Sometimes I hate when God uses late night hours to speak to me.
I haven’t had a good night of sleep in a couple months. I hear the call. I feel the push.
I gotta do it.
Maybe then God and my ancestors will let me sleep.
Ministry
As a trans man who is called to ministry, I’ve been slacking.
I’ve been afraid.
I’m not afraid anymore.
Now I’m hustling and building. Challenging systems and cistems. I’m grinding.
It’s not about me.
It’s not about the money.
It’s all about the message.
God is love.
God is in all of us.
We should be love.
Black Lives Matter ✊🏿
Police brutality must be stopped in this country. We must stand up. We all have an obligation to do our part.
Moving forward, I am dedicating this platform to seeking equality and justice for black people in the USA. I will remain dedicated to this purpose until meaningful change comes and beyond.
#blacklivesmatter #nojusticenopeace #justice #revolutions #blacktranslivesmatter
Day 13: Healing
Healing can be painful. This weekend I’ve taken time to revisit old wounds with the intent of healing them.
There are things I wish I could undo. There are events I wish never happened. There are things that were beat into me that I now have to unlearn.
One day at a time family. One day at a time.
I love you.
~Bash
Day 9: I Quit My Job
Today I quit my job to do something important. It was terrifying. It was exhilarating. It was necessary. I still have one shift to go but I did it. I seized an unexpected opportunity and decided to say yes to an adventure.
I’m happy to be leaving the world of B2B sales behind. I won’t miss this job. I have to be honest with myself about that one. I have given it a shot and am okay with admitting that it’s just not a good fit for me. There’s no shame in that.
As a recovering codependent, I’m happy that I chose to do this. It’s the first time since I started this journey of recovery that I’m making a major shift. I aim for it to not be my last.
I’m grateful to the source of all for this opportunity to grow. My faith increases with each passing day. I’m not a mistake. My trans experience is a gift from on high. I choose alignment with purpose. I choose to bet on the god in me.
I love you.
~Bash
Love on YOU.
I’ve mastered many things in my life but self love ain’t among them. For most of my life I learned to be a chameleon for my own safety and the real me got lost in the process.
Now that I’m at a place in my life where I can live out loud, I sometimes struggle with being kind to ME. Working on my manuscript has brought me face to face with my need for some good loving from myself. That can be tough but I’ve decided to be intentional about it.
To start, I’ve dusted off my dreams and interests. I’ve made some needed investments in those things that bring me joy like dystopian novels, strong coffee, time alone, motivational lectures, etc. It’s necessary.
Why?
Those of us who are called to bring light into darkness and speak truth to power must first learn to heal ourselves. We must learn to accept ourselves. We must be comfortable with loving on ourselves. We must do this in the face of the many years of programming which told us that who we are is evil and disgusting in the eyes of the creator. We must do this even when relatives and friends walk away. We must do this so that those whose lives we are called to touch can be impacted positively because our service will come from a place of healing and not a place of bitterness.
Love on yourself. It’s okay.
Love on yourself. It’s necessary.
Love on yourself until you understand that you are worthy of unconditional love just because you exist.
I love you.
-Bash
Writing
I’ve been wrestling with my manuscript lately….. and myself.
How does one tell their story and not care what people think? People pleasing is something I’ve struggled with for a long time but, it won’t win. It can’t win.
What good has this journey been if I’m not going to strive to make the world a better place for others like myself.
May God give me the strength to bring these words to the light.
Harsh Reality
There is a lot of blood on the hands of those who continue to spread hate speech in the name of religion.
We must do better.
It’s literally a matter of life and death.
-Bash
Unconditional Love
It’s 2020 and yet people are still Hell bent on being pissed off at parents who love their child unconditionally. Dwayne Wade has accepted his daughter’s truth and people are bent out of shape.
I saw statuses and posts about it on various social media platforms today at my day job and tonight, with a malt beverage in hand, I’m going to address it.
Trans people have been here since the dawn of time. We have been in every civilization and the fact that your limited understanding of the trans experience is where it is, does not excuse the foolish arguments that find their way to the light each time a story like this is in the limelight.
It would take much more time than I have tonight to address all the stupid things people fix their mouths to say so I’ll address one. There is no LBGT agenda to destroy the black community. If half the folks who say shit like this KNEW their history, they would be ashamed. Black and brown people of LGBTQ+ experience have been on the frontlines for progress and movement building for generations. One of the most brilliant minds behind the African American Civil Rights Movement was a gay man.
We’re in your families. We’re in your churches. We’re in your communities & we’re not going ANYWHERE.
I, for one, am glad that the world can now see what unconditional love looks like. The world can see parents loving a child and just letter her be HERSELF. I can only imagine what the world would be like if more parents would choose loving their children more than their ego and programming. Maybe the number of LGBT youth who take their own lives would drastically decline. Maybe the rate of homelessness among LGBT youth would decline. Or maybe, maybe parents who love their programming more than their children wouldn’t be missing out on relationships with amazing human beings.
🤷🏾♂️ I don’t know.
But I can imagine that the next generation of LGBT youth would be better off if we could get our collective shit together and educate ourselves.
-Bash
p.s. Don’t blame your bigotry on God. They made LGBT folks and have no issues with us living in our truth.
Change…
Over the last few years there has been a LOT of change in my life. I’ve moved across the country, married the love of my life, walked with my love through a cancer battle, changed jobs/ careers….. and much more.
Lately I’ve been feeling exhausted. Anxiety and depression have been trying to have their way with me. I’ve been fighting the urge to just settle into a dead end job and stop trying so hard. I was having a really low moment today and so I took a cleansing salt bath and reflected on why I chose this path in the 1st place. It took a few minutes but I found my why again and took the time to look at how far I’ve come on this journey. I looked at the lesson in every experience and concluded that the journey so far has been worth it.
I am the man that I am today because I decided a long time ago not to live a scared lie anymore. Sure, I lost people and community that I’d spent years building. I’ve had a good bit of money and I’ve been broke to the point of homelessness and hunger. I’ve cried myself to sleep many nights and there was a time when the only comfort I could find was in a bottle because I had bought into a theology which said that God rejected me for living honestly. This pain is not pain that I would wish on anyone. I cannot pretend that it has not hurt because it has BUT I get to choose what I do with the pain. I get to choose to push past the pain so that others won’t have to endure what I have. I choose to use the pain as fuel for my purpose.
I choose life.
I choose love.
I choose me.
Bash Shares 