Ten years ago, I was planning my escape.
It wasn’t a quick jump out the window in the middle of the night. I didn’t get away by running desperately down the street (although I had done that once—really twice—before).
Leaving my parents’ house took a long time—years if you count the time it took for me to realize I was being emotionally, spiritually, and financially abused…
Read MoreI know I’m not the only one who finds the stories of faith deconstruction, of surviving cults and high-control groups to be healing. Memoirs, documentaries, blogs, films—no matter the format, I think telling our stories is invaluable in our collective effort to move away from harmful communities and relationships and toward healing.
I recently watched the limited series Under the Banner of Heaven on Hulu—almost all of it in one sitting because it resonated with me so very much I simply couldn’t do anything else. And there’s this moment in the last episode that I can’t stop thinking about…
Read MoreWhen I first heard about the leaked opinion on the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I was surprised by the bodily reaction I had. I could feel the ache of adrenaline in the back of my neck. My stomach rolled. My thoughts scattered, then focused on what this ruling would mean.
I was raised to be “pro-life,” taught that abortion is evil and that this was The Moral Issue of our time. The overturning of Roe was always the goal, according to my parents and my church.
I was also not taught anything about the concepts of consent or bodily autonomy, or what sex is or how birth control works. I understood that I would learn about sex when I got married and that birth control was a sinful attempt to “play God.”…
Read MoreI’ve had Jane Austen on my mind lately. It feels like over-the-top, “anti-historical” shows and films are having a moment, and while I love The Great and am entertained by Bridgerton, I’m not quite sure what to think about the new film Persuasion, Austen’s classic turned into a surprisingly comedic romance.
The story of Persuasion has always stuck with me because of its melancholy, its despair, its regret. I spent much of my early adulthood building my own regrets and learning that a lack of independence usually means disappointment and unhappiness, so the story spoke to me. I could relate.
This new adaptation takes a lighthearted approach to the story, making Anne into a comedic commentator on her own mistakes as she frequently breaks the fourth wall to explain her feelings. I don’t hate it as much as some do, but it’s not the subtle character development and quiet desperation that I relished as an eighteen-year-old stay-at-home daughter…
Read MoreA couple weekends ago, I attended the second day of the Restore Conference outside of Chicago. I hadn’t really planned to go until I heard that some friends from Tears of Eden were attending, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see them as they’ve been an important part of my healing this past year.
I will be honest: I was nervous about the conference though. I recognized many of the names on the speaker list, which told me that the conference would address spiritual abuse and other abuse in the Christian church, topics I’ve been researching and writing about for a few years now. But the tagline—“A Conference Restoring Faith in God and the Church”—didn’t quite resonate with me and my own journey after abuse…
Read MoreYou liked me as a quiet, meek, first-to-clear-the-table, last-to-speak-up girl. You liked me voiceless.
You wanted me submissive, obedient—powerless—and happy about it.
You told me to just keep submitting because it would all turn out okay. You said God would work everything out for good, but then you went home and minded your own business because you aren’t God…
Read MoreFor most of my life, my story was dictated to me. God had already planned my days, and if I wanted to honor him, I was supposed to follow my father’s interpretation of the Bible in order to fulfill God’s plan.
I was always a secondary character in this story. One could say the protagonist was God, the controller of the universe, but since he’s invisible, his stand-in was my father, eventually to be replaced by my future husband.
I remember once as a twenty-four-year-old, when I was trying to assert myself, I was told, “You can think whatever you want, but you can’t act on it.” That statement encapsulated the essence of the spiritual abuse I was experiencing…
Read MoreWe never called our churches “fundamentalist.” We were Reformed. We were Presbyterian. We were Calvinist. We thought we were the true Christians.
Now that I’ve left, I use new language that I would never have used before to describe my childhood church and the homeschooling world I grew up in: abusive, high-control, legalistic, cult, fundamentalist. These words help me explain what really happened. But of course, they weren’t words that we would have used for ourselves back then . . .
Read MoreWhen I was asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say, “I’m going to be a stay-at-home wife and mother.” This wasn’t what I really wanted to be, but I believed that it was my destiny and that I had no other option.
As I got older, I was trained for this future, and I was told that after I graduated high school, I would stay in my parents’ home as a stay-at-home daughter until I got married. All my friends from church were given the same expectations. This was the norm in the Christian patriarchy movement.
Daughters were treated differently from sons because we were helpers in training. We were supposed to be dependent on men, protected by men. Any independence of thought or action was shut down . . .
Read MoreWhen I was little, I used to fold pieces of printer paper, staple them together, and write “nature books” in the pages. I loved watching Reading Rainbow because I could learn about new books to borrow from the library. I couldn’t wait till bedtime when my mom read me stories before I fell asleep. In short, I’ve always been obsessed about reading and writing and stories, so it’s probably no surprise that I now work in publishing and spend much of my spare time reading and writing.
For the past few years, I’ve been working on creative nonfiction essays, threads of my life in the Christian patriarchy movement as a stay-at-home daughter. And now I’m starting to weave these threads together into a memoir. It’s not finished quite yet, but I’m getting close. I can feel it coming together. Finally.
Which brings me to some exciting news . . .
Read MoreYou never know who will be impacted by your story.
More than ten years ago, I was a stay-at-home daughter, waiting around for a man to marry me and wandering in Borders bookstore looking for something to read in the meantime.
I was about to leave the store when a book with the image of a girl’s face stood out to me. The book was called Paper Towns. I’d never heard of it, but something about it made me know I needed to bring it home . . .
