Freedom to love and tuition bills!
Donation protected
My dear community—
The short reason for this GoFundMe is that, thousands of dollars in debt and less than a year short of my degree at Antioch, I’m asking my community to help me raise money to graduate. My immediate need is $2,000 this week to pay for this quarter. To reach my diploma—a degree in Spiritual Studies & Social Justice as the first step toward a masters in teaching in the Waldorf tradition—I’ll need roughly $8,000. I’m asking for you to consider contributing.
My situation reflects privilege. I’m attending a private liberal-arts college, and in the past have qualified for thousands of dollars in loans; I also have a community to whom I can reach out for financial support. My situation also reflects marginalization. Because of my relative poverty, I have had to spend much of my in-school time also working two (or more!) jobs to make ends meet. Without the time to complete required coursework, I failed quarters I was working full-time to pay for, costing me financial aid opportunities. Furthermore, this struggle toward my goals took place against the emotional strain of not being seen or accepted, by my biological family or my family by marriage.
I’m blessed to have friends from many class backgrounds who share my values of making a better world possible. Helping support me as I complete my degree brings me one step closer to doing the work of real love in the world—helping families-to-be and children find and affirm their true spirits in resistance to an authoritarian and repressed culture.
Here’s the longer story I want to share...
Basically, just one week after Dan Savage published this letter, my real-life sister-in-law actually did out my marriage to her and my husband’s parents, behind our backs and without any warning, as non-monogamous. The most urgent and material repercussion that came from my sister-in-law’s utterly narcissistic decision is that our parents have chosen to punish us by withdrawing the financial support they were going to give me to finish school. They told me and my husband that, when they had offered to help me, they were under false pretenses that they were supporting someone who was invested in their son’s future.
They told us they no longer see our marriage as legitimate. “I don’t have a crystal ball,” in mom’s words, “and I can’t be sure you guys are in it for the long haul.” “When you are married,” they told us, “you belong to one and other, body and soul.” “When you are married, casual sex ends.”
I love my family-in-law. I do not wish to shame them by sharing the events of the last couple of days. Understanding love through difference is complicated and difficult. But rather than ask us questions about our life, the in-laws have jumped to conclusions, or, worse, “educated” themselves by reading articles online. The message they’ve sent us is one of non-acceptance, horror, rage, and deep deep grief. I want to tell this story because feeling betrayed by our sister and rejected by our parents has only made me feel more political about my love and my choices around love, sex, and my own corpus.
Let me acknowledge with great care that I benefit from having more privilege in this broken culture than many; I am a white woman in a marriage that passes as hetero-normative and straight. We have the choice to hide our queerness/non-monogamy to keep us safer, or hold onto the benefits of this privilege. While my husband and I are open and out in our community, we have been scared to out ourselves to our parents, for fear of this exact pain of rejection. In this way, I am thankful for the absolutely inappropriate thing our sister did for us. No one should have to live in fear because of how they choose to love. Choose isn’t even the right word. I didn’t choose to be queer and non-monogamous, I AM.
Under ideal circumstances, I don’t believe anyone should be put in the position to defend their love for whoever they love, or the choices that two consenting adults make around their romance and sex lives. But we do not live in an ideal world. Now I feel tasked with, not only coming up with a large sum of money, fast, but also to speak up for a new, radical love.
Non-monogamy, to me, isn’t only about being free to act on spontaneous erotic desires (which I would also like to name as a good thing), but, in fact, is also about feeling as deeply as my heart longs to for every person. I have romantic relationships with friends that don’t involve sex at all. I call it romantic because the love that we admit to each other is so heart-pumping and life-affirming that it feels dangerous by our society’s standards, and certainly would be considered “inappropriate” in a “traditional” monogamous setting. But why, you ask? Most likely because of the time and energy I spend on loving the deep, dark, hidden truths of the many people that I love. This quality and habit of mine is one of the things that made my husband fall in love with me in the first place, God bless him.
I feel my husband and I have grounded ourselves in a lifestyle that requires deep personal reflection, radical honesty, constant, compassionate, non-violent communication, and a mutual agreement to seek out and express our individuality in its totality. I truly believe that non-monogamy is one aspect of our marriage that will, in fact, help keep us together for “the long haul.”
Marriage does not equal ownership. I value and cherish my precious, wild, and beautiful Soul, which I believe has secrets, even from me. It is the deep, dark, hidden truths about my partner that attract me most to him. We are on the terrifying adventure of life side by side. We can’t and we never will live entirely from within each other, and we love to journey into our difference, not away from it. Every fiber of my being is in a gorgeous, sensual love with my husband’s body, and no partner I’ve had has ever made me feel so at home in my own.
