The Grief of Being Shamed and/or Shunned

          Dear Blog readers, the following is a real letter from my mother’s cousin. I looked up to her as a role model, I treated her like an aunt to me, I included her in a family vacation, I was never once mean to her because I had deconverted. In short, I continued to respect and admire her. This is how she repaid my kindness. This week we are talking about the loss and grief that comes when your friends and family abandon you wholesale for being who you are. If this has not happened to you, you are blessed beyond measure with good friends and family. This is what happens to so many of us and is one of the biggest church crimes out there. “shunning” or in this case, “Shaming." I am writing out my responses to her for your benefit.

Dear Karen Elizabeth:

The last time you heard from me was when I wrote and thanked you for the beautiful Afghan you made and sent to me and I keep on my bed at all times.

*****What a lovely thing to say. I did agonize over colors and choose that which I thought would please you.

I am asking you as your Aunt and you being my Name Sake to please read the entire letter and not throw it down

*****I ask the same favor of you. I read every single scarring and horrifying line of your letter and am asking you to sit there and do the exact same thing. Please note the commanding tone. I am given no right to look away and no grounds to say that this is abuse and I do not have to hear it anymore.

but please hear me out as someone who loves you dearly and wants to very best for you and your beautiful family that God has created through you and Peter's genes and the Lord created inside your womb.

****How on earth could you possibly know what is best for my family? Did you know that Peter had a lying issue through our entire relationship? Did you know when I found evidence he became really mean? Did you know that he said of every single blog I have ever written whether it was Christian or not, “I ‘have’ to listen to you all day long. Why am I going to go to the effort to READ what your thoughts are online? No. I am not reading that I am tired of being bombarded by your ideas.” Did you know that as I would try to speak to him he would categorically ignore me? As if I was not even in the room at all. The last time he did this to me, he was reading the Bible as he did it and he knows how excruciatingly painful that is for me. I tried counseling, but that is a no go, he put all the fault on me. But boy does he love Jesus.

Right now you are very very angry and you feel that the way to get even is to put yourself first and Ross second.

*****Here you are just making stuff up out of thin air. I do not even know what you are talking about. If that were the case, I would already be permanently moved to England as neither of us want to live in this accursed state. His home in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire is lovely and 20 minutes outside of London. You know, the most amazing town in the ENTIRE WORLD? But please tell me how you know for a fact that Ross is second and my children don’t feature. I promise you, if that were the case, I would not be here at all, but already in his arms happily married and in England. VERY HAPPILY. But I’m not. He knows he comes third and has said time and time again that this makes him love me more. As I look over the history books of our family, it is you that put the needs of a really abusive man over your daughters and one of them bears addiction issues from it. But go ahead and tell me how I am so selfish. Tell me how I am failing my children.

Karen, you will not admit it but Satan has filled your mind with lies about Christians and your family.

*****No. My family has done and said EXCRUCIATINGLY, EXQUISITELY painful things like writing letters filled with really nasty assumptions that make me sound like a raving unloving whore. Thanks for that. I have evidence that this is not lies, but indeed the actual verifiable truth. You’re reading it.

You Don't know Ross Balmer except what he wants you to know.

*****Yup. Apparently, he does not want me to know what color his poos are because that is about the only topic we haven’t covered. I know his history, his life, his addictions, his fears, his damage, his brilliance and his preferred underpants. To be honest, he asks me to not bother loving him because he fears that it is all too much for me to handle right now as I am coming off a divorce. There is a bit of computer software called Skype. It enables us to sit and talk while looking at each other like we were in the same room. We sit and look at each other and bare every part of our broken hurting lives. You would say souls. The man is far from perfect but what he has going for him is he is terrifically kind, gentle, loving, peaceful, even tempered, patient, and intelligent.

If you would be willing to take the time and do research you will learn that men in England

******I did an extensive web crawl as you suggested and using bing, google, and yahoo found no such story of this being a thing **Englishmen** do. Nigerians have been trying this but there is no such record or known, established trend in the lives of English people. They actually love their home and see America as a tantrummy child. Especially now that Trump might actually become president.

and other countries are using American women to marry so that they can get to the United States, steal their bank accounts and then desert them leaving the boken [hoc] and destroyed.

