Soft Animal

On writing, play and a Canadian tv show

Hello to the many new subscribers who have arrived here via my last essay! Welcome! Very glad to have you! This essay is a bit of the story of how I got here, after a six month or so hiatus, to this new focus on life after Christianity. This is a balance to my last essay, I hope. Less trauma, more wonder (but TW there’s still trauma). I want to try to strike a balance here at SPIRAL BOUND because personally, that is a lot of what I’ve experienced since leaving Christianity—wonder, joy and love.

Still from the show Anne with and E

In October of this year, I moved from southern Pennsylvania to Maine with my husband and two cats. It was a long time dream that we very quickly and unexpectedly made a reality. I’m still pinching myself daily. And if you’re going “why Maine,” well then my bet is that you’ve probably never been here.

We moved from a comfortable yet sad little house in town, near amenities and family, that we’d bought four years ago to renting a tiny apartment above a barn, on a farm that sits back a dirt road, all surrounded by woods, in a town where we knew no one. In May of this year we were on one of our many visits to Maine and I was overwhelmed with the feeling that we needed to move not in several years but soon. As soon as possible. It upended all our plans but it seemingly had to be done. Somehow that soon quickly became by the end of the year, and then fall, and then October. And now we’re here.

I had many plans for my new life in Maine, but one of them was an old plan. I told myself that when we moved I would finally start writing again, in earnest. I had been unable to write freely or comfortably for some time before we decided to move and then in the midst of moving there was no headspace at all to write. But when we got settled in Maine, I told myself, that would be the time.

(Now, I dislike when writers write about writing. That is what I’m about to do here but it is and it isn’t about writing…)

I’ve been writing since I was about thirteen and I’ve always been extremely serious about it. As a teenager I would stay home from outings and parties because I told myself I “had to” write. I took notebooks with me everywhere. I shamed myself for not writing enough words daily. It wasn’t a hobby. I told myself I was fulfilling something grand by writing. Being raised evangelical I’d heard snippets of The Purpose Driven Life and I chalk it partly up to that. I can’t speak to the actual content of the book because all I have are the pieces my young brain overheard and tried to make sense of. But from what I gathered I had to have a Purpose or I was nobody—I was wasting my life. Writing became my Purpose. I convinced myself that the world needed my work and I was called to bring it forth.

In retrospect, I think I unconsciously thought it was my one chance of being seen. I thought of myself as awkward and unloveable. But I knew I could write and make up stories and that felt like the one thing I had going for me. So between these two things I kept at it.

For this I was rewarded. As a teenager I had poems and short stories published and others won awards. I made books of poetry and photography for Christmas¹ and wrote stories with my siblings. My ability to write served me well in college of course and after it has made me some money.

Now I like my writing and others seem to as well. And I do find the writing process enjoyable. But I made it so serious. The storytelling and making handwritten books fell away eventually (as did the dream of being the next Christopher Paolini—iykyk). What was left was the knowledge that my writing could “get me something”—money, an award, recognition, a good grade—or a belief that the world needed my work for some reason. Those are the reasons I wrote.

So when we got to Maine in October I said I’d knuckle down and do it. I get serious about writing. This was my new life and I needed to do the thing. I’d finally make my Substack work. There would be a structure and new branding and all kinds of stuff…

But there was immediate resistance. I had ideas but nothing was falling into place. As the October leaves hit peak color in Maine, I went out to cafes with my notebook and scribbled out ideas and plans. And then the very next day it would be like it had all evaporated, as far as my motivate was concerned. I didn’t want to do it. It felt pointless.

I started to think maybe the world didn’t need my writing after all. And if it didn’t need my writing then I was just making useless noise.

I’ll be honest: I played with the idea of letting go of writing completely. Even though it has long been part of who I am I seriously considered giving it up and very nearly did.

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Barred owls, November 18

Shortly before we moved to Maine, I binged the show Anne with an E after it was recommended by a friend.² I’ve never owned a TV, so generally I have to be sick and sequestered in bed with my iPad to watch anything. But I’d underestimated the stressfulness of moving and I needed an escape. So between trying to figure out how to put all of my life into boxes I watched Anne with an E (RIP).³

It’s a new-ish adaptation of the classic Canadian novel Anne of Green Gables written by L.M. Montgomery at the turn of the 20th century. I’ve never read the books but there were made-for-TV movies of Anne of Green Gables made in the 80s that I watched in the early 90s. I think my grandmother must have had the VHS tapes because I watched them several times. They didn’t do much for me though.

