Last Updated on 19 February, 2026 by Cara Sutra
Welcome. I hope you’re sitting comfortably, and that you’ve got a drink and some snacks within reach. This is a long read, which isn’t surprising as I cover all the things that have been going on in my life behind the scenes, since I started blogging. Things I’ve never revealed here on my blog before, but which have had a huge impact on me. There has been heartache, abuse, violence, betrayal, loss, grief, trauma. Changing relationships, changing family structure, house moves, births, deaths and marriages – the lot. What follows is the hardest post I’ve ever written here on my blog. It’s a confession of all the things I never said at the time, because I was ashamed and embarrassed. I was afraid of being seen as less. Less of a person, less of a woman, less of a sex blogger. I have changed. It’s time to reveal and to heal. No more division or pretence, just integration and kindness. I’m too old and too tired to carry on pretending to be something or someone I’m not. Let’s get started.
My writing has changed over the years. It’s hardly surprising, really; I started blogging at the end of my twenties, and later this year I turn 46. If you look around my blog, it’s obvious that I’m a sex blogger. There are thousands of sex toy reviews, plenty of sex tips and BDSM advice pieces, and sexy stories with a variety of illicit and taboo themes. From around 2009, I presented myself online as a healthy young woman brimming with desire and imaginatively kinky interests, with an active, multi-partnered sex life. And for the most part, that was true.
But there’s so much I haven’t been saying along the way. So many difficult to handle, difficult to process things have been happening while I’ve been writing my carefully curated, intensely sexual blog posts and social media updates, and in between uploading seductive personal photos.
Life isn’t just sex and spankings. Today I am revealing the rest of me. Who I am beyond the sex blogger label. Not just right now in 2026, throughout it all. I made out I was floating through life in a cloud of orgasms and high heels, but my reality was often tempered by stress, pain, and loss.
Before a deep dive into the behind-the-scenes turbulence through the years, I want to share how my sex blogging started. It’s a fun story.
How I Became a Sex Blogger
I have been sharing my sex-related interests via blogging and adult product reviews since mid-2009. My blogging started on the Google-hosted Blogger network, plus I had a drag & drop ‘Moonfruit’ blog for my FemDom side. I seem to recall being on MySpace too… wow, such a long time ago.
Around the same time, I was invited to join the chat forums at Lovehoney by a friend. I loved being part of the ‘Orgasm Army’ community, as it was called in those days. There was a monthly competition in which members could upload photos of themselves wearing their Lovehoney lingerie or outfits (Model of the Month), and I was delighted when I won. I was gifted a £100 voucher to spend at Lovehoney. It was like all my Christmases had come at once.
My sizeable but discreet parcel arrived swiftly, delivered by my wary postie (I had a habit of answering the door in my latex and PVC outfits, in those days, sometimes mid FemDom session with a visiting sub). £100 went a long way during a sexy shopping spree in those days. I can’t remember everything I chose, but I have memories of a Jimmyjane massage candle and the Tracey Cox Supersex bullet. Still have a soft spot for both of those, many years later.
Lovehoney gently encouraged members of the public, and people from the community forums, to share their honest reviews of products from Lovehoney on the site. Well, I thought, it’s a bit of fun, isn’t it. I didn’t have a lot else to do with my time back then, with just the one very young child who was at school all day, so I sat down to share my thoughts and opinions on the products I’d enjoyed.
My reviews were popular. Not just with the rest of the ‘Orgasm Army’ community, but with the team at Lovehoney. Pretty soon, I was offered ‘free sex toys‘ through the post in exchange for my written reviews. It was thrilling. Free sex toys! Amazing.
As my reviews became more detailed, as I learned more about sex toys and other adult products, I branched out into writing more in-depth reviews on my blog. I took various photos too, then uploaded them to accompany my writing. Lovehoney had an affiliate program, so I joined and used those links on my blog. As I received my first few pounds of commission, I thought, this is great. This is what I want to do.
And, very long story short, that’s what I did. Here I am today, at carasutra.com, my self-hosted professional blog, writing not just adult product reviews but sex tips, BDSM advice, personal sex life confessions and original, imaginative erotica. This isn’t just a bit of fun on the side anymore. It’s my full-time job, and I earn a decent salary and pay my taxes.
