For Tori, intimacy begins where performance ends. Her work sits at the intersection of sexuality, emotional safety, psychology, and self-acceptance, asking a deceptively simple question: what happens when we stop trying to be desirable, capable, or unshakeable and allow ourselves to be known as we really are?

That question is rooted in a life shaped by adaptation. Growing up in foster care and moving through nine homes taught Tori how to become independent, successful, and seemingly self-sufficient. Later, years in the sex industry gave her an intimate understanding of the difference between performing desire and actually inhabiting it. Loss eventually disrupted the carefully constructed armor. As grief surfaced, what felt like falling apart became an unexpected opening into feeling, vulnerability, and a more honest relationship with herself.

Today, she challenges the ways we talk about relationships and healing. She questions our fixation on red flags and psychological labels while drawing attention to what secure intimacy actually feels like: being able to express hurt, ask for reassurance, and remain present through uncertainty. Her understanding of belonging has similarly moved beyond proximity or fitting in towards relationships built on depth, choice, and the freedom to be fully known.

In this conversation, Tori reflects on pleasure without shame, healthier masculinity, emotional armor, the complicated legacy of her time as a dancer, and the difference between awareness and genuine transformation. At its heart is a quieter, more difficult truth: sometimes the most intimate act is not revealing your body but risking the possibility of being seen and loved without performing for it.

The Beauty of Being Fully Seen

What was the moment you realised healing wasn’t about becoming someone new but finally allowing yourself to be fully seen?

Tori:  I spent most of my life trying to prove that nothing had happened to me.

I grew up in foster care, moved through nine homes, became incredibly independent, built a career, bought a house, traveled the world, and collected degrees. I thought if I became successful enough, I would finally feel safe and worthy.

I had to prove I wasn’t like the rest of them, those “whores.”

But I was also incredibly good at pretending.

I could perform confidence, independence, and even intimacy.

Then my father died. My brother died. My mother died. Relationships ended. Suddenly, all the grief I’d outrun started coming through my body. I cried constantly. I thought I was falling apart.

I wasn’t.

I was finally feeling.

Healing became less about fixing myself and more about allowing myself to be seen as the complicated, emotional, sexual, grieving human being I actually am.

I’m still learning how to be fully seen—that’s my biggest growth edge. “Walk the talk, Tori,” I tell myself. If I’m going to preach it, I’ve got to live it. I’ve come a long way… but this work doesn’t end.

Pleasure Isn’t a Reward.

Pleasure is often marketed as something we buy or perform, yet your work suggests it’s something we learn to receive. Why do so many people struggle to accept pleasure without guilt, shame, or the need to earn it first? 

Tori: Because many of us learned how to perform before we learned how to receive.

I worked in the sex industry for years, but when I started dancing at eighteen, I barely understood my own sexuality. I could perform desire beautifully while being completely disconnected from my own body.

My first orgasm happened during a lap dance. I wasn’t attracted to the man. I was performing—and suddenly my body did something I didn’t understand.

My immediate reaction was shame.

That experience taught me something I’ve carried into my work: being surrounded by sexuality doesn’t mean you’re connected to your own pleasure.

Pleasure requires safety, presence, and the ability to receive.

So instead of asking, “How do I deserve more pleasure?” I like asking:

“What taught me that I didn’t deserve it?”

We’re obsessed with Red Flags. 

We often hear about “red flags” in relationships, but not enough about what emotional safety actually feels like. How would you describe secure intimacy to someone who has never experienced it before? 

Tori: We’ve become obsessed with identifying what’s wrong with other people: anxious, avoidant, narcissistic, or a red flag.

But what does “healthy” actually feel like?

For me, secure intimacy used to feel almost boring. I was so accustomed to uncertainty that anxiety felt like chemistry and chasing felt like love.

Secure intimacy is being able to say, “That hurt me,” without fearing abandonment.

It’s being able to need reassurance without feeling ashamed.

It’s knowing conflict doesn’t automatically mean the relationship is ending.

And emotional safety doesn’t mean someone never challenges you.

It means you can be challenged without being abandoned.

That’s the kind of intimacy I’m interested in now: where neither person has to perform, chase, or earn their place.

Cost of Emotional Armour 

Many men are taught to separate emotional vulnerability from sexuality. How do you think that conditioning affects intimacy, and what would a healthier masculinity look like in the bedroom?

Tori: I have enormous compassion for men. Many were taught to be strong, successful, confident, sexually capable, and in control—but never taught how to talk about what they’re actually feeling.

The men I find most powerful aren’t necessarily the ones who know all the techniques.

They’re the ones who can say:

“I’m nervous.”

“I’m scared.”

“I don’t know.”

“I actually need reassurance.”

That’s vulnerability, and vulnerability creates intimacy.

I don’t think healthier masculinity means becoming less masculine.

I think it means becoming more whole.

Strength and vulnerability aren’t opposites.

