Josephine A. Lauren is a queer, neurodivergent author and activist, as well as the Community Organizer of Incest AWARE. She shares her story of surviving childhood incest and illness to raise awareness and support solutions for prevention, intervention, recovery, and justice. Additionally, she provides writing workshops, consulting, and trainings for survivors, the media, and support organizations. Her story has been published in outlets like Ms. Magazine, Yes!, America, Spirituality & Health, and Elite Daily. You can review her full portfolio at www.josephineanne.com and find her at @josephinealauren on all social media platforms.

From Masking & Makeup to Baggage & Barefaced Beauty: An Incest Survivor Finds Healing in Queer Identity

josephine lauren

I have a lot of baggage. Figuratively. Once literally too, but no longer. Today, I am proud to say that the contents of my life fit into just three packs: one rolls behind me, one hangs from a shoulder, the last straps around my back. I have released everything that I don’t need to prepare for traveling. Well, almost.

A tote of makeup sits exiled outside of the pile of my packed up life. Its items once bought to belong to my body, to be absorbed by my body, to hide imperfections of my body, to highlight the beauty of my body. Neglected for the past three years, since the beginning of the pandemic. The powders hardening, the liquids separating, the mascara clumping as it slowly dried from staying inside a bottle, no longer lengthening my lashes. A brush to maintain my long, wavy hair. The tote won’t fit. The question is: do I still need it?

I remember the stress of Sundays. Forced to go to the Catholic Church just down the street in Newport Beach. A destination location in

Southern California known for its beaches, its boats, and its babes. Wealthy. As I got dressed, I daydreamed of the moment mass would end. When I would transcend the trees with friends and eat donuts. So I prepped by dressing casually —pants, a t-shirt, comfortable shoes—and left my bedroom. Immediately my mother screamed.

“Anne Marie, you need to dress up! Go change and hurry!”

“But Mom!” I talked back.

“Don’t talk back to me!” she yelled as she continued to get ready.

“Anne” means “Favored.” “Marie” means “Rebellion.” This was just the beginning, but then the only option was submission. My three brothers walked out of their bedrooms each in pants, a polo shirt, and some form of comfortable boot. As I bemoaned my mother’s cues, forced my muscular legs into tights too tight, pulled a dress over my broad shoulders, and buckled Mary Jane style shoes with a slight heel on my long, narrow feet. They never fit right. I sat at the top of the stairs with my head in my hands, sad once again that I had to present myself as someone I didn’t want to be. Every week.

I walked into the church, drenched myself with holy water, making the sign of the cross on my chest: forehead, between my breasts, right shoulder, then left. Then participated in the ceremony: I sat, I stood, I kneeled, on repeat, mimicking the priest—the male in a dress in front of me—alongside the community. As soon as it ended, I quickly ran to the donut stand, stuffed a cinnamon-sprinkled hole in my mouth, then found the nearest tree to fulfill my dream.

I hugged the bark with my hands sacredly and gazed up lovingly. Reverent and ready. Then, I lifted one foot onto the broad trunk, opened my legs to reveal my little-mermaid-themed underpants, and pulled myself into the bushes of leaves that hung from the branches of the tree. Suddenly belonging. Seriously, my mother followed me in horror scolding:

“Get down here this instant! You’re in a dress, you can’t climb trees.”

I descended, quickly ashamed, and watched with envy as my brothers scaled the tree effortlessly in their pants, polos, and sensible boots. They teased me from above, while I dropped to the ground. Bound. They could remain. Why did I have to change?

It only got worse. It was as if my whole world received a memo that I hadn’t. On Halloween, when all the other girls wore pretty princess dresses, I chose a scary fish face. Shame. When all the other girls sat around the schoolyard and talked, I played ball with the boys. Disconnection. When all the other girls claimed pink was their favorite color, I confidently stood up and said mine was ice cream: a flavor full of purples and blues and yellow hues all at once. Difference.

When all the other girls’ bodies became plump and full and round and lovely, mine stayed stick straight, flat, and muscular. Disembodiment. When all the other girls seemed to follow the roles of silence and submission effortlessly, my big mouth always said whatever came to mind and challenged the same confines. Divergent. I came to look like the tree I so wanted to climb. Strong, stubborn, and stuck in a society, spirituality, and system of family not suited to me.

But eventually, I caved. I craved to be like the others. To be popular like the glitter-studded-eyelinered girls. The ones with flipped out chin length hair and Doc Martin platform shoes embedded with stars. I wanted to be loved by the boys like them. Valued for my appearance, my aesthetic, my body. I tried so hard to be femme. And started conforming to fit in. I stood in front of the mirror and criticized every flaw, picked at my skin. I never saw myself as me. I prayed and played pretend endlessly.

