No Body Is Broken

If you have ever felt like your body is failing you, you are not alone. If sex has felt confusing, painful, impossible, or far away, you are not alone. If you’ve cried after intimacy, or gone numb during it, or avoided it entirely for years, you are not alone.

I want you to hear this clearly. You are not broken.

There is no one right way to be sexual. There is no single timeline. No perfect body. No universal standard of pleasure. What there is, instead, is your truth. Your story. Your nervous system. Your sensations, your limits, and your longings. And all of those are allowed to take up space.

Many people come to me saying something is wrong with them. They do not crave what they think they should crave. They cannot orgasm the way they used to. Their body has changed from illness, injury, aging, or trauma. They say, I used to feel sexual, but now I just feel lost. Or numb. Or scared. Or tired. Or nothing at all.

I always tell them the same thing. You are not malfunctioning. You are adapting.

Bodies adapt to survive. When something overwhelming happens, whether physical or emotional, the body may shut down in order to keep you safe. That shutdown might show up as low libido, dissociation, pain, tension, avoidance, or over-compliance. That is not your body betraying you. That is your body protecting you the best way it knows how.

And it makes sense that sex might be hard, especially if the world has not been kind to your body. If you were touched before you gave consent. If you were punished for your gender. If you were told your body was too fat, too dark, too disabled, too queer, too different. If you received medical care that ignored your pleasure. If you internalized shame from religion, family, or media. All of that stays in the tissue. Not forever. But long enough to matter.

So when your body resists sex, or responds differently than it used to, that is not failure. That is information. That is your nervous system saying, I am not ready yet. Or I need a different approach. Or please go slower. Or please ask again.

This is why I teach pleasure as a form of listening. Not as a goal to chase, but as data to receive. When we stop demanding that our bodies perform, we begin to hear what they actually need. And sometimes, what they need is gentleness. Sometimes what they need is rest. Sometimes what they need is not sex at all, but touch, safety, breath, warmth, or grieving.

You get to start where you are. Not where you think you should be. Not where your partner wants you to be. Not where you were five years ago. Right here. Right now. With the body you have today.

Your body is not broken. It may be healing. It may be tired. It may be cautious. But it is still wise. It is still capable of pleasure, even if that pleasure looks different than it once did. Even if it starts as the relief of saying no. Even if it comes in small moments, like warmth in the chest, or a soft exhale, or tears that finally come.

You do not need to be fixed. You need to be met.

Let this be your reminder that there is nothing wrong with your pace, your boundaries, your curiosity, or your absence of desire. Healing is not linear. Pleasure is not a performance. Your body is not behind. Your body is communicating.

You are allowed to listen.

With love,
Nina