Dear Mom,

As promised, I’m writing to you today to talk about sex. More specifically, I want to talk about the flaws in the sex education I, and most of my generation, received. The sex education that was heavy on the biology and very minimal on the psychology. The education that lifted up physical protection and left out emotional connection. 

As I start to peel back the layers of my personal issues it all seems to start at a very specific fork in my road. A moment in time when I was young. I didn’t feel comfortable in my body. I was full of hormones. I was learning mostly from movies. And I wasn’t equipped to go out into the world as a sexual being. I was an adolescent who fully understood the power of a condom. Who knew the dangers of STDs and teen pregnancies. But I was also a child with little understanding of the levels that girls and women in our society have always been taken advantage of. I wasn’t ready to be released into a world of boys and men who were hungry and didn’t care about my safety unless it directly reflected their own. In my experience, the majority of the male species only cared about protection when it was against STDs. Pregnancies were less concerning as it didn’t matter to them the same way. It wasn’t of their bodies. And protection of the heart? Of the brain? That was nonexistence.

You were never shy with me when it came to talking about the human body and reproduction. These were topics that were very much on the table when I was growing up. So much so, that I was horrifyingly humiliated more than twice in my youth by your attempts to normalize talking about bodies, in particular my pubescent one. 

Now, today’s letter isn’t about the mother/daughter tea when you announced my having started menstruating to a crowd of my fellow middle school peers. This letter isn’t about the What’s Happening to My Body book you forced me to look at too many times. This is definitely not the time to discuss the disaster that was your way of teaching me how to use a tampon. 

No. I’m not going to discuss these topics today. I’m pretty sure I know exactly what those moments did to me and to our relationship. 

Instead, I want to discuss the lack of tools I had when I started my journey as a hormonal adolescent. And it all starts with our brief sex talk. I can’t tell you when it was. I don’t remember. I can’t tell you if I had already had sex by that point. I really don’t know. I do remember standing in the dining room with you. It was daytime. And from my memory it was entirely unprompted. You said to me that the most important thing when having sexual relations was to be protected. To be safe. To use a condom.

And I believe you chose to speak of it that way, because you knew deep down that sex was inevitable. And if I was going to experiment anyway, I was going to do it safely.

Unfortunately, for me, that left a lot of space for interpretation.

Growing up in the 90’s was a strange time for many reasons. As I take a deeper look at my childhood and my adolescence, I feel like the entire decade acted as a confused teenager. Like it wasn’t quite sure where it was headed. Coming off the 80’s carried weight. And when it came to sex education, it very much reflected the darkness that preceded it. It was as if the childhood trauma of the 90s was the 80s. And we were going along for the ride.

I have minimal memories of sexual education in school. I do remember the year we learned about flowers and seeds and pollination. I know later there were discussions, and images, of STDs. I’m sure there was a lot more information given to us, but the most impactful lessons were those surrounding the use of condoms. Physical protection against pregnancies and diseases. Protection above all else. Oh, and all those PSA’s. I’ve actually been researching the PSA’s from back then and it seems like the majority fall into two categories. One message is all about using protection because if you don’t, you’re at risk of getting pregnant or getting AIDs. The other message is abstinence. And that was in a sense our education. Our two subjects. Have protected sex or don’t have any sex at all. And it might sound like those are the only two options when it comes to teen sex. Be protected or don’t do it. But guess what? That’s not the reality. At least it wasn’t for me.

There is a lot of gray area between having protected sex and abstaining. There are awkward conversations between people who don’t really know how to advocate for themselves yet. There are hormonal urges that negate rational thought. There are real, significant predators who look for damaged prey. There are the more subtle, convincing types who act as if you are the most important person in the room until they get what they want out of you. And that’s just the surface. Then there are the young girls with severe body image issues. The girls with practically nonexistent self-esteem. There are the girls who hate themselves. Who feel numb. Who are unhappy. The ones who are drugged. The ones who are dunk. The ones who are just tipsy enough.

The girls who say yes often. The ones who seek it out. Who claim to want it. Who initiate. And the boys who don’t question it. The ones that take it at face value. Who say, it doesn’t matter how drunk she is, she already said yes.

For years I went into my own sexual experiences thinking we were all just having fun. Everyone was there for experimentation. No one was being taken advantage of. I had said yes. I had given consent. But on the flip side, I don’t think that’s what all the guys were thinking. They were thinking, she’s easy. All I have to do is get her a little bit tipsy or party with her for a little bit and she’ll do anything. And even if she doesn’t remember it in the morning. It doesn’t really matter because she said yes at one point and therefore, I am ok.

And listen, I’m not saying that everything was dark in my youth. That every boy I knew took advantage of me. There were more than enough questionable experiences for sure. But there were also genuine moments. Friendships. Sometimes I actually had feelings for my partner. Sometimes I even thought I was in love.

