How having great sex heals and connects you to your ancestors

Written by: Tamar Simone Weir

I never talked to my grandma about sex, sexuality, what she thought about the word liberation, freedom, and pleasure. I spent lots of time with her in my childhood, but when I was around 11 she had a stroke which left her in an almost non verbal state. From there on out she needed to have a caretaker 24/7 and was not able to communicate for herself much. I continued to visit every few years but our connection remained in the realms of good hugs, eye gazes, and an occasional smile, there was not much else to be done. Simple moments in each others presence. My grandfather, her husband died when I was very young, and I have no formal memories of him only pictures that seem like memories and a feeling of warmth in the body. I know that he loved to pick fruit from the trees lining the streets, fill his bag up and continue the search. On my father's side I also did not have much of a connection to my grandpa, he died similarly when I was very young, and have little to no memories of him. I do know some facts about him that make me feel close to his soul, his addiction to sweets and chocolate. And my grandma, my fathers mother, I knew a bit better she was alive until I was around 9 years old, a chain smoker, someone who kept her house extremely neat, I don't know how much we had in common but I loved her.

A few years ago, my Safta (my mamas mama died). This was my last grandparent alive in this realm of the world, and although we knew that she was passing for many years, unable to live without full time care, the moment when she finally said goodbye was a shock to the system for all of us. This person who I feel soul connected to, didn't know who I was as an adult, the person I have become, the person I am becoming. I know that my grandma was conservative in her values, she was a traditional woman. She was born in Iran and fled. She was jewish in a country with a dominant religion of Islam. She was a believer in education for women. When she died, her funeral was planned shortly after and was held in Israel/Palestine where she passed. I had planned to go travel in Argentina at the time with a friend and was conflicted whether to go on the trip and miss the funeral or across the world with my mom to say goodbye to the body. My mom reassured me that my Safta wanted her family, wanted the women to be badass, she wanted us to see the world, she wanted us to be educated, to be independent, to be free. The best thing I could do to honor her was to see the world with my big eyes and to continue with that feeling of freedom. To honor her by being. I cried for days over this feeling of confliction, or betrayal, and of the idea of honoring. What does it mean to honor someone or honor a tradition held within a family? What does it mean to say goodbye? And is there ever a perfect goodbye? These questions filled my mind as I chose to continue my travels in Argentina, and say goodbye to my Safta in a different way, a less traditional way, and reminded myself, this is what she wanted, trust.

In many families, being afraid of your body and not fully loving your body is the norm. Phrases like I can't wear that because..... or I look like shit..... are only a few examples of the ways that we put outselves down and the ways that parents put themselves down unknowingly in the space with their children or the younger generation present. There are such rigid standards for people, especially socialized as women. Often times these messages get systemically pushed onto us, but then once they enter the home, they surround our own souls with this harmful messaging and those within our direct intimate communities. These notions of "femininity" and "masculinity" are binary concepts of our potential expression. In your family, if you had a mother, father, or caregiver, how did you see them talk about their own body? How did they talk about your body, and what you should look or feel like? Did they use shame based language to describe the "ideal body" or the "ideal characteristics" of a beautiful person? Did they encourage you to try new styles, colors, textures, and play with your body in fluid ways? Did they convey messages with a rigid structure? Or was there room for play and movement?

Photo on the Left- My Safta Photo on the Right- My Great Safta

There are many questions I never got to ask my Safta. Many questions I never asked my grandparents, as I was too young to know which questions I wanted to ask. Im curious about my grandmas, the role of being women in the family, in different cultural contexts, and what inner deep desires they kept secret. Many questions about their own sexuality that I would have loved to ask them. And although, I don't know their answers, I can imagine that they would be very different from my own answers, living and growing up in California, in a nude home with access to higher education. My answers echoing my experience, and theirs echoing their own.

This is an excerpt from one of my favorite books called "Persepolis" by Satrapi Marjane. To read the whole book which I highly recommend,can be found here.

So how does thinking about our grandparents connect to the topic of Sex?

This seems unsexy, seems like two separate topics.... But when I think about who I am and the desires that I have, they are often linked to depth within me, things that I don't always know how to explain. Its not that I think while engaging in sexual moments, spicy moments you should be thinking about your grandparents or your ancestral lineage.. but what i am curious about is what golden truths we carry from generation to generation.. and the potential eroticism in acknowledging the power of the past for healing in the present and future. Like look at this picture of my grandparents sharing a bike together! How romantic, look at the union they shared. And now as i ride my bike with my lover, going from street to street and romancing our lives, I cant help but feel a connection, some shared truth. But of course, not all grandparents have the same core values of our generation, like what if our grandparents are actively homophobic? Is that something that we want to carry with us into our lived expereinces and eroticim? Well no.. There is a very real and likel chance that my grandparents would have had a challenge with many of my identities. Being queer, being polyamrous, studying to be a sex educator and intimacy coach, being sexually explorative, being a woman with body hair, being a woman who cut all my hair off, being a woman with an STI and openly talking about it.... So many of my identities and desires are very different from my grandparents and no doubt they would have either not accepted them or have had severe challenges in accepting/tolerating them. I know this, and try not to romanticize that all is well and beautiful in my family and in our heritage. That the past is romantic and pure, beause its not. My family has created pain and suffering, and still to this day continue to uphold and spread patriarchal and heteronormative views and values. This pains me, triggers me, and is also part of my truth. When i think about my grandparents, I try to come with curiosity and less with judgement. This may be easier for me as they are all deceased now and I am not directly confronting and engaging in challenging conversations. And while this is the case, I deeply want to ask them these questions. Interview them and hold their hands in tenderness. Tell them sex is not bad. Desire is not shameful. We are all deserving of pleasure. We are all deserving of liberation in our own way.

