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.  

  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 ...

  From childhood, I was afraid of being stuck. I always cringed and felt nauseous watching Alice in Wonderland where Alice shrank and then grew tall inside that house until it exploded. I felt that my emotions and fears could be similar. There were actual instances that contributed to this fear and ones that I’m not yet ready to share with others outside of my close family and therapist. However, some instances include being locked in a room with abusive people or being tied up by those same abusers just for their entertainment. My wrists still sting as I remember the struggle and my chest burns at the memory of the panic. Just writing this, I broke out in a sweat. (PTSD is fun. Sarcasm, obviously.) The point is, being stuck has been a terrifying trigger for me created by traumatic events that caused it. It’s difficult to have complex trauma that contributed to my chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As my therapist told me a few months into our sessions over a year ago, not m...

  Confronting a past that has harmed you without any say from you is difficult. Trying to process the decisions and actions made by others against you is a new level of confusing. I remember when I was a young adult, and my one imprisoned abuser started the process to seek an early release after a few years into his sentence. I started to search for anything I could use to speak up on my behalf if the process ever made it farther. What happened was that I stumbled upon notes and information taken by social workers and the detective on my childhood abuse case. It was very difficult reading those notes, seeing the sadistic mindset of my abuser. I remember that when asked why he molested me as a child that his response was that I was “annoying.” In his abusive and twisted mind, he molested a child for being a child and to him who was annoying child at that. I remember the turmoil reading that unwarranted explanation caused in me. I was always told that I was annoying growing up and ...

  My journey post cult has been an uphill battle on most days. The trauma of surviving abuse and a cultic experience translated into struggles I still face today. Back in Autumn of 2014, when I left the abusive group I was a part of for 21 years, I didn’t have tools or support really. I shut down emotionally and mentally. I lost myself and fell into a dark depression that lasted 3 years without any relief. I started seeing improvement after connecting with other survivors. Then, I started to join the rest of the world. I started advocating, researching, and offering help to those that I could. In 2019, when I called out my past church for harboring an alleged abuser, I decided to step away in many ways and focus on myself after that negative response. Experiencing betrayal after betrayal by friends and family was my cue I needed to focus on my recovery. Within a year, I started building for my future. I sought out joy, took care of myself, created my support system, and sociali...