Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life

I think that to feel normal is to feel that you belong. Remember what Camilla said way back in chapter 1: “We’re all just trying to belong somewhere.” We want to know that we are safe within the bounds of shared human experience,

emotions are tunnels: You have to go through the darkness to get to the light at the end.

“It’s like… I’m sitting with a stunned bird in the palm of my hand. If I get tense and try to hurry it, it will just stay frozen. But if I’m still and patient long enough, the bird will wake up and fly away.”

“All I can tell you,” I said, “is that everything you’re experiencing, all the contradictory feelings and all the pain, is a normal part of the healing process. Everyone goes through it differently, and there’s no way to know how long it will last. It sucks for a while, and then gradually it gets better. But I can tell you this for sure: Every sing

Joy is loving what is true about your body, mind, sexuality, and life.

Confidence is knowing what is true about your body, mind, sexuality, and life.

The way to get through is to stay very still, to notice all the aspects of your identity that were tied to the lies you were told, to notice all the grief you feel in letting go of the self you spent your life trying to be. Notice, too, the anger you feel at having been lied to for so long. Notice all of these with nonjudgment. Allow them to be tru

When the map doesn’t fit the terrain, the map is wrong, not the terrain.

Ultimately, the “you” that is consciously aware of being a “self,” an individual distinct from other individuals, is a composite self, a hologram built of these multiple motivational and cognitive processes all engaging with the environment and with each other, in a noisy, messy, multidirectional tug-of-war. As a person capable of desiring multiple