the search for inner peace and strength
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Divorce is a lonely journey. Compared to the deep bone aching loneliness I felt in my marriage, being alone now feels hopeful. My ex was emotionally unavailable for years, due to addiction and other issues. I prefer being alone to the constant false hope of change, of things getting better.
My marriage was toxic. At the beginning we brought out the worst in each other. We triggered old childhood wounds and traumas, but never worked to heal them. It took becoming a parent for me to face my childhood and fully work on it, on my own. That was gift I gave myself, the first of many and the start of my journey to self-love. Eventually this journey ended the cycle of abuse within my marriage through divorce.
I can see the wounded children within myself and my ex now. I see the old fights (we always had the same ones; even if the circumstances around them changed, the core turmoil was always the same). We were both struggling for love, and self-acceptance, but we put all the work on the other person instead of owning our own baggage. We outsourced validation and emotional regulation instead of going inward. This outsourcing is known as “codependency.”
When I finally stopped the codependent patterns on my end, things turned downright abusive. I realize now, looking back, it was always abusive. There was a trauma bond that had me trapped in the cycle. Verbal assaults, invalidation, gaslighting, financial abuse, and other issues that I will not go into with this post, were a constant. By the end of my marriage, I was genuinely scared. So scared, I made arrangements for a safe house for myself and child, if it came to that.
Those fears came from a real place. All the threats and verbal attacks pushed me into survivor mode. I recorded several arguments just to have proof for myself that I wasn’t imagining how bad things were. I had been gaslighted and invalidated to the point I questioned my reality. Thanks to those recordings I found truth. I was experiencing “retroactive abuse.”
Retroactive abuse is when the abuser pushes their victim to the point that the victim lashes out. The abuser gains the upper hand by acting like the rational one. This type of abuse was the baseline of my marriage.
Almost every argument turned into retroactive abuse. Many times I would try to walk out of the room, only to be followed. He would even stand in doorways to block me from leaving. All while arguing at me, often yelling at me, sometimes hitting or kicking the walls.
I was stuck on survive. Stuck in a constant state of over-vigilance. I was a master at walking on egg-shells, a trait I learned in childhood and carried into my marriage.
When I finally asked for a divorce, I was so scared, thankfully my worse fears never came to fruition. I am grateful that my imagined fears were greater than the actual physical fear, but I do not for once instance negate those feelings. They came from a feeling of being unsafe. My fear manifested in many ways outside of my ex’s presence.
I recall times when I was driving behind a truck with pipes sticking off the back. I was certain I would sneeze, take my foot off the brake, ram my car, and my eye, into the obtrusion then die. I also feared I would have a seizure while out walking my baby in their stroller, and collapse, pushing the strolling into traffic, killing my child and myself. Those were normal thoughts that were always present in the back of my mind. I was on high alert because of the constant stress of the abuse in my marriage and from my childhood.
A few months after my ex moved out, these fear-filled thoughts abated. I was sitting in traffic behind a truck with things sticking out the back for a full two minutes before I realized I had not thought about my doom. It was a strange, peaceful feeling. The catastrophizing, and vigilance was starting to wear off. Peace felt uncomfortable and foreign at first, but welcomed.
Divorce is a lonely journey. But I will take this hopeful loneliness, this expectation of a brighter future, over the desperate longing that filled each empty night in my marriage. This loneliness can change and will change as time allows. The loneliness I lived before was endless and marred with the hope of change that would never come. Now I am making changes myself. I am moving forward, one step at a time.
Much like getting on a train to a place you have never been. You can imagine what it will be like at the end, but there are a lot of stops. You go through lots of dark tunnels and wonder if you are doing the right thing. Did you get on the right train? Is this really the right course?
I am alone on the metaphorical divorce train, but I feel hopeful. I am excited about this new adventure. Maybe I will find love again. Even if I don’t, at least I found peace. I think that might be more important than love in the end.
And to quote a famous animated princess: “Yes, I’m alone, but I’m alone and free.”
Read more about freeing yourself from emotional, spiritual, and religious abuse:
Growing up Evangelical Christian, I struggled with the “how” of things. Overtime my struggle brought me out of religion all together and pushed me into a more spiritual practice. For now I would say I am more Pagan leaning in faith, but even that is a bit of a stretch. “Nonreligious” feels more accurate. Yet I was still searching for HOW to live a fulfilling life of peace.
