September doesn’t rush in with the full promise of fall in my world. It quietly descends, softly whispering remembrance to my mind and body of our upcoming trauma-versary. This is year six. 

Six years of healing, six years of sorrow, six years of finding our new rhythm. Amelioration.

Half-consciously I start my day scrolling through my Twitter app reading the passing thoughts of my peers. Celibacy. The word catches my attention on three separate posts and I recognize this as the first whisper of September to me. September, six years this month, the sudden weight of it rests on my chest. It is lighter than in years past, though I can still feel its presence. This whisper is first of many ‘invitations to notice’ that will come from the energy around me. Even social media is in on this attempt to tenderly usher my mind toward the wisdom of year six, I think to myself.


Celibacy. The conscious choice to live a life free of the act of sexual contact; abstinence. Today is six years of total celibacy for me. Is this an accomplishment? Part of me chooses to see this as being rooted in wisdom, part of me is thirteen still and untouch(able), another part of me notices the palpable sense of desire coursing through my body.

I add my voice to Twitter, us elder millennials (whatever the hell that implies) have found our own carefully curated rebellion here. 

I laugh at my own way of describing this very complicated part of my reality. I follow the vernacular of my peers and add humor to mitigate any discomfort.  

This feels like a weird thing to talk about out loud, if I’m being completely honest. I AM in my forties though, well into my own need to add my voice to the normalization of sexuality for myself and my peers. Many of whom, like me, hold the story of an adolescence built around the American evangelical idealistic (and nearly idolized) fundamentals of purity culture (aka the reaction to our parent’s generation of flagrant sexuality). Purity culture trained a specific diffidence into women like us, silencing the innate and godly curiosity of our wondrous, sexual bodies. It’s left many of us in the liminal in-between space of intellect around our bodies and shame around our desire. 

I sat recently with a client describing that celibacy needn’t be a thing that happens to us, but rather an empowered choice we get to make. Even as I said it, I realized I needed to hear it again too. Celibacy is lonely at times and that loneliness can heap unkind accusations into our ways of thinking. We need to be reminded, we need to remind one another, that we always have choices. Choices that are shame-free no matter where we land on this spectrum.

In reality, I know handfuls of women who have chosen, quietly, either in line with their moral values or as a reaction to their own stories of harm, to maintain their celibacy. <Truthfully, I don’t know men who have done the same; not that they don’t exist, I just don’t know them by name> I wonder if the women I know have explored, or are actively exploring, freely, their why of celibacy. For me it is in part my trauma, it’s also something a friend and I found in the midst of our conversation:

Part of my choice to remain celibate is the wisdom of my deeper knowing. I have permission to hold the intensity of my physical desire as equal parts human, healthy, and God-given. I have permission to freely explore the way my body responds to self-exploration. I also know that what I desire is not a quick release of pent up sexual energy (although I definitely desire and practice that at times too), but of being known and knowing another intimately, cognitively, sacredly. Celibacy is my answer, for now, to rendering care and mothering the parts of me that are looking for connection and belonging. For me, celibacy is a choice to not short-circuit my need for connection at the moment. I’m also free to change my mind at any time, though I really want to be conscious of that decision if and when I get there. 

Celibacy, for me, isn’t the absence of desire but rather an attuning to my desire when it is felt in my body and mind. Sure, there is some belief system happening here too. I do follow Jesus, though I’m not held by the constraints of my past religiosity in this realm. It is healthier for me to understand my why in connection with my mind and body, holistically, gently, and with an abundance of acceptance.

I want to be exceedingly clear about these words I’ve put together: this is MY story of celibacy. Celibacy isn’t mandatory, sex is good, desire is healthy. You are entirely free to choose for yourself, absent of harm to anyone else, how you engage your mind and body around sexuality. I’m sharing, in part, to create discussion and offer permission to the women I know and love in all the parts of their stories, too.

xoxo, kimberly