UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 8, 2015

**Listen to the StoryCorps interview here**

A clergy abuse survivor, former nun, Catholic elementary school principal, lesbian, gay rights activist, competitive ballroom dancer, and author all walk into a bar …

The “crowd” is just one person: Mary Dispenza. Her story is compelling—rich and complex in the relationships between how our society views sexuality, the roles of women, organized religion, activism, and child sexual abuse.

I’ve known Mary for years, but I had the ultimate honor of interviewing her for StoryCorps in 2014. You can listen to the piece here. We talk about how sexuality—as defined by others—has been a recurrent theme in her life. We also talked about family, love and loss. We both cried.

A blog post can’t do justice to Mary’s intricacy. You can’t talk about her abuse without talking about why…