Over the years the one word question, how? pushed me to explore every aspect of my faith. I was told you are supposed to live righteously, but not HOW to apply this idea to every day life. I began to feel bored and frustrated every time I left a church service. This tug to a more practical practice eventually left me open to see the overreaching hypocrisy of those in religious leadership. Overtime my respect for the church and their doctrine diminished completely.
I tried participating in 12 Step programs to work through my codependency issues, as well as find healing from having alcoholics in my life. I really struggled with the fact that all the Al-Anon meetings in my area were at churches. The literature and structure of the meetings were too religious leaning for my taste (there is a lot of talk of a higher power or God). Lastly I did not like the fact you could not cross-talk (as in directly talk to someone during the meeting).
I understand that the cross-talk thing is to give space for everyone to speak their hearts, while also limiting advice giving, something codependents struggle with (many of us are rescuers in the relationship), but it felt like we were all talking at one another instead of with one another. All of those aspects reminded me a little too much of my past church life.
The part that finally pushed me away from 12 Step programs is that the literature and overall format feels very “fluffy” and lacking much substance to me. I found myself reading through the books and listening to the talks wondering “HOW?” Members at the meetings kept talking about living this peaceful serene life, but not HOW to live that life.
When I would ask how do I find that peace, I was directed back to the literature and told to follow the steps. This alone felt too much like my evangelical upbringing, where if I asked HOW they said read your Bible everyday, pray, and repent of any wrongdoings.
Since 12 Steps and the Church did not give me practical how-to on living a peaceful, fulfilled, and healed life, I had to keep searching.
During a particularly difficult period in my life the words “mindfulness meditation,” started popping up everywhere. I saw them on magazines lining the check-out at the grocery store and in social media posts. I signed up for emails to be a more peaceful parent, and the biggest advice was to start a meditation practice and get more mindful of your body to reset your triggers.
I felt like the universe was trying to tell me something, so I listened. I looked into mindfulness practices and meditation. I found that starting off with short guided mediations at night, or at least once a day, helped me get inside my body. I slowly connected to my feelings, even the deep uncomfortable ones. I started to know myself better. My triggers became clear, and so did a path through the big feelings.
I found a therapist who gave me some tips on how to break the flooding cycle I was stuck in. I’ll share this here, because in many ways it saved my life.
That one method saved me from feeling completely stuck in the fear, flight, freeze mode. It moved me into clear thinking and helped me find a way out of the codependent life I had built. It’s such a simple thing. Just tensing parts of your body, then relaxing, but it took 36 years before anyone told me How to do it.
I am much more consistent in my mediation these days than I was three years ago when I started this journey. When I feel stuck and wonder what to do or how to do something, I now check inward. There is this deep sense of knowing inside that helps me make the next decision. I am learning to trust myself and to rewrite false beliefs that held me captive from a fulfilled life. The more I practice getting in tune with my body the better I feel. The more confident I become in myself the faster I recognize when I am acting in an old, unhealthy or codependent way.
I don’t need a religious institute or 12 Steps to find my inner peace, it was here inside me all along.
Check out my other posts for more content about leaving religion and finding inner peace.
When I stopped shaving I set off a chain reaction of choices that eventually led to my divorce and coming out to myself as gay.
I stopped shaving my legs and underarms over a year ago. Any time I mentioned this to other women, they always asked in shocked awe, “Is your husband okay with that?” I wish I had answered with a confident, “My Body, My Rules,” but I didn’t have such confidence at the time. I simply knew I was done shaving and that my husband’s opinion on the matter did not actually matter. It was my choice and he couldn’t control that.
He was fine with me not shaving, for those who are curious. He complained here and there while the stubble was pokey, but overall he didn’t make a big deal about it. It wasn’t like I regularly shaved. I hated shaving, so I shaved maybe once every two weeks, and always missed spots (thanks nearsightedness).
When my eczema got to the point that I wanted to peel off my skin just to stop the intense burning itchiness, I said no more razors. I almost always got razor burn and never wore anything that showed my legs anyways. The decision to stop shaving felt like freedom, and it would be the first of many such freedoms.
I did not immediately go full hairy leg, that would come later. For a while I would use a trimmer to trim the hair, which was less irritating to my skin than a razor. Eventually I got tired of bothering to keep my legs smooth. My eczema was still raging strong on my shins and I just wanted to stop making it worse. So I grew out my leg hair and embraced freedom.
I hated shaving. Then I wondered why was it shameful for a woman to have hairy legs while men were allowed to grow their body hair wherever and however they wanted?
