Once Upon a Time in My Oceania

  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...

  This time of year is always bittersweet for me and a lot of other survivors out there. I remember a lot of traumas around Christmastime and New Years, also a lot of sickness. There was a lot of pressure to do a lot of things and be a certain way. There was caroling, a Christmas play where you’d have to perform and sing, often very ill, and a ton of get togethers to attend. And then, there were a lot of tough feelings and emotions as you either gathered or didn’t with people who were, well, super hurtful. It can be a triggering time of year. There can be a lot of loss and grief. But there is also joy for me. Well, now there is…. For the past few years, I’ve decided with a heart full of purpose to enjoy my time here on earth and make every Christmas one that I remember. Most often that looks like living in the moment. I have a tree, a Christmas village that lights up, and I put Christmas lights on the balcony. There are stockings hung. I have cards from friends and even strange...

  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 ...

  There are many things wrong with fundamentalism, in my opinion. I couldn’t get into all of them in a single post without exhausting myself in the process. But I think the teaching of separation, this command in many ways, is definitely one of the most problematic ones. I could point to the way fundamentalism uses this teaching to separate its members from outside resources in cases of abuse, the different ways separation can impact the next generation mentally, physically, and educationally, or even the fact that fundamentalism instills in its followers not to rely on others to a point that is unrealistic and entire families suffer because of it. There really are many aspects that I could share about where this teaching causes future damage to fundamentalists. I never needed to be separate. I didn’t need to remove myself from a world that could harm me. I did not need to pull myself away from the joy that human connection offers. I didn’t need to be saved, sanctified, and separ...

  A lot of people ask me often if my faith is intact after everything I’ve gone through. This is a question that I’ve received countless times as a survivor of church abuse and religious trauma. I suppose it’s a relevant question after growing up where religion was a prominent fixture in my life. My spiritual journey isn’t one I often talk about. Granted, I do share what I feel were problematic teachings that leant to the abuse I and others have experienced. But truly have I broken down my thoughts, feelings, and opinions on religion? No, I haven’t. I’m unlikely to completely start doing that now either. This is partly because like everything else, I’m still learning about it. In the beginning days on my journey, especially after leaving the IFB, I was extremely close to God. I found such healing and the ability to break away more freely with recognizing that an all-powerful being was one of love. I would say at that time I was very progressive in Christianity if I was searching ...

  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 ...

  I believed every story the preacher man told me, even the gruesome details he spewed with vengeance in his voice and the spit that left his mouth. I took every warning so seriously, could feel the life leave my body as he warned of touching the Holy Scriptures with dirty hands. For weeks afterwards, I would examine my little hands for even the faintest of dirtiness, worried I’d disrespect God and endure his wrath, even to the point of death. That is just one of many examples of how literal I was as a child taught to believe things incredibly literally. I can’t explain how much that literalism damaged my mental health till this day or the impact it has had on me understanding people as an adult. I joke that I’m just a literal person, but the truth is I was told to take things so seriously or I could face eternal consequences. A child’s mind is very impressionable. They are molded by the adults in their life. Their view of the world is crafted by what they are told, what they w...

  It's difficult to explain to those who haven't also had the realization that they, too, were once in a religious cult what that's like. It's something that I've also had to try and tackle while undergoing therapy for my chronic PTSD. I know at least I'm not "crazy," but it still doesn't change the fact it sounds crazy and is uncomprehensible to the mast majority of people who listen to me explain what my life once consisted of.  It doesn't help that the word "cult" has been grossly sensationalized and stigmatized, whether by Hollywood or even other cults themselves. It seems the very worst controlling groups tend to draw the brightest spotlight on them that society has a unconscious threshold of what constitutes a cult. Basically, if you didn't have some terrifying rituals or lived on a compound, suddenly you are not a cult survivor.  You can easily be invalidated.  But for those that have lived that life and left, we've exp...

  I've been right where you are. I've had the same things said to me and about me, too.  It sucks.  People don't get it and that's frustrating.  It hurts. It's damaging.  It's a negative reminder.  It's a reminder of the harm done. No, they don't get it. No, they don't want to either. They'd rather suggest you are bitter, vindective, seeking revenge.  But for what?  For finally voicing a secret not of your own making. A secret that seared your heart, mind, and soul. A secret your body unfortunately can remember all too well. "I'd think you'd want to forget about it..."  How do you know that us girls don't wish for the ability to not remember the time(s) our innocence was stolen? Instead, we are forced to relive every, single and agonizing moment. We continue to pay even years later.  You would think they'd not ask the impossible.  But they do, because the possible–the seeking of justice–would also reveal their own ugly t...

  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...

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...