Ink: The Beginning

It hurt more than I thought it would. It was bearable enough though. After a few seconds of pain he would let up, gifting an immediate moment of relief before he’d continue again. I felt so out of place in that room- surrounded by people and images that years of conditioning taught me to judge so harshly. Topless women, bleeding hearts, demons and gods— Tattoos, they said, defiled the body. 



As a child, I remember Sunday School teachers asking, “would you spray graffiti on the walls of God’s temple?” 



“No!” I’d answer confidently. Of course I wouldn’t. In all honesty, I wouldn’t have sprayed graffiti on so much as the side of a dumpster, never mind a sacred building. 



“Well,” the teacher would explain, “God says your body is a temple. So if you’d never spray graffiti on God’s house, you must also never put graffiti on your body.”



Continue reading this post on my new blog. 



Waking Up

I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but there was a moment sometime in May when the universe seemed to align and something clicked within me. Here, on this isolated piece of beautiful farmland, I’ve spent countless hours alone. I sometimes go weeks without hardly talking to another soul. I’ve been listening to podcasts and stories and reading books and writing almost every day as I sip my morning coffee. I’ve listened to the sounds of the forest and the fields as they change-  from season to season, day to night, and from dry to wet. The earth is so alive, and I have felt myself come alive with it....

Continue reading this post on my new blog.

Beware the Demons in the Church Pews

Recently, I found a little gem mentioned almost in passing in the introduction of The Artists Way by Julia Cameron and I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the idea she expresses. I’ve been expanding it over the course of the past few days and thought it worthwhile to share. It’s about the trajectory of life’s path, asserting the notion that that it isn’t so much a linear one as it is a spiral. So rather than thinking of life as an obstacle course with a new challenge at different points along a linear trail- this circular path alludes to the revisitation of specific points along our journey. As we gain elevation and reach a higher plane, we inevitably circle around to some of our most persistent demons, each time battling them on a new (deeper) level before being rewarded with another gain in elevation. As frustrating as it is, I have found this to be consistent with my experience...

Continue reading this post on my new blog.

Down the Rabbit Hole

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.”

-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Life often seems to me like a lone adventure through a maze of forks and crossroads. There are periods of consistency when there are no major decisions to be made and there are also spans of road we share with a fellow traveller(s)…

Continue reading this post on my new blog.

"I don't pray."

Six of us sat around the dinner table in a farmhouse in the middle of rural Maryland. Across for me were the married couple. They are service missionaries and occasionally wear black name tags that read "the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." To my right sat the cowboy from Utah who has probably spent more time with sheep than with people and is rarely spotted without a cattleman's hat atop his head. The remaining three of us have been on this farm longer than the others, but not by much, and despite the fact that we were all from different decades, we came out of the closet in the same one...

Continue reading this post on my new blog.

Be F*cking Brave

Earlier in the week, during a phone call with my mother about how things are going for me in this new life, she commented that she admired my bravery— that I took risks. This comment got me thinking a lot about bravery. It isn’t that I hadn’t been called brave before. After going through the coming out process and being vocal about it, I had many people suggest that I was brave. But I’ve never, never-ever, thought myself to be brave. Cautious feels more like me. So when my own mother made that remark, I was taken a little aback by it...


Continue reading this post on my new blog.

Underneath This Skin There’s a Human

When I was 12 years old, my family moved to another city. Many would agree that Middle school is awkward enough all by itself, without throwing in a move to a different school half way through seventh grade. Up until then it proved to be the worst year of my short life. The new house was only 30 minutes away from the Orange County neighborhood where I grew up, but for a twelve year old, it might as well have been the other side of the planet...

Continue reading this post on my new blog