Fundamentalism Made Us Complicit

Griefwork after SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE: Duggar Family Secrets

A week after the documentary dropped on Amazon Prime, I was still straining to find solid ground.

On the set for Shiny Happy People

I’d filmed my interview in February 2022, in a feverish 8-hour session with the film crew and producers, and then waited over a year to find out which clips would be included. Who the rest of the cast was. How wide the scope would be. If I’d made a vulnerable mistake. If I’d find release and support for sharing the truth of my experience in Christian fundamentalism…or condemnation. The wait was agonizing.

Then, on June 1, sequestered in my stateroom on the Queen Mary 2, while I was slow-traveling solo to Europe as part of a recovery process, I huddled over my phone and watched Shiny Happy People for the first time. The ship was near England, GMT, and so it was the middle of the night. One of my besties, who happens to be a religious trauma therapist, was on the phone with me, supporting me scene by scene.

We watched as few of my quotes rolled in:

“In this culture, you are not really allowed to say no to who shows up and says he wants you. If a man says he wants you, he’s God’s man for you, and you have to learn to adjust your feelings and thoughts around that.”

and referring to Christian patriarch Michael Pearl…

“His goal is to help you spank your child with extreme measures and not get in trouble with the police. So how you spank is just as important as what you spank with…it can be a switch from a tree, a length of craft glue, pvc pipe….”

Watching myself on the screen felt surreal. Like time travel, like a disturbance in my continuum. But I was impressed with the job the producers did putting our stories together with such integrity and respect.

At the end of episode two, after I’d shared about my wedding night and purity culture outcome, and after seeing images of my first wedding and young children blurred on the screen, my body was shaking. I wanted to throw up. Curl into a fetal ball. Lay on the floor and scream.

Laura, my aforementioned friend, texted that I should move my body. Dance or sway. Movement helps a traumatized nervous system regulate, she said.

I was too upset to dance so I let my arms go limp and swayed back and forth. I instantly started to cry. Laura said it was a release and to let my body do what it needed to do. Nauseatingly, I resisted. Surrendering to release is difficult for the self-protective.

But I cried for hours that night. It wasn’t just the trauma of the rapes or the discipline scenes in the documentary that haunted my system. I knew this wave well. What washed over me at 3 am as I sobbed and moved my body like a staggering zombie was the grief of complicity. Of having been a young fundamentalist mother who read To Train Up a Child and received advice from my Gothard mentors on how to effectively spank my babies. Of having participated in behaviors they told me God said to do, that I deeply regretted and could never take back because time marches on. My children are grown.

Complicity: the fact or condition of being involved with others in an activity that is unlawful or morally wrong.

A week after the documentary dropped on Amazon Prime, I’m still straining to find solid ground, and I’m not alone. In the week that’s passed, I’ve received a flood of messages from viewers expressing:

“Thank you for your bravery.”

“Horrifying. I had to take breaks and pace myself.”

“I definitely saw that in our church and we weren’t even IBLP!”

“Me too. That was my marriage too.”

Scrolling around and reading various posts, it’s clear that Shiny Happy People activated a lot of memories and emotions in anyone who watched it. The questions shifted to inquiries about religious trauma. What qualifies as trauma? What can someone do if they’re feeling triggered and jolted by the extent of fundamentalism in America? How can we metabolize and process the disturbing abuses uncovered through this project, especially when we’re triggered by them?

Triggers are information. In healing from religious trauma and the kind of church-sanctioned domestic abuse I shared in my interview, I’ve learned that triggers are unavoidable, often stealthy, and offer valuable insight into what hurts. If I can ask, “Where in my body am I feeling this pain?” and “What memory does it remind me of?” I’m on my way to processing a wound otherwise stored and buried in my system. Triggers are the key to healing if we use them wisely.

There was just one snag that kept popping up in the comments and messages: regret. Some viewers weren’t only activated about their experiences. They were confronting their participation in a system they now understood to have caused irreparable damage and harm.

A complicity trigger twists a sharper knife.

The realization that we participated in harmful practices because we thought it was the right thing to do at the time is a slicing awareness that peels away masks, veils, and pretense. Gothard, Pearl, and the patriarchs deftly ensure everyone’s hands are bloody. This keeps the blame off of them. Our victimhood includes the ways we became the abuser’s hands, mouth, eyes, ears, and feet. This was definitely true in the IBLP, as the documentary showed. Freedom comes through cutting the puppet strings, but the cut doesn’t undo the damage.

