Hi, Emily! Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before we get started?

Here's some quick summary info:
- Emily, 32, trans (I am a literal infant when it comes to being a woman, only two months old!!), gay
- Grandparents and extended family are all fairly religious (I think everyone is Lutheran), though neither my parents or my mom's siblings are particularly religious.

Both my parents don't believe in God, so I was raised as an atheist. We had a Christmas tree, but my parents were definitely upfront about the fact that they thought religions weren't true. I was the kid who worked to get us to stop doing a toy drive for Samaritan's Purse (which uses the toys to evangelize to poor children). I still think that's a wildly inappropriate charity for a public school.

Neither of my parents spoke much about their faith. My father, who grew up in Paris, was raised Catholic and had been an altar boy. He occasionally spoke to my brother and me about his belief in God but he was profoundly anti-clerical and did not want us to go to church or to receive a religious education.

I grew up Catholic -- all my dad's siblings have saint's names, and my Nana refused to speak to my mum for a while after my brother was born because she spelled Mathew with one t so it didn't count as a saint's name. This is what happens when Irish and Italian Catholics marry each other.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote about his conversion to Islam in Al-Jazeera yesterday, and it's well worth checking out (especially if, like me, you cannot get enough of conversion narratives).