The Sacred Lingerie Date I Had With Myself

Sacred Beginnings: My Journey With Lingerie

I was 19 the first time I ever put on lingerie.

Newly married, still a virgin, naive, quiet, and uneducated about my own body—about pleasure, sensuality, or what it meant to feel beautiful in my own skin.

It was my wedding night, and some well-meaning friends had gifted me a delicate white babydoll set for my honeymoon. I slipped it on in the tiny bathroom of our hotel room, my heart pounding against my ribs, cheeks flushed with nerves and expectation. I honestly wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen—Hollywood was my only source of info back then—but I thought it was supposed to be epic.

I stepped out—nervous, exposed, hoping to be adored, my new husband . . . didn’t exactly respond the way Hollywood said he should. The TV stayed on, he didn’t get up from the bed, and the rest of the night (and our marriage) was pretty much a bust.

And in that single, deflating moment, something inside me silently learned a lesson I wouldn’t fully unlearn for more than a decade:

That lingerie, beauty, sensuality… they weren’t for me.

And if they didn’t earn me attention, they weren’t worth much at all.

For the next decade, I carried that belief like a secret rulebook.

I spent all of my 20s being a little depressed, a little overweight, and overall just diminished. I was always drawn toward beauty, and especially fashion, but I was restrictive with myself about it and too uncomfortable in my own skin to really own and love being a woman.

I wore lingerie maybe twice more, both times feeling like I was dressing up trying to prove something to myself and to my partner,disconnected from my own body, going through motions that never quite landed, and NEVER achieving the results I wanted.

When I turned 30, I had suddenly lost a ton of weight, fell in love with someone outside my marriage and then said goodbye to him, went through a divorce that left me with a giant scarlet letter on my chest, and ended up thin, beautiful, and completely ALONE. I had finally gotten to a point where I felt attractive, only to be alone with no partner to share it with.

I honestly thought I was done—done with men, done with trusting anyone, done with the exhausting feeling that I needed something—or someone—outside of me to feel whole. I was alone, celibate, and convinced I’d probably stay that way forever… and, for the first time in my life, I was okay with that. 

But something surprising happened in that chapter: 
Even though I wasn’t dating, wasn’t going out, and had zero interest in anyone’s attention, I found myself drawn back to beauty. 

Because I was starting to wake up on the inside, and was doing a lot of inner work to heal and love myself again, I found I didn’t really need the outward attention anymore.

It was during that lonely, liberating season that my little sister took me into a lingerie store so she could grab something fun for Valentine’s Day. She was planning a romantic night with her husband. I was planning a quiet night at home with my daughters.

For fun, and because I was feeling a little rebellious, I also tried on some lingerie, even though I had no one to show it off to. 

My soul— and my body—were markedly different now. I had shed both physical and emotional baggage over the last few years, and I was left thin, in great shape, with saggy, deflated boobs, and a giant fanny pack of stretch marks and loose skin sitting where my flat tummy once used to be. 

I slipped into that lace teddy and looked in the mirror. 

Standing in that dressing room, staring at my reflection—saggy, stretched, soft—I actually STUNNED myself.

For the first time ever, I saw ME.
Not the flaws.
Not the “less thans.”
I saw my soul shining through my body. My femininity. My curves. My softness. My beauty.

I stood there longer than I intended, just staring at myself. At the time I didn’t understand that I was in the middle of a revolutionary, deeply-soul-moving moment, and that these few quiet minutes of self-admiration would be one of the most pivotal experiences of my life. 

For that moment, it wasn’t about anyone else.
It wasn’t about performing or proving.
It was about me, in that mirror, reclaiming my own gaze.

It didn’t matter that no one else would see it.
I saw it.
And that was the whole point.

We, as women, have been trained to believe beauty is for someone else. That it’s a tool to attract a mate, to win approval, to be chosen. Which, if you look at history, makes total sense. 

For so long, women were treated like property, and beauty became a kind of lifeline. Be beautiful—or be invisible. 

But at the same time, we’re also handed the opposite message: 
Don’t be too beautiful or you’ll make people uncomfortable. 
Don’t be too radiant or too confident or too anything, or you’ll be seen as shallow, as “too much,” as unrelatable. 
And whatever you do, don’t age or let life leave its mark on you, or your beauty will no longer count. 

It’s exhausting. And it leaves most women stuck in a confusing, tangled funk that feels impossible to make sense of. 

But the biggest lie in all of it? That beauty is for anyone but us. 


When we make ourselves beautiful for ourselves, we step into the deepest self-love and acceptance there is. 


We stop performing! We stop chasing. We create fulfillment inside our own bodies, in our own energy. 


We attract relationships and opportunities that feel nourishing, not because we need them to fill a void, but because we’re already overflowing.

I didn’t end up buying the teddy that day (old stories still had a grip on me), but something inside me had already been purchased:

A deeper truth and a new narrative. One where beauty, adornment, and sensuality weren’t about being chosen, but about me choosing myself.

When I sat down to write about my experience, I knew it couldn’t just be a how-to that I whipped up without much thought, it had to be an experience! It needed to come from that sacred place.

The place where no one’s watching. The place where the most important relationship of your life—the one with yourself—gets to be honored.

Because what I’ve learned is this:

Partners come and go. Bodies evolve and change. Life unravels, rebuilds, surprises.

But your relationship with yourself…that’s the constant! That’s the forever love story!

And it deserves tenderness, devotion, and YOUR GAZE.

It’s not really about lingerie.

It’s about creating your own moment in the mirror. Your own sacred date. Your own private, breathtaking reclamation.

If you let it—it can change you.

And when you stand there, hands on your own skin, seeing yourself through new eyes… 

You’ll know.

This was always for you.