Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
This isn’t a breakup pep talk. It’s a full-body recalibration.
Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary—the only podcast for women navigating the messy aftermath of divorce who are done with quick fixes and spiritual fluff.
I’m Dawn Wiggins, therapist and homeopath, and I’m here to give you something the divorce advice space rarely does: real healing.
Through somatic therapy, EMDR, IFS, and homeopathy, we go deeper—into your nervous system, your unspoken grief, and your buried rage.
Every week, we hold the tension: the body-based anxiety you can’t shake; the hormonal upheaval no one warned you about; the unresolved longing for identity.
You’ll hear raw solo episodes, real voice notes from women in the trenches, and intimate interviews with experts who do more than perform healing.
Here, you won’t be asked to “just move on.”
You’ll be asked to feel.
If you’re tired of tutorials that leave your nervous system humming and your heart disconnected, hit subscribe.
Your nervous system already knows the truth—it just wants a safe space to embody it.
Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
255. Holy Heartbreak: Finding God After the Church Fails You During Divorce
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Is It Still Faith If I Don’t Feel Safe?
Have you ever walked out of a church meeting feeling more broken, ashamed, or dismissed than before you went in—wondering if it’s even possible to honor your faith and protect your safety at the same time?
For women facing divorce, church is often positioned as a lifeline—but what happens when the lifeline turns into a source of confusion, shame, or spiritual wounding? If you’ve found yourself battling self-doubt, wrestling with religious trauma, or feeling frozen by judgment instead of comfort, this episode gets right to the heart of why so many people lose their sense of spiritual safety during marital distress and divorce.
In this conversation, you’ll gain insights into how to rebuild spiritual trust and belonging after religious trauma, discover why shame and “spiritual bypassing” can derail your healing journey, and explore practical ways to reconnect with faith and community without sacrificing your boundaries or well-being.
Press play now to hear real women’s stories, expert perspectives, and tangible steps for honoring both your faith and your safety as you reclaim your voice and your healing.
Post Divorce Roadmap - 21 Days of Guided Journaling
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On the Web: https://www.mycoachdawn.com
A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, manifesting, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of building your confidence, forgiveness and letting go.
Post Divorce Road Map : 21 Days of Journaling
Promo Code: MAGICDROP
When I told my church elder that my husband shoved me into the wall. He asked me if I was praying daily. He said I needed to be more obedient. I left that meeting and threw up in the church parking lot. Loves, this episode is different. It's not just our voices, it's yours, and today we're honoring the stories our community has shared about what happened when they asked the church for help and got shame instead. This is about the women who sat across from spiritual leaders and left more broken than before.
Speaker 1:Hi love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence. I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. After divorce, darlings, today we are digging into all the things spiritual and religious trauma and certainly processing our own experiences with it, as well as the stories that have been shared with us. Some of the things we are going to talk about today is the shame instead of help, right when we're looking to church for help, because I do think that's what we've been taught to do is for it to be a resource and a source of support. And when you know there's not a solution, that fits the problem right, there's sort of a common theme around there being self-doubt, spiritual disorientation, nervous system freeze. When you get something from a pastoral team or a leader in a church that doesn't actually ask big, curious, hard questions and go to the dark places and have a path for intervention, right, it just sort of ends up being spiritual bypassing and gaslighting and all of this right.
Speaker 1:We are also going to talk about how to rebuild spiritual and religious safety afterwards. Right, if you decided to leave your marriage and maybe you decided to leave your church. Right, going back and revisiting those things. And how do you rebuild when you've experienced spiritual or religious trauma amidst marital distress and divorce? Right, what you can learn, relearn about faith, god yourself, what you would say to those spiritual leaders if you could go back and do it again from a sense of safety in your own body. These are the things we are going to dig into today, because the truth is you do not have to pick between your safety and your salvation. Welcome, coach Tiffany and Producer Joy. What you feeling as we're unpacking this conversation this morning.
Speaker 2:I feel a heaviness and a heartbreak for these women, because this is very, very real women, because this is a very, very real. I don't think that as a christian culture, we hold space or um like the broad, the broad church right, not not um, but hold space for truth to be in the light told like, yeah, so it's, this one's a little bit more of a heartbreak for me, because I do love the Lord so much and I see it. I've seen it my entire life, I've seen it even in recent years. Yeah.
