I was raised in a Slavic Baptist environment, meaning that God was a huge part of my life growing up and that it was very strict. For example, I remember when I was a small child, dancing was frowned upon. Another thing that was hugely frowned upon was playing any sort of card game. Anyways, after I lost faith after I did my own research on religions and why I should believe in what I believed, I kept my atheism a secret from most of my family, with a few exceptions such as a my mother, father, and a few cousins.

I was at a relatives house, sitting, minding my own business, when I walked over at the kitchen to get something to drink, one of my relatives sat me down and asked me if I believed in God. I said no, I didn’t. This unraveled into a huge hysteria of people crying over me, almost forcing me to “repent”, which I politely refused to. After the initial shock, their anger set in and blamed numerous of my family members of why I didn’t believe and that the devil has taken hold of my soul. At one point, it got so ridiculous that they blamed it on my hair (I have long hair). I asked those relatives where they found out I was atheist. The response surprised me; this very blog was spreading through their church like wildfire, later to find out my cousin found my blog through Google+.

After this incident, I received an enormous amount of animosity for at least two months, hence why I ceased to post new content. On and on I received requests to go see a preacher or cut my hair because it was “evil”. I simply brushed it off, but I felt betrayed by my own family for not accepting me for who I am, even though I was the same person they knew for years.

Recently, after I thought this whole mess had blown over, I went on a family trip to my cousin’s house up in Washington. The treatment I received there was relatively pleasant in the beginning, but after about a day, I was reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, I was approached by a relative and asked what I was reading and I replied. She asked what it was about and I replied what the book was about. The conversation really took off and at some point reached the topic of evolution, which is where I got the most angry reaction from her. I didn’t understand on why creationists hate evolution so much, it isn’t attacking their religion or beliefs, it is just simply fact (before I get angry comments from theists, do your research on what a scientific theory is and look up evidence for evolution). Continuing with the story, I asked why she didn’t believe that evolution was a fact and gave me the typical responses that creationists love to drone out. I was surprised when asked why I believe it, so I explained to her why and she asked how evolution worked; I was interrupted during my explanation for her to ask, “so, you believe that humans came from monkeys?”. I responded no, I don’t and continued to explain how evolution works and, upon her request, on how humans evolved. I already had lost her interest and she started mocking me by making hooting monkey sounds in my face. I calmly stood up and left the room, not wanting anymore wasted time on arguing.

Later that day, I had a conversation on why I didn’t believe with her sister. But that really turned out to be stressful for me because I was insulted a lot. I was called stone-hearted and the saddest person they know. I was really dismayed that I was called that by my own cousin who I had grown up with and treated her like my sister. I couldn’t believe that she could really feel that about me just because of a difference in beliefs.

Later on that week, I was sat down by her father at around 12am, when everyone was asleep, to talk about why I didn’t believe in God. The discussion was a pretty respectful one, no one was arguing and no one was disrespectful to anyone. The thing that I didn’t like about the conversation was the aversion from empirical evidence by the claim that God couldn’t be measured. I thought I brought up some good argument in the flaws in God, which he could not answer, but as expected, it wouldn’t affect anything because he was a very firm believer.

Overall the experience of the trip was positive when religion didn’t come up, but negative on the religious side. I was lucky that it didn’t really escalate into something bigger, but it was dismaying anyways.

Thank you for reading my experience and I hope that you enjoyed reading my experience. If you would like, please write your experience of how you came out in the comment section. Thanks!

~Fromwarriors