Igniting a Shame-Free Rebellion Against Generational Trauma with Rena Martine
Including a sneak peak of The Sex You Want, Rena's upcoming book
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my Disclosure Policy.
In the first installment of this interview Rena described what shame is, how it shows up in our language, and how to start unpacking it. She mentioned the viruses we have in our clunky computers (aka our brains).
But how were those viruses installed? How much of this toxicity did we absorb from our familial culture and traditions? What does breaking those generational curses look like?
And is it time for wine yet? Yes! We discussed rosé wines for this interview, but maybe you prefer something else. What’s your favorite wine:
Breaking the Chains of Generational & Cultural Traditions
Paulette: You hit on a lot of points that not only are universal to women, but Latinas specifically. These are all things that we carry within us. [Then there are] women like us who are breaking generational cycles by not having children and not perpetuating that same tradition. Because that's part of what it is: these traditions of sweeping shit under the rug, staying quiet in the face of what might look, feel, and actually be abuse, like you just mentioned.
That shit is hard. And it's really hard sometimes to step out of that. So that's where you help women on this journey, and can hold their hands in figuring out how to even come to terms with all of these weird emotions that come from doing the exact opposite of what you grew up doing.
Rena: Right. Part of it, too, isn't to get people to say, "wow, my parents must have been assholes," or "My parents must have been idiots. Like, why were they feeding me this toxic stuff?"
But also what did they teach me about what it means to be a woman? And then how is their lens different from mine? So that in their mind, that made sense. And also are they doing the thing I'm trying to do?
Because if your mother was somebody who didn't value higher education or didn't have access to it, for example, it may have made sense that yes, this is your job, this is what you do. But has she done the thing you're trying to do? If you're leading a different path, then no. And like I say, don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from.
Don't put on somebody else's pair of glasses and assume the lens that they see the world from, because their lens makes sense to them.
So understanding my family's input, it came from a place, and it makes sense to them. We're all rational actors. However, I have a different prescription that I need for this path that I'm trying to follow.
Doing that kind of micro level dismantling can be really helpful because we're giving everyone some grace in this particular circumstance. So I've heard a lot of people say, "I'm scared to go to therapy cuz they're just gonna convince me that I hate my mom and dad and that they were terrible people."
Yes, there is a slight bit of truth to that when it comes to therapy. That is not what I do with my clients as a coach. It's really putting things in their home and in their place. Marie Kondo-ing our emotions.
Paulette: Marie Kondo-ing our emotions! That's brilliant. I'm [finally] at the point in my life where I'm also able to separate how my parents raised me—because that's what they knew. They were doing the best that they could do with what they had, and that might not have been great. But also I am able to see it more objectively than when I was going through it.
So two things can be true. Parents could have tried their best and parents could still have not done for us what we needed.
Rena: Abso-freaking-lutely. Yes, yes, yes.
Embracing Our Unique Vision: Reimagining Success Beyond Parental Influence
Let’s take another shot at the idea of breaking with tradition and creating our own unique path, one that our parents are probably not familiar with.
Especially since they did have kids! And we…won’t!
A lot of what we know about ourselves today is through the lens of what our parents wanted for us. This is a common first gen struggle, but it doesn't stop there. There's always this aim for better, even for perfection:
I really appreciated how Rena compares it to needing a different lens prescription, different glasses. Our parents knew only what they knew and they—hopefully—did their best with the information they had at the time.
But our generation is trying to accomplish something different. It's a different world now. It could absolutely be in line with what our parents hoped for us, but they don't have the same glasses prescription to see it as we do. So they may not be able to see it through the lens of their own experiences and their own limitations. And that's okay.
Liberating Ourselves from the Pursuit of Perfection
Paulette: We’re all human.
Rena: Yeah, and none of us are perfect, nor should we strive to be perfect.
Paulette: Oh my gosh. Perfection is a lie!
Rena: Yeah. It's bullshit. I say a lot, “think of how many industries would collapse if women started loving our bodies tomorrow.” But think of how many industries would collapse if none of us were striving for perfection.
Paulette: Mm-hmm. What I say all the time is that decisions are not life sentences. There are very few things in this life you can't walk back. Very few things that are absolutely permanent once you make that decision. Cutting off your leg, you know it's not gonna grow back. Most other things you can change your mind about. You can decide, you know what? That's not working. Let me turn this car around and take a different path.
Rena: Absolutely. And giving yourself permission to fall out of love with what you thought you wanted. Because people will often stay in relationships, for example, well I made the commitments. And that isn't necessarily doing anyone any favors if you're staying out of obligation.
But you had me thinking when you were talking about cutting off the leg, things that can't be reversed. And before we started recording today, we were talking about the concept of regrets. When people ask do you have any regrets in in your life, Rena? I say I have one: over plucking my eyebrows in the nineties.
