A dream
Before I die, I want to feel a mutual love,
warmth and care with at least one woman (and maybe several),
through intimacy, mutual understanding, lying still and holding each other,
sexual experimentation, as well as through hugging, kissing and passionately fucking.
Is that too much to wish for?
Reality
Danish Christian culture and Evangelical-Lutheran theology,
the Church of Denmark and other Evangelical-Lutheran organizations,
Danish Christian schools and extrovert culture,
stole this from me,
and instead, gave me fear, shame,
a feeling of inferiority, panic attacks, traumas, body hatred,
sexual repression and emotional isolation
– and has afterwards, out of ignorance and religious belief,
multiple times punished me for my trauma reactions.
This is supported by the majority of the Danish population,
through their membership of the Church of Denmark
and other Evangelical-Lutheran organizations.
Is that ok?
– Bjarke Raabjerg, 42 years old.
The above is currently one of the first pages of an e-book I’m trying to write (in Danish) and which I hope I can finish writing during 2022.
This is a reminder to every trauma survivor who has had to listen to harmful clichés about how to heal their trauma when they are barely getting by. Overcoming trauma is complex. The most important part is you feeling safe. Validate how hard this is and dismiss shallow messages.
Nate Postlethwait, Twitter, 29 sep. 2021
Based on our nightmares, panic attacks, and paranoia, one might think that my childhood friends and I had been to war. And in fact, we had. We went to war with ourselves, our own bodies, and our own sexual natures, all under the strict commandment of the church.
Linda Kay Klein, Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free