My Relationship Back Then
While living and working in Jersey (where I lived since I was six, with early years in Manchester and a few later years in Ireland, but that’s another story for another day) I met a man who seemed down-to-earth, funny, and so different to the stuffy suits I worked with in the banking sector. Yorkshire by birth, mechanic by trade, he was irreverent, the life of the party, with no airs or graces. I fell hard, and fast – and pretty soon I fell in another way, too. I was pregnant with my first child.
We were happy, but this change brought with it a heavy financial impact. Childcare costs in Jersey, on top of extortionate private rent, meant we couldn’t afford to stay on the island. About a year after my child was born, we packed up as much as we could and sailed over to the south coast of England to start a new life in Portsmouth.
He worked; I became a stay-at-home mum. After less than two years together and the birth of one baby, my partner’s true nature came to the surface, and it was happening more and more frequently. He drank, heavily. He took money I set aside for food and nappies and spent it on alcohol. The car was fuelled by cheques that inevitably bounced, back in the days when garages still took cheques for fuel payment. No surprise they stopped. The heavy drinking caused him to fly into terrible rages, unleashing a violent temper that he took out first of all on our furniture, then on the doors and walls, and then of course, on me.
I told myself it was just the stress of our situation. He wasn’t really like that; we’d get sorted and he’d go back to the funny, life and soul of the party guy that I’d fallen in love with. Then I fell pregnant again. He didn’t change.
I suffered a miscarriage at four months.
The years passed. Online, I was flirty, sexy Mistress Cara who orgasmed frequently and practically lived in PVC and thigh boots. In reality, I was a broken mess. I stopped eating, to gain some semblance of control. He was still drinking, still beating me, with no apologies for either, just accusations. And I didn’t know how to escape, what to do except carry on trying to live, trying to work, for my beautiful firstborn child if not for me. I was a half-starved zombie, but at least I looked pretty and sounded sexually alluring online.
The Promise of Something Better
I bloody loved Twitter back in the day. I’m devastated it’s turned into the toxic cesspit of vitriol, bigotry and hate-speech that it is today, but that’s yet another story for another day. Too many stories. I don’t remember exactly when, but sometime at the end of 2009, start of 2010, I was tweeted (as it was called back then) by another woman working in the adult industry. She seemed sexy, flirty, fun, confident, happy. We got on instantly. She worked for a sex toy company in Luton, and she reached out to me partly as a form of head-hunting for the team, partly flirtatious seduction.
I grabbed on to that escape ladder with both hands.
She invited me to visit her, and the company. At first, it was just a visit so we could meet, but it somehow evolved into a job opportunity. Almost before I knew it, I was given the opportunity to become affiliate manager for the company. The trouble was, it was an in-house role. I’d have to move – we’d have to move, my abusive partner, my child and I – from Portsmouth to Luton.
During the few initial visits to Luton, and then to this exciting, sexy woman’s house, I found out more about her and her lifestyle. I found it all alluring, addictive, intoxicating (often, literally). She was not only married to a man, she had a boyfriend too – and frequent no-strings fun with girlfriends. Everyone was openly kinky. It was my first brush with polyamory, and it seemed like bliss. It was presented to me as more love, more support, more happiness; and doubtless for many polyamorous people, it is. She wanted me to become part of her love commune, and I wanted that, too.
I decided to go for it. Despite facing yet another house move, from Portsmouth to near Luton this time, I felt it would all be worth it. I had to try.
In what seems like a blur, looking back, I managed the house move and transition into my new job in the office. My abusive partner, my child, and I, moved from Portsmouth to the outskirts of Luton. Then, with my abusive partner’s knowledge, and surprisingly his consent, the exciting woman became my girlfriend. Just one small problem: I was falling in love with her husband as well. And she was delighted about it.
