Ann Maree: Hello, and welcome to The Safe to Hope Podcast. Safe to Hope: Hope Renewed in Light of Eternity exists to offer women space to tell their stories of suffering and loss with care, dignity, and honesty. Though all suffering is loss, we ground that belief in a God who cares and remains present. This is our hope.

My name is Ann Maree, and I am the executive director of Help[H]er. This podcast is made possible by donors who believe faithfulness means protecting the dignity of women’s stories and creating a space for truth-telling without pressure or performance. Together, we listen for God’s redemptive thread and look for ways to join Him in His transforming work.

Julia: Hi, listeners. My name is Julia Fillnow, and I’m a therapist, advocate, and board chair at Help[H]er, and I’ll be hosting The Safe to Hope Podcast today. Before we begin, we want to take a moment and care for our listeners. The Safe to Hope Podcast typically includes discussions of abuse, and this season will as well.

In particular, we’ll be talking about spiritual abuse. However, our conversations may include other abuses. Please listen at your own pace and take breaks as needed. If at any point you need to pause or step away, that’s okay. Your wellbeing matters.

Well, hi, Safe to Hope listeners, and welcome to another episode. Today, we’re gonna hear Melissa’s story. Melissa is a dear friend. She’s an author, a counselor, group leader, and a teacher. Melissa and I have spent some time talking together about her story and how she wants to tell it, and one of the things she wanted to name before we begin is the role that systems have played in understanding her experience.

All of us live within systems: families, churches, schools, workplaces, ministries. Systems aren’t inherently harmful. They can help us organize communities and give us ways of belonging to one another. But systems also develop cultures that influence things like who has authority, what happens when someone disagrees, and sometimes even which questions are safe to ask.

Systems aren’t only organizations. Almost unnoticed, we also live within what we might call systems of thought, ways of interpreting scripture and doctrine, theological frameworks, even whole worldviews that give us a kind of storyline for making sense of God, ourselves, other people, authority, suffering, and belonging.

Melissa has said that for much of her life, she has operated within systems without really recognizing them as systems or even just how deeply they were shaping and forming her. For nearly 30 years, much of her work, ministry, and volunteer life took place within churches and nonprofit ministry settings.

And as she began this process of looking back and understanding her story, she started recognizing not only a collection of painful experiences, but particular patterns. And Melissa, that’s where we can begin Thanks, Julia. Yeah, I think when I look back on my childhood and young adulthood, they were marked by a couple of themes that I believe set me up in some ways to be a, quote-unquote, “good candidate” for something like spiritual abuse.

Melissa: Just some relational wounds and confusion about things I saw that were not explained, ways that my emotions were not tended to, and left me to make sense of those things and cope mostly on my own. And also, I, for as long as I can remember, have had a heightened sensitivity to the vulnerable or the outcast, and that has always been present in me.

And in large part, I’ve also always felt a sense of not belonging or not being welcome, and that’s not necessarily something I hold a particular person responsible for. It’s just a significant theme of how I experienced myself and my relationships throughout my life, family and friendships. I also can look back and see how I was prone from as long as I can remember, enmeshment with others, and had no sense of being my own person, being differentiated.

I didn’t even know what those terms meant until recent years. So I let my perspective about myself, my identity, be primarily shaped by those who had the most influence in my life at that time, and by those who offered me belonging, even though that belonging typically came with a cost, whether it was friend groups growing up, and then shifting into church relationships throughout my young adulthood You mentioned enmeshment and differentiation.

Is there a helpful way that you’ve come to know and understand those terms? Yeah, I think a couple things that have been helpful for me is just being able to even visualize that idea of separateness. There was a, a person in my life just in recent years that kind of explained that to me using a diagram, which was really helpful.

He just kinda described as if you’re the person and then there’s like a circle around you, and if all the people in your life are kind of in that circle with you and just… I’m probably not gonna do it justice the way that he explained it, but the way that can get overlapping so much. One other visual reference that was helpful for me a couple years ago was another counselor friend of mine used this visual of like two ladders kind of leaning against each other and how, you know, if one is pushing and the other one is pushing, inevitably somebody is gonna end up being knocked over.

And so just that idea of I’m not my own person. I don’t even know– I don’t really know who I am apart from what or how these other people view me. Yeah, the, what you’re saying is those boundaries between individuals get so blurred that it’s hard to identify when you’re your own person with your own emotions and your own capacities to make decisions, and I think that’s part of why systems can become so powerful is when we lean on a system or a group of people, especially those people who have authority, it can be harder to trust ourselves and to make decisions that are best for us.

Julia: Um, and that impacts also how you belong to the people around you. I mean, you mentioned that you were looking for belonging, and that’s obviously such a deeply human thing that every person wants. It’s a desire. But it sounds like that was also part of what’s been most impactful as you look back, is that desire to belong.

Melissa: Yeah. I think though seeking belonging in what we would call and what we’re describing as systems, and I just didn’t recognize that or know much about systems. So in systems, and I’m not an expert at that at all, but what I’ve come to understand is just everyone has roles to play and rules to abide by, and there are consequences, whether intentional or not, when you don’t fit neatly or easily in the system, or especially when you stop cooperating with the system.

There’s also a lot of pain when you realize you’re in a system, but you lack the resources and support to stand on your own within the system or to exit the system safely. So what I would learn over my time in this particular system that we’re gonna be talking about is that it was primarily built really around promoting and preserving the legacy of the senior pastor or the pastoral staff, and even more broadly around promoting and preserving this particular form or brand of reformed theology that we ascribe to, which was really its own system.

So loyalty was everything in this system, which I became a devoted student of as someone who desperately wanted to belong. And I should clarify here at the outset, ’cause I’m gonna be tracing this back to the late ’90s, early 2000s, I should clarify that this particular experience of spiritual abuse in my life and harm spans a period of about 15 to 20 years from my early 20s to mid-30s.

So some of the themes and the incidents that I’m gonna share are not necessarily organized in some consecutive timeline, but I began attending this particular church after moving to the area with my parents at the age of 21 I think at that point I would’ve still had the mindset that, you know, 21, you’re an adult.

But looking back, I can see so much of myself that was still very childlike for a variety of reasons. But I was still in a season of prolonged confusion and disappointment about what I was going to, quote unquote, “do with my life.” I didn’t know how to answer that question if someone would’ve asked me.

