By Courtney • 13 years ago

Faith & Feminism: Sobriety through feminist spirituality

This courageous guest post from Karina Keeley continues our Faith & Feminism series. See Karina’s full bio after the jump, and be in touch with Courtney_at_feministing.com if you’d like to contribute a future column.

I wasn’t raised religious, or spiritual, atheist or agnostic—I was raised ‘indifferent’, as I like to call it.  Not to say that my parents did me a disservice; I think, in the long run, it has actually granted me space to organically and sincerely figure out what works for me in the deistic realm.  As an angsty, bewildered teenager, I often flirted with a variety of god-like notions, different forms of prayer, and even a gothic-inspired foray into paganism. Nothing seemed to resonate, however, and with the discovery of punk rock and Bikini Kill, my search for a higher power was quickly abandoned.

For my formative years and on into my early twenties, feminism became my religion and in many ways, it still is.  It gave me a sense of hope and my first taste of that ever-elusive and seemingly religious concept of ‘faith’.  However, there was one thing that feminism just couldn’t do a damn thing about and that was my addiction to drugs and alcohol.  I tried over a ten-year period to get sober, to stay sober; to live a life I was proud of.  Sometimes I didn’t try. Sometimes I couldn’t find it in myself to know that I deserved better.

Through years of ups and downs, depression, suicidal ideations, violence (self-inflicted and inflicted on others), and friendships come and gone, I finally decided I was sick of wanting to die and that I had to do something to change my life: I had to get sober.  I came to a 12-step program that suggested a spiritual solution to maintaining long-term abstinence from drugs and alcohol.  I developed a belief in a power greater than myself, and most importantly to a feminist like me:  one of MY understanding.  Meaning: not male, not white, not vindictive or jealous or hateful or any other notion of ‘god’ that I had found so problematic in organized religion.

I was comfortable with the notion that there can be a difference between religion and spirituality and that spirituality can have aspects of religions, such as ‘prayer’ and ‘faith’, while not having an ounce of religion in it. I began to realize that there is nothing inherently oppressive or patriarchal about prayer or faith; in fact, both have become instrumental in my ability not just to stay sober, but to actually be happy, cultivate self-love and help other women—something I never thought was in the cards for me, and something that I now believe to be a fiercely feminist act.

And I’ve had to contend with friends, the feminist and ‘progressive’ communities seeing all things ‘faith-related’ as rooted in religiosity, as somehow the exclusive realm of organized religion.  Yes, faith and prayer have certainly been popularized by mainstream religions, but that doesn’t mean that for those of us for whom religion gives the creepy-crawlies, we can’t utilize them to improve our lives.

I have faith in love, compassion, my higher power (who, by the way, is a gender-neutral non-entity that I often refer to as beloved, goddess, sunlight of the spirit, or spirit of the universe, or Kathleen Hanna), feminism and hope. Faith has granted me the freedom to not have to live a life ruled by fear, addiction, depression and hopelessness—and that is a wonderful, empowering and lovely thing.

Karina Keeley is a second-year Women’s Studies graduate student at George Washington University where she focuses on comprehensive sex education for underserved youth and youth empowerment.  She lives happily with her dog, Badger, and her cat, Raven, in the District of Columbia.

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