The story of finding who i am becoming is a story of my finding where and how i wish to express myself and who i wish to do it for. It’s a story of finding Allat, Goddess, in myself, my wife, my friends and then in the Qur’an (and vice versa). It’s a story that involves loss, change, painful growth (both desired and unexpected), terror and challenges.
Writing this piece was more difficult than i anticipated. i have always struggled when talking about myself to actually see and name my strengths, weaknesses and things that make up my wholeness. the original version of this piece was torn to shreds (in a good way!) by my Wife, who pointed out that i had done a good job of listing facts about my life, but a terrible job of actually exploring my me-ness. so that means getting this out has taken longer than i would have liked.
There are things that are true about my life that effect/affect everything else and need to be named – i am White, i am of seven-to-tenth generation european settler descent in the so-called “united states”, and it is very likely that at some point my ancestors owned Black human beings as property. much of how i move through and experience the world has been shaped by that matrix, and yet i am determined to move in resistance to it.
(Lady Fatima Al-Zahra, Leader of the Women of the World, draped in a yellow dress-like garment that covers her head to toe. Her face is covered by a white veil. She stands in a garden and holds the earth in her hands. Source: zahrafoundation.ca, Artist: @14rosesartwork)
Goddess first grabbed me in 2014 CE/1435 AH when i was living in Chicago with my then girlfriend.
She grabbed me during my first time living away from home and school.
She reached out and said “You are Mine”.
She found me when i was safe from my abusive “Christian “ fundamentalist upbringing, when my dad was out of sight, wasn’t constantly texting me to make sure i was getting to class, correcting and shaming me. She found me and showed me who i was.
And that is when i told my then girlfriend, now wife, that i was a girl and my name was Olivia.
And of course, in the eleven years since She’s pulled me deeper, and i’ve reflected on all the ways She spoke to me before August 2014.
Goddess found me when i was three years old and told my mom “i like girls, and i’ll always like girls” – i don’t actually remember saying this, i only have my mom’s story, but i imagine a little Olivia, wrapped in the presence of Goddess, expressing herself with the words she had. Imperfect, expressing only half the idea – but enough that both my mom and i have separately looked back to that story as an expression of my inner girl-ness.
Unfortunately, i wouldn’t recognize that for years. my dad was a self-proclaimed apostle of the Lord, and both my parents were active in fundamentalist evangelicalism. What i was taught and what i absorbed through church attendance, books i read, and horrible TV shows like “Gospel Bill” and “Commander Kelly and the Superkids” bleed together.
i don’t remember ever explicitly being told queerness was wrong, but i remember my dad speaking derisively of men who sat with their legs crossed. “They’re trying to crush their balls” he would say. it was always directed at me, like he knew something was off about his “son”. i was always uncomfortable when he spoke like that, though i didn’t know why
i wanted to grow out my hair, so he started cutting my hair himself to keep it short,
i talked with my hand on my hip like i’d seen my mom do – he told me only gay men did that (and the way he said it i knew that was bad)
He positioned himself as a religious authority, and tied that up with his being my dad.
(Black and white line art drawing of three umbrellas. One large umbrella labeled “Christ” protects a smaller one labeled “Husband”, which in turn protects an even smaller one labeled “Wife”. The Husband tier is labeled with the responsibilities of “Protect Family” and “Provide for Family” and the Wife tier is given the responsibilities of “Children” and “Managers of Home”. The “Umbrella of Authority” was common in fundamentalist christian movements like those of Bill Gothard and his Institute for Basic Life Principles.)
i was raised in a household where the Bible was lifted up as the guidepost by which we should live. When i was little this meant reading children’s bibles with rewritten stories full of imperial christian interpretation. i was taught that human fathers spoke to their families for God and Christ. The image above highlights the hierarchy expected in my home and communities.
i knew this didn’t make sense- my dad was a bully! Abusive, abrasive, arrogant- a real bastard. From a young age i had mentally rebelled against him, though i struggled with that because of the Ten Commandments – where i was told to “honor my father and mother”
i believed that hating my dad was dishonoring him.
That changed for me when i found a Psalm attributed to the Biblical Prophet-King David,
Father of the fatherless and orphans and protector of widows
is God in his holy habitation.