The answers to these questions led me on a soul searching journey.
Society wants women to look juvenile. From plastic surgery to dying away the grey women are targeted to stay looking younger for as long as possible. This runs counter my own values. I want to age with grace and beauty, accepting all facets of the aging process, wrinkles, grey hair, and all. So why the heck was I shaving my legs when I hated it? I certainly wasn’t shaving for me. I also didn’t care about looking young forever.
I then looked into health benefits of shaving. I wanted to know if there was anything beneficial to shaving leg hair, though the fact men were allowed to have leg hair would have answered this question straight away, I wanted to be thorough. Turns out Ancient Egyptians and Greeks shaved almost all the hair on their body because it was a symbol of status to be clean shaven. Lower class had body hair and pests. Shaving supposedly rid their bodies of lice, fleas, and other pests.
Pest are not a problem for me and I don’t believe leg hair is a determining factor in beauty. I was happy with my research. If I wasn’t shaving for me, then I didn’t need to shave or even trim at all. Done.
I have a good moisturizer that helps with the eczema and now that I no longer shave it has calmed down. I haven’t had a bad rash or burning itch in almost a year.
The beautiful biproduct of making the choice to stop shaving helped me realize I could make decisions that were centered on what I wanted not what society or another person wanted. This revolutionized my thinking. I started wondering what other areas of my life I was compromising for others and not myself? I started to re-center my thoughts to what I really wanted.
This would open the doors to finally accepting my sexuality, my being gay. (You can read more about that on my previous posts). It also led to realizing that I didn’t like my marriage. I didn’t like who I was with my husband. I didn’t like who he was in recent days. Our dynamic was toxic and neither of us were growing within the confines of our marriage. It was time to really think about what I wanted and take the steps to make meaningful changes. When I told my husband the things I wanted from our marriage, he said he wanted different things. Our marriage had run its course. It was time to part and grow on our own.
It may seem a simple thing, not shaving, but it runs against what society thinks which is hard for me to counter. I was conditioned to consider everyone else first. To think how it would look to other people. Now I am relearning to think for myself. To ask what I think before anyone else.
It is my hope that as more people make choices for themselves and celebrate their individuality society will change. I hope others embrace their true selves and move towards living authentic, vulnerable, lives, hairy legs and all.
Blessed Be
Learn more about my coming out journey and how I broke away from rigid religiosity on my other posts:
Growing up my ideas about love centered on rules and expectations. I grew up idolizing self-sacrifice as the ultimate expression of love. The God of my childhood sacrificed his only son in order to save mortals. Even though Jesus himself didn’t want to die on the cross, he had to do it for the sake of all the sinners.
Mortals are meant to emulate God. The best way to show love to another person is to sacrifice yourself. Dying for someone, being a martyr, were all seen as being like God and showing God’s love, which is more important than any other expression of love.
Even the society and culture outside of the Evangelical Church taught that love was all about putting others first. Many films and fairytales center on heroes and heroines who give things up to show their love.
The Little Mermaid leaves behind her powerful voice and fins for love. In the original she becomes sea foam, because she did not kill the prince she loved, which would have returned her to the sea. The moral is it’s better to die for love than to live for yourself. Another theme is to change everything about yourself to fit the image of the person you love instead of being authentically you.
Another classic Fairytale that teaches submission is Cinderella. Poor Cinderella is rewarded with a gown, shoes, a night out, and eventually a prince because she constantly puts her evil stepfamily’s needs above her own. Despite being constantly abused she smiles. The moral of her story is that submission is more rewarding than standing up for oneself.
These stories also show that love is rewarded with a man, a marriage, which will lead to happily ever after. A woman’s reward is to continue being submissive to her spouse and sacrificing herself for her children.
It hass taken a lot to come to this conclusion. It’s taken having a child and wanting to not only be better for myself but create a better world for him. Learning to be a better parent means healing childhood wounds by loving myself.
I cannot love others until I love myself, fully, unconditionally, accepting all my flaws and insecurities. This is so foreign to me, yet so freeing. My greatest moments of peace have been when I accept and love myself as I am. Instead of looking inside for all my flaws and criticizing myself, I now look inside and see someone who is working to be better each day, and that is beautiful.
Through meditation I’ve learned it’s okay to have strange thoughts. I don’t have to judge everything that drifts through my mind, every criticism and doubt. There is power in simply acknowledging the thoughts exist without keeping them and making them mine. I can release them and feel freedom in the peace that comes after.
