Hugged and Heard

Hugged and Heard 

By Annette Camp 

May 6, 2026

Before words assemble themselves,

arms arrive. Not to fix.

Just a chosen gesture.

There is silence. Not sentences.

Being held does not mean

being contained.

I am open. Made wider.

My voice is received.

My words invited this.

There is clarity in

this moment: Love.

And something shifts.

Letting my words exist

became an invitation.

My honesty was met

with understanding.

Willingness on my part

to place my truth where

others could see it with

unmistakable care.

I feel change take root

beneath my skin.

Open to what

continues to unfold.

I stay with the

stillness of this

moment feeling

hugged and heard.

The Weight of the Wedding Ring

The Weight of the Wedding Ring 

By Annette Camp

May 1, 2026

I stand at the door before the ceremony.

My mother asks, "Why the tears?"

I dare not say they are the release

of what I do not speak.

My words have already been decided.

I do not want myself on the stage.

Others rise around me.

Their faces blur.

Expectation pulls at my heart

as the tears continue to flow.

Inside myself, I keep asking,

"What are you doing?"

I walk forward carefully as though

the floor might give way beneath me.

My knees weaken with every step.

My heart is heavy.

My terror is hidden.

My doubts continue without rest.

I think about the permanence

of this one act.

Marriage feels like a narrow bridge

everyone told me to cross.

A husband.

Children.

A proper home arranged

beneath God's approval.

The altar waits for my approach.

The congregation listens

to words I cannot hear anymore.

The room feels distant from my body.

My bouquet trembles in my hands.

When the vows begin,

my chest tightens so violently

I think I might faint

before the words are finished.

Then the ring.

Gold shining.

Heavy beyond proportion.

The moment it touches my finger

it slips from my hand.

I want to say no.

Not dramatically.

Not loudly.

Just one honest word

finally allowed to breathe.

Denial is not holy.

Yet, I am told submission is.

Eyes are watching.

Cameras are rolling.

Someone retrieves the ring.

So I swallow the word

that burns all the way down.

I let him slide the band

onto my finger where the

metal settles like the

closing of a gate.

I stand there silently

as everyone rises in celebration.

I hide my grief and wonder

if God can feel the weight

of the wedding ring.

What Remains in the Stillness

What Remains in the Stillness 

By Annette Camp

February 20, 2026

Grief arrived quietly, in stillness,

in the absence of familiar sounds.

No soft padding across the floor.

No warm weight leaning into my side.

Yet, I felt — I am here.

This place feels wider than before.

Corners echo.

A hand still reaches down

out of habit,

searching for fur that is no longer here.

Love does not vanish when a body does.

It lingers in doorframes scratched by joy.

In the worn patch of carpet by the window.

In the leash hanging like a question

by the door.

Waking up sobbing.

The pillow soaked.

Shoulders wet.

Tears streaming down.

The night has wrung something out—

not the love,

never the love.

Grief is love with nowhere to land.

So it moves through the body instead.

A tide that rises without asking,

that leaves salt on your skin.

A remembrance carried of a companion

through seasons of ordinary miracles.

Rain walks.

Shared glances.

The steady comfort of breathing in sync.

And in the end,

something heavier is carried:

the courage to let go

so suffering will not stay.

That is love too.

Healing does not mean forgetting.

It means speaking the name

without your voice breaking in two.

It means smiling at the memory

of muddy paws and reckless joy.

It means understanding

that the bond has changed shape,

not disappeared.

Now in the waking,

there are mornings with fewer tears.

There is space on the side, yes,

but also, gratitude.

The ache has softened

into something almost warm.

A quiet companionship of memory.

And somewhere inside

the love still runs.

Tail high.

Heart open.

Memories 

that were shared.

Real.

Good.

And always belonging to me.

Holy Heartbreak

Holy Heartbreak

By Annette Camp

February 11, 2026

Today

I stood in the same air

as the woman who once 

carried his first child.

We did not recognize 

each other

by face

but by fracture.

There is a certain language

women learn

when they have been pushed

while holding life inside them.

It lives in the pause

before the truth is spoken.

In the way breath catches

at the word stairs.

We compared memories

like bruises held up to the light.

Pregnant.

Angry footsteps.

A shove that was never called a shove.

The terrible gravity of betrayal.

She lost her son.

I felt the sentence

land between us

like a small white coffin.

Mine lived.

Mine lived with a body 

that jerks and shouts

in rhythms he did not choose.

A nervous system that remembers

what my mouth tries to forget.

Tourette’s,

the doctors say.

Trauma has many dialects.

She is fifth generation faithful—

Kingdom Hall woven into her bones,

Watchtower ink in her lineage.

And now

disfellowshipped.

A word that sounds like exile

because it is.

Cast out.

Just like me.

Two women

thrown from staircases

and later from sanctuaries.

When I told her

I was writing a book—

about losing my ministry,

about coming out for the 

second time in one lifetime—

I watched her eyes widen

as if heaven itself

had shifted.

The dots connected.

Not coincidence.

Not chance.

Pattern.

The same man.

The same violence.

The same God invoked

to keep us silent.

And here we were—

two former wives,

two mothers,

two lesbians,

two survivors

standing in the wreckage

of doctrines and drywall.

Holy heartbreak.

Because there is 

something sacred

about truth

finally spoken aloud.

Something holy

about women

refusing to carry shame

that was never theirs.

Her grief and mine

sat down together.

Her son who never grew.

My son who lives loudly.

Both of them

evidence.

We were never crazy.

Never dramatic.

Never the problem.

We were women

who were pushed.

And yet

we stand.

Not in a Kingdom Hall.

Not at the bottom of the stairs.

Not beneath his shadow.

We stand in recognition.

In shared story.

In the quiet, trembling miracle

of finding each other

after surviving the same fall.