At the behest of my mother, I recently sat down to watch the Untold Netflix docuseries, focusing on Manti Te'o and his experience with being catfished by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. While it may be easy to assert that Ronaiah is the story's villain, the true evil was the systemic failure to affirm diversity.

Claiming religious objection to providing life-saving services is an admission of personal apostasy. You are no longer serving God. I realized that in the years I was actively waving the banner of my faith, I was harming people I'd never met. I caused harm. I caused hurt. And I did it believing I was helping those who were suffering. I realized I was part of the problem after serving the communities I feared the most.

Skiing never came easy to me. My older brother was a phenomenal skier. It came naturally to him, or at least he made it appear so. Either way, it made my lack of talent even more evident and painful. And I do mean painful. My parents were relentless in their insistence I learn to ski, despite coming home from full-day classes with more bruises and fat lips than I can count.

Not long after moving to Colorado this summer, a stranger from the local religious community began inundating me with countless texts and calls. I was too burdened by the move to respond. My deferrals strengthened this woman's resolve to infringe on my privacy. She left random trinkets and notes on my doorstep. Despite explicit requests to stay off my property, she would knock on my door, hoping to initiate contact.

I’ve struggled my entire life to understand who I am and to know my role here amongst humanity. As a therapist, I often guide people through the process of identity development. I help patients and clients navigate the parts about themselves they like, the parts they dislike and facilitate their identification of characterological elements that transcend various identities they navigate or embrace.

I spent my first twelve years on Earth confident my life would end in a sudden flash of light. I was a child of the (late) seventies, and perhaps by then those who had lived through the missile crises of the previous decades had begun to doubt that cataclysmic inevitability.