On Learning to Embrace My Spirituality
I don’t believe in fate exactly, but I’d also say that in some ways I was fated to live the unconventional life I have. I’d attribute it to my middle-child status, the negligent upbringing with a depressed stay-at-home mom and workaholic dad, and having a chronic autoimmune health condition. All of these factors, together with being poorly socialized and having an umkempt appearance, led me to be extremely self-conscious and insecure throughout my childhood. As I entered early adulthood, of course I felt a desire to make up for lost time, to rebel and overcompensate for my traumatic childhood.
In some ways, living on the outskirts is perhaps in my genes. As a child, I was endlessly preoccupied with the mystical and the “occult,” despite having a staunchly atheist academic dad and being raised in an overwhelmingly secular environment. I have to think that despite this secular upbringing, with my mom essentially renouncing her Judaism at the request of my atheist father, my Jewish heritage helped propel me toward a spiritual quest. I could sense there was something impoverished about life as I knew it, in the mostly conventional American way of life.
Though I evaded fully connecting with myself and ceding to my power in my 20’s as I fell prey to all of the external stimuli of NYC, l took solace in the alternative lifestyle I had managed to build for…
