Misseducated

Introduction 💒

“Oh, it's a nice day to start again / It’s a nice day for a white wedding” — Billy Idol, White Wedding.

A new line from Paperless Post appears in your email inbox. You’re hesitant to open it because it can only mean one thing. Yet another couple you know is fulfilling society’s most boring prophecy: they’re getting married.

Weddings are challenging things. They test us. They plonk themselves down in the middle of our lives and require not just our time and money but our emotional attention as well. Weddings dig up the dirt, not just between family members but also within ourselves. You might not have wanted to deeply self-reflect and evaluate your life. But once you’ve been invited to a wedding, you’re going to get it. Weddings will ask you: Can you be happy for these people, or are you secretly seething with envy? Have you done enough therapy? Do you even know how to set boundaries? Have you really healed? And most cruelly: Do you really have anything in common with these people anymore?

I’ve put together this gentle guide to help you process the annoyingly uncomfortable feelings that attending weddings might bring up for you. I have to be honest: you will survive these weddings, but your friendships might not. I’m a single, 30-year-old woman with a limited number of dollars in my bank account and an even more limited amount of f***s to give (I never want to be married, but I do want to have children). I’m here to remind you that going to a wedding is a challenge: you have to remember what you truly want in your life. Together, we’re going to set your boundaries and keep you on the beautiful life path you were already on.

1. Keep dreaming other dreams 🚀.

“She has brought them to her senses / They have laughed inside her laughter / Now she rallies her defenses / For she fears that one will ask her / For eternity / And she's so busy being free” — Joni Mitchell, Cactus Tree.

Much like reading your resume, your life experience might not translate exactly to the bride’s religious auntie who corners you while everyone else is on the dance floor. Partnered or not. Childless by choice, or not. Other wedding guests often jump at the chance to weigh in on your way of life and your future. And much like the definitions of shame that I’ve explored for us females, other people’s expectations of us conflict and compete. Being raised to be “good girls,” we are expected to be polite while these people rattle off their point of view, even if we decided for ourselves a long time ago that we don’t care for that. Attending a wedding while single is hard, but I’ve heard that attending while in a relationship that’s not going well is even harder.

Don’t freak out. Your needs for the security, the ring, and the father of your future children might have been dormant inside of you, and the surge of socialized pressure might reawaken them. But it’s crucial to remember that this wedding is most likely at a venue where you’re out of your element, cut off from the day-to-day life you’ve built that you love. I experience this a lot when I go back “home” to London. In London, there’s no trace of the beautiful life I’ve been building in Mexico for the last three years. It’s very disorientating. This is only temporary, and you’ll be back to the comfort of your normal life soon.

While the couple was busy doing whatever, you might have become the first woman in your family to graduate from Medical School. Or you might have hosted a summer camp for kids and grown some fat cucumbers in the school garden. At any wedding, you must find some way to ground yourself in your own life and remember who you are. Bring a little token of your daily life with you if that helps. Remember why you made the choices you did. Remember how much you love to make yourself lemon water with honey in the morning. You’ve been on your own path, dear. You’re probably not anti-man. You may not even be anti-marriage. You’re just not willing to compromise on your lifestyle, your happiness, or your goals and dreams.

Let yourself keep dreaming other dreams. As one of my friends said, “I’ve just stepped into this freedom that my path is so different from my friends’.” In 5 years, you’re going to look back in awe at yourself during this time of your life and how much you have grown and evolved. And that’s a lot more important than any of this societal bullcrap.

2. Protect your peace and your bank account 🧿.

Going to a wedding is the ultimate time to test our boundaries. Now, if you have five super close girlfriends who are all getting married and having bachelorette parties in the same year, then I can’t help you. That was your fault for having so many close friends!

As ugly and bridezilla as this can get, I’m here to remind you that absolutely everything is optional. My mother calls me selfish for having boundaries and saying no. But you have to face other people’s disappointment in order to maintain your sanity. You might even think you need to go to your sibling's weddings. But trust me, you don’t. Yes, your family might disown you forever. But I went to a wedding a couple of years ago where the oldest sister didn’t show up. So what? S**t happens.

Attending a wedding is a good opportunity to practice being shamelessly sexy. If your needs don’t matter to you, they won’t matter to other people either. You have to know what you want, believe you deserve what you want, and ask for what you want. Your hard-earned money is precious. Your vacation days are precious. What you want to do with your god-damn limited minutes on this Earth is precious. Treat your resources as such. I’m a wedding cynic, but you don’t even know if this couple is going to be together in 5 years. Why get them an expensive wedding gift if you can’t afford it? That’s just going to become collateral when they split up their assets anyway.

3. Try to see the full picture 🖼️.

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.

Of course, feelings of jealousy and envy may arise. As you watch her walk down the aisle, in the same dress you’d ideally have, marrying a rich guy, both with stable careers, you might be tempted to shake your fists at the universe and say, “Why not me, motherfucker?!”

Not so fast. You have to scratch below the surface. If you’re in the bridal party or family, you’ll probably have enough insider information to know the ugly truth about this couple’s life. For the rest of us, quite like having a crush, we might tempted to project a full, happy picture into the gaps we can’t see. Alcoholism. Abuse. A dead parent. If this couple is human, they’re likely harboring some layer of tragedy right below her beautiful bouquet that matches the table settings. And yes, her parents might have paid for a big white wedding. But that means they also got to invite 100 of their stuffy sailing friends from Rhode Island.

Try to identify within yourself what it is that you are jealous of. This is nothing more than a signpost of where you want to go in your own life or what you think you are missing. Make a note of those exact things that you want, whatever they are. If you do plan on having a wedding someday, this is a good time to take out a pen and paper and analyze what you like about the event and what you don’t. You’re doing research.

If you truly want her life, you have to take in the whole package. Chances are, if you knew the dirty details, it would not be as glowing and rosy. Just because this couple is joyful on their wedding day doesn’t mean anything either. There is always time for things to go awry. And not even a long marriage is necessarily a happy one. It’s not easy being alone, but it’s not easy being married, either.

Also, remember that you are only seeing the finished product. Weddings require an endless amount of time, money, and planning. You might appreciate the bride’s outfit changes, but would you have wanted to spend a year of your life planning one day, mediating fights b…

This article has been updated and republished in full on tashdoherty.com. Enjoy!

Introduction 🚀

“The challenging thing is that we tend to feel that we live in a liberated age and that, therefore, it’s especially odd to feel that sex is a bit odd.” — Alain de Botton, Design Matters Podcast.

This article has been years in the making; it’s an honor to share it with you today. It combines two beautiful things: sex (love and intimacy) and writing. Plus, elements of what I’m going to share with you have been shown to improve your mental and physical health!

