A Priest’s Daughter’s Pathway From Shame to Pleasure and Self Love

A reflection on growing up in a Christian household, how it led me to my passion + profession as The Therapusst, and where I'm at today with my pleasure, solo and in partnership.

I was cleaning the kitchen listening to a podcast when the title for this piece plopped itself into my head. And if I know anything about Human Design and my Splenic Authority, I’m meant to follow that ping or internal knowing that now is the time to share this part of my story, in this “new” way.

And that’s not to say that some of the other articles I’m wanting to write aren’t as important, because believe me, they are. (Stay tuned for posts about how I work with sexual assault survivors/thrivers, medical trauma, and sacred rage.)

But post-new moon on an overcast afternoon in follicular phase has me in this headspace. I want to timeline some of the nuanced relationships and experiences I’ve had with regards to my sexuality, sensuality, pleasure, sex, and orgasm over the years because I’ve been having a handful of private conversations one-on-one where it’s SO EVIDENT that talking about sex, even with close friends, is still taboo.

In one of those conversations, I shared that I started having sex at 18 and didn’t have an orgasm until 27. That’s almost a DECADE of not prioritizing my pleasure while being sexually active and putting that responsibility in the hands of another.

There’s still a lot of shame (I am ‘bad’), guilt (I did a ‘bad’ thing), misconceptions, limiting beliefs, and disconnection to self going on in women’s hearts, minds, and bodies, and I want to dispel some of that today by sharing.

This written story has been brewing for years, but something in me knows: it’s time to tell it now.

Diary of a PK (IYKYK)

As made evident in the title, I’m the (proud) daughter of a (retired) priest.

I grew up in a Christian household, where, compounded with a Cambodian mom and a little brother 18 months younger, things were fairly strict. And before we get into some of the things that were said (or not), how things were handled, and how they are now—I want to note that I deeply love my parents and we have an ever-evolving relationship where it just gets better and better. I write this from not “an angsty-teen who blames her parents for her life experiences” place, but as a grown-ass woman who has taken responsibility and has found compassion and forgiveness for my parents who just want to love me back.

A few stand out memories from my early upbringing to paint you a picture:

• Zero conversations around private body parts, periods, or sex—at home, church, or youth group. Just had your typical sex ed in middle school, which was subpar, to say the least (something I’m looking to change in my world).

• Once I was old enough to hang out with boys, my dad once called me a ‘tramp’ (he’s since apologized and been forgiven). It didn’t stop me from cultivating honest friendships with men, but it did plant seeds of self-doubt.

• Never explored my body on my own, but I remember sneaking away to watch the nude drawing and sex scene of Titanic at 8 years old, just to see another female body. No one walked around naked at my house and I was definitely curious. I looked forward to what my 18 year old body would look and feel like.

Hello Puberty, Hello High School

• I got my period at 12 years old and when I think back, I used a pad maybe once and instantly switched to tampons because I identified as an athlete who couldn’t be stopped—unless the cramps hit, which they did, every once in a while.

• I have a vivid memory of bravely telling my scary old P.E. coach that I had cramps and wanted to get excused from running the mile that day. He plugged his fingers into his ears saying “lalalalala” and told me he didn’t need to hear that and to find a seat somewhere.

  This was a real and confusing shut down where I internalized some shame and even disgust around my body’s natural rhythms. Hence, hiding tampons from boys in class, being embarrassed to the core when my dad talked about my period, and treating my monthly bleed as a nuisance rather than the gift that it is.

• By the time I entered high school, I was interested in boys, but still had never kissed one. My first deep crush happened to turn into my first boyfriend. As a complete hopeless romantic, I thought he’d be my first kiss - in the rain - after a football game where we won - Cinderella story style - but after 3 months, he broke up with me because he couldn’t wait.

  This was the first time I learned that I wasn’t good at naming my desires clearly. I had hoped he’d read my mind. I also sadly internalized the narrative that only I had patience for my desires coming to fruition, and this would be one of many instances where boys would get frustrated with me and dump me for not giving them what they wanted in the form of physical affection.

  But why was it that I wasn’t ready or didn’t want to? I feel that there has always been a heavy note of sacredness in the kind of connection I wanted.

  I wasn’t being prude. I was being discerning.

  I had a flavor of “good Christian girl” but when I felt safe and loved, all bets were off.

• My first kiss happened at 15, and afterwards my curiosity blossomed—a nice way of saying: I loved to make out.