And so in 1999, just prior to this move, I had been introduced to Calvinism, or what people might call the doctrines of grace, via a young adult’s Bible study group. This was a systematic framework that my love of learning and my zeal for deep understanding, and really my need for certainty, was quickly drawn to.

So when I arrived in this new area, didn’t know anyone, and visited this church, I’m just gonna call this church RCC. This was a reformed Southern Baptist Church, part of the Founders Ministry, which is a group within the SBC who view their mission as returning Southern Baptists to their Calvinistic roots and maintaining conservative cultural engagement.

That’s how they would describe themselves from their website. And so this church was a part of that Founders Ministry. But I recognized right away the theological language that was emphasized in the pastor’s sermons. He preached boldly, loudly, and there was a depth to his sermons that I had not experienced previously.

So my interest in studying and growing was really attracted to this disciplined way that this church seemed to approach discipleship. I was impressed and excited to become a part of a community that took s- took God’s word so seriously. And so I voraciously studied everything. I would stay up to the wee hours of the morning studying early on, um, during those, those early years of services, Bible studies, some of the theological training programs that they had right there on site.

We revered all the Johns: John Calvin, John MacArthur, John Piper. TULIP was a sermon series that was repeated frequently over the years. We even sang songs highlighting human depravity or worm theology. A song that we sang often, that I could still quote the whole song, I think, is Great God, How Infinite Art Thou.

And the line that has to this day just rung so loudly in my head is the line where it says, “What worthless worms are we?” And this was ingrained into my mind, and I believe it did so much damage The discipleship in this church in many ways was based on self-despisement as an evidence of holiness. As I was preparing for this conversation, I went back and revisited some old journals, and I found one from 2005 where I wrote, “So much wickedness and rebellion remains in me.

Am I too great of a sinner to be a missionary? Show me how great my sin is, God. One pastor has advised me to repent and apologize immediately. He said it was urgently imperative, yet I remember this same pastor once teaching on how we should never obey God or seek repentance merely out of obligation.

I’m so confused. Cause me to see the vileness and corruption of my heart and mind, how it is so quickly drawn away.” Hmm. And so this was, in a sense, my journal was a way that I would pray, and these prayers were in response to the correction I received from a couple of the pastors at this church after I had begun pursuing a missions organization apart from their oversight because I grew weary of waiting for them to approve my proposed missions trip, and I thought I could find another way to ha- make it happen on my own.

Now, sure, in my zealousness, I may have been rushing and could have rightly benefited from wise caution, but this was something I was passionate about, and their offense seemed less about whether this was actually a good opportunity and more about the fact that I didn’t get permission for each step. So I was devastated by their rebuke and that there seemed to be an assumption that I was rebellious against their authority And so along with those elements, there was also this weird pull toward a deeply familial experience where all the longstanding members were known and part of this kind of inner circle.

I don’t recall coming to any sort of cognitive awareness that I wanted to get access into that circle, but I can look back and see where my inner compass of identifying my, myself by those I associated with, again, not being able to differentiate, and my natural inclination to perform for approval became easy, an easy on-ramp for what unfolded over the next decade.

My access to this inner circle was through a couple of early friendships with people who were already a part of the circle. My other point of access was just my profound willingness to serve everywhere and anywhere I was needed or welcomed as a single young adult woman. Children’s ministry, administrative and events volunteering, anything I could be a part of, I was.

I was devoted to service, somewhat in response to a genuine call to ministry that I believe I experienced in my middle school years, but it was also in response to my confusion about being a single young adult woman with fading hopes of marriage and motherhood and not knowing how to answer the call to ministry apart from those particular roles Throughout my years in the college and young adult ministries of this church, the pendulum swung from Christian hedonism early on, things like, “Go, give your life in radical submission to wherever God calls you,” to by the final couple of years in this church, there was an emphasis on marriage and motherhood as the highest calling of God in one’s life, with things like, “Get married as young as possible,” being said.

So this shift, though it happened over time, it was jarring and so confusing. But we had learned not to question our leaders, to trust them implicitly, because they claimed to have our best interests at heart. We were silly, stupid sheep who needed wise shepherds to guide us. We were reminded often that we were stupid or dumb sheep.

I think of Psalm 95:7 now, and other verses throughout the Psalms where the emphasis is on shepherds caring for the sheep- Mm-hmm … not pointing out their stupidity. You know, during my years there, there were also these themes of platforming power and idolizing the reformers and Puritan preachers. The church’s emphases and the teaching centered around stories of these church fathers.

One example of this was in the construction and delivery of a new pulpit at one point, which was very anticipated. It was made to mimic Charles Spurgeon’s lectern with fine woodwork. It was placed above the people, so the pastor was always looking down at everyone from the stage, and the pastor would often pound his fist on that pulpit dramatically while making a point, or make statements about how other churches were, quote-unquote, “compromising and capitulating.”

And he would give just enough information that we could often guess which churches in the surrounding community he was talking about. But then in the same sermons, he would begin s- the sermon by reminding us to test his words against the scriptures. He would even pray that God would test his own words, but then he would pepper examples throughout the sermon that criticized other churches or pastors for not rightly dividing God’s word.

Julia: Hmm. So interesting the things that churches will prioritize to spend their money on. Those things as tangible things actually become symbols of the idols of their heart or the things that they’re willing to give over. At the time, what did the pulpit communicate to you? To me, the pulpit mostly communicated authority and rightness, whoever was standing behind it.

Melissa: The pulpit was a representative, or who was behind the pulpit was a representative of God speaking to His people. The pulpit was far above everything and everyone else. So preaching was the centerpiece of going to church, which I now understand is far different than the gospel or Christ himself being the centerpiece.

Hmm. That’s right. Looking back now from your vantage point, does that image carry a different meaning for you? It does. I still see that image in a sense at times, especially in that I have a really hard time, even to this day, attending formal church services. When I see a man get up and stand behind the pulpit, especially if I’m in a church where that pulpit is elevated above the congregation looking down at us, I tend to become more tense or feel a measure of anxiety.

I wonder right away, “What is this going to be like?” Or, “What’s this person going to say?” And so I do sometimes practice ways of trying to keep myself more at ease. I carry a stone heart in my pocket or put it in my purse most Sunday mornings. Sometimes I pull it out and turn it over in my hands just to help keep myself present.

I also tend to find myself easily frustrated or disappointed and quick to form judgments based on what the pastor is saying. So if there are particular passages, like ones related to authority, marriage, submission, or narratives like the one of David and Bathsheba, I become anxious, and I’m bracing myself for the worst.

