My wife has always called me a stealth diversity experience because, from the outside, I don’t clock as queer or kinky or pagan. I look like the nice middle-aged white lady next door — but then people talk to me. And I am all of those things, I’m just also queer, kinky, polyam, pagan, and ace.
I grew up in a military family who moved regularly, often across major bodies of water. What I learned from this was that every place has its particular beauty, no one place is better than another, and people come in a delightfully broad span of personalities and characteristics. While there are many things that weren’t great about this upbringing for me personally, I will always value the way it expanded my horizons.
I spent my twenties in academia after getting a degree in creative writing, because I somehow thought it was “more practical” than writing. (This is what happens when 19-year-olds make major decisions.) I don’t regret grad school (I loved grad school, actually), but I hated my tenure-track job, so I left, which shocked my family and most of my friends.
I also met and married my wife, Qira, in my late 20s, which shocked my family in a different way. My friends weren’t surprised by my being queer, but some of them were surprised by our extremely pagan wedding, which included a fire breather. If you can’t have a fire breather at your wedding, when can you have a fire breather, I ask?
After I left academia, I worked a series of corporate jobs that paid the bills and let me do my real work: digging into this experience of being human.
I received a 2nd degree initiation in Stone Circle Wicca, I did extensive and intensive work with the Enneagram with Russ Hudson and Jessica Dibb, I participated in transformative online communities with Havi Brooks, and I earned a coaching certification with Martha Beck. I also spent a lot of time in therapy. (Like, a lot.)
Life also gave me lots of opportunities to practice. In the last twenty years, Qira and I have (together or separately) changed careers, gone back to school, gone to grad school, moved across the country, developed chronic illnesses, learned to manage mental illnesses, lived into an evolving sexuality together, opened our marriage, and dealt with significant health crises. We have gone through it.
In fact, we have, individually and together, been through things that could easily have broken us up, but our lives and our marriage are better today than they’ve ever been.
There are lots of reasons for that, but they largely boil down to two things. First, we’ve each been working on noticing and relaxing the habitual patterns that get in our way. Second, we’ve each been unpeeling the layers of should off of ourselves so we can land in yes.
Today, we live in the PNW with our cat Maia and a lot of moss.