Every superhero has an origin story. Unfortunately, I am no superhero. I am just an ordinary person with some unusual experiences and perspective in my background. If you saw me on the street, you’d likely forget me seconds later, because I tend to blend in with my surroundings. I like to call it “stealth mode,” but my therapist seems to think that I shouldn’t rely on stealth mode all the time. Here goes my attempt to hop out of stealth mode and actually speak out into the void of the interwebs in hope of being helpful.
Rather than delving into my story right away, I’d like to avoid specifics of my story and dig into the “why” behind this blog. Why start a blog? Isn’t there enough noise being publishing online? That seems like a fair question to me. In my personal history, I have come across scores if not hundreds of people who have been spiritually and/or emotionally abused, and now seems like a good time to start diving into that topic in order to not only document my own journey a healing from some religious trauma, but also to hopefully provide resources for others sharing this road with me.
Unfortunately, there are as many different expressions of spiritual abuse as there are spiritual abusers.
Spiritual abuse can mean a few different things, but the general idea is of someone using spiritual concepts (heaven, hell, sin, God, etc.) to control, manipulate, or otherwise harm you. This can take many different forms like a pastor molesting someone in his congregation in the name of Jesus, or a Christian school convincing its female staff and students that they are less valuable than their male counterparts, simply because they are women. These are only two of an infinite number of possible expressions it can take. Unfortunately, there are as many different expressions of spiritual abuse as there are spiritual abusers. As we move forward, I’d like to tackle some of these topics in more detail.
In addition to spiritual abuse, I’d also like to explore how emotional abuse plays a role in priming people to be more susceptible to spiritual abusers and abusive situations. My background, which will come into play throughout this blog, includes extensive experience in both spiritual and emotional abuse. This journey is not an easy one, but it’s a valuable one. So these are the reasons for this blog, and if you’re still reading, I look forward to keeping this discussion going in the future. 🙂 Thus it begins…
Healing Sacred Wounds 