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Minisode: Announcements and Thoughts from Host, Amber White
152 Plays7 months ago
It’s been a month since the last episode, but Amber is back with some big news, updates, and post-faithful thoughts on life lately.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Now I See'
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I was lost in utter darkness I was trapped in toxic shame I was bound by my religion Till I chose to break away Now I'm finding my true colors For the first time I feel free Now I'm learning self compassion And as I heal I'm finding peace
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Welcome to Now I See, eye-opening stories from the formerly faithful. I'm your host, Amber White, and here, me and my guests share our experiences in loving and leaving rigid faith systems. Together, we shine a light on the dark corners of these institutions and share the joys of rebuilding life on our own terms. I promise you'll leave inspired, even if you are a little teary-eyed.
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And welcome back to Now I See.
Personal Updates and Joy of Expecting
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I'm your host, Amber White, and I am back from a brief hiatus. I have been needing a little extra time lately because I am having a baby. It is a very exciting time in our household. We have a million projects underway right now, um several that are actually finished, which feels great. And I have just in general needed more time for rest, for recuperation, for planning, for existing. So I took a little gap there and I'm excited to be back and be back on track.
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Episodes may vary between two and three weeks through September at this point. If I were not doing this by myself, it would be very different. But because I am and because there's so much going on and there's so many things that have to be done, there may be a little bit of adjustment in time. It pains me greatly to say that. But it is true and I have to make space for the things that have to be done and still have time for work and my family and baby showers and nurseries and all of the things that are about to be the bulk of my life and that I'm very grateful to make the center of my life.
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It has been such a wonderful experience to be making a family at this point in my life. I am 14 years out of leaving fundamentalism and my worldview has changed quite a lot in that time.
Teaching Religion to Her Son
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And I've spent a lot of time in therapy and a lot of time working on myself and and even more time making mistakes that I have mostly learned from, which is great. There are a few I continue to make and will continue to work on. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot as I consider this baby boy's entrance into the world is what do I want to teach him about the idea of a higher power in general. And I have put myself through the ringer thinking about this. I have got myself just in
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absolutely ridiculous loops and thought cycles um that have lasted longer than I care to admit. I specifically think a lot about some questions that I'm asked. And one of the big ones is, are you going to let him go to church? And that is that is so interesting to me because I hadn't really thought about it. My husband and I don't regularly attend church at this point in our lives. so And I don't really see that changing. But that doesn't mean that I would never allow my son to go to church. I certainly would if he wanted to.
00:04:36
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What I would not want to do is force him or make him feel obligated to go because someone else wants him to go.
Concerns About Church Influences
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and what i would what What I hope I will do is, along with my husband, create a space that is open for communication about everything similar to a school or anytime he's out with other ah ah other children and adults he doesn't know very well and they're not part of his family or even that are part of his family. I hope he will feel like he can come to us and talk about what he's learned or what might be concerning him or something that he doesn't think is right or something that even is just confusing. So he would have that.
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But I do find a little fear around the idea of him going to a church that I don't know and haven't been to because I've heard some of the most horrible things I've ever heard in my life in churches. And so i I'm caught up in these thoughts. And what gives me peace I think about things when I'm only 20 weeks pregnant and or have way bigger fish to fry at this point. But what gives me peace about it at this point is knowing that I have a spouse who's on the same page and I know that I am creating a space
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where my son will have choices and where he will be able to discern things for himself and talk about things and know that that's normal and that's okay and that he will not feel obligated to believe in things because of the pressure around him. And that includes not believing in God, right? The other loop that I find myself getting caught up in is having a boy in the world that we live in.
Redefining Masculinity and Positive Role Models
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Because even now, well he is but a fetus.
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I have heard comments about who he will be and what kind of things he will be into, and, oh, he's going to be so rowdy, or, oh, he's it's so interesting, because it's not necessarily things that are untrue. But they remind me of a lot of things I learned about men that are untrue, that were generalizations about who men are in the world and who they have to be. And a lot of those are really for lack of a better word, shitty. I grew up learning that men are domineering, unemotional, they're less inclined to be present in their homes for their wives and with their children, that their jokes about women's inferiority to them were funny.