What about religion? My mother-in-law used the ten commandments and her “relationship with God” to justify rejecting her son and his wife. But, last April, my in-laws sat side by side with my big ol’ queer community in the pews of the Catholic church I was being baptized in. I could write a whole other, and much much longer, piece about my personal spirituality which is not by any means locked entirely in the Catholic tradition, but that is for another time. Here’s the Jesus I know: The guy who said, look into your community and find the most rejected outcast, and wash that person’s feet. The guy who said, free those who are imprisoned, and love thy enemy. My God, who looks more like a black hole in outer space than a white man in “heaven,” is at the core of my non-monogamy. Love. It’s love. Never be ashamed of love.
I know that there are many folks expressing their love in ways that are unrecognizable to the current marriage industrial complex paradigm, and I hope that by sharing my story, I can offer any comfort to those who are scared to step fully into their identity or those who have no choice but to live “out” and are punished terribly for it. Furthermore, I hope that if there are other family members or friends of folks who are in a relationship that they can’t fully comprehend, my words can offer even a shred of insight into a world that is complex and personal to each of its members.
We’re told to fear money: that money taints what it touches. That taboo keeps money, and comfort with money, in the hands of the super-privileged. I want to speak to you over and past that fear. We live in a society where money is a tool: a thing you need to have to make your dream happen. I’m asking you, my beloved community, to support me in my aspirations to break down these deadly paradigms, through being a guide to Soul for the future activists/teachers/decision makers/parents/humans of this earth.
Anything and everything helps; if there is someone reading this can give $1,000, that would bring me much closer to my goal. Know, however, that every $5 gift gets me there too. Besides contributing financially, I ask you to please share my story with, well, everyone. Also, if you are comfortable, please share stories from your own lives about how your way of loving has caused our society to hurt you, and why you decided to give.
Also, please don’t be shy, if you want to give but have complex feelings around it, to ask me for a follow-up conversation. I am excited to share more with anyone who is curious. Thank you for making a gift and a statement in favor of radical love and freedom!
The short reason for this GoFundMe is that, thousands of dollars in debt and less than a year short of my degree at Antioch, I’m asking my community to help me raise money to graduate. My immediate need is $2,000 this week to pay for this quarter. To reach my diploma—a degree in Spiritual Studies & Social Justice as the first step toward a masters in teaching in the Waldorf tradition—I’ll need roughly $8,000. I’m asking for you to consider contributing.
My situation reflects privilege. I’m attending a private liberal-arts college, and in the past have qualified for thousands of dollars in loans; I also have a community to whom I can reach out for financial support. My situation also reflects marginalization. Because of my relative poverty, I have had to spend much of my in-school time also working two (or more!) jobs to make ends meet. Without the time to complete required coursework, I failed quarters I was working full-time to pay for, costing me financial aid opportunities. Furthermore, this struggle toward my goals took place against the emotional strain of not being seen or accepted, by my biological family or my family by marriage.
I’m blessed to have friends from many class backgrounds who share my values of making a better world possible. Helping support me as I complete my degree brings me one step closer to doing the work of real love in the world—helping families-to-be and children find and affirm their true spirits in resistance to an authoritarian and repressed culture.
Here’s the longer story I want to share...
Basically, just one week after Dan Savage published this letter, my real-life sister-in-law actually did out my marriage to her and my husband’s parents, behind our backs and without any warning, as non-monogamous. The most urgent and material repercussion that came from my sister-in-law’s utterly narcissistic decision is that our parents have chosen to punish us by withdrawing the financial support they were going to give me to finish school. They told me and my husband that, when they had offered to help me, they were under false pretenses that they were supporting someone who was invested in their son’s future.
They told us they no longer see our marriage as legitimate. “I don’t have a crystal ball,” in mom’s words, “and I can’t be sure you guys are in it for the long haul.” “When you are married,” they told us, “you belong to one and other, body and soul.” “When you are married, casual sex ends.”
I love my family-in-law. I do not wish to shame them by sharing the events of the last couple of days. Understanding love through difference is complicated and difficult. But rather than ask us questions about our life, the in-laws have jumped to conclusions, or, worse, “educated” themselves by reading articles online. The message they’ve sent us is one of non-acceptance, horror, rage, and deep deep grief. I want to tell this story because feeling betrayed by our sister and rejected by our parents has only made me feel more political about my love and my choices around love, sex, and my own corpus.