I discovered these tools by accident. Like many women in my generation, I grew up trying to be a “good girl” and feeling ashamed about sex. Going to private all-girls schools, the red shoes of my school uniform were always perfectly polished. But inside, I was deeply insecure about my body and, once I hit puberty, my erotic desires. My experience reflects how many women experience shame as “unobtainable, conflicting, competing expectations about who we are supposed to be” (Brené Brown). The only way I was able to explore my sexuality was by watching a lot of pornography and reading spicy books in my high school library.

Clearly, I am missing a screw in my brain because about two and a half years ago, I wanted to become a writer. I wanted to write something unique, and my steamy stories seemed like a great place to start. But writing articles like “Why I Never Swallow Cum” had an incredible benefit that I didn’t expect. It helped me figure out what I like in bed and learn more about who I am.

Keeping a sex journal seems to be a highly underrated way for us to explore our more sexually deviant natures. Through this personal and private act that I’m going to share with you, you’ll get to turn inward and set aside all the noise and advertisements on Instagram to figure out aspects of who you truly are. You can safely identify your boundaries. You can make what you know subconsciously about yourself conscious. You can pinpoint the exact techniques that help you orgasm, even, or at least how you like to receive pleasure. While you might not be willing to post your innermost desires on the internet like I do, this methodology will enable you to achieve the same ends without anyone else having to know about it.

So, let’s get started!

The Basics of Keeping A Sex Journal 📓

* Get yourself a new journal. Duh! 💁‍♀️

It can be cute and fuzzy, or it can be unassuming and subtle. But yes. You’re going to get a new journal where you write down all your deepest, darkest, and sexiest secrets. Maybe you’re an Accountant, so your sex journal is just going to look like any other bland office book. That’s kind of exciting, isn’t it? Find one that you can hide easily and get to it.

Remember that this journal is for your eyes only. When you sit down to write in it, you want a private space where you can be completely honest with yourself about whatever comes up for you. Stash it where no one else can find it. Unless it’s part of your kink for your partner to discover it, in which case, go ahead.

One of my friends in her late 40s is going on dates again. She told me she recently got a sex journal, and she’s been loving it so far. It’s helping her determine what she likes and doesn’t like about her dates. In the future, I plan to design and sell a branded Misseducated sex journal of my own, with all the correct pages, topics, and themes. But for now, as one of my early readers, you’re going to have to navigate your stories yourself. And if you’re curious about what I use for my sex journal, you’re reading it!

More From Misseducated 💌 ✍️

Warning: This piece discusses my menstrual cycle in depth. If that doesn’t interest you, please do something else with your time. I won’t be offended. Thanks!

“Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs.” — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.

Dear Wonderful Readers,

I am not a scientific expert when it comes to a complex topic like the menstrual cycle. But as a writer who is curious about the world, since I got my first period 19 years ago, I’ve gathered a lot of data on one menstrual cycle in particular: my own. Today, I’m going to share with you one aspect of my menstrual cycle that I hope you will find reassuring, cool, and downright witchy. It gives me the kind of all-knowing power that I definitely would have been burned at the stake for 400 years ago.

The Phenomena of Phenomenal Thinking

Every month, after I finish my period, I get a few days of incredible clarity on basically every aspect of my life. I also feel incredibly energized. I’m currently in that phase. Just yesterday, I found myself biking extra fast on my way to my co-working space and improvising on the piano like an absolute boss.

I first noticed this experience a couple of years ago. I’ve since started tracking it in my period-tracking app, Clue, which is an awesome company that I also happen to work for (I don’t make money from telling you this because Clue doesn’t have an affiliate program). In Clue, I’ve made a special tag for this experience. I call it my “Post-Period Strategic Clarity.”

How does my “Post-Period Strategy Clarity” manifest in my life? Well, this week, I pitched five new clients before midday on Wednesday. I’d also been feeling a bit lost in my career, but when I went to a concert on Tuesday, I could picture my future self, sitting on that same stage, selling out an audience of 3,500 people as I talked about my writing tools and techniques and sharing them with the world. In the last couple of days, as I go to bed, I find myself reaching for a piece of paper and a pen to jot down strings of incredible ideas on who I should be reaching out to, how I should be asking for help, and where I should be focusing my energy because I know where I’m going. It’s like unrolling a blueprint created by my brain and knowing all my next moves. I even redownloaded Hinge and started messaging people.

There’s evidence that I’m not making this up. Here’s what hormonal health expert Alissa Vetti says about the menstrual cycle and the follicular phase:

“So first, you have the follicular phase. Fascinating phase. And neuro-chemically these hormonal ratios change your brain chemistry. So, you are a different person week-over-week within a month…In that follicular phase where the eggs are coming up to maturity, one is going to make it to the fallopian tube, very exciting time. Neuro-chemically speaking, you have the most access to creative energy than that you will have the entire month. Effortlessly. This is a perfect time to begin new projects: mastermind plan, dream big, all of that.”

My next question is: why does my body do this? Well, here is my totally non-scientific answer. I’m 30 years old, and these days I’m feeling super intense baby fever and what can only be described as extreme horniness every time I ovulate, which occurs in the days right after the follicular phase. So, right after my period ends, once my body has rid itself of the last cycle, it’s gearing up again for ovulation. And so, I get a surge of energy. And this energy makes sense because, for survival, it would probably be a good idea for me to gather a lot of resources (i.e., pitch a s**t ton of clients to make sure I have plenty of enough income) and find a mate (i.e., download a dating app and start going out and flirting with whoever is hanging around). Maybe I need to nest a bit (i.e., decide which relationships and things in my house are working for me and discard some that aren’t). So, yes, I’m living my modern life equivalent. But from a biological perspective, I can see how this corresponds to what’s going on in my cycle. My brain might be speaking in emails, client pitches, and party invitations. But my body is making sure that I create the most awesome, successful, and habitable environment for myself, attract a great mate, and get some optimal offspring going. Pretty cool! And yes, I literally am ready to run a half-marathon this weekend before a party with some of the coolest musicians and hot, bright young things in Mexico City.

Before you start rolling your eyes and thinking, “Well, isn’t this girl’s life just pretty and perfect!” let me remind you what happened just before my Post-Period Strategy Clarity: I had my period. All the greatness that follows my period during this phase happens despite my recent mood swings, extreme irritability, propensity to cry for no reason, and depression during my PMS for at least another week before. Plus, the depressing point is that this clarity doesn’t last forever. As I’ve written about before, after a couple of days, I know all the insanity of ovulation will start happening again, and I’ll be back to not having a clue what I am doing with my life. See how Mother Nature’s a b***h? And how what goes up must come down?

