Examination of consciousness. I am a former lesbian nun

Reflections by Judy Smith taken from the book "Inside the convent. The nuns break the silence" by Nancy Manahan and Rosemary Curb, Tullio Pironti Editore, 1986, pp. 73-76

My sisters, I often think of you and I wonder where you are; My friends, companions, counterparts of other congregations. We all experienced the religious vocation for the longer trying to do it at the best, before leaving the convent and collecting what remained of us to return to the world. What was it of you, sister Mary Vianney, SP, after writing to the Pope to dispense you from the final votes, knowing that that request was useless and derogatory, because even if you had been denied you would you have left anyway?
There is still that person, or have you destroyed its identity together with the guise, while you put yourself in civilian clothes and run towards the bus stop? (1959-68 Requiescat in peace). That woman, who was then me, was buried in my unconscious, today I only go back to popular my dreams.

What happened to her sister Ann Brigid, sister Fidelia, sister Thomas Marie? Have you also destroyed the soul of the nun, as if it had never existed? Do you have the courage to admit that you are ex nuns or do you hide those years with shame? Those who are close to me discover it immediately: I can't stand doubts and prefer to tell everything about me: so at least they can justify my oddities. Those years in the convent have served you to grow, or do you remember them as an embarrassing mistake? Does it annoy you if I call you sisters?

They ever ask you: «Why did you enter? Why did you leave? Tell me, how was it really? Were there many lesbians? " And tell me also, do you still look for the most suitable answer? Have you been able to give up the votes without the torment of feelings of guilt and the fear of failing? Are you still trying to imitate that lifestyle? And the centuries -old world still scares you?
Has that middle class convent left you eager for total poverty? Do you go still looking for a simple life? Are the money scared? Or has feminism broke the chains allowing you to improve?
Did you sell yourself to men to seek security? Did me earned it? Has your divorce from Christ transformed unworthy lovers for human beings? What relationship do you have with Christ?

Was it the love for a woman who spouses you to leave? Have you left that love of yours behind the convent bars? Have you noticed that instinct that pushes you to women? Are you paying the social consequences of being lesbian or bisexual? And if you fell in love with another man, or more men, this union prevented you from feeling in all respects lesbian, despite the insatiable attraction for a world populated only by women?

Have you had carnal relationships, or professes celibacy? Have you lost the safety of the convent: do you still feel the pain of a wound that you will not be able to heal? Do you have problems with the Authority, waver between passive obedience and the desire for rebellion?
Do you find yourself paralyzed by the indecision, scared at the idea of ​​wasting your time, are you looking for someone who knows how to guide you?
Do you feel guilty if you try to build a career? And again, do you feel injured in the soul? You needed a psychoanalyst to find that your feelings have the right to exist, and that anger is a response justified to injustices.

Do you suffer from nostalgia, fantastic that the convent is the only safe place on earth, an idyllic paradise from which you have been ousted? Do you miss the old liturgy? Have you ever burst into tears singing alone "Veni, Sponsa Christi"?. Do you feel different when it comes to Christmas and Easter? Do you miss the silence? Are you perfectionist? You remember corporal punishments inflicted by the mother superior in the name of an education that. Would you have made you better?

Are you cynical? Can you express all hatred? Have you punished yourself instead of fighting repressive infrastructures? When you leave the convent, do you also abandon the church? Do you pray again? V1 are missing the privileges of the convent or have you used to being the same as other women? Have you been forgiven by your family for choosing the votes? And for having denyed them?

Did your mother thrown your toys away? Do the sisters of the convent find time to be with you, or with them? Do your friends find themselves with other former friends? Have you managed to survive the crisis of faith, or have you sought an alternative in theology, psychology, atheism, paganism, scientology, Buddhism feminism, black magic, in radical ideas? Have you discovered a road that allows you to adapt to humans? Has your creativity manage to survive?

The exams of consciousness usually end with an act of contrition, but I do not feel guilty for having made myself a nun and having abandoned the convent. I am not guilty for having saved myself from a system that oppresses and destroys. Life today is often difficult and lonely, but at least they are no longer silent and invisible. I am here, combined with you by an indelible brotherhood.

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* When I was a nun I belonged to the sisters of the providence of Saint Mary of the Words, in the Indiana.

** Before the second half of the 1960s, the majority of the nuns underwent a ritual every night, wondering to find out if he had committed sins by breaking the rules.