More About Dr Waun
By K.J. Bryant
The Point North Magazine
June 2006
Since childhood, Renee Waun has had to deal with loud voices. Most telling her things she didn’t want to hear. How do you shield yourself from the abusive messages of your own parents? How do you quell your husband’s verbal assaults and not see them as confirmation of what you’ve heard all your life? And how do you filter out society’s constant reminders that as a woman, you’re never quite enough?
Waun’s answer was to keep listening for a voice that would finally tell her something good about herself. And when she heard it, she knew life would never be the same. It was “the call” she wasn’t expecting.
Waun was minding her business in church during an ordination ceremony. “I was sitting in the choir at the First United Methodist Church of McKeesport watching this middle aged woman kneeling as she was ordained and then all of a sudden, it was the weirdest thing. I heard this guttural roar from within, ‘You will be ordained. This will be you.’ Someone later told me, ‘Renee, you know that voice was in your head, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Well of course it was in my head. The important thing was it Reverend Renee Waun was there at all.’”
Renee Waun was 37, a wife of 17 years, mother of two daughters and respected teacher. She was not sure what to do with this new voice. “It came out of the blue. All I could think was, how the heck am I going to tell my husband?”
Like so many women, her story of reinvention is epic. Too big for a small column. And yet even the highlights are compelling and inspiring. She heeded the call. In seminary she discovered her own voice and began to see herself for the first time – smart, opinionated and pretty. Renee Waun was a swan.
Waun became a minister and for seventeen years served the First United Methodist Church of Pittsburgh in Shadyside. All the while, she kept listening to voices and heeding the calls to action. Write the book. Leave the marriage. Become a Unitarian. Identify as a feminist. Waun, 62, now serves three Unitarian churches in Murrysville, Ligonier and the Ohio Valley.
When asked how she views her transformation over the years, Waun smiles. “It’s never too late. Every moment is your powerful now and you can always choose again in this moment. What’s most important to me is being authentic and being aligned with who I really am. Everything else flows.”
Reprinted by permission. K.J. Bryant writes about women’s transformations in Journeys: 50,000 Miles of Wise Women. Join the journey. Visit www.kjbryant.com to learn more. If you or someone you know has a story of reinvention, contact Bryant at: [email protected]