My story doesn’t start with me. Following my roots will find you on the island of Haiti. My parents’ families both came to the United States and built a life in northern New Jersey. They met at a church and fell in love. They are dedicated Christians who really love Jesus. Worshiping God is the most important thing to them. They prioritized imparting that to their children.

The last thing they expected they expected was to have a queer transgender child. Yet, here I am.

Being a first-generation American with immigrant parents who were very religious things weren’t always a walk in the park.  I remember feeling like my parents were much harsher on us kids than other families were on their children. I remember not being able to go to sleepovers, not being allowed to wear pants to church, and being taught that dancing wasn’t godly and feeling really left out because of those things. Growing up being treated like a girl in a radical Christian home was frustrating and isolating, to say the least. There was so much about me that made me different than my 3 older brothers. As the youngest child, I also got picked on by my siblings and since I was such a sensitive kid, that stuff was very difficult for me. I ended up being super depressed by the time I was in 8th grade.

Looking back it makes sense why I was depressed. I realized I was gay when I was in middle school. My parents made it clear to me that being gay was incongruent with being godly. As I discovered who I was I also discovered there was something very wrong with the feelings I was having. The feelings didn’t feel wrong when I was with my first girlfriend in high school. I had finally felt that things were right for me. But at the same time, I felt so guilty for loving another woman. I remember the disappointment on my parents’ faces when they discovered I was in a relationship with a girl. I was swiftly grounded and shamed for this and made to end the relationship. It became clear to me that I was going to have to figure out how to survive in that kind of environment, and survival meant I had to shove this part of me away.

Living in denial becomes easy when you shut down. If you stop trusting yourself and start trusting everything outside of you, you start becoming a different person who is more palatable to the people you are trying to please. There was a time where I loved my life as a good Christian ‘girl’. I was doing what I thought I needed to do to be truly happy, and that was to deny my truth. I believed that if I was straight and girly that somehow God would be more accepting of me. I mean it was the message that I was getting from my family and the church so it had to be true. Right?

Truth

What is truth? I’ve discovered that the truth is way more complicated than I believed. I was taught that the final truth could be found on the pages of the bible. I believed that the scriptures were the actual words of God so how could they not be true? I mean they HAD to be.. if they weren’t I was in for a rude awakening. I trusted the people in my life for the truth and I believed them with my whole heart.

So then, why was I so lost?

After high school, I followed my heart and enrolled in Word of Life Bible Institute. At this time I was your average Jesus Freak. I know that I wanted to serve God in this life and at the time going to get an education in the scriptures and ministry sounded like a dream, and it was! I got to spend 2 years in constant study of the scriptures, working in service capacities on campus, learning to evangelize and tell people about Jesus, and really understanding what it means to live a life dedicated to God. At this time my ‘same-sex attraction’ seemed to improve. I was too busy with my studies and extracurricular ministry work to think about romance anyway. There were times that I remember sharing about my struggles with my sexuality discussing that I was dreaming of the day where I would be able to share my story of how I overcame same-sex attraction. I feel my stomach turn as I remember that time in my life. I had no idea how blinded I was to my own truth.

After leaving Word of Life I went to Cairn University to finish my bachelor’s in youth and family ministries and master’s degree in counseling. Outside of the constant community of the Bible Institute, I had a lot more time to think. Even though I was busy with my studies I found myself feeling sad, lonely, and empty inside. I remember feeling that I was surrounded by people that all knew me as a good Christian would change their minds if they knew my truth. Little did I know that some of my worst fears would become a reality.

Two years after Word of Life, I was in the middle of a graduate program. Even though I was setting myself up for a life of success, I felt more depressed than ever. I was commuting to university every day and would fanaticize about driving my car off the road. I remember one Wednesday afternoon sitting in my car in the university parking lot, after one of those fantasies, thinking that my life couldn’t continue the way it had been going. I was sure at that moment that I had to live my truth in some way or I wasn’t going to survive. That was the first time in a long time that I listened to my intuition and it was terrifying. I desperately longed to find love so I went to the Internet! Not too much longer I was on a date with a platinum blond cutie and before long she had my heart.

Amanda was everything I had been looking for and more. She wasn’t religious but was respectful of my faith. She always pushed me towards my best. She showed me that it was possible for me to be fully loved if I stood in my truth. She didn’t ask me to be one way or the other she was just happy with loving me. And that was the gift I needed to give myself the love I had needed so desperately.

 As my relationship with Amanda grew stronger and stronger, I also began to emotionally distance myself from my family. It was too difficult to be around them because I was finally getting used to being myself with Amanda. I hated feeling like I had to put on an act to be around my family but it’s the reality of my situation. One day, after graduating, I mustered up the courage to tell my parents about my girlfriend and that I was going to be moving in with her. I knew they would try to convince me I was doing the wrong thing so I didn’t give them the chance. I have never looked back.

