We are born as sexual creatures. This sexuality, this passion, is a natural part of being human, of being mammal, of being ALIVE. Our everyday lives depend on the level of passion we carry within ourselves.

We could not survive without passion, nothing can. It takes passion to create a world. It takes passion to destroy it.

Is passion responsible then for humankind's 'Sins?' Do away with passion. Do away with temptation. Do away with the beauty of sexual interaction between adults. Make everything evil and wicked, and Evil cannot win.

Denial doesn't make the truth go away. It just puts it on hold for another day.

Passion is not to blame for humankind's heartaches. Passion has been wrongfully married to shame, which gave birth to blame, which married guilt, which gave birth to SIN.

What happened to Us? What happened to the beauty of Passion's touch?

My daughter is sixteen. She has recently begun to date. Her boyfriend is seventeen. They are both in school band together and often go to football games to play music during halftime.

When this young man believes my daughter may be cold he takes off his jacket and places it around her shoulders. She, of course, being completely like her mother, gives the coat right back.

I told my daughter, 'It's alright to bend a little with the wind. The next time accept his offer of the coat. He offers it to you because he feels protective towards you and he wants to keep you warm. Trust me, one day the woman who lives inside of you will look back on this young man with the fondest of memories.'

Passion has wrapped itself around these two young people and they are free to discover for themselves the mysteries of this wondrous life.

My daughter is an innocent. My definition of an ' Innocent ' is someone who makes it into their teenage years untouched by the violent abuse of passion's touch.

It has taken four generations of women to produce this single female who remains, for now, an innocent.

When all of our years are added together they represent almost three hundred years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Think of it, Three Hundred Years, to produce one female child who has not, as yet, been abused.

Should these figures hold up for the rest of the world it becomes quite staggering to realize the vast number of children who grow up in physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive homes.

We wonder what has happened to humankind. We wonder why we have so much devastation and destruction in every area of the world. We wonder why humankind, in this enlightened age, still makes War a solution to anything. We wonder why we have so many wife abusers, and child abusers. We wonder why there are so many child porn sites on the Internet. Why women are still being sold into white slavery. Why Gays are hated for being Gay. Why mothers kill their children. Why fathers walk away from their offspring without a backward glance. Why people kill and maim and torture all other life forms on this planet.

We wonder, and then we pretend we don't understand.

Why? Why? Why?

We who survive abuse become the abusers. (I know we don't all grow up to abuse others. However, all of us who grow up in Harm's Way are guilty of abusing ourselves).

I wish I could say otherwise. However my own life, and the lives of my brother and sister speak the truth, and this truth cannot be denied. In a time span of sixty years, within my family alone, we have alcoholics, emotional child abusers, wife beaters, and extremely bitter parents who continue to hold their children responsible for the outcome of their life choices.

We set the stage for our own self-destruction and then complain, about God, when what we created turns on us.

I grew up in a home where passion was a thing to be feared. I grew up in a home where being born female was a Sin. I grew up in a home where shame and guilt lived and walked and breathed, and left their breath of destruction on everything.

Yet I continue to believe there is a better, more gentle, more passionate, more loving way, to live our lives.

I continue to dream of passion's more gentle touch. I continue to believe in the beauty of humankind's true nature. I continue to believe that one day there will be more children like my daughter: Innocent children growing up in the shadow of loves true touch. I continue to believe that one day there will be less and less broken adults like me.

I continue to believe that there is a beauty to SEX that most of us cannot conceive.

I continue to believe.

Crying Again

Spread your legs and let them in
For a little while you'll be a ten.

Sad to think this is her end.
To be used.
To be abused.

Crying again.

Somewhere around the next curve,
Over the next bend,
Somewhere there is someone
Who knows what loneliness is.
Someone who will show her
What love really is.

And when she shows him her desire
He won't run and hide from it.
He'll look her square in the eye
And see her heart inside.

Crying again.

She'll settle for less
And wish for more
As the Hounds of Hell
Knock on her door.

Always,

Mary