| Being
a teenager is a complicated and complex experience. Not only
are there mysterious and frightening changes in our bodies,
but our thoughts and feelings are taking on a new direction.
Even self-perception is slowly changing and we start seeing
ourselves in a new (and not always positive) light.
We say and do things that we don’t want to, or don’t
mean to; we cannot tell people around us that we are no longer
kids, but we aren’t adults either. We don’t know
how to control ourselves and focus on the things that used
to interest us; or how to express the waves of emotion building
up inside.
And there is a constant overwhelming feeling of being alone
and not understood. Sometimes even
our best friends cannot understand how we feel.
There is no one we can talk to, who can reassure us that what
we think and desire and normal and acceptable. Especially
when it comes to sex, there is a deep sense of guilt, curiosity,
and shame that enters our hearts and minds. Sex and sexual
messages and experiences are all around us, but we can never
really find everything we want to know about it. The adults
around us say that we ought not to think about sex or feel
sexual till marriage, but the truth is that many of us are
sexual from a very early stage, long before puberty and adolescence.
We long to find spaces where we can ask those embarrassing
questions without fearing judgement, where we can be ourselves
and talk about the things that interest us, without feeling
fear or shame. IFSHA hopes this site will be such a space.
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