I’m not a cheater. Nothing happened between myself and her husband, beyond our unspoken yet obvious feelings for each other, until I ended things with my abusive partner. My new employment, a new location and a newfound confidence, probably due to seeing what life could be like, strengthened my resolve as I left him, taking my child with me. We moved into the polyamorous ‘home of love’, which housed various adults and other children, and on my 30th birthday my new relationships became official. I was part of the polyamorous quad, with a girlfriend and boyfriend of my own, both of whom were legally married to each other.
Life Living, Working, Breathing Sex
It all started so happily. So full of life, passion, kink and sex. So much sex. All four of us in the polyamorous quad, him, her, her separate boyfriend and I, worked in the office in Luton; promoting sex toys and lingerie and kinky bondage gear all day. I could continue my sex blogging on the side, which was steadily growing in popularity and renown. I had acquired a nearby BDSM slave when I still lived in Portsmouth; he moved up to live with us all, in the polyamorous home. I was a proud slut. I loved fucking, and fucking loved my life. For the first year, at least.
My writing and online persona was full of confidence, but behind the scenes, the cracks were beginning to show. I hadn’t processed the trauma of the violent and abusive relationship, and the speed with which I’d become entangled in the new job, location and relationship style left me emotionally breathless and feeling chaotic. I was incredibly insecure, which manifested as an ongoing eating disorder, propped up by a lifetime of conditioning and patriarchal pressure to be sexually available, wholly amenable, and male-gaze attractive.
On top of this, my girlfriend clearly had insecurities of her own.
In relation to my boyfriend (her husband), she stirred the pot with lies. She would regularly imply or directly state that he would fuck anything that moved. This was clearly projection, because she cheated on all three of us, her partners, regularly.
At the same time, she conned thousands of pounds out of us, our families and our friends. At times she would fly into jealous rages, then punishing sulky silences, with hatred spewed out about me online that she either didn’t know I’d see, or didn’t care.
Lies were constantly told about me to our mutual friends, so they would form negative opinions of me and see her as a wonderful, caring, matriarchal figure, whilst I was viewed as some vile, toxic, abusive mess of a person. Over the years, I’ve been approached by several people who apologised for ever believing her lies, which covered things from “she hates animals” all the way up to distressing slander, such as that I abused children and that I attacked my boyfriend with an axe and broke his ribs.
I know. What. The. Fuck.
Oh, and then I got pregnant again.
And still, the sex blogging continued.
A Growing Household
She actually got pregnant first, by her boyfriend. I felt upset and jealous, because I’d suffered the miscarriage at four months in my previous relationship, and despite trying my best to get pregnant again (I desperately wanted my son to have a sibling) it just hadn’t been happening. Either in that previous relationship, or in my new one. On top of all the other stress and trauma, I didn’t handle it well. I didn’t know how.
As fate would have it, I actually did end up falling pregnant, towards the end of her pregnancy, at the start of 2012. For a few weeks, we were pregnant at the same time. Our relationship was ironically up and down throughout; we’d fall out dramatically and make up even more dramatically, with renewed pledges of absolute love forever and promises to never argue ever again. But of course, we did.
2012 was a busy year.
I was pregnant, money kept mysteriously going missing, then our landlord said we had to move. Those last two were related, although my boyfriend and I didn’t know that at the time.
My boyfriend and father of my unborn child, who was also her legal husband, had family near Lincoln. Our roles in the office had evolved to the point where we could work from home. She wasn’t working anymore; her child had been born and she had other interests. Horses, alcohol and other people’s genitals and money, to be blunt.
We packed up our belongings from where we’d been living in an expensive-to-rent Manor House in Bedfordshire, commutable to Luton, and moved to a rented new build in North Lincolnshire.
I wanted my second child to be born at home, but sadly it wasn’t to be, due to complications at the start of labour. At the end of October, my youngest son was born in hospital. I went home with him the same day. My girlfriend and boyfriend were with me during the birth; I wanted him with me. She was the only one of us three who could drive, therefore ended up at the hospital and in the delivery room, regardless of what I actually wanted. By this time, I knew better than to openly express any of my own feelings. It wasn’t worth it. I’d been gaslit into passive silence.
