Let's Talk Filthy

When I was younger, I put a lot of my focus and belief on the idea that filthy was shameful.

Clean was sacred. Filthy was sinful.

Clean was worthy. Filthy was worthless.

Clean was wholeness, divinity, light. 

Filthy was broken, damnation, darkness.

And because of those beliefs, I felt torn in two.

The person I showed the world pursued sacred cleanliness with passion. The person I hid from the world often snuck away to private places, touching myself in secret, fantasizing and feeling my whole body in electric bliss. 

That is, until I had to step back into the light and feel that horrible schism inside myself. I felt like a fraud, and I was desperate to escape the pain of it. 

At age 18, I sat on a dock with another guy, looked out over the water, and told him my life plan was to castrate myself and dedicate my life to serving God, free from sexual temptation. At age 44, I sat with an admitting nurse at a psych hospital after a police officer found me standing on the edge of a bridge, sobbing. When she asked why I was there, I answered "Because I don't belong here." In that deeply painful moment, I believed my most authentic sexual self had no place in this world.

My journey to healing and self-acceptance has been long and non-linear. 

And I'm still on it. But along the way, I have received precious gifts. They came in the form of women letting me see their filthy little secrets. The earthy parts of them. The sensual parts. The sexual parts. Confessions of their real, raw, filthy thoughts. Confessions of filthy things they had done.

Those secrets became a safe harbor for me on a sea of shame. Lights of hope in the dark place of my internal torment. 

I have so much love for those women in their moments of transparency. So much gratitude for the gift they gave me in letting me see them. And I admire their courage. For all the struggle I've known with sexual shame, I believe women face an even taller giant. I believe cultural shame around sexuality targets women with even greater force. 

So, for me, any woman who is willing to step onto the battle field of prevailing ideology and face that giant is a real hero. A force of nature. An expression of divinity.

They are the inspiration for my writing. And they are why I wanted to start the Filthy Little Secrets podcast. 

Because I believe in the power of women's filthy little secrets. 

They carried me through some dark valleys. 

Carried me here.

Here, a place where I can glimpse a different truth. Truth that there is so much beauty in our filthy parts. So much life comes from our filthy moments. Flowers, trees, grass all sprout from fertile filth. From nature's dirty.

So, I want a podcast where women come and tell their powerful, beautiful, filthy little secrets. 

So we can celebrate them. 

Honor them. 

And let them light a way for us.