Once Upon a Time in My Oceania

  Healing isn't pretty.  It's raw, it's emotional and it can be downright messy.  Often, healing is portrayed as moving on from a terrible time in our life and into a new happy, thriving chapter, filled with smiles and freedom. Rarely do we see the messy parts–the set backs and mistakes, frustration and tears, the moments where we're convinced we've gone backwards on our journey instead of forward. So often, the actual process, which is complicated, isn't highlighted. We only see the crushed victim, struggling to keep their head above the rising water and then suddenly jump to the part where they're a survivor and thriving on the shoreline. We don't talk enough about the swim, the days and nights of being able to only tread water, fighting to stay afloat. We show the rescue, but not the recovery. In many ways, the hardest part is starting that recovery and being committed to learning ways to help us process the old and navigate the new. It's about re...

One of the most wonderful times of the year is upon us and signs of the season are everywhere we look. I found myself happily smiling at holiday lights decorating neighborhood homes and the brightly lit Christmas trees gleaming through their front windows. I love wreaths on their front doors and the warm, homey feeling I imagine is just beyond them. The holidays are supposed to be joyous, filled with loved ones and the love they bring to you on display just like those decorations. And although many do find that to be true this time of year, sadly, not all do. Cult survivors can be that exception and some don't have a home to go back to for the holidays.  This can be for many reasons and through this blog post I'm going to try and tackle some of those possible reasons. I hope that by doing so others will open their hearts and consider survivors of all stripes, and the difficulties they may face during what is supposed to be the jolliest time of year. Shunning Shunning is sadly c...

  I cried today. Bawled. Snotty nose, swollen red eyes, and shoulders that shook cried. What caused this intense reaction? Christmas cards. I thought 6 years later I'd be stronger than this. That it wouldn't bother me as much. That distance and its friend time would have helped heal this old wound. I also naively considered the fact that this year my life has had much more happiness, new and unexpected changes, that were also welcome and that those things would lessen the sting. I thought I had grown and yes, I know I have in some major ways.  But the truth is it still hurts. So I'm writing this. To my family who I won't be seeing this holiday season because I left the Church: I think we all secretly dreaded the holidays long before I left. The stress to be perfect, to add up to others' depictions of good Christian families was tough. There was always so, so much pressure. Or maybe that was just me feeling it. But, I think we always knew that, although there were la...

With all the dizzying aspects of leaving a cult, I couldn't imagine a life of happiness and fulfillment, let alone a life where kind souls would enter my life and change it for the better. I was concentrating solely on the confusion, grief and surviving of all the years where I was owned by a manipulative and controlling force that was my past church and the movement it belonged to for some time. I was unprepared, so unprepared, and my personal circumstances only complicated my exit and the eventual few years afterwards. I'm thankful I left, but for me, leaving was just another traumatic experience to process. I'd go on to shut down, crippled by that grief, reeling from years and years of living in a constant state of survival mode. To say it was a dark time in my life would be an understatement. I once told someone dear to me that I was like the dead just walking around. I just existed. It felt like a lonely existence, too.  Coming back from trauma isn't an easy task. ...

  I was taught to never lie. Never exaggerate, never utter a falsehood, never "bear false witness." I, like many raised in the strict world of fundamentalism, feared telling anything but the truth. Unless it was a means to avoid punishment, I was that person who would stand by what I perceived as truth. And yet, looking back I found that wasn't always the case. There were many lies I told during my time entrenched in Christian Fundamentalism and often those lies were lies I told to my very self.  These lies had extreme power over me. Power over my actions, my view of the greater world and the isolated one that was my only life. Many of these lies were lies I'd utter for only my ears to hear as I pondered my current circumstances in that environment and how I was unhappy and feeling helpless. Often, I felt like a captive more than a Christian.  These were the lies I told myself in fundamentalism... I'm all alone. I'm the problem. I have to stay. Every church is...

Living life with chronic illness comes with its own struggles to overcome, along with the added reality that your new "normal" may look entirely different. Of all the many things a person faces when confronted with an unexpected health condition, the questions of Why me? Why this? What did I do to deserve my health failing? can often be visited in the mind of a chronically ill patient. I grew up in an environment that always knew the answer to these questions: God made you sick.  Witnessing a manner of all illness afflict many an individual during my time in the Christian Fundamentalist movement, I don't have to traverse long down a path in my mind to recall the reasons why God would allow sickness in a follower's life. It was always one of two reasons: A trial for a believer to overcome and bring God the glory once they were healed, or the direct result of an unrepentant sin committed.  The latter reasoning tended to be the most widely accepted opinion in-group. It s...