There wasn’t a lot of time to recover after the birth, as the household relied on any income that my boyfriend (her husband), plus her other boyfriend, and I, could generate. By now, there were anywhere between five to seven adults, seven children, and a menagerie of dogs, cats, fish and more living in the house. Confusing, yes. It was also a filthy mess.
She kept an open-door policy towards her friends and any animal she liked the look of, so I never knew when I woke up in the morning just who or what I’d find myself living with that day. What I needed was security and stability. This was anything but. And I was doing my best to work in this environment, work to earn money to feed the family, and lose myself in sex blogging and my sex toy reviews. My online persona. The me I wished I were.
All while I had a new baby to care for.
Then, 2013 started with devastating news.
The Start of the End
At the beginning of February, we found out that my boyfriend’s father had cancer. It was aggressive, already at such an advanced stage that radiation and chemotherapy wouldn’t be able to help. I was there at the hospital when he, and the rest of us, heard the word no one ever wants to hear. Terminal.
He, along with my boyfriend’s mother, moved in with us on Valentine’s Day 2013. My blog and social media pages were littered with sexy Valentine’s Day tips and inspiration, advice for products to make your Valentine’s night hotter than ever. No doubt I’d thrown some lingerie pics into the mix for added allure. My sort-of father-in-law sat on our sofa, holding his newest grandson on his increasingly bony lap, popping his signature hat on my new baby’s head. He sang Sloop John B to him, and to us.
I still can’t hear that song without crying. I’m crying now, just thinking about him, that song, the words, my new son, his new grandson, the shadows of illness and time.
The days turned into weeks, and then months, living in this strange reality of extended family, complex relationships, new life and ending life, and work, and the incongruence of it all.
I maintained the confident, sexual online persona that I felt was required to secure ongoing income which supported my family, but at the same time it felt increasingly hard to maintain, being so different to who I really was offline.
I was taking breaks from writing sex toy product descriptions for a retailer, or a review of nipple clamps or a new clitoral vibrator, to breastfeed my child. I would fall into bed exhausted from holding dual identities. From being a mother and a partner, to multiple partners.
And from helping provide support to a terminally ill parent of my boyfriend, the grandfather of my child, who had only just started his life. And his son, my boyfriend, who was obviously struggling through the grief. Three generations under one roof, all with such differing realities.
Meanwhile, I stuffed my own past traumas into a box in the dusty darkness at the back of my mind. A box heaving under the weight, cracking at the seams, fractures which split further with every additional pressure, every new worry, every argument, every new evidence of instability.
He died in May 2013.
The polyamorous relationship ended by Christmas.
I’d like to say it just slowly, quietly, gently faded away. But it didn’t. It was loud, angry, confrontational, accusatory, inflammatory, painful, and instantly final.
We got through Christmas, just about, for the kids. Early 2014, my boyfriend and I, my two sons, his mother, and my long-term D/s slave, moved out. Moved on, to a new, better, happier, more secure life. And about time, too.
A New Era
2014 was a wonderful year. There was a joyful sense of relief, despite the sadness of the previous year. We’d escaped, and no longer lived in a hovel of animal mess and new additions to the home, we were no longer ruled by a cheating, thieving, selfish dictator who emotionally bullied my boyfriend and I into enforced silent suffering due to gaslighting and manipulation. We could just… live. Breathe. Enjoy each other, and our family.
We adopted a cat, Grizabella. She’ll turn twelve later this year. 🐾
I felt more settled in my online persona around this time. My confidence was returning, with each month that passed without the heaviness and toxicity of the previous situation and relationships. I had a renewed motivation to be healthy, my libido was wonderfully high, I had a live-in D/s slave and my ‘mother-in-law’ had a wonderful sense of humour. We got on brilliantly. My sons grew and went to their respective nursery and primary school in the small town we’d settled into. My blog was accumulating ever more traffic, authority and popularity, and in demand as somewhere adult businesses wanted their products reviewed, and their websites linked to from my well-written articles.
My Cara Sutra brand was in full swing. I had a new bondage kit with my name and face on the box. I attended industry events, like the ETO Show in the UK, and EroFame in Germany. Blogger meet-ups were arranged, attended, enjoyed.