Read MoreWhen I was a child, I understood the world through a set of absolute rules that required absolute obedience. I heard these rules at home and at church, and I was very good at telling them to the neighbor kids. I was called a “goody two-shoes,” but I didn’t feel too offended because at least I was “good.” I desperately wanted to be good. And to me, that meant following the rules without question.
I can look back now and recognize that my life was controlled by religious fundamentalism—in my case, a Christian ideology framed by a rigid, literal interpretation of the Bible, which I was told was inerrant and completely transferrable to our modern lives.
Being controlled by religious fundamentalism or a high-demand group is a little like living in a very small, dark box . . .
Read MoreTo my thirteen-year-old self.
You probably can’t imagine twenty years into the future, but here I am, remembering you as if the past two decades were hardly any time at all. And yet, I hardly recognize you.
You were likely up early that day because you were an over-achieving homeschooler who wanted to get her vocabulary homework out of the way before breakfast. And when your parents called you in to watch the news after the first tower was hit, you didn’t understand something so devastating as the violence you witnessed in real time. You thought it was a joke.
I cringe to even write that, but I know now that you were in shock. You were processing that the world wasn’t quite as predictable or safe as you wanted to believe . . .
Read MoreI remember being taught that women were created to be under men, to be their helpers, to find their purpose only through the purpose of their fathers or husbands. The Old Testament served as a foundation for this kind of teaching: Eve was created after Adam because Adam needed a helper. Eve also led Adam into sin and was cursed with always having a “desire” for her husband. This phrasing was written in a different language thousands of years ago, but still Eve’s curse was translated to mean modern-day feminism in the religious world I grew up in.
It’s easier to go along with sexism and misogyny than it is to speak up for yourself, especially when you’ve been indoctrinated into a patriarchal system that doesn’t have any safety net for those who are abused, neglected, hurt, or questioning. It’s easier to live under Eve’s curse, accept your fate as a female to be passed from father to husband as if you are property.
I only knew what I was told, and any outside information was strictly filtered or banned. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Read MoreWhen I first left the Christian patriarchy movement and moved to Michigan, I knew that I wanted to work, but I didn’t know much at all about how to get a job. As a stay-at-home daughter, I hadn’t been allowed to work outside the home because that would mean being under submission to a man who wasn’t my father. The only thing I could do to make money was teach piano lessons from my parents’ home, which ended up being a significant reason I was able to save up enough resources to eventually leave.
In Michigan, it seemed like there were endless opportunities, but I had limited options and very limited experience. I didn’t have internet in my apartment, so I would spend my days at the library looking for job openings on the computer and submitting applications. I applied to more jobs than I could count, from retail work to babysitting jobs, anything entry level that didn’t require any college education. I got a few interviews, but I had zero practice, and I felt so inexperienced, even though I was in my mid-twenties. Another snag was that I shared a car with my husband, making it difficult to find a job flexible enough to correspond with his work schedule.
Read MoreEight years ago, I left my life as a stay-at-home daughter in the Christian Patriarchy movement.
I was struggling with depression, anxiety, and terrifying fear. My voice was silenced, and I had no agency over my life. I was not allowed to get a job outside the house, not allowed to go to college, not allowed to date. I had few friends and was mostly cut off from extended family.
The conservative Christian church I was a part of as a teenager was deeply invested in teaching strict gender roles, homeschooling as the only way to raise children, courtship instead of dating, and father-controlled families. Hate speech toward women and the LGBTQ+ community was preached from the pulpit. In this church, I learned to fear everything and to hate myself . . .
Read MoreI’ve been thinking about those of you who have lost through leaving.
Maybe you have lost your family, community, sense of safety, belonging, friends, church, or work. Maybe you feel this loss in ways you can’t share with others. Maybe you have lost everything, or what used to be your everything.
Maybe you feel like you’ve lost yourself.
Leaving can mean different things: leaving behind something or someone you care about, leaving a faith, leaving your past self in an effort to grow into who you are becoming. For me, leaving Christian patriarchy meant losing some family relationships, losing the scattered kind of community I grew up in, losing my sense of certainty, my support network.
When I left, I felt like I was losing pieces of myself, only to find that leaving was the only way to healing, to becoming more whole. . . .
Read MoreWe were told daughters need protection, daughters need help, daughters need supervision.
Daughters need fathers.
We were told a daughter is a princess, and her father is the king. It doesn’t matter if this daughter is 5 or 35 years old. She is bound to her father’s kingdom, waiting for an approved prince to marry her and become her new protector.
I was one of those stay-at-home daughters. . . .
Read MoreReading Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a little like reading a biography of my upbringing, just not the fun parts. With all that I’ve processed in the past decade, I am so thankful for this book and the work it is doing. The book untangles the web of Christian nationalism, American evangelicalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy, and if you don’t think those things are connected, then you definitely need to read it. . . .
Read MoreWe all need books that move us, change us, challenge us, enlighten us, educate us, heal us. One book that has been healing for me in my journey away from fundamentalism and spiritual abuse has been Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu. This is just one of many that have made me feel less alone in my experience, that have opened my heart to the possibility that my story is important too, that this hasn’t all been for nothing. That our experiences mean something.
When I first heard about Jennifer Mathieu, I was attending the Festival of Faith and Writing three years after leaving the stay-at-home-daughter movement, and I saw her talk in the conference program, with a description of her book mentioning Christian Patriarchy. I hadn’t heard of any fiction books about the world of fundamentalist Christianity, and I was curious to see what she had to say and what her book Devoted was about. . . .
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