In January, I spoke at the annual meeting of the Society for Christian Ethics by the invitation of my friend and colleague Grace Y. Kao. I’m not an ethicist. I’m a philosophical theologian. I specialize in thinking and writing about what people believe. I’m particularly interested in how our beliefs mesh the ways we understand the world. I think that what we believe affects what we do and so I have some thoughts about that. Which is why the ethicists let me in their meeting.

​Grace invited me to talk about “Self-Disclosure in Teaching and Scholarship.” I was on a wonderful panel with other religious scholars who write and teach about surrogacy, sexual violence and disability – at times intertwining their research with revelations about their own experiences with these issues. 

​I began by talking about how I engaged in “self-disclosure” in ministry before I did with my teaching and scholarship. I spoke out about sexual violence and church responses (or lack thereof) because I am a survivor of sexual violence. I didn’t wake up and think, “I want to put my business in the street.” Rather, I felt a sense of calling. 

This January, for the first time, I shared about what I lost in doing this. I talked about the terrible things other ministers said about me. The prejudicial things people told my significant other about me. How I had to take myself out for ice cream after every speak-out to sooth the rough places of how hard it was. How many loved ones told me to be silent and how lonely that made me feel. How I would never have been so vulnerable if I had any idea that I would experience those things. That I had no clue about the fall out.

I recently had another opportunity to be deeply vulnerable. It was a more private context, but it involved telling a personal story I have been happy to keep to myself. At this point in my life, I know how to calculate the risk. Well, most of the risk. There are always surprises. And I still chose to share. Because I remember how scared I was, and how I didn’t know anyone else who had gone through what I was experiencing. And I didn’t want someone else to be so afraid to choose life. 

​There is a verse in the Hebrew scriptures of Deuteronomy that reads: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live” (30:19). I’ve known this verse since I was 18, and it has guided many decisions I made. What eighteen-year-old me did not know is that this society makes it very difficult to “choose life.” Our Western healthcare system, insurance policies, paid time off (or lack thereof), too-short parental leaves, cultural stigmas, institutional administration, policing systems and so much more … make it hard to do what one must sometimes do to be well, to be alive, and/or to stand with those who cannot choose life for themselves.

​Telling my story is part of what LIFE looks like to me. Not because it’s easy, but because I know that silence and shame and isolation are death. 

In this private context, hearing my story helped someone else feel less daunted about making a difficult and absolute right decision for their well-being. And I hope that the self-disclosures I’ve made in my writing and speech have more positive impacts than negative ones. But fairness demands I share the cost. I’ve come to realize that far too often, people see the shiny end destination without knowing that it was a rocky road to get there.

Lately some friends, former students, and countless students I do not know personally are on a rocky path. They are making difficult choices where they are only partially aware of what they are losing by doing so. They are choosing life for themselves, their families and the communities they care deeply about. And it is not easy.

I pray that they will look back on their choices as a path towards life, and that the world will one day recognize it as such. 

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Dr. Monica