Well, maybe I have more religious trauma than I’d thought

So, apparently I’m the last person in my life to figure out that I might have religious trauma. My True Love has gently mentionined the topic in passing, but I said I didn’t think I had it. My reasoning was that my mother intentionally chose the most toxic religion available to her because she wanted to be able to use it to control. So if it hadn’t been for the religion, my mother would have found another way to be just as abusive. It’s not like she ever actually believed it, and it’s not like she was a healthy and warm person until she joined a group that made her do abusive things. Now, the religion she signed up for was a little intense. I mean, the red flags were there. Their founding creed was the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which just happens to be the same founding creed that was used by Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church. That was very confusing when I was a teenager, let me tell you. I remember they were on the news once singing one of their signature offensive “Christmas carols” and a line was, God hates the world and all the people. And I was like, “Everyone hates them but their theology is exactly like ours” 🤔 Or the time I went off to East Texas Baptist University and the other kids at ETBU were openly convinced that I had just come from a cult. Like, if there was anything they should have been experts in…

Anyway, my thing was, religion was more the weapon my mother used to abuse, rather than the abuse itself. But I sort of had an epiphany, so I was talking to my True Love, and said that maybe I had religious trauma. They nonchalantly were like, “tell me more,” so I mentioned a few things, including the following:

• There was definitely educational neglect. This was true in all subject areas, but especially in Science because my parents didn’t feel that girls deserved to learn about those things. I mean, the only reason for me to get any education under my belt was, “So you can be a more interesting conversation partner for your future husband.” And I was homeschooled all the way through 12th grade, so I was totally fucked. I often wonder where I could have gone in life if I’d been to school as a kid. I’ve managed to piecemeal together enough of an education to be able to sort of get by, but the fact that I was able to do that means I probably would have been intelligent enough to be a doctor or made significant contributions to a field. I might have been able to live above the poverty level instead of constantly having to ask for bail-outs from my little brother. Or at a minimum, it would be nice to have a clue how electricity works. But if there’s one thing my cult of origin was afraid of, it was empowered women, so they had to keep me as held-back as possible lest I become a feminist or something.
• They also said that a woman living without being under the authority of a man, would be like someone jumping out of an airplane with no parachute
• The pastor of our church said that women could serve God, but only “in an auxiliary role”

But aside from sexism gone off the deep end, there are not too many groups outside of religion where everyone decides to cancel someone all at the same time. Growing up, I was pretty much in solitary confinement, but I had some interaction with my immediate family. Mom did this at least in part so that I wouldn’t have any identity or sense of belonging outside of my family. But I loved being a Christian. I ate slept and breathed Jesus. Then I started going to therapy, and Mom needed me out of the family. So, she started a huge rumor that I was “never really saved” and actually hated God, the Bible, church, Christianity, etc. She even went so far as to claim that I was offended if people prayed for me. Thus, she had no choice but to absolutely leave me for dead. There are technically a slew of Bible passages at her disposal with this (so long as you’re fine with bearing false witness), such as for example Matthew 10:

And whatever city or village you enter, inquire who is worthy in it, and stay at his house until you leave that city. As you enter the house, give it your greeting. If the house is worthy, give it your blessing of peace. But if it is not worthy, take back your blessing of peace. Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet. Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.

Matthew 10:11–15, NASB95

He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.

Matthew 10:37, NASB95

I was no longer “worthy” of my family, and they shook any dust associated with me off their feet. And after religion had been weaponized against me like that, it became inextricably linked to being unworthy, inadequate, unloveable, an imposter, “never truly saved.” As though the truest essence of my being had been deemed a lie. Eventually I couldn’t do it anymore, and having “faith” became too painful to bear. I’d had nothing but my family and Jesus, and Mom took both from me.

Well, except I didn’t lose my entire family- my cousin Charlene had been previously shunned by everyone when she made it very clear that she was going to marry her wife. So the two of them reached out and said I was not shunned by them. I was like, “But Charlene, aren’t you guys at least a little pissed that I spent years as part of the bandwagon that treated you like total shit?” And Charlene was like, “No.” So they were the most supportive people in my life, and I truly don’t think I would have survived deconstruction without them. Charlene had had numerous lengthy hospital stays, so when I was in the psych ward for 14 months, she hand-knit a hat and mittens for me, and sent me cards, and made it so clear how deeply she loved me. Then in December of 2022, she fucking died of leukemia, and I’ve been putting down fake emergency contact numbers ever since. I still talk to her widow, but she’s super not fine, obviously, and I don’t know if it’s okay to talk about Charlene yet. The neurofeedback doctor apparently has been working on getting me to “feel my feelings” and I hate this, because I miss Charlene and now I’m crying about it.

Anyway, I can’t handle writing about that any more, so going back to the phone call with my True Love. I was explaining how sexism and abandonment were pretty central components of the church I grew up in, so maybe I had religious trauma after all. They were so good, they were just like, “Yeah, I was going to wait for you to get there on your own, but I sort of picked up that you might have some religious trauma after you went with me to church on Easter and were violently ill for a week afterwards.”

Anyway, I guess acknowledging that you might have a problem is half the battle. My True Love is an ultra-progressive Presbyterian, so they’ve supported my desire to connect with some sort of spirituality that doesn’t think my dust is unworthy. So, I’ve been taking classes in Wicca. They seem pretty non-judgmental. I also really like the idea of being a “spiritual atheist,” which is a term I learned about from this YouTube video:

TheThinkingAtheist. (2026, February 10). A Spiritual Atheist? (with Britt Hartley) [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/2YXF_rhGdII?si=8DW8706Fg9Ki2-kZ

So, that’s as far as I’ve gotten for now. I can’t believe my True Love knew I had religious trauma all along, and that religion wasn’t actually an innocent bystander in my traumatization. But I appreciate that they let me figure it out in my own time. I guess it’s like they say, True Love Waits 😉