Three years ago, I was on this same cycle, just as I will be until I hit menopause, I expect. In May 2022, I wrote,

“Right before I get my period or even the first or second day, I feel incredibly alone, timid, and shy. I feel self-conscious and hyper-acutely aware of all my mistakes in conversations. But the strangest thing happens at the end of my period, like now. I feel incredibly energized, and my thoughts become completely clear. It usually comes to me like a flash of inspiration on one night of the month. I can see crystal clear who I am trying to become, what I need to do to push myself that month, what I’m truly feeling about things, and what needs to change. I can see that now.”

For those of you who want the extra details, you should know that this all happens despite the fact that I’ve had a Hormonal IUD for the last 8 years. I recently got mine replaced after it expired because my periods have been historically insanely painful, and I don’t plan on having a period again if I can avoid it. These 8 years, I haven’t had cramping and bleeding on my period, but I still get those mood swings! So, I still get my Post-Period Strategic Clarity. At least in my experience with Hormonal IUDs, everybody wins.

In summary, if you have a menstrual cycle and you’re not currently using an app to track any of your symptoms, maybe try it out for a while and see if you find it helpful. There are plenty of apps on the market besides Clue. Obviously, I’m not a pacha mama earthy spiritual lady telling you to live off the grid and never put another medication in your body ever again. But looking at the science, it makes sense to try to master matching our lives with the energetic flow of our menstrual cycles, especially when it serves us as baddies living our best lives. Alissa Vetti called this “[leveraging] your body as a power tool.” And that’s what I plan to continue to do.

Here’s to harnessing the cyclical nature of being a female for my own benefit! Moahaha! 😈

Love,

Tash

💌 ✍️

More From Misseducated

I scheduled a meeting with my boss one cold mid-March morning in New York City. Since saving up almost $40,000, I had started to taste freedom in my morning coffee. My courage came out of nowhere. I was about to do something crazy. I was on the edge, flirting with the real world. That morning, I did the dead. I quit my full-time job.

Three years have passed since that fateful morning, and this week, I hosted a party to celebrate that. As I sipped white wine with my friends, I realized that despite what the crunch of capitalism would want you to believe, I’m still here. I’ve survived for three years without a full-time job; I also moved to Mexico City and published a teen romance novel in the process. And in some ways, I’m thriving.

This article is for anyone in the corporate world who is curious about what I’ve learned in the chaos of building my new career as a writer, freelancing, and fun, which I’m calling my “post-employment” era. Here, I’ve distilled for you the five most important professional lessons that I’ve never shared anywhere else, as well as the most impactful things in other categories of my life.

Top Five Lessons for Post-Employment Professional Thriving 🚀

1. 1% of effort leads to 100% of the outcome. In my experience, the Pareto 80-20 Rule applies even more extremely in our real-world endeavors. Focusing your efforts on the exact right thing is more valuable than anything else. For example, I recently took 5 minutes to pitch a quote to an editor. That pitch landed me in Vogue, earning my first mention in a major publication. Whether you’re trying out a new hobby or building a business, spend your energy on the easier, highest-impact tasks first to catalyze your progress. When you find something that works, double down on it. Ignore everything else.

2. Things compound slowly. Arguably, it took me 30 years of being alive to land that quote in Vogue. The truth is, you’re going to work for a long time with no meaningful progress until your efforts start to compound. Eventually, you’ll achieve a critical mass and accomplish with one email what you struggled to gain in five years with 100 rejections. You have to stay strong and stay the course. Mark every little bit of your progress along the way. Celebrate your wins. That’s why I threw myself that Post-Employment Party, and why I celebrate my Author Birthday every year. Encourage yourself to keep going. You’ll need it.

3. It’s all about who you know. Nepotism, baby. You’re not above this! You’ll only land the consulting contracts you want if you know the right people. I have never gotten a job without a warm introduction to one of the higher-ups at the company. Last year, rather than spreading myself thin and applying for a bunch of random contracts across the internet, I nurtured one warm intro I got to the CEO of Clue, the leading period-tracking app and my dream client. I got s**t done and won contracts with them for a whole year. Focus on writing that one email to that one right person, that warm lead you have.

4. Ideas that you think are absurd will lead to your success. When you’re building something new, you have no idea what is going to work, and you will fail constantly. Remember that humans are really bad at evaluating which of our creative ideas will succeed. For example, last year, I wrote a niche article called “What is it like to orgasm on psilocybin?” I didn’t expect much from it. But since then I’ve also made a couple hundred dollars in affiliate link sales of the Lioness vibrator thanks to the article’s unexpected success on Google Search. Keep trying different things because you really don’t know what is going to succeed. And don’t kill a creative idea without testing it first.

5. An idea means nothing without execution. Since I started my blog, many people have told me about the one rom-com script idea that they’ve had for 30 years or whatever, and yet they’ve never written a word of it. My own grandmother told me she wanted to write a book, so I invited her to a writing class with me. She declined my invitation. Fast forward three years, and my grandmother still hasn’t written a word, and I’ve grown this blog to 3,000 views every month and 500+ subscribers. The harsh truth is that unless you’re applying your ass to your chair and writing it or painting it or whatever, your idea means nothing. Also, there are a million good ideas out there. Stop shining your idea like it’s a precious pearl, and actually do it.

Top Three Personal Life Lessons 💡

1. Embrace the ebb and flow of friendships. It’s natural over the seasons of life for friends to come and go. Close friends move away. Others start new romantic relationships, and that becomes their priority. Try to meet these changes with love and acceptance. It’s better to let things fade naturally than burn bridges. If someone moves away, it just means that you need to cultivate new relationships. You aren’t an a*****e for outgrowing some relationships, either.

2. Your happiness matters a lot. Time will pass whether you want it to or not. Don’t be one of those people who is stuck in your job or a relationship, and when people meet you, they can tell you’re unhappy. The more you can pursue projects, ideas, places, and people that make you happy, the more memories of pure joy you’ll have in forty years to cherish. That, in my opinion, is the definition of a life well-lived.

3. Own what you want. Discard the rest. This applies not just to material goods but also to your life decisions. For example, I’m happy living in a one-bedroom apartment; I never want to be married, I probably want to have two kids, and I don’t like skiing, so for me, it’s a waste of money. I’m proud of these aspects of my character. The more you can critically reflect on what you really want to own and what you do and don’t want in life, the more you can remove crap from your life that you don’t even like and bring in what matters to you.

Top Five Activities That Changed My Life 🏏

1. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): This is a form of therapy that’s like 20x as powerful as a talk therapy session on steroids. I tried it last year and focused on processing a specific core memory of abandonment in my childhood. It’s super intense and not for the faint-hearted, where a therapist uses a simple gesture as you move your eyes, and you’re able to access your most traumatizing memories.

