Drag Queens and Healing from Hurt
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I haven’t written anything in a while.
For a split second, I wanted to get mad at myself about it. I wanted to pull out all the self-indulgent dramatic stops of, “I know I haven’t posted in a while, and I’m sorry I took a hiatus…” (like anyone cares 🙄) Or the self-sabotage talk of, “Blaine! You were on such a roll! What the hell happened!?” But enough with that noise. For some reason, I’ve felt this was a good time to get a few things off my chest.
Along that same frame of thought, I’ve been reflecting on the past. I’ve been thinking about all of the mistakes, all of the truly embarrassing behavior, and all of the collective trauma I’ve caused and survived.
It’s heavy.
I know I can’t individually apologize to every human I believe I’ve scorned or hurt. I know there are YEARS of apologies and amends left unsaid. And I know it is ultimately impossible for me to fix mistakes frozen in the past.
So, what do I do? Where do I go from here?
First, I need to take an intermission to tell you about one of my obsessions: RuPaul’s Drag Race.
If you’ve never seen the show, it’s a competition where drag queens battle it out to become the world’s next drag superstar! It’s glittery, glamorous, and so damn entertaining. Look it up. Seriously.
It’s also very spiritual. I recently told my fiancé that Drag Race has become my church service.
In the most recent season, two-time competitor and now the first transgender winner, Kylie Sonique Love said something that completely changed my world.
On an episode called “Pink Table Talk,” the contestants were challenged to create a chat show focused on hot topics. Kylie’s group was discussing some of the deep traumas many of us experience in childhood. In a moment to comfort one of her fellow group members, she said, “Don’t let that hurt child make your grown-up decisions.”
WHAM! Right between the eyeballs.
Read that again: “Don’t let that hurt child make your grown-up decisions.”
I felt this deep in my soul. The truth in that statement is palpable.
My fiancé and I work really hard to help our two kiddos manage their big emotions. For our kids, this sometimes shows up as outbursts, behavioral issues, regression, and silent treatments. While we’re not huge fans of any of these choices, we understand that they’re children. They’re still learning how to navigate all of the hurt this world has to offer.
As grown-ups, I think we find ourselves processing trauma the same way we did as children, especially if we’re triggered by our own childhood pain. Deep seeded hurts overwhelm us and shake us to our core. We lash out in ridiculous ways. We beat ourselves up. We take it out on other people. We shut down.
If we are to take the advice of a drag queen, and I often think we should, we need to change how we think about what hurts us.
If old trauma is resurfacing, we can’t face it like the child who initially took the hit. And we certainly can’t handle new pain and extreme emotions in the same ways we did when we were younger.
We need to give ourselves the freedom to change the way we process and heal. We need to forgive ourselves for the wreckage we’ve created in the past. We need to create space to make apologies and amends. We need to allow ourselves to set up healthier boundaries.
I hesitate to bring the Bible into much because I try to be sensitive to everyone’s experience. Hell, I’m still unpacking my own church trauma. However, a verse does come to mind. 1 Corinthians 13:11 says, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” I think Kylie Sonique Love says it better, “Don’t let that hurt child make your grown-up decisions.” Funny enough, that scripture reference comes from what many call the “Love chapter” of the Bible. I think I’m going to take a chapter of of Miss Kylie’s book and focus on ways I can grow into the person my younger self would be proud of.
As RuPaul says, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen up in here?!”