A Tale of a Dissident Daughter

Many years have passed since I graduated from college. I hold a B.A. in English with minors in History and Psychology. I intended to go on to a grad school for creative writing, but settled down instead in my old hometown after meeting the man who became my husband. I concentrated on making a home for us and, after he was injured on the job, on my career. During those years, I kind of floundered around, uncertain of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

For a time before we were married, I worked in a career counseling program and took the Meyer-Briggs personality type indicator as well as the Strong Interest Inventory test to determine what my strengths are for what positions I would be most satisfied in. I discovered that not only am I a borderline introvert/extrovert (with introversion being the stronger side), but I am also split when it comes to my strengths. I am both very creative as well as very analytic.

The latter test told me, twice (I retook it because I didn't believe it the first time), that I would be happiest in a military leadership position.

Say what now?

Well, that wouldn't happen anyway; it couldn't. I am a life-long asthmatic and the military doesn't take asthmatics. Instead, I just did what I could do, working in an office and gaining Skills and Experience for future positions.

But I never felt satisfied.

I am interested in a lot of different things. In my youth I played the French Horn and sang as well as playing in a soccer league and beginning writing when I was around twelve. We practiced martial arts when we were very young, and I daydreamed of a time when I would have adventures and ride motorcycles and travel to exotic places. I lived those adventures vicariously through my characters in my stories.

It wasn't until I was in some of the darkest days of my life that I finally stood up, shook off the dust, and started shaping my life into the one I wanted - needed - it to be.

I mentioned previously that my husband was injured on the job. He's still not fully recovered and it's been almost seven years to the day. I found myself in an atypical role for a woman as I was suddenly the primary breadwinner. Yes, it was a shock and a certainly uncomfortable learning experience. As things got worse (both his health and our finances), I spiraled down into depression. I constantly reminded myself to look for the silver lining in the clouds that seemed to just keep coming, but rarely could actually find it.

After my grandfather passed away, I finally broke down and called my employee assistance program. From that initial consultation, I began regular therapy sessions throughout the fall of 2009. During those sessions, I began to quietly voice my disappointment with the religion I was brought up in. My therapist suggested a couple of books, one of which I read with a highlighter and pen in hand so that I could mark sections that spoke to me and write my thoughts in the margins.

That book was The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd.

The first section I felt I could have written myself. It was as if Mrs. Monk Kidd dug around in my brain and found the words that I didn't know that I needed to say. She gave voice to the feelings inside of me, and, seeing that I wasn't the only one who had experienced what she termed the "feminine wound", I began to break out of my protective, hardened outer shell.

That long-ago moment when I was told that, instead of leading singing, I would only be able to work in the nursery or the kitchen - that's the feminine wound. It's the exact moment when a young girl realizes for the first time that she isn't going to be treated as equal. It's the loss of faith in the system that should have protected and nurtured us as girls but instead told us that we were "less than males and that we were going to spend the rest of our lives obeying and asking permission or worrying if we didn't" (Dance, Sue Monk Kidd, p. 17).

In the fall of 2009, I wrote a letter to my parents, telling them that I was no longer a Christian and that I didn't want to speak to them about my decision and asking them to not speak to me about Christianity. This was a tall order for my parents, as my father was the pastor for a small Christian church at the time, and their lives were heavily involved in the church. For the first time in my life, I didn't speak to my mother for weeks. I had always had a great relationship with her, but in standing up for my believes, I had trodden very heavily on both her and my father's toes. She told me later that she didn't really know what to say to me after that.

It hurt, knowing that I had hurt them with my dissidence. But I could no more turn a blind eye to the awakening spirit within me than I could deny that, yes, I am a woman.

I read the first two sections of Dance of the Dissident Daughter and then, with my brain full to bursting of new concepts, I set it aside. Over the next years I tried to absorb what I had read - that I wasn't the only woman to experience the feminine wound, that I wasn't going to burst into instant flame the moment I said I didn't believe the same thing my parents believed, that there were feminine gods long before the masculine ones, and, most importantly, there is inside all women a spark of feminine divinity.

I wasn't ready to fully accept my femininity then. I had gone around for the past several years telling myself that I didn't like women and preferred the company of men (which was true).

What I realized, however, was that I didn't like myself because I wasn't what I wanted to be.

Powerful. Successful. Assertive. All those things that I associated with being male.

I had to find it in me to forgive myself for being born on the wrong side of the gender pool before I could accept the divine feminine spirit growing inside of me. Grow she did, and still does as I struggle daily to accept that I am, and that it is okay for me to be, a girl.

That, my friend, shouldn't be necessary. A girl shouldn't question that her femininity is just as good as masculinity, let alone hate being a female as I did for so many years.

