Faith in Practice
Unlearning a lie
Hannah Kowszun
Not many sex therapists begin working life as a nun, but
Fran Fisher was a cradle Catholic who took vows at
18 only to discover she couldn't tolerate the obedience. Several
years later the process of acknowledging her own sexuality has led
her into helping others to do the same.
I loved my church and my faith growing
up. I was a daily communicant and any opportunity I could get I
would go to church. I became a nun when I was 18 but I couldn't
tolerate obedience. Truly, I did not have what it took to remain in
that disciplined lifestyle. You were expected to follow wholesale
things that didn't make sense to me. But there are people for whom
that is the perfect place. I loved my religion even after I
left.
Now, I would not describe myself as a Catholic. My core as a
believer, my link to God, is the purity of Catholicism in
childhood. For instance, I like sitting in old churches: it's
emotional comfort where I can meditate and pray, but it's not the
prayer of a Catholic, it's the prayer of a spiritual woman.
I finally left the church in 1996. Before that my family would
come with me even though my husband was an atheist and we had not
brought our children up Catholic. We were in Australia for
Christmas and at the service the Bishop of Sydney said the reason
for all the abortions, war, drugs and mayhem on the planet was
inferior religion. I looked at my husband, who was sitting letting
it all flow over him, and said, 'You don't want to be here do you?'
He replied, 'Absolutely not.' To which I said: 'You know what? I
think I don't either. Let's go'. On the way out we passed the
chalices ready for communion. I reached in and took a host from the
chalice, taking with me the only thing that I truly valued in that
church: access to Jesus. And I never looked back.
I was 45 before I said I loved sex. I would never have had that
discussion before that, not even with my husband. When I went on
the sex therapy course I didn't so much have my eyes opened as my
heart wrenched. It was shocking, horrifying how ignorant I was of
myself and any kind of reality; I had lived in a bubble and yet I
had grown-up kids at the time!
In the beginning I went on the sex therapy course because I had
had such difficulty in my marriage: being able to comprehend and
live a well-adjusted sexual life. I'd always had problems with my
husband. We had a great sex life but I couldn't be on the same page
as him exploratorily. My comfort zone was very narrow.
Looking back, it's hard to believe because anybody who knew me
would never have believed it of me. I was never a wallflower, I
wasn't a little Catholic mouse; I've always been very outspoken,
but if people did talk about sex I would leave the room, because I
thought it wasn't right.
I thought I'd just be on the course for a few months. But on the
first weekend I was there I was so unnerved I came home and said I
would never go back again - it was a bunch of 1960s hippies making
a science out of sex, how ridiculous. You know that British way of
looking down on something you can't understand?
At the end of the weekend one of the deans of students said that
some of us - and I'm sure she picked me out right away -would take
a while to process all we had been exposed to. I just wanted to get
out, to get home. I didn't go back for a month, but during that
time I would be driving down the freeway and find myself crying; I
didn't understand the emotional turmoil I was going through. At
that moment I began the unlearning of the lie, I began to accept
there was a big void of understanding and that I had to fill it, no
one else could. That was when I realised I had to go back. I was
scared to death.
I'm a very obsessive-compulsive learner once I put my head to
it. I couldn't stop - it was amazing. Two years later, while I was
on the Masters course, the school said that I should go on to do a
PhD. It took me a while to be convinced that I had the wherewithal
to accomplish it, but that's how I ended up writing this book: I
had to do a dissertation rather than a thesis and I had no idea
what to write on. I was told not to worry about finding a topic
because it would find me. In the end it came all the way back to my
childhood and to being a nun, how it had crippled my sexuality.
I adapted my PhD dissertation to make it more accessible to the
general public. All of the women in my book were raised Catholic
and the prologue is my own story: I describe my childhood, where
sexual fear was instilled in us as children at Catholic school, at
home and in church. Very subtly in school, because it was never
mentioned: it was just an overlay of 'thou shalt not'.
Regular therapists are as hung up about sex as anyone else. Many
of my referrals come from therapists who don't deal with sexual
issues because they're very complex. I have a lot of people from
religious backgrounds come to see me. They say that when they read
my website my background gives them a feeling of comfort and
security. There's empathy rather than sympathy because I know how
they feel and how they can heal themselves from that kind of
rigidity and fear around sexuality.
I would say to anyone reading this who can relate to my
experience that owning and understanding our own deep reverence for
our bodies and our sexuality is such a gift from God. No one else
owns that. If you're under a veil, if you're under the Taliban
even, no matter what severity you've grown up with, you should be
able to intrinsically respect your own sense of sexuality, however
you perceive that. It may be time to look at the issue with a
gentle awareness and begin to explore what is actually holding you
prisoner. We're not all the cookie-cutter people that religions
want to turn out, because that kind of harmony is such a hairy
place to be. Literally.
Fran Fisher was talking to Hannah Kowszun
In the Name of God, Why? Ex-Catholic nuns speak out about sexual
repression, abuse & ultimate liberation is available
now.