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by Esther M. Hooley (Author)
Purity culture was the lie that kept us docile, kept us giving and giving, and told us never to take. It said pleasure was only meant for some people at certain times. It told women they weren't enough and simultaneously too much. It made us strangers in our skin. It crushed the dreams of men and women alike. It was the snake in the grass that always found a way to strike. To cope with the destruction of our dreams, we learned to cope by cutting ourselves off from the bodies we inhabited. We cut ourselves off from sexuality, pleasure, and the right to have desire by silencing fundamental parts of our identity. Many of us learned from purity culture that we are fragmented and disconnected, and when this happens, we are more easily controlled by false messaging and are lost to ourselves. Embracing Erotic Wholeness invites you to get curious about topics in sexuality that we've though dualistically about for so long. It asks you to live into the gray as the space where we learn that we don't have to know the answers and there isn't always a "right or wrong." The gray is more of a wondering about what fits with our spirit and our soul. This book explores sexuality and spirituality with an open spirit, and reveals to us that we have the freedom to see how sexuality can attune us more to the longings with which we were endowed. It helps us to see that eroticism doesn't have to be a place where we diverge from our spirituality, but where we learn to see that eroticism is integral to a deep and lasting desire for something more.
