Through the Rain

My Journey Towards Queer Spirituality I attended part of a church service yesterday. My own spiritual journey has been one that others have mostly inwardly, if not outwardly, scoffed at and judged. Maybe I’m making up the whole judgment thing with my autistic assumptions. But being raised in the Bible Belt, daily life was steeped in religion. Steeped isn’t strong enough of a word. Everything about our lives was about church. Even to this day, you ask my dad something, and he brings it around to God, or prison ministry, or something he did at work, and then a few sentences later how he didn’t have time because he was doing something church related.  There’s nothing wrong with having religion being a part of your daily life. But we were spiritually abused. I hesitate to throw the term around because as the victim, it’s still hard for me to not normalize the abuse, but most times I see it. I see it in the way I can’t make decisions for myself. Either my dad or my sister had to make th...

Just Let It Go No, it’s not the Frozen song, and I’m sorry if it brings it to mind. I was reminded recently of the heavy traumatic load I still carry, and that I just need to let it slide off my shoulders. That’s it. We spend every second of every day fighting our battles that sometimes, just sometimes, we forget the battles that we’ve already won. We carry the weight of the past that we don’t need to with us. This is our reminder to just breathe a deep breath. Sigh. And with that sigh, let the weight of all that is in the past be the past so that the present can have its moment and the future can have its hope! I almost cried when I realized how much baggage I had been holding onto. And no, what I am suggesting is not as easy as a 1, 2, 3, breathe in, breathe out, done. At least, it wasn’t for me. I wish it was. Back a few blog posts ago, I decided to turn this blog post around for good and not focus on the past anymore. This is not a relapse of that! This is a re-commitment to that b...

The Top Five I spent probably close to an hour this morning listening to a famous public speaker that I had never heard of but who threw out names of people I had heard of and was a great communicator talk about how to better your communication skills. He began by saying he spent all his time focusing on technical skills, knowledge, and expertise in his subject area but wasn’t getting jobs, promotions, or anything like that and didn’t know why until he read a book about how you have to pair communication skills with expertise to go anywhere in life. This coupled with the YouTube video someone posted about how people who don’t fit in societal norms typically also get passed over for jobs and promotions made me listen to this guy’s three videos. I know I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to in-person communication, though sometimes I nail it! I’m much better in writing, which is why I have a blog and not a podcast or video blog. In his second video, the presenter mentione...

A Job?!?! Today I had an interview for a Housing Assistant job. The job was to be a part-time social worker and document guru for people needing more permanent housing, whether it be from no housing to temporary housing or temporary housing to more permanent housing—at least if I understood the job correctly. It was exciting pay, and an exciting opportunity to work in my field of choice: helping people directly! I met with my job coach beforehand and gave her the list of questions that I looked up and pondered yesterday while doing a bit of research about the company, and she said it looked great! We talked a bit, and while talking, she decided to look up other jobs at the same company to see if I would qualify for any of them with my no driver’s license and no social work license. Lo and behold, there was one other job, this one full-time, that I qualified for. She emailed me a link to it minutes before the interview was about to start. My “job coach” is a supported employment special...

Not Everything Has to Be a Fight Dear Lord, this is a struggle for me. When I find something I’m passionate about, and I find very few things I am passionate about—good people and really narcissistic people, injustices, safety—those are the ones I can think of right now. I’ve been having more and more fights over those few things as politics enters the picture over those few things. Boundaries is another one that I am working on. My therapist asked me how I feel about cutting people off and how I decide the point is for cutting them off. To be honest, the more I do it, the freer I feel, but the more of an echo chamber I create, and I don’t want that in my life. Enough people have an echo chamber telling them everything they believe is the truth so they close their minds off to new ideas, and I want to always be learning the right things.  I’ve learned the wrong things in the past, and I don’t want to repeat the same mistakes, so I’m a little hesitant to take on new ideas. It’s like...

Gratitude for Health This one is almost ridiculous after all I’ve been through. I have a lot of mental health issues. I have worsening physical issues. Why would I be grateful for my health? I am grateful because it’s not worse. I am part of a couple support groups on Facebook that have members who have very nasty symptoms. One group chooses specifically only to focus on the positives. Sure, there’s a post every day for those who want to vent in the comments section, but if you don’t want to engage, you don’t have to! I have Functional Neurological Disorder. I was diagnosed first with essential tremors and dystonia. Dystonia is basically a combination of muscle spasms that are neurological in nature as well as a host of other neurological problems—loss of balance, chronic pain, non-epileptic seizures, etc. If you have mental health issues or have been through trauma, or if the neurologist misdiagnoses you or doesn’t feel like it, they can diagnose you with Functional Neurological Disor...

A Long Time Coming Sorry it’s been a while since I last wrote. I’ve been through a lot the past few… days. I had an eye exam and was told my right eye wasn’t seeing correctly, and it definitely wasn’t! My dad wrote back after months of silence and used a different email address so I opened it not knowing it was him writing me back. I know this is supposed to be a place of vulnerability and openness where I share what’s been going on with me, but that’s exactly why I’ve been so closed off lately. I don’t want the world to have access to me. I was raised that nothing was private, and I’ve lived my life where nothing was private except for the deeply shameful things… the things I regretted, the things I have hidden, the things that held me back. Recently it strained my relationships with everyone. Both being too open and not being open enough. I set the wrong boundaries. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s time to get this right. I know in the past I said I needed to focus on myself, b...