2. ITAA (Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous): I joined ITAA, a 12-step program, on August 2nd, 2022, after struggling for years with tech addiction, primarily to YouTube and reality TV. I’ve since quit both, and while I’m not perfect (damn you, Instagram!) I’ve gotten a lot of my time back, and I’ve learned how to feel my feelings instead of numbing them.

3. ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families): This is another 12-step program, this time focused on dealing with the effects of family dysfunction. I have a daily ACA meeting where I can talk about what happened in my childhood and how it’s affecting me today. It’s basically free group therapy that has really helped me build my self-esteem.

4. Pickleball: Lol. I’m not ashamed to admit that playing pickleball is a breath of fresh air after running alone for years. I’m making so many new friends through it. I get to lean into my competitive side, and I get to exercise out in the warm sun in Mexico City. It’s super fun!

5. Learning Spanish: I spoke basic conversational Spanish when I moved to Mexico after studying it for years, and now I am comfortably fluent. Learning a language in my 20s has taught me so much about the importance of mindset, which is applicable to many other areas of life. It’s going to take you a lot longer than you think to become fluent, so you have to find ways to enjoy the journey. Stay curious. Have fun with it. Pick up new phrases whenever you can. Focus on improving over time. And don’t underes…

Introduction 💌

When you find out your crush doesn’t like you back, it’s a dagger to the heart. It’s a stab to the ego. But when you hear they like someone else in your friend group instead, it’s a double blow. The tsunami that follows the earthquake. For example, last week, I found out that the guy I sent a fun love letter to actually fancies my friend, and now they’re dating. Meanwhile, I’m still single and have been left to wallow in one of the saddest facts of life: not everyone that we find attractive will like us back.

But from asking around, the one reassuring thing I’ve discovered is that I’m not alone. It turns out crushes and friend groups are risky business. One girl told me she introduced her female friend to her close family guy friend at a wedding; he also happened to be her childhood crush, who had always been out of reach. Before she knew it, her friend was making out with him, and they dated for over a year. Boo! That’s gotta sting. Another girl’s best friend and her crush got together. But then she witnessed their six-month relationship turn toxic before it finally ended.

This is real life, people! Just to be clear, I’m not into love-letter man anymore, and in this article, I’m going to share all my practical tips on how you can wipe away all your feelings of unrequited love as well. So, how are we going to kill your crush? Here are my thoughts on how to help you through this.

1. Feel the pain 😫

There’s no way around it. Depending on how long you’ve been attached to your crush, this may warrant a full-blown ugly-cry. Unless, of course, you’re currently at a wedding like my friend was, watching this play out in front of your very eyes. In that case, you have to hang in there and distract the heck out of yourself until it’s safe for you to ugly-cry later.

Feel free to excuse yourself, politely decline invitations, and get some space. Leave town if you need to. Tell your friend group you’re grateful for the party invite, but you can’t go. You’re busy! Do what you need to do to feel the sadness and rage and not hang out with the new happy couple together. I escaped to the woods for two days on my own, with no electricity or internet. I also sat in my house, blasted rock music while doing a jigsaw puzzle, and let the rage burn through my body. Both of these activities were therapeutic in their own ways.

So, I encourage you to go to a museum. Get lunch with your grandma. Work on that poem you started writing a couple of weeks ago. Do whatever activities it takes to remind yourself that your crush person’s opinion of you has no reflection on your self-worth. Instead, your self-worth comes from how you show up in the world in your own beautiful way. Take time away from everyone and do things that make you feel joyful, valued, and alive.

2. Accept your humanness 🧘‍♀️

You are not a perfect person, but then again, no one else is either. There is a really cheesy line from an outdated breakup book that says, “Even Halle Berry has been dumped” (Greg Behrendt, page 113). It’s true. No one is safe from rejection in the world of romance.

However, self-compassion expert Dr. Kristin Neff has a useful approach to this. In her incredible TED Talk, she talks about the importance of “common humanity.” I’m paraphrasing, but she says that suffering is a part of life. Everyone suffers. We are not alone in our suffering, and that’s precisely what connects us to other people. Accepting this can help us feel connected to others rather than excluded. So, yes, I was comforted by the stories of my friend’s similar experiences. And frankly, it helped me to know that some of them had it even worse than me.

3. Limit your contact with your crush 🫣

This is going to be hard. It’s time for you to accept the time you have wasted on your crush as a sunk cost and walk away. Just like after a breakup, I recommend a good 60 days of no contact.

You have a limited but beautiful amount of energy in your life. Chances are you've been channeling at least part of your energy into your crush person, who isn’t appreciating it. This is your time to redirect your energy towards better things. This could mean working harder, studying a new topic, exploring a new part of the city, and finally signing up for that half marathon that you wanted to do (don't look at me; that was your idea).

Ultimately, the decision to walk away from a crush is about you and how you want to treat yourself differently. You can't get your time back. You can't get your dignity back, either. But you do have agency. It’s your responsibility to prioritize what’s healthiest for you and do something about it. This probably means not doing anything because it means not calling your crush and not putting yourself in the unnecessarily painful situation of hanging out with the new happy couple. This is an opportunity for you to grow because it was never about the other person. They were never involved with you in the way you wanted them to be.

4. Unbury the red flags 🚩

It’s time to resurrect all the warnings you had about your crush. You know, the things that you first noticed were wrong with them but that you strategically forgot about?

Make a list of all this person’s red flags and all the reasons why they were wrong for you to begin with. I’ll start: you only want to get involved romantically with people who want to get romantically involved with you, so your unrequited crush doesn’t qualify!

Red flags can be anything. Were they addicted to weed, alcohol, shitty club nights, or video games? Did they take advantage of you? Were they your boss who always asked you to do extra work but didn’t pay you for it, but you did it anyway because you were in love with him? (Guilty). Did they specifically tell you that they have never had a girlfriend that they haven’t cheated on? (Okay, fine, guilty again).

If you start to feel angry towards them, good! That means it’s working. You’re no longer willing to put up with their shittiest qualities. Which means you’re one giant step further away from being smitten by them.

5. Face what you’re avoiding 🙃

Do you find yourself falling in love with people who live 5,000 miles away, who you’ve never met in person? If so, you might be using unreachable crushes as a distraction from forming real intimate relationships. (Guilty, again, okay? Stop looking at me like that!)