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and true, and that's what made them funny. And in my own household, I remember being made fun of for saying that I wanted a husband who was helpful around the house and who was present and wanted to be a companion, like an equal to me. and like that was kind of I was kind of laughed at for that. not kind of, I was absolutely laughed at for that. And jokes were made and, oh, you're going to learn. and And now I sit here with a husband who is deeply committed to our household and to preparing for this child to come into the world and for putting
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his everything into making sure we get our project list complete and making sure that I'm well cared for and being proactive about chores that need to be done and being proactive about household tasks in general that need to be done. I have a companion and a husband. And I grew up learning that that was not possible, or even worse, that men like that were actually secretly gay, which is horrifying to think about. And so I'm hearing all these things about boys and how hard the world is for them, and then I'm thinking about the way that I learned about men's behavior, and then I'm looking at a man beside me who has a very different behavior, and that is giving me peace. Because my son will get to grow up
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in a household, maybe not a world, but in a household where he has an example of something different or he has an example of a man who is fulfilled and happy and genuinely deeply content with who he is and what he has and with the life that he's made. and a man who is caring, just deeply caring and comfortable in his own skin. My husband is also very secure in being a man.
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And he is a man of his own making. He is who he wants to be very unapologetically. And that includes things like a protective nature and a caring nature. And those things are not impossible to exist together. And I know ah many of you are probably listening to this and going, yeah. And to that I would say, right, but I've had so few examples of that. in my lifetime of a secure masculinity that pulls from things that were taught to me as feminine and were taught to me as masculine existing together in one person comfortably. It just didn't happen. I knew it existed somewhere in my head because I wanted it and I did find it, but it is so amazing to see. And so when I think about how scary the world is for men, I have a lot of peace in knowing
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that my son will have my husband and that he will have so much in that. It's really beautiful. I'm very grateful for what my life has become.
Teaching Exploration and Authenticity
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And so when I look forward, five, 10, 15 years from now, I see stability and I see happiness and I see comfort and growth and all these wonderful things that kids deserve, happy households where they're not afraid that
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they're going to hell every night or that they did something wrong and now God's going to punish them or they want to do something that their church says isn't great or they want to listen to music or they want to go to the movies or they want to any of these things and they just get to do that. And I have found myself leaning really hard into ah like a global theme for his nursery and his shower and all of these things. Just like this idea that the world is huge and full of so many options and wonders and exciting things and that it's worth exploring, it's worth knowing. And I just, I can know that's coming from a place of what I'm hoping I get to teach him.
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which is the opposite of what I got to learn, right? So I learned the world is very small and it works best this way. And when I left, I found out that the world is huge. And there are a million and one ways to live a life that are beautiful and happy and lovely and absolutely worth exploring if that's right for you. And so I'm also finding peace in knowing that he will know that from us, that he will know that it's okay for him to live a life as himself and to work things out and decide what's right for him. And I am beside myself just over the moon. My husband and I talk about this
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every few days it must come up because we talk about it so much. We get to raise a kid who will know that he can be who he is and we will adapt to a certain extent, right? Like we're not, we're not gunning for poor behavior here, but We are not trying anyway i'm so sure there are some ways we will try but our goal is not to mold him into an image of something that a limited world of you or a small group of people think he should be.
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We are excited. I cannot get over how fun it is to talk about this. We are excited to get to experience him and see what he likes and who he is and help him in that. It is so wonderful to feel supported in that by everyone who surrounds us and everyone who will be a part of his life.
Family Support During Pregnancy
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I am unbelievably grateful for the ways that my family have shown up throughout this pregnancy already. The ways they have gone out of their way to schedule trips, help us get things that we need, or just be excited with us.
