I was raised Catholic and basically went through the motions until I was confirmed. Confirmation is when a young Catholic becomes an adult Catholic. Even though I felt more like a girl who had to fight to wear pants to church on Sunday than an adult Catholic, I chalked that up to adolescence and made my first Catholic adult decision after Confirmation: to attend Catholic high school. I thought if I tried touching this religion through daily exposure, it would respond. But I couldn't get close to it in high school. The teachings weren't personal enough, and I acted out, feeling oppressed and excluded. During my sophomore year a nun took me aside one day and quietly whispered in my ear, "I think you need to find peace with God." I transferred at the end of the semester.

When I graduated from college I went on this long spiritual quest in search of an alternative, which I wrote a book about. I wanted to find other women who felt disconnected from their religion of rearing, and consequently found other routes to spirituality that were either more woman-friendly or encouraged spiritual fulfillment beyond gender roles. Catholicism let me down as a girl. The teachings I heard focused mostly on Eve, the harbinger of original sin, and Mary, the sinless. Neither was a realistic or healthy model for a young girl¹s developing identity. So on my quest I investigated many traditions, from Wicca, a version of the ancient goddess religion of Britain, to Shambhala, the genderless system of meditation fashioned on Buddhist principles. I chose unconventional ones that create mystical experience through concrete efforts. Spirituality was a completely alien feeling to me, but I wanted to feel it, badly. I was looking for intimacy, a kind that resembled a sexual connection, and immediacy, to quench that need to feel growth. Yoga was the first path I found that fostered a connection for me. Practicing gave me a high, and yoga called that high divinity. The high was the key to the sense of unlimited bliss I wanted to feel and incorporate into my everyday life.

I notice more growth and happiness when I practice every day, but that doesn’t always happen. I do some yoga in the morning to ground my body in some positions that feel good before I crumple myself up in a desk chair all day. A few times a week I try to meditate in the morning, just sit quietly on a pillow on the floor for 15 minutes or as long as I can, and try to feel what's going on. I try to let my own sense of self rise above my emotions and thoughts. It’s really hard, and often I can¹t deal with it. I’m too impatient. But meditating in the morning helps me keep work or emotional stress from the rest of the day in its place. I feel like it's a form of prayer, but it's not the only one I have.

I have a grandmother who is dead whom I talk to all the time. If I have a really strong emotion that overwhelms me, like excitement or expectation or sadness or disappointment or confusion, usually I can just look somewhere and feel her presence arrive. Not from the air, necessarily, but from an inner sense that corresponds with the same state of calm achieved during meditation and yoga. I tell her what’s going on. Then I get information back, not always an answer, just dimension, or perspective or confirmation. That’s the closest relationship with God I have. For me, God is an interior sense of love and bliss and belonging. It's a knowing, a consciousness that every person has inside of them. That is what’s frustrating sometimes about the idea of God. You’re pretty sure everyone knows what it is, but it isn’t accessible to everyone at the same time for some reason. That’s the tragedy of being on different paths.

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