I grew up being told that I was part of the reason my parents were miserable. There was a lot of pressure on success, perfection, and submission. I wanted to be loved and felt that being perfect was the only way to achieve that. Love was something you earned by doing all the right things, by being kind and submissive.
I was assaulted twice in high school. Purity Culture taught me that how I dressed and behaved could bring on an assault, so when it happened I believed it was because of something I did. Because I liked the people who assaulted me I stayed quiet fearing I would lose them. Sacrificing my physical autonomy was part of love. This is a lie. Let me repeat that… sacrificing your physical autonomy IS NOT LOVE.
I now love myself so much I say “NO” proudly and firmly. I can put my needs and feelings first, in healthy, safe, kind ways. This doesn’t mean I tell people off and act mean. I set boundaries with frim kindness, a technique I am still working on. I tell the other person what I will or will not tolerate, and then explain what the consequence is if they push my boundary.
Now that I am learning to live a separate life from my soon-to-be-ex-husband, I have to make decisions for me, and my child. I no longer put anyone else’s feelings or thoughts into the equation. It’s so strange, but so freeing. I can make a decision that is best for me without having to worry about someone else’s reactions.
I am becoming more confident with each new decision and growing into a new person who loves herself.
Instead of being patient, kind, self-sacrificing, I think Love is being authentic, honest, and straightforward. Love is accepting things as they are, knowing I’m not perfect, others aren’t perfect, but not tolerating rudeness or abuse. It’s setting firm but kind boundaries. Telling people how I want to be treated and not tolerating being treated less.
If my boundary is not being called names, then I say that and if the other person starts calling me names I point this out and tell them I will not tolerate it, and end the conversation.
Love is knowing myself and living the fullness and wonder of all that I am.
Love is Kindness to me first, then to others. As I learn to be kind to myself I fill myself with the energy and compassion that can be then given to others.
I am love and love flows through me.
Blessed Be.
Find more posts from Losing Faith, Finding Spirit:
Halloween, especially with a Blue Moon, is a perfect time to align with your Shadow Self. To face the things hidden deep inside, and make peace with your past shame so you can unlock your truths.
Around Halloween I tend to get retrospective. I love this time. The weather starts to cool and a sense of fall is in the air. Pumpkins and skeletons decorate yards and lawns. I like to read spooky things and think about mortality. This is all part of the ancient rituals surrounding Halloween and also part of searching into the Shadow Self.
If you’ve never heard the term, Shadow Self, it’s the hidden things in your subconscious, things buried because of fear and shame. Our anger, fear, and sadness reside inside our Shadow Self.
But the shadow is not something we should be afraid of. It is as much a part of us as the light. Shame and guilt make us feel like things are worse than they are, or that we are somehow different than others. In truth we all have these traits within us to varying degrees.
I find that in times of great grief the valve connecting my conscious to this shadow self open. It is within these deep moments that suck my chest and make gulp in sobs, that I see my shadow self clearly.
I work well with visualization. When I work with my shadow self I imagine her as my inner child.
She is the person I had to leave behind when the demands of my parents, one an addict the other an enabler, forced me to behave as a miniature adult. She’s the one who I wish I could hug, and often imagine hugging in mediation to help heal so much past hurt.
I faced my inner shame and realized shame is not something so bad. Shame reveals a truth I wish to keep buried. Accepting shame made me realize I was queer. That realization gave me strength to make changes, no matter how hard, to become authentic.
Once I faced this shame, the grief began to surface. I started to grieve everything in my life. I grieved the childhood I lost, the mother I wished I had but will never have, the childhood pet that died, the frailly members who died, the addiction that wrecked havoc on my childhood and now my marriage. I grieved the loss of a pregnancy and ended friendships.
I had not grieved things in my past because I never had the opportunity. When my childhood pet died, I did not grieve. My mother needed me to be strong because her grief was greater, her emotions more important than my loss. When my grandparent died I held in my grief, again. My mother, who was besides herself with grief and had been the one to lose a parent needed me to be strong.
No more.
My inner child still needs space to mourn. She needs the space to cry. She needs the gentle acceptance that her feelings are valid, that she is not less-than because of all the pain she had buried and tried to be strong. It is her vulnerability that makes her strong because that is where her truth lies.
I get angry, but that anger tells me something about my values. I no longer burst out with rage and yell or snap. I let my anger exist in my chest, and I listen to what it is trying to tell me, what value it is worried about in the moment.
