The soul has no gender.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estes
In the fall of 2018, one of our children came out as a transgender woman. She was so nervous about telling us that she waited until the very last minute of our week-long trip to finally speak her truth. We had 45 minutes to respond to her. There simply wasn’t time to ask bunches of questions or have a panic attack. Instead, we assured her of our love, thanked her for her trust, hugged her and left for the airport.
Over the past 5 years, I’ve transitioned from that overwhelmed parent to simply, once again, being her mother. I recognize her as the same soul I met one Wednesday morning in a hospital birthing suite. She is so precious to me that I am shocked when we go out together and the microaggressions begin. My daughter is accustomed to the staring, whispers or downright rudeness. That alone makes me angry.
People are not the injustices and inequalities they suffer within our societal systems. They are not issues or causes or ideals. They are someone’s beloved. When I take my daughter to lunch, I am not challenging someone’s belief system or making a statement, I’m there to have lunch. She is my daughter, and so I love spending time with her shopping or going to lunch. You know, like regular people.
Are we so disconnected from our own souls, that we are unable to recognize the soul within another? And are we deaf to love, the language of our souls? I have no idea what the solution is. Important as all our legislation, protest and social justice work is, will the love that connects one soul to another ultimately redeem us? I hope so, for my daughter’s sake.
~Lisa Kiel
What a powerful expression of how love works, Lisa!! Doesn’t it seem like it could be, it should be, as easy as looking through another angle of the prism for folx to be able to see through that lens of Love–that everyone is someone’s beloved, that everyone’s soul is beautiful at its very core?
For me, working on the legislation, working for the equity, rights, accessibility, and safety of those most targeted by biased systems actually feels like a channel through which my love can pour. They are one and the same, this loving and this working for justice. I love the communities we build as we do so. It makes the taste of liberation so sweet and the feel of connection so real.
Still, the balance of these twins, love and justice, expresses itself differently in different seasons in my life and in the times we’re living in. What I come away with from reading your words of wisdom, Lisa, is a vision of the groundedness that comes with being with and loving your daughter. It all comes back to that!
with Love at the center,
Rev. Nancy