Off to College for More Firsts

We don’t need to get into the granular details of my hookup history, but I do want to mile mark some of the more prominent events and relationships that shaped my understanding of relationships, sex, shame, and connection to God.

• The first time I had sex (let’s also please stop calling this “losing your virginity”) was with someone from back home while on Winter Break my freshman year. I was 18, he was older. I crushed hard on him afterwards, but was continually allowing myself to be mistreated. By that time, I carried lower self worth and standards in the relationship department.

• When my parents discovered I was on the Pill (I had a boyfriend sophomore year of college), my body literally broke out in hives—an embodied reaction to the shame I carried around sex.

• After my college boyfriend and I broke up, I started dating another guy I liked. We had sex, and then I went home for spring break where my mom, my brother and I had a conversation I’ll never forget. It had to do with saving ourselves for marriage, being connected to our chosen partner through God, and why that was so important to her. Even though I was sexually active at the time, her earnest and vulnerability really struck a chord with me, so much so that I came back to school, and told the guy I was dating that I wanted to not have sex anymore—not to become a “born again Virgin,” but to give myself time to process what sex really meant to me. What surprised me back then, and not at all now, was that he didn’t want to keep dating if we weren’t going to be having sex.

• I did not give myself enough time to come to any real conclusions about what sex meant to me in college. I soon returned to it, I still carried guilt on my “walk of shame” carrying my heels home from the night before. I did have one micro-situationship where the guy really encouraged me to find out what would help me orgasm. I didn’t with him, or with myself at that point, but that was also a lesson that spoke to the energetic pressure of what MY orgasm would mean about him as a lover.

• During all of college, despite being sexually active, I didn’t orgasm—solo or partnered. That wouldn’t come until my late 20s.

Getting Schooled Again + Dr. Brittney’s Orgasm

I entered graduate school for physical therapy in San Diego in 2014. My focus was going to be on ME, succeeding in school, and pursuing my dreams. Maybe finding a husband (lol). Well, I found myself in another relationship. Likely the least communicative and most destructive relationship to my sense of confidence looking back. This was the relationship where:

• I went on the Nuva Ring for birth control and had the worst emotional roller coasters, set off by my inability to hold better standards for myself.

• I thought that if we were really a happy couple, we’d be having sex at least 3-4 times per week. I don’t know where that number or belief came from, but we definitely weren’t doing that. We were both grad students navigating stress. My shame about NOT having sex got shoved away. My fear around being abandoned for voicing any desires kept me quiet.

• My confidence eroded. I stuffed down my desires, felt trapped, and when I finally asked him to use a vibrator with me, he got frustrated and dismissed me as ‘one of those women who can’t orgasm.’ It broke my trust.

• Not long after, at 27, I had my first solo orgasm—with a vibrator, alone. It wasn’t fireworks, but it proved there was nothing ‘wrong’ with me. And looking back now, I see it wasn’t that my body was broken. It was that I’d never been given the chance, the space, or the tools to actually know my body. At this point, I still hadn’t grieved the fact that I didn’t fully understand my physiology, my mechanics, my arousal anatomy, or how my low self worth and love impacted me.

2016-2018: Shaken Up by My Saturn’s Return

• I received my Doctorate in Physical Therapy in April 2016. Believe it or not, I stayed with that boyfriend through that graduation, studying for boards, moving into a new home in Carlsbad, and finally getting my first clinical job. It was at this point that I was developing more of my connection to God again, along side the women who I was so blessed to work with at the PT clinic. I was also deeply involved in the yoga community by then, teaching weekly and really getting into personal development work.

• In 2017, I finally broke up with my boyfriend. I had been emotionally detached for months, if not a whole year, and that really kicked things off for me. I moved to Oceanside with an angel friend of mine and met someone new who I started dating soon after.

My next relationship was all-consuming and… toxic—I identified at the time as “classic anxious-avoidant” attachment. It was passionate, but not emotionally safe. It was also the first time I experienced a partnered orgasm during penetration (~age 28), though it only happened when I was numbing my system with weed or alcohol. It would be years before I learned that what my body actually needed was slowness, safety, and presence—not numbing. This was the relationship where:

• I was still at the clinic seeing 8-12 patients a day and decided to have a quickie solo-session with my vibrator before work one day. That was a 10 minute power session/clitoral sneeze that I wrapped up the moment it was over, jumped out of bed, cleaned up and went to work. Once I arrived, things went downhill quickly. I experienced a PAINFUL feeling between my legs at my pelvic floor that was a similar sensation to a UTI, feeling the need to go to the bathroom every 2 minutes. Every time I would try to go, nothing happened—just pain. I was lucky and happened to have a pelvic floor physical therapist as a patient for her vertigo. I called her up, told her what was happening, and she advised me to go home, rest, and if I was brave, use my vibrator again to have an orgasm, but this time—enjoy it. Relax. So I did. And that feeling went away right after. A curiosity about how my pelvic floor and pleasure operated was unlocked for me right then.

