If you are a girl and you were raised directly after/during or around the Sexual Revolution,  adults around you scrambled to implore, your virginity is a prize.

We were to guard it, covet it and hold it up, waving it, teasingly even, like the last cookie in the cookie jar.

I loathe this sentiment. Mainly really for what it leaves out.

The truth is your heart is a prize. And so is theirs.

And in raising my daughters, I have tried to emphasize this.

Whether we deny it or not, our bodies and our selves are linked. That unruly beast we call oxytocin makes us bond both to the perpetrator* individual and the experience. When we give one, we give both. And all that we give of ourselves and to whom, creates who we are.

Our experiences, good, bad and ugly, form us like a collage. The words we whisper to ourselves in the quiet, the people we let in, those who touch us deeply and those who leave us cold, all help form us and inform us.

Who will help paint your canvas?

And what will it look like when it is over?

This is what I tell my girls.

And myself.

*  Humour. Remember humour?