Paulette: You're right! When I was 15, I over plucked my eyebrows and 30 years later...yeah, I'm with you.
Well, we've talked about shame. We've talked about sexual shame. That's what you do for a living. This is a vocation for you. This is who you are. For anybody who wants a model of someone living La Vida Más Chévere, Rena is here for you. Rena embodies her work to such a degree because that is your best life, right?
Rena: Yeah. There's very little distinction between work and play for me, which is usually a blessing, but sometimes a curse. Cuz I'm like, wait gosh, I'm working again! I didn't even mean I'm working right now.
But it is such a relief to not have to wear these different hats. Because I felt like I did have to do that quite a bit in my last career, in a very conservative profession as a prosecutor. And now I talk about the same things as I do outside my life, at work, and inside my work life. And there isn't this cognitive dissonance there, and that is so liberating.
Paulette: There is the word of the year right there. Liberation, for all.
The Sex You Want Coming in 2024
On top of being a former attorney, a badass intimacy coach and a TEDx speaker, Rena is now also writing a book called The Sex You Want.
Rena: It's called The Sex You Want. And the subtitle is A Shameless Journey to Deep Intimacy, Honest Pleasure, and a Life You Love.
It's a self-help book, so nonfiction. But it's a little bit different than what's on the current sexual self-help offering in that I share a lot of my personal stories, and those of the clients that I've had the honor of working with. Those are anonymized for them, not anonymized when it comes to me and giving people lessons.
Each chapter is a lesson illustrated by stories, but also with practical tools on how to go out and do this. So I tell you, “go to this website, check out this product.” I'm telling people how to do the damn thing. That's kind of my motto because no one's teaching us how to do it. I wrote the book that I wish I'd had on the beginning of my own journey toward being shame-free.
Because a lot of what's out there right now is being written by academics or clinicians, and so there's this kind of ivory tower perspective. And mine is supposed to feel like a conversation between two friends over a reasonably priced bottle of wine.
And that's what it's supposed to read like, very conversational. I'm not talking at you, I'm with you. And what sets it apart too is that I talk about a lot of topics that have typically been siloed in the sex world.
I talk about BDSM, I talk about ethical non-monogamy. Hey, you wanna have a threesome? Here's how to do it. In addition to all the things you might expect in a sex book. But what my editor had said to me when the publisher wanted to buy the book was, "I like the fact that you treat all of these things that people might consider as taboo as just normal topics of conversation."
And so it's a good start to your journey. Like I say, there's never an end to your journey. But this is inviting the reader to approach their own life from a place of curiosity to start getting rid of their shame and invite in more pleasure and better relationship to themselves and to other people.
Paulette: Go follow her on Instagram. Because not only does she talk about this all the time, the content of your book is in your stories, all day, every day. And you light up when you talk about this, which makes it clear that you love it, and that's why you're so invested in it.
But also if you want sex toy recommendations, get on her newsletter. She will send you discount codes. She will show them in her stories! If your needs are somewhere else, if you wanna explore BDSM, here is someone who will actually talk to you about it, without making you feel like you’re the weird one.
And that's what I love about you so much. In your stories on Instagram, every day you're dismantling this weird idea that we have, culturally, around sex and you're just making it okay to talk about. Like you were saying, it's two girlfriends over a glass of reasonably price Trader Joe's wines, probably rosé.
Rena: Oh my gosh! It's so funny because literally one of the chapters in my book opens up with me having a conversation with a friend of mine, over a bottle of reasonably priced Trader Joe's rosé in my backyard at the time. This book is for you, Paulette, do you know?
Paulette: Yes, I wanna signed copy! I will be buying my copy from an indie bookshop and then taking it to you so you can sign it for me. Hopefully a women owned indie bookshop. And then hopefully we can get your stuff in the hands of other marginalized communities. Let's get that into the bookshops in East LA, of Inglewood and Compton. Especially for Black women and Latinas with the family ties and shame and the religion and all these things that can overwhelm you, those are the people who need it the most! Who need to just approach sex and, and [their] body with liberation.
Rena: In some cultures, there’s a history of our body not belonging to us, for a variety of reasons, and there is that intergenerational trauma that comes along with it. So this is an opportunity for me to reiterate that becoming shame-free is truly an act of rebellion from a neurological evolutionary perspective, but it's also an act of rebellion in terms of breaking these generational curses that we never asked for.
Listen now on Apple:
Or on Spotify:
Find Rena online at:
To get the full show notes, and an episode transcript, go to PauletteErato.com. And stay tuned for an expanded version of our conversation right here on Substack, coming later this week.
Audio Engineered by Robert Lopez // www.cratesaudio.com