God gives the desolate a home to live in and the lonely a family;
he leads out the prisoners to prosperity,
but the unjust live in a parched land.
~Pslam 68:5-6
i understood then that God was my father, in part because i was effectively fatherless – my human father was anything but – so i found refuge in the nourishment of God, in the shelter God would provide from my desolation. This sustained me for many years – and was the root of my faith.
my pre/early teen years were filled with a particular angst, while other queer girls might have been worrying about whether or not the girl they liked liked them or whether it was okay to like girls – i was praying to God/dess that S/He give me breasts. i hadn’t named the reality of being a girl/woman, but i knew that there were ways my body was developing that were incorrect. Something was off- and the only outlet i had for it was prayer.
if i had the right amount of faith, faith enough to move mountains as Prophet Isa/Jesus the Christ (pbuh) said, surely God/dess would meet my needs. While those prayers never were answered in the way i imagined they should have been – waking up one day and the issues with my body being magically addressed, i continued to imagine ways that i could come into the right body. i had dreams of switching with my cousin ala Freaky Friday, hopes of one day getting a “sex change” with the justification that i could then play all the women’s roles in Shakespeare’s plays. i didn’t yet have the words to say “i am a woman” though i look back now, and i see a long string of notes where Goddess sang into my soul with words and Truth that i will always wish i had been physically and emotionally safe to fully hear much earlier than 21 years.
When i finally came out as trans – when Goddess noticeably came for me and pulled me out of the shell i had hid in from my dad, when i heard Her song because it was safe, it was my relationship to God as Father that held me and comforted me as i doggedly searched for a way to hold onto my love for the Divine and God’s love for me that included my queerness and transness.
i read books, talked to pastors, attended gay churches, i found an all-Embracing Divine Love that was everything i had wanted from my dad. i began to learn of the Divine Feminine, how Goddess language and ideas had been suppressed and buried in the dark. Along with the expansiveness of human experience. Centralized power systems, from ancient Jerusalem and Rome to modern-day Washington and Berlin have always been threatened by women, by those who are born with physical Wombs and Divine life giving power – and by those who join their ranks, who create ritual and community around the joining of sisterhood. Something awoke within me, my heart stirred, i no longer had to play by the rules of my father’s game
Goddess granted me a second chance at living and i grabbed it back as hard as She’d been reaching for me
my experience was a common one, globally and historically – finding home in a gender space other than the one placed in at birth is attested to in ancient Sumerian myth, in the third and fourth genders common in England until the 1600s, in Indigenous Two-Spirit people of Turtle Island, in the six gender/sex configurations found in the Jewish Talmud – and the mukhanath of Qur’an 24:32. Among many, many more. Leslie Feinberg’s (may hir memory be a blessing) Transgender Warriors highlighted this herstory from the perspective of the colonized and downtrodden, and i thank hir for it.
i learned the stories of Mary Magdalene, who i named myself after, Hajar, Miriam the Sister of Moses, and countless others whose stories were told improperly by Imperial Christianity. One of my favorites is Yosef, whose “multicolored coat” in Jewish tradition and legend is a “Princess coat” and was considered by some Talmudic Sages to be what we might call a trans or non-binary woman today.1 2
Through this journey my deepest relationship to Goddess was Parental – i haven’t always used “Father”, for a while i have preferred Mother God and Mother Goddess, but i’ve also found something lately in the phrase “Father Goddess”.
i find it odd, slightly uncomfortable, and beautiful all at the same time.
In 2022 Goddess pulled me in for another shift – i had traveled in the world of Progressive and leftist Christianity for years, but a seed that had been planted years earlier finally sprouted and i discovered Islām and the beautiful mother-like Prophet Muhammed (pbuh). i took the plunge and read the whole Qur’an during Ramadan and then spoke the Shahada – the Muslim declaration of faith – witnessed by a queer Muslim friend and two others – i was formally welcomed into the fold.
