Hello
My name is Sharleen Nelson, Shar, for short please. Over the course of my life (54 years) I've been defined and assigned a lot of labels -- wife, editor, mother, tomboy, waitress, daughter, reader, auntie, student, artist, employee, writer, sister, photographer, journalist, intelligent, operator, spiritual, blond -- these are fairly normal and relatively acceptable; others not so much -- perfectionist, pleaser, cat lady, feminist, sensitive, smoker, fat, stubborn, precocious, difficult, under-achiever, liberal, nerd, news junkie, slut, atheist, eccentric, gifted.
I've come to the conclusion that as a functioning human person I am made up of an amalgamate of things, but it's taken me a long time to understand and come to terms with what that means exactly. Two years ago, I had a big epiphany, well actually two big epiphanies, maybe three now that I think about it -- 1. I don't believe in god; 2. I'm gifted; and 3. I almost died.
These three things had a huge impact on the way I had always viewed myself and my life. Losing my religion didn't happen over night. It was a gradual falling away, a letting go of imaginary things that never really made sense to me, but that I clung to out of fear and retribution and tradition and respect for my mother. The stumbled upon discovery that I was gifted pretty much explained EVERYTHING, and when you have a near-death experience, it changes you. It profoundly changes the way you look at each day and forces you to re-examine your relationships with your family and friends, and to prioritize the things that are truly important and let go of those that are not.
So, I'd like this blog to be not only about religion, the losing of it, as well as what it's like to be a gifted adult, but also to embrace the multitude of other things that I find interesting (which can and often change quite rapidly), and to perhaps serve as a resource; a repository of "found stuff," if you will -- interesting blogs, what it's like to get old, articles about history, politics, science, weight loss, what to do with a pumpkin after Halloween, photography--whatever happened to Robbie Benson?...Literally, whatever it is I am thinking about, wondering about, googling about that day -- that's what I think this blog should be, and it's not because I am terribly interesting or anything, but because what I find, might be.
So HELLO, this is me.
Love the blog! You need to include within your first paragraph that one of your assigned labels is a friend (:
ReplyDeleteI, like you, don't identify with any particular religion and have a hard time doing so. That may be because I didn't have any religious background in my upbringing. Hard to tell. I just am very skeptical of what different religions entail that it's hard for me to put full belief into one system. I would say I'm agnostic, because I believe there is some higher power out there. We are here for a purpose, we are just unsure of what it is.
Although I haven't had a near-death experience, I have an extreme fear of death. I don't know if this because of my absence of faith, or just a phobia. Of course all of us are curious about life after death, but it really freaks me out... Whether it be a near death experience, or phobia of death, they have lots of similarities which makes one want to complete everything you can within a day and re-examine how you want to live your life.
Looking forward to reading more blog posts!
-Sara