*****Again, that is what my family has done about the destroyed part. But as to money. Peter is a really rich doctor. I have no job. No money. And I have very honestly stated I will be getting a meager 450$ a week in child support. Right now I have all of .40$ in my bank account. Peter cut me off completely and I have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. If he is looking for money, there isn’t any. Even if I were in Mom and Dad’s will, they have nothing. NOTHING. There is not even a promise of inheritance. SO, again, you are making things up OUT OF THE AIR.

Karen,
The Lord has blessed you and Peter with three beautiful children, Joey, Sarah and Ellanor who will blame themselves for your divorce and ask themselves down the road what they did to cause their Mommy and Daddy to unlove each other.

*****No. They don’t. You know who struggles with not blaming her mother for all the damage she still must process and the abuse from afore mentioned bully? YOUR daughters. I made a point of asking my kids if they felt to blame. All of them answered, “No.” I said, “Who is to blame for Mommy and Daddy’s divorce?” They all said, in unison, “Mommy and Daddy.” “That is right kids. You were not even alive when I decided to marry him and you have no part in our relationship or in the ending of it. You are loved and actually you make sure that Mommy and Daddy will always stay friends so that you know you are loved.”

I know that there are always two sides to every story in a divorce but ((The conjunction there tells us that she is completely disregarding my side as valid)) Karen the Lord can perform miracles in both you and Peter's hearts if you will give the Lord the chance.

*****I prayed for 5 years that God would heal our marriage and fix me and fix him. What if the miracle provided to change Peter’s cold heart is this divorce? He works in really really strange ways.

I know you are angry with God and blaming Him for a lot right now but the Lord has spared you a lot of problems; but my prayer is that you will wake up and realize that there is more to life than material things that you are wanting.

****Peter has all the material things. I have no idea what you are referencing. I will have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I will be working a job and hoping to make ends meet as I live pay check the paycheck. This was preferable to living any more with his ridiculous anger and silent treatment. Peter just inherited an island. Yes. A private island. Would have been mine too if I stayed. I don’t want a ridiculous island and this world’s wealth. I want to be emotionally safe and loved. WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE IT ISN’T ME! I have no idea where on earth you are getting your really really wrong information.

I am not angry with you but love you enough to sit down and through the guidance of the Holy Spirit write to you ((This absolves her of any abuse in the letter. It isn’t she that is saying all of these horrendous things, OH NO it is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit)) and pray you will read this and let the Holy Spirit open your eyes and your heart before you do anything more to destroy yourself and the precious family that the Lord has lent to you and can take away at any time and you then cannot go back and undo. 

*******This is my very favorite part. If I do not do as you suggest, God will take my family away from me because he loves me. Really? You are threatening me. If you have to explain how your letter is loving so very much and so very hard, IT ISN’T LOVE AT ALL. And if God is willing to do that to me and my family after all I have been through, He is an asshole. Do not contact me again.

I love you and Jesus loves you more.
Love Aunt Karen Durr Crogan.

              

          I will let you, the dear reader judge between us. This experience is so common to so many of you out there. I have found love, I am healing, I have found a way to cope. I wrote these responses out in July. I have come a long way since then and am willing to admit that I was a part of the problem. The cycle of toxicity had to be broken. I have ended it with my Aunt Karen as well for that very reason. She may be able to believe that nonsense, but I can’t. I love myself, my children, Ross, and you dear reader, more than that. If you need help with family that shun or shame you, please contact me today.

Wasn't Ready for Westworld.

     

   
       Ok, so I have seen the first two shows in the new hit series, “Westworld,” by HBO. This blog contains information about the plot, so if you are interested in watching the show, please make note of this. I have basically responded to the simple premise, so there are not as many spoilers as you would think. Westworld caused a neurotic crying response to my mother and a full night of nightmares that I was back in the church. When I woke up and ate copious amounts of sugar, coffee on its way, I clearly understood why.

