Episode 325: I Belong to Me with Tia Levings

Tia Levings is back, and this time she's brought the book so many of you have been waiting for — I Belong to Me, a survivor's guide to recovery and hope after religious trauma, and the follow-up to her memoir A Well-Trained Wife.

After thousands of women slid into her DMs asking how did you heal, how do I find myself again, Tia sat down and wrote the guide she wished she'd had. In this conversation, we get into what religious trauma actually is and why therapists are only now starting to name it, how spiritual bypassing uses faith language to invalidate your pain, and why the period right after you leave a high-control church or marriage is actually when you're most vulnerable — not most free. We also talk about why your voice and your sexuality are twin wounds that heal together, how to start building boundaries when you've never been allowed to have any, and why real recovery eventually means sitting with your own complicity — not to shame yourself, but to finally choose something different. If you've ever wondered was what I went through actually trauma, and can I actually heal from it — this episode is for you.

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work (and get access to the book club!)
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• I Belong to Me by Tia Levings — Release Date: May 5th — Pre-Order Now!
• Listen to Tia's first episode with us on her book The Well Trained Wife

Transcript

Sheila

Jesus is supposed to be life giving, and he is. But what happens when the church isn't? Hi, I'm Sheila Gregoire from BareMarriage.com where we talk about healthy, evidence based biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. And today we're going to take a big step back and we're going to ask, what do you do if you've been in a church which has caused you trauma? What do you do if the religious beliefs that you grew up with didn't end up being life giving, but instead suck the life right out of you and you're still figuring out how to recover from that life?

We have an amazing interview coming up with Tia Levings, she is one of my friends is going to go into that about her new book, but I need to tell you, we here at Bare Marriage believe two things. And the first is that God is good. God loves us. God wants us to have life abundantly. And we get that life through Jesus.

But we also believe that the church has missed the mark so much when it comes to women in relationships that in many cases, the church is doing more harm than good. And that's what we want to expose here at Bare Marriage. Not because we don't like the church, but because we love the church. And we are so tired of people being traumatized and running away from the church and leaving Jesus because the church has been awful to them.

And that's got to stop. And I understand if you have left the church and you just feel like you can't read the Bible anymore and you're not even sure Jesus exists, just know this is a safe space for you, okay? We welcome everyone here who has questions. But church, we've got to do better. And we have to be real that the people who are traumatized and who are leaving are not doing it because they want to sin.

They're doing it because the church has done something very, very wrong. And we're going to talk about how to recover. If you're one of those people, how do you move forward? How do you figure out who you are? If the church has made you feel like you're not even allowed to have an identity or to have feelings? And so that's coming up in the interview.

But first, if you want to support what we're doing, if you believe in what we're doing, if you believe in a healthy church, that here is something really quick you can do right now, if you are listening on YouTube, watching on YouTube, can you hit that like and subscribe button? Because that helps other people see this in their feed, and then people can find me.

And if you're listening somewhere else, remember to rate the podcast, tell other people about it, spread the word. And if you want to do something even more tangible, we are always looking for more Patreon supporters or just donors. If you join our Patreon group for as little as $5 a month, you get access to our Facebook group, which is a super fun place where people are trying to ask, like, like most of our questions aren't even about sex and marriage. They're about deconstruction and faith. And how do we find the real Jesus and how do we figure out a healthy church? It's wonderful. And for a little bit more, for $8 a month, you also get access to Joanna's awesome book club, which she does every month, and a whole bunch of other things. So, check that out. It's Patreon.com/BareMarriage

The link is in the podcast notes. And of course, if you want to help us in our endeavors to write more academic papers, to do more translations, or working in Spanish and a couple of other things right now to produce more video docu series like The Love and Respect, one that we just did. And would you consider giving a donation to the Good Fruit Faith initiative of the Bosko Foundation that feeds us directly and is just we couldn't do this without you because a lot of the things we do, we can't monetize.

-And so, if you would like to partner with us, that would be such a help. So, we're going to put the links to the podcast notes. And now, without further ado, here is my interview with Tia.

I am so thrilled to bring back my friend Tia Levings onto the podcast. Hello, Tia.

Tia

Hello, Celia, did I just. Sheila I just put two ls. Your name is Sheila?

Sheila

That's okay. It sounds like Celia. Everyone. I don't know why people spelt like she. Lia. That makes no sense to me, but I get that. Oh, doesn't even say Sheila. But anyway, let's see. Okay, so you first. You first were on. I don't know if the first time you came on was for your book, The Well-Trained Wife, or if you were on to talk about the Excellent Wife by Martha Piece, because you and I, along with Marissa Burt, deconstructed, demolished that book.

Tia

We did, that was a fun chat.

Sheila

It really was. And I know people appreciated it. Yeah, but you have a new book out.

Tia

I do.

Sheila

At least it will be out in like a week or so “I Belong To Me” . When's, when's the launch date?

Tia

May 5th. May 5th. So, depending on when this airs. But yeah, it's  I Belong to Me A survivor's guide to recovery and Hope after Religious trauma. And it is a self-help follow up to A Well-Trained Wife.

Sheila

Yeah. And I love it. Okay, so for those people who haven't heard you before, maybe they didn't see the episodes where you told your story. Do you want to just tell us all the major details of your story in five minutes or less? Three minutes.

Tia

My high level recap, I will say, if you don't, if you haven't read A Well-Trained Wife, you don't necessarily have to have for I Belong to Me because there is a recap in there that will give you the context in the overall like big plot points. But it is helpful because what happened with A Well-Trained Wife is many, many people related to it more than they expected to.

So even though you haven't been through the exact same harrowing cult journey that I've been through, you relate to different points on the path, and so that will help you identify trauma in your own life that that may need some addressing. So, A Well-Trained Wife is my story of how I got in and out of that high control cult.

It starts at a very ordinary point in time. When I was a child and we were we joined this megachurch, Southern Baptist megachurch in Jacksonville, Florida, that was becoming more fundamentalist and nationalist. As I grew up, I married young, I married who I thought God said I was supposed to marry because he told me that. And I knew at that point in my life that if God spoke, it would be through a man's mouth, and you weren't to argue.

So, I didn't really know him very well. We didn't have a lot of chemistry or compatibility, but there was no discussion about that. And I was immediately married into a violent situation with a very disorganized but very devout husband. And so, what happens? I call it church sanctioned domestic abuse or church sanctioned intimate partner violence because we had a very toxic, complementarian and dominant submission, headship, marriage.

But every single time we had a problem, and we had a lot of problems, the church would the resources, the books, the pastors, everything we would consult would point us back into this high control model. And so, we were we were caught in this vortex of turning to our faith for comfort, but instead we were getting really toxic advice.

