How I Became a Sex Educator: My Story
I’m sharing this because it’s relevant — directly relevant — to how and why I became a sex educator, and why I do this work the way I do it.
But before I became a sex educator, I had to become a woman. And that felt like war.
The beginning
I was sitting on the toilet, screaming for my mum. I couldn’t feel pain, but I was bleeding. A lot. From… there.
My mum was as unprepared as I was. She explained that this is what happens to women, that I shouldn’t worry, and that it would continue until I was 40. What??
So I was now a woman. Aged nine. With 31 years of continuous bleeding ahead of me (I’d assumed). That felt like a very long time.
Things would never be the same. My periods were heavy, painful and irregular. Scrubbing my stained knickers by hand with salt felt like a cruel punishment. The thick pads that chafed my baby thighs didn’t help.
Body hair
I cringe recalling my mum trimming my underarm hair with nail scissors. The long minutes on the bathtub’s edge with stinking, burning cream on my legs. I wasn’t allowed a razor. The procedure was so inconvenient it rarely happened, and I began to fear exposing my legs.
My breasts grew quickly — long before wearing a bra was acceptable. My crop-tops did their best to contain my painfully growing chest. When they ripped, I repaired them with safety pins.
Soon after, hormonal acne arrived. My doctor treated it with unnecessarily strong tablets and a burning ointment, prescribed Guinness for my period-induced iron deficiency, and started me on the pill before I was a teenager.
I was told not to tell anyone I was taking the pill, which became a source of great shame. My childhood had ended, and I was utterly consumed with combating every visible sign of my body’s transformation.
Daddy issues
This is the part of my story where I was most hurt — and where I formed the limiting beliefs that took years to undo.
Limiting beliefs emerge when we try to make sense of things our minds are too young to comprehend. It’s like adding two and two and getting 26. We find evidence that 26 is correct, that becomes our truth, and we live for years with a false equation we never think to re-evaluate.
Looking back, these are the moments that shaped me most painfully:
- My father left home and, after a few visits, I never saw him again. I was seven years old.
- I was discouraged from locking or closing my bedroom and bathroom doors from the age of nine.
- When I spoke about sexual boundaries being crossed at nine, it caused family divisions that lasted for decades.
- My therapist disclosed discussions about my abuse to my mother.
- I was punished at twelve for writing in my private diary about imagining boys naked.
- At thirteen, a close family member told me that boys would only want me for my big boobs.
- At seventeen, I was forced to leave home and live in a bedsit with a shared bathroom — the only female in a block of six — because I’d disclosed I had a boyfriend. I wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to my sister.
Disconnection
I concluded that I was unsafe, unprotected, unlovable, and unworthy. Underneath it all sat the belief that I couldn’t rely on anyone to be there for me.
I dealt with it by disconnecting from my body entirely. And I absolutely wouldn’t seek help from anyone — I was angry, stubborn, and building walls around my heart that would take years to come down.
I put myself in dangerous situations. I abused alcohol and let men abuse my body. My self-esteem was in shambles.
Stuffing it all down
I came up with strategies to get through the next few years:
- Gathering up all the suffering and locking it in a box. Swallowing the key.
- Disconnecting from my body — no catching feelings, no pain, but also no pleasure.
- Studying obsessively — ten straight As at school (a B for maths), four A-Levels, and a BA Hons in Business Management.
- Beginning a compulsive diet-and-binge cycle — hello, crazy relationship with food.
- Becoming a doormat — I developed world-class people-pleasing skills.
- Being hyper-independent and relying on nobody — I supported myself completely from seventeen, paid for university, graduated, and landed a job in London where I wore a suit every day.
These trauma responses helped me survive and get things done. On paper, my life looked great. I hadn’t dealt with a single thing.
During university I met a man who was ten years older — dependable, kind, and safe. I played the doormat, doing precisely what I thought I needed to do to keep him from leaving.
Becoming a mother
We moved in together when I graduated, and I fell pregnant at twenty-three. This was a turning point.
I fell in love with my body and what it was doing — even after I’d devalued it so cruelly. Over eighteen months I enjoyed two beautiful pregnancies, two spontaneous and spiritually awakening births, and breastfed two strong, healthy sons. The enormity of that blessing was not lost on me.
My sons smashed the wall around my heart. Motherhood allowed me, for the first time, to feel deep compassion for myself rather than disgust. I became aware of how much little Lisa had been through.
I was twenty-six — a married mother of two, with a house, a car, a job, and everything I was supposed to want. And I realised I had built a false identity to protect myself. I didn’t know who I was.
The healing journey
It felt more uncomfortable to stay trapped inside the cage I had built for myself than to face what was outside it. So I began peeling back the layers and facing my truth. The full force of that pain put me in a spin — and revealed a tiny spark of the real me still burning inside.
I was desperate to get to know her. To hear her voice. To let her take up the space she deserved. But she couldn’t fit into the life I had built.
Sadly, marriage counselling didn’t help. Divorce was excruciating — systematically destroying the beautiful family we had created together, one legal letter at a time. The parting was fraught with anger, and I was left with nothing. I quietly picked up the pieces and carved out a new life with my sons.
Ongoing guilt
I still experience waves of guilt and grief for walking away. It was a selfish choice — and for someone who couldn’t bear to upset anyone, choosing my own happiness was way outside my comfort zone.
My healing began by reconnecting to my body. Gentle, patient self-care. Many tears. Curious inquiry. I took the time to explore what I actually liked, to tune in and listen to my own body — and to discover what I didn’t like, and how to say no to it.
As I dismantled the false identity I’d built, the self-doubt began to drift away. I was getting to know who I really was, without judgement. It felt like falling in love with myself for the first time.