Julia: Hmm, that feels really important. I think you’re noticing that you have so many feelings coming up in you that give you pause, and maybe rightly so. There’s a questioning, a reflecting, reconsidering maybe a position. And those are the very things that are usually framed as threats and weaknesses in high-control systems, but they can actually, in you, be signs of spiritual maturity and individuation.

When you notice that anxiety now, how do you distinguish between that old alarm going off and discerning something important happening in the present? Hmm. I love that question. I’ve done a lot of spiritual formation work, along with prayer walking in nature over the last six, seven years. I’ve also allowed myself to take in different perspectives, reading and listening widely rather than narrowly.

Melissa: The main differences that I can see are that when I’m being triggered, I usually have a more immediate or acute reaction, which tends to lead me towards either anger or panic. But when I give myself time, quiet contemplation, maybe take a long walk after the service or after I’ve listened to something, or take time to process what I heard with a trusted friend, then I can begin to see that I might just be discerning something is wrong or off I can let myself become more curious.

I can find space to acknowledge that what I’m hearing might be misguided. I’ve come to understand that sometimes my reactions are actually a prompt or a warning, that my instincts are not automatically wrong, that sometimes they can be a, a prophetic guide given from God. And that’s really been such a challenging thing, but probably one of the most beautiful things to experience, and so very different from my experience in this church during my early adulthood.

A common thread that I’ve tracked from my experience there, as well as similar or adjacent environments, is that there’s often this language or this invoking of language about the enemy wanting to stir up division as a way to destroy the church, with either a direct reference or an implied one, that when people like me, for instance, question or challenge areas of concern or something that’s being shared from a pulpit, we’re somehow being used by the enemy.

Mm. And so oftentimes this ends up being actually a cover for those with power to continue prioritizing their preferences or keeping their power centralized to that inner circle rather than welcoming feedback and prioritizing a humble willingness to either change their mind or to give away or release power, and to receive questions or feedback as maybe an opportunity to actually cultivate spirit-led wisdom.

And so at one point during this time that I was in this church, there were key events and relationships that began to stir up more and more discomfort in me beyond the pulpit, discomfort that I attributed to my immaturity or my unfaithfulness. Oh. You attribute it to immaturity or unfaithfulness. That makes me so sad to hear, and angry how the question got turned back on yourself.

So instead of the question being, “Is something wrong here?” The question was, “What’s wrong with me?” Yeah. So much morbid introspection is what I often will call it now, which is so different than a biblical, spiritually transformative type of self-awareness, right? Mm-hmm. So this showed up, this pattern that you’re, you’re noticing about what’s wrong with me, it showed up a lot in a particular relationship or context.

So my connection with the counseling pastor at this church throughout my 15 years or so was very formative and marked the majority of my experiences of harm and confusion. I initially went to him with a desire for spiritual support and guidance related to some family concerns, but over the course of my time under his leadership, he manipulated and mistreated me in so many ways, along with many others, specifically women.

Mm. I remember whenever I would go to the church office for an appointment with him, he would come out and greet me with a big smile and a hug, often saying to the office staff members or whoever else was nearby, “Isn’t Melissa such a good girl? Don’t you just love her?” And this meant the world to me. I felt drawn to him almost in a father-daughter type way, and over time, as I experienced more of his manipulation and eventually ended up on his bad side, I became acutely aware of his displeasure and disappointment in me, and I was no longer greeted with that kind of affection.

So he would use silent treatment or withhold the typical kind and tender-hearted ways of relating to me as a form of punishment when I wasn’t agreeable to what he wanted, and especially when I began asking questions. In the years since, something that stood out to me from this was just this idea of, like, good girl versus bad girl theology, and it came from…

I– this might be a weird connection to make, but I love watching Law & Order: SVU episode, and in one there was a perpetrator named Elias, and he would use the phrase, “Good girls get good things, and bad girls get bad things,” as a way to train his victims to be submissive to his abuse and to remain in captivity, and I really resonated with that analogy.

And this was happening in the Lord’s house. It sounds like the relationship with this counseling pastor, that relationship itself became feedback. That warmth told you you were good and acceptable, but distance told you that something was wrong with you. Oof. Yeah, Julia, you have so carefully kept hitting on this idea of what’s wrong with me, because that really was what was marking the majority of how I was viewing myself.

So I spent a number of years serving in various ministries in this church, particularly as a small group leader and teacher in the youth ministry at one point, in the college age ministry at other points. And I remember one incident where there was a young woman, a church member, who was made to apologize from the stage during a Sunday evening service about her inappropriate behavior with a pastor from another church in another state And when I say she was made to apologize, I don’t know behind the scenes, you know, what her level of willingness looked like, but I would categorize it either way as still coercive.

He had been– this, this other pastor that she had been in this inappropriate relationship with had been involved at one point in our church’s summer camp. And when she went away to college, she spent a lot of time with his family. I didn’t know much about what happened or the details, but after their relationship was revealed, she moved back home and returned to our church.

I don’t recall the specifics, but I just remember being so uncomfortable when she was up on that stage apologizing while the pastors of our church stood there and commended her for repenting. All the while, this pastor was barely mentioned, and it was portrayed as a mutually sinful relationship rather than what I believe it actually was, a pastor who had a sense of authority in her life and took advantage of the access that he had to her, which I would now understand to be abusive.

And so it was in processing this and similar types of incidents and events that my own introspection, what’s wrong with me, grew deeper and darker. I was the problem. I was the common denominator in my questions. And so during this season, I also had noticed just a, an undercurrent of young adult men in our church giving a lot of inappropriate attention to teenage girls, sometimes minors, whether it be flirting, pursuing them but not honoring or showing brotherly love, and in some cases, engaging what I would now say were exploitative and even illegal behaviors.

Julia: Mm-hmm. Unfortunately, that’s not an uncommon experience, and kind of that approach and distance is a very heavy tool, and the use of shame and obligation and guilt is also a very heavy tool. Unfortunately, it works too well. So sitting there, it sounds like before where there was this self-questioning, now there’s a part of you that was awakening up to this idea that something doesn’t seem right.

Melissa: Yeah, even without knowing all the details or knowing what assumptions I had w- were accurate or maybe not fully formed, I can look back now and I do believe that my conscience was deeply disturbed by the things I was seeing and experiencing, and the things I was being told. But I kept silencing my conscience because I thought for sure I could not trust myself.