Through 2014 and 2015 I enjoyed a golden period of sex blogging and sex toy reviewing. I was at full strength in my writing and as a Domme in the BDSM scene. My relationship with my boyfriend was also stronger than ever before. With everything we’d been through together, all we’d endured, we were unbreakable.
However, my slave was getting older. In time, it wasn’t possible for him to live with us anymore as I found him annoying (harsh perhaps, but true) and it was affecting the friendship element of our relationship. He moved out; not far, only two streets away. Over time it became apparent that due to age and other issues he needed to retire as my slave. The relationship benefitted, transforming into a strong, mutual friendship, instead.
At the same time, my ‘mother-in-law’ was struggling with her health. She had suffered a lifetime full of pregnancy loss and heartbreak, as well as health issues like diabetes, heart problems, COPD, progressive blindness and a hernia, as well as struggling with being a larger lady. Her mobility lessened to the point where first she relied on a mobility scooter to get to the local shop and back, then couldn’t manage that anymore and was restricted to the house. Carers were organised, visiting twice a day to attend to her personal hygiene needs and any treatable medical issues.
Christmas 2015 came and went. In January 2016, our landlord informed us he was selling the house. And he wanted us out.
2016, aka Hell
What were we going to do?
Our home was privately rented, in a convenient location for our family. Schools and amenities were close by, a must as neither my boyfriend nor myself could drive yet. We couldn’t afford the lessons.
Even with our dual income, we were just about managing to pay household bills and rent, massively inflated compared to mortgage payments on similar properties. We were ‘stuck renting’.
And now we had been given just a couple of months to find somewhere to go, somewhere that needed to be local, affordable, and large enough to house a couple, two growing boys and my partner’s mother who, with limited mobility, was restricted to ground-floor living. It felt impossible.
I was overwhelmed, crushed by the urgency and the critical nature of it all, the weight of responsibility on my shoulders as mum, partner, ‘daughter-in-law’; the one who organises everything brilliantly and always manages to get things sorted.
That year, I drank a lot. I also ate plenty of shitty takeaways. Numerous bottles of Night Nurse were bought then emptied, as I swigged from them before bed just so I could drift into the oblivion of sleep.
The stress caused the damage from my first child’s biological father to flare up, the physical issues of my previously broken collarbone and shoulder blade causing me to completely lose the use of my right arm that year. I don’t fully understand why. What I do know is that I was under so much stress.
The landlord was piling more and more pressure on us to leave the house, even threatening to stop the water supply, when he knew there were young children in the home.
And still I did my best to carry on my work as a sex blogger. I continued to accept mountains of sex toys to review on my blog. The content, I needed the content to continue. I needed the distraction. And we definitely needed the income.
I look at a lot of the blog posts I wrote that year and I cringe. They’re awful. Rambling and incoherent in places; generic, vague and badly researched. All over the place in tone, rather than authentic and grounded. It was all a cover. Preening my alluring feathers on the surface while I was paddling in frantic panic underneath.
I couldn’t figure out what to do. There were no suitable properties to rent. And absolutely no way we could raise the minimum £10,000 required for a property purchase deposit.
My slave came to the rescue. It’s still so hard to believe someone would do this for us, for me, but he gifted us the deposit so that we could buy our first home.
What a relief.
The rest of the story wasn’t stress-free by any means, what with signing up for ISAs and applying for the government’s Help to Buy scheme at the time and obtaining a mortgage as two self-employed people in the adult industry… But, long story sort, we made it.
In October 2016 we moved into our forever home. Even ten years on, the feeling of relief and unfamiliar security in owning our own home (well, mortgaged) is still there. I still marvel at the fact that we won’t be unceremoniously turfed out of our home ever again. There are many nights where I have trauma and fear-induced nightmares that we lose our home, somehow, but I wake up and breathe in the reality deeply. It’s just a nightmare. We’re still here. And we’re not going anywhere, we’re not packing up our lives and moving anywhere else, ever again.
The Calmer Years
After settling into our new home, my partner, his mother, our two boys, and I, life felt happier and easier for a while. My partner and I got engaged. He was still legally married to the ex, but we’ll come to that.
