Sex ed was nonexistent in my town growing up.

Not only that, but the little education we did get, I was pulled from class because of the cult beliefs of my parents. I really knew nothing, except that you needed to wait until marriage to have sex or else no one would want you or you may even go to hell. All my friends were the same, because we were all a part of the cult of christianity, so I didn’t even have them to learn from or to talk to about these things. If I tried, I was ostracized. That didn’t keep me from having sex, and I quickly got pregnant and had a miscarriage at 16. I went through it all completely alone, because I couldn’t tell anyone that I’d had sex. I believed the miscarriage was my punishment for having sex before marriage, and that’s what others would tell me as well once I did start telling some people. In college, I had multiple boys stop dating me once they found out I wasn’t a virgin, because abstinence was that important to them. I’m totally out of that community now, and I wish desperately that I could have left sooner.

I hope children today can have better, because we all deserve better than that.

Abstinence only sex education is incredibly harmful.

-Fern W.