Re- remember, I was in this context where we were being reminded regularly our hearts are deceitful above all things, right? Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes, that’s striking to me because the system was teaching you, was conditioning you to distrust the very inner witness that may have been calling your attention to the harm Yeah.

There was so much emphasis on the deceitful and wicked nature of our hearts that I had come to assume I could not possibly have any s- any wisdom in any situation that was not tainted by my own sinfulness. So there were other examples throughout my time there of what I would say were termed as inappropriate relationships at one point or another, oftentimes between teenage or young adult females in our church and older men 10, 15 years older.

Not always an adult with a minor, but in a number of cases, there were some illegal activities because of the teenage girls being minors still. And typically, these relationships were being cast as mutual or reciprocal- Hmm … simply because the, the young woman was participating in it or was talking about it with other people.

And it wasn’t until I understood abuse dynamics and predatory behavior several years later that I could recognize this deceptive narrative. Just because a teenage girl participated in sexual behavior did not mean she gave consent, or even fully understood what was happening at times. Yep. And in some cases, I don’t even wanna say that I’m laying all the blame on just the man that was in the picture either.

I lay much of the responsibility at the feet of the church leadership, who made excuse after excuse, maneuvered to hide and cover up indiscretions, or to downplay them, placed heavy yokes of blame on the young women for how they might have tempted or lured these men in. They, those men, those leaders should have known better and done better.

And even all these years later, when there’s been ample opportunity for transparency, repentance, and seeking forgiveness, there has mostly been, from what I have seen or heard through people that I’ve stayed connected with, a continued framing of these things as ignorance or naivety. We just didn’t know it was that bad.

We had no idea. Or sin leveling. Well, we’re all men. We’re all capable of anything as humans, which goes with the theology of the emphasis on total depravity, right? And so at the time, I so wanted to be part of this inner circle, to belong, and I was so entrenched in my loyalty to protecting the church leadership that I also judged many of those girls as being immoral or being tempting to those men and taking part in these inappropriate relationships.

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Julia: Hmm. I really appreciate your transparency and, like, naming the uncomfortable things, even about how you were trapped in this environment and even where your own heart and mind went, you know, during those moments. So thank you for also entertaining my questions because you do have so much goodness and wisdom for us.

So I’m also wondering, this idea of the inner circle has come up again. You were talking about it a little bit earlier. I think the inner circle can represent a lot for us. It can represent, like, being close to certain people. It can represent that you have somehow attained this deeper theological knowledge or a capacity to care for people in maybe a holier way than other people who weren’t in the inner circle.

So I’m just wondering for you, when you say that you were longing to be a part of this inner circle, what do you imagine that those people who are in the inner circle possessed? Yeah. I held these, these men, these leaders, and their wives, and connected people in that circle in high esteem. They had been set up in our context as bastions of wisdom and spiritual maturity.

Melissa: They were trusted and valued. I wanted to be trusted and valued. So when I did raise questions or voice concerns about what I observed, whether it was about these young men that were in that inner circle or things that were said, church leaders would often explain it away as just immature or careless behavior.

But looking back, I now see so many patterns where some of the young adults there were being judged harshly for things like questioning doctrinal points or expressing confusion around things like gender identity or career choices, while this handful of young adult men, who were either related to pastors or part of this innermost circle, were just utterly exempt from accountability, and whose reputations were guarded with deflection and defensiveness.

So to speak against one of them was, in some senses, to attack the pastors directly. And while this church never actually pulled out umbrella diagrams or said directly that to speak against a pastor was to speak against God, those things were embedded into the culture in our ministries and in the way the system operated.

So it was a lived experience, something that came true more times than not. So I learned, like many of the people, particularly women in that context, to just not speak up when I saw things that bothered me or didn’t sit right with me. So these young men, in particular those who were pastors’ kids or part of the worship team or other leadership positions, they were exempt from the very qualities and characteristics that were often being taught from the pulpit and in our classrooms, because it was also during these years that I was working at the…

The church had an ACCS-accredited classical school. For any of the listeners that might not be familiar, if you know anything about ACCS, there’s just a lot of overlap with Doug Wilson’s teaching. So there’s kind of that reformed background, but a particular vein of it. And so our church and the school overlapped very much in the leadership.

So those, those qualities and characteristics that were being taught from both the pulpit and in these classrooms, there was this disconnect between who those things applied to. Yeah, so you weren’t really wanting to be a part of the inner circle because you imagined that the inner circle would give you something else.

Julia: But there was this underbelly, there was something that people couldn’t see that was happening behind the scenes. It was promising something it didn’t actually offer. Yeah. Mm. Yeah, I mean, I, I wanted belonging. Mm-hmm. That’s right. I wanted to be trusted, respected, valued, which is all part of belonging.

Melissa: Mm-hmm. But I couldn’t belong if I didn’t live within the boundaries of this inner circle, and the teaching, and the sort of unspoken agreements that everybody had between them. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned the classical school programs and what you were a part of in the church, and how the church operated.

Can you tell us a little bit more about what those programs were like? Sure. So from the church side of things, I was heavily involved in some of the women’s groups. We spent a lot of time reading things like The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace, or True Wom- True Woman and Spiritual Mothering by Susan Hunt, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Wayne Grudem and John Piper.

I called it the blue book. That’s just what I called it, the blue book. We met weekly to listen to the counseling pastor teach us on how to be godly women and how to mentor the other women and girls in the church to be godly. The, the counseling pastor, who is a man. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. Just to be clear.

Sometimes… Yeah, just to be clear. Sometimes other women who were part of the inner circle would teach us, but it was always under his authority and with his direction, and submission was a consistent emphasis of those teachings. I looked back and was just reminiscing and, maybe not reminiscing, ’cause that sounds like a positive word, but I had written some notes back in 2011 from some of the teachings from one of those women’s meetings, and what I wrote down from what he said at one point was, “Every man is created to lead.

Every woman is created to submit.” Ugh. And so one of my early awakening moments came in 2012 when I was trying, without really knowing it, to get out of this system, but also not too far or too fast. I didn’t wanna go too far or too fast. But I was at a conference and I heard Russell Moore, and he was speaking, and I don’t even remember his exact text or title, but I had written in my notes from what he said, “We must simultaneously teach women how to submit and how not to submit.

The problem is not that our women are not submissive enough, but that they submit indiscriminately.” While this may not be so shocking to me now when I read it, at the time I was blown away that a man in a theologically conservative setting would say something like this at all. And so that conference was a pivotal step in my beginning to reexamine my beliefs and my perception of what had been happening in my church.