Let me acknowledge with great care that I benefit from having more privilege in this broken culture than many; I am a white woman in a marriage that passes as hetero-normative and straight. We have the choice to hide our queerness/non-monogamy to keep us safer, or hold onto the benefits of this privilege. While my husband and I are open and out in our community, we have been scared to out ourselves to our parents, for fear of this exact pain of rejection. In this way, I am thankful for the absolutely inappropriate thing our sister did for us. No one should have to live in fear because of how they choose to love. Choose isn’t even the right word. I didn’t choose to be queer and non-monogamous, I AM.
Under ideal circumstances, I don’t believe anyone should be put in the position to defend their love for whoever they love, or the choices that two consenting adults make around their romance and sex lives. But we do not live in an ideal world. Now I feel tasked with, not only coming up with a large sum of money, fast, but also to speak up for a new, radical love.
Non-monogamy, to me, isn’t only about being free to act on spontaneous erotic desires (which I would also like to name as a good thing), but, in fact, is also about feeling as deeply as my heart longs to for every person. I have romantic relationships with friends that don’t involve sex at all. I call it romantic because the love that we admit to each other is so heart-pumping and life-affirming that it feels dangerous by our society’s standards, and certainly would be considered “inappropriate” in a “traditional” monogamous setting. But why, you ask? Most likely because of the time and energy I spend on loving the deep, dark, hidden truths of the many people that I love. This quality and habit of mine is one of the things that made my husband fall in love with me in the first place, God bless him.
I feel my husband and I have grounded ourselves in a lifestyle that requires deep personal reflection, radical honesty, constant, compassionate, non-violent communication, and a mutual agreement to seek out and express our individuality in its totality. I truly believe that non-monogamy is one aspect of our marriage that will, in fact, help keep us together for “the long haul.”
Marriage does not equal ownership. I value and cherish my precious, wild, and beautiful Soul, which I believe has secrets, even from me. It is the deep, dark, hidden truths about my partner that attract me most to him. We are on the terrifying adventure of life side by side. We can’t and we never will live entirely from within each other, and we love to journey into our difference, not away from it. Every fiber of my being is in a gorgeous, sensual love with my husband’s body, and no partner I’ve had has ever made me feel so at home in my own.
What about religion? My mother-in-law used the ten commandments and her “relationship with God” to justify rejecting her son and his wife. But, last April, my in-laws sat side by side with my big ol’ queer community in the pews of the Catholic church I was being baptized in. I could write a whole other, and much much longer, piece about my personal spirituality which is not by any means locked entirely in the Catholic tradition, but that is for another time. Here’s the Jesus I know: The guy who said, look into your community and find the most rejected outcast, and wash that person’s feet. The guy who said, free those who are imprisoned, and love thy enemy. My God, who looks more like a black hole in outer space than a white man in “heaven,” is at the core of my non-monogamy. Love. It’s love. Never be ashamed of love.
I know that there are many folks expressing their love in ways that are unrecognizable to the current marriage industrial complex paradigm, and I hope that by sharing my story, I can offer any comfort to those who are scared to step fully into their identity or those who have no choice but to live “out” and are punished terribly for it. Furthermore, I hope that if there are other family members or friends of folks who are in a relationship that they can’t fully comprehend, my words can offer even a shred of insight into a world that is complex and personal to each of its members.
We’re told to fear money: that money taints what it touches. That taboo keeps money, and comfort with money, in the hands of the super-privileged. I want to speak to you over and past that fear. We live in a society where money is a tool: a thing you need to have to make your dream happen. I’m asking you, my beloved community, to support me in my aspirations to break down these deadly paradigms, through being a guide to Soul for the future activists/teachers/decision makers/parents/humans of this earth.
Anything and everything helps; if there is someone reading this can give $1,000, that would bring me much closer to my goal. Know, however, that every $5 gift gets me there too. Besides contributing financially, I ask you to please share my story with, well, everyone. Also, if you are comfortable, please share stories from your own lives about how your way of loving has caused our society to hurt you, and why you decided to give.
Also, please don’t be shy, if you want to give but have complex feelings around it, to ask me for a follow-up conversation. I am excited to share more with anyone who is curious. Thank you for making a gift and a statement in favor of radical love and freedom!
Organizer
alex austin
Organizer
Seattle, WA