Our family friend, who had previously been my BDSM slave, still lived just a few streets away from us and visited regularly. He was, and still is, a huge part of our lives. Family.
Cara Sutra as a brand and a sex blog progressed steadily through the next few years.
I discovered a new joy in life: exercise. My life was wank, work, walk, as I joked online regularly back then. I loved to stalk the local hills for an hour and a half each day, and in time I added regular cross bike and running sessions too. Coupled with a low-calorie diet I lost several stone and felt I looked the best I’d ever looked. I felt healthy and confident.
I was ‘letting my hair down’ every weekend with a bottle or two of wine, or half a litre of vodka, but that was normal, right?
Usually, I could ignore the call of the wine in the fridge, that ‘easy out’ into oblivion and escape from my own mind, due to a desire to keep on exercising, keep on losing weight, and needing to attend to my daily family obligations and responsibilities. It got harder to ignore in years to come, until I had to end my relationship with alcohol entirely, as I’ve written about in my piece on going sober.
Behind the scenes I dealt with just normal, everyday life stresses and strains. Our youngest son is autistic. He went through the formal diagnosis process at 5 years old, after being on ‘watchful wait’ since he was 18-months. He transitioned from nursery to primary school. There were plenty of challenges with regards accessing support for him – speech and language, toileting, his EHCP, and more – leading to me writing many letters, attending many meetings and acting as his fiercely protective advocate.
My firstborn was at secondary school by this point. He’s neurotypical. Parenting a typical teenager presents its own kind of challenges. Bullying and fights at school, anger issues with the surge of hormones, the start of romantic interest in his peers, the desire for full independence without the wisdom or resources to be able to navigate the world safely.
We’d welcomed my partner’s mother into our home, after she’d sadly lost her husband years before, and I developed a close bond with her. Even if you get on well, living with your ‘mother-in-law’ isn’t easy or without its challenges, either. Her bedroom was on the ground floor as a necessity, with her unable to handle stairs. So she lived and slept in what would otherwise have been the dining room in our forever home. There’s a downstairs loo which she could just about manage to access. Carers still visited twice a day to attend to her personal and medical needs.
As the years went by, and her health declined further, falls started happening more regularly. My partner and I would be unable to lift her, so an ambulance was required each time. It could take a couple of hours or more for an ambulance to reach us where we live in a rural village, some distance from the nearest cities. After a long discussion with my partner, we decided it was best for her, and provide reassurance all round, if she had round-the-clock care in a nursing home. It’s easy to feel guilty about this decision, but I knew at the time, and that belief has only cemented in hindsight, that it was the right decision for her. She moved out and into a nursing home in autumn 2019.
And then we’re all too aware of what happened in 2020.
It was a good job she had 24/7 medical care and attention. Did she get COVID-19? Yes, she did. With diabetes, heart issues and COPD on top, there’s no way we would have been able to properly care for her in a home environment. Thankfully she pulled through COVID; however, the strain on her body proved too much and her mobility deteriorated to the point where she was now confined to bed. It was an incredibly sad situation, especially for my fiancé who had already had to watch his father get so ill and pass away just a few years before.
A high point of 2020 was obtaining my first ever loss-specific hearing aids, which have been life-changing for me. I’ve written more about my deafness, with an update on my hearing loss from this year included. It’s now a progressive deafness, so I am hoping hearing aid technology can keep up with me as my hearing continues to decline.
Besides that high point, 2020 was obviously difficult for a whole host of reasons. Lockdowns, shielding, schools being open then closed then open again, nobody really knowing whether this was ever going to end or whether it was the ‘new normal’, masks and loo roll hoarders and Joe Wicks and hand washing while singing Happy Birthday… What a year. The perfect time, of course, to plan a wedding.
His divorce had come through a few years before, so he was free to remarry. We set the date for mid-2021, as everyone was confident in spring 2020 that COVID would be ‘over by Christmas’. Famous last words.
Thankfully, by my Hen party the following July, then the wedding in August 2021, all socialising rules and gathering restrictions had been lifted. Only just, though, which caused no end of stress and sleepless nights. Along with a generous helping of guilt that other people had much more serious worries to contend with.
