I'm proud of your progress and courage, Michelle.
Also, reading your stories shows me how differently our brains are wired.
To me, church has always been torture. Being forced to wear dresses and shoes to church when I was a kid, and later on, following all those endless conventional social/religious rules drove me to distraction. But being a loyal little religious person, I put up with it, believing that's what I must do to please God.
But after my husband ran off with a younger woman, the entire church turned on me, kicked me out of all my church offices, and I became invisible if I tried to talk to my former friends, while they continued to socialize with my husband and his new lover.
I can totally believe the statistics that 85% of white evangelicals voted for Trump.
I also told my daughter that I would only attend a church that didn't blame "God" for children being abused and people dying of lung cancer, just as though people are helpless victims of God's whims, with zero responsibility.
I realized that in the churches I'd been attending, the only way to be accepted was to be white, straight, married, with 2.5 children, have a good job, drive a good car. The moment my husband left me, making me a single female, I was rejected.
We never found such a church in the US, but here in Thailand, the Buddhist temples welcome everyone, even animals and birds, with zero judgment.
Also, your enjoyment of eating out with the girls, shopping, etc. are things I considered torture and a waste of time. People who hang with me also love to hike, climb mountains, go wave riding in the ocean, go trail riding on horses, etc. I still dress androgynously, but pass as female.
