No Guilt Summer is presented by Just Cakes Bakeshop. JCB is a Food Network winning bakery based right here in Surrey, BC. They aim to create a culture of appreciation around desserts & pastries, while evoking emotion and memories through the power of sweet treats. Their Just Jars are my guilty pleasure (Reese’s one to be exact!) and exactly what I’ll be munching on guilt free all throughout my No Guilt Summer. Visit their website www.justcakesbc.com or check them out on Instagram @justcakesbakeshop
Here’s a guilt I still don’t know how to curb: leaving your house to go hang out with a mans after lying to your parents about where you’re going.
I don’t know about you, but for the longest time, my parents’ energy lingered and hovered over me every time I was going to see a mans. I’d be nervous all week leading up to the day and then nervous the day of having to lie about where I was going. I’d look my mom dead in the eye and tell her the elaborate lie that I’d come up with, trying extremely hard not to stutter, shake, or sweat through my pores.
On the way there, I’d be shaky and nervous because I absolutely hate having to lie. Lying makes me incredibly uncomfortable and carrying the weight of a lie makes me very ungrounded.
During my teens and early 20s, I simply couldn’t get my parents out of my head when I was with a boy. From the weight of the lie to the weight of my entire family’s honour, I would constantly feel guilty about the dating, the hanging out, the hooking up, and the pleasure. None of it felt like my own and I had tremendous guilt around even thinking that it was my own.
For me, the guilt stemmed from doing what I was always unofficially told not to do. Good girls did not do any of this. Even though I knew in my heart that I was doing nothing wrong, it still felt wrong. And so, every time I left the house lying about who I was seeing, where I was going, and what I was going for.
I think about how sad it actually is to navigate dating, intimacy, your sexuality, and pleasure with guilt. I think about how unfair it is to not feel grounded and present during those experiences. I think about how messed up it is to have your parents and not your own senses at the forefront of your mind when navigating these incredibly normal, necessary experiences.
I think about how much I would love to be able to move through experiences of intimacy, sensuality, pleasure, and just straight up fun without guilt looming over my head. Mostly, I think about how lit life would be if I didn’t have to carry concealer with me or come up with elaborate (and quite frankly really silly) lies about what that thing on my neck is.
I’ve built a better, more transparent relationship with my parents now and I’ve begun reclaiming my own experiences, but there is a ‘but’. While yes, now I can say that a mans is picking me up from home for a date, or that I’m going out for drinks with the guy I have a crush on, I still haven’t been able to fully let go of the guilt. I haven’t been able to fully lose myself in the experience of being out with a mans. I’m still holding on to the ideology that good girls don’t do bad things.
To that end though, I commit myself to a #noguiltsummer around all of this. I publicly proclaim: Good girls are girls who put themselves, their bodies, and their pleasure first. Good girls are girls who take no shit and give no shit. Good girls are girls who decide for themselves what is good and what is bad.
Good girls are all girls and I’m going to really let myself believe that for this year’s #noguiltsummer.