There were also plenty of times when I very much knew what I was doing was wrong. When I knew that I’d get free alcohol or access to drugs in exchange for minutes in the bedroom. It didn’t seem to matter at the time. But looking back? I might have known what I was doing in the moment, but I don’t think I understood the damage it was causing to my psyche. And it would be so many years before I could see that. Whole relationships before I could see the damage that was done. By the end of my high school years, I was already so fragile in so many ways that my decision-making ability in college was quite juvenile. I wasn’t able to stand up for myself. To advocate. To speak my mind. I let people walk all over me. Because again, these were not the topics discussed when it came to sex. None of this mattered in the long run. All that mattered was that I wasn’t coming home to you with an STD or pregnant. So somehow, I was doing it right.

It’s funny, when I think more about my sexual education, what had the most impact were the television shows and movies I was watching. That’s where I was getting most of my information about sex. And as I look at the movies I watched back then. There are two that stand out the most. American Pie and Cruel Intentions. They both came out in 1999. They both have a storyline that is all about having sex. One is a race to lose virginities in high school. The other is a race to take a virginity in high school. And let’s just say those movies were extremely influential for me. Especially that year.

Movies like American Pie, and later shows like Dawson’s Creek which don’t forget was a show we watched together, made having sex as a teenager something to aspire to. It was the pinnacle of the high school experience. And I was going to achieve the highest honors. That was something I had the power to do.

I get the feeling that you wanted me to be sexually expressive. To be secure in my female body and wanted me to feel comfortable in my skin and more importantly not ashamed. That my body was beautiful and powerful. But then I was inundated with mixed messages. I had you telling me how much you wished your body was like mine. Which in reality was you missing your ‘old’ body before having kids. I had your body, which was in a sense my future body. And you hated yours. I then had Seventeen and YM magazines. I had all the movies and shows with beautiful actresses playing sexy teens. And then I watched my peers who were smaller and prettier and more popular. And it didn’t take long for me to figure out where my real power came from. That I could use my physical body to entice boys. It didn’t matter how my body looked when the lights were off.

What I didn’t understand at that time was the very real fact that they were the ones with the control. That my body was really being used by them. 

Now, I’m going to confess something to you. After all the reminders about the importance of condoms. My first time? We didn’t use one. Can you guess why? Because he said we didn’t need to. And he was older and more experienced than me. And I didn’t know how to fight for it. I didn’t know how to say never mind. I didn’t know how to say no after already saying yes. Because these were not the conversations I was having back then. No one was telling me about the complications of speaking to a partner. No one was talking to me about how to stand up for myself. How to speak my mind and also change my mind. 

These are the conversations that I want to be having with my own kids when it’s time. And sadly, I feel ill-equipped. How do I tell my daughter that she has the power over her body and her mind. How do I convince her that she has the power of her decision making? How do I teach my son to ask the right questions? And to also protect himself? And how do I ask these sorts of questions when I made all the mistakes? How do I have the authority to teach the next generation about making good choices and about self-care and self-love?

From the research I’ve done, I feel lucky that I’m raising my kids in a city that teaches a more comprehensive sexual education. It seems that today, at least in California, kids will have many more tools than I ever did. But that doesn’t mean I can relax. It doesn’t mean they will magically be ok. These are topics that I truly believe need to be learned at home as well. Kids and teens need examples. They need foundation. They need communication. And they need adults to listen to them. These are all things I felt were lacking in my upbringing. So, when it came time for me to experiment. And when it came time for me to take chances and risks with my body. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. When I lost my virginity unprotected, I spent weeks worrying. I laid in bed at night going through the list of adults in my life I could turn to if I got pregnant. And I’m really sorry, Mom. It doesn’t make me feel good to admit this. But you were not on that list for me. I didn’t feel that I could turn to you. And it got a lot darker after that first time. And I allowed it. I allowed myself to fall deeper while knowing perfectly well that I was at risk in many ways. But none of that mattered to me. It was simply the world I lived in. And I had to take full responsibility for it. I was alone.

I don’t want my kids to ever feel this way. I don’t want them to go through their adolescence and young adult years feeling alone and unsupported. I want to teach them how to survive and to thrive and to protect themselves in all aspects. And it’s starting to occur to me that maybe I am the answer for them. Maybe after all my years of mistakes and regrets and risks and bad choices I’ve actually become the expert. I do actually have some authority here. I know what the signs looks like and how to grow from even the worst heartbreaks. And it brings me a great amount of comfort knowing that it won’t all be for nothing. That something positive will come out of my darkness. And I’m sorry that we couldn’t have these moments together. I’m sorry you couldn’t watch me come out the other side. But know, I am ok now. I am stronger now. I do love myself. And I’m not perfect. I’m not fully put together. And that’s not so bad. 

I love you, Mom.

Love, Rachel