Living with Amanda gave me even more room to explore myself. I fell more in love with her and in the summer of 2019, asked her to marry me. Life was going great!

Then the pandemic hit.

There was so much stress with life and work during that time and I ended up getting sick at the beginning of quarantine. I had a lot of time to think as the world as we knew it came to a halt. It was during this introspective time that I discovered my non-binary identity. Free from the pressures of the world I was left to sit with my own truth. I realized that the inexplicable discomfort I had felt with my gender identity was due to the fact that I had no context to understand myself outside of the gender binary. Once I had the language for it, everything clicked. It was like life was starting to make sense.

I was excited about discovering myself but I knew I would have to face the world. The world is not kind to trans people. It is especially unkind to non-binary people in the sense that my Identity is often questioned as illegitimate, or my favorite, that non-binary identity is just a modern-day trend. But The rejection I feared the most was rejection from my family. I hoped that they would be able to accept me and treat me with respect, but deep in my heart, I doubted that this would be possible.

As I anticipated coming out to my parents as trans and grappled with what this would mean I felt myself emotionally shutting down. Even though I felt free in my identity I felt weighed down by the expectation to deny my truth to be accepted by my family. I have already faced rejection and isolation by my family after coming out as gay and felt overwhelmed by the possibility of bringing more rejection from my family.

At this point, Amanda had become my fiancee and we were living with our pets; I was truly blessed. At the same time, I was anticipating tremendous family distress, my health was deteriorating, and I was overwhelmed with work. My depression returned with a vengeance and my anxiety was worse than it ever had been. My heart palpitations were crippling and yet none of the medical testing showed any real reason for them. My asthma was suffocating me. Literally. I felt like I couldn’t remember what normal felt like. It continued like this for months and one day I couldn’t do it anymore. I went on medical leave and completely fell apart.

While I was on leave I did a lot of soul searching. At the time I had been feeling disillusioned with Christianity. I began pulling at some loose threads in my deeply woven Christian beliefs and I became a loose pile of threads longing to be put together again. I began connecting to my roots and studying the faith of my people through Haitian Voodoo and other African spiritual practices and some things started to make sense. I noticed the similarities in those faith practices and wanted to study the root of spiritual thought.

Then I dove headfirst into the world of spirituality. It was like a whole new world of possibilities opened up to me. I learned that because I was a divine being I had the power to heal myself. At this time I was in so much suffering that I had plenty that needed healing. I started with my anxiety. I remember suffering another panic attack and feeling residual heart palpitations the next day. I had a conversation with myself and I said I don’t know how this whole self-healing thing works but I cannot continue to live this way. I didn’t know how this was going to work but I knew in my heart that I believed in my own power to heal. I fully trusted myself. I remember hoping that I would feel immediate relief but I still had some heart palpitations the next day so thought it didn’t work. It wasn’t till a few weeks later that I really noticed how much my anxiety had improved. I remember doing some group and individual therapy work to get some emotional support during this time but none of the relief I felt from that group could compare to the healing I received from trusting in myself.

I felt more secure in my identity than ever before. I was better prepared for whatever challenges would come my way. At this point, I had sent a letter to my parents sharing with them that I married my fiance and that I was non-binary. I gave them articles about non-binary identity and reconciling transgender identity and Christianity in terms I felt would be helpful for them. They didn’t respond for a little over 2 months. It was the most agonizing 2 months of my life. When they did, I received the letter I wished I wouldn’t have but knew was coming. It told me that God created 2 genders and that I would always be a woman. They told me that it would go against their beliefs to respect my identity. Even though I knew it was coming and I felt secure in who I was, I felt so devastated because I had hope that they would be able to make a sacrifice to be in a relationship with me. I had to let go of my idea of who I wanted my parents to be. It was time for me to parent myself.

I continued my self-healing work by diving headfirst into my emotions. I developed a loving relationship with my inner child. I finally can say that I am in the practice of fully loving myself.  I am happy to say that I am in good health today. My heart palpitations have gone away completely and my mental health has improved drastically. My physical health has returned to me and it feels like I can breathe freely again. I know that there are only more possibilities ahead for me. 

I knew that I had to be in a career that reflected my new beliefs in the power of our own energy and intention. I also knew I wanted to be able to work with people and help them discover the power of living in their truth. It was how I became MAVMAGICK. I have transformed myself into a marvelous being of light just by remembering that I have always been one. The truth really is an amazing thing. I now know that my purpose in life is to people find their truth and find their magick.