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YOU GUYS. YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE THIS INTERVIEW. I am so excited to bring you this fantastic conversation with Dr. Laura Anderson: religious trauma therapist, co-founder of the Religious Trauma Institute, and founder of the coaching organization Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery. And, she has a book coming out into the world on October 17th called When Religion Hurts You: Healing From Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion. I was honored to speak with her and be able to pick her brain a bit to share with all of you about her learned wisdom on all things religious trauma!
*If* you’re not already following Laura, you can find her on Instagram @ drlauraeanderson or check out her website with tons of resources (and order her book!) at https://drlauraeanderson.com/.
You’ll want to carve out the time to listen to the whole interview, but if reading is better for you, you can read the fairly accurate transcript in the app / online!
Please press the “heart” button if you enjoyed the interview, send it to a friend, and share your thoughts in the comments! So excited to hear from you. :)
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christinegreenwald.substack.com -
I’m excited to bring you today’s interview about creativity! Even though I’m on here writing most weeks, to be honest, I don’t typically see myself as a creative person. I don’t have great decorating taste like my friends, I can’t assemble an amazing Lego structure out of nowhere like my husband, and when clients want me to paint with them, I paint the same mountain scene every time. Turns out, I needed to hear this interview with Heather!
In Ordinary Creativity: How to Survive with Joy, Heather Caliri unpacks how eugenicists, misogynists and racists skewed our understanding of creativity, reframes human ingenuity to include experiences like caregiving, disability, and suffering, and helps you claim your own way of being creative with fierce, unapologetic delight.
As you listen to the interview, I think you will be surprised, fascinated, and delighted about the topics that come up around this concept of creativity!
Heather’s background growing up in a “creative” family and the pressure that went with that:
So like I was just surrounded by very creative people, but the dynamics around that and my family were not always healthy. Like my kind of creativity, the performing kind was like the good kind. Whereas my sister like made art that disturbed people, and my parents were always like, Like she sort of exposed some of the not so healthy dynamics in her family, through her, through her art, well before I felt comfortable doing that.
And so that was very, like, I was always very nervous about that. And so there was this, I always had this sense that some kinds of creativity were okay and some kinds of creativity were not okay. And even like I would compare myself to my sister because I really respected how great of an artist she was. [There was a lot of] comparing yourself to other people and coming up short… I was held up in our family as the successful one, but at the same time I looked at my siblings and was like, I just really wish I could be like them.
The eugenics history behind the study of creativity
The first person to formally study creativity was Francis Galton. And I said, wait, what? The guy who invented eugenics was the first person to formally study creativity?
The whole idea of differential psychology is what makes human beings, some human beings have different abilities than others, and he really thought that. People who were wealthy and tall and male and white were inherently better. That that was why so many geniuses came from wealthy, established families that they cause it ran in the blood and so therefore, super genius, creative people were better and were like masters of the race and they should be supported and encouraged to have more babies because that would improve.
Misogynist and racist elements of how we approach creativity
A lot of women artists never got their due because they would make quilts. And why is it that we think quilts are not a form of abstract art? Like, why do we think that if it's made with fabric, it's not actual visual art, but if Mondrian makes a thing out of geometric squares made out of paint that suddenly that matters.
But if you put it on your bed, it doesn't matter. Like there is just so much weird supremacy built into visual arts. During colonialism, a lot of art was stolen from different African civilizations. And then artists like Picasso were inspired by it, or artists were inspired by Japanese, Japanese art, and they would say that the artists who basically stole and were riffing off these other artists were the real geniuses, but none of the original artists or their cultures were ever credited for the ideas that that inspired Picasso and other artists of the modernist period.
Reframing creativity and finding it in the ordinary everyday
When we realize that creative work and our everyday work — all of it is honoring, all of it is super important. Then we have more connections to other people. We're kinder to the other people around them because we see they matter in whatever genius ideas that I have and their labor is making all of it possible, like all of our collective labor is making all of this stuff possible, and without it, we're all sunk.
Sometimes creativity happens in the cracks of our daily life. And it is still important. It is still worth doing, even if it's only for 15 minutes. Even if nobody ever sees it, like ideally we would be all set up to share our work as widely and often we would like, but nobody has that.
