A Liminal Space

DIRECTIONS TO YOU

by Rainy Dawn Ortiz

Follow them, stop, turn around
Go the other way.
Left, right,
Mine, yours.
We become lost,
Unsteady.
Take a deep breath,
Pray.
You will not always be lost.
You are right here,
In your time,
In your place.

1. North

Star, guidance as we look up
To the brightest white
Hoping it leads you to where you want to go,
Hoping that it knows where you should be.
We find our peace here in the white,
Gather our strength, our breath, and learn how to be.

2. East

The sun rises,
Red,
Morning heat on our face even on the coldest morning.
The sun creates life,
Energy,
Nourishment.
Gather strength, pull it in
Be right where you are.

3. South

Butterfly flits
Spreads yellow beauty.
We have come to this moment in time
Step by step,
We don’t always listen to directions,
We let the current carry us,
Push us,
Force us along the path.
We stumble,
Get up and keep moving.

4. West

Sunsets, brings
Darkness,
Brings black.
We find solitude,
Time to take in breath and
Pray.
Even in darkness you
Can be found.
Call out even in a whisper
Or whimper,
You will be heard.

To find,
To be found,
To be understood,
To be seen,
Heard, felt.
You are,
Breath.
You are,
Memory.
You are,
Touch.
You are,
Right here.

Source: “Directions to You” by Rainy Dawn Ortiz

An excerpt from my journal on community, healing, and reimagining safety

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Content Notice: This post discusses religious trauma, spiritual abuse, and power dynamics in religious settings. Please take care of yourself while reading.

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The Weight of Being Seen

Yesterday evening, I co-hosted a peer support group for an online community. The topic was safety. Being on camera, being visible, being seen—it shook something loose in me. Maybe it’s because nothing gets people’s attention quite like safety. Or maybe it’s because I’m realizing that it still doesn’t feel safe to be in front of others. For so long, I stood in front of people being who I thought I was supposed to be.

I’d spent my childhood as an adopted child pretending in an effort to belong . I didn’t even know I was pretending. I thought the person I was presenting, the circumstances I was living in—that was just the way it was supposed to be. That was just who I was. This pattern carried over into adulthood.

Then I finally faced the truth in my own life, and people in the church started talking about me behind my back. It felt so shameful. I can’t think of anything worse than being judged when I’d done so much to fit in—to cover things up—to be the person I thought would finally be accepted.

I don’t think anyone can know how exactly it felt for me. The church really had become my family in my mind. I thought they’d always be there—that I’d die there. To see them so shocked by my behaviors, to lose those relationships—it was terrible. So hard. I feel a real sadness about it, even now.

When I look back at her—at who I was then—she was so wounded, so desperate for understanding, and it wasn’t there. I don’t think anyone knew what to do with what they’d heard. They didn’t have the tools or framework to hold what I was carrying.

The Jesus I Created

We had an answer for most things in those groups. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t at least attempt to explain away with doctrine. The lens I viewed addiction, abuse, and any kind of trauma through was “Choosing Jesus.” He would take it all and cover me with his righteousness. I’d be made clean and new.

It didn’t matter how many times I messed up. I could run to Jesus and beg for forgiveness, and there he was, ready to wash me and clothe me in white. So much emotion. Desperation and relief when my brain perceived that I’d accepted his mercy and was clear again.

I had spent my life believing that I was unclean and unlovable (roots than ran deep into my own developmental trauma and abuse) and there was nothing that could be done to help me—until Jesus. He would dress me in beautiful, glowing, sparkling pure white silken fabric and make me His bride. The relief would come. My imagination had always been my way of escape. I could write myself out of any nightmare, and this was a powerful vision—one that I’d heard again and again.

But here’s the hard confession: This Jesus wasn’t enough. And this says something about how real he was to me.

When I think back to that time, I can still feel that emotion—so strong and overflowing. I was loved, accepted, finally home. Everything I’d ever needed and wanted was projected onto Jesus, and He was more than happy to comply because this Jesus was just something my imagination created to help fill up the void.

But when a real person came along who offered me what my imagination had been creating, I traded in the imaginary Jesus for someone who would give me the validation I had been looking for my whole life. The first time he hugged me it felt like a thousand fireworks filling up the sky. My perceived safety, belonging, and being made good and pure came true. This man of God loved me, and my mind imagined it was God through him. I’d asked for so long for a messiah, and there he was.

I would worship and bow down at his feet for almost another decade. Looking back now, I can see it clearly: it was an abusive relationship built on a power imbalance that should never have existed. When someone holds spiritual authority over you—when they’re positioned as God’s representative, your pastor, your leader—and that authority is used to maintain control, that’s abuse. My desperate vulnerability met his position of power, and he used that power in ways that were deeply harmful. The structure enabled the abuse: one person elevated with divine authority, one person below seeking salvation, with no accountability to interrupt what was happening.

The Ground That Scorched

To finally realize that he was a figment of my imagination was almost more than my soul could bear. There’s a verse in the Bible that talks about finding one’s life and having to lose it first. That verse makes so much sense to me. Everything I imagined—the life I’d created in my mind—was lost. And there was nothing I could see to hold onto that felt real.