Eventually Goddess led me to El-Tawhid Juma Circle, a Queer Masjid that practices radical unity – our creed is that we are all united in our surrender to Goddess (Allat in Arabic). We welcome Shi’a, Sunni, Ismaili, Christian, Jews, and other non-Muslims who wish to join for prayer and worship in a spirit of love and inclusion. Women lead prayer, give khutbahs, and our community has many queer and trans members.
i’ve been blessed to have spoken at the Mosque a few times, with one of my favorite experiences being the time my wife and i spoke on the themes of Darkness and Light in Judaism, Islam, and Star Wars.
In the years since i have grown into a particular Goddess oriented expression of Shi’i Islām. This tradition draws its power not just from the Holy Prophet Muhammad, but also from Lady Fatima al-Zahra, who happened to be the Prophet’s daughter. Similarly to Mary Magdalene for some Christians, Fatima al-Zahra is for some Shi’a a manifestation of the Feminine Divine within the physical world.
As a result my practice is infused with dance, magic, prayers of ascent and descent to and from heaven, mourning, Love, and i hope, my Beloved Goddess.
Something else that is supremely important for you to know, is i am a nerd. i’ve always loved reading myths and fantastical stories, like Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Arthurian tales, stories of the pre-Christian Greek pantheon, and most especially Star Wars.
These stories served as escape for me, a way to hide from my upbringing, and of course they are a lot of fun.
i read a lot of books, and write a lot of Star Wars fan fiction.
Goddess appears there too – if you are someone who reads archiveofourown you might stumble across stories dealing with the meaning of Darkness, Light, destiny, colonialism, freedom, and all the many questions of our modern world. Those might just be mine. The question i find myself returning to the most in my stories is where is Goddess found, who is She found in, and where is She going to guide us.
i write a lot – for fun, to process emotions, to express my love, to wonder and to wander. i find it hard at times to write truthfully, i was quite distraught at the copious notes on the first draft of what you’re reading, i had to set it aside for a week!
When i write
i write when inspired by natural beauty, to praise it or to mourn the colonization/desecration of Mother Earth and our living animal and plant relatives
i write with my Wife, for my Wife, inspired by my Wife
i write when i want to pray, to capture the song of words, to get lost in thealogical mazes about what makes Goddess Great.
i write about my womanhood and how it is still mine, real, and part of the weave of the Divine Feminine- even if it started from a different place than Man’s World expects
i believe in the abolition of states, capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy and all their attendant evils
i believe Goddess demands this of us – that our submission to Her requires the complete refutation of all human authority
i believe the abolition of colonialism is necessary to free indigenous peoples and lands from the settler state and its imposed anti-life ways – because Goddess demands life
i believe this necessitates the abolition of the state, as the modern state is a patriarchal invention forged in colonial needs for hierarchy, white supremacy, and authoritarianism
i believe capitalism drives the ongoing maintenance of these systems
And the only systems Goddess ordains are ones that protect and love Mother Earth, lives of human and other-than human beings, and harmony between all life
i believe patriarchy is one of the root evils of the world and this is why i call myself an amazon – a warrior woman dedicated to the freedom of queer-feminist society from the patriarchal death-cult. An understanding i owe to Butch Lee, a Jewish Feminist Dyke (may her memory be a blessing)
Goddess demands the liberation of woman – of the life-givers, the mothers, the priestessess – wherever they are found and however they are born
i believe that anti-colonialism and anti-racism are both necessary and intertwined aspects of undermining settlerism and white supremacy
Goddess demands that we sek unity and harmony and explicitly condemns all forms of supremacy- the only supreme one is Goddess, our Supreme Sustsiner
Palestine and Turtle Island must be free, and Mother Earth must be free
Then we can all be free to love Goddess and each other
i am always learning
and my wife Kate is one of my most important teachers
embodiment has been her most important lesson
embodiment and hereness
i like academic learning, books, reading, lectures, scholarly language
but these things cannot replace the knowledge of the Earth, the knowledge of song, stories, and our bodies – we need all knowledge or it is a dead thing
White supremacist-settler knowledge is such a dead thing – it is based on extraction not experience and is geared toward the worship of death and not the love of life
it has taken me a while to learn that
learning is hard
it is challenging
and sometimes it hurts
but it is always worth it
i learned many of these things by rote when i studied with leftist political parties, communists, and so-called revolutionaries
But i didn’t learn it truly until Goddess grabbed me again and began dragging me into the Dark, beyond the so-called Enlightenment of settler scientific unknowledge
Years ago i found myself wrapped in the cultic tentacles of dead knowledge – of a Marxism devoid of feminism, devoid of Goddess, and devoid of vulnerability. The Dark was foreign to it – it taught us we were the light of the world, that we had to recruit, obey, and repeat the perfectly formulated party line
There was no space to challenge, to question, to be unsure
To listen to my body, my intuition, to the voice inside that screamed this was not okay, to my wife’s voice when she said the same thing
Their surety, which they sought to instill in me had no room for women’s voices, for queer voices, for Black and Indigenous voices if they questioned and listened to their Goddess given inner voice
Learning the truth and letting go of that place was like being scrapped over hot coals – it hurt and i was angry
And in many ways it hasn’t stopped. I’ve continued to learn, unlearn, and relearn what it means to listen to my body – to be in my body, to stop seeing -even unconsciously- my body as superior or as apart from other living breathing bodies.
