On choices and speaking my truth

I believe in choices! I believe that your values do not have to be the same as someone else’s and that no one has the right to tell you how to live your life or what to do with your body. I am all riled about on choices and truth today.

This post will address multiple issues all rolled into one.

I believe that the choice to

  • believe in whatever faith aligns with you is important
  • love who you love is important
  • do with your body however you see fit is important
  • live life according to your own rules is important
  • share your own personal truth is important
  • fight against the entities that try to control you + your life is important

Your faith, religion or spirituality is your business.

No one should or has the right to convince you to believe in something that doesn’t align with you, your values and way of life.

Not being Christian doesn’t make you a bad person. Being Christian doesn’t make you a bad person.

It is frustrating and annoying to walk around this planet and be judged because you don’t believe in the same faith or religion as thy neighbor. When in fact, respecting choices will actually make for improved relationships. You could, in fact, start a conversation and realize how simiar different faith and views are.

It’s almost to the verge of anger when someone of a different faith tries to force you into their way of living and create rules and laws that you do not align with. Or when they refuse to listen with an open mind and think they know everything about another ones faith.

I have friends in a variety of faith and religious denominations. I work with them, hang out with them, lean on support with them and play soccer with them.

I don’t have to agree to be nice or kind. I can be respectful and have conversations

Who you love is your business. Period.

Whether you are heterosexual or LGBQT – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, and Transgender. The laws on who you can marry, who can benefit from your life insurance, who can adopt children and who can’t are ridiculously outdated. You don’t have to understand someone’s life – we’re just asking for the world to be supportive.

And let me add that who or what you identify as is also no one’s concern but yours because again no one has to understand it but being an ally doesn’t hurt anyone.

Again I have friends in all gender roles and relationships. I work with them, hang out with them, lean on support with them and play soccer with them.

I don’t have to agree to be nice or kind. And being part of the LGBQT community I get frustrated and annoyed that because I am in a heterosexual relationship that I am straight. I am not.

It is your body and no one has a right to force anything upon you!

I am an emotional + sexual abuse and rape survivor. I have also had multiple miscarriages that required going to the hospital. When I became pregnant again and didn’t have a miscarriage, I chose to have my tubes tied.

I am appalled that the government influenced by religion in some kind of a way – tell me that it isn’t -, is taking away a woman’s right. Unless you have been raped and conceived a child, you do not know what the woman endures.

The emotional pain and the physical pain – that trauma is for some too much to bear. And even if she does go to therapy after having been made a victim over and over again – if she gets pregnant, she will look at this child every day knowing how that child was conceived. And if you think that just giving it away for adoption is the answer – please take a close look at the foster care system.

And if she doesn’t give the child away for adoption, she unleashes her anger, her grief, her shame, and her guilt onto the child. Perhaps not on purpose but it will be present nonetheless.

I believe in choice. And even I have contemplated abortion at one point in my life – the despair and agony that comes with that decision will surely follow for anyone that is considering it.

And let’s not forget that a heartbeat alone doesn’t not equal life. In order to survive outside of the womb you in fact also need a brain and a few organs – and they need to function. Now let’s say that a woman finds out that there is no brain development, are you really asking her to carry it to term when in fact she could be starting her grieving and healing process?

Somewhere someone forgot the biology of things because an embryo cannot survive outside of the womb. Unless I missed something.

But that’s not the point because again it boils down to choice.

No one has the right to tell you how to live, what to believe in and how to carry yourself in this world.

Not religion.
Not the government.
Not the neighbor.
Not the social media friend or follower

My entire life people have tried to tell me

  • how to live my life
  • what to believe in
  • what to do with my body
  • what’s okay to say and what isn’t

I keep hearing her and over again is because “society matters in the way you are being viewed and the choices you make”. Fuck that noise.

I am super aware that people may choose to no longer be affiliated with, engage with, support The Rebels Den. This post has been weeks in the making but I digress, not reading any of the writings is your choice.

I am a fan of choices. There is a ton of shit out in this world I don’t agree with but the thought to control any of that has never once entered my mind. Or to tell people they are wrong for their faith, relationship or gender status or what to do with their body.

No matter your view, you don’t get to decide what is right or wrong for someone else.

Think for just a moment if the choices of what to believe in, who you can love and marry, what/who you identify as and what to do with your body were taken away.

For just a moment practice empathy and tune into how that feels.

Choices.

And we have to stand up for the ability to have choices.

About the author

Petra Monaco is an artist, author, and professional problem solver for creatives, rebels, and multi-passionates.

She is here to help you remove frustration from your life and achieve your creative dreams with more ease and confidence.

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