Losing my religion
For Jane Caro, there is no higher power. She explains why she's an atheist to her bootstraps.
June 30, 2013
Jane Caro
I'm an atheist for the same reason that most believers are members of their particular faith: I was born into a family of unbelievers.
I have had flirtations with religious belief. I was a precocious reader and many of my favourite authors were profoundly religious Victorians (George Eliot, the Brontës, Mrs Gaskell). Heavily influenced by their spiritual world view, I used to try saying prayers secretly at night, waiting for some kind of momentous spiritual experience (I was also a horribly melodramatic and exceedingly morbid child). As far as revelations went, however, I experienced nothing and, as a result, grew bored with my own grandiosity and soon gave it up.
Many years later, as an unhappy young woman struggling with a mental illness, I sought solace in religion. I earnestly tried to believe there was some kind of higher power. I was never much tempted by any particular brand of religion. A true child of the 1970s, I sought spirituality.
When, thanks in part to the skilled and compassionate help of a secular psychotherapist, I finally made the breakthrough that helped calm my irrational anxiety and dissipate my depression, I was filled with gratitude. I wanted to place this sense of grace with someone or something bigger than myself or my therapist, and so I tried to believe in some kind of supernatural force that had helped me resolve my fears.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/lifestyle/losing-my-religion-20130625-2ouww.html
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