Speaker 3:For me personally. I think that there's so much connectedness between God bringing me a husband like God, choosing this man, putting him in my path and this is the one that I chose and realizing that something about it is not right and then having to reconcile is this what God wanted for my life? It's a big thing to sort of turn away from. Is there a lesson that I'm supposed to learn? Am I supposed to change? Am I supposed to fix this? Because this is the one and only man that God brought into my life?
Speaker 1:That's super interesting, because I was always told that God had the perfect person picked out for me too. Oh, interesting, and my ex-husband is definitely a Christian, but he's also a lot of other things that don't square with living in alignment with God living in alignment, you know yeah. Yeah, that doesn't mean people have to be perfect, right, but there's sort of this willful ongoing disobedience Right, right, right, right of this willful, ongoing disobedience Right, right, right, right.
Speaker 2:There's a distinct difference between loving the Lord and living for the Lord, being a Christian and being indwelled. Like there's like a fruit that comes from alignment.
Speaker 1:That is not necessarily there, just in the right words that you say, or actions like going to church, you know so we've heard, like so many stories, whether it's in the community around town or from women we've talked to or you know, and we have definitely heard people say things like they feel like the church betrayed them, things like the church asked me what I was doing that made him so angry, or they reminded me that he's still the spiritual head of the household, or that my marriage could be redeemed if I only learned how to forgive better, or whatever. And I think that this is to what, tiffany, you said. This is really spiritually disorienting. What do I believe?
Speaker 1:And I know, growing up for me, growing up with a mother who was very, very religious, I think in the way that often makes people cringe religious, I think in the way that often makes people cringe I often doubted myself because she carried herself as though she was the voice of God, right, that what she spoke was godly truth, and then it made me always question everything that was outside of what she thought or felt or believed. And I think, very similarly, that's what goes on in churches and it's very dangerous because then we're self-abandoning, right, and we're abandoning even maybe our own relationships with God in deference to what a leader or a figure has said, right. So that's not this deep, meaningful relationship with God, really intuiting what God is trying to say to me. It's like this unhealthy attachment with maybe a leader or a attachment figure right the church.
Speaker 3:What are your thoughts? I feel like that happens a lot, though. It happens a lot in religion. When you start idolizing the pastor instead of really working through all of that to say, like what is God trying to say to me right now? You know, what is God speaking through me right now, and I know for me. I knew divorce in religion was not great. I knew there were things surrounding that, but me it was like I was hearing one thing, but I felt like God was telling me another.
Speaker 2:And I remember even like right before divorce.
Speaker 3:So I was raised in the Northeast. Northeast religion is very different from the South.
Speaker 1:I would love to talk more about that yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. How's it different? Well, because in the Northeast, where I was raised in Pennsylvania so initially I went to church a lot with my grandparents and we had a Lutheran church I was a baptized Lutheran, which is like a step down from Catholic, so in my town a lot of people were Catholic and then I kind of like went away from the church a little bit because I was raised by a mom who was very spiritual, but in the sense of like she worshipped God through nature and experience and being loving. So not necessarily having discipline to go to church every week, like we didn't really do it. But then when I was a teenager, I started taking vocal lessons because I love to sing, and so that vocal teacher ended up connecting me with her choir and so when I was like around 12 years old, I joined a Methodist church and I started singing in the choir and my mom would attend with me and things like that.
Speaker 1:When I got to the South. What's your favorite church song to sing?
Speaker 2:One time I did a flute solo.
Speaker 1:His Eye is on the Sparrow right and I just loved playing that song on the flute. It was so beautiful. It's such a beautiful song. Do you remember anything like that? I?
Speaker 3:don't? I feel so disconnected from that time that I honestly don't remember.
Speaker 2:Interesting, but that's where I'm at.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I sang in weddings.
Speaker 1:I sang solos all the time I feel an IFS session coming.
Speaker 3:Well, we also had this really cool pastor and he tried to bring a lot of really neat things, and we actually burned incense in the church, which whatever. And Well, we also had this really cool pastor and he tried to bring a lot of really neat things in.