My friend sent me a beautiful Instagram post called “Why We Fall in Love with Unavailable People” from The School of Life. My favorite part of it says,

“People stuck in these unrequited situations may garner a lot of sympathy. But in truth, they may have actively sought out such situations as a way of avoiding the trials of true intimacy. Actual, committed relationships are frequently mundane, messy, and often ‘unromantic.’ It may be far easier and safer to indulge in a fantasy that has no chance of being realized.”

I have wasted years on crushes I have never met, teetering on levels that probably make me a candidate for SLAA (Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous). These days, I’m trying to get brutally honest about one-way love sooner. And that’s sad. In reality, it's not the darkest before the dawn. It's darkest at midnight when you have nothing to save you, and you’re not sure if you’re going to be okay. That’s what getting rid of my crushes and fantasies feels like. But as hard as it is, I know that it’s healthier for me to free myself from my fantasies sooner because then I’ll be more emotionally and energetically available to welcome someone real into my life.

6. Don’t read too much into it 📚

I originally wrote a long section in this article where I related this experience to feelings of abandonment in my childhood. When I mentioned this to my therapist on Thursday, she said to me,

“I wouldn’t extrapolate this experience so much. Sometimes, these things just happen.”

At some level, I was enjoying the pain of relating my rejection to the deepest, darkest wounds of my childhood. But I think my therapist has a point. You’re not unlo…

Hello Wonderful Readers,

What I’m about to share with you is completely real.

I wrote a love letter to another writer. We met through friends in Mexico City. Over dinner, he told us he had written a short story about sex, and about him. I told him I wanted to read it. I gave him my email address. At the club later that night, after he had emailed me the story, he stood over me and talked loudly over the music into my ear,

“Will you send me something back?” he asked me.

“What do you want to read?” I said, “I publish my work all the time.” I was trying to make myself sound very prolific and very accomplished.

He paused for a moment. Then he said,

“Send me something you haven’t sent to anyone else before.” His words gave me chills, and you’ll understand why below.

The next day, I went home, read his story, and whipped up this piece, “Toothpicks,” in about an hour. I had no intention of sharing it, but then my friend insisted on it.

Well, here it is.

I hope you like it!

Love,

Tash

💌 ✍️

Toothpicks

It starts last night when we are sitting at the bar; I don’t know exactly why or when. I think it is when I am playing with the toothpick, smiling and prodding it between my front teeth, circling my tongue around its tiny, spiked edge.

I look up. Then I notice you. You are playing with a toothpick, also. And maybe you are looking at me. Or maybe I am looking at you. You glance at me. Your eyes catch mine. Maybe once. Maybe twice. I try to imagine what you are seeing. A slightly straggled mess of unwashed, imperfect brownish hair that used to be blonde (I swear). Fresh out of the sauna of Koti, no makeup, no shampoo, yoga pants, Hoka running shoes, not even a lick of foundation on my face. But rejuvenated, I guess. Maybe at 30, I still have some collagen in my skin. Maybe at 30, my cheeks can still look a bit red and a bit plump, glowing. Or at least I can try to smile from my deep brown eyes, piercing every man in my wake. Moahaha.

We tell stories back and forth with our friends, and you are talking. When you talk, you are looking at me. Or maybe it is the angle of the table. But I like to think you are angling yourself in my direction in the blaring orange-red-neon light of the swanky bar. I like it. Maybe it’s pathetic of me to say, but it feels kind of electric.

I am cautiously optimistic. I chuckle to myself at my own secrets. I tend to be a little hornier when I ovulate. As the conversation flows like the beers our friends are drinking and the spicy soy sauce concoctions in our bowls, I check my period tracker on my phone. It’s Day 19 of my cycle. Nope. Ovulation this month is long gone. My arms are shaking a little. Hormones are flooding my brain. I sense them coursing through my body.

I remember that it’s been about three months since I last had sex. Since no one else has come along, when I masturbate, I think of him. Tall, muscular, and almost stereotypically masculine, his Calvin Klein underwear echoing his commercial-worthy existence. But my memories of his face, him kissing me, are fading. The coldness and darkness and wetness in London are deep in my bones, lying in his bed on that Sunday morning, knowing that my love of life was calling me back to Mexico. And I am all too glad to leave him in the grayness. The grayness of it all, to fend for himself.

But then you are here, right now. In flesh and blood. A real human a meter away from me. It’s a little too much for me to handle. I smile to myself, and I consider that, whatever happens tonight, I am going to need to masturbate when I get home. I’ll use my favorite setting, the lowest green one, on my vibrator. And I remember, yet again, that, especially at this age, the most powerful force in my world is biology. And each person around me is the culmination of thousands of similar, irresistible acts and circumstances. We are all looped through the trajectory of time, the result of chance encounters, and the caresses of thighs. Each of our ancestors carried their bodies through. They found a way to make it happen. So why not me and you?

💌 ✍️

Related Reading From Misseducated

Introduction

My mission is to help the world be shamelessly sexy. To me, that means not feeling ashamed about who you are or the type of sex you want to have. It means going after the things that you want in bed and in life.

Being shamelessly sexy looks different for everyone. It’s something you need to define for yourself on your own terms. Also, no one can ever be perfectly shamelessly sexy. That’s because shame is a normal human emotion that will continue to crop up in life. But being perfect is not the point, people! Not feeling shame is not the point, either. This is about self-discovery. It’s about living your own life that is pleasurable and “totally rad,” as the surfer dudes say. It’s about feeling aligned with yourself and courageous enough to pursue what you want.

I may be more shamelessly sexy now, but I wasn’t always this way. I grew up in London, where I was trained at all-girls private schools to be a prim and proper young lady. The red shoes of my school uniform were always perfectly polished. As I failed to color inside the lines in my lessons, I developed a dangerous curiosity.

One day, I secretly came across what one might call a “spicy book” or “smut” in my school library. Heavens! When I read it, I felt excited. It was a beacon, an acknowledgment from the adult world:

“There are other horny teenagers just like you out there. In fact, being a horny teenager is normal. All those boring adults? Well, they were once one, too.”

That day, my perspective on sexuality changed. That smut book opened my mind to the possibility that sex and lovemaking are some of the most beautiful things in the world, even if nobody overtly champions them. I still believe that it’s one of life’s greatest joys to love another person fully, honestly, and vulnerably. And yet, this is totally hidden in our culture, which makes us feel guilty for simply enjoying ourselves. To this day, that doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve come to wonder whether there is a screw missing in my brain or if it’s that I simply transcended the confines of the world I grew up in all those years ago when I read that smut book in the library. Now, I try to help others do the same: to love ourselves and our partners openly in our own unique, beautiful, and messy ways.

This piece is for heterosexual-leaning females because that’s my experience. Men experience shame differently, and I’ll address that in another piece. So, let’s dive into how we can get you there!

