grief – Invisible Cake Society

Poetry

Relating

February 1, 2023February 1, 2023 jennadewitt

I don’t know how you feel

I haven’t had your particular expression

Of grief, of loss, of pain

I can’t say I’ve been through that

Exactly, particularly, specifically

In the ways you experienced it

But I do know what it’s like

To be what parents fear for their child

To grow up and become

I do know what it’s like

For every cell to groan with need

For answers and Why and I hate this

I do know how it feels

To have so much love to give

If only someone wanted it, wanted me

I know intimately the story

Of sitting in the soul dark silence

Knowing no one is coming to save you from this

I know being different, I know alone,

I know the constant low hum of fear

As you smile in a privileged outer life

I know Mirrorball, and

This is Me Trying,

And Tied Together With a Smile

I can’t say I know your life

But maybe in part,

And you know mine in some way

And we can see each other

As kin, and gently say

Me too. You are not the only one.

allyship, aromanticism, asexuality, disability, faith, Mental health, neurodivergence, queer, resources

Naming

January 10, 2023January 10, 2023 jennadewitt

As you might assume from my content on this site, I carry a lot of labels. Some are less well-known than others, and some carry inaccurate connotations. Some I am constantly working for greater awareness of, and others I keep quieter about. These labels have been immensely helpful for me, whether they are as specific as a microlabel on the spectrum of aromantic and asexual identity or as broad as the unifying and nebulous umbrella terms that I’m not sure where all I fit within.

Naming is important to self-concept and acceptance of our identity, but there are equally important stages that we move through before and after we first say, “Hi, my name is ____ and I’m ____.” These aren’t strictly linear, but they are numbered for the sake of organization:

Awareness—Congratulations! The first step to putting descriptive words to your experiences and self-concept is to be mindful of how you are interacting with the world and what you see around you, particularly in ways that potentially diverge from the scripts and norms you were given. Notice what’s important to you, what may be missing, and what you feel drawn to.
Curiosity—What does this have to teach you? Are you just reexamining assumptions and norms or is this a new part of yourself that putting a name to might lead to healthy changes? Don’t get too overwhelmed with labels, plans, and changes yet, simply stay curious and open to new growth.
Learning—Research what others with your experience are saying, from a diverse array of angles, not just stereotypes or dominant narratives. This may be uncomfortable as you push past assumptions, but don’t worry about the identity part yet for yourself or taking stances on intercommunity issues. You’re gathering information as an observer to become more informed.
Connection—Ask others you trust or who have expertise in this area, especially lived experience alongside connection to the community and knowledge about things you are learning. The goal isn’t to find a guru but to try to find a whole community that is accepting and welcoming of those exploring and doesn’t gatekeep or enforce rigid behavior rules of who is “in” and “out.” If they seem like potential friends and not moral purity police or a clique to impress, you’re on the right track.
Fitting room—You may return to this place often over your lifetime as you add and change and mix labels, but for now try on some names for your experience and new identity based on what you’ve learned that feel right to you. Something that makes you nervous isn’t all bad, especially if you aren’t sure you’ve “earned” it or “count” or are “enough.” Those are incredibly common at this stage. Hold the term loosely, working through any self-judgment or shame you might feel about claiming it for yourself. Doing this work with a therapist can be really useful, as well as with those connections you’ve made to educators in this area and research you’ve done. However, when in conversation with those who already hold that label, be aware that they are obviously in favor of it for themselves, may try to persuade you to claim it, and will likely not welcome any reservations you have that rest on prejudice or biases against them as a community or individuals. Be kind and considerate of others’ feelings and perspectives as you question your own and keep things about what fits true to your experiences and identity, not about your hesitancy to become “one of them.” Using time in therapy for this can be wiser for this reason so you can work through misconceptions and negative feelings.
Naming—Start thinking of yourself with this new identity name, knowing it is the best information you have about yourself in this moment. It is just one part of the whole of you, even if it feels huge right now. It can help to practice before sharing with others, thinking through what information is important and what the terms involved mean to you. What does this change in you and how are you going to integrate that information into your life for a more authentic, healthy identity, even as you continue to grow and evolve as a mature person?
- Grief—Finding a new identifier or name for your experience can be liberating, but it can also come with layers of grief. You may regret not knowing earlier; you may resent those who should have helped you along the way and did not; you may wonder how no one saw the signs, have trauma from situations related to this identity, or grieve being forced to conform to norms you could never fully fit. You may lose people, organizations, and places you love or feel comfortable in. Grief in this journey can encompass a wide array of experiences from discomfort to profound loss and can include every stage, including anger and bargaining and denial, not just sadness and acceptance. You may be surprised at the emotions you feel as you begin to examine your past, verbalize your current experience, and connect more with others’ similar experiences. This is normal, and again, something you may want to work through in therapy as you come to accept both the grief and pride in your new self-concept.
- Pride—Share what you’ve learned about yourself with those you love and who need to know! This could be only a few people or the whole world, and there is no deadline or rush to share it. It is your information to reveal or not. With close connections, you may want to be clear about how you feel about it so they know how to react, and be prepared with a few resources if others want to learn more about your identity and ways they can support you in it. Starting with those you already know and trust (especially if they carry the same or similar labels) can help ease you into more difficult conversations. Try not to generalize if someone reacts poorly; it doesn’t mean everyone else will. It is simply one person’s reaction, and others can celebrate with you or grieve with you or talk through it with you in the ways you need them to.
Get involved—Chances are, there are others out there like you who aren’t aware of this part of themselves. It’s your turn to be one of those connections in stage 4 if you want to be or perhaps create resources and raise awareness like in stage 3. Or you can support your community in whatever way feels best for you, even if it’s more subtle, quiet, or behind the scenes.

