After not having posted on this blog for a very long time, it is with a heavy heart that I return to posting with news that saddens me greatly. One of my favorite blogs, Possummomma, has gone dark after some very serious harassment of her and her family following what I can only summarize as a malicious case of mistaken identity. Since I am not privy to specific details, being only a reader of her blog, I will not endeavor to explain much more, but details about the incident can be found at The Calladus Blog, and at Berlzebub's Inferno.So why is this so important to me, you may ask? Well, to put it simply, I was not always an atheist. I was raised religious, and only came to atheism in my 20s while at college. Now, I have a wonderful husband who is also an atheist, and I know that some day we will want to have children and raise a family. But when I look back at my personal experiences of childhood, and when I look to the adult role-models in my life that I would reach out for advice about raising children when the time comes, I find myself surrounded by religion. It is a hard thing to escape. Being an atheist, how do I explain death to my children when I was raised to believe in Heaven? How do I raise them to be moral and kind and caring and generous without relying on the Ten Commandments or the stories of Jesus? The thought of trying to raise children without ever reverting back to the moral instruction I received by way of religion used to terrify me.
Possummomma's blog changed all that. Her frequent posts about raising a non-religious family, despite her religious upbringing and recent deconversion, were truly inspiring. Her stories and photos showed a family that was happy, stable, kind, and loving, children who were smart and independent and thought for themselves, and parents who, despite many personal hardships, were able to put the really important things first and get through both the good times and the bad without religion. I admired her for her courage in putting so much of her personal life online, despite the fact that she attracted the worst sort of trolls because of it. Hers was the first blog that I ever chose to comment on, and it was her blog that inspired me to start one of my own.
And now, her blog has gone silent. And it makes me angry. Angry that people can be so pessimistic and suspicious that they would take any act of kindness and charity by people towards someone they had only met online and assume that the person receiving the charity has to be duping those who would wish to support them. Angry that a person who is brave enough to show the world that you can raise an amazing family without the crutch of religion would draw the ire of so many people who think the worst about atheists without even getting to know one. And it makes me angry to see the very worst aspects of human nature lash out and cause so much pain to people who are only trying to embody the best aspects of human nature (I am speaking about both PMomma and her supporters here).
But mostly, the silencing of PMomma has just made me sad. I find the Internet to be such an amazing place because it makes it possible to connect with people that you would never get a chance to know otherwise. PMomma is an amazing person, and she has become one of my role-models. I have so much to thank her for, and I am sorry that I never really got a chance to tell her so myself. Though this blog post has been a chance for me to vent my feelings on an occurrence that has greatly affected me, I am also using it as a call for personal action. I started this blog because of Possummomma, because I was so inspired by her frank, unapolagetic sharing of a family life without religion. She is one of the few that I have found that are willing to put their life up for scrutiny and say "I'm really just like you. I may be part of a despised minority, but I am your next door neighbor, your friend, your family member." If more people, more atheists were willing to put their lives as ordinary people on display, then maybe the people who doubt the existence of happy, ordinary, moral atheists would not be able to attack so easily.
So, this is my call to action. I am going to stand up here and now and say this: I am an average, ordinary person. I am happy with my life, I have a wonderful marriage, and I have the same plans and concerns about the future as any other ordinary person. I am also an atheist. I am the girl next door. I am your sister, I am your daughter, I am your friend. And I am an atheist. Doubt me if you must, but that does not change the fact that I know who I am, and that, from now on, I am going to own it, be proud of it, and tell everyone that I know about it too.