The people that I admire, like most as as creative people, don't have that luxury. They're not super famous. They don't have maids. Many of them have chronic diseases. Many of them are caregivers. And I admire the fact that they put those things alongside each other and they say, not that they have to choose between one and or the other, nor that they can have it all, but that all of those things are important and the work can happen in small ways and still be meaningful.
And of course, listen to the full interview for more tidbits on the intersection of religious trauma and messages about creativity, and what it might mean to claim your identity as a creative person!
You can find Heather’s book here: Amazon or Heather’s website, and take her Creative Personality Test to learn how — not whether— you’re creative!
Do you consider yourself a creative person? Or after listening to the interview…can you? Did you have any idea about some of the dark background of the concept of creativity? (I didn’t!). What’s your favorite way to create? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
Music in podcast provided by:
Above by Sapajou | https://soundcloud.com/sapajoubeatsMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christinegreenwald.substack.com -
Saknas det avsnitt?
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This interview was a joy to record, and I hope you get as much out of it as I did! I speak with Sarah Lewis, who shares her powerful story at the intersection of lesbian identity and religious trauma. She grew up in a small town as a devout Christian but was taught her sexual orientation was not compatible with her religious identity. She escaped to a place of “queer privilege” for about 15 years but returned home with a mission to make her hometown more inclusive than what she experienced growing up. I think you will find her story resonant and compelling, and I hope you enjoy our conversation!
Interview Highlights:
On trying to “pray the gay away”
I was definitely trying to pray a lot away… I knew by eighth grade that I was a lesbian. And [my female pastor] had given me a teen devotional Bible and there was this whole section on homosexuality. And I would just read that section over and over again, cause it was something I was really struggling with. Those feelings. I was just reading it, reading it, reading it, trying to pray that out of me constantly. And I thought, okay. I'll if, if I can become a preacher, I'll get better. Oh yeah. If I can do all these church camps, I'll get better.
Like it's gonna go away. Like these feelings are gonna go away and they didn't and here I am.
Hating the church and afraid her parents would hate her
The more I got to know people around me and the more I continued to discover myself, the more I grew a little bit of — and I will say a hatred —towards the faith-based community, because I felt like they were stifling me to who I was.
[My parents are] loving and caring. They're great parents. They love me. They love my daughter. They love my wife probably more than they love me, but I really believed that they would hate me. And I believed I had to burden my mom, with ‘your firstborn child's going to earn the kingdom of hell rather than the kingdom of heaven.’
Finding some healing through a new kind of spirituality
And [the Science of Minds church] was about positive energy and intention. And it's about finding the God within you. And it doesn't have necessarily have to be this negative connotation. It's this non-denominational being that represents the energy that you put out into the world. And I started adopting those kind of ideas with her. It sounds a little cultish when you explain it. But sending that positive energy out into the universe. And having those positive things return to me just improved my life.
And studies really show that It's really similar to prayer, right? It's as the faith-based community is praying, they're putting that positive energy out into the universe. It has that return and it just shows the, this is the same idea.
I don't have to eliminate this huge part of who I am. And being a lesbian, it is a huge part of who I am. The way that I love is different than some other people. And so when I'm being asked to strip that away, [it feels] so impossible. And it feels tragic and it's like telling me, ‘don't love your wife anymore.’ Yeah. I like, I can, I, on the verge of tears is thinking all that. Yeah. It seems ridiculous to me. And then I was able to find a faith.
Coming back to rural Ohio with a mission
If we're gonna move back to Ohio, we're gonna make it worth it. We're gonna do everything that we can to make them feel included, and represent something that I didn't get to see when I was their age.
That [representation] was my main motivation because it took a devastating amount of time to be able to get myself out of that deep sadness. That pit that you're always feeling? That emptiness that you feel in your heart? You're told it's because you need God, when in reality, it was the acceptance of myself.
The hateful reaction to Pride events and queer representation in Bellefontaine
I’m at my nine to five job, and I'm receiving hateful messages that ‘we [neo-Nazis] are coming to get you.’ White supremacy groups are circulating our flyers and saying we're child groomers… I catch a message or a screen grab of some hateful stream or thread that started with a picture of my family on it.