And so then on the school side of things, where I was a teacher, I, I taught various grades and subjects over nearly a decade, but in my final couple of years at, while I was still at the church, I spearheaded a biblical womanhood class for the high school girls, alongside the counseling pastor who was gonna teach the biblical manhood class.

And it was in this season that the abuse had really come to its head for me, and would continue to kind of escalate. My dysregulation and anxiety, which I, I wouldn’t have known to call it dysregulation at the time. I would’ve just called it sinful anxiety. I would’ve said that my anxiety was my problem.

And those things were being framed as instability by my pastors, the leaders that I would talk to about this. My confusion was abundant during this time. I began willingly deferring to my male leaders on everything, even when it went against my conscience. So things like boys in the school, student behaviors, boys telling girls that they were required to submit to them.

I mean, imagine- Wow … if you’re a young man and you’re being taught biblical manhood and being told things like what I quoted earlier about, you know, all men are created to lead, and all women are created to submit. Yeah. If you’re a teenage boy, why would you not, like, use that as- Mm-hmm … even if it’s joking at the time.

Right. But why would you not use that to kind of get one over on these young women? And so I was pushed at one point- I’m not gonna say forced, but I was definitely pushed in a way that I felt I didn’t have a choice to meet with and apologize to one of the pastors and his wife because I had taken their son aside to address his inappropriate behavior toward one of the girls he was sitting next to in class- Hmm

in one of my classes. No wonder you were dysregulated. Yeah, for sure. And then much of the discipline that I employed in my own classroom was based on the training that I received from our church and the school leadership, and the conferences and materials that we had as our guides. Our students had high standards when it came to immediate obedience, but I learned that those standards were often flexible for the pastor’s kids and those who were part of this inner circle.

Julia: I mean, just the asymmetry here in what you’re describing is so striking. You’re saying that, like, authority and power come essentially with double standards, so students were taught immediate obedience, but those who were close to leadership could absolutely violate those standards without the same consequence.

Melissa: For sure, hence the confusion. Yeah. I have always been a copious note-taker. I just enjoy processing information that way. Mm-hmm. And so another place where I had returned to some notes recently was looking back at a time in 2012, another meeting with the women led by this counseling pastor, and I wrote, “Spanking stands for something: wrath or hell.

It is a faint echo of judgment. We spank because we are dead serious about our stu- about our children’s souls.” And so while I was not required to use spanking as a form of punishment in my classroom, this was a regular aspect of the church’s parenting training that went on throughout the years that I was there.

This was a part of our theology. It was embedded in there. And when I look back, you know, these reductionistic and bypassing forms of engaging with scripture and theology, I can see now where they bled into all of my life, but even particularly my vocational pursuits during that time. So going back to something I said earlier about as a single woman, considering what might help me be more prepared for a lifetime of ministry, I began pursuing a graduate degree.

I completed a master’s degree in biblical counseling from the Master’s College, mostly because I wanted to gain further education so that I could counsel and teach, but I wanted to do it within the framework of the church- Mm … and with their approval. I needed that. I needed that security that it met their approval, their standards.

But that pursuit ha- has been one of my biggest regrets. One of your biggest regrets. Why? Well, it was in this program that I experienced further confusion and oppression, and I realized there was overlap with my church at that time, so I’m not sure where one began and the other one- Mm-hmm … ended. But I desperately wanted to prove that I was fully committed to the approach our church took to caring for people in our midst.

I wanted to be deemed trustworthy, and so becoming a biblical counselor felt like the way to legitimata- legitimize my desire to serve in s- full-time ministry. I wasn’t married. I didn’t have any prospect on the horizon for that. This was another context in which my love of learning then became an easily exploited opportunity for me to continue- Mm

serving this particular church in the ways they saw as right and righteous. So it was in this educational program that I also saw what happens to women who don’t fall in line. There were a few other incidents that I recall during that timeframe that added to my fear of stepping outside the framework I had been existing within during those years.

One was I turned down a, a speaking opportunity. It was the first time I was ever asked to speak beyond the walls of my church, but it was because this counseling pastor said that he was concerned that I was too young to teach older women. What about Titus 2? I also remember during that time, loved every summer the program I was in in graduate school.

There was a school. There was a summer women’s conference, and Elise Fat- Elise Fitzpatrick was a speaker there, and probably about two or three years into my degree, she was just mysteriously removed without explanation. That was confusing to me, and I would say even distressing a little bit. She was someone that I really admired as a woman serving God with her life.

Another interaction was my thesis advisor was my professor’s wife, which was often how they did that in the program. You couldn’t meet with your professor for thesis advisorship. His wife had to be involved because, you know, we gotta keep everything above board. Wow. And when I was there for an in-person session of school, she critiqued my weight as a hindrance- Mm

to getting married with- without really having any context of relationship with me ahead of time. And so these are just a couple of experiences, but these things just furthered my confusion and my turmoil, and kind of set me up for a season where I even participated in the systems of coercing and harming others.

I found myself doing the bidding of pastors and ministry leaders who operated from this posture of self-interest and self-preservation. I counseled younger women with legalistic and oppressive man-made standards rather than coming alongside them with the compassionate presence of Jesus. In my own insecurity and anxiety, I became the one with power at times, which in turn led me to offer my own version of oppressive care toward these young women that I taught and counseled.

And so rather than mentoring and guiding them to find their identity in Christ, something that I had not even come to enjoy- Mm … or to make life decisions ba- From a place of spirit-led wisdom, I ended up reinforcing much of the messaging that was baked into the church culture that we were in, messages that taught us to see ourselves, especially as women, as being easily misled without male authority, or as temptresses who held the responsibility for guarding and honoring the reputations and dignity of those men.

Mm-hmm. You were sold too. And so when… Yeah. I was, and I’m sure, like any story where there’s abuse, we can say, um, we don’t know what everyone’s intentions are or were, and yet we know that there’s a way to know what to do, know how to do what is right, and that would’ve been available to these leaders if they had been seeking out, how do we do what is right here?

Yeah. And so one of my more recent awakenings connected to your question about regret, you know, I, I have so many regrets, as I know many others do about their own lives and the context they’ve been in. And I’ve taken steps over the years to make right where I knew to do so and had opportunity. But beyond the relational regrets, I’ve grappled most with the regret of my own life, the years that feel like a waste in some ways, the student loan debt, the missed opportunities to pursue other interests, or perhaps to make friends who don’t think or believe just like me.