Speaker 3:Like we actually burn incense in the church, which, whatever, and eventually there ended up being a situation where he was dismissed from the church by the elders due to like some things. And that was my first real rift in the church and experiencing losing someone who I felt like was a great leader for my life spiritually when I got to the South.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the world of Southern Baptists okay, because there is a Baptist church on every corner and where I live there are churches everywhere. We're probably like the Charleston of the mountains is what they call us here. So I started getting involved when I was in the military in Southern Baptist Church and I remember, you know, we were doing Bible study with other couples and doing other things. Those pastors I loved because they were loud and they were so like. They spoke with such conviction that they just like gave you chills every Sunday and I felt very connected to the Southern Baptist sort of you know, religious tendencies whatever and I remember it connected to the Southern Baptist sort of you know religious tendencies whatever, and I remember it was crazy because right before my divorce- so like meaning, because I was born and baptized Lutheran, also in Wisconsin, right.
Speaker 1:So I would guess that we had like a similar experience, right. But then we moved to Florida when I was very, very young, five years old. We stuck in the Lutheran church for a couple of years but then went to a Southern Baptist church when I was like nine or 10. So by loud do you mean like in the Lutheran and Catholic churches everything is sort of like monotone and like very like nasal or whatever. And then you get to this other church and it's like dynamic and intense and it's like there's life breathed into it or something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like the pastor's voices are always booming, like they're super loud If anyone's ever been to Southern Baptist they are loud. Yes, and that really kept my attention and it held me and it was good for what I needed and I remember there's something about the Southern Baptist religion and people want to tell me that I'm wrong. That's perfectly okay. But they do believe at some point that as adults, they would like you to be re-baptized, because it's like a recommittal of the Lord like in a conscious way.
Speaker 3:So I remember one of the most beautiful religious times that I had was right prior to my divorce, like prior to me leaving my marriage, I decided to get baptized and it was a night and the church was dark and it was just candlelight and I invited no one no one, because it was such a personal decision that I had made and I got baptized that night and it was one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened to me.
Speaker 3:It was one of the most beautiful experiences ever I have chills. I really, really loved it yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah same, I had been baptized as a baby but then got re-baptized as a teenager or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then when I moved to Myrtle Beach I did attend a Baptist church. My daughter went to a Baptist daycare. We did the whole thing again and then I started gravitating towards non-denominational, because that's a big thing down here too. So yeah, I think I've taken quite the spiritual journey and kind of where I'm at now. Where I've landed is I haven't gone to church in a number of years but for me I've kind of gone back to the roots of my mother, where I worship God through nature and through hiking. Like I feel closer to him when I'm in nature, the lake, on a hiking trail, like whatever that's where I feel like.
Speaker 2:I get. You're preaching joy's love language there. Yeah, I say that I meet God in nature. I absolutely wear. I meet him and we have the best conversations.
Speaker 3:I have a lot of conversations with my friends who are also going through divorce, who are ultra religious in the church and are receiving counseling through the church, and I'm always amazed by how different some of their experiences are, where some of them have these very empowering pastors that are validating them and say this is not what God intended for you. It's time to move on. And there are other ones that are almost shaming women into being these very subordinate beings.
Speaker 1:I agree, I see the church grappling with trying to become modern right, like speaking into and acknowledging and validating the truth of living in a modern world and and speaking up about our current modern struggles. Right, but then not condoning. Right, like trying to remain biblically based while also speaking out against certain things. I see the church really grappling with that. But I got to tell you, we started going back to church last year and it's been wonderful. But also I don't hear in the halls, for instance right, or in the chit chat. I don't know how much like truth speaking goes on. You know like really truth speaking about what happens behind closed doors in people's homes and how much. Our church recently started a trauma-based program for people, which I love, and it was based on Davey Blackburn's experience. His wife was brutally murdered and so he created a trauma program for churches. But even in that I didn't hear anything about EFT tapping or EMDR or homeopathy or the things that actually help heal the brain-based trauma that happens, and so my spidey sense always goes off that. Well cool, we have a trauma, we could say. I attend a trauma-informed church. That's freaking amazeballs.