And because I’d let myself down so much in the past, I needed to forgive myself and build self-trust. I needed to keep the promises I made to myself.
Starting a new life
In 2012 I began sharing publicly on a Facebook page called Happiness for Her — my first online platform. It started with boundaries and self-love. Sex education wasn’t yet on my radar.
Around that time I connected online with an acquaintance named Gavin — fun, straight-talking, and 8,500 miles away in South Africa. He felt safe precisely because he couldn’t get physically close.
But we became close despite the miles. I shared my story gradually, and was surprised by his rage at what I described. It was the first time I’d seen fierce, protective love — someone encouraging me to take action rather than absorb.
Gradually, I had the hard conversations that needed to happen. I said what I needed to say. I set and enforced the boundaries I deserved. Watching myself do those things produced a feeling I still find hard to describe — a mixture of pride and awe.
Next steps
My divorce completed. Gavin invited me to visit. The thought terrified and excited me in equal measure, so I booked the flight.
The visit was better than I’d imagined — like coming home and having an adventure simultaneously. It sparked a longing to live there with the boys, Gavin, and the ocean.
That longing didn’t dissipate over the years, so I began investigating how to make it happen. With no legal guidance, I built a case to relocate with my children. I was a single, working mother preparing to emigrate to another hemisphere.
Wake up, put on a suit, make packed lunches, walk to school, gather documents, get on the train, stand in front of a judge, defend against a barrister without crying, get on the train, rush to school, make dinner, bedtime story, prepare new documents, sleep.
While that was happening: organised school places in South Africa, packed up our lives, put them in a container, handed in my notice, sold our possessions, packed three suitcases, said our goodbyes, and boarded a plane.
I realised the enormity of what I’d accomplished — and prayed it would be okay.
Happily ever after?
Landing in my dream life was… not exactly a dream, to be honest.
I had poured everything into emigrating — time, money, energy, friends, family, free schooling, healthcare. I’d sacrificed all of it to stand on South African soil beside Gavin. Now I wanted him to fill every void that sacrifice had created.
Meanwhile, Gavin’s carefree world disappeared overnight when three exuberant, needy Poms arrived. A ready-made, mess-making family.
The honeymoon period was tense. Trust issues, communication failures, clashes of opinion, raised voices, tears — and a lot of great sex.
I wondered if I’d made a colossal mistake. After four months, the boys and I returned to England (a court condition), and I seriously considered whether to go back.
My fifth surname
We did go back. And slowly I learned how to show up in this relationship as my actual self — without defensiveness, without armour. I dropped the protective behaviour. The jealousy, insecurity, and neediness gradually fell away.
I remembered how strong I was on the inside. That unbreakable foundation — the one I’d built entirely by myself — gave me the courage to swap my armour for softness. I knew I would always be okay, which finally allowed me to relax and start having fun. That’s still how I choose to show up.
After three years, Gavin asked my boys for permission to marry me. We married a few months later at a music festival. My sons walked me down the aisle where Gavin waited with his son, the best man. It was perfect.
Marrying Gavin meant my surname changed for the fifth time — at thirty-five — thanks to two marriages, an adoption, and a legal change. I’ve decided it’s final this time. I’ve taken full ownership of the name Lisa Welsh, and it feels good.
The lesson I needed most from this stage of my life: protecting myself unnecessarily from pain was also blocking me from pleasure.
So how did I actually become a sex educator?
Now you know the truth — I’m very normal.
Divorced and remarried. Two teenage sons and a stepson, all home-schooling with me. A busy, sometimes overwhelmed woman with body image issues, a complicated relationship with sexual shame, and a lifelong tendency to put everyone else first.
But I accidentally discovered the power of pleasure as a healing tool. Pleasure helped me relax my hyper-independent trauma response, reduce my fear of abandonment, and rebuild my relationship with my body.
I’m not “fixed.” I don’t think that ever happens. But continuing to invite pleasure into my life helps — consistently, measurably, undeniably.
Happiness for Her
My Facebook page, Happiness for Her, kept growing. It became a cathartic space to share what was actually working for me. The more I published, the more I found my voice — and slowly, I built the confidence to admit that sex was a central part of my healing.
Watching women give themselves permission to use pleasure in their own lives brought me more joy than anything else I’d done professionally. I realised I wanted to dedicate my work to this.
I don’t have a medical degree — I have a BA Hons in Business Management. I’m not a medical professional, therapist, or psychologist. What I do have is an obsession with learning about human sexuality: sexual health, sexual pleasure, sexual rights, and sexual justice.
I read peer-reviewed journals and books on human sexuality every week. I completed hundreds of hours of sex-based professional development through the Sexology Training Club, sexual health webinars and conferences, and other training programmes.
And eventually, I became an accredited sex educator.
Oh — and I try a lot of things in bed. That’s also relevant.
Why this matters for you
I work specifically with men — and I do it because I understand both sides of the desire gap from the inside.
I know what it feels like to be disconnected from your own body. To perform rather than feel. To protect yourself so thoroughly from pain that you accidentally cut yourself off from pleasure too. I’ve lived the version of that experience that most women in long-term relationships carry — and I’ve spent years studying the version that men carry.
The men I work with are not broken. They’re in good relationships with real women they love, navigating the slow drift that happens to almost every long-term couple if nobody actively pushes back against it.
That’s exactly what I’m here to help with.
If the intimacy in your relationship has drifted and you want a structured path back to it, FLAMES is the place to start. It’s the course I built specifically for couples navigating the desire gap — step by step, from the ground up. One-off investment of $37.
And if you want to start with private, low-pressure work on your own confidence and pleasure first, the Library is built for exactly that. Guided audio sessions for men, $12/month — first month just $5.