Nine year old me would be proud to know that sneaking into my daddy’s shoe closet to get and watch a porn tape was not done in vain.​

This move, though scary and super risky, is what I believe to be the catalyst for my inquiry into sex and sexuality. It was through watching pornography I discovered what masturbation was and begin to indulge in that myself at the age of nine. Though my family’s christian teachings told me masturbation or any type of sex outside of marriage to a man was a sin, I quickly found out that was not something I believed. Masturbation was very healing for me, yet also left me with tons of questions and confusion that would go unanswered until my 9th grade year of high school when I met a Peer Counselor named India White while shadowing her at a youth center providing resources for teen moms. This was a pivotal moment in my life because Ms. India exposed me to different backgrounds from other Black girls my age and answered a lot of questions I had up until I met her. Her compassion and directness towards the girls in her peer group made me want to be a source of help and light for other students one day. This sparked my interest in being a sex educator and having candid conversations with youth about reproductive rights, sex, systems, identity politics, etc. I knew from then I would grow up to be someone else’s Ms. India and I did just that. Years passed of me talking to my friends and community members about sexual health, passing out condoms, and even landing my first job as a sex educator at Sowing Seeds into the Midlans in my hometown, Columbia, SC.