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diannesylvan_feed) wrote2025-07-10 02:25 am
In Which the Author is Even More Confessional & Probably Says Too Much
I’ve been thinking a lot about religious trauma lately.
A note before we begin: This is very long, and covers a lot of ground, but more importantly: If you have similar issues with a problematic religious history please use your discretion as to whether you should read this post or not. I am not a therapist, doctor, or mental health practitioner, just a neurodivergent, messed up human trying to get her head around the reality of her story. I don’t want to trigger anyone’s past trauma, so, if it’s a tender subject, please skip this one.
If you want to see about 70% of how I got so fucked up, read on.
Trigger Warning for suicide, assault, et al.
If you didn’t already know, the minister at my UU church has her own TikTok, where she answers questions about both UUism and progressive religious values. Just like with her sermons I often find myself inspired to write something down after listening; there are ways my brain hasn’t been able to bend in a long time that are greatly helped by pondering her words.
Most recently I watched one where the subject was altar calls at funerals. If you’ve ever been Baptist, or some variation of Evangelical Christian, you may have seen this, but outside that world most people don’t know it’s a thing. During a funeral service the preacher attempts to get people to come up to the altar and be “saved.” Saved is the state of being you want more than anything else when you’re a Southern Baptist; it means you’re going to heaven because Jesus is your “personal lord and savior” or whatever phraseology they use nowadays.
I was raised Methodist at first, but eventually my parents got us going to a hellfire-and-dalmatians Baptist church that was pretty much everything you imagine a SB church to be. I was a child at the time – around eight when we started attending. And no matter what the occasion or concept, a wedding or funeral or hanging out on a Tuesday night, the minister – and every one I encountered after – loved his altar calls. For them every possible occasion was a chance to bring people to Jesus. Literally every. Occasion.
Like my brother’s funeral, for example.
By the time my brother died I was already long gone from Baptist or any other Christian denomination. I had written my Wicca books and was a teacher of the Craft. So, over a decade after my own baptism I was able to see it for what it was: Cruel.
I wonder sometimes why so many people in the evangelism business don’t seem to see what they’re actually doing. The end justifies the means, I guess. As with other cult-like forms of behavior they prey on your vulnerabilities – rather than helping you choose to convert from a place of strength and a desire for truth and the love of God, they hit you at your lowest and, at least in the case of my former church, grab hold of what hurts and twist it as hard as they can.
(I feel the need to point out this is about a particular subset of Christianity that has unfortunately gained prominence in the American consciousness; I know plenty of Christians who would be horrified at the thought of being so blatantly manipulative particularly of children. I have a great respect and affection for those who actually live by the teachings of Jesus (or try to!). I truly wish there were more of them, especially right now.)
Disclosure: My brother committed suicide, which as you can imagine caused some awkwardness when it came time to plan the funeral. The mortuary could cover the gunshot wound but not the truth. No one lied about it but it was Best We Don’t Discuss It. Why? Well, because as Catholics can attest there are pretty clear declarations about what happens to people who unalive themselves.
My mother was absolutely shattered at the thought. For years after she was obsessed with reading about the afterlife, trying to make sense of what had happened and find some, any, assurance her baby boy was okay wherever he was and not roasting in a lake of fire. I think those years of grief, followed by trials and pain I won’t go into, finally leached the faith from her heart. She just couldn’t believe God would let any of these things happen or, if her son was mentally ill, cast him into Perdition for losing his life to what appeared, at least on the surface, to be depression and alcoholism. I hurt for her so much and still do.
I do not believe in Hell. I do not believe in a God who is supposed to be pure love but could still torment his children for all eternity because they were human and didn’t get the message, or loved the wrong person, or made mistakes, and on and on. Humans have painted this picture of the Divine as a petty, immature, capricious tyrant which, I have to say, is not as appealing as they seem to think it is. I want a god that loves better than we do. My view of Deity is very different from that (and actually from most people I know) and the whole Conservative concept of God makes my skin crawl.
Anyway.
I think back to my own baptism – how I was guilted, shamed, and terrified into being “saved” when I really had no idea what that meant, what it entailed, or anything besides the fact that Jesus was suffering and dying in this movie we watched and for some reason it was all my fault because I was born…wrong?
Do you know what happens to a child who has already suffered trauma when you tell them they are sinful and wicked? When a confused little girl who knew there was something terrible in her heart – there must have been, why else….is ignorantly told she’s right, and that the only way to not be punished for her brokenness for all eternity is to accept a specific Deity and way of living that she doesn’t even understand because she is NINE?
I’m what happens.
Fast forward to age sixteen when I was duped into going on what I later realized was a brainwashing weekend. That might not have been the overt intention, meaning I don’t think those running it were bad people, but the techniques were textbook cult indoctrination. Everyone I knew lied to me to get me there. I spent a weekend being inundated with love bombing, faith manipulation, songs, food, happy happy sisterhood, tons of little gifts and prizes…meanwhile we weren’t allowed to have books, or music, or call anyone outside the building. They took our watches. “Don’t anticipate, just participate!” Then at the climax of the weekend we were taken to this tiny (absolutely beautiful) church and left to sit in the pews and…think about what we’d done, I guess, I don’t really remember. Maybe they were trying to induce a spiritual crisis so they could make a show of fixing it. Everyone around me was crying and hugging and I felt empty. I didn’t feel the Spirit, or the presence of Jesus, or anything except hollow. I was, apparently, too broken for God.