• I experienced yet again a level of shame for “giving myself away” to a man I wasn’t married to (and who I knew deep down wasn’t treating me the way I wanted to be treated). My brother called me to tell me he was going to propose to his now-wife and I had an internal crisis. I, again, came back to my man at the time and told him I’d like to pause on having sex so I could sort my feelings out about it. He honored it, stayed with me, and didn’t pressure me at all, until I crumbled into the anxious and manipulative parts of me who knew she could hook into him for “love” and affection through her sex two weeks later.

• Meanwhile, my curiosity about coming off hormonal birth control kickstarted a different aspect of feminine awakening and reclamation. The timelines of the introspection I was facing with my sexual behavior overlapped with my desire to sync my life to my cycle. I had been on birth control BECAUSE of sex and protection from pregnancy. It made me realize that I wasn’t actually connecting to my body in the way I wanted. I wasn’t even letting myself see and receive potent parts of me. I came off of it with so much ease and eagerness in September 2018, and my relationship painfully dissolved two months later. I took my first course in pelvic physical therapy and prenatal yoga teacher training and my life completely changed.

Embodiment: A Ever-Evolving Process

The steps I took to reclamation of my period first, my pussy, and eventually my sex/head/heart didn’t look like most women’s. Starting a business in 2019 was part of that, and it’d be silly not to mention how entrepreneurship is a catalyst for shadow work, just as much as relationships. Mapping it out, here were those tangible steps, events, resources, and relationships that helped me name the things I was most afraid of (abandonment, not belonging, not being loved) to loving myself (with some apologies and shyness at first → unapologetically):

• 2018: I began blogging, sharing about periods and others’ reflective experiences online (OGs, remember Period Truth?!). Hosted my first in person workshop on cycle syncing to a local high school varsity soccer team. I kept showing up for my yoga, classes that worked my shakti energy with my soul sister Katie Kasten, and had more empowering private conversations with family and friends around sex and spirituality.

• 2019: Officially started my business. I took brand photos, my first of many photoshoots to come, with another soul sister, euni. I taught in person and online workshops about periods, cycle syncing, menstrual cups.

• At some point, I started grappling with the nitty gritty of my beliefs around sex and what they talked about in church (which I had been going to for a bit). After lots of journaling, crying it out, talking to friends, and more investigation, I came to terms with the part of myself that desired devoted union, sacred sex, and a partner that understood how I felt around masturbation and porn use—because how you do one thing is how you do...everything.

• 2020: Within the first quarter of the year, I was reconnecting to and reclaiming my body—with witnesses—in brand new ways. I taught a live month-long program for Lululemon on periods with ~11 women, modeled for a live nude drawing art class, did my first nude photo shoot, got shut in for Covid and started dancing on TikTok for fun, turned 30, and taught my first online course about periods and cycle syncing. All the while, I was dating people casually, including a pastor and a cop. I was realizing during this time that my beliefs around God, my connection to Source, needed some more attention.

• Summer 2020: I was pulled to do more intentional subconscious work through To Be Magnetic, and did inner shadow, inner child, and the love and money workshops. It was through this work I got to do some of the deep grieving for the young girl in me who wasn’t taught what she was curious about, likely because of the religious upbringing I had. I grieved and forgave my parents, past partners, and myself for everything that had happened up until that point, generating more self love and compassion for myself than I had ever had. Then, I was invited to join a ceramics class in a friend’s garage. This was where I met (read: manifested) James, my current partner.

• Late 2020: James and I fell in love, quickly. Assuredly. The emotional safety was there from the beginning, orgasming from just kissing—and he was even game to make content with me for couples who were experiencing different kinds of pain during sex. Showing up online in that way was the quickest alchemy for turning shame into unabashed pleasure and self love I’ve ever experienced. TikTok was actually a lab for me to work those sensations through me.