Julia: It’s easy to regret things that have brought us pain and loss. But I recently began thinking as I was studying the word bless last year, what if I can learn to bless those things? Mm. To bless the me that was then, because I don’t like that version of myself. It’s hard to look back at that version of myself.

Melissa: And there’s been a song that was recently released by Jess Ray, and there’s a line where she says, “I know how to curse the path I tread. When will I learn to bless it all instead? To open my arms and kiss the face of my own life as it comes my way.” Mm. And I think, you know, how do we bless what has felt like a curse?

But I think more and more it’s by moving with compassion towards those versions of ourselves that endured so much, and it also provides the spaciousness to then have compassion toward others who were a part of the destructive systems, and maybe they chose to remain in it, or to defend it, or even to participate in it.

Julia: Mm. You’re holding so much complexity so well, and just, Melissa, that feels so especially powerful what you’re describing, because for so long you were learning to question yourself, to detach from your own knowing and sensing. And there’s something so beautifully reparative about being able to turn toward that version of yourself now, and offer her grace and kindness that in so many of those moments wasn’t offered to you, not from yourself or from others around you.

And I think there’s a holiness to that kind of resistance. It’s almost as if you’re refusing to do to yourself what has been done to you, and you’re refusing even to stop carrying the system forward inside of yourself. Mm. When you chose to use that word resistance, it meant so much to me. It’s become, mm, like a really special word to me the last few years.

Melissa: And so when I think back on my final years at this particular church, I remember on a number of occasions thinking about no longer wanting to be alive because it felt like death would be a more accessible way out of the situation. And I never told anyone else, or even myself that. I never have really admitted that to myself until just maybe about a year or two ago.

But during those years, there was this significant shift in the teaching of our singles ministries. I kind of alluded to this earlier, just that marriage had become a primary issue, so much so that a couple of our pastors staged a weekend conference for our college-age and singles groups focused exclusively on singleness.

They might as well have titled the conference The Problem or Sin of Singleness, because during one of their teaching segments, I wrote what the speaker said to us, and it was, “One of the greatest dilemmas facing the church today is the increasing population of older singles.” Dilemmas. And it… Yes. One of the greatest dilemmas.

And in a later session he said, “The issues of manhood and womanhood, which give their greatest expression in marriage and family, are the watershed issues of our day.” And so as you can imagine, as an aging single, I wasn’t even aging in the cultural sense of aging. I was in my early 30s at the time. But as an aging single, what was I to do with the belief that manhood and womanhood give their greatest expressions in marriage and family?

And so this just perpetuated this sense of dread that I had about staying in this context, but not being in a place yet where I could put language to that, just knowing that something was very, very wrong. It’s as if you’re- Yeah … given the message that you are stuck and you are failing. Yeah. And it was related to something that was beyond your control.

Yeah. That’s exactly what it felt like. Again, reinforcing that whole what is wrong with me? Yes. There it is again. I’m the problem. What is wrong with me? Mm-hmm. And I remember during one summer break from teaching, I went on a, a week long or so trip to visit a friend of mine out of state, and I ended up calling home from my friend’s apartment to say that I was going to stay indefinitely.

This was the first big step in my awakening or moving toward freedom. Ultimately, that place was not the right place for me. I was looking for job opportunities while I was there. Really was desperate to not go back. Um, but I also knew the only way that I could do that was if I had something that could make it look like an appropriate exit.

Like, “Oh, I just happened to get this job somewhere else,” right? But even this context that my friend was in was really only a small step removed from the type of context I was coming from. But what it did offer me, even though it didn’t work out, it offered me just the reality of other possibilities, and it put some distance between me and the m- the oppression that I had been under.

And so by the end of that year, I had not found a job and needed to return home to live with my parents. They had packed up my apartment and stored everything for me while I just kinda decided what to do next. And so I remember returning back to that church- Just sick to go to the f- the first event that I even went back to, even now I’m just remembering this, was a bridal, either a bridal shower or a baby shower for someone, and I just remember feeling sick going to it because it represented a return to this church.

Julia: Hmm. And I even returned back to working at the school for a time because I needed a job, but it truly felt like returning to a death sentence. I knew I would not survive if I stayed there. Well, at this point in time, there had been so much accumulated debris, and so much that you were noticing now that staying became unbearable, and yet leaving also felt impossible.

When you remember that time, what made leaving feel so frightening or costly to you? Ultimately, I think it was that sense of belonging. Families there had become like family to me. Mm. I had helped raise people’s children. I had made major life decisions based on the direction of the leadership there. I knew that leaving would change all of that, and I feared the loneliness, what would feel like a shunning, in a sense, I, that I would likely face if I left.

Melissa: I honestly would rather die than have to face the disapproval or the distancing of the pastors and friends that I had come to know for so long there. I had also seen firsthand what happened to others when they left. It was usually shrouded in vague references to them going their own way or that there was some sort of unresolved question mark as to their personal integrity.

And so for me, leaving meant losing my entire community. Yes. This counseling pastor had such power over me. He was so crafty with his words and his behaviors that I knew I would not be able to withstand whatever picture he would paint of me. He had already at times turned other pastors and even close friends against me, had used me as a source in reporting back to him about other women’s behaviors or beliefs.

You know, as with many high-control religious organizations, there was a large measure of information control. Mm. I never, I never in that time had an active plan to take my own life, but I do remember often wondering things like, “What if I just ran my car into that tree up ahead?” As I would be driving home from work or from an event.

Julia: Mm. That, that truly felt like the only viable way out at times. Oh. You also said something that I just don’t wanna move past too quickly. There were times when it felt like death began to feel more accessible than finding a way out. That tells me just how trapped you have become. I mean, it’s heartbreaking to hear you describe this, just the amount of pain that you were in.

You felt it when you thought- About leaving, right? It wasn’t even just about changing churches. It was potentially losing the whole world that had become a home to you. Was that part of what made leaving feel almost unthinkable to you? Yes, for sure. I had finally found belonging, or so it seemed, right? But that belonging was not true.

Melissa: It was a manufactured and manipulated belonging. It was one-sided, and there were all kinds of strings attached. I recall one incident toward the very end of my time there when I was asked to attend a meeting with the counseling pastor, another pastor, and another woman about an issue in the life of a mutual friend.

This other woman and I were grilled about our friend at this table, around this conference table, with the counseling pastor at one point becoming so angry that we were not giving him the information he wanted or the way that he wanted it. He stood from the table, slammed his hand down on it, and just angrily stormed out of the room.

