Graduation

Just as I transition into an old crone, a time when this culture considers women mostly irrelevant and disposable, I find that I am just coming into my own. I am discovering that many of the flaws and foibles of my youth have transformed into assets as I become my favorite self. I am not only comfortable in my skin, I trust and love myself down to my very bones.

There is a great deal of trauma tied into my first colligate experiences. Many of those old wounds, resentments, and tribulations prevented young Beth from shining and enjoying that time in academia. It has followed me around as a vague feeling of failure and inadequacy. So, this time around, more aware of the privilege of education and its ability to allow me to serve the world in the ways that are authentic to my social location and personality, I was determined to do this process on my own terms. I had something to prove, not to the world, but to myself.

And I did. I found my joy, even as I have continued to enter the spaces of my little world where there is pain, inequity, and deep need. The reality is, I had to navigate within some of the very systems of oppression I hope to dismantle just to prove my legitimacy to serve as a minister. Yet within the hospital, church, and school systems, I see innovative and decolonized ways forward. There are graceful, shared powers in communities of mutual aid, transformative justice, and solidarity.

What I did not expect was that in revisiting graduate school, I was healing old wounds. I was providing myself the very opportunities that slipped by me before. I did not have to carry the anger and burdon of those who harmed and betrayed me as a young woman, because as an old lady, I protected and honored myself. I took back my narrative and it allowed me to release a lot of my biggest regrets and resentments. This kind of healing journey is often overlooked in decolonization work, but I think it is essential. Wounded people wound others. Healing allows for more expansive, generative living.

So did I dance down the aisle after I received my diploma? You bet your ass I did! Will I carry that joy forward so I can shed my privileges in the service of a better way? Damn straight!