• 2021-2022: These were slower, yet big, years of my embodiment experience and expression. I learned more about my arousal anatomy, slow pleasure, combining crystal wands, yoni eggs, and vibrators, solo and partnered, thanks to another soul sister Chelsea Adair. At this point, I called my solo-play and exploration something different than a personal pleasure practice or masturbation. I called it a sex lab, one that appealed to my inner scientist and innocent eroticism. This all of a sudden became a huge point of conversation for me, because the orgasms I was experiencing solo and with James were out of this world—and it had turned everything I thought I knew about sex on its head.

• Goop Lab came out on Netflix, and I made my family sit with me to watch Betty Dodson’s episode. (They didn’t have questions for me afterwards, but they still obliged and loved me afterwards 🥹) I read Women’s Anatomy of Arousal by Sheri Winston and Come as You are by Emily Nagoski (on top of many others). Sex and pleasure, on MY terms—through physiology, experimentation, encouraged self-exploration—became one of my talking points online. I began to blend that understanding with everything I knew about periods, pregnancy, birth, postpartum and general pelvic health and started the Pelvic Pulse Podcast after receiving a $5000 grant from Caress and crowdfunding $10,000 more.

• 2023: After giving a TEDx talk and launching season 1 of the podcast, where in the very first episode I first really named the fact that I couldn’t separate my personal life from my professional life anymore, I brought back one of my original masterclasses: S.L.O.P.E., which stood for secure, loving, open pelvic embodiment, and shifted it into a workshop series. Six different topics, one each week, that spanned over the different curiosities or life experiences one could have with their pelvic health. They were:

  • Sacred Anatomy + Physiology

  • Sexy Cycles + Seasons (Syncing + Tracking)

  • Love Your Lineage + Birth Stories

  • Bathroom Basics

  • Sexuality + Spirituality: Overcoming Pain and Shame

  • From Maiden to Mother: Honoring Preconception + Postpartum (a free workshop now)

  Each workshop had a guided practice involved, whether that was light movement, meditation, or pelvic mapping.

  What I realized after hosting the workshops was that women didn’t need MORE information.

  They needed a non-judgmental space to explore their questions and inner narratives. They needed the guidance and accountability to come back to their root. Their power. Their pussy. Just like I had been practicing, where slowing down was a chance to face all the old and stale stories, the tension was released, and new stories about our bodies and pleasure were rewritten into a frequency of self understanding and love.

It was here where I learned for me, God and pleasure aren’t opposites. They’re the same current. Love.

The Birth of Vaginal Alchemy, Becoming The Therapusst

Since 2024, I’ve been teaching on these same topics for pelvic embodiment and guiding women to be with themselves more fully—in a way that sparks forgiveness, grief, joy, vitality, truth, and eventually, confidence and inner radiance that is undeniable.

It’s THIS work—a combination of knowledge, slow and nurturing embodiment practices that go deeper for me than dance, community who hears, sees and supports you, and accountability, not to pressure you, but help you transmute what no longer serves your highest self and to encourage you to pursue what brings you pleasure—that took me from a place of shame to empowerment.

This is the essence of Vaginal Alchemy.

I’ve worked with coach Caroline D’Arcy, the shame whisperer and a sexological bodyworker who understood what it was like to grapple with religion and desire for great sex, taught, and held me in the same reverence I now had for my body.

Now in 2025, I’m living, breathing, oozing my work, loving myself the most.

I dubbed myself The Therapusst, who believes in God/Universe/All and the sacred intelligence of our bodies.

I have a loving and respectful relationship with each family member, and with James, where the awkward, intimate, and hard conversations are had on a regular basis. We’re continuing to learn about each other and are committed to being the best versions of ourselves.

I do my best to lead with love first, continue to develop a rhythm and practice of pleasure in my everyday life. Like cycle syncing our connection, dates, and sex. Romanticizing the small things. Celebrating the big things. All the while working with my body, externally and internally, as prescribed by my internal knowing.

I think because of all this, I’m having the best sex of my life. Where I feel cherished. Solo and partnered. Uninhibited and feral. Playful and human. Soft and sweet. Always honest. Real. Messy. Sober. Penetration or no penetration, orgasm or no orgasm, it’s always a pleasure.

Thinking back, it’s wild to me that a priest’s daughter—once crippled with shame—is now calling herself The Therapusst, lovingly living her calling guiding others, and experiencing partnership as a source of freedom and pleasure.

I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

If you made it all the way down here, I’m appreciative of you taking the time to read.

Love,

Dr. Brittney