Thank you all. I have lost so much. I have gained much more.

[*Deidre*]

Losing my religion, has meant losing the respect of a many number of colleagues, it would seem.

This last week was particularly onerous and melancholic for me. I have lost friends to ignorance and hostility, being unable to salvage any semblance of a former relationship. There were even some who verbally remonstrated with me in front of various others when in the staff room. The Headteacher and the board had obviously violated the terms of the agreement, but I was determined to preserve some semblance of dignity and so refused to enter into back and forth mud slinging.

There are many within my school who have isolated me, as though I were some kind of pariah. They are simply unable to reconcile my newly acquired beliefs with that of theirs and some have even ventured as far as to condemn me.

I have, much to my consternation and bitter disappointment, learned a great many things about who my true friends have been; were and are.

This fortnight will have been one of the most volatile and unpredictable of my entire life, but still I emerge as a better person as I have learned a great deal about my resilience; my determination and my ultimate ambition to preserve the integrity of my principles.

It should go without saying that THIS community has sustained me throughout some of the most traumatic and life-altering weeks of my life thus far.

I am always grateful for the love, the support and the advice that I have received here and I will forever be indebted to a community of like-minded people who embraced me and gave me the confidence to be the person I have always wanted to be.

You have given me my pride.

You have given me my integrity.

You have given me my respect.

You are an astonishing group of people.

I thank you with all my heart - as do my wife and children. We are indebted to you. We love you.

Aww, but they were showing you such Christian love? lol Didn't you feel it?

I'm happy you shared this, and you are on your way to living authentically. If a god exists, I believe that's what he/it would want, anyway. Not people fighting and ostracizing people on ''his behalf.''

I too had a falling out with a friend, recently. She told me should could no longer be my friend, as if this 'change' in me happened over night? I've been on this path of sorts, for a while, now.

But, these people were never your friends. Friends with conditions, aren't friends at all.

The road will continue to get a little harder, before it gets easier. It isn't easy to ''lose one's religion.'' But, you didn't lose anything, you gained ...your life.

Hang in there, everything is as it should be. :=)