Growing up in a naturist family
I grew up being a naturist/nudist; I don’t know which is the right term for it and to be quite honest with you, I don’t care… I’ll let others worry about the finer distinctions between the two. The bottom line is that growing in our house, we were usually naked.
To tell you the truth, I never questioned it, it was just normal in our family; even now, I’ve never given it a thought. Many naturists/nudists have told me that I’m lucky because I’ve never struggled about it, and to some extent, that is true; I am fortunate in that regard. Yet, that doesn’t mean I didn’t struggle. It must have been especially difficult for my parents, teaching us the “clothes rules” when we were little.
Soon enough however, we all learned that when we left home we had to be dressed, and we had to get dressed when others came to our house. The hard part was learning that we really couldn’t tell our friends how we lived at home. Along with that of course, we had to learn not to tell them they were weird for wearing clothes all the time!
I didn’t do well with that last part…
I should add that we lived in rural Iowa far from any neighbors, so people weren’t just knocking at our door.
Teenage years are tough for anybody, and growing up the way I did, at least I never worried about body image, so I suppose I was lucky not to worry about all of those changes that cause so much havoc with teenage girls in particular. Where I ran into trouble was when I had a really good friend, you know, the ones you tell all of your secrets, and then they tell the world as soon as you have a “fight” over something stupid. My secret tended to be electric in school, and I didn’t have many friends. Rather, I learned to deal with teasing and ridicule early on and, being a bit of a tomboy anyway, became very interested in the martial arts. In high school the teasing stopped and I was more or less feared…
Looking back on it, I wouldn’t trade my childhood with anybody, for it was as close to idyllic as I can imagine, even though nothing in this life is quite perfect. Whatever adversity being a nudist might have caused made me a stronger and more confident person and being a nudist (or is it naturist) has been, on balance one of the greatest blessings of my life and I will always be grateful to my parents for bringing us up that way.
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