Category: spiritual abuse recovery

  • When Appeasement Becomes a Way of Life

    I didn’t have words for what happened to me for a long time. Laura Anderson’s Religious Power and Control Wheel gave me a map. Here I walk through each category — and share what I lived inside each one.

  • The House Is Haunted. You’re Not Crazy

    Religious trauma lives in the body long after you’ve left the building. Here’s what actually helps — and why peer support works when other approaches make it worse.

  • A Prayer of Complaint, Petition, and Resolution

    A prayer born from threshold moments—naming consumption as the shadow we refuse to see. For survivors learning the difference between being fed and being fed upon.

  • A Table for My Enemies

    “I have spent so much of my life closing and barring the door to the parts of myself I find unacceptable. I’m realizing as I get older how much energy it requires to continue to push on this door to prevent it from breaking open. Sitting on my desk is a little golden table—a sacred…

  • Understanding Spiritual Trauma and Its Impact

    When the ground you thought would always hold becomes unstable—that’s spiritual trauma. After a decade of trying to heal in places that retraumatized me, I learned what survivors actually need. It’s not what most churches think.

  • One Box at a Time

    Can you remember the last 5 self-help tips you saw on Instagram? I couldn’t. Every scroll triggers emotions without purpose. Every post we forget still drains our energy. Information that isn’t thoughtfully applied just becomes noise. Time to sort through one box at a time.

  • The Ground Beneath My Feet

    All I’d ever done was pretend—first in the family that raised me, then in the church. I didn’t even know I was pretending. Then I finally faced the truth, and people were talking about me. What followed was almost a decade of wandering. But what I’ve found in peer support groups isn’t another savior—it’s shared…

  • Finding Solid Ground When Everything Feels Like Chaos

    Does it ever feel like too much? I open social media and immediately feel overwhelmed. I miss the old Facebook—when my feed was just friends sharing life updates. Now I’m bombarded with headlines screaming that the world is on fire, democracy is crumbling, and I need to act now or be complicit. My nervous system…

  • Care or Carrying?

    **Tags:** – trauma recovery – boundaries – codependency – religious trauma – emotional responsibility – self-leadership – caring vs carrying – parenting adult children – healing patterns – compassion fatigue – inner work – family dynamics – faith deconstruction – emotional boundaries – recovery coaching **Excerpt:** I was 17 when I called my ex-boyfriend to…

  • Finding Your True North: Why Grounding in Your Values Matters Now More Than Ever

    The Blur Between Authentic and Expected The line between our genuine values and society’s expectations has become so blurred that many of us don’t even know where one ends and the other begins. When was the last time you paused to ask yourself what you actually care about, separate from what you think you should…