My sorrow also speaks of my values. It speaks of how much I loved. I weep because of the deep love I have lost. I am reminded that my connection to this loss meant it was important to me. The relationships that end, the expectations that are not being met, the death that took someone I loved, all speak of how much I have lived and how many things I am connected to.
It is okay to grieve the loss of things, no matter how small. It is okay to be angry with grief, to be weary.
I will walk into a room and remind myself, my pet is no longer here. Sometimes I say this with acceptance, it is a fact that I now live with. Sometimes this fact grips my chest and pulls deep sobs from my heart. When the tears come, I let them. I release them and cry until I feel relief. I don’t stuff them down or hold them back. I feel them and I visualize my pet. I think of what they meant to me, what they were to me, what they looked like and felt like. It hurts and I miss them, but I remember and I grieve.
There is no shame in crying over things we have lost.
Tears bring healing. Healing brings relief. Relief leads to a full life.
I’m still doing shadow work. Trying to tap into that inner child and those hidden values and joys that I have lost connection to. I am hoping that while the veil is thin during this Halloween season, I can connect and discover more about myself. The truth is there and it is setting me free.
Blessings be.
As I have come to terms with my own sexuality I have come to realize all the many ways I have internalized homophobia. The adults in my life, namely my parents, spoke very negatively about homosexuality. They spoke of gays and lesbians in the same with the same tone reserved for perverts and rapists. The biggest authority in my life, the church, viewed homosexuality as something to hate and hide.
When I was a kid my best friend was a boy. We played all the time. He would pretend to be Link from the video game, Zelda, and I would pretend to be a magic unicorn. It was parallel play at its finest. He did his thing, I did mine, but we were together in a world of our own.
This friendship dissolved as we grew and the teasing began. Since I was a girl and he was boy, according to early elementary school logic we must have been in love. Boys had cooties, so did girls, and my playing with a boy went against the gender norms of the playground. The only reason a boy and girl could play together was if they were in love, and love was for grown-ups, thus should be teased mercilessly.
I can’t recall exactly why, but I remember being very mad at my friend. I think it had something to do with all the teasing. Regardless, I was angry and called him the worst thing I could think of at the time, even though I had no idea what it meant. I called him a F*gg*t.
I had no clue why f*gg*t was bad, just that it was. My mother always said it in the same tone she used to talk about sickos who hurt children, and dangerous people. She later called Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell “sickos,” in this same tone.
I called my friend this horrible thing, and stormed off. In my memories he vanished after that. Really I think it was probably near the end of the school year and he just didn’t come back to the same school. It’s possible I was angry because he was moving or leaving the school and we would never see each other.
I can’t remember all details of that moment, just the horrible sense of regret when that word left my mouth. To this day I wish I could apologize to this friend. I now know what that word means and how it harms those in the LGBTQ community. That word and others hurt me and kept me from facing my own truth.
As I have come to terms with my own sexuality I have come to realize all the many ways I have internalized homophobia. The adults in my life, namely my parents and those they listened to (Rush Limbaugh for one) spoke very negatively about homosexuality. They spoke of gays and lesbians like they were perverts and rapists. The biggest authority in my life, the church, viewed homosexuality as something to hate and hide.
I remember scouring through gaming magazines and staring at the women. I’m an artist, I told myself, I just want to see how to draw boobs better, nevermind the fact I own a pair myself. In college I watched the movie, “But I’m a Cheerleader,” and felt personally offended. I felt everyone in the movie was pushing their ideas onto the main character. Everyone else had decided she was gay, it didn’t come from her sense of self. Of course she would be grossed out by her boyfriend French kissing her, French kissing is gross!
I identified with the main character so much I was offended on her behalf. When in truth, I was dealing with my internalized homophobia and was just like her. I was ignoring the rainbow flags in my own life that would point the way to my same-sex attraction.
My childhood was very sexualized. That’s the flip-side of purity culture, it creates this sexual curiosity and frustration. It centers adolescence around sex. I cannot tell you how often the church talked about sex . It was the THE thing that always came up. It also strips children of their sexual autonomy. Your body is not your own, it belongs to God, which means it belongs to the Church, or your parents.
I was taught my body belongs to something bigger. That belief kept me in a miserable marriage for so long. I continued having sex because a wife’s duty is to please her husband. A wife must make her husband happy, and sex was the way to make him happy. It was my godly duty to have children, even if I wasn’t ready for them. Then it was my duty to put those children before myself.
