva La Vagina 2.0

Viva La Vagina 2.0 is an online membership designed to help women become more honest in how you relate to your body, your boundaries, and your pleasure.

Inside, you’ll explore over a dozen guided modules that walk you through the real work of embodied sexual connection:

• You’ll learn how to feel safe in your body again after years of sexual shutdown, overextension, or silence.

• You’ll learn how to distinguish between real pleasure and conditioned performance, so you can stop guessing, overriding, or pushing yourself through what doesn’t feel right.

• You’ll use tools like breathwork, breast massage, pelvic care, crystal wands, and yoni eggs to support deeper sensitivity, arousal, and body-based trust.

• You’ll re-pattern your sexual responses, so sex stops feeling like something to get through. and starts becoming something you genuinely want to return to.
  Join Viva La Vagina 2.0

 

Conclusion

Embracing sexuality is a process of learning how to listen to your body without fear, without comparison, and without the need to prove anything.

It’s moving from performing intimacy to inhabiting it, from overriding yourself to trusting what your body is saying, and from chasing what looks empowered to discovering what actually feels honest.

What I’ve learned, and what I hope this piece makes clear, is that sexual empowerment doesn’t live at either end of the spectrum. It doesn’t live in repression, and it doesn’t live in hyper-visibility. It lives in your relationship with yourself. In the quiet, unglamorous, powerful work of returning to your own cues, boundaries, and needs.

That return is rarely linear. It’s not always easy. But it is always worth it.

Because when a woman becomes anchored in her own body, her sexuality becomes something she owns. On her terms, in her rhythm, with full permission to shift, slow down, deepen, or begin again.

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