I was 63 when my husband left me. I hadn't had sexual intercourse of any kind for 10 years and I didn't masturbate. In earlier years, my husband had sometimes masturbated me clumsily in a way I found unenjoyable but I had always had the feeling that touching myself was wrong. No one had ever told me this, not even my mother. It is just what I felt, I suppose because of my upbringing. I knew that John masturbated secretly but it is not something we would have dreamed of talking about or sharing. I was depressed for several months after John left because although I didn't have sex, I realised that I had always had sexual urges which I repressed and I thought that, because I was now an elderly woman on her own, they would always remain repressed. Then I read a women's magazine article by a grandmother much older than me writing about how joyful her frequent solo masturbation was. I realised that in my conventional and unimaginative way, I had always thought of sex as being an activity between two people, a woman and her husband, and here was this lady extolling self-love as something natural and happy. I won't say it was a blinding revelation but it made me think. I did some reading and looked at some pictures on the Internet of women, some of them quite old, proudly masturbating in the nude for everyone to see and thought they were beautiful. The existence of "granny porn" as something people liked to look at, was exciting in itself. I could sense my own inhibitions begin to dissolve and although I did not begin immediately to touch myself I knew that I would do so quite soon. One afternoon, I went up to my room and took my clothes off and looked at myself naked in my full-length mirror, something I had not dones for a long time. I have never had any illusions about my looks or my body. What I saw reflected was a not particularly attractive older woman with small saggy stretch-marked breasts, an equally slack bottom, a roll of tummy fat and a somewhat wild bush of dark pubic hair. An ordinary woman like so many other ordinary women who were unnecessarily frustrated. It occurred to me that whatever reservations I might have about letting someone else see me in the nude, I had no need to apologise to myself. I spent some time in front of the mirror playing with my breasts but did not touch myself more intimately then. That evening, naked in the shower, I plucked up the courage to touch myself sexually between the legs for the first time since I was a girl. As the hot water sluiced over my nakedness, I slid my finger between my outer labia where it instinctively found my clitoris. I began to rub and masturbate slowly at first and then faster, my fingers releasing waves of pleasure that suffused my entire body until I felt myself liberated by the first real orgasm I had had in the 63 years of my life. I won't try to describe the sensation because it was beyond description in its intoxicating beauty. I did not sleep that night. Naked on my bed, I masturbated and dozed and masturbated again, marvelling at the sensations my hand and my vagina could give me with such ease. I did not know that such joy and exaltation, procurable at any moment, were possible. From that moment, I have masturbated constantly by myself and with other women of all ages whom I have found via internet meeting sites. The oldest of these was a very vigorous lady of 83 and the youngest a schoolteacher of 37. We have a comfortable little sorority who have freed themselves of the need for men and are able to indulge in the beauties of masturbation without worrying about body shape. All of the women I masturbate with are beautiful in their own way in the celebration of their lovely vaginas.