All things need a beginning...

...and that beginning often includes an introduction. So, here's mine.

My name is Sophia. I grew up in several regions of the United States, including the Southeast and the West. My experiences in both places have made me feel like an outsider, like somebody different. A lot of this has to do with my ethnicity. I am, on the outside (and in all governmental surveys and doctor's office paperwork) Caucasian. However, what the outside fails to convey, despite my long nose, is that I am Greek-American. Though I now identify as Pagan, I was raised in the Greek Orthodox Church, a sect of Christianity that is so Eastern that it seems to have been forgotten by much of the Western World.

As a fourth-grader living in Alabama, the teacher opened a discussion on the branches of Christianity. She mentioned Baptists, Methodists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormans, and Catholics. Always the precocious child, I raised my hand and said, "You forgot the Orthodox Church." The teacher, frowning and very grumpy, replied, "No, that's Jewish."

I was shocked. How could she know so little? "But I'm Orthodox, and I'm Christian."

"I've seen your last name. You're Jewish," insisted the teacher. (My last name ends in -son.) Although I would be proud if I were Jewish, I knew that if the other children believed I was Jewish, it would be another reason for them to ostracize me on the playground. And who was going to believe me over her? She was the teacher, the deliverer of knowledge.

I felt alone and scared in this mostly white, Southern Baptist area, but it was not the first time I had. My single place of refuge, the place where there were other little girls like me, was at church, and even there, as a female, I had very little representation. Furthermore, my sexual orientation set me apart from even my sisters and my mother.

This blog will be an exploration of what it means to be the "other," the one who is different, the person alienated by the culture in which she lives. I want to explore the culture of difference, the people who have come together to share their differences and through them find a common ground.