Rejection cuts straight to my bones. Perhaps because it's a demon I've been fighting for decades. So when a letter arrived in the mail a few days ago discouraging me from submitting a full grant proposal to a major funder in the religion news space — the reason being that we fall into "a very competitive funding environment" — it landed harder than it should have.
That reaction isn't really about a foundation, or even about my nonprofit religion newsroom: FāVS News. It's older than both. I've spent most of my life fighting to be seen by people who made it clear, in their own ways, that I wasn't worth staying for.
My father left before I turned 2. I don't have memories of him leaving, only the void it left behind. Somewhere along the way, without fully realizing it, I started building a life aimed at him — not toward reconciliation, but toward proof. I wanted to become someone he would regret not knowing.
My mother stayed longer, but she left too, eventually. She's a devout believer whose faith teaches that being gay is not just a sin, but something akin to murder in God's eyes. When I came out to her, that theology didn't bend. In her view, I had refused to obey God's law, and that refusal was reason enough to walk away from her own child.
She never supported my work as a religion journalist, either — the same faith that couldn't hold space for who I am couldn't make room for how I chose to write about faith. So there's a second version of the same want tangled up in the first: I want her to see what this work has become, how it's made a difference to others, and regret not being part of it. I want her to look at the life I've built — as a journalist, and as a gay woman who didn't disappear when she asked me to — and regret walking away from both.
Funders declining FāVS shouldn't feel like either of those things. But some weeks, it does. When a letter says we're not worth the investment, some old, familiar part of me hears it as a personal rejection. That part of me responds the only way it knows how: by trying harder to prove them wrong.
Chasing approval
This isn't the first time. Over the years, FāVS has also been turned down by Innovia, Press Forward, Report for America, the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund and countless others. Different funders, different stated reasons — but landing in the same old place. Closer to home, it's been much the same. Local institutions we've covered fairly and generously haven't always returned that support when we've come asking.
Buddhist teaching holds that attachment is often the root of suffering — and attachment to approval may be one of the most persistent forms it takes. It hands our sense of peace to people who may never choose to give it. I recognize that pattern in myself: handing my sense of worth to my father, to my mother — twice over, once for who I love and once for the work I do — and now to whichever funder holds the next envelope.
I think this feeling is familiar to many people in the LGBTQ community. So many of us spend years chasing approval from someone who left, or withheld it, or who made love and acceptance conditional on becoming someone we're not. We build careers, build chosen families, chase achievements — while quietly hoping it will finally be enough for the person who decided we weren't worth the trouble of understanding.
In Buddhist teaching, there's an image that has stuck with me: The moon remains whole whether or not clouds are covering it. On overcast nights, we might not be able to see it, but its wholeness was never actually in question — only our ability to see it clearly. I think that's the truer thing about worth in general: It doesn't wax and wane based on who's paying attention, or whose theology has room for you.
My worth was never actually contingent on my father staying, or my mother approving of my faith reporting — or my marriage, or my life — or a funder saying yes. It just felt that way, because the people whose validation I wanted most happened to be the ones who won't give it.
I don't have this fully sorted out. I still want the "yes." I want my mom — and now these funders — to look at who I am and what FāVS has become and regret walking away from both. But I'm starting to understand that wanting proof and needing it are two different things. One is ambition. The other is an old wound, still asking to be healed.
Maybe that's the real work in front of me — not proving anything to anyone, but learning to separate the two. To keep chasing grants and telling the stories that matter, and to keep living openly as who I am, because I believe in both, not because I'm still trying to win over people who already made their choice. The moon doesn't argue with the clouds. It just keeps being whole, waiting for the sky to clear on its own time.
Tracy Simmons is an award-winning journalist specializing in religion reporting and digital entrepreneurship. She is a Professor of Journalism at WSU and executive director at FaVS News, a digital journalism start-up covering religion news and commentary in the Pacific Northwest. Learn more at: https://favs.news/
