What Fundamentalist Abusers Don't Want You to Know
Playing Two Truths and a Lie
I wrote this post three years ago. I’m sharing again because the truth has grown, the lie is present yet stagnant, and the call to action still relevant.
Dear Fellow Cycle Breaker,
I want to let you in on a miracle. It’s not a story I tell very often––pretty much only in my memoir. Heads up, friends, this story starts out sad.
It takes place fourteen years ago in the living room of a hundred-year-old house in the Cumberland Mountains. The floors and windows were scrubbed bare, and if I’m honest, my soul was too. I stood staring at the rain completely ashamed. I felt like I was evaporating.
I felt ashamed for being. For breathing. For taking up space in this room. I knew I was failing at the one thing I wanted to do more than anything in the world: raise a happy family.
In my hands, I held the large manila envelope holding my ex-communication papers. On the desk, lay a letter from my only friend at church, admonishing me to obey the elders or she’d have no choice but to support my shunning.
In town, I had homeschooling co-op friends who had no idea (or merely sneaking suspicions) that something wrong was going on at my house. Online, I had secret friends who I listened to and hung on their every word…sometimes arguing, sometimes challenging, sometimes longing with envy. I couldn’t let them know what my life was like behind these closed doors.
Upstairs, were four children napping. I’d served them beans and rice for lunch and we didn’t have any other food except the 3 eggs a day my hens provided. He’d taken the last of the grocery money to put gas in his car so he could go to work that day. The hours he was gone were the only hours of peace we knew. It was winter and I was out of firewood. And it was cold and rainy for weeks on end.
I stood evaporating, crying, weighing my non-existent options. I was exactly how I felt I was: utterly and completely alone.
WAIT. THAT’S NOT TRUE.
I wasn’t alone. It turns out there were (and are) thousands (more?) of women struggling exactly the way I was.
They too believed the preachers and mentors who taught the formula and rules for a happy and blessed life.
They too gave up the second income and tried to live within the means their husbands provided (or didn’t, as often is the case.)
They too read the books by Doug Phillips, Doug Wilson, Michael Pearl, John Piper, John McArthur, RC Sproul, Sproul JR, Falwell, Dobson….an exhausting list.
They too believed the struggle was evidence of their failure.
They too still tithed a tenth of their meager income, giving to the church instead of to their own children.
They too still clung to the hope for timely hand-me-downs, donated groceries, and anonymous offerings sent in the mail.
Maybe we weren’t all staring at Tennesee rain on a bleak winter’s afternoon, but we were all feeling the pain of a horrible lie: YOU ARE WORTHLESS AND ALONE. Abusers benefit when we feel that way, because the despair keeps us from taking action.
I’m so happy to call bullshit on their lying liar lies.
Christian Fundamentalism isolates women and children so that “alone and dependent” is how they see themselves. It means we don’t try to leave. It means we stay in line.
And yet…
There came a point in my story when I couldn’t bear hell on earth anymore. I couldn’t take another day of watching my children’s needs go under-met or unmet. If alone is what I was, then alone is how I’d leave. It took me a while to figure things out but ten months later I took my kids and escaped.
Fast forward to today. I’ve spent 11 years in trauma therapy. Met husband 2.0 and raised my children in stability. Developed my writing career. I started making videos of content related to the Christian Fundamentalism abuses we’d experienced. Social media traffic soared. I was in a hit documentary on Amazon. Sold my book. Survived an unexpected divorce with my chin up. Traveled to Europe alone.
The journey is worth it. And now I can look back on the surreal faith I had in what they told me and see it for what it was: a lie to keep me in line.
When my social media platform exploded, I started asking questions in response to the comments and creating content around our mutual experiences.
The answers to these are all saved in my IG Highlights and listed by category on my website. Here’s the miracle, friends. If you ever felt utterly alone and ashamed for drawing breath and taking up space…these messages provide firm evidence that you are NOT ALONE. Controlling people tried to make you feel that way because it gave them more power and control when you depended on them.
Patriarchal abuse strengthens when you choose against yourself and self-betray. When you rely on the idea that your suffering is holy. When you depend on them for the bread you eat, the clothes you wear, and the only happiness you have access to. They needed you to decrease so they can increase; high-control religion is a pyramid scheme that compresses the women and children holding it up.
But when you didn’t think you could take a single minute more of love that hurts….YOU LEFT.
We all did. And now, we can tell our stories.
When we share the truth of our experience, the gift we give one another is presence.
We’ve been there and we’re changing, growing, healing. We’re breaking the cycles of abuse, even when it’s hard.
It’s true I felt destitute that day in the rain. It’s true our stories of breaking free matter. And it’s a colossal lie that I was or ever will be, alone.
You’re showing me that we’re in this life—together.
Much love,
Tia
Want to know more about what’s really going on in Christian Fundamentalist homes? Grab my free PDF, the FUNDIE CHEATSHEET.
Read more of my personal experiences as a trad wife here.
Book Office Hours with me here.