Goddess recently grabbed me and thrust me into the awareness that for all that i had dealt with my trauma, my hurts, my pains from childhood, i hadn’t dealt with my shadow – i thought i had come to a place where i could recognize that as a white woman born into a racist empire i would always be struggling to be better than the soil into which i was planted. But i’ve come to realize that i kinda thought i had it all figured out, i would be struggling not to be racist all my life – except not really.
There are reasons this painful realization has come only so recently and i think embodiment is one of them – i’ve been resistant to listening to my body and some of that is a result of childhood trauma and body dysphoria and some of it is indoctrination into a way of thinking that saw mind as different from the body. i want to thank Langston Khan and Taya Mâ for their conversation about embodiment and how childhood trauma can make dissociation from the body the default, because it wasn’t safe. i didn’t realize that was happening, and while it got better as i sought medical remedies – it was only reaching back for Goddess when She reached for me that truly brought me into my body.
Mind and body are one in the same and coming to that awareness, in my body, not just intellectually has been such a blessing as much as it has required vulnerability and the necessity of becoming comfortable with the Divine Dark
i try to embody body knowledge right now through dance – a practice i observed for years from my Wife, but only found recently – i find it healing and wholeness- inducing. i love it
i love Salat, the daily Muslim prayer, because it moves me through my body – connecting me to the Air when i stand and to the Earth when i prostrate – and i love finding new ways of embodying the Divine and all Her Holy Names
(Black woman kneeling, wearing a black hijab scarf covering her hair and shoulders. Her eyes are closed and her hands are raised in supplication. Source: Women’s Mosque of America, Photographer: Alexa Pilato)
Embodiment has brought me to a deeper understanding of who i am, nestled in the Darkness of Mother Earth’s Womb, where Goddess spoke to me again and again and again until i listened
(A woman sits legs crossed, holding the Earth over where her Womb is. She is faceless, covered in tattoo like leaf and plant designs. Source: Wombs of the World)
i am a Muslim, i am a lesbian, i am a trans woman, i am a settler, i am a nerd, i am a wife, a daughter, a child of Goddess
i am flawed and hoping to grow, i am human.
i am Olivia Sonell
i want to thank some teachers both living and ancestral for their words:
Kochav Yehudis
Taya Ma Shere
Shaykh Dr. Ibrahim Baba Farajajé (may his secret be sanctified)
Butch Lee (may her memory be a blessing)
Les Feinberg (may hir memory be a blessing)
Dr. Mohamed Abdou
Shaykh Wahid Azal
Dr. Omid Safi
Shireen Qudosi
Dolores S. Williams (may her memory be a blessing)
Cynthia Bourgeault
Monica Coleman
El-Farouk Khaki
Neil-Douglas Klotz
Layla F. Saad
Jericho Vincent
amina wadud
Amina Inloes
James Cone (May his memory be a blessing)
among many others
- https://www.instagram.com/p/CtuZFL4vU00/?igsh=bmljY2x6OG1lN3R4 ↩︎
- https://queergrace.com/josephs-coat/ ↩︎