When I was 21 years old, a guy asked me a question. “Do you really believe God would want women to have to submit to men?”
I grew up in an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Church in the south. Both of my grandfathers were pastors in this strict denomination. Not only that, I was homeschooled.
My family and church practice something called patriarchy, the belief that men should be in power and control over women in the home, church, and in some cases society too. From the time I was a young child,
to obsess over my clothing (to make sure I wasn’t causing men to lust), and to prepare to become a wife and mother of as many babies as possible.
The idea was the MANY children would be shot out into the world like arrows from a quiver sinking into different sectors of society like the home, church, government, media, and schools to dominate the world with our oppressive religious perspective.
No kidding… my dad sold homemade arrows with children’s names engraved on it illustrating this point and I actually sat through a DVD lecture with other homeschool families during my teen years about “the 200 year plan”! It was a lecture mapping it all out, how we were gonna dominate the world with our patriarchal message through overpopulation. My role as a young woman was to set aside my leadership dreams, to get married, have babies and populate the planet.
So yeah, you could say I was raised in a cult.
Needless to say in this high control community I faced many types of abuse by multiple abusers including an abusive engagement. And, I had resigned myself to submit to this way of life. I even created a blog when I was 17 called “Stay-At-Home Daughter” teaching thousands of women about adherence to the patriarchy.
I didn’t miss the relationship but the PTSD from what I had experienced was setting in and I was having regular panic attacks, nightmares, and flashbacks to the abuse. To be honest I really didn’t know how I could keep on living. Anxiety medications and therapy helped some but I was still living in that toxic community and I was being pressured to keep quiet about what had really happened.
It was about a year after my abusive engagement had ended and I was just starting to pull out of the darkest depression of my life. When one day a girl who briefly visited my church invited me to come to the coffee shop where she worked. When I arrived she introduced me to a man who loved talking religion as much as I did. Our conversation started out easy but he quickly learned my beliefs on women and submission to the patriarchy. He disagreed and believed women should have equal opportunity and should be self-controlled, not controlled by men. My 21-year-old brain started spinning.
Despite my initial resistance we did eventually begin to have a discussion and to my surprise, he actually had some good points. What’s more, I didn’t have answers to all of the questions he asked me despite my strong background in patriarchal bible study.
I was frustrated with myself for not having thought of those questions before and for not having an answer for him. I went home and for days began to study.
But to my surprise as I dug into deep study the equality arguments WERE logically answering my questions better than what I had been taught by my community… they were even compatible with my faith. This scared the hell out of me! I did not want to consider that I could have been wrong about what I had always believed. But I couldn’t turn my eyes away from the truth. I knew this could change my life forever!
And it did. When I realized women were created equal and as an adult, I should be able to make my own choices, I started looking into the other things I had been taught and finding that so much of what I believed was a lie! I started studying and was finally able to identify many of the bad things that had been done to me as abuse, not just the engagement. My whole belief system taught to me by the cult fell apart.
Then things got REAL wild. I bought my own car, I started learning to swing dance, going to the movie theater, and listening to Taylor Swift! LOL That was my “rebellion” stage because all of those things had been banned.
But it wasn’t until I was 22 years old when I married my now husband Will Easter and that physically removed me from the cult. He’s the man of my dreams, he is pro-equality for women and he gave me a safe place to start my life over.
To my surprise, hundreds of people started reaching out to me telling me that they had also experienced abuse and that church leaders or family had responded badly and in some cases even tried to cover it up! They felt so alone and isolated but I knew they were NOT alone because so many were reaching out to me telling such similar stories.
This is when I knew I needed to reclaim the power that had been stolen from me. I needed to become the leader I always knew I was deep in my soul.
In 2016 The Courage Conference was born, an event to equip victim advocates and empower survivors of abuse through speakers who were trained victims advocates, mental health professionals, and survivors sharing their journeys of triumph.
Now I’m a trained abuse victim advocate, an author, a founder of an internationally attended abuse survivor conference The Courage Conference, CEO of the non-profit Courage 365, a television producer, an ordained reverend, an international speaker, an empowerment coach, spokesperson for an internationally reported-on protest, the For Such A Time As This Rally, and I serve as Vice President for the largest and oldest clergy sexual abuse victim advocacy organization, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.
I have a life wilder than my wildest dreams and I believe I was put here on this planet to help you achieve your freedom dreams too!