Recently I went back and read the third and fourth sections of Dance of the Dissident Daughter. Shortly after I began reading it, my mother and uncle stayed with us on their way through town. While they were here, my uncle asked me, point-blank (and completely out of the blue) if I was a member of a certain religion.

To say that I was surprised is putting it lightly. I have studied a couple of other religions since leaving Christianity. I wasn't certain how my uncle knew, but I didn't want to lie. So I told them the truth: that while I don't consider myself one, I am studying the theology.

I spent that evening and the next morning speaking with my mom for the first time about my decision to leave Christianity. I told her of my experience, of how I learned that I was "less than" a boy that day when I was told to work in the kitchen or nursery. Her expression is one I don't think I'll ever forget: disbelief and horror. She couldn't believe that I had been told that, and hated that I had. I went on to tell her about the Dance of the Dissident Daughter and what it had taught me. We talked, for the first time and openly, about our experiences as women in the Church. I wasn't surprised to find that she had experienced a similar situation.

And in hearing validation in her voice, I found myself healing just a little more. Accepting just that much more that it is necessary in religion to have a feminine divine, so that men and women are equal, as we are meant to be.

Not a Day Without a Line

"Nulla dies sine linea." Not a day without a line.

The phrase is attributed by Pliny the Elder to Apelles, who was a painter a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Actually it was here on earth, but anyone who knows me knows my first full-length novel was a Star Wars fan fiction.

But I digress.

Apelles said this famous line in regards to his work as a painter. From what I understand, in an effort to come as close to perfection as possible, he painted every day even if it was just to go over lines already laid down. Click here  to find out more about Apelles from (what I think) is a reputable source.

Over the years this idea has been attributed to other artistic lines of work, such as writing. Not a day without a line isn't as literal as it once was; to the writer in me, it means a line of sentence, or, better yet, a paragraph. At the moment I don't write every day, but that is something I am trying to change.

This blog will touch on many things that mean a lot to me, and plenty of them will be controversial. I have been silent in my beliefs for going on my entire life. As such, it is past time when I stood up and spoke up.

This isn't an easy thing for me to do. As the youngest of four and the only girl in a strict Christian household, I often felt that I had no voice. Oh, I could shout and scream, but when it came to making important decisions, those were often taken from me. I will get into that a little more as this blog progresses.

I learned early on that being a boy was a better life. My parents were overprotective of me and our religion taught that women were to be silent. Seen, but not heard. If a woman wanted to argue with a leader in the church, she had to go to her husband and have him present the argument. She could not teach unless it was to other women or children, and the leaders in our church took that a step further to say that a woman could not lead singing. See (in no particular order) Ephesians 5, 22-33; 1 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 3, 1-16; Genesis 3, 16 for references to my above statements.

I was maybe six years old when I learned that I was "less than" because of my gender. I have always loved to sing, and I wanted nothing more than to lead singing in church like my daddy did. I can't remember who I approached about this desire, but I do remember being told that it wasn't possible. That I should go help out in the kitchens or in the nursery instead.

Six years old and I learned that a woman's place is in the kitchen or with the children, and that was all that she was destined for.

I grew up refusing to learn how to cook, and shying away from children. To this day, kids intimidate me! My brothers would tease me because I didn't know how to cook. I remember one Christmas in particular when we were teenagers, they told me that I was getting a stove for Christmas and that was it; so that I would learn to cook. I didn't, of course, (get a stove, that is) but the memory of their teasing sticks in my mind.

This is what a girl should do. Why aren't you doing it?

That's not what they were saying. At least, I don't think so. But the underlying societal pressure was there nonetheless. Women and men have always had "certain roles," and since that day when I was six years old, I have always identified more with the male gender. They got to do the fun stuff, after all. They got to walk down to go get the mail without having someone either a) watch them or b) go with them. They got to lead singing, teach, all the important and fun things that I wanted to do, but was told that I couldn't.

I'd like to say that I showed them. I'd love to say that, as a child, I went out and did all the things that I was told not to, or that I wasn't capable of doing. Unfortunately, I turned inward the pain of being told that my gender made me less than. I did everything that I was supposed to do (I was a dutiful daughter of God) except to embrace being who and what I am.

And yet...I was the first person on my father's side and in our immediate family to earn a bachelor's degree. At eighteen, I went away to college with that very mission in mind. I cared what I majored in to a degree, but the overall quest was to go down as the first in my immediate family as well as on the one side, with a higher level of education.

It was the first time in my life that I had ever done something just for me.

And it was an incredible, eye-opening experience that I wholeheartedly enjoyed.

Since then, I have struggled with religion to a point where I shirked it completely. I struggle daily to be true to myself as a woman, and to remember that it's okay to be my gender; that it's not a bad thing to be a girl.

And that, in a nutshell, is what this blog is about. Learning to accept myself for what I am. It isn't as easy as it sounds, but the path so far has definitely been worth it.