Where Have I Been All My Life?

I had a short, weird dream this morning that I was some sort of self-help guru (ha!). I had just written a book and was doing a book signing. Just before waking up, I caught a glimpse of the title of my book which was "Where Have I Been All My Life" and I woke up chuckling. When I told my husband about it this morning, he did a Google search (of course) and found a lot of blog posts with the same title, so I thought I should join in. He said there was one blogger who had written about the fact that Obama's campaign slogan (This is Our Time. This is Our Moment.) had really inspired him to take more responsibility for himself. Perhaps that slogan has just seeped in to my thoughts.

I went to a wonderful workshop last night called Beyond Birds and Bees. It is led by my friend Katie Malinski, who is a therapist specializing in early childhood. We talked a lot about how sex education is so much more than just talking about intercourse, contraception, and diseases. Sex education starts really early for children. We teach them about self esteem, relationships, respect, anatomy, autonomy, media, etc., and that is their foundation for a healthy, sexual adult. We were asked to think of the first thing that came to our minds when we hear the words "sex education" and we all thought "film strip," oddly enough. I was so inspired because it goes back to taking responsibility for yourself and your family. What a relief to know that I am open to talking to Levi about sex because nobody ever talked to me about it. It isn't like it was considered a bad thing in our family, but it just wasn't something that was openly discussed and, to me, that's almost as dangerous as shaming your child when they try to talk about sexuality with their parents. There were some hilarious stories from the workshop. And I just had to write down that Levi, instead of privacy, says privaseed. I love it so much that I don't correct him. And because he has a CD of stories that are told by a British woman, he now knows that there are two meanings for the word cock. All thanks to the twelve-year-old in me who just had to giggle when she said it. Of course I will make sure he knows that in our house, the correct term is penis.

Off to work! On my book.