Sacred Hearts

This is a story of a mother and writer.

This is our story.

"The one thing I wish I could have grasped from my mothers’ teachings and my poor mother tried so hard, was that I wish I could have deeply understood the preciousness and sacredness of womanhood."

My mother taught me in a very old fashioned south-american way, she taught me to "be a lady" by sitting with my legs closed, not talking crass, serving my father a cup of tea after his dinner and walking tall and proud like a "model". What she inadvertently taught me however was the unprecedented sexual power of women. Although my mother is very old fashioned,  as her own mother having had been 40 years old when she birthed my mother, was a child of the 70’s when women’s power was well established and my mother often to this day speaks of not letting males "trample all over you", that women are equal to men. 

My mother was not only very strong but also a strong headed woman who was also highly sensual and it was as common occurrence for her to refer to anything as "sexy" in my childhood home as it was common to hear dad make sexual jokes to my mother. She often told me stories of her first french kiss at the age of ten and dating a 24 year old man when she was 14 as well as having lots of male friends in her youth. Sex education and sex sociality was a common and  unashamedly talked about at dinnertime. Despite this openness I found it a little strange because at the same time my parents were strictly religious and we were not allowed to date.

So by the time I moved away from home to make a life of my own at the ripe age of 18 I took a sense of power with me and being so young and innocently naive, this can easily be misleading in the expression of power and sensuality as a young woman and can and was also easily misconstrued by the people in my life. I went on, to no ones surprise, have a lot of male friends with whom I thought I shared a secret code and that the odd affection between us was just part of our friendship, after all weren’t we equals? I hurt many people along the way with my own confusion on sensuality and expression of it with when and where it was shared and looking back now I think whether it was the best choice to share it. As time went on, I eventually learned that most people just didn’t do it that way, most people held their sensuality quite privately and within the confines of relationship, the opposite of what I was exposed to.

Growing up it was common for my father to act impressed when I was looking especially pretty or elegant and he used to tell me that I would have the men swooning over me. This was a very common behaviour for him and to even tell me that I had sexy legs or for him to wolf-whistle at me. For us these were playful & funny father-daughter moments and none of us thought ill of  any of it at all. However, when my baby girl was born and I was baby-talking to her and telling her that she had ‘cute sexy legs’ my darling husband, who is Australian, cringed and asked me quietly and reservedly if we could please not use that kind of language regarding our daughter. At first I was offended and quite taken back by this but over time ruminated on his request and came to see that he was absolutely right! That the kind of language we used in the home, let alone to our own daughter was very important.

In my motherhood, upon reflection of my own childhood and up bringing, I try to teach my daughter that we are precious souls in the first place. I refer to our hearts a lot and I teach her about kindness and thinking of others and through those conversations I am able to have discussions about boys and girls without their being any sexual or sensual references, as was in my parents home.  A great instance and learning moment for us both was just the other day, when she hesitated to play at the park because there were "too many boys" and she felt intimidated by their mass presence. I told her simply that boys have hearts... and lungs... and two arms and two legs just like girls and that it was okay. Her uncertainty was not met with an equality speech as my mother may have said to me or my fathers flattering approach that because she was a beautiful girl boys wouldn't mind playing alongside her. 

I personally find my thoughts and guidance to her very interesting as my conversations unfold because I’m realising more and more, that although I learned a good thing from my parents of self confidence as well as positive body image. I realised through various experiences that there is much more to it and to myself and I hope that my tweaking to the teaching of my parents to me, is received well as I do hope to pass on the same principles of self confidence and positive body image but without the open sexualisation of her and that not only is she is sacred, so is her womanhood and more importantly her heart.

"In my motherhood, something I aim to teach my daughter is that certain sacredness of womanhood and of sensuality."

Thank you, Anonymous.