Dear Betty,

I am 36 years old, and have always enjoyed a healthy sex life, though I have never married. Orgasms came frequently and easily for me during sex - though achievable only in one position - me on top and riding like a cowgirl...which I always do. Men seem to enjoy this. I have a very high sex drive, and considered the sexual part of my life a success.

However, I never knew until recently what a clitoris is. I never knew what my vagina looked like (nor cared to know, as the whole concept repulsed me). I had never masturbated because frankly, I didn't know how, and the few paltry attempts led to only minor stimulation. To be honest, my feelings were just too negative about the whole idea. My plan was to just wait for a man to enter into my life, and then, unleash the dam, so to speak.

I've grown older and I'm now ready to add a bit more sophistication to my sex life. I began reading up on Tantra and sexual energy (I am a Zen practitioner as well). I read "Healing Love through the Tao, Cultivating Female Sexual Energy" as well as other books. Masturbation was mentioned in almost all of them. I decided to confront this very large missing piece of the sexual puzzle.

It was then I found your web site on the Internet. I ordered your books, your Selfloving Magic Wand. The video - changed my life. My whole life, forever. In one fell swoop, all the shame of my body evaporated. All the shame about a cunt I barely knew was gone. You made me whole, a complete woman, celebrating everything female, and feminine, and wonderful. What I thought was soft, and weak and vulnerable metamorphosed into the true wellspring of life.

No wonder men in some countries cut the clit off a woman - how threatening is that gem, that precious connection to our real liberation, freedom and femininity to claim our sexual rights and celebrate our sexual selves. I looked amazed at myself, and my power, (I had it all along), and for the first time I realized how truly blessed I was to be a female but more importantly, how I am able to enjoy so many privileges denied to so many before me. I will never be the same. For so long, I had denied parts of my femininity - striving for independence and acting in ways like a man. Successful in career, as a single mother, everything I did by myself was emulating much of the man's world, and very little of a woman's world.

Your work, for the few who are wise enough to glean its real lesson, is one of the greatest contributions to feminism's history. Ever. I masturbate with great frequency now even though I have a wonderful partner and my sex life is in full bloom. Still I find time to masturbate. It is a powerful meditation tool. It serves to round me out, to complete me if I feel scattered, or detached. What a blessing. And what a woman you are. What a woman I can be, and possibly already am, thanks to the lessons you have brought into my life.

I needed to tell you that. No questions. I just wanted to thank you. I just wanted you to know how grateful I am, and in what high esteem I hold you. So much left to learn, and explore. This was big... monumental. You brought me there. You go girl! Thanks so very, very much.

Laura F.