Speaker 1:But also, you know, some of the inspiration for this exact episode was producer Joy's sentiment that too often in the church the answer is pray harder, have more faith and be submissive, right Like hit your knees, hit your knees, hit your knees. And that is a wonderful and essential element of communing with God and knowing his plan for you. But it's not necessarily. It could in some cases, but it's not necessarily going to heal your brain or your nervous system, right? There are some specific behaviors that God holds us accountable to do to allow our bodies to be in a position where they can heal themselves. And I think that requires, like you can't stay typically endlessly in an abusive or addicted or home that lacks integrity or alignment or fidelity right and heal completely. That's, you know, it's sort of that idea that you can't heal while the knife is still in you.
Speaker 1:And we've been talking a lot here on the pod lately about stay or go and how to not self-abandon while staying, and that's amazing. But also, at some point, if there's someone in the marriage who's not willing to do the work, to be well and to live in alignment with God's design women to heal or to be well or to live in God's design if they're still in the situation, that's reinforcing the pain, the harm the trauma and I don't hear a lot of those conversations. We've been invited on the podcast Unyoked multiple times, which has been amazing. It is a Christian podcast about divorce and I think he has the same mission. Right Is how can we have real faith-based conversations about divorce without shaming, blaming and disenfranchising people?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, that's the thing when we were in that Bible study at the Baptist church, like we would go into these people's homes, like every week, you know, and we would have it, and they would separate the men and the women to do Bible study and then we would all come together but there were never deep conversations, they were always surface level, you know like, and I think that there is a lot of worrying about image Performative, yes, performative Christianity.
Speaker 3:I just never felt like it went deep enough for me. I felt like if I would have told these women what I was really experiencing, what would that have done? Honestly it would have allowed me to be seen, but then what? Then there's this fear of my secret being out, everyone finding out.
Speaker 2:But then what Then?
Speaker 3:there's this fear of my secret being out, everyone finding out, staring at me in church, not wanting to invite me to things, and here's the thing that I think is a real thing is. I feel like if you go there in these small group situations, there has to be some thought around one bad apple poisoning the group. How close do you get to someone when you're already on the fence about your own marriage and someone's coming to you and somebody else is coming to you and another person is coming to you? How much of that seeps in to what you're trying so badly to hold together?
Speaker 1:Say more about that.
Speaker 3:If I feel like my marriage is falling apart, if I have questions that I'm not able to share and I'm surrounding myself with people that are surface level, people that I'm not really sharing that with, but then all of a sudden I feel like I can start sharing with more and more people and more and more people start giving me validation to divorce.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Then what do? What are?
Speaker 1:you. What is your fear of what it would do?
Speaker 3:would it start affecting all of these other women that are? It's like, if you look back in history on feminist movements, right like I just read a book that talked about the feminist right and like that book that came up and it's like if we get everybody riled up about their marriages what is that going to do?
Speaker 1:Well, right, I think it trickles back down to mutual accountability, right? So I think, in the church, is there a mechanism not just for brain-based, nervous system-based healing, but is there a mechanism for accountability for not just men, because women can be abusive? We know women cheat, right, we talk about all these things, right, this is not to man bash, right, but is there a mechanism for accountability and then a plan for wellness? And I think these issues happen in every community, not just churches.
Speaker 1:So I don't want to just like be putting the church on blast, right, I think, as communities, we struggle with there being safe spaces, we struggle with vulnerability, we struggle with social media, we struggle with polarization, we struggle with judgment and blame, and, yeah, I think this happens in all communities all over the world. Right, I don't think it's unique to churches, but, yeah, where we are, you know not, we want to avoid our own vulnerability in our own work. So I'll rather point fingers at yours, right, I'd rather, right, I'd rather put you on blast or highlight what you're going through, rather than join you in your vulnerability. I think that's real. I'm curious Joy's perspective, because Joy is in a small group that does go deep, and that's had its seasons, right. How have you grappled with these things over the years, joy?
Speaker 2:I think that the church as a whole let me speak into Southern Baptists, right, Southern Baptists as a whole, Southern. Let me speak into Southern Baptist right, Southern Baptist are are, as a whole, are very suppressed, and it's very suppressed, right, Like it's very whispered in the dark. There's, you know, there's there's a million jokes about you know, Baptist and drinking and the Methodist will hand you a beer, but the Baptist you know what I mean Like there's, there's a million jokes out there about Baptist. But I think the disservice that this level of organization does is that they, they keep everything quiet so it doesn't breed, like Tiffany was saying, like the ripples that come from one woman right.