Defining Shame About Sex

In my article, “How To Be Shameless,” I shared Brené Brown’s definition of shame: “Shame is an epidemic in our culture” that is “highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders." She shares that "[f]or women, shame is: do it all, do it perfectly, and never let them see you sweat.”

Here’s an example of this in my friend Emily's day-to-day life. Emily is fresh out of a relationship, and she wants to feel good about her body. Last week, we identified where her ideas about her body and her sexuality are coming from.

* Feminine conservatism from her mother: Emily’s mother is Catholic. For her whole life, Emily’s mother wanted her to cover her shoulders and wear longer, feminine dresses, especially when they went to her grandmother’s house for Sunday brunch.

* Bikini bodies from Instagram: Emily saw a beautiful woman wearing a bikini on Instagram, so she ordered one. It has a G-string bottom that Emily is a bit nervous about trying, but since she lives by the beach, she wants to give it a go.

* Pressure from her ex: When Emily was 18, she dated a guy who was 23, and he was more sexually experienced than her. He made her feel guilty that she had never had a threesome and that she didn’t want to watch porn with him. In his eyes, she was never sexually experienced enough.

* Social Comparison: With her last boyfriend, Emily noticed when they passed other girls on the beach who were prettier than her. Those girls were tanned and wore the G-string bikinis like it was nobody’s business. Emily knew that comparison was the thief of joy, but she still wondered if her boyfriend wanted to be with someone prettier.

Emily’s experiences mirror exactly how Brené Brown described shame in women: “unobtainable, conflicting, competing expectations about who we are supposed to be.” Still, Emily’s situation confused me. If her sexuality and her feelings about her own body weren’t these messages from others, then what were they? This was something far deeper than her mother’s conservatism or her ex pressuring her to have sex. Perhaps this was something internal. Perhaps this was something to do with her “self,” and that required an energetic, internal transformation. We agreed that it sounded woo-woo, but her feelings about her sexuality and her body are a form of energy that she embodies.

Being Shamelessly Sexy

Emily and I agreed that being shamelessly sexy comes down to three fundamental things: knowing what you want, believing you deserve what you want, and asking for it. There’s a lot to say here, so I’ll address the tips for each of them separately.

Know What You Want

“If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.” (Terry Tempest Williams).

I could probably write a whole book with tips on how to help you figure out what you want in your sex life. I don’t claim to be a witch or a genius, so I’ll share what’s helped me so far.

* Work On Your Shame.

As I explored previously, facing your shame can help you change your perspective and let go of the past. So, pull up a shameful memory or two from your past that involves your body or having sex. Try not to pick something too overwhelming to begin with. You might need to repeat this exercise multiple times if you have various memories bringing you shame about sex in your past. For this exercise, I picked Valentine’s Day with my high school boyfriend when I was 17 when my younger sister walked in on us trying to have a romantic bath together, and my dad found out and gave me the awkward sex talk. It was terrible.

Hold your experience in your mind’s eye. Remember as many details as you can about the situation. Notice what you feel. Do you feel any physical sensations in your body, your chest, or your throat? Where are you holding the shame in your body? Now, turn toward your younger self with compassion. Acknowledge the pain of the experience. Find a loving gesture you can give yourself for comfort. For this experience, I held my hand and told myself,

“Taking a bath is a rather wonderful thing to do with someone. That experience was cruel. You didn’t deserve that.”

If you don’t want to hold your hand, you could also hug yourself, squeeze your arm, or put your hand on your heart. Think of what a loving parent or a kind adult would say to your younger self now. What does your younger self need to hear? It could be something like,

“Experiencing shame is part of life. You’re not alone. You made a mistake. That doesn’t mean you are a mistake. I forgive you.”

The more you can give yourself love and acceptance, the less shame you’ll eventually feel about that experience. It is totally okay if you cry or feel a big wash of emotion. That’s a good sign that you’re processing pain and grief.

You can listen to my Misseducated interview with Dr. Kristin Neff, the world's leading expert on self-compassion, here: “How to Be Kind to Yourself, and Why It Matters.”

* Keep a sex diary or journal.

Writing helps to make what we know subconsciously about ourselves conscious. For three years, I’ve written about my sex life on my blog, Misseducated. Exploring my experiences in pieces like “Why I Never Swallow Cum” has had an incredible benefit that I didn’t expect: it has helped me figure out what I like in bed. Writing about your sex life can help you figure out what you want to explore and where your limitations are. You can also learn the exact…

Intro

Hello Wonderful Readers,

Sometimes, it’s the chance encounters that can lead to the most fruitful stories. And that’s exactly what happened when I met Pauline about a month ago.

As you know, our mission at Misseducated is to help the world be shamelessly sexy, and as far as I'm concerned, very few people embody that quite as much as Pauline. I was going to publish another article this week, but I just had to share her story with you all. It’s too good!

Here we discuss her open relationship, her views on sexuality, and her overall attitude towards being a woman and life. And I am telling you, you do not want to miss the second half of this conversation especially.

If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving us a review or a rating wherever you get your podcasts to help us reach more people. With that, I bring you Pauline and our discussion, “Open Relationships 101.”

Love,

Tash

💌 ✍️

Transcript

Tash Doherty: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Misseducated with me, your host, Tash Doherty. And today we have a very interesting and special conversation with Pauline. She's a girl that I met about a month ago now when we were out. We got talking about the blog, and it came up in conversation that she's in an open relationship, and so I was dying to know all about her experiences.

So that's what we're going to ask her about today. Pauline, welcome to Misseducated!

Pauline: Thank you. Hello, everyone.

Tash Doherty: Welcome. Welcome. So, could you tell us a little bit, as much as you feel comfortable, where you're from? Or how do you identify in terms of your sexuality and roughly how old you are? And also your partner as well?

Pauline: Sure, so my name is Pauline. I'm French, and I am in an open relationship. It's been like, I think it's been four years now. And my partner is also French, and we've been together for four years. I am 28, and he's turning 29 next week. Yeah, and we begin our open relationship. He was the one who brought it up at the beginning. He was like, what do you feel about it? Blah, blah, blah. And I was pretty curious about it. So, in terms of, like, sexuality, I consider myself as pansexual. And my boyfriend is like bi-curious. So yeah, I need to connect with the person, like, I don't care about the sex and the gender.

We've been exploring a lot together. Uh, it hasn't been that easy, but I think it was interesting. It was really interesting. I need to deconstruct a lot of stuff to like being able to actually do it and enjoy it. But I feel like it's worth it.

Tash Doherty: Yeah. That's so awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And so, how did you originally meet your partner?

