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If you were handed a story at birth, about the world, and who you are in it, and your relationship to the people around you

And especially if you were required to accept the story “into your heart” and live by it because if you didn’t you’d suffer dire existential consequences (aka hell)

Then that story, or those stories, wired themselves deep into your nervous system, and may still be acting as the filter through which you assess every person, every decision, every thought, every feeling

If you can see this in yourself, and if the story no longer fits, or never really did

If you are trying to figure out what that now means for the way you show up in your relationships, and in the quiet (or tumultuousness) of your inner life

Then there’s a good chance that what I write about will resonate for you.

Probably not all of it.

We’re each on our own path.

But the searching, the questions, the uncertainty, the discoveries may offer some comfort of familiarity

And the alternate narratives may catch your interest, or provide an insight

Not because I think you “should” believe in anything

But because fresh perspectives can help to shake loose the absolutism that has felt constricting

And because it might feel like liberation to know that there are others like you, and me, each on our own path to uncovering what we think, and feel, and know, and don’t know,

Each for our own inner self and, in this way, also together.

I was raised in a family that loved the best that it could, within a belief system that said love was unconditional

Except that it had some conditions

And required that sexual predators be protected

Love as mindfuck

I subscribed to that idea of “love” for many years. First because I was required to, and then because I didn’t know any differently.

Christian. Evangelical. Mennonite

Until the idea that a god of love would be perfectly willing to damn me to an eternity of conscious torment just didn’t make sense anymore.

Because it doesn’t make sense.

So here I am

I know what I don’t believe

But I’m not always sure what I do believe.

Or if I need to believe anything at all.

Seeing for Myself is where I work my way through the stories I was handed at birth, including the ones that were considered dangerous, and the ones that were deliberately kept from me

I unpack. I examine. And I contemplate.

If you are doing the same, know that you are not alone

And you might even find yourself at home here.

I post new essays weekly, biweekly at minimum. If you subscribe, they get delivered directly to your Inbox. Other notes show up at random.