          The show’s premise is that there is an adult play land where anyone can pay to come and interact with regenerative robots. These robots can be killed, raped, beaten, and ill-used and they are sewn up, memory erased, and the very next day, they are back to the way they were before the visitor destroyed them. If the visitor wants to, he or she can destroy the robot all over again. All along, the managers of the park program and reprogram the robots to have certain personality traits and to behave in prescribed and scripted ways. One series of reprogramming scenes undid me. There is a character named Maeve from England. She is a robot programmed to be an English woman who immigrated to the US and became a prostitute, a madam as well as continuing to work. However, the people who run the park started to notice that she wasn’t being hired out anymore. They were quite perplexed because she is exotic with her accent, her biracial looks, and her fiery personality. In the first reprogramming session, they “up her aggression by 20%.” When she is placed back in the park, she says her lines with a forcefulness that is creepy. Nobody hires her. Then another programmer takes the robot back and reprograms her without “all that aggression and this time with emotional intuition upped 1.5%.” She goes back in the park and delivers her lines with such a moving grace, she almost makes the people fall in love with her. Nobody hires her. She is seen as defective. They talk about decommissioning her, but she was so expensive to make.

          I started to cry. I felt anxiety. I had an autistic emotional meltdown and huge tears about things that had happened in my childhood. As I calmed down and fell asleep, I dreamed all night long that I was the black, English prostitute sitting in a reprogramming room with blank eyes as not programmers from the show, but pastors from my past show up. “Raise her submissiveness. Lower her intelligence. Raise her dependence. Increase responses to peer pressure. Increase her ability to be satisfied with cliché and pat answers. For goodness sake, DO SOMETHING WITH HER STRIDENT, POWERFUL, LOUD PERSONALITY.” I woke up at 2:30 am feeling battered. I tossed and turned in almost a fever like state. I ate crackers. I drank water. I tossed and turned. I turned the fan on then off .. then on again. I was disturbed. I drifted off at 5 am and went right back into the same dream. “Why isn’t she responding? Why isn’t she like the others in our fold? Why can she just not conform?” I woke up two hours later completely unrested and ill at ease.

          Church, you do not want free spirits. You do not want free thinkers with questions and big ideas. You want robots you can control, manipulate and get to conform. I am calling you out. Church leaders, if you truly believe God made me, accept me as I am. Church members, be yourselves and do not let bullies in cheap suits tell you who they think you should be and I implore you, do not become what they want you to be if it causes you stress and pain to be so. Run away from anyone whose emphasis is on conformity.  

Community

          When I left the church, the feelings of aloneness started to come down on me. As I have stated on this blog multiple times, friends left wholesale. It was a time filled with tears. I had lost my community. I started reaching out to friends and trying to keep my friendships, but most all were done. Loss of community is the biggest fear that people who are losing faith have. I have spoken to many now about how that very issue is the one keeping them in the abusive situations at the churches they now attend. They would rather be abused and/or pretend they still believe than be alone. I understand.

          Last week we talked about how spirituality was something you could create yourself as an atheist. One of the key components to spirituality is mental health. With a solid healthy mind, we can make the choices we need to make with clear, rational thought. One of the key components of mental health is connection to community. Over the centuries, churches have cornered the market on a grand false dichotomy: “There is no connection to others outside of the church.” Your choices were, a ready-made set of people willing to be your insta-family or nothing. I see it in the faces of people who can’t stay in church but who also won’t leave. I had one lady point blank ask me, “How do you make friends? How do you know that you will have your needs met if you get sick and go to the hospital?” I will answer by saying, “You say hi to people and treat them nicely.” Ok, there are some other things, too, but that is a good starting place.

          In December of 2015 I was completely alone. My old church small group were doing Christmas parties and my marriage was crumbling. A friend suggested that I look on Meet-up.com to find a local atheist group. I did. I found the Lafayette Tippecanoe Atheist and Secular Humanists. I am really starting to enjoy their company. Yesterday, they came over to my house to do a crochet/knitting/fellowshipping “Stitch and Bitch” for charity. I had inherited a stash of yarn and some knitted squares that needed to be sown together into afghans. We sat around, talked, laughed, and spoke about ideas for future charity works. Two of my mental health needs were met. I had a great time with my friends and we are reaching out to help meet the needs of others in our community. A healthy mind is a connected and charitable mind. It was a lovely day and it felt spiritual without all of the baggage of a belief system of false guilt.

