Tag: guest post

The first time I’ve heard the word vaginismus I was 35 years old and I was not able to practice intercourse. By then, I was having a nice life in Barcelona, where I am from, living with my ex-boyfriend, enjoying my family and friends and with an exciting role in a womenswear fashion retail company. …

First of all, don’t get me wrong… I have loving and supportive parents. Neither do I want to cast a bad light on my father nor depict my childhood as absolutely horrible. Yet, while my mother used to be the empathetic, emotional part of the two, my father was (and mostly is) the rational, strict …

I was always afraid of penetrative sex, from the time my mother explained it to me at 7 onward… But when I was 12 I had to get my first pelvic exam to try to figure out why I was having such long periods. The exam was excruciating as I was, of course, on a …

My vaginismus journey began in my early twenties when I attempted to put a tampon in for the first time. Growing up I never minded using pads during my period, even though it sucked whenever I wanted to go swimming and my friends swore by tampons. I think the thought of inserting something into my …

A lot of women who have vaginismus experience the symptoms long before finding out there is a special term for this condition, or as Katrin encourages us to call it, this body response. You might have heard the term in your 20s for the first time. You may have had anywhere from zero to multiple …

Every Tuesday, I’d head to a gym filled with young athletes and senior citizens strengthening and stretching their joints. I’d go into a small room, take off my pants, and lay back on a bed. Then I would get fingered. Surprisingly, this is not some new fitness trend or subscription service offered by Goop. This is …

Two operations later, countless tearful examinations, and many late nights spent exhausting the Google search engine in the hope of answers – I wonder why it is that it took a decade for my pain to be believed.  A whole decade for my lived trauma to be taken seriously by health professionals… Living with Vaginismus as a …

Vaginismus is a painful body response causing an involuntary constriction of the muscles of the vagina, making sex painful. Given the taboo on this subject, many women suffer in silence. Discovering that I had vaginismus I wouldn’t have thought of giving up the comfort of sanitary napkins until I learned the benefits of tampons and …