If leaving a high control group was difficult, the steps afterwards are equally difficult, and trust me, they are. Taking that scary first step out will be the hardest and most emotional decision you will ever face, even if it is always the absolute right decision in leaving a controlling group, church or relationship. But the days after successfully making that exit are just the beginning of a long and sometimes tedious journey.  Recently during a conversation on trying to navigate life post-cult, the statement was made that every decision, every obstacle is a mountain. Something simple and ordinary to most individuals can seem as a mountain and one that, in order to move forward, a cult survivor has no choice but to climb. I've climbed a lot of mountains in my life. I've made that heartbreaking feat of surviving abuse, of fighting for a sense of justice. I told an unsavory character just recently, "I stared down my abuser at 12 years old, you don't...

This piece isn't a theology debate to try and change your mind on LGBTQ rights. It's not even necessarily a conversation starter on the issue. No, it's just a simple post on how sometimes love becomes stronger after years of hate. It's about choosing love when hate hurts your soul. This is just me sharing a bit of my heart with this post. If you asked those closest to me what is something I am passionate about, it's likely you would hear something along the lines of seeing the world through a more logical lense. The thing is they would also likely add doing this passionately...which is where my putting "logic" into practice can look more like diving head first in understanding something I will soon become passionate about. The thing is this process can very much be a gradual occurrence. Even years in the making. It was this pattern that becoming LGBTQ Affirming came about. First, I did not know whether I believed "homosexuality" was a...

My past faith was a hateful one, and, it taught me that to hate was not only sometimes necessary, it was holy. A holy hate could look like many things; in some cases, it was quite obvious, but other times, subtle. I know my experiences with the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church wasn't just an isolated experience. It is no big secret, at least among formers, that racism is alive and well in the movement. Whether it was the strict rules and bans on interracial dating, or the very limited leadership roles for people of color, covert racism was a constant undertone. Not always was the racism covert, however. Bob Jones University, among many other IFB colleges, had strict rules in regards to race and their students. Then, there was J. Frank Norris regarded as the Father of Fundamentalism and the founder of the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement. Norris had known connections to the Ku Klux Klan's top leader of that time in Texas, with the man receiving The Klan...

Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence I can't say I ever witnessed a happy marriage in my time in fundamentalism. Not one couple comes to mind over those twenty-one years where I feel were a relationship to look up to, to use as an example of what to look for in a future partner. The relationships I witnessed were often replicas of each other, with the power dynamics of each one appearing very much the same. The first thing I automatically think of is the fact men called the shots, even for their own wives. Very rarely (if ever) did I witness a woman making a decision without the greenlight by their husband. I knew wives who couldn't even go on a grocery run without their husband's permission. Every step had to be approved by their husband or else it was a step out of line. The inability to make decisions for themselves like where to go, what to wear, how to style their hair or how to apply their make-up are just a few examples. Women were admonished for simple things...

Me as a child. IFB was all I knew.                                   I didn't ask to be born into the world of Christian Fundamentalism and certainly if I had a say in the matter, I'd never choose the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement to be the only world I knew. Although those are not my regrets to bear because I was just a child, I still grieve the years that I feel were stolen from me by a choice not made of my own choosing. I often explain it like this...my parents, who were my introduction to that world, were converted but I was conditioned.  From birth, I was groomed for a life in that movement, taught that to leave could even mean the death of myself or someone I loved. I was never meant to leave, never meant to have a life outside of the IFB Church. I was to marry an IFB man and produce more third generation Independent Fundamental Baptists in my family. I was ...

Dear Friend, No, we haven't met, although there's a good chance that if you're reading this, we've lived very similar lives. That being said, I'm not going to pretend that, even with the similarities, I know what you have been through. I just want to say I see you. You, who are struggling, carrying the heavy burden of indecision, of fear, of the unknown. You, who feel miserable, wondering when that started and where that misery came from. I see you. You, who are tired, downtrodden, forcing your head to stay above water. Confused on why The Master of The Sea has even allowed you to start drowning in the first place. You, who feel guilty, ashamed and discouraged. Wondering, why you just can't be happy, serve your god, be a Christian. You, who past memories haunt, are relived every day. The wounds of abuse still feel so raw and you wonder when they'll ever start to scab over, scar. Heal. I see you. And I weep with you. Y...