The Purity Culture Recovery Guide

The Shame-Free Sex Education You Deserve

De: Erica Smith

Narrado por: Patricia Rodriguez

Bloomsbury presents The Purity Culture Recovery Guide: The Shame-Free Sex Education You Deserve by Erica Smith read by Patricia Rodriguez

You deserve to understand your body, embrace your sexuality, and find joy without shame.

For those raised in purity culture, messages about sex were rooted in fear, silence, and control. Virginity was prized above all else, sexual desire was condemned, and women, queer, and trans people were often left shrouded in shame. The results have been devastating: fear of intimacy, painful or unsatisfying sex, and a lingering sense of brokenness.

In The Purity Culture Recovery Guide, sex educator Erica Smith—founder of the Purity Culture Dropout® program—offers the comprehensive, inclusive, and trauma-informed sex education many never received. Drawing on more than two decades of professional experience, Smith replaces shame with empathy, self-compassion, and empowerment. She provides medically accurate information about bodies, birth control, pleasure, communication, consent, and abortion, alongside affirming discussions of gender, sexuality, and relationships.

Smith's approach is both practical and healing. Listeners will learn how to set boundaries, challenge damaging beliefs, explore their own sexual values, and build a new sexual ethic based on respect, autonomy, and joy. Most of all, this book insists that there is nothing wrong with you.

Whether you are beginning your recovery from purity culture or seeking to deepen your sexual self-understanding, The Purity Culture Recovery Guide is an essential, shame-free guide to reclaiming pleasure and rewriting your sexual story.

©2026 Erica Smith (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Reseñas de la Crítica

The Purity Culture Recovery Guide is the warm, empowering resource that readers escaping religious sexual shame have been waiting for. For anyone raised with silence, fear, and negative messaging about sex, this book offers the antidote: comprehensive, compassionate, and inclusive sexuality education. Creator of the Purity Culture Dropout Program™, Erica draws on decades of expertise as a sexuality educator serving the people most impacted by authoritarian upbringing and fear-based religions. This book will provide you with the accurate, science-backed guidance your body and heart have been craving. Nurture, heal, and liberate yourself with this important book, and step into the life you so richly deserve. (Tina Schermer Sellers)

Purity culture distorts one of the core aspects of being human—our sexuality—and addressing these distortions takes nuance and compassion that can be overlooked in other guides. Erica Smith has written a useful primer, blending kindness, humor, and truth-telling, tailored for those recovering from purity culture. (Blake Chastain)