Caution: It can be tempting here to conform to “tells” or expectations of your group. The battle at this stage is to stay true to your authenticity in both directions: with the others in your life who may resist this change in you and with the new community you’re part of that may have a preexisting culture, norms, and expectations. These can be as subtle as speech patterns and lingo or as obvious as appearance and lifestyle preferences. Be careful as you find yourself changing your behavior, opinions, presentation, and more that these are truly changes that make you happy, not what you think you are “supposed to” say, think, and do as a member of this group, especially if those cultural unifiers begin to ostracize, judge, or exclude those who don’t conform. Some of those expectations might be healthy with good motives, and others might be silly or even harmful. Stay grounded and true to your own journey, not in anyone else’s concept of “cool” or “enough.”

Stay open—Others’ experiences aren’t going to reflect yours exactly. You know how important it was when you were exploring this part of yourself to have people who could hold space for that. Avoid generalizing everyone’s experiences in the way you personally experience this label, and stay open, curious, and nonjudgmental as you continue to learn and grow, raise awareness, and welcome others in. Even if someone ends up moving on from a label you embraced, their time in that space was still a vital part of their journey, and the same applies to you as well. Don’t let your entire self-concept rest on this name, and continue to hold it loosely even as you identify with it and work for stronger community around it, knowing that “home” and belonging lie within you, not in a label or specific group or lifestyle. At the same time, endeavor to be a safe refuge for others finding that sense of belonging within themselves as well. You never know when they might teach you something too, just when you thought you had become the expert or educator!

essays, faith, queer

What do we do with all this grief

December 16, 2022 jennadewitt

Today, Sarah Bessey asked her readers on her Substack about all the losses that come with deconstruction/faith evolution. It made me think of a related, often simultaneous loss when that deconstruction is part of coming out as queer:

There’s something I tell queer people when they come out and lose so much (or publicly identify as allies). Yes, you will lose belonging and comfort. Maybe your job, church, friends, family, sense of stable identity, certainty, easy acceptance into your communities, even safety. But by being vulnerable, that courage opens many doors as well. You are not alone in this. You are welcome to grieve together with others who have lost the same. You are now part of a free, inclusive, authentic family. It is so so so painful, and there is so much to mourn and lament in the rage and tears. No, it isn’t fair. Yes, it would have hurt so much less if people saw and loved the full, real you.

But you are part of a very long human history of people who have gone through this. Your queer ancestors fought for this and you will too for someone coming after, so it isn’t so hard and so lonely for the next one and on down through the ages. Some nights, when the apartment is too quiet and the ache burns at the friends who no longer speak to you, the events you’re not welcome at, the churches advertising to you that would encourage you to change to earn God’s love and approval, the family you have to lie to and hide from and put on a smile for… some nights… there will be a post about an LGBTQIA+ meetup group. An affirming church trying to scrape together two nickels to buy Christmas gifts for a foster family inviting you to their fundraiser. A trans pastor will pray for all like you to find found family. A gay therapist starts a Facebook group for others like you to share your story and maybe one of them is in your area, so you meet up for coffee.

Some nights you scream inside and write sad poetry and plan on what to tell your therapist in words that convey this hole in your heart where all those people from your past who loved you when they thought you were cis and straight used to be. But some days and nights light up with rainbows. Some days and nights your willingness to be open and say “me too” and seek community and even post online under a pseudonym or go to a church with a Pride flag on the sign or click the Zoom link or bring your lunch to a park with the LGBTQIA+ group in town or volunteer at the homeless shelter where kids like you go when their parents kick them out…

Sometimes that makes it worth it all. Every tear. Every stomach ache and bout of nausea as the words left your tongue and hung in the air: “This is me.” Every pioneer who came before you. Every DEI meeting you will sit in and future ally you will educate and lie you will debunk. Every table you sit at and gently correct and hold boundaries. They will be worth it. Because you will tell your story and it will help someone else get free too. It will help them show their true colors and you witness it burst forth, slowly at first and then in full spectrum, as they embrace who they are and stand up for themselves and bloom into something spectacular.