All of that to say, if my body was not mine, how could I really be in tuned with what I wanted? When asked in bed what I wanted to do sexually, I never had a clue. Slowly I started to realize what I wanted, and it did not involve a man. Slowly I started to accept myself and unlearn my internalized homophobia. SLOWLY, like not until my mid-thirties slow.
To this day I deeply regret calling my childhood friend a F*gg*t. Even though I didn’t know the definition of that word, I knew the connotation. I said it to hurt and wound my friend. I wish I could tell him sorry. We were only seven or eight years old, but I have thought about that moment often over the last thirty-odd years. I don’t know if he understood what I said, or what it meant, I surely didn’t, but still, I wish I could apologize.
Many labels and words are used to demean LGTBQ people. I am thankful that many in the LGBTQ community have reclaimed these labels. They have turned them around to bring power.
As I overcome my internalized homophobia, I have grown to like the word Queer. I like the way it sounds, the way it feels on my tongue. I like the way it means odd and different, for I have felt those words my whole life. I like it better than Lesbian or Bi or even Pan. I have tried these labels on like ill-fitting clothes. I’ve said them out-loud to myself. I also like the word Gay, even though it’s meant to label men who love men. I like the way Gay also means happy. Gay is the word I used when I fully came out to myself, my husband, and my therapist.
I have settled on calling myself Queer for now. I sometimes call myself a Lesbian. It’s a new word for me, a word that feels strange and foreign, but also like something I should reach out to and try on.
Funny how such a small word can make such a huge difference. How it can uproot an entire family. Shake up the norm and redefine relationships. I am hopeful it will also bring joy and happiness.
I have learned and grown since my childhood. In overcoming internalized homophobia, I have come to find words can hurt and they can heal. I am choosing to use words to heal. I am choosing to redefine my language and my labels. I am learning to accept other people’s definitions, labels, and even pronouns.
We only have one life. We get to choose how we live it. Do we live it with love and light or hide in shame and fear? I choose love and light.
Since I cannot find my old friend and say sorry to him, I will say sorry to you. If you have ever had labels and words used against you, I’m sorry. If you’ve been wounded by the societal norm, I’m sorry. There are those, like myself, who are redefining language and labels. Those who are choosing words to heal instead of harm.
I hope you find healing.
Read more:
I have been in a state of grief for several years. Going through a pandemic has only made this grief stronger. In all this time I have finally made peace with my grief and have found there is healing on the other side.
My grieving started when I finally faced the “mother wound,” or the hurts from childhood that had not fully healed. I thought that was all I was dealing with, old wounds that need to be reexamined in light of a safe environment. Turns out I was also grieving a childhood and a whole other part of myself. My queerness.
Grief is not a comfortable feeling. Like my previous post about outgrowing your skin and becoming free, grief feels like you’re being suffocated. It feels like depression, and sometimes anger. Grief cloaks you in heaviness and weighs you down. Unprocessed grief will keep you stuck, anchored in misery.
I was depressed for months before the pandemic hit. Then we were forced to stay indoors, cramped together. I started facing myself and looking within. What I found shocked me back into grief, but this time I was able to go through my grief. I finally faced what was true and now for the first time in YEARS I feel like I can breathe.
I started unraveling my feelings towards my husband. It was easier to focus on his flaws than it was to look inside and say, hey, I’m queer. It was easier to point outward and play victim than own up to my truth and make the inherit changes needed.
This time I was letting go of hetero-normative ideals. Letting go of the life I thought I was living. The lies I had armed myself with. I was facing the truth for the first time and finally accepting it. I had to grieve the lies I had told my spouse. Grieve the broken promises and the visions of a future that will no longer be.
I let these feeling roll through me like crashing waves. Let them flow with all the ugly tears and wrenching sobs. When I give my grief space to exist, it tells me I am finally letting go. I am finally moving forward, and yes it hurts. Pain isn’t something to push away anymore, it’s time to face it, accept it, and finally feel it.
There is healing at the end of the grief cycle. Accepting what I am, who I have always been, is so liberating. I feel joy in ways I never could before. I didn’t realize how much of myself was buried under the constant need to please, and be what others expected of me. Now that I am grieving that failure, I can find my new place, my new life, and who I have always been.
I am excited, though scared, and ready to start this new chapter. I still have moments of grief. I’m sure I will continue to, and that’s okay. I’m going to give my grief a safe place to exist and stop pushing it away, no matter how painful it might be. The more I do this the easier the grief is to feel, and the quicker it passes on, bringing a lighter heart and hope for a brighter future.