This was my altar for the Persian celebration of spring called Norouwz, where you welcome in the spring season and everything included in the altar has a symbolic meaning for the beginning of the new season. To learn more about all the specific elemnts included and the history, read more here.

When we talk about ancestral healing, sex isn’t always part of the conversation — but it should be. So many of us carry wounds around sexuality that didn’t begin with us. The fear, shame, repression, and silence that so often shape our relationship to pleasure aren’t just personal. They’re generational. They’re woven into our bodies through family stories, cultural messages, religious dogma, and colonial trauma. They live in our nervous systems and in the way we’ve been taught to feel (or not feel) desire.

But here’s the truth: sex can be sacred. Sex can be healing. Sex can be ancestral. Sex can be meh. Sex can be boring. Sex can be disconnected. Sex is MULTIDIMENSIONAL

When we allow ourselves to have great sex — not just physically satisfying sex, but sex that is deeply connected, fully embodied, and soulfully intentional — we are doing so much more than experiencing pleasure. We are engaging in ancestral reclamation. We are interrupting harmful patterns that may have lived in our bloodlines for generations. We are opening a portal to remembrance.

Sex as an Act of Rebellion

For many of our ancestors — especially those who lived under systems of colonization, patriarchy, slavery, or religious oppression — the erotic was something denied, shamed, or violently taken. Pleasure wasn’t safe. Autonomy wasn’t allowed. Intimacy was regulated or punished.

Cultural messaging about sexuality has shaped this repression across many societies:

    •    In a cross-cultural study by Clelland and Bartoli (2010), researchers found that collectivist cultures often emphasize sexual control and shame to preserve family honor and social cohesion. This is particularly true in many Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian contexts, where female sexuality is often tightly controlled to maintain patriarchal structures.

    •    Religious doctrine has also played a central role. A study published in the Journal of Religion and Health (2014) noted that Christian, Muslim, and Jewish teachings have historically linked sex with sin, reinforcing silence and guilt — especially outside heterosexual, marital frameworks.

    •    Colonization also forcibly altered Indigenous and non-Western understandings of sexuality. Before colonization, many Indigenous communities — including in North America, Africa, and Polynesia — viewed sex as a sacred, communal, and spiritually integrated part of life. As documented by scholars like Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Dr. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, colonizers imposed Euro-Christian moral codes that demonized these practices, criminalized queerness, and violently punished sexual expression.

So, when you choose to listen to your body, when you say yes to your desires, when you communicate boundaries, when you let yourself be touched with reverence, when you orgasm without apology — you are doing something radical. You are choosing healing over hiding. Freedom over fear. And of course, not every moment can be an orgasmic portal of pleasure, sometimes the erotic comes and goes, ebs and flows, and that is a natural part of life, part of nature, and part of the experience of living. There are seasons.

There is something mystical that happens in the presence of great sex — the kind where your body and spirit feel fully alive, where you’re vibrating with truth, where time stretches and collapses. In those moments, you may feel something ancient move through you. A deep knowing. A presence. A sense that you are not alone. Kind of like reading a novel where the past, present, and future all move through the pages in an organic non linear way. One moment you are reading from one persons perspective in a certain time period and the next moment you are in the future. The weaving of stories and time. Our ancestors live in us. In our bones, our breath, our skin. And when we engage in erotic experiences that are rooted in love, respect, and liberation, we make space for them to show up — not in pain, but in celebration. We give them the opportunity to feel what they may have never been allowed to feel: pleasure without fear.

Your moans can be prayers.

Your climax, an offering.

Your softness, your wildness, your tears — a ritual of remembrance.

This is the beautiful paradox of sex as ancestral work: when you heal your relationship to the erotic, you’re not just healing yourself. You’re healing backward, for those who came before. And forward, for those who will come after. You’re weaving a new legacy — one that honors the body, centers consent, and celebrates joy.

So let this be your reminder: great sex is not frivolous. It’s not shameful. It’s not just about pleasure for pleasure’s sake — though pleasure is more than enough sometimes, and physical sensation can be very healing too.

Great sex can be medicine.

It’s reclamation.

It’s resistance.

And when done with intention can heal.

I'd like to end with a poem that speaks volumes. To read more of Adrienne's work you can go to their website here.

it must be possible it must be us we are the only ones still here -adrienne maree brown

the ancestors singing down storms

say they pushing tectonic plates

in the world unseen

 i know we are all tired

breathe in, bare down

 an ash dusted butterfly, a luminescent hummingbird, a cacophony just arrived

to the garden for the first time

 what if we risked cocoon, just once

what if we flew many ways as one

our inheritance is heavy

imbued with fear, thick with atomic victory

with the mycelial magic of death

 the sacrifices spill our hands

coddle no one, there’s no time

i know it’s at least my friend’s mama, my homie’s wife, my favorite taurus, at least two of my grands, and harriet, and octavia

i know i can’t comprehend this

i have nothing but the faith of the living

all i know is this pulse, rooting through me

all i know is what i’m growing against

all i know is what i’ve planted

no manipulation works in the soil

nothing but real sun, real time, real water

 all i know is the harvest leans abundant

all i know is this is all all of ours

all i know is we bloom orgasmic

each generation has a role to play

hold seven generations every day

it must be possible for us

despite appearances – we are

the only ones here

it must be possible

it must be us

we are the only ones

still here

References & Suggested Reading

    •    Tichon, J. (2014). Religion and sexual shame: Implications for counseling. Journal of Religion and Health, 53(6), 1673–1685.

    •    Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books.

    •    Simpson, L. B. (2011). Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

    •    Holland, S. P. (2004). Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity. Duke University Press. (for deeper exploration of Black feminist thought and erotic recovery)

    •    Lorde, A. (1978). Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. Out & Out Books.