[Intro] Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host, Corinne Powell, and I'm the owner of Change Radically. In this space, we'll talk all things inner wellness, and parenting will certainly come up too, because I'm a mom to four kids, so parenting is a huge part of my life.

This space is designed for safety. Your inner child is welcome. Your past self is invited to listen as well, and no matter what type of day you're having, I want you to know I'm glad to be with you.

I live out of vulnerability and transparency, so come and be, be yourself, be messy, invite a friend, and please stay a while, keep coming back, I want you around. Now let's jump into today's episode. 

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Hello, friends. I am so happy to be here with you today, and thank you for choosing to spend time with me. Whether you're here because Empowered to Thrive is a podcast that you listen to, or you're here because healing from religious trauma is something that's very relevant to you, I'm glad to be with you, and I welcome all of you. So we are going to embark a little bit on my own story, if you're not familiar with it, and if you are familiar, you've been here along the way as I've shared parts of it, then you're going to get to hear an update, because it's been about a year since I've last talked on my deconstruction, and intuitively, it felt time for that subject again.

So I invite you to grab a warm drink, or a cold drink, whatever makes you happy, and join me. My go-to is always a delicious black Americano, so I sit across from you with that, and I share from my heart, and if you would like to respond, and you have things that you want to share, please always feel welcome to send an email, corinne@changeradically.com is the way you can reach me, and you can always set up a private session as well, and be able to share on any subject that you wish. 

And so with this topic in mind, religion is controversial, it's a sensitive subject, for those of you previously in a church, and very hurt by it, this can be a pain point. I'm aware of all that as we jump into the conversation. I also want to lay it out there that I'm not here to persuade anyone to think differently, to do differently, to be differently. 

That is a personal decision. I will encourage always us to reflect, to consider, and to question, but that's a part of the healing journey. And to just give you a little bit of backstory, I grew up in an evangelical church. I went to church regularly with my family.

I was really raised just going to church. I was in church all of my life, and it hasn't been until adulthood that I started to actually consider, am I happy? Do I like this practice I have? What's the reason I go about it this way? And initially, the community that I grew up with did not encourage questioning. And I would say they encouraged blindly following, except they probably wouldn't say that that was the case, because they wouldn't have said to blindly follow anyone.

But the leader within the church, we were actually encouraged to blindly follow. And when I consider Jesus, and no matter what you think of Jesus, when I consider the stories that are about Jesus, I hear of someone who gave people freedom and gave them choice. And even as he expressed truth, there was always the opportunity for someone to accept it or deny it.

And if I'm going to model my life after Jesus, which is what I would have been encouraged to do in the church community I was a part of, it would even be the way I would say I would live my life now. Then I would always go back to that place of saying someone else's lifestyle is not for me to dictate. And they don't deserve my judgment.

I wasn't given a place to judge other people. I understand we'll draw our conclusions about people like we pass judgment without even meaning to a lot of times, like the nature of the word. I'm talking about more so this idea that I suggest I know about someone's heart because I see something externally. Sometimes what we see externally reveals the heart. And sometimes people can fake it. People can be inauthentic. 

That's what we're talking all about on the healing journey is becoming our authentic selves, learning to live authentically. Many people are not living authentically. They may not even know who they authentically are and their lifestyle does not align with who they authentically are. So it's not my place. It's not your place to judge other people and to say this is right and this is wrong. But we do that a lot in religion. We do that in church. 

So not to get too sidetracked because I can. The backstory that I wanted to share with you is just that the group of people that were my friends, the community I had, were strict rule followers.

They were living their life focused on their afterlife and not concerned about enjoying their present life because they simply had a goal of that afterlife. Being in heaven. Having no pain. Crying no tears. This was the focal point. This was the emphasis. Endure the hardness now. Suffer as much as you need on this earth right now because it'll all be worth it one day in the afterlife. And I sit here saying I want to enjoy my present life and the afterlife.

And I'm not afraid of discomfort. I'm not afraid of struggles. I actually believe that the parts of life that we label as negative is sometimes to our benefit.

And so I choose to embrace it all. But what I have had to come out of and heal from are a few things. I'm going to share those with you so that you get an idea of what do I even mean.

What I mean by healing from religious trauma is this idea that there are experiences we have within religious settings that can harm us. And in the church community I was a part of, men and women had very different roles. Women were not allowed to do all of the things men were allowed to do.

They were looked at as subservient. They were not equal. And it can be very detrimental to certain people especially to be treated that way.

And the other facet of how I personally needed to heal is, and I'm not naming all the ways all right? I'm probably never going to be able to name all the ways when I'm talking about healing from a certain type of trauma.

But I'm a highly intuitive person and my sixth sense is very strong. But it was suppressed and denied because a group of people I was around didn't have language for it. They didn't experience it or they were actually teaching that it was basically evil and it caused a tension within me that I didn't even know was there. 

Because all along this authentic part of me was not able to be expressed and to grow. And so until I became an adult, I wasn't giving it place to grow.

It was innately in me. But sometimes we need a space to be able to blossom. There's movies produced that talk about these spiritual things because a lot of people relate to them.

But unfortunately, sometimes even in these spiritual settings, the church communities, we're not talking about what's really going on. I would interact with angelic presences. At least that's what I would call them because that was the term that I was familiar with.

And I would just describe it as a comforting presence, a presence that was full of goodness and light. I still experience that. Things that we don't all see with the natural eye, some of us sense. And some of us feel it. And we know it's there. But then there are those who say, but if I can't see it with my natural eye, I won't believe it.

And I would say to that person, that's okay. But for you to then deny my experience is where you've gone wrong. And so within a church setting, people of faith come together and many sing songs as a form of their worship, a form of giving honor and expressing their devotion and their love and their celebration to this divine deity.

And for some people, that looks celebratory and loud. And for others, it's more reverent and ornate. And we all worship in our own way. But are we being given space and allowance in church settings to be able to worship in our own way? And I ask that question because I've been a part of different church communities where who I authentically am and how I express myself in that setting of worship is not allowed. There's not space and permission given for it. 

I've gotten called out and reprimanded. I've been told, you can't continue to do that here. And sometimes it looks like me jumping or shouting excitedly or waving a silk or a flag, which is basically a silk with attached to a stick. It's and it's full of colors.

And it's what some people would describe as a silent shout, a visual shout. And it's a way for the energy in my body to be discharged because we are fully connected. You've heard me talk about the ways that we need to discharge the emotions. This is another way of discharging. Does everyone do it that way? Absolutely not. But there's some of us who do.

There's some of us who feel it intensely, who feel that divine presence closely. And it demands a response, just like if you were excited at an event or you were at a concert. You actually act in a way that reflects how you're feeling internally.

For some people in the church setting, they'd say it's a distraction. It's unnecessary. It's inappropriate how you act, Corinne. But the thing is, I've come to understand that if I don't show up authentically as myself, I not only do myself a disservice, but the people around me don't get to experience what they otherwise could. 

We all have something to contribute. We're all unique and special people who bring something beautiful to the spaces, the environments that we go in. And if we don't show up and be ourselves, what is supposed to be experienced doesn't fully get to be experienced. And I'm not saying that to create pressure. I'm saying that as an invitation.

How many times are children naturally just being children and they're asked to be different? They're asked to change or to stop or to be quiet or calm down. We don't allow children to be who they innately should be able to be. And I can even hear it, right? The argument like, oh, but I'm not saying that there's not space for guidelines.

That there's never a time where expression should be different here than there. Or that even though this is how you innately authentically are, maybe in this moment you should shift the way you express it. I understand that that's the case sometimes. 

I'm really talking about across the board. When it's not that the child is never asked to settle down or quiet down, but when they're actually never allowed to be boisterous and loud. When they're never allowed to run around without the care in the world. We do a great disservice to a child to not let them be a child. We do harm them in that case. And parts of their authentic self are being suppressed.

Same thing with the way we look at children. They're individuals. So to treat everyone the same wouldn't be appropriate. But there are sometimes in the church community that we ask everyone to show up and act the same way. When naturally everyone wouldn't. Naturally everyone wouldn't express themselves the same way.

Again, I bring this up for our reflection, for our consideration. So I've had to learn. I've had to learn how to continue to pursue my authentic self. To consider who am I? What lights me up? Why does it light me up? And to take it a step further and to actually choose my authentic self even when it's uncomfortable. When people are saying they're triggered by the way I express myself. They don't understand it.

I'm deliberate about why I do what I do in a worship setting. I'm intentional. And I'm not saying I haven't pivoted because I have.

I'm always willing to do something in a little bit of a different way. But when my full expression is being asked to change, then I've had to learn that, you know what? It's actually time for me to step out of this setting and to find one that offers space for who I authentically am. Because I didn't always believe there was a place for my authentic self.

But now I know there is. There's a place for me and there's a place for you. There's a place for the authentic parts of you. So continue to pursue that. And let's circle back and have more of this type of conversation. There's a lot more that could be said. But this is all for today. And I hope that you will reach out. I hope that you will reflect and consider.

And if there was one message I could leave you with, it would be to choose freedom. I don't know what that's going to mean for you. But be free.

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[Ending] Here we are. We've come to the end of another episode. Sit back and reflect on what you heard. What's the one thing that resonates with you that you can take away and do something with? Let's not just listen. Let's listen and take action. 

Now action may look very different for us, but it's doing something with what we hear. I hope that you'll share today's episode with a friend that you think would also enjoy it and please come back next week.

I hope that you have a fabulous week. And that you remember when you pillow your head at night, when you're going through your days, that who you are is good. And I'm glad that you're alive.