The trouble with transformation.

My heart is pounding and my adrenaline is pumping. My legs feel shaky and all I want is to get out - head down, unchallenged - away from this giant auditorium full of evangelical Christians.

But I’m right at the front. A big baptism pool is inches from my feet. And my beloved little brother is on stage in the pink and blue spotlights, publicly renouncing his former self  - the self that is the personification of a holiday, the self that I love with all my heart.

I don’t like it.

Until this moment, Ben was, among other things, my partner in trauma. He is the sibling who shared a childhood of unwanted religious tourism, making various stops on our confusing journey through Catholicism Central, Spiritualism South, Judaism Junction and eventually, and most bewilderingly for me, Christianity Circus.

We comforted each other by mocking the religious zealots who seemed to see through us to our ‘sinful’ cores. If you can laugh at something, it might have less chance of hurting you. But I am not laughing now – in fact, as eyes glisten all around me with tears of joy, mine are red and ragged with grief. Because all I can think about - as Ben shares his utterly beautiful testimony and looks, frankly, the most radiantly happy I have ever seen him - is what I am losing. Who will my brother be for me, now?

This is the trouble with transformation. And possibly the piece that holds so many of us back from going for something new – we know that some folks will not like it, one bit.

Transformation is an inside job, at first. And while it’s brewing, the world around you continues on in sweet oblivion, silently reassured by your gossip fetish and rictus grin. And then it starts to show. You’ve made new commitments, they are revealed in your words, your choices, your actions; writ large on your face. Your friends and family can no longer ignore the person you are becoming. And not all of them will want to. But for those who may be realising that you’re now more about pancakes than pints (for example), your new light may cast a shadow.

Back in the auditorium, my brother plunges into the water, and I’m still in my ringside seat. His lovely girlfriend – who tends towards spiritual scepticism - sees my face and hugs me tight, whispering ‘Hannah, I don’t understand what all this is - what I do know is that Ben is changed for the good’. But what I’m witnessing here is not change. Change is a couple of throw pillows. This, here, is a side return, kitchen extension and loft conversion – forever altered. She is right, though – it does look good. I don’t want to hear it, but I find a little part of me that can - and will. And right there - in the last place I expected to find the Rothman siblings - are the seeds of a new relationship, and the shoots of my own transformation.