I remember the makeup. The long hair. The weekend shopping trips. The glitter. The gold. The glue. The time. The effort. The cost of consumption. The infinity of wants. The insatiable needs. I remember why I was doing it. And who I was doing it for. Them. Men. To fit in. It was all a distraction. But again my femininity always fell behind. Because there was still another side of me.

The swimming, treading, and water polo ball passing every day toned my already wide shoulders, further flattened my leveled chest, kept my hips narrow and fit. The mascara flowed down my face, the glitter and gold wouldn’t stick. Tights were out of the question at this point and dresses that wouldn’t amplify the masculine shape of my feminine frame were hard to find. My mind and mouth still too proud and outspoken. The most athletic of my friends, they changed my name to, “Anne the Man,” claiming the duplicity that belonged within my body.

As I grew older, this binary polarized even more as social conditioning deepened. Now professionally. The men with three-letter acronym titles beginning with “C” surrounded the conference table and me. I tried to adopt an aesthetic of simplicity instead of adapting to the sexist standards of professionalism. Makeup-free, earth-toned clothes, flat shoes, naturally beautiful. No longer climbing trees. Instead, fulfilling new dreams to scale corporate ladders and break glass ceilings.

“Anne, you need to dress up.”

“Wear more makeup. High heels,” they scolded.

But I could talk back now. “I’ll wear makeup and heels when you do.”

They laughed uncomfortably and then went silent. But it got weirder with the warnings.

“Anne, the client you’re going to see today is known for hitting on women. You’re his type. Be careful.”

They knew. My body was being used to sell products. Exploited for the bottom line of a company. It was my responsibility to ensure I wasn’t harmed, not the company’s or the client’s. I knew these patterns all too well. Because…

I am an incest survivor. Abused since the age of two. Raped. Not once, not twice, but over and over again in my youth. Not by one man, not by two, but by three. And not just by three, but by an entire family that condoned the behavior, that justified the behavior, that swept the behavior under the rug.

Those same brothers that teased me when I was forced to get down from the tree never believed me. That same mother who ensured I fit in and never fulfilled my dreams, supported the men whose bodies I was forced to embody. She demanded forgiveness in the name of god and salvation and the church that passed priests harming children from parish to parish. Jesus carried his cross, so must we at the cost of children’s bodies. Or so I was told.

But it was all a lie. The patriarchy. Career satisfaction in a system built for men, by men. The Catholic imagination, built for men, by men. The nuclear family system, built for men, by men. The gender binary, built for men, by men. The use of my body, for men, by men. The duplicity of my being divided into the energies of masculine and feminine. The normalization of society that believed all of this was reality, the only option.

I had learned to survive in these lies. My self-worth mirroring what men thought of me. The violence internalized. The makeup masking this ugly reality. My soul standing like a tree in my body, while the weeds of patriarchal ideology wrapped around it with the expectations of femininity. Trapped under the weight of oppression. My tree couldn’t breathe. Suffocating under their bodies. Warned when around their bodies. Now, triggered around all bodies.

When I disclosed the abuse to my family, they left me. Codependency. They couldn’t challenge those who harmed them. So I became the casualty. They blamed me. At 24, I carried all the pain from all these years within my body, packed a car full of belongings, and drove away from what I knew home to be and my biological family.

Then, I had a lot of baggage literally and figuratively. From the inside out, my body felt heavy. The weight of intergenerational wounds, my unprocessed pain and that of my ancestors. All of my belongings stuffed into the back of my car. Uprooted. A traveling tree wrapped in suffocating weeds. No one to accompany me. Deeply lonely.

Now I had nothing but coping mechanisms, Complex-PTSD, debt from student loans, and a flood of unprocessed memories. A few disabilities without diagnoses from too much trauma far too young. An entire life to deconstruct and reconstruct from the inside out and the outside in all at once. With so little, I had to build a new body, identity, home, family, economy. But with the weight of my wounds, I could hardly move. I slept most of the day.

I couldn’t tell the difference between the weeds and the tree within me. Buried alive to survive. It would take time. Bodies weren’t built to be born in violence, then cut down, then rebuilt again backwards. It’s not natural, but in this case necessary. So, I slowly weeded my body from the inside out. Weed by weed, I let the memories fall from me. The ideologies. The identities. The binaries. The spiritualities. The economies. The communities. The memories. The family. The structures that were supposed to support me. The weight of their bodies and their abandonment. I dismantled the branches, severed the only parts of myself I had ever known away from me. Then, I chopped myself down.

Grief was my primary identity coupled with the vacuousness of all that should have been provided by family first or community second. Empty. I forgot myself. Lost my identity as a tree in the first place and struggled to find a new one apart from this process. The tree climber had become a tree cutter and none of it felt natural. Completely isolated. Alone. Nowhere to go. No home to go home to. An abused body lost in a world built to protect those who abuse. Rage followed.

