There is a good little poem by Wordsworth with the line, “The Child is the father of the Man,” a compelling verse that gives a sense of continuity through life cycles. The reader gets the sense that some of the truest, purest forms of identity were already present in early childhood, and there is a certain integrity of personhood seen in the life trajectory. Author Madeleine L’Engle says that “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”
For some of us, this idea is a marvelous comfort. For others, a curse. For all of us, there is something haunting, something that perhaps raises questions around our pesonal narratives and identity formation.
Claire, dressed as a mummy for nothing other than ninth grade stupidity.
Brittany and I started talking, then grumbling, then writing, and finally throwing up this blog because we discovered that, like other women we’d talked to, we could no longer deny all the ages, all the selves we’ve been, in our spiritual formation and awareness of self and sexuality. It’s so much easier to leave the sweepings under the rug, try to forget, or treat our pasts with judgment or mocking. The thing is, that’s the attitude that seems to have landed us, and many of the women we know, in this painful and isolated place of ignoring the complexity of our sexual, spiritual selves
From our upbringings, heavily saturated by rich and diverse faith in God, we came away with a bit of perfectionism,a strong dose of the ought-to’s. I suspect that mine came from a limited narrative of life’s possibilities, particularly where God and sex were concerned. A handful of voices set the tone for my relationships to others, particularly boys (later, men) and the divine, and I was unaware that alternatives were available, that there is no set script, or that grace abounds in unexpected places.
In this online space, we want to tear up the script, do the spring cleaning, pull off the layers. Think of any freeing metaphor that draws you into life, lightness, and the courage to name and love the child that birthed you. Britt and I aren’t trained therapists or spiritual directors. We haven’t finished the task of human being. We just believe that in making safe spaces for truth telling, and practicing acknowledgement without judgment, healing begins to take place, and that grace will abound in unexpected places.
So we’re listening. Who are you? What happened? What did you learn?
Our Daughters' Stories 