How I grew up a smut-nosed little heathen in a fundie family

I'm thinking about starting two series (at the same time because I never do things reasonably), one on storytelling, one on my coming out story (which is basically my life story up until this point, and probably forever. That's the thing about coming out, it never ends.).

This is the story of my childhood self, and how I fell in love with story itself, which is a pretty good introduction to both series.

So, let me tell you a story.

There was a library down the street from my house, I spent a lot of my childhood there. In many ways that library shaped who I am more than anything else on the planet (except the planet itself I suppose). On the third shelf up, conveniently at my eye level when I was small and impressionable, were all the picture books on folklore and mythology.

I'm not really sure how it started, a pretty cover, an eye-catching title--no matter the cause, I was soon obsessed with mythology. I knew how Loki killed Baldur, I knew how the Aztec gods created men from corn and and how Anubis weighed the souls of the dead, I could retell "Coyote and the Butterflies", "How Grandmother Spider Stole the Sun" and "Saint George and the Dragon". I had a white stuffed horse named Freya, and knew Rule of Names.

These stories were fundamental to my understanding of the world, in fact, it would not be a stretch to say I was probably a pagan child. These stories made sense to me, I understood fickle gods and goddesses with human motivations far better than I understood an impersonal and wrathful God. I wove myth and Christianity into an odd shroud that I wore through my childhood as I went looking for kitsune and fauns in the swamp, and hiding under the covers from demons and seraphim at night.

As I grew older Christianity began to overshadow the paganism of my childhood understanding, myth was relegated to my writing, my safe place. I still read a lot of fantasy (something I was actually scolded for by folks at my homeschool co-op at times. My parents didn't really pay attention to what I read), and wrote even more of it, but the fear of God banished the goddesses, gods and heroes with whom I had shared so many adventures.

I am now an atheist, but mythology still formed the basis upon which I built my understanding of the world. It gave me respect for all life, it gave me understanding of peoples from vastly different times and places with wildly different values and ideals but who were all human. It gave me power, compassion, and courage. It gave me a sense of wonder. Honestly I've probably read twice as much mythology as I have Christian scripture.

What's the moral of this story? Well, it's something I'm going to continue to return to over and over, because the moral of the story is really what my aspirations are built around. Story is powerful, use it well.