And I’m just speaking from one experience, but even if queerness or allyship that costs something doesn’t resonate so much with your story, maybe you can replace those words with your own: neurodivergent, antiracist, a faith shift, progressive/liberal, disability pride, body positivity… whatever works for you, I hope you have those moments when that vulnerability cracks the clouds wide open and the light gets in.

faith, Poetry, queer

Politicized

December 7, 2022 jennadewitt

We say

Your theology leads to harm

You say

That’s tough love for rebels

We say

Your politics lead to death

You say

Words can’t hurt

We say stop killing us

You say

Stop being dramatic

We grieve at headlines

We cry in news photos

We raise the alarm

And violence still comes

We say we told you so

You say now is not the time

To politicize a tragedy.

disability, Mental health, Poetry

The Unnamed.

June 21, 2022 jennadewitt

Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com

This is a prayer for the mystery case

The pain with no clear cause
The symptoms that don’t match
The lab test that comes back clear

The numbers say you’re fit as a fiddle
So why is your body screaming
As you beg the white coats to care

This is a prayer for the ones unsure
If they deserve to belong here
Disabled. As if it’s a title you earn

This is for the ones who have a hard time
defending themselves against the “just”s
Because maybe this one will be right

And it’s less hope and more desperation
As you swipe your card and try it.
You’re running out of time

You’re running out of your mind
Trying to figure out how to survive
In a new normal each day

And when people ask, you say sure!
Because it still doesn’t occur to you
You’ll be gritting your teeth the day of the event.

But you don’t have a name yet
Or ever. Maybe. Maybe you won’t know
What to tell people when you say sorry

And they don’t understand fully
Because yesterday you seemed fine
And it’s hard to describe what you feel

The symptom list inconclusive
Is hard to describe without
A name for what’s within

This is a prayer for our minds and hearts
and stomachs as they churn
with grief and anxiety and fear

For the choices we make with no guidance
For the questions with no answers
For the mystery that leaves us without

Community. Support. Resources. Research. Plans. Treatment. Hope.

I pray you find a doctor with undying curiosity
I pray you find empathy in a nurse’s needle
I pray you find a treatment that works

I pray your insurance covers you with no fuss
Like a blanket on a soft couch
With all you need within reach.

I pray you hang on to tomorrow
Breathe in and out, do what you can,
And in time you find a name.

essays, faith

So far, so good

May 4, 2022 jennadewitt

The new season of the Evolving Faith podcast debuted this week! I’m so excited for you all to see what this community has up its sleeve for this year. We start off with a bang from the ever-wise Barbara Brown Taylor, revisiting her talk from the 2019 EF conference.

She has this quote in there:

I’m thinking about how tired a tame Christian can get. Tired of self-censoring, tired of swallowing the questions that matter most, tired of putting more energy into being good than being alive.

That line in particular hit me hard. Thus far in my life, I have ultimately been preoccupied with that goodness. Not just the goodness in a sense of being right or moral, the way an Enneagram 1 might, but in the sense of the Enneagram 3. Is this good? Is it meeting your expectations? Is this okay? Am I doing it right? Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Is this what you want from me? Is this what we’re scripted to do and be and say? At the root of these is the question of worthiness and earning, achieving belonging by measuring up, adhering those ever-shifting standards of what is expected and required and demanded by a society that rewards those who win at its games.

And some of the games, a few, I can be so good at. I play until I am exhausted. So tired, as Taylor says, of all my energy going into my efforts to hold back and to not be obnoxious or too much, to silence myself.

I do, sometimes, need to silence myself. To exhibit tact and self-control, an overlooked fruit of the spirit. I do need to listen more and center myself less, to plug in to empathy and pass the mic. But I don’t think that’s what this is about.

This is the goodness-instead-of-being-fully-alive decision point. The part where we choose to grit our teeth and nod along, prioritizing approval over authenticity. To “lop off any part of ourselves that falls outside the lines,” as Taylor says in her talk. We try to force belonging and it becomes fitting in, fitting into the box at any cost, even when we have to leave some parts behind.

Of course, there will always be some parts of ourselves that get more airtime in certain spaces or relationships. But what is it costing us when we have to hide entire parts of who we are in our churches, homes, families, friendships, workplaces, and communities because the standard of goodness is a different shape than the shape we occupy?

