The ReiQueer Pod Episode #8 - The Shift Diaries: Things I Don't Do Anymore

bell hooks ate so badly when she described being queer “...as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live”. 

One of the things that I’ve effortlessly connected with my queerness - since childhood, really, has been the subversive nature and expansion that comes with the queer disposition. To consider yourself as firmly a part of certain worlds, while concurrently being such an obvious outlier, when it’s undeniable that you are sort of… you know. 

This is what emboldens me to explore what’s in and around and underneath some of the beliefs and thoughts that I saw my peers and family understood as unquestionable gospel. Things like how women should behave, how scarce gay people need to make themselves, how self-denial is the ultimate signifier of goodness. I deigned to be the black sheep, if only for the curiosity of how disruptive my very nature was. 

For this reason, I’ve noticed in myself a propensity to feel almost emboldened to change. To move with the kind of grace that gives myself permission to question the pastor and to talk over teacher. No, I don’t believe in a jealous white man in the sky with blue eyes and an 8 pack. Actually, I am going to push back on that. Sorry, I can’t be bothered to adhere to your unnecessary dress codes - I’m the personality hire!

There is a sweet sort of chaos about the ephemerality of belief - It’s so liquid, and so elastic, but only if you allow it to be. As we grow, sometimes we return home to find all of our memories coated in something sort of like poison. The gardens in our minds have their ruin - And it’s a scary thing to uproot the immovable. But when we shift, we are in our natural state of stretching, and shedding and reformation.

If you scooped your hand inside of your heart, what would you find underneath your fingernails? Are you willing to separate your truths in your palm, one by one? To examine each element that comes together to form your illusion of yourself?

The best and worst part is that we can always start again.

What do you not do anymore?

Until next time,

Chloe