Aiding Rudderless Women

Chastity Speaker Reaches Out to Coeds

WASHINGTON, D.C., OCT. 10, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Dawn Eden, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, lived the ubiquitous "Sex in the City" lifestyle for years, but then found her way out of it and into the role of chastity speaker.

Eden is a chastity speaker for the Cardinal Newman Society. Her qualification? She understands the pressure to live the "hook-up" lifestyle that is so rampant on college campuses, having battled it herself for years.

She will be speaking to college students around the country to help young people avoid the pitfalls of casual sexual relationships, and to teach them how to prepare for authentic love.

In Eden's book "The Thrill of the Chaste," she tells her personal experience: "I felt trapped in a lifestyle that gave me none of the things that the media and popular wisdom promised it would." Those interested in reading her book should be aware that it describes in detail her secular lifestyle prior to living a chaste life.

At some point in her own journey, Eden wrote that she realized "that all the sex I had ever had -- in and out of relationships -- never brought me any closer to marriage or even being able to sustain a committed relationship."

The chastity speaker says that a big part of that had to do with the role her father had played in her life: "I felt that I had to earn my father's affection. It was a limited and precious commodity, but I knew it was there. I strained for it, but all too often it was just out of reach."

Transformation

The result was that she believed the man worth getting was the one hard to get, the one hard to please, the one whose emotions and attention span were fleeting -- just the same as the man she tried to please all those years growing up.

"However much I wanted a man to stay, I felt deep down that he was certain to leave," Eden recalled.

Her book chronicles what happened when she picked up the habits of a chaste life. She was slowly transformed from a "leather and stilettos" kind of girl to a national chastity speaker.

Over time, Eden said she was able to see how her father's spotty love contributed to her own struggles, but rather than stewing on this, she found both the source of her struggle and the subsequent forgiveness to be a further step toward happiness.

The book explains that after she decided to be chaste, a new type of rapport with men developed, and she found she had new respect for the opposite sex, and for herself.

"What I never imagined before I was chaste," Eden confessed, "was that I could hope to find someone to love the me I don't love. My weaknesses, my insecurities, my shortcomings, all the time I miss the mark."

Through chastity, Eden was able to find what her heart truly desired, something totally unfathomable when she was wrapped in a lifestyle that led to the exact opposite of what she intended.

Regarding her new job, Eden says: "It feels like a vocation, as it encompasses everything I have done up to this point in writing about chastity and speaking about it to young adults."