Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 32

Today I made two new friends. Something I never expected to happen on lockdown.

The first is the owner of a local shop on the high street. We had a phone call last week about a possible collaboration and today she interviewed me about how mindfulness can support us to get through lockdown.

The interview went so well and our conversation was so strong, that I know this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Afterwards I felt so fed; by connection, inspiration, and humility. I felt in touch with my deep heart wish to share these precious teachings and practices with anyone who is interested in listening.

I’m full of gratitude for her interest in listening.

The second is someone I’ve been emailing with for over a year, trying to make a date, but have never actually met in person.

We spoke by phone. He is like me, a gay, Latinx-American Buddhist living in the UK. He immigrated here 30 years ago to escape the grip of his homophobic family. Until we spoke, I didn’t know how much I needed to connect with someone right now who has such a similar life experience as mine.

It was like talking to a brother from another mother.

We are connected in a few different ways, through mutual friends and colleagues, and he’s working on a new project he’d like my involvement in. On the call we share a bit of our life stories and similar experiences of what it’s like for us as queer Latinx-Americans living in the UK.

Being raised Catholic, I had been taught that being gay was a sin. But it wasn’t like someone sat me down and simply told me so. It was more like being slowly drip-fed messages over the course of my childhood and adolescence.

These messages whispered faintly in my ear that I was different, told me I was dirty, made me feel wrong. Everything about me was wrong. Loving women, desiring them, wanting to have an intimate sexual relationship with a woman was wrong.

I didn’t want what I was supposed to want. Marrying a man and having children.

But wait, there’s more! If I didn’t want that than I could become a nun or live “the single life.” Neither of those options sounded particularly attractive to me. I was a hopeless romantic and from a young age, even before I understood anything about sex, I knew I wanted sexual relationships.

At the age of 11 it was crystal clear to me that I was attracted to girls and had no interest in boys. How does a child square that kind of clarity with what she’s been taught her entire life?

For me, the cognitive dissonance led to deep feelings of shame and worthlessness. For the next five years, the same years my mother became sick and died, I considered the implications of making one of two choices.

Either I was going to live a life true to who I was or one faithful to what I’d been taught.

If I chose the first, I would have to potentially give up everything I knew and loved. If I chose the second, I would have to bury a part of me deep down inside and try and live from a place of alienation, being cut off from myself, my desires, my life-force.

When neither of the two choices seemed tenable, I considered suicide. After the deaths of my mother and uncle, and with a conviction I did not yet understand, I decided the only option was to try an honor who I was, in spite of all the messages telling me to do otherwise.

This meant rejecting not just what I’d been taught about gay people, but my entire faith.

Luckily, I had never really been sold on Catholicism to begin with. It all seemed a bit too convenient that we had to put all our trust in some God we couldn’t see and had no real evidence existed.

I sensed that particularly as a woman I was being manipulated and a part of me didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But turning my back on my faith also meant turning my back on my family.

I knew I might lose my family. I decided I had to be ok with that. If they couldn’t accept me for who I was, then I didn’t want them in my life.

My mother had played a big role in being the holder of religion in the family. Openly homophobic things she had said over the years kept ringing in my ears. It’s complex, coming to terms with how her death actually opened a door for me that I’m not sure I could have walked through had she lived.

Had she lived, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had the courage to come out at seventeen. As devastated as I was losing her, her death meant an immediate and clear end to at least an aspect of my suffering. This led to further feelings of guilt and shame.

One of the things I’ve been working on for a long time is healing ancestral trauma. I feel ashamed about aspects of my family’s past. Things that I wish hadn’t happened. There are also things that have never been clear to me, my deep intuition telling me there’s more to the story. So much unsaid.

I’ve never been able to stomach things being brushed under the carpet. I consider it a gift that my parents immigrated to the USA and that I was born and raised in a culture where I could forge my own path in life.

I also recognise that the path I’ve chosen exists both because, and in spite, of those who came before. For this, I am also grateful.