You have these outsiders coming in, encouraging people to fly on planes here and encouraging fellow neo-Nazi members, get an airplane ticket and go to Bellefontaine, Ohio to mess up all their events.
On the right to take up space in the place you want to live
We're entitled to share a quiet street with everyone else, with low crime rates. We [queer people] don't just exist in the metropolitan areas. We exist everywhere. I want my child to go to a good school system. I wanna own a little home with some grass. I wanna share that space with everyone else.
I genuinely want the queer people in this area to feel like they're entitled to be rooted here.
Christine: I don't know how politicized your upbringing was, but mine was rather a lot politicized and I was indoctrinated about like the gay agenda. Like, exactly what you're saying. You guys actually came here to have family support. And then it was like, oh, and also while we're here, let's go with the mission. Let's make this place inclusive. Here you are just trying to live your lives and there are these neo-Nazis and white supremacists who are like, ‘I don't like your agenda.’ My agenda to…have a quiet street??
About the Parasol Patrol who volunteer at events where hate groups may protest
They do not interact. What they do is shield [families from hateful protestors], using their umbrellas to shield out the hate.
The founder likes to wear a speaker and play Disney music. [The Disney copyright makes it so the livestreams are taken down due to the copyrighted music playing in the background.] So then the neo-Nazi groups aren't able to continue to push their agenda on livestreams.
[By the way, the Pride event we talk about went off without a hitch: some “Proud Boys” signs were hung around town but no actual protestors came to the event. Seeing all the support from the Parasol Patrol and the friendly honks of cars driving by was amazing, though!!]
What came up for you as you listened to this episode? What are your thoughts on the particular intersection of queer identity and conservative Christianity, and even more specifically, in a rural environment with little queer visibility? What dreams do you have of making the place where you live a more inclusive place? Can’t wait to chat in the comments!
Intro and outro music by:
Above by Sapajou | https://soundcloud.com/sapajoubeatsMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christinegreenwald.substack.com -
Happy Pride Month!!! In today’s episode (with extensive quotes / notes below!), I interview Tyler Berry, a fellow resident of Bellefontaine and the owner of The Olive Tree (a gay bar) and the Olive Tree Community Center (an LGBTQ+ / allies safe space!). It was such a fun conversation where we cover what it was like growing up here as a closeted gay person, the meandering journey his business has taken and how, like him, his business finally came out as gay, and of course, plenty about drag performers! Hope you enjoy the episode!
On Tyler’s turning point for when the church truly no longer felt safe (5:00):
For me, the biggest turning point was when gay marriage was legalized. I remember it was a Saturday and I remember the first thing I thought to myself was, oh no, tomorrow's Sunday. What is the pastor gonna say? [I didn’t even think at the time] that I was actually gay, it was more of I knew that I'm not gonna hate on people.
…My pastor's approach was very comical. It was almost like, ‘can you believe this is happening?’ And I remember just feeling like I was literally at a standup comedy show where the pastor was just cracking jokes and at the same time, the whole Caitlin Jenner situation was going on.
And I remember the one joke he said was, ‘you know, people can be whatever they want nowadays. And if I wanna be a bald eagle, then you all have to respect me. And say that I'm a bald eagle.’ [The church was about] 300 people, just laughing…
It was awful. I do remember some people getting up and leaving. After that I really, really did not like religion. I really, really struggled.
How Tyler shifted from hating drag queens to them being some of his best friends (13:00):
I met this drag queen, and at the time too, I hated drag queens. I'm not afraid to say that I hated them. They were loud, they were annoying, and I didn't understand what they were doing.
And it bothered me because as part of the gay community, it's believed, and it is true that drag queens represent the queer community in general. And I did not like how they represented me. Now that perspective's completely changed, obviously, but I'll get into that.
…[after the Olive Tree’s first drag show], the biggest turning point was after the show. I had a mother and a daughter come in tears; it was very emotional for them. And the mother informed me that her daughter was struggling with suicidal thoughts and that this event basically saved her life.
