I host Conversations With A Love Activist, which is a candid, 12-part personal documentary web-series.
This series charts my personal heroine's journey towards healing and wholeness inspired by Covid-19 and the lockdown's strain on my mental health. On each episode, I invite wise women to join me for various discussions.
So far, I've had deeply inspiring conversations with various women, including my mother, Nonkululeko Gobodo, my life coach Shannon Pam, and my spiritual healer, Gogo Sophia, who all equipped me with culturally relevant, practical, self-love tools to share with others.
Chule Gobodo with mom, Nonkululeko Gobodo. All images supplied by Chule Gobodo
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Most recently, I spoke to my mother, who is the first African woman charted accountant in South Africa and renowned businesswoman, about what she's learned about sex in 27 years of being divorced, self-love and owning her pleasure.
My mother insisted on speaking about her sexual journey after watching my episode titled S.E.X= Sacred Energy Xchange.
She felt it urgent to help women understand that reclaiming their pleasure is a form of self-love and protest against prejudice against women.
You would think this was a hard conversation to have, but because we have both worked very hard on healing our fractured relationship, we started to see each other as people first.
"The only preparation I had about sex was from my mother when I was going to high school. She said 'don't sleep with boys, you will get pregnant'," my mom tells me about her own sex education. This is something which has now led her to being as open as possible about owning her own pleasure, and speaking to me about such topics.
Watch the episode below:
We also took responsibility to re-parent ourselves, and that made the conversation easy and authentic. To me, I was just speaking to my sister, my friend, and that created a love-filled gentle space for the conversation to land as well as it has with viewers.
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Here is what I learnt from the conversation:
1. Taking ownership and responsibility for your pleasure is a form of gaining agency over your body.
2. Shame has no place in sex.
3. Loving and appreciating your body is paramount to healing from sexual shame.
The incredible comments and feedback from our community of self-lovers clarify how vital self-love, coming from people who look like them, is for them.
Representation matters, and both my mother and I are determined to break stereotypes around African women through my initiative Conversation with a Love Activist and her initiative Awakened Global.
Chule Gobodo and her mom Nonkululeko Gobodo when they were 15 and 40 years old respectively
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My goal is to create platforms for African women to experience self-love in action from a lived experience. I have done episodes on healing mother wounds with my mother, healing sexual and financial trauma through womb mapping, and a couples coaching session with my husband.
Through authentic storytelling, I aim to equip women with practical tools to heal from trauma and love themselves.
Want to get in touch with us? Send us an email on chatback@w24.co.za