Speaker 2:Descent, that's the word descent. It doesn't breed descent, and so I am proud of my church, but I do think that my church is in the minority in terms of how you know our. When everything in my personal life fell apart, my pastor literally just said that the church had my back, that that they were supportive and I had options. Like he said, I had options, and my pastor's wife brought me a lime for my. You know my drinks my mules.
Speaker 2:So, like there's, there are amazing doctrinally sound. I think the problem with the church as a whole is that so much of our teachings are opinion based and not what is actually text correct. One of my most favorite things that was said to me in that period of my life was that God is a God of redemption and my story will be redeemed regardless of the outcome of my marriage.
Speaker 1:Of your marital status.
Speaker 2:Amen, yes, and that was so powerful to me because it let me kind of release the pressure of me fixing it and me and me having to sacrifice myself or to become smaller or to do, to act right, to perform. Because God is a God who gives good gifts and he is a God who wants good things for his children. And like I'm a daughter of a king, why would I settle for being in this marriage? Why would God want me to be in a marriage that broke me in so many ways Right? So like, if we look at it in the picture of I'm a daughter of a keen. What would a daughter of a keen, what would he want for his child?
Speaker 1:Right, so like there's not not endless suffering, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not endless suffering. Like God did not create us for endless suffering.
Speaker 2:No, no so and I do, like you know you, you, this is kind of a I'm, I'm trying to, I'm not, I don't want to bash, I don't want to bash. I grew up in a church that you are modest If you weren't wearing wearing pantyhose. Right, like, it's not just like women, didn't? I didn't own jeans when I met my, my husband. So like there are, you know, women were are taught from. They're almost groomed. I would even go as far to say right, they were groomed to keep your head down, keep your mouth shut and, you know, perform as a wife, because that is what God, god, called us to do. And while I do think that God called us to be loving and supportive wives, I also believe that God is the original feminist, like he is. You know, jesus talked to the woman at the well and she was the outcast. So, like, you'll never convince me that God wanted women small, or, you know, like he wanted us cherished and loved and respected and treated well.
Speaker 1:No, and in fact your husband and I have had many a conversation about. Is the Holy Spirit female, as we would write like? Because he's talked about scripture right where it says and then he brooded over the water, or or they brooded over the water, right, and brooding is a distinctly feminine trait, right? So is the Holy Spirit female or feminine, right? And I, yeah, I totally agree and love that yeah.
Speaker 1:So in that moment where your pastor showed up and his wife brought you lives, which is just like such a beautiful moment, right, that also came on the back of your husband coming forward and admitting sort of all of his shortcomings and challenges, right, but leading up to that moment, did you feel like you could have come forward and confronted all that and been as supported in the church? I genuinely don't know the answer.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a really good question. Do I feel supported? I would say no, because I'd never experienced, I had never been witness to or experienced anything that I had gone through, right, like he confessed to, basically a double life, right. So there's a level of which, growing up in a very legalistic, conservative Southern Baptist church to the non-denominational church that we were attending at the time, I had never seen sin, darkness, whatever. Whatever vernacular you want to use, come to light and it be held. You know I had. You know there there are things that I had done or experienced or had done to me in the Southern Baptist church that was never allowed to be talked about. It was, I was. You know you miss one Sunday and you're a heathen, backsliding Christian kind of thing Does that include sexual assault at Walmart?
Speaker 2:That it was not talked about. Like my Sunday school teachers knew I was, I was sexually assaulted as a child and so um in a very public place and it was not held. It wasn't um.
Speaker 1:You know the language you're using and Tiffany is nodding her head tiff, tiff jump in.
Speaker 3:What's resonating. Again, it comes back to this thing where the message that we're taught is that when we come into this I don't know, I feel like I have such a hard time rectifying because my personal relationship with God, when I am on that lakeshore, when I am deep in the woods, when I am even in my own backyard in the woods and I'm laying in the grass and I'm looking at the sky, those feelings of being seen, understood and loved by my higher power.