But Anne with an E? Anne with an E I adore. I don’t say this lightly: it was the medicine I needed.

If you’re not aware of Anne of Green Gables, it’s ok. It’s the story of an orphan girl (Anne Shirley) who is accidentally adopted by two aging siblings (Matthew and Marilla) and brought to live at their farm (Green Gables) on Prince Edward Island in Canada. She makes friends (Diana), she makes mistakes, she finds kindred spirits, there’s a boy, etc. Adventures and hair pulling ensue.

I immediately fell in love with the portrayal of Anne in the With an E version. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve ever identified with a fictional character—and not just because I also put my long red-ish hair into two braids. I don’t think Even as a kind I felt no kindred-ness with a fictional character. I thought myself too awkward for there to possibly be even a fictional pair for me.

But watching Anne with an E I continually felt: Oh, there she is. That’s me! Or, at least, there’s a version of me that could have been, under different circumstances.

This Anne is not the demure, blushing Anne with porcelain skin and poofy hair I remember watching in those 80s movies. This Anne is freckled, spunky, curious, imaginative, vibrant, loud and messy. She sees the world in a unique way and makes it known through her constant talking. This Anne likely has PTSD from her early life in the orphanage and in a rough sort of foster care. That’s portrayed vividly yet not gratuitously. The adults in her life don’t crush her spirit or autonomy, and if they make a mistake there is conscious repair. This Anne speaks up. This Anne tells and writes stories, runs through the woods getting twigs in her hair, and talks to birds, trees and foxes. This Anne navigates complex relationships. This Anne fights for justice and instigates a bonfire Beltane ceremony with her friends. This Anne sees the world as a wondrous, welcoming place, despite everything. This Anne made sense to me.

I am her.

Or at least, I could have been.

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Being raised in white evangelical churches I was taught to hate and mistrust many things.⁴ Chief among those: myself.

If you didn’t grow up in this world you might ask: “But what parts of yourself?” Well, all of it, dear reader. All of it. Every single part. My wants, my desires, my thoughts, my ideas, my feelings, my needs, my internal stimuli, my actions, my dreams, my body. The core of my essential Self was rotten, I was told, and that polluted everything I did.⁵ To be fair, they said this was the case for everyone, not just me. This doctrine applied to all humans (except Jesus), which I think makes the world an even scarier place. It’s not just you who is absolutely horrid. Everyone around you is too, so watch out!

About a year ago I was speaking to a friend who was not raised in Christian culture, but instead in an intellectual, secular New England family. I described this Christian position to her, that everyone is awful. I'll never forget the variety of emotions that crossed her face in rapid success: shock, confusion, concern, sadness, shock again, confusion again. “But how,” she asked, aghast, “do you live that way?”

Not well, my friend. Not well.

The church taught me that what is me and what comes from me is totally depraved. But you can’t get away from your Self and still be alive, so you’re trapped. If you’ve been raised in this your whole life you have no idea there’s any other way to be—you just think you have to feel terrible about yourself, that that’s God’s design. The churches I attended seemed to suggest you could “die to self,” or “give yourself to God,” etc. Those never really made sense to me and didn’t seem to work. Despite wanting terribly for my Self to go away I couldn’t make it leave. Focusing on killing it only made it seem to need more and speak louder.

I’ve let many things go since leaving Christianity, but this wound lingers. Fighting my Self and my wants is so deeply engrained. I still default to internally chiding myself for wanting a $3.97 fair trade dark chocolate bar. It’s not about the money. It’s about what I think I don’t deserve because of years of indoctrination.

Ocean, November 17

Turning writing into a serious thing and a Purpose was a cover. I couldn’t just do it because I loved it or because it brought me joy. I wasn’t allowed to follow love or joy in any circumstances. I had to have a “better” reason. I was writing a great novel that taught people something. I had to write the best essay to impress a professor and please them so they gave me a good grade. I needed to pursue a higher follower count and viral-ness because of the money it could make me. I would write things to show somebody something because God had made me a writer for a reason.

I had to make it serious or it was just a silly thing that indulged my rotten self. My writing had to serve something. It couldn’t just be for me. I’ve carried this for almost twenty years. It’s touched the process of everything I’ve written up to now, and also the whole rest of my life.

When I got to Maine I was tired of this but I didn’t know it. Or perhaps I had done so much work to unpack my Christian upbringing that the old messaging no longer worked as well on me. I didn’t know what else to do though.

