Masturbation: The Sacred Return

a picture of “my soldiers” (my nail biting part) taken in spring of 2024

Growing up, I was told masturbation was evil. That if I did it, I should cut off my hand.

But the truth is, by then, I already wanted to cut my hands off.

At four years old, my hands were forced into things no child should ever have to do. To survive, a part of me learned a trick: if I chewed my nails until they bled, the pain would let me float away from my hands, away from the shame they carried. My hands became marked as bad, as unworthy, as guilty.

So when the Church’s warnings about masturbation reached me, they struck ground already scorched. I was told it was sinful because it prepared me for no one—that my desire and pleasure were wasted unless they belonged to a man. Desire was not only dangerous—it was purposeless, shameful, condemned.

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Years later, shortly after my divorce, I bought two tall mirrors for my bedroom. They were just décor, or so I thought. But one day, sitting naked in front of them, I opened my legs—and realized I had never truly looked at myself.

For forty years, what was between my legs had been an unknown, a shadowed, shameful absence. But that day, I saw not filth. Not sin. Not unworthiness.

I saw life force. I saw beauty. I saw sacred ground.

For an entire year, I made love to myself in front of that mirror. And most times, I wept afterward. Not from loneliness. Not from guilt. From remembrance.

Because in those moments, I found myself again. I could look into my own eyes, naked and vulnerable, and see only love. Only beauty.

And here is the irony: the Church told me that masturbation was sin, that it would lead me away from true union. But the opposite happened.

The more I touched myself with reverence, the more the old stories lost their grip. The patterns that once haunted me—the empty distraction of pornography, the self-betrayal of chasing men who were never right, the ache to be filled by something outside myself—began to dissolve. Desire stopped being a void to fix and became a presence to honor.

The mirror became my altar. My body became the prayer. And day after day, what once felt shameful grew more and more sacred.

The more I loved myself, the more my longing purified. What was once scattered, desperate, or misplaced began to crystallize into something whole and holy. I found myself desiring—not counterfeit intimacy, not escape—but the possibility of a true union. Not the old version of marriage born of fear and striving, but the vision of a second marriage: partnership rooted in love, trust, safety, and sacred belonging.

for the first time in thirty-five years, my nail biting has stopped…

What they told me was sin became the very practice that prepared me. It returned me to myself. It clarified my desire for a man who could meet me here—in the sacredness, in the worthiness, in the love—in presence.

This wasn’t rebellion. It wasn’t defiance. It was reclamation.

I was taking back what had been stolen. Taking back my body, my power, my beauty, my worth. Not against anyone else, but for myself.

This is how masturbation became a holy act of healing. A way of saying to the little girl who once wanted to cut her hands off:

Beloved, these hands were always sacred. This body was always yours. This love was always waiting for you.

A Note on “Cutting Off the Hand”

That teaching traces back to a verse in Matthew’s Gospel:

“If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” -Matthew 5:30

Jesus was using hyperbole. He often spoke in vivid metaphors — planks in your eye, camels through the eye of a needle — to wake people up. The point wasn’t literal mutilation, but removing whatever blocked you from love.

The tragedy is how this was twisted. In the Catholic Church I grew up in, verses like this were welded onto sexuality and weaponized against the body. What was meant to free people became a tool of fear and shame. Instead of bringing transformation, it fueled self-hatred.

The irony is that when I finally touched myself with reverence, the fruit was the exact opposite of what I was warned about: I didn’t spiral deeper into sin. I came home to love, to wholeness, to the very presence of God in my own body.