It was the connection out of drag that was relatable to me… As soon as the makeup came off, these people became my best friends… All the connections came into play of similar trauma stories, similar this, similar that… It's been very interesting too with the inner homophobia that I was dealing with, saying that all drag queens are the same: that is the dumbest thing you could possibly say.
On some of the Black drag queens he is friends with:
And both of them said that the reason why they do drag and the role models they look up to is from the aunties in their church they grew up with. A lot of their drag personas reflect them. [One of them struggles with religious trauma], but the other one, was like, yeah, I'm a Christian.
…We've talked about having gospel drag shows. To some people that makes absolutely no sense, but it is a thing. I've seen gospel drag numbers and they're amazing.
The transformation of letting your work and business reflect who you really are:
I came out to my mom two years ago and then just a couple minutes later we play this drag show and these opportunities come to me. It was like, ‘is The Olive Tree about to come out as gay?’ And it did. And what was really interesting is, as scary as that was, once it happened, it was beautiful. And the stress of trying to fit this business model that really wasn't even me, just completely went away. Because when I walk into The Olive Tree, it is me. I tell people the walls, the art, the things that happen in there are what is inside my head.
On the dynamics of alcohol and the bar:
I would say the only thing, and this is kind of funny, the only thing that maybe doesn't connect to me the most is probably the bar. The, the alcohol aspect of it was something that, It was a community cry out. And basically, I'm the only drag venue in probably the world that's not even offering really alcohol. And they kind of go hand in hand. And it was kind of a business decision.
I’ve learned to love what the atmosphere has created. It's created a safe place where there is alcohol. A bad coping mechanism, absolutely. But if I have a bartender that's trained and if I'm there as well, also saying, ‘Hey, you're not okay right now. We're not gonna let you drink four bottles of alcohol.’ It's created this really, really safe experience where people can come and be themselves and be vulnerable and talk about their traumas. I mean, my bartender cracks up right now cuz beforehand she worked at a straight bar and she says all the time: ‘these emotions, like it is a lot.’
It's almost like she has became mother and there are people that treat her like mother. And I couldn't be more thankful to have her in her position.
What does Tyler wish we knew about drag performers?
I wish people knew that drag queens are people. And that's it. They are everyday people that they, you know what? They shop, they buy groceries, they pay their taxes, hopefully, you know, they do everything else we do.
And it is 110% an art form. It is 100% entertainment. I think drag is one of the most beautiful art forms there is personally, just because it has allowed an outlet for queer people to experiment. To try new things. [To try a new persona]. It gives an outlet where a lot of people that I've even met, when they get out of drag they go right back into this timid, shy person.
But then there's also the beauty of, you know, a lot of people have used drag to potentially transition, potentially be like, ‘you know what, I am a woman.’ ‘I am a man.’ ‘I am this.’ And that has been a beautiful experience. Seeing specifically transgender stories through drag puts you in tears. It's just beautiful. And so to have an outlet for that, for queer people is just phenomenal.
Go find Tyler and The Olive Tree on Facebook!
Thanks for reading / listening! What struck you about this interview? What conceptions do you have about drag performers or gay bars that might get turned on their heads? What are your thoughts about the legislation getting passed around the country specifically targeting drag performers, trans people, and the LGBTQ+ community at large? Or share other thoughts in the comments!
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CW: Sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, narcissistic abuse
Today I interview Nicki Pappas, author of the memoir As Familiar As Family: Leaving the Toxic Religion I Was Groomed For and a poetry book, Reflections from a Former Evangelical. She is the host of the Broadening the Narrative podcast. In her memoir, she draws connections between the abuse she experienced as a child and how this created in her a vulnerability that was later taken advantage of by a spiritually abusive pastor and church setting. She also reflects on what enabled her to find her way out of this situation. I’m excited to share our conversation with you all today!