Speaker 3:I've never felt that in church by others. I never felt that connection to other people in the way that he intimacy me to be connected to other yes, like joy saying that she never fell witness to sin, like I'm sorry, what kind of bullshit is it being held, not not being held?
Speaker 2:yes, right, and it's not accepted like like god you know what I mean, like when, when he came forward, they didn't say oh you're, we're sinful, whatever. You know what I mean like yeah, he was held, accountable held yeah, right, but he was also like god extends grace and like that is his big picture message. Is that? Like? Sure, but how often do people?
Speaker 1:come, come forward and confess and then don't walk the journey out into alignment. Right, it is not enough to confess there has to be a step by step by step by step recovery process, that is intense and arduous and fraught, and all the things not to make healing sound so awful.
Speaker 2:No, but like it it's. It's a fork in the road right and where you have the easy road of just like burying it. It's not easy and you and I both know that that causes more damage. Even my husband will tell you that like it causes more damage. To suppress and to like brush it aside and put it under a blanket and just like move on and pretend it never happened, then it is.
Speaker 2:That's easier than it is to dive deep and and and do the really hard work of asking yourself and and self accountability and doing the reprogramming and all of those tools that God gave us, Like there are yeah, okay, right, and like you break your. This is one of the things I say all the time you break your arm, you go to a doctor, so like if your heart you don't break your marriage.
Speaker 1:and then literally yeah, Just pray. And then just like study scripture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not like God gave us tools and he gave us the opportunity for redemption to the purest, deepest sense, not just moving on, and I will. My heart, my heart breaks for the, for the couples who just move on instead of.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how many of those couples I see in practice where there was something, admitted, you know, maybe multiple times, but then never actually took the steps to do the recovery. It's like oh, we talked about it, he said he was sorry, he said he wouldn't do it again, and then like and then just sort of slipping into the comfy, cozy blanket of denial, like it's just going to go away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, another thing that I love that was told to me back then was that time doesn't heal all wounds. Time heals clean wounds. So like get all, like work it out, get it out, do the healing, because a scab is going to create a scar, you know like it doesn't.
Speaker 1:You know, I was sitting in church this weekend and I do love going because I do love learning and I do love the music and the ritual and the people that I meet and all those things, right, I love serving coffee and and all of this stuff, and I do believe that there's really good preaching at my church. And also, you know, I had this really in-depth conversation with my daughter after the service where she was really struggling with feeling guilt, right. So it's like, okay, they get up there and they preach, the preach, but then are we teaching our people how to forgive themselves, like the mechanisms, right of self-forgiveness, or God's grace or love, and what that looks like to both receive grace and be accountable? Like, are we teaching that A? But then B, they did start talking about how there are people in the world who have never heard the voice of God, or that's not right. I'm not saying that right, but like don't know about Christ. But I don't believe that because, to Tiffany's point, when she's laying in her backyard staring up at the sky, intimately attuned to God's creation, it's pretty impossible to live on this planet and not be in touch with some intelligent creator, right? I think that when the church focuses more on proselytization or conversion than it does on holding its own people accountable and with grace, we have our priorities out of order.
Speaker 1:But there's an episode we did a while back when I read the book by Janine McConaughey that facilitated a state change for me truly. It's called Trauma in the Pews and she is a licensed therapist who also has done lots of EMDR to heal spiritual trauma that happened within the church walls. She has a history of sexual abuse and all the layers of how that played out in the church and how it actually blocked her own recovery and how that turned into many different forms of illness later in life and she approached EMDR and all of this true recovery work later in life not late in life, but later in life in her 50s and 60s. Really, really remarkable. So validating gets into the essential nature of a trauma-informed approach for churches and I think voices like hers are essential. I actually gave a copy of the book to my pastor. He never circled back. There's a really good example. What are you feeling in your body right now? Tiffer Doodle, as we've been talking about this.
Speaker 3:I just feel like there are so many women out there who are in situations that they shouldn't need to be in because they're not receiving. They're idolizing the leader instead of the higher power.
Speaker 2:Are they?
Speaker 1:idolizing, yeah right, making anything other than the actual higher power, higher power.
Speaker 3:Or do they feel?
Speaker 1:trapped.