We married, and it was a wonderful day. We’d finally done it, we’d reached our happily ever after.
Betrayed by my Body
Just after Halloween 2021 I caught COVID. We were also in the middle of arranging a tricky re-mortgage deal, rolling the Help to Buy loan from five years previously into our mortgage going forwards. The entire family came down with COVID, of course. In between coughing my lungs up, losing my sense of smell and generally feeling like death, I was trying to download and send bank statements to our broker and stressing over whether or not we’d get the deal we needed. I kept reminding myself that I would have given anything to have this ‘problem’ in early 2016.
After what seemed an age, the broker confirmed everything looked OK and we fixed an amazing mortgage deal and rate for another five years, with the Help to Buy loan rolled in. A huge relief.
Christmas came and went, with plenty of alcohol to ‘help me relax’ after so much stress.
At the start of 2022, I discovered I’d entered perimenopause.
I won’t go into too much detail about the nightmare of my first year in perimeno, mainly because I’ve already written about it in detail in my Hello, Perimenopause piece. Suffice to say, it turned my whole life on its head. I couldn’t exercise like I had previously. My mental health nosedived. I went to the GP for help, and was made to feel like a hypochondriac because I was ‘too young’ to be in perimeno at 41, and turned away without help.
By autumn that year, I was actively suicidal and only getting out of bed to be a mother to my children. Yes, that was the only reason.
And still, I felt an obligation to continue a curated Cara Sutra persona online. Writing and reviewing and being a confident, kinky, sexy example of womanhood. Earning wages to pay the bills. I couldn’t afford to disappoint my readers, my audiences elsewhere, my sponsors…
It was hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. Thankfully, in November, I took the plunge and went back to the GP, determined to be believed and get help. I will admit, I cried. A lot. She prescribed HRT for me. Finally, I’d been believed. Finally, I hoped, my hormones would stabilise. My mental and physical health would improve.
I drank a ridiculous amount of alcohol that Christmas. I can’t remember anything after sitting down to lunch on Christmas Day, until I woke up with the hangover to end all hangovers on Boxing Day.
I thought Dry January would fix things. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t.
By February 2023, I felt like I’d reached a crossroads in my life. I could carry on using alcohol as a frequent escape route into oblivion, likely becoming an alcoholic and potentially killing myself through it; or stop immediately. Just stop drinking, entirely. I’d already tried moderating alcohol and I just couldn’t. It was all or nothing.*
Thankfully, I chose nothing. And ironically, nothing, when it comes to alcohol, has unlocked everything, in terms of my mental health and healing journey. I talk more about this in Why I’m Writing A Survivor’s Journal.
As a sidenote, the day after I decided to go entirely sober forever, my husband’s child he’d had with his ex reached out to him. The child was now 16. He let his father know that his ex-wife (and my ex-girlfriend) had died in October 2022. From alcoholism.
Over time, we reconnected with my husband’s son who we had missed so much for so many years. My husband had been promised contact with him, when we’d first left the polyamorous home all those years before, but of course that had also been a lie. He had also been told that his biological father wouldn’t want him in his life, what with his ‘new family’. More cruel and evil lies. I cried upon hearing that, knowing just how much heartache my husband had been through, being separated from his son for all those years.
I can’t overstate how amazing it was to have him in our lives again, and in time he moved in with us and became my third (but somehow also my middle) son, when I adopted him in the summer of 2023. I love him as my own, and I’m not just saying that, either. He is my son; I’ll fight just as fiercely for him as I will my other two boys. He has his own battles in life; trauma from his birth mother, mental health issues, being autistic with ADHD and more. With the love of a supportive family, he’s transformed over the past few years into a confident, more assertive and healthier young man. I am intensely proud of him.
Back to the start of 2023. Now, I was facing life completely sober and raw from the many years of trauma and pain. Plus, I had to navigate life in a perimenopausal and aging body, whilst working and writing in the adult industry, which still seems to favour youth, thinness and non-disabled bodies, over women who are older, larger, differently abled or chronically ill.