And in the bedroom, dominance without emotional safety isn’t intimacy.

The Search for Belonging

You’ve lived many lives across different cities, cultures, and communities. How has living in Taiwan, New York, and your intentional community changed your understanding of belonging, identity, and relational freedom? 

Tori: I’ve spent most of my life trying to answer one question:

Where do I belong?

Growing up in foster care taught me to adapt quickly. I could fit almost anywhere, but fitting in wasn’t the same as belonging.

Taiwan taught me that I have a limit. A breaking point: just because people look like me doesn’t mean they think like me.  New York taught me that community is less about quality and more about quantity.

I live with eighteen people in Brooklyn, surrounded by millions, and I’ve still felt incredibly lonely.

That taught me that proximity isn’t intimacy.

Large communities can create connection, but they can also become performative. I’ve learned that I don’t necessarily need more people—I need deeper relationships with people who have the capacity to really know me.

Belonging isn’t something someone gives you.

It’s something you intentionally build—with yourself and with other people, and allow choice.

Are We Healing or Just Labelling?

People use terms like “trauma bond,” “narcissist,” and “attachment style” after watching TikTok. Do you think psychology is helping people understand themselves or encouraging them to over-label every relationship? 

Tori: I love psychology, but sometimes I think we use psychological language to avoid actually looking at ourselves.

“I’m anxious.”
“He’s avoidant.”
“She’s a narcissist.”

I learned a lot about labels in a strip club.

There was this thing dancers called the “stripper gift”—learning to see the beauty in almost everyone. You’d meet someone who looked broke, awkward, much older, or completely different from you, and sometimes they’d become like family, and both were loyal to each other, no bull****.

The irony was that society had no room for “strippers,” while so many people either wanted to be one or were the ones sitting in the club watching us.

I hated being labeled, but I was also terrified of being seen as one.

I rarely dated openly. I dated people I knew would accept that part of me, or sometimes former clients, because they already knew. And I kept finding myself drawn to unavailable people.

Looking back, I was recreating the same anxious-avoidant cycle I now understand so well. The job never really stopped when I left the club. Chasing unavailable people felt familiar. I knew how to pursue someone who couldn’t fully show up. I didn’t yet know how to receive someone who could.

Now, in my own healing and relearning sexuality in a way that feels grounded, connected, and sacred, I can look back at that world differently.

There was darkness, absolutely. But there was also loyalty, sisterhood, humor, connection, and some of the most human relationships I’ve ever experienced.

That’s why I’m careful with labels.

Psychology can give us language and compassion. Understanding my attachment patterns changed how I saw myself—but knowing my attachment style didn’t magically change my behavior.

Awareness isn’t transformation.

I’m less interested in asking, “What’s their attachment style?”

I’m more interested in:

What happens between us?
What do you do when you’re scared?
What are you protecting?
What are you afraid to say?

Labels can help us understand ourselves.

But if we’re not careful, they become another way to stop seeing the human being underneath.

One Final Thought

If every reader of The Sin Edit walked away from this interview remembering just one truth about intimacy, sexuality, or self-love, what would you hope that truth would be? 

Tori: The one you’re avoiding. The one you’re afraid will make someone leave. The one you’ve rehearsed in your head a hundred times but never actually said.

When I was eleven, I was living as an orphan, in and out of homes, and desperately wanted to return to a foster family I loved. I wrote them a letter asking to return, but it never reached them. We kept in touch; it was too taboo and sad to ever speak of again. Years later, I finally brought it up as an adult and discovered they had wanted me back too, yet it was too taboo for them too!

We had both spent years believing the other didn’t want us.

That taught me how much silence can cost.

Then tabootalkwithtori was born.

I can’t change my past, but I can choose to speak now—even when it’s uncomfortable, even when I don’t know what the answer will be.

And I’ve learned something else about intimacy as a dancer: I could dance completely naked in front of strangers, but being vulnerable with someone I actually cared about terrified me.

Because nudity wasn’t the scary part.

Being truly seen was. Seeing how imperfect I really am, and hoping they will love that part too.

To me, the most intimate thing you can do isn’t take your clothes off. Let someone see the person underneath them—and trust that you don’t have to perform to be worthy of being loved.

Editor Note 

It is about performing less. We live in a culture fluent in the language of boundaries, attachment styles, red flags, and self-protection, yet genuine closeness asks for something far less polished: the courage to be uncertain, needy, emotional, complicated, and still present.

Her reflections also challenge the idea that healing means becoming invulnerable. Perhaps growth is not building stronger armor but becoming less dependent on it. The real shift happens when we stop treating desire as something to prove, relationships as something to earn, and vulnerability as a weakness to manage.

In the end, being fully seen is a risk precisely because there is no performance left to hide behind.

Maybe the deepest intimacy begins when we stop asking, “Will they want me?” and dare to ask, “Can I let them truly see me?”