How sexual assault helped me find a mission in life

This is a heavier topic today.

A lot of my topics lately have been pretty intense in the fact that they relate to sexuality, and marital intimacy.

I'm sure that many people are wondering exactly WHY I have suddenly (in the last 2 years) become so heavily involved with my Pure Romance business and sexual wellness and intimacy. I'll explain it to you.

**Warning here** I'm definitely going to share some experiences that are not so pretty to read. I won't be graphic with the details of the abuse, but I will absolutely be raw with the emotions that I experienced and the process that I've gone through during my short lifetime to get to where I am now.

**The Real Warning** This may be a trigger post for many, so I am truly sorry if this makes you relive trauma that you weren't prepared to deal with right now. I do hope though that IF this does trigger you, and you feel the need to share, I would love to hear from other survivors. I absolutely cannot offer professional help, but I can offer empathy to the situation.

Many of you may know that I was adopted. I talk very openly about my adoption and the fact that I absolutely believe I found a part of my family that I had been missing for a long time. I had the unique experience of being adopted at the age of 12, and prior to that living with my biological family. I LOVE my family (biological and adopted alike). In fact, I don't generally distinguish between the two. They are all my family, and they all love an accept me just the same.

^^^ That's the important part about my adoption. ^^^

Now the experience that I really wanted to talk about. At a young age (around 9, I can't be 100% sure) My family sublet our garage apartment to someone that my mom had known for quite some time. This wasn't some stranger that simply showed up one day. This was someone who, In my opinion, was known and trusted.

One night, I remember waking up to him sitting at the foot of my bed. He quickly shushed and reassured me that everything was alright.

Everything.was.not.alright.

That was the first night that I had ever experienced any sort of sexual contact.

I was 9.

This went on for a while. I let it, and I always felt guilty for my own trauma.

Deep down I knew that I could have stopped it at some point, but in my mind, I was also made to believe by my aggressor that if I allowed it to happened to me, that he would avoid my younger brother. Hindsight being 20/20 that was no guarantee of anything.

This was someone who abused my trust, and my family's trust time and time again.

I remember the day that we moved out of that house. It was a day with so many conflicting feeling for me. On the one hand, I felt sad to be leaving my home, my family, the life I had known as long as I could remember.

On the other hand, I was finally free of the perpetrator... or so I thought.

Fast forward to High School.. I was nerdy, and unattractive, and that suited me because nobody paid any attention to me. I didn't have to face any of the abuse from earlier in my life. I know that for many victims of sexual assault and rape, that this isn't necessarily the case. They try to find their identity in an over sexualized, hormone-filled world that is high school, and they struggle, and they overcompensate.

I'm not saying I didn't feel these feelings. Looking back, I definitely did, but for the time being, I simply tried to be as invisible as possible. I felt like I wasn't worthy of being friends with the wholesome girls. I wasn't wholesome. I wasn't even whole.

I wasn't bad enough to be a bad girl. I didn't want to be.

I was in limbo. Sometimes I was good enough for my friends, and sometimes I wasn't. Sometimes I was too much drama because I was refusing to address the real issues, and sometimes I had the wrong response all together.

The fact of the matter was. I still carried so much guilt for what I had been through. And I couldn't talk to anyone about it, because we don't talk about these sorts of things. We don't talk about sex when it's not enveloped in the uncomfortable undertones of shame, much less when it is.

I remember going to Sunday school and hearing the comparison of sexual purity being like a nice white picket fence. When you engage in sexual acts that's like putting a nail into the fence, and yes, you can seek repentance and remove the nail, but then there's a hole that you can't fill.

Being an adult now, I know that you can get wood filler and you can absolutely fill that hole. You don't need to feel damaged for the rest of your life because of a crime perpetrated against you as a child, but at the time, I fully believed that there was some shame that I would have to carry with me for the rest of my life. I believed that my worth was lessened because of the trauma that I had endured.

Fast forward again. I got married at 19 to the first guy who showed any real interest in me. We had our issues, and I was not equipped to deal with them. It ended in nasty divorce and an attempt to end my own life.

Thankfully, I wasn't successful, because down the road, I would find out that I absolutely was still valuable. I am so grateful for that knowledge and the fact that I wasn't successful in ending my short life on such a low note.

I have since remarried, and I now have a beautiful family, but that didn't fix everything. I still struggled with my internal view of my worth. I struggled with being intimate like many do--not only because of my trauma, but because of my stage of life, having recently had a baby, taking anti depressants, taking birth control, etc. It's all been something that I have had to deal with.

I had to wrap my head around the fact that these issues were absolutely NOT a punishment for what happened earlier on in my life. These were normal things that happen to women.

So when Pure Romance came into my life, and I saw an opportunity to educate women about their bodies, help them feel more emotional satisfaction from their most intimates relationships, and empower them to ask questions and have conversations, I took the leap.

It is now a part of my mission in life to make sure that women everywhere know that they are still valuable regardless of trauma or even poor choices on their part.

There is no reason that we should carry this shame, and disdain for ourselves throughout our lives.

We are valuable.

We are worth it.

We are women, not victims.

Please share.

** Today is Denim Day. You can read about it here to learn more about this movement and what it does to raise awareness for women everywhere.

