There are some things I have not “Come Out” over, things I never talk about because of how much it hurts/hurt me.
Today, I lay as much of that to rest as I can by uncovering what was done and said to me. I’m hoping what I share helps some of you solidify my name and gender into your brains. As well as how necessary it is to allow people to self-identify without restriction.
I am a Assigned-Female-at-birth (AFAB) non-binary (enby, NB, X) demigirl who uses she/they pronouns and although never identified or wanted to be a man, never understood womanhood or got along well with the female sex either. I switch my clothes and gender presentation sometimes multiple times a day depending on how I am feeling. I love being a good goth girl, as well as sporting baggy t-shirts and cargo pants or jeans. I love all genders and all people due to what is in their heart and in their minds.
My name is Lucia SarahBeth Kindread.
Lucia can be best pronounced as Loo-sha, or if you’re feeling fancy Loo-see-ya works too.
“SarahBeth” was given me by my grandmother as a compromise after wanting have me named “Beth.” My mother refused and called me Sarah. Elizabeth was given me as my middle name instead. My last name is a curse to me that I won’t repeat any longer.
My grandmother called me “SarahBeth,” and I smiled every time she did. I asked to use it and change my name to it to my 1st grade teacher at a Christian private school. I was denied, interrogated, and my parents called. To put it nicely, I was shamed and chastised out of using it for myself.
“Sarah” derives from the Hebrew meaning “Princess” or “noblewoman”‘, but to my mother meant “mother of many” even though the Biblical Sarah only birthed one child after giving her husband her concubine first. It is no one’s to call me except those I ask to call me Sarah. For some, they knew the “Sarah” I always was and on their lips, this name still rings true for me. They are few, and intimate to me. I do not turn my head to “Sarah” except by these few people. It is an intimate name that communicates deep knowledge and understanding of who I am, the pain I bear related to the name, and who I choose to be in the face of those horrors.
“Beth” comes from the Hebrew “bet” or “bayit” meaning “house,” “dwelling or gathering place,” or “household.” This has multiple meanings to me. That my body is not a “temple,” it is my home. And that home is where my heart is, in my body, and where-ever I lay my head and share my heart. It is a representation of, poetically, letting go of my previous “household” and my blood kin.
I am no noblewoman, but I am one who enjoys hosting people in various ways and sharing my heart with. Therefore, my middle name is SarahBeth. My mother stays with me in my heart, but my maternal grandmother’s wisdom overrides the attempt at defining who I am and have always been.
“Lucia” derives from the Latin for “light,” bringing to my identity that of a light-bringer. With it I bring to light the horror of my upbringing and rearing. Never hiding who I was again, trying not to skirt the difficult questions with platitudes and partial lies or jokes. Also, from one of my favorite Playstation games Lunar 2: Eternal Blue.
“Kindread” now replaces my father’s name.
The father who abused me, my mother, and my brother in unspeakable ways. For my entire life, my father was pain to all of us. I would witness him enter the church on Sunday, cry, raise his hands, fall at the altar in repentance, and the second we all piled in the car for the long drive back home, scream, curse, and call us horrible terrible things all over again. Belittle and call my mother nothing, worthless, in front of us. I watched him destroy our home by throwing things. I heard him do… things I won’t speak of to my mother. I heard my mother confess to me these things in my adult years. I have been called a whore, nothing but a p*ssy to then men I loved, worthless, a curse, the product of a generational curse… and lastly, repeatedly denounced as his daughter publicly and privately.
With that, I lay my given/assigned last name to rest. As he has denounced me, so do I denounce my heritage.
“Kindread” reflects in it my past, and my dread, my horror, my pain surrounding my Blood Family. By accepting my first name, Lucia, I bring to light this horror while simultaneously redefining myself.
I cannot enumerate the horrors that have been said to me. I can state that I was raised in a Cult with a capital C and anyone around me who denies this was probably raised in it as well.
I was raised to be a good wife and mother. To marry one man, love him, and raise his babies. This was my sole purpose. If my husband beat me (or my father, beat my mother), it was my/her fault and the response was to dress more prettily for him and “maybe put on some makeup” (yes, direct quote from the pulpit) while slaving in the kitchen. My worth was directly tied to who I married, how well I submitted to his hand, and how many children I popped out.
I was not allowed to know a man, at all, until the night I was married. Let me be crystal clear with this: I was kept from all sex education classes. I was not able to KNOW anything, at all, about sex, my body, a man’s body, and anything at all sexual until the NIGHT I was MARRIED. Not what the body parts looked like, not what occurred that night, not how babies were conceived and birthed…. This was the job of my husband to instruct me upon saying my vows.
When we divorced less than 2 years later, everything crumbled for me, but no one was there. No one called, checked in, wrote a letter, sat to talk with me or hold me while I cried… instead I was told that I would only ever have 1 husband to which I belonged, and that I needed to return to him. When I denied this option, I was kicked out of my family home with no belongings to take with me but the clothes on my back. I was 23. I can still hear my father screaming with a red with rage face that I “need Jesus and to return to my HUSBAND.”
In subsequent visits “home”, even after remarrying, my wedding pictures still adorned the home I was excommunicated from… As if the divorce meant nothing.
I still love that husband, and never stopped. He is a good man, and we never stopped talking and working through the pain between us. Our relationship is very different, but it is one of love and understanding. It is our relationship. It is Open, and it is what it is. He did not deserve the pain my family put us through as we tried to be a part of it all and help.
The Cult derived horrors are too many to list. Too painful. But let me be crystal clear about one thing:
I am not a woman, nor want to be one. I deny the gender binary completely and place myself on the spectrum close to the middle. I am not a mother, nor ever have been. I was pregnant once. I was told that my baby was killed by God because I was not married to the man to whom I conceived it. Those exact words were spoken to me, while I was cramping, bleeding, and going through the miscarriage of a baby I wanted.
I have since realized that my body is not made to have babies, nor do I want for myself the pain of childbirth, childbearing, or childrearing.
I am a 3rd. I am the one who wants to support a couple in raising a family. I wish to be a 2nd Mom, the “Auntie,” the one who loves exuberantly and showers with love. This is what I want for myself. This physical body cannot and does not want to bear or birth children. It would physically kill me or drive me mad and I am incapable of doing it. I only tried to get pregnancy because I was brainwashed to believe my worth was directly tied to the children I produced.
I will no longer hide the horrors done to me by the cult, that small little “church” in a small little country town not on any physical map, led by a family member on my father’s side. But they are too many to list in one blog post, and too horrific to say loud enough for bystanders to hear without being triggered. There was rape, child abuse and neglect, domestic abuse, lies, extortion, fraud, deceit, shame, control… it was all there and I bore witness to it all.
My name is Lucia Kindread. My penname is SarahBeth or SBeth. I am non-binary. I am polyamorous, in that my mind is nor never has been wired for monogamy. I am AuDHD. I am how I am and I am happy and greatly loved.
Dead names are dead and buried. I choose my family. I choose who I love, in whatever way I choose to love them. I turn my back to hate, bigotry, and abuse and turn my face to embrace true love, compassion, and kindness.
In Loving Service,
Lucia SarahBeth Kindread
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