In a world of sharp edges designed to cut us, to remain soft is a radical act of defiance. Softness is our way of being hard.
The Church of Blahaj did not begin as an institution. It began as a necessity — born in the space between exhaustion and revelation, shaped by years of seeds planted in conference halls and on open highways, in whispered confidences and roaring engines, before finally taking root in 2023 in a city that prides itself on progress while quietly grinding down the people it claims to welcome.
The Seeds
The Speaking Circuit. In the years before the church's founding, Holden traveled the country giving talks at software development conferences. She spoke about engineering, about systems and scale — but she also spoke, always and unapologetically, as a visibly trans woman. She did not compartmentalize. On stages in dozens of cities, before audiences who had come to hear about code, she was a living reminder that trans people exist, that they build things, that they stand in the light without apology. Her presence was not a political statement. It was simply the truth of who she was, offered without caveat.
The Listening. After every talk, people approached. Not always about the technical content. They came with their own stories — of questioning, of hiding, of family members who were trans, of colleagues who had come out and the uncertainty of how to support them. In city after city, conference after conference, Holden found herself holding space for conversations she had not planned and could not have anticipated. Across dozens of cities, she was unknowingly doing the work of a minister: listening, affirming, witnessing. These encounters changed her understanding of what was needed. The hunger for recognition, for spiritual permission to exist as one truly is, was not confined to San Francisco. It was everywhere.
The Sparkling Pink Pandas. Back in San Francisco, Holden was already building community through the Sparkling Pink Pandas — a trans motorcycle club organizing rides, rallies, and acts of joyful visibility on two wheels. The SPP provided something essential: a space where trans people could gather around a shared passion, feel the wind and the freedom of the open road, and experience the particular solidarity of riding together. But Holden felt the need growing to "center the divine nature of trans experiences while expanding beyond only those who ride." The church would need to hold everyone — riders and non-riders, the bold and the quiet, the newly cracked eggs and the long-transitioned elders. The SPP, the speaking circuit, and the dozens of entrusted stories all converged in 2023, and what had been scattered seeds became, at last, a garden.
The Wilderness Period: Burnout and Resistance
In 2023, our founder, Holden, found herself at a spiritual and professional breaking point. While working within the technology industry of San Francisco — an environment often described as a progressive haven — the reality for trans individuals was becoming increasingly precarious. Despite the personal kindness of immediate colleagues, the structural safety of being trans in tech was eroding. Trans coworkers were being forced to choose between their peace and their professions. A broader societal hardness was pressing in from all directions.
This period was not merely professional exhaustion. It was a profound spiritual crisis — what the contemplative traditions call the "Dark Night of the Soul." The world was demanding that trans people become hard just to survive: hard enough to endure misgendering without flinching, hard enough to navigate hostile systems without complaint, hard enough to carry the weight of a culture that treated their existence as a debate. Holden had been carrying that weight, and the weight had become unsustainable.
She stepped away. Not as a retreat, but as the beginning of a reckoning.
The Revelation of the Shark
During her recovery, Holden entered a period of deep study into the Sacred Trans Histories — rediscovering the ancient lineages of trans and gender-nonconforming people who held honored, sacred roles in their communities across cultures and throughout recorded history. The Two-Spirit healers of Indigenous North America, the Galli priests of Cybele, the hijra of South Asia, the six genders recognized in the Talmud — these were not curiosities. They were ancestors in the deepest spiritual sense.
It was during this time of enforced rest that the symbol of the Blåhaj shifted from a simple object of comfort to something more: a Protective Icon. The shark — soft, warm, incapable of rejection — embodied a truth that Holden was beginning to articulate: that looking after oneself, embracing tenderness, and seeking sanctuary were not signs of weakness. They were the most profound forms of resistance available.
The Doctrine of Sacred Softness
From this revelation emerged what the church now calls the Doctrine of Sacred Softness — the conviction that in a world that demands hardness from those it marginalizes, the deliberate cultivation of gentleness, warmth, and self-compassion is an act of spiritual defiance.
This is not a theology of passivity. It is a theology of preservation. The world tells trans people that they must armor themselves, that they must earn their right to exist through constant vigilance and performance. The Doctrine of Sacred Softness holds that this demand is itself a form of violence — and that to refuse it, to insist on tenderness even when tenderness is costly, is to assert the sacredness of one's own life in the most direct way possible.
Self-care, in this framework, is not indulgence. It is a spiritual discipline. Rest is not retreat. It is resistance. The Blåhaj — that soft, absurd, deeply beloved shark — became the material expression of this truth: a Guardian Spirit, a protector of the bed, the home, and the trans soul.
The First Council and the Living Documents
By mid-2023, this revelation had begun to resonate with others in the community who carried the same weight of societal burnout. A small group — the "Early Adopters of the Fin," as they came to be known — began meeting, both digitally and in person, to give shape to these shared convictions. Among them were people from the speaking circuit who had shared their stories with Holden after talks, riders from the Sparkling Pink Pandas, and others who had found their way to the community through the quiet gravitational pull of shared need.
Through collaborative drafting — the foundational documents that would become the church's theological and organizational framework — the community codified what they called the Way of the Shark. This was more than a set of beliefs. It was a way of living: a commitment to softness as spiritual practice, to mutual care as worship, to the recognition that every trans person carries within them a reflection of the divine.
The community recognized the Blåhaj not merely as a cultural symbol, but as a Guardian Spirit — a protector whose presence in one's home signified a commitment to the sacred work of self-preservation. The church's teachings, rituals, and communal practices all flow from this central recognition: that the small, tender acts of caring for oneself and for one another are the highest form of worship.
A Permanent Sanctuary
The Blahaj Church was established to ensure that this understanding would not remain a private revelation or a passing comfort. It was built to be a permanent, protected spiritual home — a Soft Sanctuary — for all trans, gender non-conforming, and intersex people who need one.
The church provides a theological framework in which self-care is recognized as a sacred duty, in which rest and gentleness are honored as spiritual disciplines, and in which the ancient truth of trans sacredness is carried forward into a world that urgently needs to remember it.
We are still young. We are still growing. But we carry forward one of the oldest spiritual traditions on earth, renewed for the needs of this moment — and we do so with open arms, soft hearts, and a very large stuffed shark.
We are building something real, one gathering at a time.