If you could send a message to your vagina, what would you say? Thanks for all the good times, an apology for the swimmers under jeans, perfumed soaps, and questionable haircuts? Canberrans and women across the globe are invited to pen a love note to their vulva in the Global Write A Letter To Your Vagina Workshop, this Sunday 16 July.

From the comfort of your home, you can join women from the UK, US, Europe and Africa as they all log on to be part of an empowering conversation. There will be no prompts to grab your mirror and take a look; pants stay on. Throughout the free workshop, women are invited to share their experiences, ask questions, and talk about the relationship they have with their bodies, themselves and their sexuality.

“Free The V is really about females getting to own the conversation and not to be influenced by the views and expectations that we started being exposed to as really young people,” says Danielle Dal Cortivo, founder of Free The V.

Breaking down the misconceptions and truths that women have been told about their bodies and the female experience, the workshop gives participants the opportunity to explore how the conversation makes them feel. Attendees are guided with cues to pen a note to their vagina, screens and mics go off, and people write their letters before coming back together for a reflection.

“People discover something that they’ve never seen or heard or felt or thought about before, and it provides an access to greater self-expression, freedom or confidence in how we show up in the world. A lot of the time what shows up is a real reconnection to self,” Ms Dal Cortivo says.

Attendees can submit their anonymous writings to be included in the upcoming Free The V letters to vaginas book, with plans for 100 heartfelt notes to be shared with readers around the globe.

“People don’t have to submit their letter; people can write and burn their letter once they’ve written their letter or put it in their diaries or do whatever they want to do. People have the option of submitting it; what really matters to me is people are empowered to choose what they want to do with that.”

If diamonds are a girl’s best friend, our vaginas are that friend that makes you laugh and feel great until a remark or look completely shatters your sense of self. The juxtaposition of the female organ is that of the ultimate pleasure and shame, and Ms Dal Cortivo wants to start the conversation about the complex relationship women have with their vaginas.

“There’s a world of inherited conversations that especially women are born into, around how we should look, how we should be, how we should behave sexually, how we should relate to our body, especially our vulvas and vaginas. For many people, these conversations are not super empowering … and there can be shame and stigma and expectation, and guilt,” she says.

Founding the project by chance more than anything else, Ms Dal Cortivo was inspired to research STIs after a volunteer stint at an orphanage in Tanzania. She said the promotion of a condom to protect against HIV in a place where people don’t have the power or capacity to insist on that led to more questions than answers.

From that curiosity, the founder started reflecting on her own experiences and exposures that impacted her relationship with herself, her body, and her sexuality. Soon, there were over 300 beliefs, statements, judgements, memories, and experiences that reflected her female experience.

“Once I said all of that out loud, a new experience was available ; a this level of confidence and self-love and self-expression,” she smiles.

Hesitant to share the project at first, Ms Dal Cortivo told one friend, who in turn shared her own stories that had been brought to the surface during the conversation. That friend then opened the conversation with her daughter, a moving experience for both women – and it kept growing from there.

“I had no intention of creating this; it just occurred that there actually weren’t spaces for women to be discussing the world of this in a really safe way,” Ms Dal Cortivo says.

While most adults know a lot about the penis, its appearance and variations in size and colour, says Ms Dal Cortivo, the same can’t be said for female anatomy. One of her friends admitted that in her early 30s, she still wasn’t sure what the vulva actually was.

“Why do we not know that there’s variety in vulvas? Why do we not talk about how getting our period for the first time can impact our relationship to ourselves and our bodies?”

Even just the word vagina is enough to make people uncomfortable; it is the home of creating life,  and for many, giving birth, a yet we can’t talk about it without people shifting in their seats.

“We deal with periods, endometriosis, pre-menopause, sex before children, sex after children, sexual assault … But there’s a complete lack of acknowledgement of the role of our vagina as a representation of what it is for the female experience,” says Ms Dal Cortivo.

Starting the letter-writing workshop was a way for women to discuss their own ideas of the female experience in a safe way while empowering themselves. One of the things she has noted is the disconnect a lot of women feel for this part of their body.

“They were just like ‘wow, I’d just kind of shut that off, my vagina was just for other people’s pleasure, there’s never really been a focus on me and my own pleasure or self-pleasure’. Someone else stated ‘I think about my hair and nails more than I think about my vagina.”

There is a certain kind of power to be derived from reading letters of other women, says the founder; the endless well of wisdom and experiences that connect us together with women from all walks of life. Women have opened up about childbirth, menstruation, the ways in which they have let their bodies be used, trauma, and the shame surrounding abortion.

Women from all ages and backgrounds are encouraged to join the workshop. Later instalments of the projects hope to include the voices of men and those who don’t identify as female; however, the initial project has a focus on the experience of women. The term ‘women’ includes those assigned female at birth and those who identify as non-binary and gender diverse who have a vagina.

“There’s a whole world possible outside of that. I’d love for men to write letters, I’d love for people who don’t identify as female but do have a vagina to share about what that might be like, and then there’s scope for people who have had gender affirmation surgery,” she says.

If you want to contribute a letter to the project but are unable to attend the workshop, head to the Free the V website and follow the guide on how to write and submit your note.

A note of thanks, a sincere apology or a polite request to stop doing that thing you hate, send a message with the Global Write A Letter To Your Vagina Workshop on Sunday 16 July 8am and 6pm;  events.humanitix.com

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