Pauline: We met on Tinder. I was coming like from a long relationship. And I was like, okay, you know what, I need to get myself out there, blah, blah, blah. But I'm, like, so bad with all the texting and s**t. So, I don't know, I saw him, and I was like, you're cute. So, I sent him a message, and I was like, alright, I'm gonna go straight to the point. Like, do you want to have a drink this Saturday? Because I can't be fucked to like talk to you for like ages. And I don't know what was gonna happen or not. I'm pretty straightforward. If one day I'm ever like, totally single again, this is something I want more in my life because we don't really tell women to go get it kind of. We’re kind of like wait until someone comes.

This is something that I don't want; if I just want it, then I need to be not afraid of a no. So that's what I've done. And he was like, yeah, sure. So, we went for a drink and then it was a magical and really fun night. And since then, we've been together, and we moved to Mexico City together.

Tash Doherty: That’s awesome. And so you had sex like the first time that you guys met?

Pauline: Yeah. Yeah, I didn't care. Like, I go with my – try to understand how am I feeling and like, do I want it? Do I don't want it? So, I was like, okay, like he's cute. Let's see. And I wasn't looking for anything serious. So, I was like, I just want to have fun.

And the second date with him, he was like, “Oh, do you want a relationship?” And I got pretty upset. Like I was like, “Why are you asking me that? Is it because I'm a woman?” And he's like, “No, no, I just want to know like where you stand.”

And I got really, like, in a defensive mode, and I was like, “Well, I just want to know at first if I like you, and let's see how it goes.” And I was like, “Maybe I just want to f**k, you don't know.” So, so yeah, and he was like, “Yeah, but you know, like, I actually really like you. And if, if I would ever be like in a relationship it would be with you.” And I was like, “Okay, that's weird.”

Tash Doherty: Even from the second date? Just after one night that you guys spent together?

Pauline: Yeah, I think he had like a bad experience, and he was like, “Oh, I want to, like, explore a bit,” and then he met me, and he was like, “Oh, I want something different with you.”

But he didn't say it in a good way. It was just a bit like clumsy in how he talked and stuff. And I was like, “What do you want?” I've been with some people that were kind of like mind-f****r and I was like, I hope you're not one of those. So, I was pretty straightforward.

And I think this is something that I want to be more and more like; I want to say what I want and what I don't want and if, and if you're not agreeing with it, then good, but I don't want to like second guess or tiptoeing.

Tash Doherty: Yeah, I think in some Instagram b******t meme I saw, it was like, you can't say the wrong thing to the right person. Asking for what you want, being forward. It works with somebody who also wants that.

Pauline: Yeah, I agree. He said I love you after a month. Like, he was like, yeah. And I was like, wow. But I was also really impressed. Because I think I'm a person that I couldn't be like that because I know that, like, my story makes me want to like protect myself a lot and protect my heart a lot and being scared of being hurt and all of that and I was like wow you're not scared of being hurt. You just say what you think and I thought it like I was pretty impressed. And then, like, because, like, each time we're saying that story, he's like, yeah, but, like, he said, “You said you were scared, but you stayed. It's been four years, girl.” And I'm like, yeah, no.

Tash Doherty: That's so funny. And so, when you mentioned your previous long-term relationship, had you ever been in an open relationship before?

Pauline: Never. And I think we should have because we were like long distance and we both like cheated on each other. So it wasn't good. We should have like talked about it, but I was maybe too young, and I think I didn't know about open relationships at all. So, now, like, I know more about it, and I think it's not about—because for me, open relationship meant it's not serious. You can't be really attached to the person if you're doing that and not really in love with it. Or it's just like someone you're having fun with. And I was in, like, kind of like associating that to someone we love, and you're like, oh, it's actually two different people.

It's hard for me to evolve with someone, to be always on the same page with the person. And sometimes you're not, and it's okay. Especially because we're so young, you have to allow myself or the other person to explore and, like, live who you are.

Tash Doherty: Yeah, and especially, I always think back to my grandfather grew up in a village in Ireland where there were, like, five people. We're like living in different cities or moving for college or, uh, exploring our own careers, changing jobs constantly. So, you do need to, yeah, think about how you want to evolve and explore with a person. And that is what an open relationship can offer as opposed to more strictly monogamous couples.

Pauline: Yeah, no, I agree on that because I come from like a small village in the south of France. I can't do an open relationship there because it's kind of like everyone knows …

Hello Wonderful Readers,

Last week, I interviewed Camilla Sievers, founder of Qi Health. Qi is a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) company that creates personalized blends of natural herbs to solve various problems in women’s health.

Camilla was inspired to create her company from her journey using TCM to relieve her persistent period cramps and other symptoms. Now, her team has built a seamless digital experience to help people access one of the oldest medical systems in the world.

I hope you enjoy our conversation! Feel free to reach out to Camilla on Instagram or LinkedIn to share your healing stories.

Check out her interview in Entrepreneur!

I hope you have a shamelessly sexy weekend 🫦.

Much love,

Tash

💌 ✍️

Interview Transcript

[00:00:00] Tash Doherty: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Misseducated. Our mission for 2025 is to help the world be shamelessly sexy. And that involves a lot of solving women's health problems so that we can all be comfortable in our bodies and happy with our health.

And today, my guest is Camilla Sievers. She's the founder of Qi Health, which is a really awesome direct-to-consumer personalized Chinese medicine blend brand. And we're going to talk all things period pain, her illustrious career as an entrepreneur around the world between Europe, Canada, and America, and anything else that she wants to talk about.

So here we go. Welcome to Misseducated!

[00:00:39] Camilla Sievers: Thank you so much, Tash! I'm so happy to be here.

[00:00:43] Tash Doherty: Welcome, welcome. So you grew up in Austria, your parents are German and Austrian, and what did you want to be when you were a kid?

[00:00:48] Camilla Sievers: I always wanted to be a professional horseback rider because I was always at the stable, and I just love being in nature and with animals. So you know, that would have been my dream, I guess. But other than that, professionally, I never had any aspiration, and I think it comes down to being bad in school that you feel like this, well, this is just not made for you. So, I never dared to dream big in that regard.

[00:01:14] Tash Doherty: I mean, you couldn't have done that badly at school because you did end up at Columbia University at some point, which we'll get into. And so you had no entrepreneurial ambitions at this point. Like, do you have entrepreneurs in your family or how did you get into that?

[00:01:32] Camilla Sievers: I actually, so I grew up in Northern Germany, and then I went to Ireland for the last two years of school. And then, I went to Vienna to study. And my mom had an ophthalmology practice, so yes, she was an entrepreneur. But, it wasn't, you know, you read these biographies of really big entrepreneurs and like that wasn't my life. What shaped me really early on was having two doctors who talked about patients' struggles and healing journeys. And so very early on, that was the conversation that was happening regularly at the dinner table.

