This One’s for the Girls

Potluck with some beautiful people before I leave Los Angeles

I’m not just saying that because that Martina McBride song is stuck in my head, this blog really is for the girls. Well the girls and a couple of guys. Right now I am in a season of transition, transferring from a year of volunteer work with the Young Adult Volunteer, YAV, program (check out blog here: http://throughtheyesofayav.blogspot.com/) to seminary.  While serving as a YAV in LA was: a difficult, insane, chaotic, beautiful, life changing, spiritual, and transformative year, I also expect seminary to be a difficult, insane, chaotic, beautiful, life changing, spiritual, and transformative experience. However, I expect it to be transformative in a way different from being a YAV, I expect it to be beautiful in a way different from being a YAV, etc.

One of the ways I processed and coped with my experiences in LA was by blogging. I enjoyed blogging because I would have to take my time and careful reflect on what I wanted to convey; after all, a blog is public, I don’t want to seem like I am just venting on the internet. That is why I love blogging so much; it keeps me accountable to reflecting on what I want to say. I thought that getting a blog for seminary would also help me cope and process the experiences that I am having. My blog can even be useful for people who are debating about going back to school. Originally, I wanted to create this blog because I will have such a unique seminary experience that is not similar to other seminarians. That is because I am pursuing my degree in Marriage and Family, as well as being a young female adult (more on that later if I feel like a blog entry is necessary). On a broad spectrum of people who pursue seminary I don’t think that is always the case. However, I don’t really feel like going into stigmas or labels in my first blog entry; I don’t want to place limits on my seminary experience before I even move to Louisville.

The reason I bring it up though, is because I wanted to write this blog because I wanted to create dialogue and encourage women who are debating about going to seminary. I’ve been blessed to grow up in a background that allows women in leadership positions in the church. Though, I know that is not always the case and have experienced that first hand in college. I’ve talked to some lovely ladies around my age who are in seminary and expressed personal insecurities relating to this concept that women can’t be leaders in the church. Even though I do not initially plan to work in the church since I plan to be a therapist, I still wanted to blog about my experiences in seminary to encourage those women. I want to blog the good and the ugly, the easy and the difficult. I want to be vulnerable and transparent with you lovely readers as I cope with grad school. Truth is, I don’t want to blog just for you beautiful ladies, but I also want to blog for myself.

I even want to blog for some of my guy friends that I don’t see on a daily basis. I’m not a huge feminist, I still struggle with what that word means to me, but I believe in gender equality. I started to doubt doing this blog because I did not want to label this as a “feminist” blog, if anything this blog was a “grad school” blog. That doubt faded when I told some of my girl friends about my blog idea. It started with my two fabulous friends of mine who recently graduated seminary with their MDiv, and they both were supportive of my blog idea. Later, I told some of my friends more of my blog idea when I was saying my farewells to my friends at my going away potluck in LA. They all seemed interested in reading it. Two of my girl friends said that they would be interested in reading my blog since they’ve been debating about going to grad school. That comment pushed me into the right direction. As well as that, some of my guy friends said that they would be interested in reading it just to see updates on what I’ve been doing. Basically, all my friends were supportive of my blog.

So I’m blogging for myself, but a bigger part of me feels like I’m blogging for my friends back in California. Which I am happy to, I love those beautiful souls so much that words cannot even describe it. In fact, my last goodbye hugs with my friends did not feel worthy of our friendship. Don’t get me wrong; we intimately hugged several times throughout the night, which I loved. Yet a huge part of me feels like it is not possible to captivate our friendship in a single hug. My friends from LA bring me so much joy and love, how can a simple act of a hug express all that joy and love? I realize those thoughts and feelings come from a place of grief, but I still had a difficult time falling asleep with all those emotions bouncing around inside my head. (I mean was expecting insomnia that night prior towards the potluck.) I wasn't able to put a word to those emotions and I was finally able to fall asleep when I realized nothing I can tell myself is going to make me feel better.

The scariest part about being human is allowing ourselves to feel those emotions that we don’t want to, in my case it was saying goodbye (I had to say see ya in the future.) It’s even scarier when we can’t put words to those emotions, but the thing is, in order to fully be at peace with those emotions, we must fully live into them. To be at peace, we must live into the pain, the anger, and the grief that is causing us to not be at peace. Feeling the emotions that cause us discontent, is not only a way to be at peace with our emotions, but is also an act of self-love. Only those brave enough to love themselves are able to fully live into the disharmonizing emotions without coming disharmonized themselves.