          There are many ways the ex-churched community can reach out and connect with each other, with those of like convictions or hobbies. Meetup.com is a great place to start but honestly, it is as easy as just saying hi!

          This week’s theme comes with exciting news! I am starting an ex-church facebook group. Membership includes access to the group, extra content from me, one weekly group coaching session on zoom, and the ability to make new friends. Cost is $10.00 USD a month for the first 3 months. Message me today if you are interested!  

Spirituality is Hard.

            Spirituality is an amorphous word that means so much to so many people, it is hard to pin down, especially for those who have been spiritually abused. Because of this, the simple act of asking, “How is your spiritual life,” is such a loaded question it is nearly impossible to answer without first asking, “In what sense do you mean ‘spiritual?'”
        This has engendered in many ex-church people an avoidance of thinking about any spirituality. However, whether or not we care to think about it, we have an internal life that needs to be nurtured. Here at DLC, we take a more logical approach. As with all things that delve into our minds, there is a sense of freedom in figuring out how it actually works. Before we can move forward, it is important to take a glance at what we have been through.

          In the past, we were told that Spirituality is  “Access to a higher power or the metaphysical plane by way of a set of rituals or secret knowledge.” In other words, religion. Whether it be Christianity, New Age, Islam, Paganism, or Sikh the idea is that if we read the right book, believe the correct narratives, and or perform the correct rituals, the metaphysical agent in question will respond with a higher awareness or understanding. This is not a definition that wraps up the entire experience. For me, it leaves entire chunks out of the process. Yet, many people see spirituality only as a quest for gods. I dismiss this thought. There is more to it.

          Another prevalent definition is an experience or understanding that evokes emotional euphoria or “The chills" or an emotional response. “The feels.” Statements along these lines usually also include allusions to the metaphysical, “I was at retreat weekend at my church and I felt the Holy Spirit indwell me. I got chills and started to weep.” Or “I just felt so moved when I heard the guru speak it was as if he were imparting the ‘wisdom of the Universe’ into my mind!” These are powerful experiences and need careful treatment. Misappropriating them can lead to disappointment or frustration when the follower finds out that what they believed was incorrect or no longer evokes these chills. This can lead to a period of disillusionment during which the participant is “experiencing a dry spell,” or is “having a desert experience,” or “needs to perform one of the above rituals to restore balance.” 
           Saying that spirituality is a string of experiences or emotions that need manipulating is also missing the mark. I was raised with a combination of these two definitions all smashed up. I was taught that spirituality is only the quest for the metaphysical and you know you are on the right track when you have just the right emotional experiences. Again, an external search for confirmation that the unprovable is real just doesn't work anymore. 

          These common definitions are laden with confirmation bias. “I felt something so therefore it is my pet belief.” “Something amazing and good happened in my life, it must be God working.” Even without the belief or deity, these things may have happened in the believer’s life anyway. It may very well be just coincidence. Another shortcoming of these systems is that they put the strength outside of you. 
           I personally have come to the conclusion that the best way to look at it is the old saying, “The mind is the seat of the soul.” (If a soul even exists.) If we take it to mean that the mind is the center of our internal experience it becomes our highest calling to care for it. Seeking out mental health therapies, life coaching, and, if needed, medication are all requirements for a healthy spirituality. Our minds are physical and real. The best way to maintain our inner thought life is to protect mental health. 
           Meditation can become a very powerful way to connect our internal life with our outer reality making solutions to problems very clear. We can use ritual and practice to calm our emotional lives and help us to function in a more responsible way. Lighting candles and listening to quiet music can really help us to meditate. Also, great understanding about the way that we function best as humans can be had in the practice of centered meditation. Learning to be the master of our minds and emotions is the highest spiritual calling we have.

          I carry this calling out to making sure that those around me are mentally as strong as they can be and advocating for the homeless and downtrodden that may not have access to the expensive mental health care coverage. 
          On the topic of altruism, a healthy mind is one that understands our place on this earth. For me, speaking of spirituality cannot be done without speaking about the responses we have to these moments of enlightenment. If we are not reaching out to our fellow man at some capacity, even if only to help one person, I would question our emotional and mental health. Once we have the solid footing of a healthy mind, we can see and react to the needs around us.