He did not return, and the other pastor, while not unkind to us in, in his behavior, he did not acknowledge how wrong that was, and the counseling pastor never returned to the room, never came back and apologized for the outburst. And it was also around that time that I was demoted, those are my words, those aren’t the words that were used, but essentially that, that’s what was happening, from my teaching position at the school and placed in a low-level administrative position where I felt like I was monitored very closely.

I distinctly remember a meeting with the pastor over the school and the counseling pastor, because he was involved in everything where I cried a lot. I literally just sat there weeping, and this was my form of freezing, was to cry, and I fully submitted to whatever they said, not speaking up for myself at all.

I literally could not bring myself to speak words in that meeting other than eventually just blurting out, “I’m so sorry,” multiple times. And it was in that season that I remember also sleeping with my Bible under my pillow at night because I was so discouraged and confused by what was happening to me, couldn’t make sense of it, thought it was all my fault, my sin, felt like it was unsafe to process these feelings with anyone I knew.

But I still desperately wanted to remain close to God. There was a journal entry that I made probably during one of those nights or the morning after where I wrote, “I’ve been going to bed each night with my Bible open to Psalm 103 under my pillow, and then awakening to it as well. God, please let this be real and true.

Don’t let me fall. Place my feet upon solid ground so that I will not sl- slip.” And then it was only a few months later I was beginning to ask myself and God more questions, writing in my journal, “How do we rightly submit to divinely appointed mistreatment? Is not all mistreatment divinely appointed? So then, how do we respond rightly?”

And I know, I hear that now, and even as I’m- Mm-hmm … looking back at those words, I’m struck by if I knew that someone was saying that now, I would be so compelled to want to talk to them about like, “Oh, I think we have some really distorted theological stuff happening here. How can we maybe unravel this a little bit?”

Mm-hmm. Because I was wrestling with like my mistreatment has been divinely appointed by God. Mm-hmm. So I should submit to it, but I was starting to ask questions. Right. There was a- I was challenging that … confusion, but there is this like voracious searching for truth. Yes. Yeah. Like a, a desperation and earnestness.

It really was. It really was. And obviously at the time, it felt like something I was despising that I was doing- Mm-hmm … because it was so painful, and I was so alone in it, but I, I look back on it now and see where that was the beginning of the resistance- Mm-hmm … that you mentioned earlier. And so one aspect of my awakening, which has been gradual over the years, has been to learn that I, I’ve never fought.

You know, I talked about freezing in that meeting. My typical reaction to harmful or confusing situations has been to flee or freeze. And so in this church, and with that counseling pastor in particular, I mostly froze. I can still viscerally feel that kind of tension in my body to just freeze in place, and then to shut down entirely.

And early on as a teacher in the church’s school, at one point when I realized I was significantly underpaid, you know, even with a graduate degree, because the men who had wives and children were prioritized, I never spoke up. I even wrote my entire master’s degree thesis on the topic of biblical womanhood, because I, I believed…

I was trying to convince myself that this was the right way, even if it meant promoting and defending the very systems that were actively harming me and so many other women. And even in more recent environments, when I’ve experienced other systems where confusing and concerning patterns have emerged, I can still feel that natural tendency to freeze.

So it looks like me going quiet quickly, becoming agreeable, withholding authenticity, at times drawing back from relationships that don’t seem safe. But in that, as I’ve grown and experienced measures of healing, I can see places where I am learning to remain. Not to remain in unsafe relationships or institutions, but to remain present to myself and to God.

And it made me learn to fight, not against other people or specifically for one cause, but to fight for myself, for my personhood and my integrity You know, sometimes we talk about fight, flight, freeze, and also fawn, that instinct to become accommodating or agreeable when something doesn’t feel safe. I hear that in what you’re describing.

Julia: I also hear that healing hasn’t become a swing into fight where it’s confrontational necessarily, but staying with yourself. And all the while, again, going back to what you verbalized before, is you were fighting to know the truth and not trying to lose God, trying to hold on to him. Yes. Yes. And there were signals, prompts trying to get my attention.

Melissa: I just didn’t recognize them at the time. I had become so disembodied and self-denying or self-despising really, that I couldn’t see those, those signs, those signals. I remember for quite a long time having severe stomach and hormonal issues, lots of mysterious illness and related symptoms. Went to the ER for a couple of different issues and was told that it was just in my head or anxiety, and I should see a therapist.

But day to day, I was going through the motions of being submissive and supportive of everything the church leadership did or said, because therapy, clinical therapy, was frowned upon by my church in many ways. I knew that was not gonna be a route for me to go. In one note from something that my pa- counseling pastor said at the time, I wrote down, “My trials exist to reveal my true sincerity of faith.”

That was the reference point I had for all my suffering, that it was revealing my sincerity and maturity. It was a test, but I was physically miserable all the time. All the time. I was so sick one week that I had to go to the restroom and vomited within earshot of the whole office in my job at the time, at the school, and I felt humiliated, but this was my test.

Hmm. What do you think was happening to your body at the time? I think a part of me believed I was truly wrong and that I was unstable, which was some of the messaging I had received. But I do think the longer I’ve been away from that context, I’ve been able to kind of make that connection between what I would call, you know, forms of psychological manipulation and torment, and how that does impact our bodies.

I can look back now and see that my body was screaming at me to get out of there. It was telling me I was not safe, that I was being managed, and that when I ever so slightly tried to speak up or ask questions, this, the punishment of the silent treatment or being removed from a position or being pushed to accept narratives that benefited those in positions of power and authority, my body was processing that.

It was, they say, metabolizing it, so to speak. And so I’ve seen it more too as my body has increased in health and safety over the last few years. I can make the connection back now, noticing small things now, like my breath rising and falling, or tension or ease in my posture, the fluctuations of my digestive system.

These have become places where I can see more clearly just how bad that environment was for me. And it’s not because being out of that environment means I won’t experience health issues or won’t still have physical ailments, but because now I can notice those things, and I’ve been able to discern more when those things are linked to internal distress, and to identify what I might need for support or recovery.

So even when my story comes back up as it has more so over the past year or two, there’s been a, a legal investigation going on in the past couple years into my old church. So of course, even though I’m not directly involved in that at this point, it brings my story back up. That impacts my body, and I’m, but I’m able to get my bearings and find reassurance that those returning themes don’t mean that this today is the same as that If that makes sense.