And I always felt healing and helping people was something that I aspired to do one day.

[00:02:13] Tash Doherty: Amazing. And you founded your first company, Treats. I'd love to hear all about that. Was that in university still when you decided to like step out into the entrepreneurial journey, a fresh young student out into the real world?

[00:02:26] Camilla Sievers: Yeah, so, you know, it's kind of like, um, all these things fall together in a way, and you can't see them when they fall together, and then you look back, and you're like, oh, that makes sense. First, I studied agricultural sciences, food sciences, and then agronomics, and through my Master's, I really researched in depth the obesity epidemic. So this is like 2011, 2012, and that also brought me to America for the first time because I did all my research there. And, I came back with not only a Master's thesis but an idea for a company where I saw, okay. It's exactly the same that I'm doing now. There's no access to a hundred percent natural foods and drinks.

Everything is full of sugar. It makes people sick. We've created the only diet that makes people sick. And so I wanted to create access, I wanted to educate people and I wanted to make them healthier. Like that was, at the end, the goal with which I started Treats, and I started a company because I thought I was so bad that nobody would hire me. So like, the best way to get around that is to not be hired by anybody else. And, uh, and so, yeah, I started it while I was still writing my Master's thesis and then fully after I handed that in.

[00:03:34] Tash Doherty: That's so interesting because I feel like entrepreneurs, you've got to have a bit of ego, you know, and really believe that you're going to change the world as opposed to: this is the only option that I have because I'm not going to be able to be employed by a corporate monkey.

[00:03:47] Camilla Sievers: Yeah, no, I think it was total imposter syndrome. Uh, but then also, you know, I had a couple of, I guess and like one big entrepreneurial project while at university, and I was just like: wow! It's not reading a textbook and then sitting down for tests. It's actually making something in the real world with real people, and you have to figure it out as you go. And I was so much better at that.

You could see that you've done something, and that was beyond repeating stuff that you've read. But also, it was like this appalling factor of seeing a whole industry that is supposed to keep people healthy doing the opposite.

And so I was just like, there's no marketplace for a hundred percent natural foods and drinks, and I have to create it. And I want people to understand that there are alternatives that are not only amazing for your body but they also taste amazing. Like, you don't have to fall back to oat bars that really have no taste. There's amazing innovation in this space, which I also saw through my studies. And so I wanted to help them along the way of feeling better and adopting a healthier lifestyle.

[00:04:53] Tash Doherty: Yeah, totally. And it's interesting because it does kind of align with capitalism in the sense that people are going to spend money on food. But that's a huge issue, it's health, right? The actual health of the populations and the things that we're dealing with. And, I don't know, I just think about Coca-Cola, where, you know, it's tasty, but it's incredibly bad for the world. There's so much plastic that they're using all the water supplies and all of these giant brands.

And yet, these brands are also fundamental to like our concept of America, so I think it's really interesting to help the consumer aspect of food to evolve into something that's healthier.

[00:05:24] Camilla Sievers: Yeah. It's so funny. My husband is a two-time food and drink entrepreneur. And, I think one of his mentors, I told him the saying that goes, "There's only two times you're really close to a person: when you feed them and when you f**k them." And you know, both should be looked at accordingly. And so it was really always important to me that understanding the closeness to the consumers and understanding that you have to build trust and consumers are not dumb.

They will understand if you sell them something, the same with what we're doing now, that is off the shelf. It is not working. It is not meant to work for the long term because the only objective is to sell you more, which is exactly what the food and, by extension, the pharma industry are doing.

They want you to consume more, not less, and we're kind of like the antithesis. Treats was the antithesis to that. Qi is the antithesis to that. Where it's like we give it to you, you will be healed, and then you won't need it anymore. And so, yeah, I feel like I'm, you know, I'm really proud of that.

[00:06:29] Tash Doherty: Yeah, that is awesome and really cool to look back on your career and be like, there was actually a thread of similar themes, passions, points of the world that I cared about through every single different vent…

🎶 Recommended song pairing (my friend Holly’s idea!):

Introduction

My mission in this life is to help you become shamelessly sexy. Of course, helping you figure out how to be sexy is the fun part. But before we can do that, we need to focus on what no one wants to talk about: shame.

Exploring our shame is challenging. This experience is not going to be comfortable or easy. But I can guarantee that if you can process parts of your shame, give yourself kindness and compassion about it, and then let it go, it can transform your life. Your shame might be connected to your sex life, your body, or your fantasies, but for now, it doesn’t have to be. We’ll have plenty of time to explore sex-related shame later. For now, just focus on whatever shame comes up for you. And don’t worry, because I’ll share plenty of shameful experiences from my own life as well. Let’s dig in!

What is shame?

“Jungian analysts call shame the swampland of the soul. And we're going to walk in." — Brené Brown.

Shame is “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior” (Google). Shameful experiences might make you feel embarrassed, humiliated, or even ostracized by others.

Shame is everywhere. Researcher-storyteller Brené Brown has said, “Shame is an epidemic in our culture” that is “highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders." It also manifests differently based on gender. Brown shares that "[f]or women, shame is: do it all, do it perfectly and never let them see you sweat…this web of unobtainable, conflicting, competing expectations about who we're supposed to be." However, "[f]or men, shame is not a bunch of competing, conflicting expectations. Shame is one: do not be perceived as what? Weak."

The best worst news about shame is that everyone has it; if you don’t experience shame, you’re likely a sociopath who can’t connect with others. While it is painful, shame is a fundamental part of the human experience. In a world of shame, we are the mistake. Shame makes us feel like we’re not good enough, and there’s something wrong with us. But it also makes us human.

What does it mean to be shameless?

To be shameless means to be “not ashamed, especially about something considered generally unacceptable” (Cambridge). It is essentially the absence of shame. To become more shameless, we need to work through our shame and beat it back so it doesn’t bother us anymore. Of course, we can’t change the past. But we can change our mindsets towards our shameful experiences and how much they affect us by following the tips I’ve put together below.

As I mentioned, working through shame is not for the faint-hearted. So, give yourself a pat on the back for preparing to face the darkest corners of your soul! Together, I hope we can achieve something like The Solution of my 12-step program,

“Feelings and buried memories will return. By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly move out of the past.”

Tips

* Identify some shame you have.

Think back to your childhood or youth and pick a memory of when you experienced shame. Try not to pick something too overwhelming to begin with. You might need to repeat this exercise as many times as necessary, focusing on the shame you have from a parent or teacher, siblings, childhood friends, summer camp, school, sports teams, etc.