After the rain comes Rainbows.
Read more about Mindful Healing and my journey to letting go of self-hate:
I am in my late thirties, with a child, currently in a hetero-normative marriage. Until very recently I had thought I was straddling the “Bi-sexual” lines. However, after good therapy, looking inward, and facing my truth, I am now ready to say: “I’m here and I’m queer.”
If you have read some of my Confessions of a Spiritual Bully posts you may know I come from a very conservative, rigid religiosity in the Evangelical Christian Church. While the pastor preached “God is Love,” there was a strong message that that love was based on certain criteria and if you did not meet those “norms” you were damned to eternal flames.
Part of the “norms” in the Church was heterosexuality. There was no room for LGBTQ folks, and the message was clear: Homosexuality was a choice and that choice was a sin.
That left no room for any deviance. Marriage was considered one Man and one Woman with the intent to raise children. Anything else was sin. Sin was eternal damnation and flames. Your soul would suffer for your lustful immoral thoughts.
Sadly, this same mindset has gotten very strong in recent years. As LGBTQ rights have been fought, won, and contested. I had to block and unfriend multiple family members who used the Bible as a means to spread hate against LGBTQ folks after marriage equality passed. I tried to argue with one family member that despite their religious beliefs, the constitution was in favor of marriage equality and for separation of church and state, making their hate fueled comments unconstitutional at best. It did not go well.
Those family members now vote with their hate. They vote against equality of LGBTQ folks and BIPOC. For a religion supposedly based on love there is so much hate.
I internalized this hate over the years. I stuffed my homosexual desires down deep, justifying my interests in the same sex as being appreciative of all beauty. I’m an artist, of course I love beautiful people, regardless of gender.
I recall holding the hands of many boys and feeling nothing. However I was terrified of holding hands with my gal friends. As if somehow that act (something the other girls never seemed to have a problem with) was too intimate for me.
I was careful with hugs and physical acts of affection. A couple friendships ran deeper than others, and hurt worse than being dumped by several boys when they ended.
I can now look back and see all the broken pieces I tried to ignore. All the things that weighed me down and filled me with misery. I was denying a whole part of my identity, of my potential, for fear of other people’s opinions. I was raised to fear other people’s opinions.
I knew God and his angels were always watching and ready to curse me, or damn me if I committed any sin. Sinful thoughts were enough to send me straight to Hell. I also wrote about that constant fear of death growing up.
It took a lot to get here. To admit to myself first that I was Bi, then to really settle in and face what that meant. The more I explored my “bi-sexuality” the more I felt a deep longing for a same-sex partnership. I felt a deep loneliness in my marriage that my husband could not fill. We had our difficulties, something I will discuss in later posts. But ultimately I had to face the truth, My Truth: I no longer wanted a heterosexual relationship.
When I was at my loneliest, it wasn’t my husband I wished to hold or have. It was a woman. Not a specific woman. Just the abstract concept of a woman. I had to face the Truth, I wasn’t bi, I am a Lesbian.
I recently told my husband I no longer wished to be in a heterosexual marriage. I wanted to end things and allow both of us the space to find partners who would love us unconditionally. It’s only been a month since that conversation. We haven’t even told our child. But we are working towards divorce.
I can say that while I felt intense Grief and Guilt over my truth and the loss of the hetero-normal privileges of a straight marriage. A HUGE weight has lifted off my life. I can truly breathe. I feel Hope. There are endless possibilities ahead.
Sure there’s a whole mess to deal with in ending a marriage, especially because we have a child. But when I feel that guilt rise up, I just think of how relieved I feel to never have to have sex with a man and I KNOW this is the best path for me.
I also have a lot of internalized shame from the hateful messages against LGBTQ folks I was raised with. I hear my mother’s tone when she called Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres “sickos,” as if they were pedophiles or rapists. That memory lingers making me uncomfortable sharing my truth with my family. My Evangelical family will NOT be happy with my news. However, I can’t worry about them though.
I’m going to spend the next few months dating myself. I’m going to keep looking in. Keep working with my therapist. And I’m going to heal. One day I may be out and proud and loud. Today I will boast anonymously on this blog.
I just want to say that It does Get Better. I hope you find your truths, no matter how hard, and know that you are not alone.
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The concept of “purity” as defined by the Evangelical Christian Church is a woman who is sexually pure, submissive to her husband, and a mother figure. Anyone who does not align with those concepts will be damned. The rigid religiosity of purity culture is incredibly damaging.