And there were several awakening seasons over the past 10 years since I left that church, where there, there certainly have been sorrowful losses along the way. I would say especially friendships that didn’t survive, other pursuits that didn’t work out. But I’ve experienced a shift from seeing suffering as something to do well, that it’s some hallmark of faithful and mature Christianity, to finding a much deeper and richer understanding of the theology of presence, that my suffering is made holy.

It is a sacred thing, because Jesus went before me in his suffering, and he endured all things so that I don’t have to be alone in my suffering. And that presence was not just in a moment. Um, it’s something that’s happened little by little over these 10 years. I don’t need to go into all the details, but I, I think some people might be curious what did that feel like or look like.

You know, I took some classes several years ago from Diane Langberg and Phil Monroe that brought some initial language for what I experienced, finally came to understand what trauma is. I saw a therapist in my early transition out of that church. Spent ti- she was the one that helped me go back through those journal entries, and that was a huge awakening moment for me to see and hear someone else responding, much like you guys are doing in these episodes, to see and hear someone else responding to what I had experienced, to have someone carefully bearing witness to my story, reconnecting with some of the women who were out of the system, moving toward them in repair, making connections with other people who don’t think like me or who just don’t know what they think about every issue, taking some seminary classes even now in recent years where I’m just taking one at a time, and there’s been a spaciousness in that context to learn and grow alongside others without the pressure to just embrace one narrow perspective And not forcing myself into formal church membership, leaving myself the freedom to receive spiritual community in more non-traditional ways.

And so of course, there are ongoing impacts. My health, triggered seasons, loneliness, sometimes feeling like I don’t have an official church home. Having this sixth sense, so to speak. You know, now I can finally listen to my conscience, um, which sometimes makes for awkward relationships. Um, yeah. Sometimes still feeling vulnerable to other systems that were just acknowledging enough of my experience that it could feel like a step of freedom.

Mm-hmm. But then, you know, we discover another system. Mm. But what’s different now is that I know who I am. I know it’s not my fault. I know what was done there was wrong, and I know that those leaders will have to answer for it. And so I’m comforted by the Psalms so much, I think especially recently of a couple places in the Psalms where it talks about the foundations of God’s throne are righteousness and justice, that these are the twin pillars that hold up His throne.

And in context where we so often see leaders vying for almost some sort of kingship, right? Using their power and authority to their advantage, rather than in service of the small and vulnerable. I am reminded that there is no king but Jesus, and no throne but the Father’s. And I cling to the assurance that God’s rule is concerned most with, and upheld by, His righteousness.

Julia: Amen and amen. You just said earlier that you know who you are. I know who I am. After a story with so much self-doubt, that feels enormous It is enormous. Yeah, I mean, so much of my life has been marked by being in relationships or contexts where I’m being told that my perception is not accurate, or that I don’t have all the information, or that I’m not seeing things clearly.

Melissa: I’ve been told regularly to believe the best of others, give the benefit of the doubt, only to learn that there is quiet maneuvering happening or manipulating for people’s own gain to protect the institution or preserve their power over caring for the vulnerable. And so I have come to realize how I was leaving myself at the mercy of leaders who were at best ignorant of the perils of power, and at worst were intentionally misusing their power to their own advantage.

There’s a quote I appreciate from Joy LaPrade. She says, “Whenever we see abuses of power in the church, there will always be an element of predatory behavior, the strong feeding on the vulnerable.” And many of the leaders I’ve been around, whether they recognize it or not, were feeding on the vulnerable.

They took self-knowledge or self-awareness and fashioned it as a tool of control to elevate their interests and priorities. So my self-knowledge in those contexts was that morbid introspection that I spoke of. So the enormity of knowing who I am now isn’t so much about the specifics of that, but about the strength that it provides for me to no longer despise my vulnerability, ’cause that’s part of that regret sometimes, right?

Mm-hmm. We look back and kinda despise the places where we were vulnerable, but God doesn’t. He doesn’t despise my vulnerability. He does not exploit it, and he does not take advantage of it. He values our vulnerability, commends it. I believe in some senses we were created with a vulnerability that was meant to prompt our dependence on him, not other people, which was a lot of what was happening in my context.

With him, our vulnerability is good and safe. It’s only in the context of a fallen world and in the context of these distorted and twisted versions of leadership that our vulnerability can feel like it becomes food for those captivated by power and influence. We know that God condemns those attitudes and behaviors in Ezekiel 34, for one example.

And just as Jesus demonstrated in his own care for those who were vulnerable or least and without influence, he brought them near, and that’s what he has done for me. In some way I feel– some ways I feel so far from the typical aspects of Christian faith or tradition, but I have never felt nearer to Jesus.

Hmm. That’s when you know you’re on the right track. When you think about that woman who entered that church wanting to know God, wanting belonging, wanting somewhere to give her life, what would you want her to know now? Something I thought of just in this, this moment listening to you ask that question was- I would want her to know that God wants to know her.

Mm. I would want her to know that she is loved and held and safe, and that nothing she thinks or wonders about or speaks is a threat. I would want her to know that she can trust the way the Spirit is guiding her, that she doesn’t need the stamp of approval from whoever, and that she belongs and is fully welcomed into the presence of God.

Julia: Mm. That’s what I’d want her to know. Melissa, thank you. I know there’s a cost to telling a story like this, and I’m really grateful for the way you’ve trusted us with yours. There’s so many things that I know that I’ll carry away from this conversation, but I keep coming back to this idea of learning not to abandon yourself anymore.

And there’s something really beautiful to me about the way you can look back now at who you were, not with condemnation, but with kindness and compassion. And you can repair where repair is yours to make, right? You can grieve what’s been done to you and still refuse to keep doing to yourself what was done to you.

Ann Maree: And coming back to the idea that there is something like a holy resistance in that. So thank you again. Thank you, thank you for allowing us to witness your story. Thank you, Julia. Safe to Hope is made possible by donors who believe faithfulness means protecting survivors and honoring the dignity of their stories.

Their support allows us to remain independent, trauma-specialized, and committed to truth-telling without pressure or performance. We are deeply grateful to our donors for their partnership. If this conversation stirred something for you, please know you do not have to carry it alone. Support resources are listed in the show notes, and you’re welcome to reach out in the ways that feel safest for you.

Safe to Hope is a production of Help[H]er. The podcast is executive produced by Ann Maree Goudzwaard, with audio production, mixing, and editing provided by Forward Agency in Raleigh, North Carolina