Shame, trauma and self-love: what this sex educator wants you to know about yourself

Intimacy coach Rashima Ahmed.

For Black women, the conversation about sexuality is often a fraught one.

Between navigating the cultural stereotypes attached to their sexuality and unlearning generations of internalized misogyny, it can feel like there are very few spaces where Black women can fully and unselfconsciously explore their sexuality.

Our sexual agency is constantly filtered through the male and/or white gaze, creating a complicated relationship between us and our own sense of sexuality. That's where Rashida Ahmed, a sex educator and intimacy coach based in Toronto, comes in.

Through group classes, individual coaching sessions and speaking engagements, she hopes to help women and non-binary folk on their journeys to self discovery and healing from the sexual shame and traumatic experiences that may be hindering the full expression of their authentic sexuality.

Sisi Mag sat down with Rashida to talk about sex, trauma, healing and the freedom that comes with tapping into our most authentic selves.

As a sex educator and intimacy coach, what exactly does your job entail?

I work primarily with women and women-identifying folks to help them to overcome sexual shame and trauma, healing from traumatic experiences, overcoming body shame, and becoming more intimate and intuitive with themselves. I do that through education, intuitive learning, journal practices, and really diving into some of the deep questions that maybe we don't necessarily want to ask ourselves.

What first drew you to this particular line of work?

I have to say that it's two parts; I would say about 70 per cent of my own life experiences, and 30 per cent educational experiences … brought me into this line of work. Being a woman of color, I didn't find very much representation in this space for myself growing up and there were a lot of questions that I really didn't have the answers to. That led me to various paths that maybe weren't necessarily in my best interest. So through relearning and rediscovering myself, and sort of reteaching myself things that I didn't necessarily know, that is what led me to this path. And then realizing the impact that this has on so many others in my space personally, and as well as on the broader, more global scale, is really what helped me to really push to be motivated to take this as an educational pathway, and then a professional pathway.

What kinds of conversations are you having with Black women around sex and sexuality?

I think the most common themes are being unable to express themselves sexually in a way that feels authentic to them. It's healing from shameful and traumatic experiences that may have happened to them throughout their lifetime—whether that be during childhood or during adulthood—however relationship and personal distress impacts them. Also, another big theme is them really not understanding their body, how their body functions and interprets sexuality, how their body interprets pleasure, and how their body interprets pain.

Are any of these issues specific to Black communities specifically?

I don't think they’re specific to the Black community, but I do think they are unique in the [sense] that we also have racial stereotypes that sometimes prohibit us from expressing our sexuality in the way that we want to, that other race groups don't necessarily experience or understand. For instance, some of the archetypes of being extremely hypersexual or non-sexual at all, leave us to try to find where we are in that spectrum; understanding what that means to us and how we can identify ourselves in whichever way that feels natural to us. As well, some cultural and religious hang-ups can get in the way of us expressing ourselves in the way we want to. There are conversations that are not necessarily had in some of our households with our parents or our caregivers that allow us the safety to express or speak about the things that are going on with us in our bodies.

How would you say we, as Black people, can establish more safe spaces to have conversations about our sexuality?

Sometimes it's difficult for us to have a conversation if it makes us uncomfortable. So, I think the first step would be for us to identify our own sexual biases and hang-ups and misconceptions. And then moving even a step further from that, is to allow space for honesty and vulnerability. That includes allowing even conversations that are against what we personally believe, or we personally identify with, and allowing that to be open and honest, creating an environment where we can discuss things that are maybe hurtful or things that are damaging to us, allowing the space for that to be there and for us to be heard and to be seen, without judgment, and without any sort of reservation.

“There are conversations that are not necessarily had in some of our households that allow us the safety to express or speak about the things that are going on in our bodies.”

How can we shed the shame that often comes with sexuality and possibly traumatic sexual experiences?

Confronting our own individual chains and individual misconceptions and how we feel about sexuality, I think is one of the first key steps. I always say that shame thrives in silence. So once we shed light on the things that we feel shameful about, then you're confronted with the choice to either deal with them or to continue to move in the path that you’ve always been.

And so I think it's allowing yourself to really take a look at yourself for all of it—the good, the bad, the indifferent, the ugly—and take responsibility for the choices that you've made, [and] the choices that were made for you, as well. I think that's also something that we need to allow ourselves; to take accountability for our behaviors, and then forgive ourselves.

I think the final piece is once you really decide to let go of shame and let go of how your body or mind reacts to trauma, we have to learn to forgive ourselves for the things that we may have done when we were moving in that space. This sometimes is the most difficult piece, because I find, especially within the Black community, there are a lot of ideas that we have to hold on to things; we need to be strong, we can take everything and just suck it up, smile and bear it. But I think we have to allow ourselves to know that when we were in that space, we may have done things that were not to our own personal, highest good, and then forgive ourselves for that, so we can move differently.

Are there any specific ways that we can ground ourselves physically, or give honour to the body that carries us through so much?

Whoo! I think you can be fun with it. I love to take pictures of myself, and when I take pictures, I take sensual selfies—whatever that feels like to you. I love lingerie, robes, I like soap, I like lace. Do what feels authentic to you. I like to look at it as ‘I want to honour and worship the body that I have been created [in], I've been given, I've been blessed with’. So I spend time in the mirror, I talk to myself in the mirror, I will record myself saying affirmations and listen to my own voice. And that doesn't mean that I don't listen to other guided meditations, because I do see the power in getting support from your community. But I do understand that my own words, and my own thoughts are equally as powerful. And so I allow myself to sit in that. I do a lot of journaling, I pray. I'm a spiritual person, I fast, I do the things that I know will help me to become more intuitive to me and I am very intentional about finding joy in my life. So that could be cooking, that could be spending time with family, it could be going out for walks; whatever it is that helps to find joy. For some people it's art, singing, it's dance, it’s movement. But being intentional about finding joy helps us to be connected to our bodies, because that's where we feel joy the most.

You can find more about Rashida’s work at www.rashidaahmed.com and on Instagram at @iamrashidaahmed.