Dear friends and comrades,
Create, Don’t Kill is a blog I’ve attempted to maintain for a little over two years now. You can see through browsing the archives that I’ve been more successful at some times than at others.
This past year has marked some important changes in my life, like getting married, joining a political party, and exploring my Irish & Celtic heritage. I’ve made some new friends and comrades, a more than a few mistakes. I’ve finally gotten back into therapy and that, along with a new job, has been tremendously helpful for my anxiety and CPTSD.
I’m going to take the opportunity afforded by my birthday’s arrival to reflect a bit on the growth & changes I’ve undergone over these past few years. (And while I’m a it I’m introducing y’all to the soft relaunch of the blog. New theme, new tagline, new goals. *fingers crossed*)
6 years ago I was a firstyear at Butler University studying Theatre & Creative Writing. By the time I graduated I had added an additional minor in Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality studies, and a focus in Religious studies.
As a result of trauma at home I was trying to find comfort emotionally and intellectually in the conservative fundamentalist god and his white republican jesus. Fearing to confront my own pain I simply hoped & prayed that the far off god in heaven who was never quite close enough to hear me, and too much like my abusive dad to care, would fix my problems, namely: my fear of my dad, my anger, and my “perversions”… I created a masculine shell, attempting to project what I’d been raised to expect from those perceived to be men.
Over the first two years at Butler this shell slowly crumbled as I met and interacted with people outside the influence of my parents, in an environment more open than any I’d experienced previously. Even in the face of my determination not to let college change me, things did change until in the summer of 2014, in a Chicago apartment, encouraged & supported by my lover – I finally came out as trans.
After this the facade tumbled down and I began lurking in the dark from conservatism and a god for whom I was never good enough to a tentative liberalism and a God who took the side of the Oppressed & marginalised. This new world was scary and much more violent than the one I knew before. Suddenly I was no longer being persecuted for “being a Christian” but Christianity was the one doing the persecuting. Racism was no longer something MLK or Obama had fixed. The planet was dying, and the devil wasn’t the one responsible. For any of it.
I began exploring more open Christianities, influenced by my then girlfriend and with the subtle guidance of a gay Episcopalian priest, Father Charles Allen.
Being trans meant I also had to explore the ways women & queer people are oppressed. First by seeing myself as a woman, and then as a nonbinary person’s whose gender and culture had been actively suppressed and destroyed over the years. And finally I had to deal with the fact my “father” had abused me my whole life.
Over all this hung the specter of communism. And Druidry. One was an idea I’d been taught was “evil” and another was that which had always lurked at the edge of my imagination.
Next time:
What is Druidry? Or: “The Earth is Alive.”