Lent 2022 - Week 1 Thursday

Our gender identity is a gift and yet…

Shame is: Hating ourselves because our bodies and our gender identity are not a perfect match.
And because of that, we are a mistake…or even worse.

Silence it: Do a reality check on what you’ve been taught to believe.
You’ve been sold a bill of goods that just isn’t true.

If you want to change your body in some way to match your gender identity, that’s valid.
But that’s not where the shame is coming from.

Being told that we must live by someone else’s rules about what’s “appropriate” for our gender is what causes shame.

Being assigned a gender by someone else and then told that we must conform to this assignment is what causes shame.

If all of us let go of trying to control other people and put them in boxes that WE have defined and designed…

If all of us were free to wear the clothes we wanted, cut our hair the way we wanted, had top surgery, had bottom surgery, were just free to be us…the way WE define it…

If we didn’t try to make gender so binary or illegal or a problem…

Then we wouldn’t feel shame about our gender identity.

Similar to yesterday’s post, the enemy is not coming from within. External forces have told you something is wrong with you and you have unknowingly taken on those beliefs as fact.

It’s a lie and it’s important to recognize it as a lie because it keeps us feeling small and unworthy of existing as we were made.

You are a beautiful creation. You are not wrong. Making choices that are life-affirming to you is not wrong. Your gender identity is not wrong.

Resist anyone or anything that tries to tell you otherwise because it is a lie.
We must resist the lies because they are killing us.
In some cases, literally killing us.

Let me know what you think in the comments.
If you are trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming in some way…how do you resist the lies?