Speaker 3:I think, all of the above, all of the above, all of the above.
Speaker 2:I would honestly say I don't know if that many people are aware. Right, you go to the church and you trust him to stand up on the pulpit and give the words of God. But how many people actually come home and rectify what was just preached to you versus what was actually in scripture? Because there are so many commentaries that you can take scripture out of context. You can take one little thing, that Well, sure.
Speaker 1:And also this piece about attachment style, right, because when I was getting divorced and made a decision to and there was so much context again about religion and spirituality in my divorce as well, that was wound up in my mom and my ex and all the things and I started exploring other religions, other spiritual practices.
Speaker 1:I started really stretching and reaching and exploring for the first time in my life and I would have sometimes panic attacks about the idea that I was going to go to hell because I had a Jewish sponsor or because I was practicing yoga and learning Sanskrit or exploring the Hindu faith or you name it, and I think I have some very unpopular takes within the Christian church. Right, the Christian church would have a lot to say about what I experienced in those years as I built this much stronger, deeper connection with God. But in those moments I really believe that my attachment style was all wound up in the church and my perception of God not God's actual way of being or loving or creating, but my perception of God that came from growing up with a parent who was incredibly dogmatic in a church that was very, very suppressed and repressed.
Speaker 1:My dad, actually Tiffany, this is hysterical my dad told joy a story yesterday about how we had this little dog when I was a kid and it was a boy dog so it's penis would stick out sometimes, right, and my mom told my dad she wanted this was before they got divorced, wanted him to diaper the dog because his penis was offending her. Like that's such repression right to do with, like shame and sex and sexuality and body, all the things, right Like it. Just explains me right there, friends, that's the whole game, right there. But yeah, so I think that our attachment style, we cannot heal our attachment style without looking at our relationship to religion and religious leaders, because it's all, when you've been raised in a religion, it becomes part of it, because religion is based on life, eternal life or death, right, heaven or hell. In every religion there's some version right Of life after death and how that plays out, I mean, and they start teaching it at a very young age.
Speaker 1:I am shocked by how we scare little kids into being Christ followers by teaching them about blood over door jams and this kind of stuff, right Like slaughter and Jesus on the cross, and I think it's terrifying and I think it does groom them or brainwash them. I was brainwashed right Like exploring my religion shouldn't cause panic. That's a very clear sign that there's something off in the way. There's not a security right, not a security in my identity in God's eyes. Period.
Speaker 3:Well, in the place that I live now, like they have very public protests. There's like one center of the city that you can protest in. That is on Main Street, and I remember I was down there I don't know when it was, but I went by and there were people out there protesting with their big signs that says God hates divorce. And all I'm thinking of is like all of these little kids that are in their parents' cars, that are going by and reading this, and then what is that conversation like in the car? So I worry about these pockets, especially in the South where I live, where people feel so suppressed and that they don't have a voice and they have to just sit still and look pretty.
Speaker 3:And these are the women that I feel like, in my mind, are probably experiencing the worst kinds of Marital suffering. Something, yes, abuse addiction.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what we want our listeners to hear today, right, other than you're not alone, we hear you, we get you, we've lived it is also that we are three women who have a strong faith and spiritual and even religious foundation right and a trauma-informed approach to walking this out and a spiritually informed approach to walking this out.
Speaker 3:And even in our program right, like we're embracing with these women and their own spiritual journey, like I feel, like your own relationship with the higher power is, it has to be one part of your healing. It has to be and I tell all of the clients that we work with. I don't care if what you are, if you're Buddhist, if you're Hindu, if you're just universal and you believe in universal law or attraction, there has to be something higher outside of you that has to be a piece of your healing.
Speaker 1:Okay, my darling dears, our Thursday episode is going to be an even grittier look at today's topic. We are going to share some listener stories that you know trigger warning. It's some intense content right about what goes on behind the scenes in churches, when you're sitting in that pastor's office and really trying to find a path forward. So stay tuned for Thursday. If you're not a premium subscriber, this is an invitation to become one. For $5 a month you can dive even deeper into your healing journey here behind the scenes and deeper takes on how to keep it going, how to find alignment, how to heal. We love you so much. Peace, dear. Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach John. You can find more at mycoachjohncom.