Before we dive into today’s interview, I want to clarify a couple of terms that will be helpful for us to wrap our minds around:
Spiritual Abuse: Whenever a person or system in a position of power uses God or any other spiritual construct as a weapon to control, manipulate, or demean, spiritual abuse occurs (Jamie Marich, 2018)
Religious Trauma: The physical, emotional, or psychological response to religious beliefs, practices, or structures that is experienced by an individual as overwhelming or disruptive and has lasting adverse effects on a person’s physical, mental, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. (Religious Trauma Institute)
Narcissism: Having characteristics including: an inflated sense of self-importance, lack of empathy, exaggerated needs for admiration, and holding a belief that one deserves special treatment
If you prefer to read a [mostly unedited] transcript of today’s conversation, you can find the link here.
Nicki’s background: Growing up Southern Baptist, anxiety about hell and the rapture, and experience childhood sexual abuse from a family member. (4:00)
I couldn't articulate it back then as a child, but before [the sexual abuse] happened, I thought, I'm autonomous. I can make decisions for myself. I have some level of agency.
But when I was sexually abused, my body was violated and boundaries were crossed, and my agency was completely ignored as this person just took from me and I needed to just yield to him.
And so I look back on that as the first time I can pinpoint this misbelief taking root…that I am not autonomous, like those with authority are, particularly the men in my life. And plus, I still had to sit with this man every Sunday at church, right?
Joining a church where she was explicitly taught complementarianism, which paralleled her experiences of abuse in her childhood. (6:00)
I see how the abuse of my childhood and adolescents groomed me to be this perfect candidate for believing that my body was not my own because I already didn't think I could exercise my autonomy.
We were told if a husband is sacrificially loving their wife in this manner as Christ loves his bride, then it isn't hard to submit to that type of love. And I bought it. I was all in on that. And I say that the sexual abuse of my childhood really groomed me for this complementarian teaching because of men like the man I was supposed to call my grandfather [who abused her].
They had been trusted authority figures. I was taught to respect them, submit to them. And so on the surface, people could look at the men and the boys who are doing things to me and think that they are a source of protection, but under the surface, I knew they are a source of harm.
…But I clung to it because it seemed like a way to keep myself safe.
Nicki’s experiences of spiritual abuse at this church, after a meeting with the pastor to express her concerns to him about how women in the church were feeling (17:00)
He reacted very defensively. He made accusations against me of trying to label him a sexist, which I was not doing. That wasn't even on my radar at that time. I was hoping we could talk, we could figure out a way forward that's gonna allow the women in the church to feel valued.
And it hit me that our church wasn't rooted in mutuality, but rather in this hierarchy that defaulted to his preferences, and his preferences took precedence. So, this pastor is preaching that we're supposed to count others more significant, and we're supposed to look to the interests of others. It looked as if he was somehow absolved from that. And further, he made every decision that was of any consequence at the church.
Other harmful dynamics at the church (24:00):
Stephen [her husband] and I were punished in a lot of ways for making the decision that prioritized our family and the health of our family. [Questioning why they should submit to] church leaders who, whether intentionally or not, pushed members to the brink of exhaustion and still feared about losing community if you step outta line.
What Nicki would like to tell all survivors of spiritual abuse (36:00):
If you've been spiritually abused by a pastor or church, I want to remind you that you didn't do anything wrong and you didn't deserve that abuse. My invitation to you is to surround yourself with people who are committed to your flourishing, and to get the help you need to remove yourself from that situation.
And I also invite you to tell your story. There is this power in vocalizing what you experienced with people who have earned your trust and who you can be authentic with about your experience. Because I'll say, when I went to therapy and I told my therapist what happened, she's this outside person, but having her say, ‘oh wow:’ it was so validating.
Thank you, Nicki, for joining me for this interview! You can find Nicki on Instagram, Twitter, and on her website.
If you enjoyed this interview, would you press the “heart” button? And better yet, if it sparked some thoughts in you or you want to share about your own experiences of spiritual abuse, please leave a comment! I love to interact with readers. Find me on Instagram and we can engage on there too!
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To read an automated transcript of today’s conversation, you can follow this link. I’ll include some highlights of our conversation below along with some time stamps to help you listen along if you desire!
This week we are talking with writer Liz Charlotte Grant, about shifting faith therapy, the process of memoir writing, and the tender topic of navigating family boundaries, including when that extends to ending contact with family members.