I kept trying to find my way back to my original perceived safety through Jesus, but it would no longer stick. The churches I visited—I just kept seeing things that reminded me of my former need for a real Savior in the form of a man.

I met with a counselor for 5 years who tried to help me process my trauma and find my way back to God, but I found that going back to where I’d been before would never work. That ground had been scorched already. No more fire of faith could burn there again. And what I’d seen in my previous church experience could never be unseen.

My need for a savior. Someone to tell me that I belonged, that they would love me and keep me safe—I could no longer be a part of a system telling me to do that again, no matter if their beliefs were different.

The Wilderness Years

What followed was almost a decade of wandering. Not the purposeful, spiritual kind of wandering that gets romanticized in religious circles. Just… lost. I didn’t know where I fit anymore. I didn’t know who I was without the structure of belief that had defined me. I tried different approaches—therapy, new frameworks, different communities—but nothing quite reached the depths of what I was grieving.

Those years felt like walking through fog. I could see shapes of things I thought might be solid ground, but when I reached for them, they dissolved. I was learning, slowly, that I couldn’t rush this. That some transformations require time in the wilderness, even when—especially when—it feels unbearable.

So Now What?

That’s one of the most difficult questions so many of us reeling from religious trauma are asking. What can I hold onto that’s real and true and will keep me safe?

I still have a vivid imagination. I imagine what life would be like if I lived in a place where life was more calm—where neighbors saw each other as equals. A place where we aren’t bleeding blue and red. A place where we don’t have to put another man on a pedestal to save us.

This past year I’ve found my way to some environments where there isn’t a leader standing in the center telling us all what to believe in order to be safe, loved, and belong. Through online peer support groups, I’ve discovered something different. It’s a place where we stand together in authenticity and support, and in these groups safety naturally comes.

It’s really hard to put into words what it feels like, but it just feels like the ground is a little more underneath our feet. Shared ground where we all have more in common than we do differently. There is no pressure to be someone I’m not, even though I’m still learning how to feel comfortable being seen and heard by these groups, even though it’s just online.

But even in these groups it’s ok to say that I’m trying really hard to feel comfortable, not pretending to cover up the sound of my stomach churning. But every time I take a brave step to show up, I feel better afterwards. Even co-hosting yesterday evening—as terrifying as it was to be visible like that—I felt better afterward. Not fixed, not cured, just… a little more solid in my own skin.

The Island That Burned

**Spoiler alert for Netflix’s Midnight Mass ahead

One of my favorite scenes from a movie comes to mind when I write about this. It’s a scene from Midnight Mass, a limited series about a small island community whose charismatic new priest brings what seems like miracles—but turns out to be something far darker. In the final episode, all the people on an island that’s on fire stand singing “Nearer My God to Thee,” knowing that their lives are about to change from one form to another. They hold hands and sing. Even in death they are together. And it’s one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie.

It’s almost surreal watching the religious leader attempt to bury herself in the sand alone. She’d tried so hard to convince the others to look to her for the answers, but they’d found each other instead. Out at sea, a young pair of teenagers listen to the singing and watch their home burn. They will begin again with an image of their loved ones singing together.

Even though it was a horror movie, I can’t imagine a more perfect ending.

Choosing How We Face It

The reality is none of us will be on this planet forever in the current state we are in. Death and taxes and all of that are inevitable. But how we choose to live the rest of our lives on this planet is something we have some control over.

We can continue to bury our heads in the sand denying that it’s coming, or we can find our way to each other and face it no matter what comes.

I still use my imagination to think about what will be when we change from our current state to another, and I can’t imagine a more beautiful picture than a place where there will be no more tears. A place where the lion and the lamb lie down together. A place where swords are beaten into plowshares where we all grow and thrive together. A place where there is enough for everyone and where we are all equal. There is no blue or red or men who sit on thrones and attempt to rule over us all.

A place where safety, love, and belonging are the ground beneath our feet where we live and grow and thrive connected with all the rest of the universe. It is good and perfect and finished.

Connected Across Time

And when I think about this vision, I feel a deep connection—not just to the people around me now in spaces like online peer support groups, but to all those who came before me. The ones who also searched for belonging, who also questioned, who also hoped for a world where we could all be equals.

There’s something profound in knowing that this longing isn’t mine alone, that it echoes through generations. We’re all part of the same story, reaching toward the same light. The wilderness years weren’t wasted time—they were preparation. They taught me that the ground I was looking for couldn’t be found in a person or an ideology, but in the shared humanity of people standing together, holding space for each other’s pain and possibility.

This is what I’m learning now. That connection doesn’t require a mediator. That we can hold each other’s stories without needing to fix them. That safety can emerge from horizontal relationships rather than vertical ones.

That’s what I imagine. What do you imagine it will be like?

About the Peer Support Groups Mentioned

IFS Peers Support Community is a peer-led support community based on Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy principles. The groups provide a safe, non-hierarchical space for people to explore their inner worlds and support each other without a facilitator directing the conversation.

Friendly Circle Berlin is a peer support network that creates spaces for authentic connection and mutual support. The emphasis is on shared power and collective care rather than expert-led healing.