Growing up with Narcissistic, emotionally abusive parents. 20 years in a spiritually abusive cult. Sharing my stories so that others can draw strength and know you're not alone.
I’ve written a good bit about my childhood abuse trauma lately, and today I want to bring the focus back to the main type of trauma this blog is supposed to be about: Religious trauma. The concept of Religious Trauma Syndrome is fairly new, and even those at the forefront […]
I’ve been in a very deep pit. Surrounded by fog and darkness, weighed down by heavy stones. According to the date of my last post, I haven’t written on this blog for nearly 3 months. Chunks of that time are completely missing from my memory. For days on end I […]
I woke up this morning to the new trending hashtag #MeAt14 on Twitter. Many of the tweets are just images of girls at 14, who are obviously too young to be in any kind of sexual situation with a man in his 30’s such as Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. […]
CW: Non-consensual physical contact, emotional abuse. It could begin over anything. Sometimes it was over some youthful indiscretion on my part. Sometimes, my dad would even be laughing and joking one minute, and the next minute it was as if a switch had flipped and he was full of […]
On a cold night in December, 1970, a barely 18-year-old girl was dropped off at an unwed mother’s clinic just over the state line from where she lived. Her father watched her get out of the car and then drove away. She was in labor, and nobody other than her […]
I distinctly remember a moment when I was perhaps two or three years old. It had occurred to me that my parent’s had stopped saying “I love you,” to me. What did this mean? Had they just forgotten? Had I done something wrong? So tiny little me formulated a plan. […]
I’m currently in Western North Carolina for a memorial service for a dear cousin. This will be the first time I’ve seen my dad since I stopped talking to both my parents. After a lifetime of emotional abuse, the final straw was their reaction to learning of a sexual assault […]
In a dream, I was in a primitive cabin, possibly in the mountains where I grew up. A woman named Molly was sitting in a rocking chair near the hearth, where there was a blazing fire. Molly was clearly a wise woman, and she had something to share with me. […]
So while we’re on the subject of my past trauma, let me recount a story for you. At the age of 14 I went to a concert. The adult relative who took me stayed in our assigned seats while I went down to the front to join the crush of […]
This is the second article discussing how the United Pentecostal Church and it’s teachings caused trauma in my life. I’m laying bare these old injuries in an effort to understand, and hopefully, heal from them. You can read about what caused this need here. “Are you sick?” The question, […]
The other night I had a dream. I was supposed to attend a service at my old church, but overslept and didn’t go. As people started returning from the service, one was the Pastor’s Wife from when I attended. Only it wasn’t her. It was a very old, very disfigured […]
I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I’ve remained mostly anonymous on this blog and dive into some family dirt. My grandmother is back in the hospital, and I spent Christmas in western NC visiting her. My aunt is the one that mostly takes care of her, because […]