Our guest, Liz, is an award-winning non-fiction writer. Last year, her newsletter, the Empathy List, was nominated for a Webby Award, making it one of the top five newsletters on the internet. She's been in the Huffington Post, the Christian century, Christianity Today, US Catholic, and many more places. Her first book will arrive from Eerdman's Press in 2024.
I originally met Liz at a Writing Fair Life conference in Colorado in 2022. She’s one of those friendly, gregarious people who brings people together (something introverts like myself very much need at a writing conference full of strangers!). She asked a question there about her memoir she wanted to have published. The problem was she didn't think that she would be able to have the people within the memoir consent to being in it, and she ended up pulling the contract.
For *reasons,* I was super intrigued by this little revelation about her because I have experienced some the similar things in the process of writing memoir and people who may or may not like what you have to say. We chatted it up at the conference, and I am so pleased to bring you an interview today where we talk about memoir writing, complex trauma, therapy, and challenging family relationships. Hope you enjoy!
2:00: Liz’s classic All-Star evangelical child resume
4:00: What started her journey towards deconstruction / unmasking religious trauma: it wasn’t church structures… it was the incongruence she felt in her family that said they believed in Jesus and God who was one way, but she didn’t experience that from them.
6:00: How dysfunctional family relationships set her up for codependency and unhealthy friendships / relationships down the line. Liz went through a lot of therapy to recover from these things!
12:00: The process of writing her memoir, which included a chronic illness involving her retina and overall vision. How she realized that she needed a story in her memoir beyond reporting what had happened, and what that actual story and throughline turned out to be (hint: it has to do with those troubled family relationships)
20:00: On needing to set boundaries with her parents:
And you know, with complex childhood experiences, often part of the trauma there is the fact that everything was about the parent, you know?…Setting that boundary with my parents. It was like they were over my shoulder reading everything I was writing. So I'd be like typing and my mom would be saying things on the right and my dad would be saying things on the left, and it was so confusing, right? I couldn't even hear my own self. But then after I had set this boundary with them, all of a sudden I was able to separate.
21:00: The process of trying to protect herself and family in the process of publishing memoir, and why she ultimately didn’t go through with the book contract.
26:00: Why Liz ultimately decided to cut off contact with her parents (for right now):
Like, wait, if I can do better as a parent, I want to do better as a parent. Why didn't my parents do better for me?… I started to have conversations with my parents about some of the pain that I'd experienced…
[Mom] and I had a lot of very hard conversations and the last conversation we had was in my kitchen and she was yelling at me and telling me that I was a bad Christian, and I had no right to be doing any writing or speaking about anything faith related because I wasn't in contact with my father.
37:00: On the internal wrestling about going no contact
My therapist did ask me, what do you want from them? Like, what would reaching out to them give you. And I was like, well, really nothing. Like it would just make me not feel guilty. And she was like, huh.
I think it felt like I couldn't be a Christian, a good Christian, and be out of touch with my parents. But as you know, I made the decision because it felt like I couldn't make any other decision. I was like, that was the only choice left. My parents weren't willing to work through things with me.
I wasn't able to work through things with them in the way I wanted. And we needed the pause. I hope it's not a forever boundary, but for now it is. Interacting with them is a part-time job for me and I don't have time for it. I need the space, the relational space, space for my children and for other relationships. Like I don't want all of my energy to go toward these family relationships and working through past issues. I want to have emotional space for other things.
40:00: Words of wisdom or advice Liz has to offer us?
I think these decisions are so tender. You know, when we grow up with complex childhood trauma, our instinct is that our needs don't matter. And so that is the fundamental thing we are taught, that you are less important. Your experience of your family and yourself is less important than theirs of you. I think it was very freeing to say, that's not true. My singular life is only mine. And so I have to own the things in myself. And you know, for me it wasn't about happiness. It was actually about purpose.
I felt that I couldn't do the other things well that I needed to do, that were right in front of me. And so it was a sense of embrace of my own limitations too. I can't actually mother my parents while I'm mothering my children. I can't actually have weekly phone calls with them and try to keep up with writers across the country that I'm trying to be friends with.