But I don’t want you to think all my issues came from Christianity. Oh no, Paganism fucked me too. I was attacked during a Samhain festival a week after 9/11. My history with large festivals pretty much ended there. I went to. a few more but was never ever comfortable, and even small campouts with a close-knit group often left me feeling lonelier and sadder than I ever had in my life. I bailed on a lot of campouts in the middle of the night.
A few years later I had the group I’d pledged myself to – that I was teaching for – turn their back on me because someone I thought was a friend poisoned the leader against me. (Oh, man, speaking of cult behavior.). I’m still not sure why it gave her so much satisfaction to hurt me. But apparently I was crazy, unstable, “only doing this because I had something to prove.” I was blackballed from ever advancing my degree…and they didn’t even have the stones to tell me to my face. I found out a decade later that even if I hadn’t left, I would never have been allowed a 3rd degree, although they didn’t seem to have a problem with me teaching and initiating innocent students. Their ethical standards only went so far, I guess.
Long after, years after my brother, and that group, and all that, I co-led a coven and it happened again. Someone I was incredibly close to (or thought I was) decided I was faking it in ritual. (Apparently I’m a much better actor/liar than I thought, and willing to defraud my closest friends for no real reason at all?). I knew all along that was how that person felt; but I was too busy losing my mind to do anything about it.
You hear both sides about Drawing Down the Moon: That it’s totally safe, or that it’s dangerous. I think the people who know it’s real understand it’s not inherently safe. You need to understand what you’re getting into and have strong personal boundaries. I did not. As a group we dedicated ourselves to a Being who i’m told showed up impressively in Circle, but I never knew, because it was in my body. Everyone else had experiences with this Being but I was the one that had to deal with Her basically possessing me at random. I opened up a path for this energy and didn’t know how to shut it.
For months I lost time, found myself standing in the grocery store with no idea how I got there, but crying with nasty laughter in my head. I would binge-drink and be overcome, humiliating myself in front of others and then sick as a dog for days. I got insights I did not want about people and don’t get me started on the nightmares.
I don’t think it was evil necessarily, just dark, and demanding, and it took me at my word when I said I was willing to be whatever it needed me to be as its acolyte. I wanted to give my coven something meaningful, and didn’t take a beat to consider what might happen to me. Come on, how dangerous could it be? I remember clearly something she said, one of the few moments of clarity from that entire era: “Mine is a path of fire, and you will burn.”
Was it a Goddess? Some sort of demon? Was I actually having a psychotic break? I have no idea. I don’t remember enough to really analyze it. But it took several friends banding together to help me perform a banishing to close that door.
I never opened it again. After the coven fell apart, I stopped practicing entirely. I made a few forays and tried over and over, but things just fizzled. And to be honest even now years and years later I’m still not really “back.” I want to reclaim my practice, and hopefully my power, but though I try to do the work and the meditations and all that, I still feel blocked off from the sacred. I don’t know how to reopen the door to magic and spirit; I know it exists, and I know I used to walk there. I know it was beautiful for all but a couple of terrible months a long time ago. But I don’t remember how to get there. For a long time it was just blind, visceral fear – if I opened myself up what was going to come in? The same Thing? Could I function as a Witch on my own or was trying to practice just an open invitation I was too weak to rescind?
Nowadays it’s not really fear of what might come in as it is fear I don’t have anything. Like I’ll open the door and nothing, Nobody, will come in, even if I invite them. At least if I’m bereft right now it’s because I keep the door shut. Again, I go back to my youth, wondering if I’m just damaged goods.
I have Shadow Worked all of these things, spent years teasing the threads apart to understand the overall weave. I understand the self-loathing that led me into a lot of these situations, the desperation to be loved and admired. I’ve worked out everything you’ve just read and a lot more, and while I am acutely aware of my shortcomings, I also know I didn’t deserve any of it. That’s the part we’re working on now: Unraveling shame, wiggling up under the fears that still dog my steps and trying to shuck them off. For all that I’ve had a dreadful few months emotionally I do feel like I’ve accomplished something .
I think if i hadn’t joined a UU church I could have gone on that way forever, just pretending all that stuff didn’t happen. People would ask me things about my Pagan books and I’d say “Well, I don’t identify as Wiccan anymore,” but what I really meant was, “I’m not anything, this subject hurts, please just read the book and let me go.” But since becoming part of Live Oak I’ve wanted to stretch out and make use of my talents, and while I’ve found some ways, I know there is so much more I could do and so many ways I could benefit the community, if I could just figure out how.
How is the big question.
But I honestly don’t think I can get where I want to be in life – or who I want to be, although I’m not sure who that is – without opening myself back up to the mystical. It was sewn into my shadow for so many years.
Funny how, after practicing from the age of 16, and over 30 years on this weird-ass path, I keep ending up right back at the beginning.
If you made it this far, thank you for bearing with me! Sometimes a girl just needs to unload her history on total strangers and hope for the best, lol. I’m still not sure what’s next, but I. hope you’ll stick around for that too. Please enjoy this palate cleanser.
