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A little background on me. I grew up in a really poor neighborhood in the southwest. My mother was a seamstress and housekeeper to rich old ladies, and my dad was a jack of all trades. Our family managed to get by on my dad's odd jobs and my mom sewing costumes for strippers.
We were forced to accept a low price for our house rather than have eminent domain declared against us, because the nearby Catholic hospital decided it had to expand. After our neighborhood was demolished, the parcels where our homes used to be remained empty lots for a decade.
We ate a lot of canned pork and generic Velveeta from the US Government. (I still get yearnings for that end-of-life surplus food product.) I had my Freshman year in high school with my peers, and then it was decided our school would have to close and we'd be bussed downtown.
"Downtown" was the high school attended by all the rich kids whose parents didn't force them into private school. It went badly. I saw a jock in a varsity jacket slam a brick into the back of a black student's head. We were not welcome there. We needed to back where we came from.
I married very young, afraid I would be unable to make it on my own. In the process, I married into the Evangelical Lutheran Church. For a while, I got along to get along, but eventually I got sucked into the "family" aspect and allowed myself to suspend a bit of my disbelief.
We had a daughter. Gave her a biblical name. Decided (per our religious beliefs) that we would not lie to her about things. We didn't lie about the tooth fairy, we just told her to put the tooth under her pillow and see what happened. We told her about Saint Nicholas.
Of course, the religious element was considered "truth" at the time as well. Over the course of time, she conceived again and we were a little shocked (we were struggling financially, worse than usual) but accepting. 10 weeks in, she micarried.
I did not handle this well at all. To say I had a crisis of faith is putting it lightly. I still believed, but I was angry at God. Going to church just filled me with a sense of powerless rage, and I made excuses not to go. It was honestly for the best at the moment.
Her family, who always saw me as beneath their strata, and who had tried to convince my ex-wife to divorce me in the past, used this as a wedge to drive us apart and convince her that I was a bad influence on her and our daughter.
They successfully split us up. Her family packed her up and moved her across the country. I would see my daughter on some holidays. The church never reached out to me. In fact, they excommunicated me in absentia, declaring they were "handing me over to the devil."
I stayed mad at what I perceived to be God for a long time. And then I went on a ten year spiritual search, visiting places of worship at various non-Christian traditions. I found many of them lovely, but there was always one thing, one sticking point, I couldn't concede to.
Of all of them, I think I appreciated the Baha'i Faith concept the most. I even visited Wilmette. Had it not been their views on homosexuality or the fact that their Universal House of Justice had no women on it, I could have been persuaded. It was truly beautiful.
Finally, I looked into paganism and wicca. And what they were asking me to convince myself of wasn't something I could take seriously, personally. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not disrespecting anyone who does. I'm talking about me personally.)
Ultimately I realized I felt completely ambivalent to what it was I once considered to be "God." I realized I didn't really have a "God-shaped hole" in my heart, after all. I was a flawed and fucked up person, but I was still a good and moral person.
So after a year separated, our divorce was finalized. A week later, my ex remarried. One month later, she was dead of congenital heart failure. I was on a plane to regain custody of my daughter. Her family tried to interfere, but thankfully, one member of the family helped us.
I raised my daughter by myself, I never forced atheism on her. I just answered her questions about religious questions, mainly things that her classmates would talk about at lunch.
I always told her, "Well, some people believe this, and your dad belives this, but you are free to decide for yourself, and the best part is, you're always allowed to change your mind." She got there all on her own.
I couldn't be more proud of how she turned out.
I couldn't be more proud of how she turned out.
I struggled to raise her. I sold blood plasma to a pharmaceutical company for enough food to make sure my daughter ate three times a day. It was a humiliating experience, and one I don't recommend unless circumstances are absolutely dire.
But we did it. Mostly by letting her be her own person, like what she likes, never being reactionary if there's an issue (unless it involves eight hours with no phone check-ins). I have always been open to talk with her about anything and everything. And we are best friends.
If this thread is for anyone, I guess it's mostly to the Democrat who instinctively barks, "Russian bot!" to anyone on the left who substantively disagrees with them. You're disrespecting the struggles of your fellow Americans because you defend a party over your own neighbors.