As I was grappling with all this and considering giving up writing, a friend (who, by the way, I met because of this Substack), said something which changed it all for me. I am not even going to try to paraphrase because it happened over many texts and it’s all woven into my brain now. It came down to this: Dear friend, REMEMBER YOU CAN PLAY!

I CAN PLAY AND EXPLORE AND THIS IS OK. 

Sorry for the caps, but I do think this emphasis is needed. I can play and explore and that is not just ok but perhaps it is very necessary. This friend gave me permission to do what I want. Amazingly (probably partly because this friend is herself amazing) this permission slip trumped the messaging of my childhood—squashed it totally. It doesn’t have to be something that anyone needs from me or that fulfills some great destiny in the world. I can go, “oh this is interesting…” and follow that wherever it takes me.

I can do it for myself.

Another friend—who I also met because of this Substack—mentioned in a wonderful letter she wrote to me recently that she’d been undernourished as a child—emotionally and mentally undernourished. This friend too has lived most of her life in Christian churches.

I’ll be writing her back shortly, and saying: Yes, me too. What a good way to put it! I was undernourished for too long and came into adulthood that way. If the Self is bad and evil then that is not a thing to be fed. That’s a thing to starved and I had starved it quite well from the time I was a child.

I don’t need more structure, another big project, another side hustle or attempt to go viral. I don’t need something to throw myself into like it’ll be the solution or a major contribution to humanity. I need nourishment. I need play. I need to run around, doing what I want, finally. 

I need to let the soft animal that is my Self love what it loves.

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I don’t think this would have made as much sense to me if not for Anne. I was rooting for her from the start.

The church taught me that if you do what you want and love what you love it will be an undeniably ugly thing and lead you down a dark road. But here was Anne running around in the sunshine, seemingly incapable of not doing what her heart desired. And it was beautiful. A messy beautifulness at times, but beautiful. There were misunderstandings or hurdles to climb but she wasn’t punished for doing what she wanted. In the end, she either learned something and integrated that knowledge, or was vindicated.

With my life all taken apart around me, I would sit sobbing over Anne and her stories. Moving and living where we’d been living had numbed me. These stories made me feel. It cracked me open and softened me to myself, letting lessons from the church evaporate and be replaced by kinder, truer possibilities.

Stills from Anne with an E

Now, I do realize it’s fiction and Anne is a thirteen year old Canadian girl who is not real and I am a thirty-two year old women in the twenty-first century. But she allowed me to connect with a younger part of myself that I had become detached from. A younger part that probably had been locked away because an older part had to emerge too soon.

In Anne I see little me and I love her.

And I wonder if maybe sometimes I can maybe still be her?

Coyotes on the full moon, October 17

Since we moved, I’ve been running freely around through the woods around the farm. I have been talking to trees. I’ve cleared off the old bridge our landlord built probably before I was born. I’ve happened on coyote fur and skins and I don’t know what that means. I’ve found new paths. I’ve sat on beds of dry hemlock needles and watched the sunset. I’ve been playing and exploring, quite literally. My younger self is finally happy. This part of her is finally fulfilled—she has always wanted woods to run through and freedom to explore.

When my friend gave me that permission slip, my mind shifted from telling myself, “put your nose to the grindstone, for goshsakes, you idiot!” to “let’s play, sweetheart!” And the writing just started pouring out of me. Pages documents started stacking up on my desktop, ideas were scribbled down on my phone, in my notebook and on any slip of paper at hand. I love this feeling. What I’m doing has not changed—it was always the plan to write about life after Christianity—and how I’m writing about hasn’t even changed either. But why I’m writing has.

This is for me—little me and present me. Maybe future me, even. This is what I love. I love to write and share it. I love the act of writing and what it does in my brain. I love connecting to people via these crafted pieces.

I think those of us who have left Christianity or are leaving Christianity needed to hear, in the words of dear Mary Oliver, that we do not have to be good. We can love what we love. We let our soft animal bodies be themselves.

I say this over and over to myself in my head—my writing now is part of teaching myself this truth. Some day I think it will drown out all the other noise. Some day I will believe it.

꩜꩜꩜

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

1. And I never want to see one of these again…

2. THANK YOU, FRIEND!

3. The show was canceled or something like that a little while back for reasons that are not clear to me. As you can imagine, I and all the fellow fans are distraught.

4. In case you didn’t catch my last essay, I’m now writing about my upbringing in Christianity and shifting away from it.

5. I will get into this more another day. Probably many days. Actually, it’s going to be a whole series.