Once Upon a Time in My Oceania

  They told me to wait. Don’t give your body till your wedding night. After that, you can never stop giving it. Guard your purity. Guard your testimony. Guard yourself. Also, be the guard for all men. Protect your testimony and theirs, too. Help them not lust. Be a shield for their eyes. Do not put on that skirt, that top, that color. Do not tempt them with certain looks, certain laughs, your secret charms that are also secret to you. Prevent sin at all costs. Do not be a temptress for your fathers, brothers, and brothers-in-Christ to stumble. Do not flirt, bat your eye lashes, use a soft and sweet voice unless you’re obedient. Men are unable to control natural urges. Your job is to help them out. All the while, women were never helped. We, women, were responsible for every crime involving men… except it was never considered a crime. It’s just how men are built, after all. Purity Culture only benefits the patriarchy.  

  Last month, I celebrated one of the happiest days of my very life. I got to marry a wonderful, safe, and fantastic man. I got to do the things I had always wanted to when I envisioned my wedding day . I was the first of my family to have a secular wedding, something I’m not only honored by but treasured deeply. Through hard work and tears, I am making a life that I want. It’s so far from my upbringing but it’s the truest and most authentic of lives I’ll ever have, and it’s brought immense peace to me. My wedding day was not held in a church. While I have felt the uncharacteristically comfort within a house of worship before, I would not say sacred vows to my partner in a system of abuse. I also had to look after myself and practice self-care—I have chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from what the Church has done to my body, brain, and soul. My C-PTSD has been managed really well for over a year and I need to keep that going. And of course, my fiancé and I did not want to have...

  What is peace? If you asked me as a fundamentalist, I would have answered “a peace of that passeth all understanding,” which because it was far beyond understanding, I never truly did, well, actually, understand it. I never felt peace in abuse. I never had piece of mind either. I just got through it. I wanted to have the capability to experience the peace that was preached but now I know it was simply not feasible in that environment. For many years, I was led to believe that the issue was with me, not the church. If I did everything exactly as I was taught, as the man of God proclaimed, as the Bible “clearly” stated, then, I would no doubt have that peace they always talked about. But I did not. I felt like an anomaly. The odd one, that I was one that had deep wounds that I had caused to myself where peace evaded. The irony is that I was always very confident in that world. I knew that I knew the teachings with my heart and my head. I knew the rules and believed in following...

I've been working really hard to make a beautiful life for myself. As any trauma survivor knows all too well, rebuilding (or in my case, building from scratch) a life that has seen abuse is super intimidating. In spite of this, many survivors do cross over into thriving territory and look back on how much strength it took to get to the top of a mountain, only to climb one after another in that one's wake. I have certainly climbed a few mountains. Currently, I'm climbing a couple personally. Those that love me cheer me on with each step, and I'm forever grateful and thankful that they are in my corner. Those that have seen this fight in me for healing know just how much harm I had experienced. There are many layers to the harm, which is difficult to even separate when so many aspects contributed to that hurt. There is the childhood abuse that lasted many years, the spiritual abuse that went on until I was a young adult, and the long and tedious part of my journey where...

  I’m not sure I’ve really deep dived and shared about what it was like in the weeks of leaving my IFB church. The events that led me to that decision were years in the making and very traumatic. Still to this day, there is a part of me that is still baffled that I actually made it out. It didn’t come cost free though. I lost a lot, but gained, in many ways, much more. That last sentence is very hard for me to write, because leaving a church, especially one that your entire existence was based around, means you leave a complete lifetime behind. At the time, I started transitioning into the real world in some ways. I had started listening to music of the time instead of just the hymns and Southern Gospel I was raised on. I started wearing jeans sometimes in place of my long skirts or awkward culottes, albeit terrified church people would see. I wore makeup but was constantly ostracized for it. Those were some surface things. Down deep, I was never prepared. I was still very awkw...

  Trigger Warning: Abuse, religious trauma, childhood abuse, sexual abuse I openly share about a lot of difficult things that have occurred in my life as someone born and raised in a toxic religious environment, that I feel fits the criteria of a cult. I don’t throw that term around haphazardly. I’m careful for a few reasons, including trying to prevent misinformation from being sent out into cyberspace and also because my experiences, like many other cult survivors out there are real stories that should never be taken lightly. When you are one that hears a lot of tough accounts of those who have survived trauma, it is easy to be desensitized. This is part coping, part exposure. But down deep, compassion and empathy are there. You understand what it’s like to walk in the often-unique shoes of those who recognize that there are two worlds if you survived a cult: the real one and the cult’s. I was in a cult. Like I said, I share that publicly. And like many other cult survivors of ...

  I knew it was possible that the new people in my life may stumble upon what I write on religious abuse, trauma, and cults. I also knew that they could possibly learn more about me than I was ready to share just yet. When I first started writing a blog, my articles, or social media posts on the abuse I survived, specifically in the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement, I didn’t worry too much about that particular aspect of being vulnerable about my experiences, on the internet, no less. I had a goal in mind, and I followed it. I started writing, raising my voice when I could about the things I cared about in the moment. I was all about “giving the damn” for once. It was with my first real connections post-cult, especially those of the romantic and friendship variety that really brought my writing to the forefront. At first, I struggled to know how to share about my passions surrounding abuse advocacy, mental health, and especially cult awareness as they are paramount to me....

  I prayed for revival. I wept and cried, pleaded, and begged that God would send a mighty awakening in the IFB movement. At the time, I didn’t know I was praying for the Independent Fundamental Baptists; only that I was praying for Christians. I was taught real Christians were independent, fundamental and Baptist though. We were the “saved” ones, the separated, and sanctified. And because of those things and the teachings I grew up with (not to mention the fear), believed with my whole heart. I took the “man of God’s” words seriously and I did as was told. So, I prayed. I prayed God would revive us. I never got to see a mighty revival overcome the IFB. Not over the years I was there. I struggled to understand why that was the case when so many of us had to have taken that seriously and followed the rules. Before I left, I realized it would never happen. When I heard that I and other young people were at fault for the absence of revival, I felt betrayed. It wounded me and others ...