As someone who grew up homeschooled in a fundamentalist church in the 80’s, I didn’t know much if anything about anything queer! I'm really not entirely sure when I became aware of my sexuality, to be honest. I grew up in a poor family in a rural area. We were pretty isolated and we didn't see much in the way of television and all that. Let's just say I could crack a lot of jokes now about my first crushes being country singers and Xena Warrior Princess! Ha! It wasn't funny then, though. I know that I had a lot of confusion over the feelings I had for friends that no one else seemed to have, so I kept these hidden and to myself. I wasn't fully aware of "what is going on!?" until my late teens, and I did not come out as non-binary until this Spring, at the age of forty.

Over time, those feelings and that confusion that I hid away became a source of shame for me, and hiding myself and making myself small became my way of life at a very young age. As someone who was also undiagnosed as autistic and ADHD until my late 30’s, I became very good at masking in many ways. I left the faith entirely at 19 after I was outed involuntarily. I was kicked out of my family home and my church community. I was told many things about what being queer meant about my worth, my salvation, my life, and whether or not I was acceptable to God and others, and I was filled with shame. I did not know how to cope and lost my scholarship to college and was homeless within a year’s time. Even though I left the faith intellectually and came out loudly, feeling rebellious and proud, the shame and masking continued and was only exacerbated by what seemed like my inability to cope with life. I know now that homelessness and poverty, classism, homophobia, developmental trauma and subsequent traumatic events had a lot more to do with my struggles than some sort of innate moral deficiency or lack of worth, but I did not know that at the time. Looking back, I can easily identify that because I was gay, and therefore could not do the things and live the life that I was taught a good Christian woman did, that meant that I was worthless. That I was a disappointment and an abomination. That my life had no meaning. That I was hopeless, defective, disgusting, and easily thrown away. That no one truly cared. That the world was only a cruel and hard place. That I would always be alone. I went through a very dark time that was lightened greatly when I met my partner at 25. Her unconditional love and loyalty changed everything for me.

My partner and I were together for five years when I started to struggle again with issues of faith. Neither of us identified as Christian and thought we’d left that life behind. Together, we sought and found meaning and spiritual practices outside of Christianity and rejected that belief system altogether. Then in 2010, after my thirtieth birthday, I began struggling again with so much of that shame. Long story made very short, we found ourselves repeating a cycle of religious trauma again, together, as adults. We began attending a church that claimed to be affirming in an attempt to explore spirituality in the Christian world and to discover if we could reconcile our sexuality with those beliefs. However, the church we attended was not actually affirming in the least; subtly and over time we found ourselves being guided toward an ex-gay theology which each of us began to internalize and accept. For more than five years, we remained in this church; the harm inflicted on ourselves and each other was intense. I believe it is a complete miracle that we both made it out of that situation alive, and it has taken a lot of therapy, work, and commitment to remain together and rebuild a healthy relationship again. I am continually amazed and grateful that this has been possible, and I grieve for the pain we each endured, the time lost, and even the financial difficulties that were significantly worsened by the ordeal. As we left that church, I discovered the Side B community which offered us both a place to learn to accept and affirm ourselves as queer people while not entirely abandoning our faith. The existence of the Side B community was crucial to my well-being and survival during this time. I learned to accept and love myself as a queer person again and on a deeper level than I’d experienced before, and connected with other neurodiverse, trans, and otherwise queer folx. After five years in the Side B community and intense therapeutic work, I finally began the process of deconstruction.

Part of that deconstruction was the realization that I can no longer be part of the Side B community. I still respect and support my Side B friends in their beliefs and journey, but I don't belong there anymore. I have come to realize that pleasure, desire, love, and the intimate and erotic expressions of those things are crucial to my well-being. I cannot continue to deny and repress these things any more. I realized that by remaining celibate and remaining in that space, I was stalled in my shame. I acknowledge that others may have a very different journey, but for me, allowing myself to own my entire physical body including as it relates to my sexuality is crucial for me to build safe connection and to heal. There is so much more I could say and want to say in answer to all of these questions, and I wish I had more time to articulate these things more clearly, so I'll just say I'm doing my 2020 best, ask you to bear with my errors and accept this brief story knowing there is so much more to it, and continue.

