I’m very glad that you brought up this subject! It gives me the opportunity to speak of something that I seldom confess.

You could toss a dime from my ‘birth home’ and hit Black’s Beach and - even all those years back! - it was a nude beach. My birth parents adopted a nudist lifestyle and we were naked at home, on the beach and on vacations (not only at specified locations but in state and national parks, for example). Even after my mother’s death, my father and I continued the lifestyle. Later came my evil stepmother. She was only half-accepting of the lifestyle - she loved getting her complete tan but she wasn’t much for socializing with others. At home my dad and I would tell her that we were going to ‘be naked’ for a period of time... so we were clothed most of the time.

When I left for college, I resumed my nudist lifestyle. I could not continue whilst hospitalized/institutionalized but I resumed, again, when I got my own apartment. I keep a t-shirt and shorts at hand for those who might be offended. But my postal delivery guy, UPS and FedEx folks all see me naked.

Most of my partners readily accepted nudism, some were already practicing - a few I even met in spots where naked was natural. During the warmer months, when going outdoors from my home(s), I only wore a pair of shorts and flip-flops and, even now, when I go outside during the warmer months, I only wear shorts (my body, at 59-years-old, is scarred but I am slender and well-toned and really don’t give a damn about what others think).

I believe that I grew up body-neutral (of my own body) and body-neutral (in my judgment of others). It never occurred to me to be ashamed of my body and, yeah, I still feel a kind of goodwilled freedom being around other naked people. I’m fine with oversized people but am seldom tolerant of the ‘morbidly obese’ who eat their way into death.

You know, I never considered nudism as a help with depression but my return to nudism coincided with the gradual healing from depression.

Yes, I believe that you have hit upon an aid for combatting depression. There is nothing like full-body-exposure (and ‘being comfortable in your own skin’) that can stimulate a full-mind-exposure. Once you’ve come face-to-face with the latter you can begin realizing and ridding yourself of the psychological toxins that find fertile growth in a diseased mind.

There probably aren’t any nudist psych hospitals. There should be. Full exposure and disclosure.

When I had legs - over eleven-years-ago - I would go for long walks, alone or with others, and I felt such freedom, naked. I can no longer walk and my manual wheelchair will not roll upon sand nor wilder ground. But I can visit my lover’s home, in a meadow by a pond, and I can control the temperature in my apartment and, when friends and lovers visit, we can be naked. Oh, I loved our young bodies but I may love our old bodies more. I will not go into my reasons, only say that our old bodies bear time well.

There was a night that I remember so well, another university far away from my own, with excellent acid and at least three-dozen naked bodies. A rope tied to a limb allowing us to swing from one side of the river to the other or, most frequently, to plunge into the deeper water of the river. One young man feared exposure and did not participate in our nightswimming.

Yes, it is good to be naked. Thank you for mentioning this subject.

Peace.