Sex, a sensitive subject that most parents would rather avoid. Maybe it feels awkward to talk about such an intimate act, or maybe parents deny that their babies have indeed grown up.
However, parents play an important role: providing their children with the right guidance so that their kids can make good decisions. And guidance on sex and relationships is an important part of the package.
Our generation is evidently more relaxed about sex. Clothes, books, films, songs, dance moves and even laws are a lot less conservative. What in decades past would be considered indecent has been accepted by mainstream society.
But despite this change of attitudes toward sex, the prevailing wisdom that most moms still impart to their daughters is to wait before having sex.
One mom, Sasha Douglas wrote a letter about sex that she addressed to her daughter. She doesn’t make sex sound wrong. In fact, the letter makes sex sound “crazy hot” and passionate, the way it should be. Here is the letter:
To my dear daughter, As you grow, many boys will enter your years. They will speak words of love and passion, of wanting you–all of you. Their sex will be lacking. Believe me, dear girl, I know what crazy hot lovemaking is made of. Until the boy can assure you of the following, it is not true passion. If he can patiently wait for over three years. From pregnant to nursing to pregnant to nursing, with your hormones fierce, and desire often dead. “Please, just let me sleep. I am so tired.” will be your common response. Until he can love you still, choose you still, it is not true passion. If He can call you beautiful when even your feet are swollen from baby belly. Call you sexy when your legs run thick with varicose veins from the same. Call you perfect after your belly hangs loose with skin and your eyes deep with bags. Until he can still call you these things, it is not true passion. You may throw things at him, yell words of hate and shame as you feel the hormones of post baby blues run deep. Until he can love you even deeper, piercing through the pain into your heart, it is not true passion. He will go to work where there are other women, pretty women. Pretty women with no children and varicose free, high heeled legs. I know the way they toss their pretty little hair to and fro. He will come home to you, your hair pulled back into the frizziest of buns, a baby on your hip, spit up down your arm. Until he can come home to you–you with no makeup–and express there is nothing as wonderful as seeing your face, it is not true passion. You are touched by his love, and whisper tonight you will return the favor. Tonight there is a crying baby and a feverish toddler who just joined you in bed. Until he can laugh, fully laugh about this, it is not true passion. Can a man like this exist? Yes, dear girl, and you call him your dad. He has shown me what true love is. The hormones have faded. I am not pregnant. I am not nursing. My own passion has returned. Can I truly say “returned?” I really had no idea what passion was. So intense, so raw, I cannot put it fully into words. I am not in love with just another man. I am in love with the father of my babies. The one who called me beautiful through nights of ugly, called me strong through days of weak, called me valuable through days of uncertainty. The one who waited patiently for me. Who washed the sheets of vomit as I bathed the fever infested child. This is love dear girl. This is passion. It is being one with he who is going to be there for you, till death do you part, regardless. It is something mystical and unexplainable. It is something crazy. It is crazy hot sex. Wait dear girl. Wait for him. There is nothing so beautiful as finding your heart in his, the one who will wait for you–even after marriage. Love, Mom
She nailed what sex in a truly loving relationship is like, why the right guy is worth waiting for – and that he exists!
So for all moms of daughters out there, hope the letter prepares you for that talk with your teenager. She really is growing up so fast.
If you liked the letter, you may want to read more of Sasha’s work over at her blog Mom Life Now.
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