And your listeners will be familiar with all of that toxic advice because you break it down so excellently. I was living those all of those realities and some of those ideas to their natural conclusions. So, my story includes Christian domestic discipline, which is otherwise known as wife spanking, severe corporal punishment for children, very strict Calvinist doctrine and theology through Doug Wilson's church at homeschooling, alternative lifestyles, trad wife.

All of those themes are in my story. I escaped very violently in 2007 with my children, ended up going into hiding, getting divorced, narrowly escaped with our lives, and so that it is a very dramatic, harrowing read. But at the end of A Well-Trained Wife, I got to spend about 25% of that book talking about how I'd rebuilt my life and put myself back together, and it's a lot of people's favorite part of the book, but it just begged more.

And when I started talking about it online, which is at some point where our work intersected, I was getting so many DMs of me too. And how did you heal and how did you rebuild a sense of self? And that was really the point. I hadn't I didn't have a sense of self when I escaped 33 years old and didn't know who I was or how to move in the world, there wasn't really an actualized adult, didn't understand agency, and I had to recover and repair all of that in a therapeutic landscape that was still figuring out how to talk about it, too.

So, it was very trailblazing feeling. And so, when I sat down to write I Belong to Me, I wrote the book that I wished I'd had back in that day. It's a very conversational, warm, real talk, like what it's really like to heal a lot of academic and therapeutic books written by experts will say, here's what you can do. Boom, boom, boom. And my book is more like, well, I took that advice and here's what it was like to do it. And here's what I was feeling along the way. So, it's the end result, you know, I'm actualized. I can talk about it without retraumatizing myself. I can go into these really hard rooms and chambers. I can resist fundamentalist thinking. And so that's what the body of my work encapsulates. It should bring us up to the present pretty well.

Sheila

Right? And of course, and you have you have four living children.

Tia

I do, yeah. And they're all adults.

Sheila

Yes. And four grandchildren. And they're just like me. Yeah. Yes, yes. And we also share. Yeah, a trauma you and I share a trauma. Yeah. Yes. We're and I was just blown away when I read this in A Well-Trained Wife. I've talked about this before. I just haven't met anyone who's gone through what I went through with losing my son. And you lost your daughter Clara, with hypoplastic left heart, which is a right. Yeah. Really?

Tia

Because the variances were so parallel. And Christopher and Claire are like little mates. I feel like they brought us together.

Sheila

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of grief, a lot of trauma in your background and you have rebuilt and I love this, but the book really focuses on healing, on having compassion with yourself when you're just in the midst of the fog and understanding the fog and understanding the confusion, and then and then working through all these things. You talk a lot about brain science, which I love. You know, you're using you're using the best, most up to date best practices research, which I love too. And so, yeah, I think it's a really, really helpful book. So yeah. Let's dive in.

Tia

Thank you.

Sheila

Yeah okay. So, you're talking about it focuses on religious trauma and that that is those two words together trigger a lot of people because religion isn't supposed to be traumatic. And how dare you say that? But more and more therapists are realizing that many religious spaces actually are traumatic.

Tia

Yes, yes, they're toxic. They enhance power dynamics and they have systems. They're populated with people who have generational trauma and have their own personality issues and their own problems. You know, like very familiar hearing. The church is full of sick people. What does that look like when you're, you know, turning to a bunch of sick people for comfort, you going to get they're going to get their yuck on you. And so that is kind of what happened. There can be doctrines that are violent. There can be pastors that are, you know, promoting really misinterpreted ideas, exploiting people for gain. Like, you know, this is the, this is the blood and bone of everything that we work on all the time. So. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the idea that religion would somehow be safe and protected and immune from that is, I think at this point, I think it's pretty ludicrous.

Anytime you have groups of people come together, you're going to have the potential for that. And unfortunately, and so much of the religion that we've had in the past 50 or so years, it tends to bypass the real harms that are happening or not want to talk about it. There's a lot of silence culture and a lot of othering and exiling instead of allowing a reckoning to take place.

Sheila

Yeah, and I love your definition of fundamentalism. It was just so simple. And I'm going to use just for now on: placing ideas before people.

Tia

Yeah.

Sheila

Yeah. At anytime we do that, we're, we're becoming fundamentalist. And that's, that's very much what a large swath of the evangelical church has done. I don't I don't think every corner has done it. And I'm in a church which does not cause me trauma right now. But there's I was in churches that did cost me trauma. Yeah. And I think that's the story of many people listening to this podcast is. Yeah, we definitely do. We put ideas before people.

Tia

And that ideological purity can seem so worthy and sacred and important. And you're supposed to, you know, couple that with teachings about dying to self or losing yourself or melting and dissolving into the system and the outcome, the fruit of that is not healthy. It is not good for society, it's not good for the individual, it's not sustainable. And so, when I started valuing like my humanity and having compassion for my humanity, it meant sometimes the ideological purity had to be compromised. And that was okay, because my humanity was more important than some purity test.

Sheila

Yeah. And then you start to realize that, yeah, that a lot of the things that you were taught were absolutely black and white, aren't as black and white. Exactly. And, and actually, that's the one thing that I really want to just throw this in at the beginning that I really appreciate about your book, because you said at the very beginning that, you know, fundamentalism is this putting ideas before people and we get into this black and white thinking, you know, they're all bad. I'm all good. If I do this, I'm good. If I don't do this, I'm bad. Like all of that. And you really resisted doing that in the book, you know, like over and over again. You know, you weren't saying that they are perpetrators. I'm the innocent victim, right? Or even the way you talked about family estrangement, you know, had some nuance there. And so, you're just you're really trying to put. Yeah, you're fighting against the fundamental because what we what's so often happens, I see this so much as people jump out of one fundamentalist space and then they end up fundamentalist, but just in the other direction.

Tia

Right? They recreate it because it's so comforting. Yeah, I love a good binary. Who doesn't? Who does the love, the clarity of an easy binary. But life is very rarely so polarized. And even the abusers, no one is holy good or holy bad like there is nuance and compassion to be had in there. When I'm looking back at previous versions of me that ardently believed in wanted that, you know, group, I want to be compassionate to her, too. She didn't know what she didn't know, you know. Yeah. And so, I can't be I can't be all or nothing about that in recovery. You know, that's not true. Recovery from fundamentalism, right?

Sheila

Yeah. Okay. So before let let's just talk about religious trauma for another minute because you said that there's a lot of things that, that cause you triggers. Now snippets of hymns, even hearing someone say thoughts and prayers, you know, our thoughts and prayers are with you. You know, those things are triggering. I get that too. There's and for different reasons, right? Like, I, I can't listen to it as well with my soul saying that at Christopher's funeral. And so, whenever that plays, I leave the church is yeah, maybe I'll get EMDR for that one day. I don't know if I want to, though. I've said this on another podcast, too. It's like, I don't know, I think it's okay that that one triggers me. I don't know, I.

Tia

Mean, I might if it were me because I do have a, I have a song like that as well. I reframed it to be an invitation to sit with that person so that that trigger. One of the things triggers do for me. I tend to look at them in as information, and I talk a lot about this in the book, is how your triggers are information of what's activated in your system, what needs love, what needs some tender love and some care. And I don't want to feel victimized by my triggers. I want to excavate and understand them. So, one of the things they do so well is they take us back, they take us back to a place, and sometimes that needs to be reclaimed or reframed or healed, like you just don't know until you know what you're dealing with. Very often, when something with Clara will come up that could hurt, I take it, and I and I bring it over here to a private place and I and think, I think about it in terms of she's in my life today. She's. Someone brought her into my day, right? Or I talk about what a horrible thing to say to someone who's lost a child, you know. Sometimes, it needs to be called out. People say some pretty awful things, and that needs public call out. But, you know, I won't know that until I sit and look at the trigger and what it's telling me and what it's bringing up and the appropriateness around it. Like there's a lot of questions around that information.

Sheila

Right. Yeah. I'll sit with that. I'll sit with that I yeah, I think, I think sometimes it's just for me it's, I mean I just need to be by myself. Like I can't be in a group of people feeling that. I think that's okay. I don't know.

Tia

It is because there's like as there's also not an assumption that there's anything wrong with your response.

Sheila

Like, yes, like yes.

Tia

You don't need to be in a room singing It Is Well. Like what? What does that do. For the planet? It's like is there. Yeah, exactly.

Sheila

But then I also get triggers. I find it hard sometimes to be in religious spaces where they're singing just, you know, with the super, super praise band in this fog machine and they're singing popular songs. And I just feel now like it's so emotional, like they're tugging. It's manipulative almost. Exactly. And I have a hard time with that, even though, like, I can sing some of the songs on my own. It's not the song; it's just the environment. Yes.

Tia

Yes, And the intent behind it and why. It's like there is a difference when it's in a corporate environment and there's like collective effervescence happening. I don't know if you are familiar with Rick Pidcock's work, but he has a book coming out soon on this.

Sheila

Yes. I'm so excited.

Tia

And it is. It speaks right into the heart of that. I mean, it's time we had a book right into that niche, you know, as to how we are manipulated through music. And then when your trigger is taking you back to manipulation, now you're dealing with it in a different level. It's not about the music, it's about what was happening.

Sheila

Right. And so, I know a lot of people listen. They have different triggers. Maybe it's not for me. A lot of it’s music, but maybe for you it's something else or whatever. But yes, it's normal when you when you come out of a situation that has been very high, controlling for that would be triggers. Right. And so, you start your book by talking about how, you know, often we need to deconstruct this stuff that was harmful to us. And deconstruction, you said, is simply the process of questioning beliefs, right?

Tia

Yeah. Just it's just asking why or what? Yeah. You know, it's just it's just questions.

Sheila

Yeah. And you said, I'm just going to put this out there because I know some people are wondering, like you said in the book, that your own faith is private. You don't speak about what you believe now.

00:18:08:22 - 00:18:09:19

Tia

I Do it. Yeah. I do say that. I'm spiritually private. And then I have this, you know, whole explanation I go into as to why. But that deconstruction is not about your faith. Healing from religious trauma is not about your faith. It's totally possible to be a person of faith and ask the questions about why you believe what you believe. Those are not mutually exclusive. You can heal your wounds and admit to harm in a space without it impacting your faith. It might change and adapt your faith. And it probably should, I would argue, but it's also like not necessarily the public's business. You know, I think our culture has gotten really comfortable waving labels around. Be with me. I'm in this camp. Be with me. I'm over here in this one. And me personally, I cannot label something like as deep and spiritual as faith like that person. It's personal. It has to stay that way for lots of reasons. But yeah, thank you for calling that out because.

Sheila

Yeah, I appreciate that. Okay. I want to read just a little paragraph. You had the quest for recovery from religious trauma is a deliberate fall into the unknown. No one can promise you an outcome. There's no tidy formula of steps to follow, no choir, no sacred book of wisdom in other words, there's no plan of salvation from the human experience, no rapture away from the consequences of our choices. There are hard things and challenges and many boxes to unpack. That does sound like a lot.

Tia

It is. And people who are uncomfortable with uncertainty and who need answers, and who crave structure and crave formulas, and you know that those are the people who are most vulnerable to fundamentalism. And then we happen to live in a chaotic country right now, you know, chaotic world. We're in different countries, but they're both pretty chaotic right now.

And mine is particularly influential when it comes to chaos. And so, people want a solution that sounds clear and simple and just tell me what to do. And they don't want to fall into the unknown. How terrifying can that be? I mean, so many people have that recurring dream where they're falling, falling, falling, and they never stop, you know, I wouldn't necessarily cling to that metaphor too closely because I don’t, I don't experience it that way. But I do experience it like wonder, more like looking at the Artemis mission and realizing a new perspective and the vastness of what I don't know.

Sheila

Yeah. Wasn't that cool? It was the coolest thing ever. I, I realized watching the Artemis mission that for the last few years, I've been so anti-space travel. I'm like, why are we wasting money on this? And I realize, no, it's all because billionaires have wrecked it, right? Like when you actually put competent people out there who know what they're doing with all these competent people on the ground supporting them, it's amazing.

Tia

It is. And they discover so much that we use that it's not related to space. It's really important for research. And, and, and I think that just gave us, especially since that mission came during a week where the crazy president was talking about nuclear war and harming our earth. It was amazing to have this counterbalance of wonder and beauty and the glory of the earth like, it's amazing to have creation in front of us like that.

And I it made my life a lot better. Just looking at the pictures, I was like, okay, there's there is growth in health somewhere, and if it doesn't feel like it's right here, at least I know it's out there. And that that to me is helpful.

Sheila

Yeah, I love that. Okay. I want to ask a very simple question. Yes. Right. What does it mean to be safe?

Tia

Oh. Sheila, with a good one, wow okay.

Sheila

Because I feel like that's the heart of it that we have to define before we unpack the rest of the book.

Tia

Yeah, I do, I and I, and I don't ever directly define that because I do believe it's so individual. It would be what makes you feel unthreatened and your nervous system calm and regulated and your awareness intact. And no immediate danger of any of those changes. So, like if you are truly safe, asking a disturbing question should not disrupt the safety. You know, if that's your truly safe, if you're truly accepted and loved and wanted, then making a mistake should not impact your safety. That is going to be very individual for people for what that looks like. But yeah, I do think that it is the ability to be safely vulnerable and open in a non threatened.

Sheila

Yeah, I love that. And when we're not safe that's when trauma starts.

Tia

Yeah, I, my favorite definition of trauma is anything that's too fast, too soon, too big for your nervous system to regulate through. So that is a good definition for understanding that two people can have very similar experience, and one will feel traumatized and one will not. And it's not about the thing that happens. So much as it is. That person was not able to regulate themselves through the experience, so they were overwhelmed. And their nervous system has now, you know, been disrupted. And it has a process it needs to come back to for stasis. And we don't always give our systems and our bodies and our personalities and everything that space to come back to stasis.

We just keep going so that that trauma just keeps compounding. Yeah. That's been one of my biggest revelations, is how important it is to process on the spot in the situation or in the immediate aftermath and make space for that immediate aftermath. Because when we just keep going or keep up appearances or hold the secret or act like nothing's wrong, our system is damaged inside.

You know, our nerves are frayed things. You know, that's where overwhelm begins and states. So religious trauma is often chronic for people. It's sometimes it's a single event, but most often it's. And you know, extended time spent in the same environment with many players and many complications. And that makes it harder to unpack because you might also have good experiences in there that make you feel like, well, was that traumatic? Because I enjoyed myself while I was there, you know? So, it can get really complicated at that point.

Sheila

Yeah, yeah. But it can. Really pile up in. Yes. And when you're not safe, when you're told that your feelings are wrong, your opinions are wrong, you're not even supposed to have opinions, etc., etc. Okay. Let's talk spiritual bypassing.

Tia

Yeah.

Sheila

Because that relates to our feelings, you know. So, if you have any feelings we're going to bypass how do you have, what is spiritual bypassing.

Tia

Spiritual bypassing is anything that's like skipped over with spirituality or spiritual reasoning attached to it. So, like an example would be your feelings in this matter don't matter because Jesus paid it all, you know, like, yeah, exactly.

Sheila

Yeah. I remember when that one that you used is no matter what you're going through, remember what Jesus went through. And so, because nothing that we go through is ever going to compare to being physically crucified and abandoned by people you like, it's like saying you're not allowed to ever be upset about anything on this earth, right?

Tia

 Yeah, right.

Sheila

And I think when people say that they can feel very righteous, right. Like, like the person who's doing the bypassing feels like they're giving you a word from the Lord, right? They're giving you encouragement from Scripture. They're speaking Scripture over your life. And but there's a line, almost line because like Scripture, if, if properly used, is to comfort you in the midst of your grief, it's not to ignore your grief or to deny your grief, right?

Tia

Yeah, I never saw it growing up. You know, Christian, my whole life I never thought that those were exclusive, that Jesus and God are so big that we can both validate that I'm hurting. And yes, crucifixion is horrible and what he faced was unparalleled. Those are both. They can both exist. But I wasn't raised that way. I was raised that our pain really doesn't matter because there was this. There's always somebody who has it worse. And I know those people issue that in order to, you know, get you to pull yourself up or keep going or, you know, whatever their motive is.

Sheila

Both gratitude, because gratitude is.

Tia

Gratitude is a big one. And just be thankful and then you won't feel suffering. That's not true. You might be thankful and still really struggling with your suffering. And so, the fruit of that is not it doesn't. It isn't actually encouragement. It isn't actually helping me get through. I'm actually now feel heavier and I can't. My denial is becoming my inner voice and my is my shut down and my dissociation is increasing.

And you know, so those are some of the ways that I mapped out like here's what it looked like for me when that happened. And I'm a real big one on what's the fruit and outcome of this practice or teaching. Because that's what we were told to look at is what's the fruit and outcome. But I don't think it, it, it, it makes God bigger. I think when we are, when we're allowed to validate our experiences, I think it makes the God of the universe even more grand and mysterious because of course, there's room for all of that.

Sheila

It's yeah, that's not scary. And God's not threatened by the fact that, you know, this six-year-old girl is sad that her cat died, right? Like, right. You know, like the six-year-old girl is allowed to be sad that her cat died and.

Tia

And Jesus would understand. Yeah. Sit next to her and say, hey, it's okay, I'm here. And I hurt too. And I know how you're feeling. Yeah. That's it. Yeah.

Sheila

And I think the reason that spiritual bypassing can lead to trauma is that, again, we're not safe because part of being safety, safe is being allowed to show up with everything that you are. Right. And that. And that doesn't mean that people are going to necessarily agree with that. But you're allowed to be there. You know. Yes. And yeah. And spiritual bypassing says, no, you're not like your feelings are a problem and you need to. Yeah. And, and that's I think that really is the root of so much religious trauma is your feelings, which is the core of who we are. Right. Like, right. What I am feeling, what I'm experiencing is irrelevant. And I need to put it aside. It's like, well, yeah, how do you do that? That's awful.

Tia

People suppress and contain and for me, that's a Tell for fundamentalism again because it says whatever ideology or system is in place is more important than slowing down to acknowledge your feelings that, you know. And so, you're the priority is not on your humanity again.

Sheila

Yeah. Yeah. And it needs to be this balance. So, you talk a lot about how, and you explain how our brain is actually wired to like, act before we can think, like to, to process what's happening and act before we can actually think about it with our thinking parts of our brain. Right. So, right. So often we react in the moment. And that's what like shock and trauma do. So, can you explain shock? I found this part of your book really interesting.

Tia

It was so illuminating to me when I looked up and I, so I knew I had been through a physiological and psychological shock at In the Escape. Both. They were both physical and psychological, but I hadn't thought about the long-standing impact and the invisibility of psychological shock. And when I looked at the symptoms of physiological shock and the way that, you know, there's actual like we're familiar with that in first Aid, you actually have to act quickly to protect somebody while they're going into shock. Once I realized a similar process happens when we have psychological shock, except that the standard in our culture right now is that you keep going, you buck up, you smile, you get through it, you grit your teeth, you know, you're not stopping to notice that your heart rate is going crazy, that you're flooded with hormones, that your fight, flight freeze and fawn is an alarm.

Yeah, that's your animal, primal instinct helping you, like, get out or survive and we blow right past it. Or we hold it in our bodies, and we make ourselves go through this experience. Or we get out of bed too soon after a baby. You know, like, there's so many different ways we deny that we need processing time. And that's what happens in shock when you're in physical shock, you have this like really catastrophic systemic impact on all of your operating systems.

And you don't just get up and you're better. There's an aftermath and there's a there's a process of coming back to equal levels, safe heart rate, safe temperature. And that's when you're ready to get back up and move. And so, tying that to my psychological shocks was illuminating because I realized, oh, that in order to get my thinking brain online, I need to be able to slow my heart rate.

I need to come down into my parasympathetic nervous system. I need to feel safe and warm and have my enough food and water. You know, the creature needs have to be tended to. So, there's like this physical safety even involved in psychological safety. And it changed everything of how I deal with the things because we're still going to face stuff.

There's still going to be like traumas that come my way, things that are overwhelming, things that stop me in my tracks, but how I care for myself to integrate and metabolize in the moment now is so different than what it was 20 years ago, when I would just kind of accept the shock, you know, you absorb the shock and then you keep going.

And that's to the detriment of your tissues, your psyche, your soul, everything. Like you're just. Yeah, you know, in in real danger at that point.

Sheila

And we're learning so much more, too, about how this kind of stress actually affects the body. And that's one of the reasons why women have so many more autoimmune disorders in there. They're doing a lot more research on this. Like it actually affects us. Yeah. Anyways, you were you were talking about in the book how when you escaped and this I think this is so common for women either it's escaping an abusive marriage like you did, or when you finally get out of an abusive church situation, you think about people decided that they're going to leave the church that their parents went to. Maybe your shiny, happy people, kind of a church like that's a very big thing. And so, you're leaving your support system? In your case, you are now responsible for your four kids. You don't necessarily have a lot of income available. You don't have a secure place to stay. Like, there's so many things that are stressful in and of themselves. And then you've also got the trauma of this abuse that you're trying to live.

Tia

Yes, it was something then because I was physically running away, but I also had the flight instinct in my system, and it wasn't imagined. It was a real, tangible threat. And at the same time, I had to, like, keep the plates balanced and keep stability for my kids and make money and make critical decisions for our future. And those just like you wouldn't like if somebody falls off a mountain and they're starting to go into shock, you wouldn't ask them to sign the paperwork to buy a car or, you know, make a decision about a relationship.

But that's what I was doing. I was making major life decisions from a place of shock.

Sheila

And I think that's something really important to hear. I mean, when you are escaping a domestic violence situation, you're going to be in that you're going to be in that. And that's hard. And so don't make any big decisions right away, you know, and get yourself safe and get yourself a network of people who can support you. And you had your parents, which was important.

Tia

It was.

Sheila

But for other people, you know, if you're leaving a church situation or you're still even though you may not be fleeing physical violence, you're leaving your support system, you're leaving your identity. That's still very, very traumatic. And I think a lot of people do try to make huge, huge decisions right there, right when they haven't fully processed that trauma.

And that is not a good idea.

Tia

It's not. And there's a lot of pressure to do it. And some of it's not malevolent. You know, they want you to have a vision for your new life. They want you to reinvent, start fresh, you know, and so people move like far, far away, you know, and start fresh. And like, that might not actually be the best or it might be the best, but you need time to process that change.

That is its own thing apart from what, you know, compelled it. So, like that aftermath period turned out to be some of the most critical to protect and the defense of time. The time that it takes is actually super important. You will find out once you decide that you're going to insist on time to process something, you will find out who has a problem with that, why they have a problem with it. Like the revelations will come to you there. There are secondary waves of issue by insisting on time.

Sheila

And so, I just, I just, I really want I'm going to really hammer this one home because I think this is important for our listeners to hear. So, if you are leaving a traumatic experience, then just give yourself that time to process. Don't. Because I think often when we finally make the decision to leave, you know, so it's not like we were chased out the way that you did.

Like running, you know. Really literally for your life. But when you finally make that decision that I need to get out of this, whatever it might be, I think we want to make all kinds of other decisions because we want our life to be different. But that is the moment that you are the most prone to manipulation, right? You're the most vulnerable and you know, and so and so you were you said in your book was you need to think of it like a crime scene. Right? And I loved this. I love this. So, one of the first things you do is you secure the perimeter. Yes. Who's allowed in it? Who's not.

Tia

It's important that information that that idea. So, I obviously my artistic mind loves metaphor. And so, I use it a lot. And I love examples. And for me like just envisioning the harm I've just experienced or the shock, you know, sometimes it's a good shock. Even I need to tape off the region. I need to know who's there. I need to document carefully what's around me and who's around me. I need to write down what happened. I can't rely necessarily on my memory to get all this, you know, because you're disoriented when you're in shock. You're there's a lot of things that are true in your system. And this is when people called up. This is when they fall in love with a bad second bad relationship. This is when they sign up for programs, you know, that turn out to be really detrimental because they're critical thinking is not on even online if they're far away from being able to have critical thought. And there's so much pressure to re stabilize quickly.

Sheila

Yeah. Now you got involved in a parenting program.

Tia

I did.

Sheila

That was really toxic. Can you explain that. Like what happened with that.

Tia

Oh yeah. So, the Parent Help Center is primed for its exposé. It's primed for a documentary. It's a very toxic, high control parenting group run by a fundamentalist man who used to be a football player, who has got a lifetime of violence in his testimony. And he likes to. It's he runs it like a behavioral program for parents to help give you consequences that are not like corporal punishment or overly strict. He wants you to have structure and order, but he uses shock and awe in order to scare kids straight and scare kids into obedience. And so, if you have kids that you feel are, you're out of control with and you don't know what to do, his program appeals to that chaos in parents’ lives. Like, here's a program, here's a consequence.

He runs something called camp consequences. And kids can go to this farm, and they can do manual farm labor for the day or dig holes or, you know, whatever is on the docket. And so, when I met my second husband and he wanted to have more of a sense of control over my teenagers, this was presented to me as a great program. And I had misgivings, immediately, just from just from him yelling and screaming and on being overbearing over the parents was enough to terrify me, but I didn't know how to speak up for that yet. I didn't know how to put that into words, and I was. That was coupled with a lot of visual endorsement. It was run by police officers in uniform who were also kind parents, who are our friends.

And so, the signals were really mixed. I had a lot of friends in this program who were endorsing it and normalizing it. And of course, it was endorsed by the CPS program in our city, Child Protective Services. And so, you know, had all this merit to it. And I will still like I still tap into this feeling of that that weekend when I decided I would agree to try it, everything in my body was screaming no! And because I couldn't articulate it, I figured then I better trust the other people over my own misgivings. And in what I do now, in recovery as a result of the work that I did over the next ten years, to both repair that and everything else I've been through is realizing a whole-body no is enough. You do not have to be able to explain it to somebody.

And if I had just had that piece of information, the fact that you're not ready for this and you don't have to explain it to anybody would have I would have said no, I would have walked away from that. But I didn't have that information. So that's why it's in the book. It was a really hard memory to include. It's Googleable. You can find this guy. It's horrifying. And I still feel, you know, some level of shame that I participated even though I show myself compassion and I know how I got involved in it. This is why I care so much about empowering people to stand against people who are exploiting them, or manipulating them through emotions, or taking advantage of their fears. Because you don't have to be able to explain why it's wrong. If it's wrong in your body, that's enough. We just need to respect that.

Sheila

Yeah. And so that so that that time when you finally make that decision and you, you change everything, that's when these things are likely to happen because you haven't yet healed. And so, then you talk about documenting and trying and trying to start naming the things that happened to you. And I want to read I'm just going to read this excerpt.

One of the things that you talk about is how when we have trauma, it's often from repeated injuries, like when things keep happening to you. And so, you give, you give some signs that people are experiencing repeated injuries. And I just want to read this because I think, I think our audience will relate to this. So when someone hurts you but expects you to move on like nothing happened and they continue repeating the same behavior, so you go along with it for the moment, because the temporary relief means you can breathe, but the relationship feels terrible and you're not happy or healing, or when you can't remember when you were last able to relax and fully let your guard down. But all the while you've been parenting, working and operating as it been on high alert all the time is normal. Or when you fall for the same character dynamic over and over, such as a new high controlled guru who promises to have all the answers and you like them better than the one before a cult hop from ideology to ideology because it will be better this time. Or this cult promises to solve what was broken. In The last one, or a relationship pattern. It's a little better than the one before, but you are responding in similar ways and starting to feel crazy. And you're saying that these decisions aren't mistakes or choices. They're attempts to cult made while you're still in a damaged state.

Tia

Yes, that right there, that little, tiny section is the result of years of tracing backwards. Well, why did I choose that? Oh, this. Why? Okay, then why did I choose that? You know, because when I started writing A Well-Trained Wife, I started it with my marriage. And it didn't make any sense to start with my marriage, because the first question everyone had was, why would you stay with him, from the beginning? I was like, oh, I actually have to back up to the whole thing, how I got involved and groomed into this situation. And so that's that little section, right there. You'll trace it back to your original trauma. That right there was that when you first decided you're going to just act like it's okay, act like nothing's wrong. That's, that's the cacophony, the whole domino effect.

Sheila

So, in this section, you're trying to help people sort of diagnose what's happening to them. And I think this is another good sentence that I want our audience to hear.

If you are worried that you will get in trouble, reprimanded, embarrassed, humiliated, corrected, excommunicated. Estranged, shunned, punished, then you already have an answer to the question is it trauma?

Sheila

Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Tia

I had to fight for that language in the book a little. I mean, I say fight, but I just I asserted, I asserted for it because in the secular world where they don't have so much shame and control over behavior and the concept of sin, you know, where that's not discussed, they don't use I'm going to get in trouble as language when they're making a decision of what they're going to write their story or tell on tell a story or tell what happened. That is that is something particular to a religious trauma dynamic or a high control dynamic. And so, I said, absolutely, that's what they say. But I'll get in trouble if I say that. And so, I had to I had to retain the language, because that's the language that we use in our inner monologues of and hesitations, why we stay silent.

Sheila

Yeah Because a lot of people, yeah, we're not safe and right. And. Yeah. And we need to start we need to admit that and diagnose that and see that, because until you can name it, you can't get through it. Okay. Let's talk silencing. You talked a lot about silencing. And I loved this one. Quote. The authoritative bully doesn't have to silence you if you are so scared, shamed or worried about rejection that you silence yourself.

Tia

Yeah, as a recovering good girl, this is the bane of my existence right here.

Sheila

Yeah. And that's so much of toxic evangelical culture where we are taught that we aren't allowed to speak our truths, that to do so, if we are any type of the spiritual bypassing, but also when I'm allowed to name, when people hurt us because we have to maintain the power dynamic?

Tia

Right. And in even a step further, it's baked into the doctrine that women are supposed to stay silent, you know? And as patriarchy takes over, that is their message that women are to be silenced in the corner, not leading, not speaking good or bad, no matter what, no matter what you're saying.

Sheila

And how can we speak like this is the thing is, if you grow up in a culture where you're never allowed to speak, where your thoughts are seen as a problem, and one of the things we measured and She Deserves Better, we ask the question, do you agree with Girls Talk Too Much or where you. Taught that.

And that is a huge belief, and it's very much tied to internalized misogyny that that concept where girls feel there's something actually wrong with being female because girls don't talk too much, like we talk the same amount. And in in mixed groups, women actually talk far less like. And I think women only have to speak. What is it, 30% of the words for men to say that they're speaking the majority of the words like, right. It's yeah. And so, our voices are seen as a problem, but our voice is our birthright. You said. And so, who benefits when we don't speak, right?

Tia

Usually the oppressor, usually the abuser. Usually somebody with an unbalanced power.

Sheila

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, our voices really signify our I taught it our autonomy. Right. And when your autonomy is taken away in a faith situation, then I would argue that you're not really in a faith situation because you can't have faith without autonomy.

Tia

Oh, I love that. Yeah. You know, I agree.

Sheila

Like faith has to be something which you willingly and wholeheartedly adopt, not something which you are forced to or pressured to or coerced into and I really appreciate some of your critiques, especially of Evangelical Culture towards children, because I think a lot, a lot of what we do is very manipulative towards kids. Right? I think we do have to grapple with that, like those of us operating in the, in, in, in evangelical churches, we have to grapple with that.

So yeah, I okay, this this this is fire here. I loved your chapter on sex. Of course. But this this was interesting. I hadn't thought of this. And so, I want you to speak on this to me. Sex and voice are twin wounds that feel in tandem with one another.

Tia

Yeah. To your point of what you just said, voice is autonomy. And so much of sex is autonomy and so much of sex and performed sexuality. You know, it will either encounter your autonomy or violated. You can't give consent unless you have autonomy. There is very little consent in the evangelical world that I came from. And that's a familiar wound for a lot of women in evangelical culture as a result of some very specific books and teachings, you know, which you definitely highlight and can address so well in your work.

There's a lot of vocal manipulation and suppression in that same culture, and they are so tied. So, a lot of my people find me because I talk about fundy baby voice. Yes. And you know that the child like the pressure to remain sweet and childlike, which should be very disturbing to people. But it has been very normalized in the specifically the evangelical faith community. They're not the only ones the Mormons do. It too. And there is also lots of cultural and regional vocal manipulation happening. Does it? It's directly related to rape culture. It's directly related to what we what we're experiencing with misogyny. And yeah, and then for me that the healing was so intertwined. Yeah, yeah. And I my sex chapter is not like anybody else's sex chapter. That's what I can promise listeners.

Sheila

Okay. So, for those for those okay. So fundy baby voice, think Michelle Duggar right, right. Like I can't even do it but like it's just it's very breathy. It's high pitched. It's not assertive at all.

Tia

Yeah.

Sheila

And we, we I've noticed this in a lot of megachurches pastors’ wives. I don't want to name them because I'm not trying to call them out. But there's definite fundy baby voice going.

Tia

And people know it when they hear it they, they're like I can't stand that voice. Why is she talking that way? The whole point is to sound sweet, childlike and non-threatening, right? Even if you are speaking, you're not speaking in a way that a man's going to have a problem with, and he might even be turned on by it because, yeah, he, you know, it's sweet and pleasing and it's meant for the male gaze.

Sheila

Right. And but that's, that's scary in and of itself because you said you said this. I believe there's a correlation of sexual assault in religious circles where women are taught to behave like children, and children are prematurely told they're women.

Tia

Yeah.

Sheila

Yeah, yeah. And I think about, you know, telling eight-year-olds that their bodies are intoxicating that Dana Garesh talks about in in secret keeper girl. It's now been rebranded as True Girl. There are still events all across North America, but that idea of telling a child that they have to be careful, or that they can't wear a two-piece bathing suit, they have to wear one piece because they'll give men the wrong idea. When a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old doesn't even know how to process that.

Tia

No, but the men do. And the men are being told that the children are enticing, and we have increasing awareness over pedophilia culture. So, it is a real problem, and they are related to one another, and it's going to be so uncomfortable to excavate this in us, as societies. But the tells are there, the stories are there.

Sheila

Okay, one more paragraph I got to read what I didn't know then that I know now, is that if a woman can't express herself as an actualized, fully developed, grown woman of agency, she can't have the sex life of one either. A child is as a child does. And the flip side is true as well. A woman is as a woman does, religious trauma survivors have sex problems because religious trauma survivors have development problems, and the fault for that lies with the pastors and leadership who stunted us into child like brides.

Yeah, yeah. And then they tell us that we have to be freaky in the bedroom. Yeah. I cast all this really recently, like one of the megachurch pastor from Arizona told women that, like, you know, once a week you have to do something that will kind of make your mother, if she knew about it, she would drop dead or something like, like, you have to be so freaky, right?

And it's like, how are you supposed to do that? Right?  When you've been told all along that you're like, it's just so weird and weird.

Tia

Demeaning, violating, performative. It doesn't turn on like a light switch. So much of that is going to get on to sensibilities, and what someone is comfortable with or feels is morally right, you know? And then that's coupled with teaching like, well, if you submit to him, even if he asks you to do something that's wrong, it's still right because you're obeying, you know?

And so that's just very twisted in the brain to figure out. And then like the, the idea that your pleasure is still about his pleasure. You know, I remember being taught, you know, like my female orgasm is enjoyable for him to watch. So, it's not even that is that still doesn't belong to me because it's all for him.

Sheila

Yeah, I know, it's just it's so. It's so strange. Like. And if sex is supposed to be the ultimate expression of who you are, which I think it is, then you have to have it. You have to be able to know who you are. You have to have agency. So, you have to be able to show up. And that's why I think a lot of a lot of evangelicalism has just become fetishization of sex because yet, like the fetishization is, is really the opposite of showing up with everything you are because it's not about me, it's not about us. It's about this thing. Right? It's just a denial is it's crazy. Anyway.

Tia

So yeah.

Sheila

Objectifying it is. Yeah. Completely. Okay. I want to tell you move on in the book, and you walk through a different process of processes of healing. Like, you know, when you first, when you're first in that shock, when you're trying to draw boundaries. Oh, one of the things you said, I need to mention this, but one of the best ways to do boundaries, I never thought of this, this is brilliant is instead of saying, no, I won't do that, you start saying, I am somebody who.

Tia

Yeah, I am somebody. Yeah. So, I reframed boundaries a lot. And so, one of the things I want to say about the book as a whole is that I originally wrote it like a spiral. So, the first time you encounter what boundaries are like when you've never had boundaries isn't going to look like what your boundaries look like ten years later, because you're going to have more maturity and growth. And so, you think about it like a math skill. You know, you're elementary. Math is not the same thing as your high school math because you can do more with it. And so, the back half of the book has more graduated takes on what boundaries look like. Because in the beginning, I was just like my very first boundary, I think was like the door that I had, I had my own door, and then no one had come in there and I was like, oh, actually, this is a protected space. So, but I was very confused by boundaries because they felt mean. And I know a lot of people deal and struggle with boundaries, and they feel like they're being mean, or they don't want to tell someone no. And so, I was very fascinated with all this negative language that comes along for the ride, and then the counter information that, you know, boundaries are not rules.

They're not about controlling other people. They're not about I can't, I can't, I can't. They're instead like, they're defining who you are and what's for you and what you can do. What's your capacity? So, I, you know, there's a part of the book and the part of my life where I talk about, I switched them to I can statements.

It's not I can't come to dinner. It's I can be here for five minutes, or I can call you instead. And you think about what you can offer instead of what you're prohibiting or later, the idea that they're flexible and they grow, and you want to participate in something that feels like it's true to you or not without judgment. So, it might work for someone else, but it's just not for you. So, let's use something like a crowd. Crowds are just not for me. I don't have to belabor my point about why I get overwhelmed in crowds, or why it might be a fun concert, or why someone else might really want me to be there, or why there's legitimate room in my schedule to accommodate it. I can just say that's not for me and pass and then they're free to go do whatever they want. And I haven't, you know, I haven't like over spoken, I haven't word vomited, I haven't overthought it or over analyzed it. I haven't gotten defensive. Just no, no, actually that's not the environment for me. And it changed how I thought about how I moved through the world so much, because I don't have to judge everybody else's choices or fall for all those things I just listed.

I tended to overexplain, overanalyze, stumble over my words, feel like I had to have a good enough excuse to say no. I wasn't familiar with the idea that no is a complete sentence. You don't really owe any words after that. But being soft and warm, I still want to help people understand so that language is really important for framing and really helpful framing for me.

And I hope it helps others to, to just know what you are and what you're about. And then that provides a natural contrast from other people. They'll detect it. A lot of times you I don't have to spend a lot of time talking about my boundaries. People pick up on that themselves and they know what Tia is about and what Tia is not about.

Sheila

Yeah, know so well. And you do you give a lot of really important steps in how to process things like grief or reintegrating your identity, figuring out who you were, all kinds of I, there was a throwaway line that I want to talk about where when you're trying to rebuild your identity, how we need to get away from enabling and, and you said that enabling was sheltering my kids and preventing them from learning resilience because you felt guilty about what they had gone through. And it was just this throwaway line in this paragraph. And one of the things I really respected about that, and I appreciate in the book, is you were so transparent about the things that you regret, regretted doing in your healing process and the fact that you had, you know, when we're healing from coming out of an abusive marriage, you realize I, I let my kids see things they should never have seen.

Tia

That's right. Right.

Sheila

Like I let my kids down.

Tia

Right? Yeah. Complicity comes up really quickly. You and I think I think part of this is because, like in patriarchal systems. Exactly. The women become the hands. They become the ones who are practically applying the ideologies and translating them into daily life. They're the ones that enable and make space and continue patterns and allow things, especially if you're in a submissive role. You're not behaving like another adult in the room. You're under the man and you're completely at mercy of his benevolence or not. So, there were things that I allowed to become pattern in my home that I didn't agree with, but I did not tap into my power to stop. And eventually I had to leave with actually leave because there was no way to transform that experience from the within. I needed to remove myself in order to be safe. I said something a little controversial a few weeks ago. I said the only safe mother in patriarchy is the one who takes her kids and leaves. And that is not meant to imply that it's easy to get out. It's not. Or fast. You know, it sometimes takes people a long time to extract, but as long as you're in a system like that where you're serving the ideology over the needs of your children or over the needs of people, you're not safe for your kids.

And that's so hard to sit with. I was not safe many times with my kids, and there was no way I could tell you the journey of how I put myself back together and rebuilt my life. Unless I'm exploring and excavating the ways I was complicit in our harm and thankfully had gotten to a place in healing. And we all can get there where we have the capacity to sit with that discomfort and understand why we did the why we did it, and why we're not doing it now. What why we changed our minds. It is hard work. It is hard and vulnerable and scary, and it is hard to put it in a book and say, you know, this is what I did, and this is the harm that I caused. It's easier to blame someone else for all the problems, but all that blaming and projecting outward is not healing my inner you know, my psyche, will you?

Sheila

Because until you can say, here's what I did in the choices that I made, then, even if they didn't feel like choices at the time. But here's what I did. You can't really choose something different for yourself then. All right. So, then you're still you're still saying, well, I was helpless. And if, if you know and again, that's not to say that it's easy to live. Absolutely not to say that is to live. Both are both. Yeah. Both can be true at the same time where you know you are you can be violently abused, but also you are the protection for your kids, right? Right. And.

Tia

A lot of times I was the human shield for my kids. There's a lot of things my kids didn't see because my body absorbed those scenarios. And that also is a reckoning, like realizing that I was self abusing by allowing that to happen, you know, and justifying that behavior in front of them like they are. Kids are smart. They do know there's more going on than parents think.

And I was modeling that for them. And in many ways, I was perpetuating a harmful system.

Sheila

And I think if our kids are going to heal, whether it's from an abusive parenting situation or an abusive church situation or whatever it is, they can't heal until they can speak the truth. Because if safety isn't, is being able to speak the truth, that we have to let our kids be able to speak the truth. And sometimes their truth is that we did things that hurt them.

Tia

Yes.

Sheila

And so, you know, so part of our healing is, is allowing our kids to say that to us.

Tia

Yeah. Without defenses allow it to be true. It's their truth. There might be some interesting contexts to offer. You know, the adult perspective. Every kid's ready to hear that. And not everybody's in the place in their journey where the context matters yet or the intent matters yet because they're dealing with the impact. And sometimes that's a very visceral stage for a long time.

Sheila

Yeah Okay. I'll tell you something funny that I got that again. I had one of these. Oh my gosh moments. I had totally forgotten that. But I was reading and there was an anecdote you talked about a particular author who I had kind of known about ten years ago, and even more than that, maybe 13 years ago. And I was I was booked to speak at this conference.

It was a very big conference. This was going to be my first time speaking at a big American Evangelical Women's Conference. And it's so happened that when they gave me the final dates, I was going to have to be there over my daughter's 16th birthday. And she was also, she was involved in Bible quizzing. This was her big competition weekend, and I was one of the coaches, and it was huge. And I was like, but this is the biggest break of my career, right? And so, two months before I was supposed to go, I called this woman the one of the one of the that you talked to a lot. And I said, I can't do it. I, I, I have to be with my daughter. And I had totally forgotten this because, I don't know, I have never read any of her books.

I don't know much about her really. And then I read that and I'm like, oh my gosh, can you imagine if I had gone like, like I may not be doing what I'm doing now, right? Because I could have gotten into that group. Yes. I didn't realize was all on this same bandwagon.

Tia

Of, oh my goodness, I can't. Talk about the letters of. The chances we miss.

Sheila

So. So thank you, Katie, for having 16th birthday. Yeah, this is very funny. It's just another one of those ways that our lives have overlapped a couple the different ones. So, you know, in the book it's really practical. You talk about internal family systems, EMDR, breathwork, you make it really easy to understand. You show when these different things can be useful and how to integrate them and and how to relate to the people around you and how to process your new relationships as you're trying to figure out who you are. So, it's just a really, really practical book and I really appreciate it too. Yeah. So yeah, anything that you want to say to our listeners.

Tia

I just hope that you receive it like the hug that it is, the friend on the journey. It's I'm not an academic. I'm not an expert. You know, that. I can be like; this is what you should do. And here are the steps. It's really meant to be solidarity on your path to give you some real talk. It's long, it's thick, it's patient. It's meant to go slowly. So, you know, I really think the format a lot of people love the audio of A Well-Trained Wife, better than the than having the book it out. It outsells because it's such a compelling narrative and it's good to listen to. But I think I know.

Sheila

This needs to be in book form. This is a.

Tia

Book form you're going to want to underline and sit with and reflect on. And so yeah, I do emphasize if you're trying to decide what format to get, I do recommend the book.

Sheila

Okay. Well, we're going to put links to where you can preorder it. It's out on May 5th. So really soon. So, and thank you thank you. Yeah. You take care.

Tia

Yep. You too.

Sheila

So grateful for Tia. She has walked through so much with church. You know she grew up in this major Southern Baptist church, and she got sucked into a Doug Wilson cult. Because remember, when churches don't specifically preach against Doug Wilson, Doug Wilson can steep in, like she got exposed to Doug Wilson in an SBC church because people who were leading groups there were Doug Wilson supporters.

And we see this happening all the time. When pastors don't specifically speak against fundamentalism, it comes into your church. And, you know, she was just so tremendously hurt, and she's had to rebuild her life and she's done an amazing job, and she really understands, you know, how trauma works in the body, how we can reclaim our bodies, reclaim our identities.

And I will put a link to her book, I Belong to Me in the podcast notes that comes out, I believe, May 5th. So that's in just over a week. And if you want to listen to her interview with us on her first book, A Well-Trained Wife, which is just awesome, I'm gonna put a link to that as well.

And it's well worth a listen to this story. It's just fascinating. So, thank you for being here. And will you please join us in our quest to make the church healthier? I believe in the church. I think that we are supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus, and where we have failed to do that, that doesn't mean that we cover it up or we stop speaking about it because we don't want to. We don't want to put the church into disrepute. No, the thing that puts the church into disrepute is when we hurt people. And so, we need to draw attention to this, and we need to fix it, and we need to find the places that are healthy and feed them, seed them so they can grow and their influence can expand.

Yeah, let's stop the influence of the bad places, and let's feed the healthy places and let's work on ourselves getting healed from some of the trauma that we may have experienced too. So, thanks for joining us on Bare Marriage. Check out the links on the podcast, notes, and we'll see you again next week on the Bare Marriage Podcast. Bye.