At the start of 2024, my husband’s mother died. Suddenly, there was a funeral to arrange on top of just life in general, and I was supporting my husband through this intensely sad and difficult time for him. My three sons had lost their nana. I’d lost the only person in my life who’d ever come close to being a mother to me.
I was still trying to write and review through these months and years. Doing my best to hold it all together online whilst these stressful and sad events affected us all behind the scenes, here in our home.
And then, last year, I developed M.E. Again, I won’t go into too much detail about that here, as you can read my separate pieces on how 2025 enforced a change of pace in my life, how I need to protect my energy going forwards, and what living with M.E. is really like.
Changed Life, Changed Perspective
Hi, I’m Cara.
I’m 45, in perimenopause, living with M.E. and deafness, mother of three boys with neurodivergence and other needs, wife to my autistic husband.
I live with c-PTSD from issues I haven’t mentioned in this piece as well as some that I have briefly mentioned. I’ve lived (and preferred) the sober life for three years.
I attend trauma-informed therapy on a weekly basis. It’s helping, slowly. I’m in that vulnerable stage where I’m easily brought to tears, with enough triggers from life and ongoing health issues to make me cry on a regular basis.
I’m also Cara Sutra, sex blogger and sex toy reviewer.
I am she. She is me.
No more division. I’m tired of the growing pretence that I’m still the high libido, healthy and active woman I was in my mid-twenties. I refuse to coast on superficial content about spicing up your sex life and the best vibrators for couples when I have so much more than that to say, so many more personal and deep revelations at this point in my life.
It’s time to integrate all that I am, all my past and present, everything that makes me Cara, and blog as the person behind the pen name.
It was during my Christmas 2025 break that I realised something had to change, with regards my blogging. I’ve been holding on to the mistaken idea that a sex blogger has to be a certain type of person, have a certain type of life, for far too long. This deeper self-reflection is what led me to begin The Survivor’s Journal series, where I document my healing and trauma recovery in real time.
I’m not a sexy, lithe, regularly sexually active, 20-something woman anymore who posts seductive lingerie pics. I’m in my mid-40s, with chronic illness, an aging body, low energy, low tolerance but high experience. And that has to be worth something. It’s worth something to me, and that’s what really matters.
That’s why, this year, I have a renewed motivation and focus on being the real me behind the sex blogger label. Still a sex blogger, but authentically me as well, with all my history, issues and flaws.
My self-esteem isn’t the best right now, and I have confidence wobbles on a weekly basis, but I’m done with trying to be something I’m not. I have my blog, I have my voice, I can still write. I still identify as a sex blogger, because that remains the main theme of this blog, and the topic of sexuality extends its tendrils into every aspect of my life. However, this is also my personal space to share whatever I have to say, to get those thoughts out of my mind and soul and put it out there so it’s unburdened from me. Somewhere to set the heaviness down, instead of feeling forced to carry it around in my mind, malformed and chaotic.
Sex remains a strong interest for me, and it’s a huge part of my life. But with my health issues right now, and lowered libido, I can’t pretend that sex is my raison d’être. It isn’t top priority anymore. I have other interests, needs and desires, and that’s normal and acceptable.
I’m not less of a sex blogger just because I’m not rampantly having sex with my husband or multiple partners on the daily; I don’t have to masturbate with various sex toys three times a day in order to keep my sex blogger membership card. I am still alive, happily, and I still have a sex drive; it’s just taken quite a beating recently. The embers are still there, though, and I’m tending to them.
No rush, no pressure, no expectation.
I am a sex blogger. I am also simply me. Cara. A writer, a woman, a person. With thoughts, opinions, a past, hopes for the future, ideas, advice and personal experiences that perhaps someone else will find and see themselves in my words and find comfort in them. It is worth carrying on. Writing, blogging, living. And that’s what I intend to do, for as long as I’m able.
This personal shift continues in Why I’m Writing a Survivor’s Journal, the starting point of my ongoing healing series.
* I was not physically dependent on alcohol, therefore I could simply stop drinking. If you have a physical dependency on alcohol, suddenly quitting can be harmful. Please seek the advice of your GP before embarking on any total sobriety plans, and they can support you through it safely.
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