How to be successful in Direct Sales

So I know many people are really wanting to know how to bring in extra money working from home doing direct sales.

Well here are my thoughts on the subject.

I've been in direct sales for 2.5 years now, and I've learned quite a few things along the way.

First of all, it does take work. You don't just buy a kit and have everyone's orders fall into your lap. It takes lots of work. You won't get rich quick doing direct sales, but you can make lots of money when you will put in the time.

Second, Consistency is key. If you are like me (a little bit of a free spirit) you may not like the idea of scheduling yourself. I mean after all, isn't the point to be freeing up your time? I have found that by scheduling my time for just a couple of hours each day, that I am much more successful productivity wise. This also allows me to do what I want the rest of the day, but there are certain "hit times" that I make myself meet. Sometimes the time of day changes. I can spend an hour in the morning, just the same as I do in the evening, and get the work done. So I schedule around life, but I make sure that I do it every day.

Next, Find a system that works for you. Just like I schedule my time, I have started doing the same tasks in the same order. For example, every Monday I do a motivational post, Customer Follow Up, and Hostess Coaching. Tuesdays are set aside for my team. I am always available for questions, comments, concerns, brainstorming, etc. BUT on Tuesday I won't schedule anything else. My focus is on my team, so if nobody calls... I literally sit and wait all day. Wednesday has a task, as do Thursday and Friday. A couple hours a day, and then I'm done for the most part.

Again, Stay a student! Always learn about the new products, their benefits, why people want them. How your customers can benefit from them. Spend a little time learning about them, and they will pay back in mass amounts. Also personal development is huge here. Always strive to be bettering yourself!

Another tip, and this was BIG for me, Build a team. It seems like a scary thing to do, and I waited far too long to go for it, but once I started building a team I found a whole new level of motivation. Now depending on which company you are going to be working for, the way that you build your team will vary. For me, I don't earn directly from my teams sales. This is what helps every consultant in our company take home more money. We all start between 40-45% commission at the lowest level. We can do this because We don't share our profits with our uplines. At the end of the month, we get bonuses based on how our team has done, but that money comes from corporate directly. Awesome right?


The last tip I'm going to share today, although there are about a million more I could share, is this: get on the phone. This was hard for me. I hate the phone. I think I sound like a crazy person, and it makes me nervous, but getting on the phone really makes a difference. You can have a coherent conversation, and your contacts can actually hear your excitement. It makes the biggest difference!

This can seem overwhelming, but pick one task to work on and it will pay off! Good Luck!

*****If this post has helped you, please share it with friends and business partners. If you would like to learn more about my awesome business in women's health and sexuality, please reach out! I'd love to have you on my team!

Intimacy is not a sin

One thing that has always sort of seemed off to me is the idea that we don't talk about our sex lives.

I'm not saying we should be giving the nitty gritty details to everyone. Don't get me wrong, that could get weird...


...But our spouse? We should absolutely be talking to each other about what we like, what we don't, what we would like to try, or have zero interest in trying.

So why don't we?


I'm going to give a religious thought here, so be warned...

I really truly believe that the adversary/Lucifer/Satan/what-ever-you-choose-to-call-him absolutely uses taboos on sex to drive us away from talking to our partners about something that shouldn't be scary.

He makes us feel "dirty" "guilty" "shameful" for wanting to be sexual beings in our homes with our spouses.

AND. WE. LET. HIM.


So why do we do that? Is it because our parents never really talked about it?

I think that as kids we grow up being told that sex is "bad unless you are married." "Wait until you're married." "Nobody wants gum that's already been chewed." Etc.

So we put a taboo on our sexuality and go into marriages pretty naïve.

We wonder what is okay to want, okay to do, okay to even talk about...

... and then we don't talk about it. We are afraid that our spouse will judge us, that they will think that we are dirty, or freaky, or sinners. Why are we afraid of our spouses judging us?

I think it's because we don't know what they will say, and they probably feel exactly the same way.

I also think it is a tool of the adversary to drive a wedge between spouses. There is no room for shame or guilt within an intimate relationship if you truly want it to flourish.

We need to start talking about this with our spouses.

*****

Breaking away from that thought for a moment, I wanted to share a few quotes from church publications. I'm LDS, so these will pertain to my faith directly. I also want to give the disclaimer that this is my understanding and is not meant to be considered church doctrine.

"Sexual Relations within marriage are divinely approved not only for the purpose of procreation, but also as a means of expressing love and strengthening emotional and spiritual bonds between husband and wife." -The Church Handbook


"Physical intimacy between husband and wife is beautiful and sacred. It is ordained of God for the creation of children and for the expression of love within marriage." -True to the Faith


There are plenty more that blatantly explain how important intimacy is within a marriage. None of them tell you exactly how to, or how frequently, and this is one of the big reasons that I feel communication is so important.

We should be discussing with our spouses what we are looking for. It should be an open conversation that warrants revision from time to time as you go throughout life together.


***** If you found something valuable in this blog post, or have more in depth questions, I am happy to answer them either through comments, or email. Also if you find value in the type of information that I give from time to time, and would like to host your own educational ladies' night, let me know!