Converting Kassie

4/19/2025

I never thought that I’d end up where I am.

I never thought I’d reach 18, 20, yet alone actually live long enough to turn 30.

I never expected to be happy. I expected that severe depression and anxiety that plagued my childhood and teenage years to stay that way through adulthood.

Luckily for me, I made it.

I lived. I learned. I thrived.

I questioned.

Hashem knows I questioned everything.

Sexuality.

Gender.

Religion.

Who I am/was.

What I like to do.

What I want to do.

What sort of job/career I want.

Where I want to go to school.

What medical procedures/tests/medicines/treatments to try next.

And it kept coming back around to religion.

It started with leaving my childhood church.

I tried other churches. I really did but none of them fit.

I would joke that it felt like I was going to get holy water on me and burst into flames. That I felt marked as ‘other’. That everyone could see I was different.

But slowly, surely, everything kept circling back to Judaism.

It took me years of prayer, and contemplation, and thinking, and wondering and praying some more.

But I finally got to where Hashem wanted me.

I got a job at a Jewish Yeshiva.

I found a conversion program from Darshan Yeshiva.

I applied.

I got in.

I started working with a wonderful Rabbi.

I did all of that without telling my parents who I still live with.

My rabbi helped me figure out how to tell my parents.

I told them. I wrote them a letter on a Hanukkah card.

My parents accepted it easily, (so so easily), and they just want me to be happy. I’m very lucky to have them.

They told my siblings for me, and the rest of our family.

Mom still worries that I’m joining a cult.

It’d be funny if she wasn’t so worried about that.

But I feel like I’m finally where I need to be, where Hashem wants me to be in life.

I’m trusting that this is what He wants for me.

My friends support me.

My family supports me.

My coworkers support me.

I’m incredibly blessed.

The whole point of this blog is to document and share my conversion journey.

I know it won’t always be easy.

I know there will be times I doubt where I’m headed.

I know I’ll eventually face antisemitism.

But I want this.

Hashem knows I really want this.

I want that connection to Hashem.

I want to worship and pray to Him.

I want to take on the mitzvahs in the Torah.

I want to be part of a community again.

I want a religious home again.

I want to learn Hebrew, to be able to read it and say the prayers in Hebrew and English.

Hashem’s leading me to it, and I am going to take the opportunities.

It’s not always going to be pretty, or easy, but I’m kinda used to that. I can deal with it. With hard, and ugly, and difficulties and trying times.

I want this more than just about anything, and Hashem help me, I’m going to make it happen.

I’ve already taken the first steps.

And I’ll keep taking the next steps, small steps, until I get to where I want and need to be.

So join me on this journey.

It’ll be interesting to see how I change. And I know I will change.

But not all change is bad.

Not all change has to be sudden.

Most will probably be gradual, and slow, but that’s how you build new habits and change your life.

Watch me change.