Dear Nipple,
A personal letter to the nipple, which explores of the relationship with the body and appreciation for the significance of the nipple.
Dear Nipple,
I didn’t expect to be writing a letter to you, but it’s recently been brought to my attention by a dear friend how significant you are. I realized that we don’t talk much, you seem to be cool hanging out just doing your things, and I like to imagine that I’m very busy doing many important things myself, but this seems like something to slow down for. So much so that I actually just removed my tank top so that we can come into deeper connection.
Sometime when I look at you, you don’t look like how I expect. You have little bumps that weird me out, your tip has this texture that’s unlike any other part of my body- it’s a little like the skin of a ball sack actually. You’re the same color as my lips, both my mouth lips and my yoni lips. The skin around the tip is a light brown, dark nude. Dear Nipple, I’m sure you have names for each part of what you are and I have to say I’m a little embarrassed to call myself a voice in women’s empowerment and sexual empowerment… and to be this estranged from you! All this focus on the ass and abs and hands and feet, the teeth and face and hair… but no nipple.
I think the first time I really thought about you was when I was a little girl. I use to see my mom naked when we would go camping in the summer and share a shower. I remember her breasts, and she would point out one nipple that wasn’t like the other. She said that when I was a baby I was so hungry for milk I bit off a piece of her nipple! Ouch! As a little girl I remember being scared of a baby biting off my nipple one day, it actually still makes me nervous. But something happened in that moment, even as a child I could sense the discomfort my mother had with her body and it transferred to me. I wasn’t much interested in getting to know you, because I was afraid that I would feel the same way about you as she did.
But I don’t.
I think you’re spectacular. I think you are beautiful and odd and funny looking all at once. I love to play with you, and I love it even more when someone I love plays with you. In their mouth, with their tongue, with the soft center of their palm or sensational squeeze with finger tips. I think you’re funny nipples. I laugh and feel joy every time we come into contact. Which is, I guess always… because you are a part of this body. And what am I? An awareness? A sentience that for the moment gets to reside inside of flesh and bone? Thank you nipple, thank you for hosting me and sending signals of pleasurer through the circuitry of this body so that my awareness can sense what it is to be alive.
You nipple are a doorway, a portal and keeper to something much deeper than the psychological shaping of a culture that’d rather keep you inside. You are alive and you speak to me through this body temple. My reverential connection to you is a connection to the millions of cells within my body that are multiplying and thriving, to the connection of life inside of my skin. I am a universe, and when I orgasm thanks to you I multiple. You are a code carrier to my creatrix being and absolute proof in the abundance and generosity of the our cosmos! I mean, milk comes from you! Milk that feed humans for the first years of their life! How does that happen?! I’d like to find out.
I’d like all women, and men to find out. To find out about their bodies as an integral instrument in which to experience and enjoy life. To understand that their bodies are safe to felt and to be seen. I’d like to know that if I lay topless with a woman to watch the sunset, no one, especially her, will feel any threat. I’d like others to see you and feel anything they desire, and to be present to what they feel, and to bring it back again and again to admiration and love in which all things ultimately reside.
Dear nipple, how do we remind one another that it’s okay to be seen, to be felt, to be known? You represent what it means to be free. You represent the wisdom of ways past. I have seen the Ibu today walk topless through the neighborhoods. It use to always be this way. What will it take through the beauty way to remind us, and regain that patience and willingness to be in acceptance of our body and one another’s?
Wow, I’m so grateful for my friend who had me ask some deeper questions and play around with the idea of what my nipple means to me. A lot more than I realized.
Thank you Nipple, I adore you.
Xoxo
You’re life partner and friend.
This letter was inspired by good friends Cassis and Davod who are launching a beautiful jewelry line called Dear Nipple. I recently had a session with Cassis in which she created a cast of my nipple that is now being turned into a piece of wearable art. The experience was expansive, and I can’t wait to be adorned with my nipple and share the body positivity with others. To learn more, visit their instagram page: @dear.nipple