            This is just a start. It is by no means a definitive answer. Having said that, it is where I will place my emphasis this week. A mind clouded by the baggage of too many hurts and destructive emotions is one that cannot reason clearly.

Bigger and BETTER

               It was the most terrifying moment of my life. I was alone. I was in my chair at my last church. I was crying. I realized I hated hell. I hated the idea. I hated the smug way the young pastor at the front of the church was stating how, “Indeed an eternal, permanent hell was something that the unbeliever had to look forward to.” He was making the point out of every part of the Bible. John 3:18 and Matthew 24 made appearances and they were used to prove the point that Jesus approved of eternal damnation and there was no escape for the non-believer because of the love that Jesus has for all people. My brain broke. I then watched Christians support discrimination against gays in the form of seeking legislation that would keep Christian wedding service providers from doing gay weddings. I was then drawn into arguments with fellow believers who called me sinful or misguided as I sought to secure civil rights for all people in the US, not just the ones that look and act like we do. As the abuse and the illogical beliefs piled onto my head, I came to a terrifying realization. **I could not ever go back to church again.** I was profoundly done.

               This was, as I said, terrifying. First, I lost most of my friends. Each friend was like a mini betrayal. I could only be a true friend if I supported the church. But that was nothing compared to what started to happen next. The illogical beliefs started to just burn holes into my brain. I desperately flailed about trying to find my god. I prayed I begged for more. I wanted answers to my soul burning questions so badly I lay awake shaking and crying each night. Finally I awoke to the reality that not only could I not go to church anymore, I could not Bible, I could not Jesus, I could not Hell. I. Could. Not. The Bible was the foundation of my faith the very center. It crumbled in a flurry of textual criticism and good old fashion logical thinking. With tears pouring down my face, I told my then husband, a devout believer, that I could not believe anymore. I desperately flailed about for my lover. For a few short weeks, I thought I still could have a relationship with him. He then told me he had been told by my dad that my uncle had seen my facebook posts about my pain from my past and present in the church. My lover told me that he thought I was mentally ill and should be seen again. My world shattered and we just started to pull apart. Two doctors with MD after their names said that I was not at all mentally ill.

               Speaking of my Daddy, he likened my lack of faith with a porn addiction and that I was a marriage vow breaker for it. My mother awkwardly tried to say she felt she was losing me and all she could come up with was, “I don’t know how to even spend time with you, we have nothing of importance in common.” I desperately flailed around for my parents. I was then reminded that my brother had died at birth by their god’s good grace so that I could exist. If he had lived, I would not have been born so I should ever be grateful to their god for allowing me to exist. I vaguely remember trying very hard just to get my father out of my house. My father who was up until that point my daddy. I was his girl. I was quirky, masculine, silly, and loved 60’s music because of him. He had been my hero and one of my best friends. All I could think as he hugged me and left was, “leave. Just fucking leave.” My entire foundation had shattered.

               I had to rebuild. My marriage had just turned co-dependently mega toxic and I had to leave. In that moment of death, I found life. I found me. I looked at my mirror and with all the power and brilliance of my own strength and said to myself in the full glory of the moment, “I AM THAT I AM.” I filed for divorce and found love. I started to train as a life coach and found that I could replace “I am a Christian,” with “I am Karen who is her own creation from this point out.” I found a group of fantastic friends in an atheist group, Lafayette Tippecanoe Atheists and Secular Humanists and they have come to mean a great deal to me. The friends who are still Christians and still love me without fighting with me feel like family.

               You might resonate with some or all of this. Whether you keep your faith in God or not, leaving the church is TERRIFYING. It isn’t easy, you need to completely destroy and then find the strength to rebuild. 18 months after deconversion, I am happy, fulfilled, and optimistic for the future. I am engaged to my lover, Ross Balmer, and we are building this business and ideas hand in hand. I feel tremendously hopeful and would love to show you that there is life, joy, charity, fulfillment, and connection with peers after leaving the church. I would love to get you started on your journey to the grace, hope, and joy I have found.