My name is Auntie Neo Kawn. I'm a recovering Republican.
When I was in college, I struggled with having an uber-liberal lesbian advisor. I had a hard time with the multi-cultural festivals featuring the local Hillel alongside booths from Planned Parenthood and the music of a reggae band. Living in SoCal, I wanted all illegal immigrants immediately repatriated. Cut taxes, get rid of welfare...I was even anti-environment. At the time, I was dating a guy whose family were all hard-core wingnuts, and I swallowed the personal responsibility line whole. It wasn't surprising...my mother was an ultra-devout evangelical Christian, and even though I'd sworn I'd never be like her, the only part of my ideology that didn't mirror hers was the religious basis.
Even after I'd moved out of my parents house, ditched the boyfriend and built a successful career, I remained conservative. Oh, I became a little more socially liberal: pro-choice, pro-freedom of religion and speech. But I still believed the whole bootstraps thing.
And I voted. For Perot, of all people. For Dole. And for Dubya.
And then I got divorced.
I was utterly alone. My family was three states away, and they were horrified that my ill-conceived marriage was over. My father told me "You made your bed" before he stopped talking to me. My mother was much more conciliatory: if I'd turn my life over to Christ and be saved, she'd come out swinging. Otherwise, I could hang myself from the rope I'd spun myself. I had few friends and the world had turned against me. No one who'd been a part of my life for more than a few years believed that I'd been verbally and emotionally abused and isolated.
But little by little, friends I didn't know I had began to appear. A coworker with amazing twin boys, ten years my senior, stood by me. A couple I'd known for a while let me live with them when I had nowhere else to go. One here, another there...people willing to testify in court, people willing to GO to court with me just to hold my hand so I wouldn't be alone.
The divorce was shattering. As I was beginning to put the pieces of my life back together, my developmentally disabled brother called me to ask if he could live with me. He'd endured years of my parents' stupidity and couldn't take anymore. I said yes before I'd even thought about it, and spent the next eighteen months fighting bureaucracy trying to establish his eligibility for state and federal benefits.
As I healed from the divorce and established a life for my brother, I changed. I realized that nearly every single person who'd been my friend was a devoted liberal. I also realized that the wingnuts in my life had turned their backs against me. I saw the thread by which my brother's well-being hung: the thread of my life. Without me, he has nowhere to go.
A lot of people have pointed out that people become conservative out of fear. I would say that was true in my case. I was afraid of the entire world, and naive about much of it. I was afraid of people until I needed them. I was naive about the evils that can be perpetrated against people until I became a victim of them.
And until I faced the fire myself, survived, and learned to ask for help, I was conservative.
Until I learned that we are all connected, and that misfortune is just that, and that the core idea of this country is the common good, I was conservative.
And then I learned. And that's when I became a liberal.
UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who has commented on this diary. I've never made the "Recommended" list before, and it totally made my day!
I am very politically active now. I have to be. I've heard it said there's no greater zealot than a convert, and in my case it couldn't be more true.
There ARE genuine, caring conservatives in the world, and many of them are truly aghast at what the political climate in this country has become. But there are far too many living in fear...fear of terrorism, fear of losing "what's mine", fear of the unknown, fear of Hell. In my case, fear had to be faced and overcome in order for the light to shine.
Again, thank you. This community is more of a home than any I've ever known. And it's because of each of you, with your own stories to tell and beauty to share, that we are truly a community.