This post is part of a series, to start with the introduction click here. It feels a little silly to write the last planned post of this series when I stopped adding to it over a year ago! But It still feels incomplete to me, and so here I am. Relating to non-affirming friends and family when coming out isn’t a race. It’s more like a marathon. It’s exhausting, it takes endurance and persistence. I purposely choose to live a... Read more
We’ve called out abuse. We’ve talked about this. For years survivors of the fundamentalist christian homeschool movement have told our stories. We asked people to listen, we asked people to help, we asked for some sort of protections to get put into place for isolated homeschooled children. We’ve pointed out the dysfunction as one by one, the leaders of the movement covered up scandals or were toppled by them. We were called bitter. We were told that we were... Read more
This post has been a long time coming, and with the Duggar scandal all over the news, its been on my mind again. First off, let me say that what Josh Duggar did was wrong, and how the media has handled this story has been pretty awful too. Tabloids have been flippant about sharing police documents with the victims names on them, and since the Duggar family has been very vocally against LGBTQ people who they claim are child-molesters, there... Read more
I noticed it the first time about six months after finally recognizing issues I had with my upbringing and making the decision to stop spanking our kids. Ms Action plopped her bottom onto the floor and accidentally onto a hard toy in the process. She jumped up with a shriek, holding her bottom and crying. I had seen the whole thing from across the room, I knew what had happened, and that it was an accident, and that she would... Read more
I read constantly. It was a way to find out more about the world outside my parents home, and escape from the day in day out monotony, and other than our family movie nights, some of my only entertainment. Some books that I read, were not approved. I speed-read them without my parents knowledge in the library (The Princess Diaries Series, Star Wars Sci-Fi) and later when I had access to book stores bought them and hid them in the... Read more
I’m so cripplingly lonely. I have parents that think I shouldn’t be allowed to go out with friends more than once every couple months because they don’t want me to make friends that accept my gender. I never get any social interaction, I just sit in my room and listen to indie music and browse tumblr all day. My social anxiety is at an all time high and my stuttering is worse than it’s ever been. -Quote from Leelah’s Tumblr I... Read more
In my last re-post I talked about how I am not my parents. This stemmed from being told again and again (whenever I disagreed with my parents stance on something) that when I was older, when I was a parent, when I was a parent of many… I would magically understand why my parents did what they did. The implication being that I would agree with and condone what they did as well. The breakthrough I talked about in that... Read more
So the Atheist channel at Patheos has been chatting about whether or not atheist parents should teach their children about religion, and whether or not atheist parents should raise their children to be atheists. The discussion appears to have started over at Natural Wonderers, picked up by On the Margin of Error and continued by Love, Joy, Feminism and Camels with Hammers. I’ve thought quite a bit about this topic having been raised to be conservative christian, and leaving that mentality as... Read more
This post was originally published in May of 2011. I’ll admit, I still go back to read this post on occasion. Because the fear of hurting my kids is so overwhelming at times, I need that reminder that I am not doomed to repeat the past, that change is not only possible, it is already happening. This post has been finished for weeks, but for some reason I haven’t felt brave enough to post it. I can’t find anything... Read more
This post was originally published June 2011. One of the things that prompted my finally admitting my own denial, was realizing I did not want to parent the way I was parented. I wanted to believe that how I grew up had not been harmful, I wanted so badly for my parents to be right, that I refused to think about it, refused to deal with it, and even repeated it. In the end, my desire to not hurt my kids was... Read more
Permission to Live
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