“Unlearning what the world told me about my body”
Reclaiming Pleasure: Overcoming Shame and Cultural Conditioning Around Sexuality
Pleasure is a birthright—yet for so many of us, it’s wrapped in layers of guilt, secrecy, and hesitation. From whispered warnings in childhood to unspoken rules in adulthood, we are taught to shrink, suppress, and censor our desires. The body becomes a battleground, intimacy a performance, and joy something to be rationed or earned.
But what if pleasure was not something you had to justify?
What if it was simply yours to claim?
Imagine stepping into a world where your body is not an object of judgement, but a vessel of joy. Where intimacy is not a transaction or test, but a playground. Where pleasure is not a privilege for the few, but a language—one that you were always meant to speak fluently.
Across cultures, generations, and identities, shame has been used as a quiet tool of control. Often invisible, it seeps into our thoughts, our relationships, and our ability to feel at home in ourselves. It teaches us to disconnect from our bodies, to fear our own longings, and to view sensuality through a lens of suspicion or sin.
But that narrative is not the only one. And it is certainly not the truth of who we are.
Reclaiming pleasure is an act of rebellion, yes—but more importantly, it is an act of radical self-love. It is the conscious decision to unlearn shame, to dismantle inherited stories that no longer serve us, and to give ourselves permission to feel, explore, and enjoy—without apology.
This is a journey of coming home. To your body. To your voice. To your joy.
Welcome.
How We Were Taught to Feel Wrong
Shame rarely bursts in; it arrives in tiptoes, through sideways glances and hushed conversations and through the things that are left unsaid. I don’t know about you, but the story of my sexuality began not with celebration, but with caution. I was taught to cover up, be careful, and not draw attention. And pleasure? Best not even go there.
Those who conditioned us? They were likely shamed themselves, and this conditioning is rarely passed down with malice: each a link in a generational chain of silence, doing the best with the scripts they were handed.
“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.” – Audre Lorde
Lorde refers to the ‘erotic’ as something to which we can aspire, but how can we find that part of ourselves when we learn to mistrust our bodies, fear our impulses, to silence our hunger for connection, pleasure, and play?
Without inclusive exchanges around consent, boundaries, sensuality, and joy—we are left fumbling in the dark, navigating our sexual selves with a map made of myths.
I challenge you open up that map, blow off the dust, and pick away at what has been said and unsaid to carve out the beginnings of your sense of self and the chaos of your strongest feelings.
The Cost of Disconnection
Disconnection from pleasure is rarely far off from disconnection from self, and it rarely announces itself imperatively. It can live quietly in the background of our lives: in the way we avoid mirrors, in the way we struggle to ask for what we need. It shows up as numbness, self-doubt, people-pleasing, or performance.
The absence of pleasure is not neutral.
It creates a vacuum—one often filled with anxiety, shame, loneliness, or even resentment.
We may stay in relationships that don’t nourish us, believing we’re asking for too much. We may push our bodies beyond exhaustion, thinking rest must be earned. We may confuse pain for passion, silence for strength, or obligation for love.
Over time, this disconnection can calcify. It can feel normal. But under the surface, something in us always remembers.
The body remembers softness.
The heart remembers joy.
And the soul longs to come home.
Permission to feel again
The Call to Feel Again
Then, there’s a stirring.
What if there’s more? What if I’m allowed to feel good? What if I’ve been worthy all along?
It’s not a sudden transformation, but a gentle, persistent call to return to yourself: awakening.
To reclaim pleasure is to turn toward yourself with tenderness. It is the act of meeting your body not as a problem to be fixed, but as a home to be inhabited. It’s a soft rebellion against everything you were taught to suppress. A decision to no longer outsource your worth, your desire, or your joy.
Reclamation is about about remembering who you were before the shame. Before the silence. Before the stories that taught you to shrink.
It’s about coming home to yourself—with curiosity, courage, and compassion.
Beyond The Physical
Pleasure is a full-bodied, full-hearted experience. It lives in laughter, in rest, in nourishment, in creativity, in connection
It’s time to pull pleasure out of the narrow boxes we were given and allow it to bloom in all the places it already exists.
“Pleasure is the point. Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom.” – Adrienne Maree Brown
Worth is equated with productivity and power is equated with control. With this in mind, finding pleasure becomes a radical act, inviting us to slow down, to listen, to soften.
The Journey Back to You
Homecoming
You are not too much. You are not too broken. You are not too late. Every breath is an invitation to come home to your body, to your desires, and to the deep well of wisdom within. So take up space. Speak your truth. Move towards what feels good. Because pleasure is a revolution. And it begins with you.