I read To Train Up a Child and received advice from my Gothard mentors on how to effectively spank my babies. And while I did not spank my infants or participate in blanket training, and did not faithfully read Pearl’s books because I detested his mean manner, I sat in rooms where they trained their babies using this method. I did discipline my children with switches when they were older. I did sit in circles of mothers as they calmly spoke of canning jars and obedience training, long dresses and character verses, bread recipes and sin bound up in the heart of a child.

I grieve those years. I regret stifling my inner voice and wisdom. I ache to go back and time and take younger me by the hand, lead her away from them, burn Pearl’s book, and break the switch. My kids are grown, thriving, and forgiving. But as I remained entangled in regret, it was as if I’d turned the switch on myself, the patriarchs still shadowed every day. I’d turned their abuse onto myself.

When a trigger requires griefwork, the healing process is a dark pain that pulses in a shame-laced silence. It’s not “rinse it off and maybe put on a bandaid.” Griefwork requires psychological surgery and post-operative care.

“When you leave, and you’re actually out there, flailing like a new little fish, there are people who catch you. The universe catches you.”

–– Tia Levings, Shiny Happy People

In 1993, 50% of parents spanked their children. And while that number dropped to 35% in 2017, chances are a good portion of the viewers feeling activated by the discipline scenes in the documentary carry unprocessed guilt for choices they made when they were younger.

And this is actually good news––it’s a gift of hindsight that demonstrates change. Realizing our participation in harmful behaviors, patterns, and systems is embarrassing, shaming, regretful––sad to the level of agonizing. This is especially true when long-term consequences are present, relationships are broken, and scars won’t heal. But if you’re looking back as a changed person, you’ve learned something. When we know better, we do better.

What I knew then: I was an exhausted, mother in shock with the life I strained to hold together. My mentors had glowing, shiny families, with obedient children who sat quietly in a row. Their recommendations didn’t land well in my body but what did I know? They were professional parents. I should listen to them.

What I know now: I was part of a high-control system optimized to exploit vulnerable and needy people like me. I was living in abuse. I didn’t want to hit my children and the day came when I stopped. Nothing I chose was from evil intent or a desire to harm––and that’s using the word “chose” loosely. It was a life without choices, a life where I was not free to hear my own conscience or buck their system.

I look back at that young mother as if she were another person and see someone who was trying, despite great pain and confusion. I see her kindly. I know her heart. I’m filled with the compassion that I know she needed then, the wise voice she craved to hear. And this is important because kind compassion is essential for healing.

Being kind to my younger self decreases pain, lessens anxiety, and helps me hold space for mutual truths that are critical for me to accept, such as:

1. I meant well, and

2. My actions still caused harm.

As well as:

1. I’m so sorry for so many things I said and did in my fundamentalist years, and

2. Those years are lost to me now.

Unfortunately, knowing better, doing better, and even recognizing that we had good intentions in the first place won’t give us what we really crave: a chance to do it over.

Good intentions don't really mean much when harm's being done. Beyond offering context, they don’t relieve the suffering. Our choices have consequences. Sometimes these consequences must be held and carried. These are the facts of survival.

The facts call for grief work and perhaps one of the hardest things of all: acceptance.

Griefwork is a powerful healing tool

The only way I know to cope with loss and regret is to metabolize it through grief.

Sometimes it’s sobbing. Anger. I spent years in denial, years more depressed. I begged and bargained to be spared the consequences. I have a saying––"You’re not getting out of this one for free.” It means that when a thing needs to be grieved, I need to make space for it. Clear time. Listen to sad songs, take long walks, and not be surprised if I end up crying on the bathroom floor. Grief exacts an unavoidable price, a sacrifice. But it’s also a key.

The key unlocks the catharsis of release: acceptance and integration. All that swaying like a zombie, sobbing, and letting go of what I can not get back, allows yesterday to remain in the past.

Something I say often that brings me comfort and inspiration is “Trauma took my past. It doesn’t get my present and future too.” Griefwork is my attempt to contain those years, to create new eras where I can move forward.

Because reclamation is possible. Forgiveness is possible. If trauma took your past, it doesn't have to take your present and your future too. “Do your work,” including grief work. Allow yourself to grieve all the things that you've lost and all the things that may remain lost. Apologize. Hold space. Honor the boundaries others set around their healing and survival. Sway. Cry. Walk. Metabolize every layer of your new awareness in a time frame that feels manageable to you.

But don't become your own self-abuser through a legacy that they gave you.

That would be letting them win. And they don’t get to do that. You deserved better then and you deserve it now. If making the documentary taught survivors anything, is that when we talk and share our stories, we take our lives back, and our feet find solid ground.

Read more of my personal experiences as a trad wife here.

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