Hi! I'm a little late to the slumber party, but rather glad to be here. My name is Mara. My username is an obscure quote from one of my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem that can variously be translated, "We are separated," "Our lives are apart," and "Our destinies are different." I'm a lit!geek who mostly reads fantasy, a grammarian descriptivist with proscriptivist impulses, a cooker of random experiments that (usually) turn out ok, and a bit of a jaqueline of all trades when it comes to crafting. I tend to live in a drift of messy dishes and half-finished projects. I read too much Victorian literature as a kid and as a consequence have a penchant for long sentences with too many appendant clauses.
In the interest of laying my cards out on the table and being really honest: I'm also a lesbian with a loving (older) boyfriend who knows about and supports my orientation. We've made it work, somehow. I'm probably a bit liberal for this crowd, but I love and respect the views of my conservative sisters and brothers.
My relationship with Christianity is complex and involves a lot of hurt, anger, and passion. I suffer from depression. I was molested as a child by a close family friend. Most of the women in my blood family were sexually abused at some point, sometimes by family members. The attitudes towards sexuality in family have been/are poisonous, often because of the lack of healthy and open discussion, and this is something from which I've struggled to pull myself free.
Discovering feminism has helped with this struggle a lot, to put it mildly.
(I'm struggling to come up with what's most relevant to an introduction. I don't want to over-share but I don't want to leave anything out either.)
When Kay told me a bit about this community I really fell in love with the idea. I live near San Francisco and frequently find myself serving as what I think of as an interpreter of Christians to the liberals. Most of my friends here are secularists; I've disconnected from the church to give myself time to process all of my beliefs (and damage) but I've really missed the conversation of sincere believers and I've always wanted to be able to talk about these unspoken things. Thank you for letting me in.
So. Erm. Hello. This is me.
(Hee puns! Sorry.)
Hi! I'm a little late to the slumber party, but rather glad to be here. My name is Mara. My username is an obscure quote from one of my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem that can variously be translated, "We are separated," "Our lives are apart," and "Our destinies are different." I'm a lit!geek who mostly reads fantasy, a grammarian descriptivist with proscriptivist impulses, a cooker of random experiments that (usually) turn out ok, and a bit of a jaqueline of all trades when it comes to crafting. I tend to live in a drift of messy dishes and half-finished projects. I read too much Victorian literature as a kid and as a consequence have a penchant for long sentences with too many appendant clauses.
In the interest of laying my cards out on the table and being really honest: I'm also a lesbian with a loving (older) boyfriend who knows about and supports my orientation. We've made it work, somehow. I'm probably a bit liberal for this crowd, but I love and respect the views of my conservative sisters and brothers.
My relationship with Christianity is complex and involves a lot of hurt, anger, and passion. I suffer from depression. I was molested as a child by a close family friend. Most of the women in my blood family were sexually abused at some point, sometimes by family members. The attitudes towards sexuality in family have been/are poisonous, often because of the lack of healthy and open discussion, and this is something from which I've struggled to pull myself free.
Discovering feminism has helped with this struggle a lot, to put it mildly.
(I'm struggling to come up with what's most relevant to an introduction. I don't want to over-share but I don't want to leave anything out either.)
When Kay told me a bit about this community I really fell in love with the idea. I live near San Francisco and frequently find myself serving as what I think of as an interpreter of Christians to the liberals. Most of my friends here are secularists; I've disconnected from the church to give myself time to process all of my beliefs (and damage) but I've really missed the conversation of sincere believers and I've always wanted to be able to talk about these unspoken things. Thank you for letting me in.