I was in a cult. Like I said, I share that publicly. And like many other cult survivors of every stripe, my cult was my only world. A small backwoods church, with a pastor and his family, along with members devoted to the same leader and it got murky quite…

A lot of people ask me often if my faith is intact after everything I’ve gone through. This is a question that I’ve received countless times as a survivor of church abuse and religious trauma. I suppose it’s a relevant question after growing up where religion was a prominent fixture…

I knew it was possible that the new people in my life may stumble upon what I write on religious abuse, trauma, and cults. I also knew that they could possibly learn more about me than I was ready to share just yet. When I first started writing a blog…

I grew up convinced I wasn’t going to be able to make anything of myself. I was taught I was unworthy, worthless, and that I wasn’t even ordinary. I wanted nothing more than to make my parents proud, carve out my own path and convince myself I was a somebody. …

I prayed for revival. I wept and cried, pleaded, and begged that God would send a mighty awakening in the IFB movement. At the time, I didn’t know I was praying for the Independent Fundamental Baptists; only that I was praying for Christians. I was taught real Christians were independent…

I believed every story the preacher man told me, even the gruesome details he spewed with vengeance in his voice and the spit that left his mouth. I took every warning so seriously, could feel the life leave my body as he warned of touching the Holy Scriptures with dirty…

Upon waking up after leaving a cult and finding myself grappling with that fact, I also started to grieve. I grieved my exit and what leaving cost me: access to family within it, loss of community and the people I knew all my life. And then there was the grief…

Part of recovering from a cult is healing the parts of you that the cult hurt. In my case, a cult controlled, and its fear ruled my entire childhood. There are only photographs of my childhood days in cult clothes and doing most activities connected to the church. It’s very…

In life, we all will experience hurt. That is true for everyone, regardless, if a cult was involved or not. Avoiding hurt entirely is a trauma response, however. And although understandable, feeling true connection means we have to sometimes jump and see what happens. Originally published at https://lydiajoyl.blogspot.com on July 14, 2021.