You know, I can't write this work I need to be writing if they're on my shoulder, right? And so a lot of that was very clear to me. Like there is a limitation actually on me and my energy and time, and it's okay to acknowledge that. So I think some of those things were just, you know, that I just started to notice myself and see that I was a person worth caring for and that it was okay to say there were things I couldn't do.
You can find Liz Charlotte Grant on her Substack newsletter, The Empathy List, which promotes a more empathetic and curious Christianity from a progressive Christian lens (her article from yesterday is sooo good!). Find her on Instagram here. And her book coming out in 2024 is about re-approaching scriptures after leaving inerrancy, writing in a genre mixing in sciences, fine art, Jewish myths, and much more!
If you liked this interview, would you press the “heart” button and/or leave a comment? I’d love to hear how this impacted you. And if you have questions or further topics to explore around the issues of family boundaries and family of origin relationships, pleeeease comment (or write me at christinegreenwald.substack.com): I would love to tailor some posts to tackle some of the issues you all want to hear about!
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christinegreenwald.substack.com -
You can listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts if you prefer (more platforms to come, as well!)
I’m delighted to bring you my interview with Marla Taviano! Marla is writer of numerous books, most recently her two books of poetry entitled "unbelieve" and "jaded," with the third in the trilogy to be released later this year. She’s a prolific reader as well as writer, and is the person behind the popular account on Instagram @whitegirllearning (where she posts every single day about a book by a person of color). She was the kind of committed Christian that she rivaled the Apostle Paul’s resume (as she writes about in a poem). She became a missionary of sorts in Cambodia where she skipped all the Trump years in the U.S., got divorced by her husband and discovering he was cheating on her, and oh yeah, was simultaneously going through a MASSIVE faith shift. We talk about faith deconstruction, reading, learning to be anti racist, navigating family relationships after a faith shift, and more!
Podcast highlights:
The “two Marla Tavianos” and Marla’s wild, wandering faith journey. What began to wake her up to racism, white supremacy, and how this ties in with religion. (2:00)
White Girl Learning Account on Instagram: what inspired her to start it back in 2017? (14:50)
“I realized about 99% of my books were by white people… I decided to [do a bookstagram] where I featured exclusively books that were not by white people!
Elements contributing to her faith deconstruction. Questioning the methods people used to count “conversions to Christ”… yes, if you give a hungry person a chicken, I’m sure they’ll say the right prayer! (19:00)
On reading the Bible literally:
I was learning another language and I was beginning to see how verses in the Bible didn’t match up [in the other language]!
You can’t ever please everyone in these faith shift journeys and advocating for antiracism:
Some people have been very offended by me, and some people think I’m too kind and gentle.
The things that make it all unravel… (27:00)
“We are not being honest about this stuff. I have recently been pushing on people who praise God for everything good and never blame God for anything bad.”
“One thing I’ve noticed, is why you can hate other people…it’s because you hate yourself. ‘I’m a wretched worm,’ and on and on, but it’s kind of a prideful thing. ‘Because I know all these things…’”
Navigating family and friend relationships post faith shift (31:00)
“We made the decision to live in South Carolina, in part because everything in Ohio felt like Marla Version 1.0… And also the weather is more comparable to Cambodia than Ohio!”
“We recently had a wonderful visit with my parents…because we talked about nothing [controversial]!”
On whether to stay in church:
“I don’t think it’s possible to change the church when everyone’s very very invested in how things are… they’re not going to listen to one person in the church.
The freedom after faith shifts:
People told me right after my husband left that ‘you’ll be so much better off without him.’ I could see what they were saying, but it discounted the pain I was in.
“The more I discover about myself, the more I discover about God, whoever God is.”
Lastly, I asked Marla for some book recommendations, especially being the bibliophile she is. She had trouble narrowing it down but chose these 3 that she’s read in the last 6 months and can’t stop thinking about:
The Light of the World (Elizabeth Alexander)
A House of My Own (Sandra Cisneros)
This Here Flesh (Cole Arthur Riley)
You can find Marla at all the usual places:
Her Substack, Writing Wholefarted: Marla Taviano
IG: https://www.instagram.com/whitegirllearning/
IG personal: https://www.instagram.com/marlataviano
Twitter: https://twitter.com/marlataviano
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