We are tired. So tired. It’s not always our choice, and for that, we grieve. We grieve for when it is the only choice, and for when it is the best bad option available to us. We grieve for when others can’t see our belovedness and for when we can’t bring ourselves to face it in the mirror.

Taylor says grief sets us on a path to “embrace the full terrain of living.” Fullness beyond goodness. Fullness beyond looking around for confirmation we’re doing it right. Fullness beyond holding back in fear and inauthenticity for the sake of fitting a hole in a box like a child’s toy, made for simple shapes to be granted entry. Stars in the star spot, big hearts in the big heart spot, even ordinary squares in the spot for ordinary squares. And perhaps we’re something else entirely, not simple or familiar to those making the rules of the box.

Or, for a more lively metaphor: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could thrive like wildflowers, decadently ourselves in whatever ways we have the capacity, instead of pruning ourselves back into neat little rows of acceptability and shame and control and the kind of goodness set by those trying to sell us our belovedness in numbers?

There are the numbers of control all around us, from our bodies to our bank accounts, from our square footage to our rank on the ladder, from follower count to test scores. No wonder we are so, so tired. Measuring tape at every turn, held up to determine the size of our lives, whether our shape fits the box’s hole, whether the dimensions we are growing in are acceptable.

You’re not crazy. It’s not just in your head. It’s not all your fault. And sometimes you may not have a choice. But together we can dream of the fields across the terrain where we can throw on our brightest colors, grow in abundance, thrive, and put our energies into being our full selves, fully alive and free.

wildflowers — Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

essays, faith

Homesick

December 1, 2021December 2, 2021 jennadewitt

Homesickness is a funny kind of illness. It sort of hurts all over. In your throat when someone asks the wrong question at the wrong time. In your lungs when a reminder of what you’ve lost takes your breath away. In your core when there’s the gut-punch of knowing what you long for may never come to pass. There’s a desperation to it, when hope and grief intertwine into an ache.

Someday, we know, someday, as our seasonal songs tell us: “The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again.” Another tells us, “Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother! And in his name all oppression shall cease!”

Luke 21:25-36 tells us to be on guard, for your redemption is drawing near. But we wait, we long for the time when all shall be made right, when there will be no more tears or death, no more oppression, or haves and have-nots, no more pandemics or natural disasters or injustice… when the upside-down Kingdom of God comes on earth as it is in heaven.

We wait. We hope. We long, with the deep groaning of the Spirit within us when words fail. It hurts, God. Life hurts so much.

Sometimes what hurts is that we know we don’t belong here, not forever. We were made for the Garden, for full communion with God, but here on earth? It’s easy to wonder if God is real at all. And if he is, what are we doing down here? Sometimes we look around and we see so much wrong with the world and feel so disconnected from the people in it, we might feel like we’re almost aliens, that we don’t belong here.

I know what it feels like to be deeply rooted in a place that just doesn’t feel like home. I know what it is like to be new in town, to not know a single soul in my city, over and over as I have moved across the country. I know what it’s like to be Too Much or Not Enough, to feel like an outsider. As a queer woman, I know what it’s like to wonder if I’m the only one or if there is someone out there like me, to be different in a room where everyone else fits in, to have people disagree with unchangeable parts of my identity. To be told I don’t belong and never will.

Those places don’t feel like home. Those places can make the world not feel like home.

These old places promise they will feel like home if only we change who we are, if only we turn away from God’s call on our lives to be more palatable, to be their definition of successful or holy or perfect. Drunk on our own power and consumed with the worries of this life.

It is a lie. The harder we try to be something we’re not, the more the ache grows.

And yet! And yet, we’re not idle in our waiting for the coming of our Lord. Our homesickness doesn’t freeze us into inaction. We move forward, serving and befriending, loving and being loved. Creating a makeshift home for the homesick.

We stand as greeters at the exits from those aching places, instead ushering all who long for true belonging out into the wilderness, outside the strict boxes for what constitutes “fitting in.” If you are done contorting yourself to fit in, if your homesickness is eating at you, longing for a better world, come. Come to the tables in the wilderness and join the preparations for the feast of anticipation.

And so we wait, homesick for a place we have always known but never been, filled with the ache of longing, but lonely no longer in the communion of saints before us and with us and to come. We are not alone in our waiting.

Our hearts may break as we look to the empty skies, and we cry “How long, Oh Lord?” but our homesickness, our grief intertwined with hope for a coming day, doesn’t keep us from calling out to our fellow misfit neighbors to wait with us in the wild places, the places we can belong as our true selves, in a hint of the freedom and glory that is to come. We are called into belovedness, into Kingdom-belonging. Take a stand and raise your heads! Our redemption, our King, is drawing near.

This was originally written for Redlands United Methodist Church, November 28, 2021.