Under Construction - MHWA Retreat

I was raised in a Brethren church and then my family went to Southern Baptist when I was a teenager. When I was young I super into religion and very much enjoyed it. Then I started going through all of that teenage stuff and the second church was much more vocal about its likes and dislikes than the previous one had necessarily been. When we were still at the first church, they actually kicked out a lesbian couple who were the youth pastors because of who they were but I didn't find that out until later.

With the second church and being a teenager, I was discovering my own sexuality and beginning to think for myself. This led to a lot of fight with Christianity because I was being dragged to church on a weekly basis and it was no longer coinciding with who I was or what I needed, especially when they were preaching anti-LGBT rhetoric. During this same time I ended up transitioning into a more Pagan faith, then agnostic and finally settled on an atheist set but I would say I never lost all of the spirituality I found in Paganism, just without the need for higher beings.

All of this didn't necessarily help my mental health because I was forced to go to a church that was preaching against who I was discovering I was as a person. I spent a lot of that time withdrawn and it probably helped develop a lot of the disdain I have for hatred/hate speech and general anxiety when in religious settings. I still can't set foot in a church or go to places with a lot of religious people without being anxious about various topics that could be brought up. Now I'm much more likely to talk back against it but that anxiety will always be there.