A Love Letter To My Labia — Lilium
The other night, I had the deep pleasure of reading Lilium, a raw and intimate love letter to my vulva, in honour of Petal, the bold and beautiful work of artist and photographer Bex Day.
Petal is more than art.
It is rebellion in bloom.
A visual manifesto that pairs vulvas with flowers — soft, wild, fearless — in tender defiance of shame and the patriarchal gaze.
Through each image and story, Petal breaks the silence that has long cloaked this sacred part of our essence.
It celebrates the vulva in its power, the beauty of its diversity and invites us to stop hiding. To open up in full bloom.
The evening hosted at Soho Revue was intimate and powerful, a gathering of stories and bodies, together reclaiming the narratives of our vulvas.
When I shared Lilium, I spoke about shame and sensuality. About my journey back to self-love. About reclaiming the language we use for our vulvas, and rooting deep into pleasure and pride where shame was once planted.
Standing there, revealing the rawness of my truth, I felt the weight and wonder of this revolution, unfolding one petal, one story, one reclaimed body at a time.
This is what it means to practice wild love:
To honour every fold, every scar, every soft and untamed part of ourselves.
To remember that we are, and always have been, living, breathing art.
I Invite you to join me on this tender, wild journey of self-love and step into the sacred art of embracing your body without shame,
Read my love letter to Lilium.
Vagina.
I’ve never loved that word.
Too clinical. Too far from the wild, raw truth of her real essence.
I prefer pussy. Or cunt.
Words that taste of sensuality, power, eroticism.
My pussy?
She’s tight, years of yoga and devotion to pelvic strength have gifted me that.
But my labia?
Oh, they are of another untamed nature.
They hang soft and free, unfolding like petals opening outward.
My left lip falls lower than the right, wildly asymmetrical, utterly herself.
Say hello to my lopsided labia.
Lilium.
These days, I celebrate them. I welcome them.
Lovers adore them — voluptuous, unique, unforgettable.
But it wasn’t always this way.
There was a time when my labia and I had a more complicated love story.
One that was unrequited.
At 15, squeezing into tight thongs, my lips cascaded out rebelliously, fighting for freedom.
I remember looking down and wondering, “Fuck, is this normal? Is something wrong with me?”
No male lover ever shamed me.
But the silence spoke too.
I burrowed the questions deep down.
Until her.
My first female lover.
She had surrendered herself twice to the knife, enduring two labiaplasties and still couldn’t make peace with her lips.
In her pursuit of perfection, sensation had slipped away.
Her shame slipped under my skin, unearthing something long buried.
I spiralled into late-night searches, scrolling endless images of “perfect” tucked-away vulvas.
And there, shame came rushing back, whispering that my unruly lips were somehow too much. Imperfect.
Until I found my tribe.
In their embrace of my queer, sex-positive community, I returned to myself.
Their love and acceptance a mirror reflecting what I had long forgotten.
And there, in that tender seeing, it bloomed:
My lips, wild as petals, fearlessly their own, are mine.
My lips are mine.
Unique. Voluptuous. Alive.
A tender truth that we are all beautiful in our own way.
No two pussies are the same.
No lips are too big or too small.
Every pussy is a universe.
Beautiful and unique in its own way,
And pleasure?
Pleasure lives in the wildness.
Pleasure lives in feeling. In softness.
In the refusal to cut away parts of ourselves for the sake of fitting in.
I wouldn’t trade my sensation for aesthetics.
I wouldn’t trade my freedom for approval.
And I wouldn’t trade my beautifully lopsided lips for the porn-perfect mirage of what a pussy should look like.
Lilium — you are the canvas of my desire.
My soft rebellion.
Sacred, untamed, and deeply mine.
And I love you.
— Lana
