They told me chastity was something I could lose.
A delicate thing. A clean sheet. A secret to hide.
They told me if I gave it away, it wouldn’t be mine anymore.
If it was taken, I’d be ruined.
They never asked how it felt to be reduced to that.
To a gate.
To a lock.
To a thing to protect—while no one protected me.
They gave me metaphors I never asked for.
They called me a rose with the petals plucked.
A glass already broken.
A gift no longer worth unwrapping.
And so, I learned to disappear.
I learned to shrink.
To keep my knees together and my questions quiet.
I learned to fold my desire into silence.
But silence is not the same as safety.
And shame is not the same as salvation.
So I began again.
Not with their rules. Not with their eyes on me.
But with my own hands—trembling but mine—
I picked up the pieces of the story they never let me tell.
I touched my skin without apology.
I named my boundaries without flinching.
I looked in the mirror and said:
You are not what was done to you.
You are not what they feared you would become.
I am not dirty.
I am not dangerous.
I am not waiting to be saved.
My chastity is not something I lost.
It’s something I reclaimed.
Something I redefined.
Something I walk in now—head high, heart open,
not because I am untouched,
but because I am undiminished.
I don’t need purity to be worthy.
I don’t need shame to be spiritual.
I don’t need to be invisible to be whole.
My body is mine.
My desire is mine.
My story is mine.
And I will not be quiet about it anymore.
If these words stirred something in you—
if you’ve ever tried to reclaim your story, your body, or your voice—
you’re not alone.
That journey is the heartbeat behind everything I write.
Over the past three posts, we’ve peeled back the layers of a word that has shaped—and in many ways haunted—so many of us: chastity. We’ve explored how it has controlled, wounded, and ultimately how it can be reclaimed, and redefined.
In Part 1, Chastity Was Never Meant to Be a Cage, we explored the historical weight of chastity—how it’s been used to measure women's worth, control their bodies, and shame their desires. But we also began to reimagine it as something else: a sacred act of self-possession.
In Part 2, How We Reclaim Chastity, we moved from reflection into embodiment. We looked at how people today are unlearning purity culture and rewriting the relationship between spirituality, sexuality, and shame. Reclaiming chastity, we discovered, is not about restraint—it’s about wholeness.
In Part 3, I Am Not What Was Done to Me, we gave voice to the survivor. To the rebel. To the sacred feminine. The part of us that refuses to be erased.
The part that says: healing is possible—even after harm.
Desire and dignity can live in the same body.
Silence is not the final word.
Together, these posts form a tapestry of healing, power, and awakening.
But stories don’t just live in essays.
They live in fire, in flesh, in fiction.
And now, I want to invite you into the story that started it all for me…
Yes, it’s a story of magic and myth.
But more than that, it’s about a girl becoming a woman in a world that has tried to own her from birth.
It’s about healing after abuse, discovering a power you didn’t know you had, and daring to believe that your story isn’t over—even when the fire has touched everything.
It’s about what happens when chastity is no longer defined by silence, but by sovereignty.
Because reclaiming your body—your pleasure, your power, your voice—takes time.
Because trust doesn’t bloom overnight.
Because some of the most sacred transformations don’t rush in with thunder.
They happen slowly. In shadows.
In the stillness before the fire.
A slow burn isn’t just romantic pacing—it’s spiritual pacing.
In Ashes of Chastity, every glance that lingers, every moment before the touch—it’s all intentional.
It’s all earned.
It’s all part of Chastity’s journey from silence to song.
If you’ve ever loved a story where desire builds alongside destiny—this is for you.
This isn’t just fantasy. It’s the beginning of her becoming.
And maybe yours too.
Annalise Monét | Urban Fantasy Author | Genre-bending author of Ashes of Chastity and other works where desire, divinity, and transformation collide. I write urban fantasy with spiritual depth, emotional truth, and women at the center of the magic.