I am thankful for those who see strength and resilience in my story. I have a lot of folks playing very pivotal supporting roles in the movie that is my life who didn’t have to read the first drafts. They didn’t see the character development. Fortunate in many ways to have been spared some of my more insufferable scenes, but also missing very important scene-setting background information.

I believed that womanhood was marriage and children. Oddly enough, this wasn’t encoded into my DNA. This wasn’t the result of fairy tales and strong warnings from my parents. In fact, my wonderful mother and father (two humans I don’t know that I even deserve to call my own) pushed me to be all that I wanted to be. There dreams and aspirations for me weren’t that I would find a good husband and be financially secure with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence.

There was no stern questioning about when I planned to marry or who my boyfriends were. They simply didn’t force an identity on me. I was bred in such tender and intimate familial love that was space to grow into an intelligent, free-thinking woman.

What broke me wasn’t a tragic home life. It wasn’t even the chaos of traumatic events. I wasn’t wrapped in depression because of my life. I hadn’t grown up believing I didn’t belong. What broke me was dogmatic religion.

*releases the deep breath she’s been holding up until this point*

There. I said it. I believed, really I did, that I could do anything. I was supported to write and explore my passions. I was encouraged. I was inspired. I was pushed to find myself.

What failed me wasn’t my raising. It was religion.

I can feel the weight of your judgment. I can sense the tension rising. I can hear the Christians with their good intentions telling me that it’s not their god or their Jesus or their church. But let me remind you, even in your offense, what does that change? Does that make my story less real? Does it make it less palatable? Does it negate what I’ve experienced? No.

It doesn’t.

It’s my story.

It’s my story to tell. I’m not here to defend a thesis or a dissertation. I’m here with my story. I’m flaying open my chest, making myself a target. I know there are the “buts” just welling inside of your chest. You can hardly contain your need to remind me that I went to a Christian university. You can’t stop rambling about my work at a Christian camp or even at a Christian daycare. You just have to tell me that god hasn’t turned his back on me. This is my prodigal story, you’re certain of it.

This isn’t my rambling to deconstruct your spirituality. I’m not loading an arrow of flames to destroy your sacred texts. I’m not here to argue who is right and who is incorrect. I’m here to tell you that I was a vulnerable woman who ran into dogma that was veiled behind an illusion of inclusion.

I was perfectly content not believing I had to seek the traditional route of marriage and family. I had no shame about not wanting to spend my days playing a submissive role. I never believed that women weren’t equals. Not until the “church” sunk its talons within me and said “you’re not enough to stand alone.”

This isn’t what anyone wants to hear. It’s unnerving! I understand. But this is what I felt. These are the things that I heard. These are the experiences that slowly seeped into my brain. My dreams were burned at the stake. I was a witch in the face of dogmatic misogyny disguised as the biblical model.

I’ve already come to terms with the fact that people will not believe me. My stories will go so against the grain, be so different than their experiences that they have to be fictions. But that’s the risk I’m willing to take.

I stayed friends with a woman after she got engaged to a man. A man of god he was! He had once invited me to come stay with him in his home when I was in crisis. Just me and him. Alone. A man. A woman. But I was told that I had misinterpreted that offer (by a well respected mentor). In hindsight? No. What he had offered me in a state of low depression was inappropriate. But he quickly turned away from me after he was warned that I wasn’t preachers wife material. He was told he couldn’t pursue ministry if he was linked up to me.

And so he never spoke to me again.

But I watched him get engaged to, marry and have child with one of my “friends”.

I stayed married to a man who forced me to have sex on his timetable, and who mentally abused me throughout our marriage because the church had prophetic words warning us against divorce. I stayed with this man because I was told by godly folk that I wasn’t doing my Christian duty. I was too opinionated as a woman. I expected too much from my husband.

I wanted respect and partnership. But I was told to lower my aspirations to being tolerated and servanthood.

My path to sainthood would be paved with abandoned dreams and desires and key parts of my personality. In order to cross the finish line to the pearly gates, I’d have to slaughter myself on Mount Sinai, I’d have to martyr myself to fight the good fight.

Because I was a woman, despite my obvious talents to speak and teach, I could only teach children and other women. Though my strong, intelligent voice had value for everyone — I could only be trusted in front of women and children. That’s is. No matter what divine wisdom is harnessed by me, my value and ability stops there because of my biology.

