Welcome to My Blog

 April 14, 2016

My name is Valerie.  I am starting this journal to help people to understand  how this very normal American teen age girl decided to become just a little less normal.  Maybe it will also help me understand myself and why being naked is so important to me.  

I really wanted to use photos as part of this blog.  It would be great for readers experience what I experience.  Although I have very understanding parents, I know that posting photos of my underage, naked self, along with photos of my friends and some of my family naked all over the internet just isn’t a very smart thing to do.  I am going to use my drawing skills to add color to my story.  I am going to do my best to create the right combination of words and scribbles to convey the experiences I have and the people I meet in my quest to find acceptance of me, just naked me.

I grew up all my life in a small  Northern California town just north of Santa Rosa.  I did normal kid things, hung out at the mall, sold Girl Scout cookies, collected posters of Korean boy bands.  I feel like saying my family is pretty dysfunctional, but when I compare my family experience with my friends, its actually not that different;  Dad works all the time and when he isn’t working, he just wants to relax and watch sports, my brother is only interested in playing video games and rarely comes out of his room, and my mom spends her time planning adventures and vacations that rarely materialize.

I don’t want to make it seem like my brother and father are the villains of the story, but they seem to always have a reason why every weekend has to be the same, spent at the house with my dad watching some sporting event and my bother up in his room.  It was always the same, until one glorious April afternoon at the Muir Grove Sun Academy, when I found myself relaxing with my mother, both of us completely naked in the sunshine as other naked families played games on the grass or splashed in the pool.  I was getting to experience this at fifteen years old and it made me feel so alive, so wonderful.