A moment of healing from purity culture that I experienced

I was very religious from ~12-19. It then took a couple years after for me to fully leave Catholicism, and even now on the cusp of 30, I’m only just processing a lot of shit. And of course a goldmine of both pain and insight comes from my experiences with purity culture in the 2000s-2010s. I am a gay woman, for context, so I had that added shame and only realized I was queer at 22, which I still hold some resentment about (even though I had inklings earlier on).

Like some of you, I had heard the classic chewed gum, used tape, etc examples from purity culture when I was a teenager. I remember my youth group leader telling us that we would be damaged goods and would forever hold a piece of that person’s soul, much to our future husband’s displeasure. In fact, I attended Steubenville at one point and was given that card where you promise your virginity to your future spouse. I refused to sign it, like I refused to even consider a vocation as a nun. Even as a religious nut, I still had a distant inkling that I would like sex, money, and freedom too much for that life.

Skip to my mid 20s. I was working at an inpatient center as a therapist and had a coworker who was pretty unhinged, but had real nuggets of wisdom and had overcome addiction herself. She told me about this exercise she did with clients in which she would hold up a crisp $100 bill and ask clients if they wanted it. Naturally they would all raise their hands. Then she would throw it on the ground, stomp on it, and crumple it up. After picking it back up, she’d hold it up again and ask who wanted it. They all raised their hands yet again. She would then explain that everybody is like that $100. Even if you feel dirty, used, and degraded at times, nothing can take away your worthiness and value as a person. None of this was spiritual or religious, just stated as a very anti-shame memory.

I told my partner about that exercise recently and she thought it was sweet, but I ended up crying because I felt touched by it in retrospect. It took me a while to figure out why this exercise, which I’m sure is cheesy to some, was so touching to me. And that’s when I connected the dots to my background in purity culture. Hearing the opposite message was so healing for me, instead of feeling like I was used, dirty, or disgusting.

Fuck purity culture.

TL;DR a simple, cheesy exercise at a treatment center I worked at back in the day was healing because it countered the purity culture bullshit I was taught in my youth.