So many of my beliefs have changed – actually, my core beliefs and intuitive knowledge has not changed, but I have begun to view those things as just as if not more important than external factors such as traditions, creeds, cultural church perspectives, and the like. I have come to believe that the God and Creator I know experientially cares more about my holistic well-being than They do about my maintaining and adhering to cultural standards of marriage, family, identify, sex, and gender. I believe my Maker made me joyful, intuitive, sensitive, creative, playful, curious, questioning, passionate, different, and with a great capacity for pleasure on purpose! and I believe that They take great joy in seeing us-in seeing me-be who They made me to be. I believe that there is no such thing as true faith and true Christ-following if we fail to address trauma and mental health issues first, and if we do not cry out for justice. I believe that Black and Indigenous and Trans lives matter, period—and that they definitely matter more than the comfort of the white, affluent, colonizing church. I believe that it’s wrong to require an adherence to cultural standards before we welcome, love, feed, clothe, nurture, defend, and live in community with people. I believe that shaming someone, of telling someone they do not deserve our love or God’s love for any reason is abhorrent. I believe that idolizing a book or belief system or political system to the point of abandoning people and of harming people is reprehensible. I believe that my healing and the healing of each person and creature and this whole Earth is the point—and that takes precedence over tradition, popularity, finances, culture, or anything else in church or in the world, and over the comfort of the privileged. Now I believe that I matter, too.

The road to affirmation has been a very long journey that is still ongoing. For over thirty years I have struggled along that path. Much of it I have had to walk alone, though I am grateful to have had my partner by my side for the last fifteen of those years; she cannot do this for me as I cannot do this for her, but we have not been alone in the journey. One of the primary resources that have helped me has been therapy, but specifically a therapist who works with IFS and polyvagal theory, and who utilizes Nidra meditation and other somatic exercises in and out of session. That has been life changing. Another powerful resource throughout my life has been spending time in nature, as part of nature and not as other. Learning the power and abundance of the Land all around us has been crucial. I have returned to the intuitive and animistic ways I learned as a wild little child living in a rural area--the ways that had been preached out of me--the ways that do not turn me away from God but instead bring me even more wonder and love of our Creator. I must also say that the Side B community was a place that helped me in more ways than I could sufficiently describe. Though I no longer hold to Side B beliefs, I think that it is crucial that we continue to respect each other, and appreciate the support and community that is offered to all of our queer family, no matter what our differences may be and no matter how passionately we disagree. We are all on a journey which implies movement, traveling, evolution; let's allow places to exist for wherever people may be even when those places are not places we believe we want or need. They may not be for us, but they are for others. Over the last two years, I’ve also begun to build safe connection with others, especially other queer, trans, non-binary, and polyamorous people in and out of the church; this has helped me to feel safe, and valid myself. Hearing their stories, following people who are sharing their story on Instagram and TikTok, and opening up more myself about the parts of myself that I’d hidden away for so long has helped greatly. Also, attending the QCF Conference two years ago really opened my eyes to the realization that maybe deconstruction doesn’t have to mean deconversion.

Life is still challenging and messy. But I feel now more than ever that I am gaining an understanding of who I am and where I fit in it. I am finally accessing resources that are relevant to me and the challenges I face. I am learning to love myself, to receive love, and to love others authentically. My partner and I have been able to develop deeper trust, vulnerability, and intimacy than I ever thought would be possible, and we feel happier, safer, and more ourselves than ever as a result. And while I am still in a place of prioritizing my rest and recovery, I can finally start to see glimpses of how I might contribute to the world from a place of authenticity, rather than needing to first trying to make myself acceptable to God or to others. I am learning in a deep soul place that my purpose in the world can only ever flow out of the nurturing, healing, and acceptance of my true Self. That journey is only beginning, and I can’t wait to see where it leads! Since this is 2020, I can’t end on that note as I may have otherwise. The growth and changes I've attempted to summarize in these paragraphs simplify far too much, and there are still so many challenges, and there are broken connections to grieve with family and people and even ideas I love as a result of the changes I've made. I must add that one of the biggest blessings in my life now is beginning to learn how things can be ok—how I can be ok—even when I am a mess, when people I love are messes, when the world is the biggest mess. I don’t know how that works and I don’t always feel ok. But I do have hope. And I know that when I walk out into the big field of our city park at night, and I look up at the few stars I can see through the haze of the street lights and my tears, I know that God is here, and that we all matter (even me!) and I think: Ok. Let’s stay connected. Let’s stay real. Let’s stay now, and here. Let's keep growing.