00:14:13
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And then I'm equally over the moon and beside myself at the way that my husband's family has embraced me as they always have. Like I've always been here, which is so beautiful. The way that they are already throwing themselves into this child's life through a baby shower, through endless answering my texts for advice and for ah help or for ideas. Everyone has been so supportive and the women in his family are throwing me a baby shower. And we had a planning meeting last week and I'm getting teary eyed here, but we had a planning meeting last week and I got to sit at a table full of women who were so excited to do something
00:15:05
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For me and for us. not for themselves, but for me. i I have felt so loved in so many ways because they asked me what I wanted, what theme I wanted. Do I like this? Down to paper plates and cutlery. Like, du is this okay with you? are you And for me, like i when someone wants to do something for me like that, I i am okay. That's fine. I don't need to have a comment, whatever you do is so nice. That's great. But they have just insisted on making sure that it's something that I really want and really like. And that feels really different than what I'm used to and what I expect for myself or what I would ever ask for. And I have an aunt in my family who's doing the same thing. She's already asked me about
00:16:00
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what invitations I like and what I want to do, and a neighbor who wants to throw a neighborhood shower for us that I just love so dearly that she would even think to put her time and effort in a complicated place in their lives to do this. And so, in addition to all the things that comfort me, this is part of it, but I'm also learning from all of these These things that are happening from the preparations from the the showering of love that we're getting and from the things that I'm thinking about and I've heard people many times say that you learn
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kids teach
Lessons from Pregnancy and Podcast Impact
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you. You think you're going to teach kids, but they teach you. Um, I am only 20 weeks pregnant and I can tell you that has been true so far. I have learned a lot about the way that I approach things and why I approach things that way and the expectations that I set for myself and how they're so different than the expectations that I set for everybody else. And it's been really beautiful. It has been
00:17:03
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Really cool to see how considering caring for another life, a life that you created, changes you. And I'm grateful for that. I am really grateful to be in a place where through therapy and a lot of, again, mistakes, I've learned at least some amount of of self-reflection. And I hope through all the stress that newborn life brings and having a child brings that
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my husband and I both will continue to notice those things and grow and that we'll embrace the learning part too. So it's harder as you get to be an adult and I'm 35 and my husband's about to turn 40 and it's easy to get a little stuck in your ways. So i'm setting I'm setting a hope now and a reminder to myself now that it is okay to learn and to realize that maybe that is wrong or something is wrong and needs to be corrected. It's been a whirlwind over here. I am, again, very glad to be back.
00:18:16
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We will have some pretty remarkable guests throughout the remainder of the season. I have three really remarkable recordings scheduled that I hope you will enjoy. And I am as grateful now as I was in the beginning of this show to be on this journey with all of you listeners. This show has changed my life in remarkable ways and in ways that I'm really grateful happened before I had children. And I just appreciate the way so many of you have shown up and supported the show and supported me and who share my show with their friends and who share it on social media.
00:19:00
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It has taken off in a way I did not expect. We are very close to 8,000 downloads, which is more than I thought we would have in multiple seasons. And I think that speaks to, especially considering the limited amount of marketing that I do, I think that speaks to the need for the conversations that we're having about extremism, especially where religion is concerned. And we're going to keep talking about it. We're going to keep doing it. I'm glad you're here to do it with me. So that is the update.
Podcast Scheduling and Community Support
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Very different than most episodes that we have. But I wanted to share where I'm at and what's been going on so that going forward, you know, if there's a three week gap instead of a two week gap, it's probably because I'm in a
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spiral about something? No, I'm just kidding. I am probably in the middle of a bunch of projects and then in also trying to sleep and keep up with life as it changes very rapidly around me and I have less energy for it than ever. All right. It's been good to be back. You know what's going on now. I'll be back in two weeks. I look forward to it.
00:20:25
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Thank you for tuning into this episode and being on this journey with me. You can find resources and links in the show notes. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe, rate, and review, and follow along on social media to help us grow. Now I See is independently funded by me. If you'd like to help support the show, you can donate directly or purchase a merch item on the website. Music for this episode was made by Alana Sabatini, a former faithful and talented musician. And finally, this podcast is made possible by the incredible team at Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio for entrepreneurs and creatives providing technical skill with tender support.