My friendship circle had always been diverse. My family never encouraged hatred for differences. We were taught to view other people with intentionality and only reject others if they were mean or meant us harm. But I never rejected another person because they had different tastes or viewpoints. I embraced them. I understood there was something to learn from every person.

I admit that my marriage was dragging me through stages of being brainwashed. I was separated from my family and diverse friends. I was indoctrinated by teachings that encouraged the shunning of those not like me. I was starting to believe that anyone who was different was demon-possessed and it was my new duty to cast them out. I was constantly worn down by the tears at my personality that I couldn’t fight against the lies anymore.

Until I was removed from the circle of only Christians, Christians only. When I began working with a diverse group of people again, my heart was overjoyed to hear about experiences I wasn’t having. I wasn’t afraid of any type of person. I embraced them. I didn’t feel the need to defend god. (Listen. If this is your bread & butter, remember the creator of the universe doesn’t higher you as his lawyer. You are not making a case for god against the sinful world. He’s god. He doesn’t need you to do that.)

I just needed to be myself. I felt this peeling away of what was binding me. I was being reintroduced to what society had intended.

I think about my descent into believing women were inferior beings. I know that I had a significant weight established when I say through marriage and family seminars. I listened to speakers deliver sermons on finding their person. And how to keep their person in times of trial.

This is when the seed of shame for divorce started. Never in my life had I been told that divorce was the final nail in the coffin. My mother had divorced her first husband. My sister had divorced her husband. My aunt had many divorces.

I’m not arguing for divorce. It is a gutting experience if it involves children. And even if it doesn’t. Two people pledge the rest of forever to one another, and then they cast that off and into the ocean. The promise that is usually made in luxury of an expensive wedding is traded for the hollow echo and the ink stain on your hand from the final divorce hearing.

But divorce does not always mean it’s the worst thing.

My divorce is the most beautiful season of shedding. I went from the embarrassment of being kicked out my cult home by a text message, to the development of my best years and best joys. (Knowing that this joy isn’t the last time I will laugh or feel light and love. But that there are more seasons of light to come.)

But I found the seed of this shame when we were hearing speech after speech about people who came back from the edge of divorce. They emphasized how much they knew god hated divorce. And they discussed what they had to change and do in order to salvage their marriage.

And Fireproof came out with the message that you persist until the other caves in. Well, I mean, you run a hamster wheel race to make the other person feel loved and admired until they recant their intention to leave or have you do the same.

Divorce isn’t a dirty word. We’d have a lot law if we stopped insisting on marrying off every 20-something. Maybe if we’d stop asking our single adult children when they’re getting married at every single holiday gathering, people would stop rushing to link up with people who cannot last a lifetime with them. We have to stop saying marriage is the ultimate dream.

Because you either stay married forever or get divorced.

I tell you that dogmatic religion is what broke me. I want to make it clear that I have met plenty of spiritually driven people who have loved me well and still do. They don’t have a checklist going of how much of an apostate I have become and haven’t added me to their church’s prayer list. They’ve found ways to love me beautifully and deeply no matter what I proclaim as my worldview. They love their understand of god without interruption. And they live it out without coercing others to see it exactly their way. They aren’t comment section keyboard warriors shouting about how right they are and how wrong everyone else is.

They walk humbly, justly, and in a cloud of love.

But I was exposed to the sour side of religion. The sort that breaks down your critical thinking. You assimilate and continue to strip away what doesn’t belong. Every word delivered from a pulpit is inspired of god itself. Even if it’s contradictory. And that turned me into a shell of myself.

I won’t apologize for my story. I won’t take it back. I won’t defend my narrative to make you more comfortable. There’s no chance that I will hold your hand and walk you through my dark nights just so you can argue with me about how wrong that I am. I was broken by religion. But I have been putting myself back together.

And though I will never set foot in a church again, I assure you my head has never spun around backward and I’m not attempting to sacrifice children to angry volcano gods. And I’m not encouraging the youth to listen to death metal.

Simply put, I don’t share to wait for you to correct me and tell me how I need to readjust my sails. I share because stories are meant to be told. They’re meant to be heard. And this is part of mine.