Within the Evangelical Christian Church, there was a lot of emphasis on virginity. Youth groups talked constantly about sex and all the reasons you should abstain until marriage. Huge events and conventions were held to persuade teenagers to make purity vows.
There were even marriage ceremonies with God. Teenagers who made such vows were encouraged to wear purity rings, or promise rings on their ring finger. You would later give this ring to the first person you had sex with. The hope was this person would be your spouse. Oftentimes these ceremonies were specific to girls. Sometimes the vows would be with the girls’ fathers, which is gross on so many levels.
My pastor’s wife pulled all the girls aside to discuss the importance of being modest. What you wore, how you behaved, and even how deep you kissed could all lead to losing your virginity. There was an unspoken understanding that the burden of staying pure was on girls. It was the girls’ fault if a boy lusted after her. It was also her fault if she was raped.
Even my middle school teacher at a Christian private school joked that the best birth control was an aspirin between the legs. As in hold the aspirin between your knees so you don’t spread your legs for boys. I WAS TWELVE and basically being told that if I dressed with skirts or shorts more than three inches above my knees, I would be raped and it would be my fault.
According to the church I grew up in the Bible stated that marriage was only between one man and one woman. And that anyone you “lay with” or had sex with was your spiritual spouse in God’s eyes. If you have sex with multiple people your soul would be split and pulled apart until there’s nothing left to give the one person you want to actually marry.
Never mind the fact that King David had many wives. One of his wives he acquired because he saw her taking a bath one her roof and wanted her. So he invited her over and raped her. Of course the Church likes to say Bathsheba was a willing participant, but the truth was that the KING invited her over. You do not go against the king.
This story was said in youth groups to emphasize how girls have to protect their bodies, specifically their nudity from men. But King David was also revered highly in the church. After he raped Bathsheba, she got pregnant. To cover his misdeed he had her husband killed in war so he could marry her. Not only did King David rape someone, he also murdered someone. Not to mention David already had many wives. (2 Samuel 11, 12; 1 Kings 1, 2)
The child from this union died, which is also interpreted to mean that women who get pregnant out of wedlock, or through some ungodly means, will miscarry. I cannot tell you how many women struggled with fertility issues in the church and felt that it was God punishing them for having sex before marriage. So much for “God is love.”
I became terrified not only of sex itself, but of my own sexual urges. Lustful thoughts were also SIN. And sinners burn forever in Hell, an eternal lake of fire.
In Purity Culture marriage is one of the highest unions two people can have. It’s the happily ever after at the end of the fairy tale. It’s Godliness, because how often the Church is called the Bride of Christ. Brides and women are highly valued for their purity, their virginity, and not much else. Women aren’t technically supposed to hold office or speak up in church, or so Paul writes in the New Testament, though many modern church-ladies do. (1 Corinthians 14:33-35)
Men rule women, and are heads of their house, like God is the head of the Church. This concept opens the door for abusive marriages. Women feel trapped with husbands who can do whatever they want. It is a woman’s spiritual test to obey and submit to their husbands as the Church is supposed to submit to Christ.
So many teenagers married too young and to wrong people (myself included) because of the strict rules and obsession with sex. I know at least two people who married just so they could finally have sex. Both people have since divorced and remarried and are much happier for it.
Accepting people for who they are, like Jesus who stood up for the prostitute and adulterer, is what I think the church should focus on. He said anyone who has no sin can throw the first stone (John 8:7). I feel there are many proverbial stones being thrown at people who simply do not deserve it.
I was sexually assaulted and felt that it was my fault because of what I was wearing. My love for this person meant I should accept the assault and submit to this person. My needs came last, if at all. Purity culture puts the blame on victims, instead of holding the rapist accountable. Purity culture emphasizes the sin instead of the forgiveness.
I felt dirty, and ruined. I felt like I had to marry the first person I had sex with, and I did. It led to me hiding my own sexuality for fear of not falling into the Christian household of Man and Wife. It led to so much inner turmoil and damage that even now, in my late thirties I am still healing.
I am learning to let go of the harmful messages in my past and accept my true authentic self.
It’s uncomfortable, but I am becoming a better person every day. I hope that anyone struggling with purity culture can find a safe place here and know you are not alone.
You are loved.
You are valid.
There is a place for you. I hope you find it.
Find more Healing Tips and Confessions of growing up in Evangelical Church at these links: