dr.deanza

Religious abuse is when a person or persons uses their power and authority, through any means possible, to control, demean and coerce you into submitting or complying with their will or desired outcome. A healthy spiritual leader affirms your process, hopes, safety, boundaries, dreams, gifts, and capacity. A healthy spiritual community also affirms, celebrates, and encourages.

If you are searching for a new spiritual community, it can feel scary and vulnerable, especially if you’ve been harmed. The process of finding new connections in a religious or spiritual community can feel overwhelming because it brings those hurts to the surface. Entering into a new community doesn’t mean we have to give our trust away. Trust is established through healthy connections built over time.

Give yourself space to observe and to listen to your own body and intuition. Exploring your spirituality is a personal, intimate relationship. Your journey is your own. It might be a process of leaving beliefs and rituals that do not align with where you are and finding home in new traditions rooted in your ancestry. Curiosity is the greatest gift and offering you can give yourself.

💗

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Image description:
Slide 1: From a Trauma Therapist. Is Religious Trauma Real? Image of multicolor mosaic heart.
Slide 2: Ever wonder about an experience you’ve had in a religious environment and/or upbringing that has never felt right to you, but you’re afraid to say it was traumatic because you don’t want to be wrong or be perceived as overly dramatic?
ID to be continued in comments below.
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trauma

For those of us at the margins, our survival was never intended. Silence doesn’t guarantee safety. Our survival is not guaranteed. Audre Lorde teaches us that we might as well speak anyway, love anyway, and live anyway, and live a life aligned with our most deeply held values. We keep each other safe when we raise our voices for one another. So let’s get to it! ❤️‍🔥

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[Image description: Pink and white text with beige background. Text reads: Excerpt from “A Litany for Survival” By Audre Lorde “...when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” On the second slide, text reads: For those of us at the margins, our survival was never intended. Silence doesn’t guarantee safety. Our survival is not guaranteed. Audre Lorde teaches us that we might as well speak anyway, love anyway, and live anyway, and live a life aligned with our most deeply held values. We keep each other safe when we raise our voices for one another. So let’s get to it!]

Rage is an element of grief, and a sacred expression in response to injustice. When we give rage voice it takes the sting out of the lies systematic oppression tells us & advocates for liberation for all those who suffer injustice.

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Image description:
Text says: Rage is an element of grief. I share this experience not to say my path is the only & right path, but to illustrate that rage is an element of grief. Rage needs a path to effectively burn. When rage is left unattended on a slow, smoldering burn-- it turns into self-harm & self-hate. Rage is a sacred expression to injustice. When we give rage voice it takes the sting out of the lies systematic oppression tells us & advocates for liberation for all those who suffer injustice.

We need to remember that we are not doing this work on our own, we are on a path that our ancestors laid out for us. To keep moving forward, we must lean into the imagination of our ancestors as a blueprint for how we can show up in the world. There is an intentional disconnect from those stories. A disconnect from their bold and genius models for resistance and transformation, like our ancestors during the Stonewall Uprising, the Civil Rights movement, and so much more. We have to root ourselves in the fact that we do not have to invent everything from scratch. Our elders and our ancestors have been fighting for a long time, and we can call on their medicines, tools, and strategies to make a path forward.
Our healing is political.
All of our movements, spanning forward and backward through time, are connected.
We must keep learning, connecting, grieving, growing, and building toward collective liberation ♥️

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Image description:
Slide 1: From A Trauma Therapist
Ancestral Blueprints for Liberation
We’ve been here before and we’ll move forward again.
Image of hands holding seeds, with flowers and maps layered behind them.

Slide 2: The feeling of defeat and hopelessness are strategies of empire.
In reality a different strategy is possible. There IS forward movement, even in moments when we feel like we are not getting anywhere, or going backwards. We need to remember that we are not doing this work on our own, we are on a path that our ancestors laid out for us. To keep moving forward, we must lean into the imagination of our ancestors as a blueprint for how we can show up in the world.
Image of river.
ID continued in comments soon

Me: ‘Why am I feeling like this?’ My body: ‘Because you haven’t rested in 3 weeks.’ Me: ‘Nah, must be something else 🤨💀…
What if your emotions weren’t obstacles to overcome, but messages waiting to be heard? In a world that teaches us to suppress, ignore, or “fix” our feelings, many of us struggle to see our emotions as anything but burdens. Especially for BIPOC women, capitalism, ableism, and white supremacy culture have taught us that productivity matters more than rest, and that our pain is something to “push through.”
What if healing wasn’t about “getting rid” of difficult emotions, but learning to listen to them? What if every feeling (grief, anger, exhaustion) wasn’t a failure, but a signal from your body asking for care? It can be scary making space for these feelings.
Healing is an ongoing practice of curiosity.
Feeling your emotions feels overwhelming, especially if you have complex trauma. When you’ve spent years in survival mode, slowing down to listen to your feelings can feel unfamiliar, even scary. But healing isn’t about diving in all at once, it’s about taking small, compassionate steps toward yourself. Start with curiosity, go at your own pace, and remind yourself, your emotions are not here to hurt you, they’re here to guide you toward what you need.
We can ask: What is this feeling telling me? What unmet need is calling for my attention? When we listen, we reclaim our relationship with ourselves, and disrupt the systems that tell us we must endure suffering in silence.
What’s one emotion you’ve been struggling with lately? Can you get curious about what it’s asking from you?

Image description: Black text in blue text bubble: “From a Trauma Therapist, Healing is getting used to viewing your emotions differently. Healing is getting curious & asking yourself, what need might this emotion be signaling?”

Free offering. Just bring yourself, glass of water, blanket, candle & something to write on. .deanza