It was all too much work at the same time. To rewire my mind from the traps of trauma, to reclaim my body that was used, to restore my being that wanted freedom over oppression in a system that still required submission to survive. To recreate a family, to rebuild an economy, to rediscover a way of living that suited me in the body that still bore the consequences of my beginning. To pay for most of the work out of pocket, while going to work to earn the money to pay for the work out of pocket. To show up, to dress up, to put on makeup, for a career path that would pay the bills, but never fulfill me and likely retraumatize me. Risky. To advocate for the safety of the next generation of children.

I was trapped in a cycle of pushing too hard then burning out for years. From the healing and hurting and hiding and holding myself in, holding myself back, holding myself bound. I could hardly function between the work to earn money and the work to heal. The work to reveal my former secrets publicly to guarantee that children were safe from my family. All of this responsibility on me. Justice, compensation, trauma-informed support, community—not possibilities during recovery around an issue like incest abuse. Too taboo.

So I kept simplifying my life to fit into less and less luggage. The baggage on the outside minimizing while the baggage on the inside took up so much space. I leaned on the stability of others while I treated my own instability. Moved from friend’s guest room, to couch, to blow-up mattress, to cheap apartment, so that I could manage the cost of living in the present while surviving the past simultaneously. Every 3-6 months, packing everything back up to not burden anyone too much. I needed the world to slow down. For life to slow down. For the triggers to slow down. So that I could catch up to my body now.

Then it was Spring of 2020 and Covid-19 spread to the United States just down the street from me. Suddenly, everything slowed down for all the wrong reasons. Traumatically, a pandemic swept the world. But in response, protections were put in place that I had long been waiting for. Government paychecks I didn’t have to earn. Reduced medical premiums. A suddenly introverted social system. Remote work opportunities. A society that cared about mental health. People who understood the cost of isolation. Solidarity. Instantly, everyone asked me for permission before approaching me or touching me. I didn’t feel forced to hug, or to hold, or to help others at my own expense. Consent. Finally safe in a world required to stand six feet away.

I became a full time writer focused on activism. I interacted with people only virtually. I didn’t have to hide from creepy men, or defend my values, or cake my face with glitter and gold makeup, or stuff my feet into heels, or my body into dresses too tight for me. To manage my long locks of hair. I didn’t have to mask, by which I mean act like I didn’t have disabilities. To pretend to be femme. To repress my parts considered masculine.

Instantly, it was just me and my tree. I could wake up every day and listen to my body. Violence turned to resilience. Reverence and readiness. I held the bark of my bones with both hands sacredly and gazed at myself lovingly. Finally ready to be me.

I cut my hair into a pixie. Went makeup free. Barefaced daily. My skin breathed. Dressed minimally, simply, comfortably. My body became bigger. I learned to rest. Without the pressure of rebuilding, and earning, and healing, and holding so much trauma, yearning for the fulfillment of so many stolen years, managing the weight of trapped fears. My brain began to settle. I could finally begin to practice being.

Then, I looked into the mirror and saw myself for the first time. I called myself queer. My pronouns became she/they to hold my femme identity partnered with gender fluidity. I changed my name to Josephine. Josephine means the “Expansion of being.” I go by Jo. now.

Today I still carry my entire life on my back. But I move now by choice not necessity. It turns out a lifestyle of simplicity and travel suits me. I only take with me what I need: a few long sleeved t-shirts, two pairs of pajamas and jeans, bras, underwear, three types of black leggings, socks, and jackets. One for rain, one for snow, one for in between. A swimsuit. Flip flops, pointed flats, and two pairs of tennis shoes—one for walking, the other for fun. A towel. A bag of toiletries. One necklace. One laptop. One ring. One wallet. I do have one dress and one pair of fancy shoes, but rarely wear them.

So, what about that tote? That bag full of makeup and masking tools that have been so necessary to my survival. The proof of femininity, the suppression of masculinity, the oppression of disability. Do they still have to be?

Suddenly, function wins over form as I walk into the kitchen and confidently throw the bag full of brushes and glitter and gold-packed powders right into the trash. And with it the patriarchy, the false gender binaries, the nuclear family, the Catholic hierarchy, the failure of systems meant to support me, forced identities, heteronormativity. All the effort required to appear to be someone else. Whether I need them or not, this is not who I choose to be.

I take the baggage of my body with me: my neurodiversities, my disabilities, my histories, my identities. But this burden I now call beloved. Home. And the rest of my belongings are packed into those three bags. The minimalism of this life invites the maximalism of my experience. A reality always calling me to more. More liberation, more justice, more freedom, more play, more purpose, more pleasure. More of all this and less of all that. Crap.

What a queer and perfect way to be. A traveling tree expanding her/their being without the constraining weeds. I flow in fluidity and let my being guide me. So, where am I going? We’ll see. I hope it feels like gold and glitter and the freedom of children climbing trees. Allowed to be. The one thing I know confidently: I’ll look just like me. Josephine.