Danielle, you just blew my mind. Sitting on my couch, reading this on my phone, BOOM, a revelation. After aaaalll these years of deconstructing, I still don't think I'd put the pieces together that my middle kid's anxiety (she's 20 now and it started when she was 9 maybe?) was BECAUSE of my religious beliefs. I think I'd always thought she was just "a kid with anxiety" and I tried to make it all better with my prayers and all of that, and I was most likely trying to fix the problem WITH THE PROBLEM. Oh my god.
I have so many Jesus Storybook Bible stories too (that I've probably mostly pushed down deep in my mind). That same kid saw the Abraham/Isaac page one night before bed and said, "Oh, I don't like that one! Would you ever do that, Mom?" And I said, "If God told me to." NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. And she said, "Well, do it on Livi or Nina." (her sisters) OH MY GOD.
She actually doesn't struggle with anxiety much at all anymore and we talk every once in a while about how she managed to deal with it on her own. She developed routines, started working out, a bunch of stuff. And now I'm putting MORE pieces together. I deconstructed and let go of harmful beliefs and stopped fixing things with prayer, and that gave her room to heal. (I realize she—and all of us—still have a lot of healing to do, but man)
Also thinking about aaaallll the ministries I've been involved in over the years helping vulnerable kids (like the ones trafficked in Cambodia) and my own kids were vulnerable and being harmed, and sooooo many other kids are STILL being harmed.
So much to think about and if I didn't have to work today, I'd just sit here and reread this and all the comments and keep talking to you. Maybe this is for the best—ha!
Last thing—I am soooooo sorry about those prophecies over you. What in the actual hell??
love you friend, and you modeling your relationship with your child now is so healing for me!!!! I LOVE that story of them and the Abraham/Isaac story. One of the truly worst stories I tried my whole life to reconcile!!!!
I'm just going to respond that I grew up relatively unchurched and my first deep dive into the Abraham and Isaac story was in a highschool "bible as literature" class. The cool boy in my highschool, a Jewish hippie who grew up on a back-to-the-land sheep farm, (and on whom I had a hopeless crush) told our teacher (a black-church Baptist) that HIS first exposure had been from Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 revisited:"
So I found my way to Christian faith as an adult -- and the mainline, ultraliberal, Anne Lamott church was my refuge from a judgmental and traumatizing childhood environment where religion wasn't the tool, but where the message was similar - your essential nature is bad and you will not receive love unless you are with the program. As I was becoming a Christian as a young adult, I was doing so in an intellectual and progressive milieu in which Dylan was the primary songwriter in the hymnal. His command of folk story, of the Bible, of feeling -- it's unmatched. he even went through a (brief) period of Christian faith in the 1980s -- for sure not his best musical epoch - but the man's traveled through, and he 100% deserved that Nobel Prize in literature. 2 thumbs up for Dylan for "recovery from fundamentalist approaches to religion."
Thank you so so much, friend. I feel tons of awe and gratitude today over how much my kids and I have been through together and how amazing they are. Love you too.
I was sooo determined as a kid that if I were ever placed in an Abraham/Isaac situation (WTH?!) I would be MUCH more pleasing to god than Isaac because I would joyfully submit. I can laugh at my poor little self now, but that story did so much harm, didn't it?? Like Danielle said, it's so encouraging to see a mom like you doing the work to heal - that can't be easy.
I remember having SO much cognitive dissonance over the Abraham and Isaac story as a kid. Like are you telling me that God might tell my parents to kill me and that would be okay?? It just didn't add up, but there was no space in my world for it to not add up.
And sometimes our job is to create space for things to not add up and for that to be totally OK. I think this is one of the biggest ways in which I envy the neurotypical. Which in general I do not. I like things to ADD. UP. (I actually add things up, I used to not be able to function around digital clocks because I have to add up the digits...). My experience with neurotypical people is that they do not have this same super need for things to MAKE. SENSE. To BE. RIGHT. They can watch football without worrying about whether they are complicit in injuring players. They don't see patterns EVERYWHERE and ask themselves where they fit in those patterns.
I have to make space for myself to say "there's a pattern here. But I am not seeing all of it, because I have a limited perspective. There is space in my world for me NOT to be omniscient."
I relate to this so much. I forget that not everyone sees connections in everything everywhere all the time and not everyone is always trying to make everything make sense.
I really appreciate how you framed this (re: your kiddo anxious *because* of religious beliefs, not saved from them by praying, etc) because I’ve been so debating on whether I should be telling my kids “just pray when you feel sad/mad/anxious. It’ll be all better.” That’s what I was told as a kid and it’s true I don’t think it actually helped. Just prayed my heart out and felt nothing really. I think I’ll focus on other calming and regulation techniques.
This has been so tough for me personally when I have anxiety and want to calm/regulate. I sometimes just say, "please, mama god" even if I don't know what I believe about God.
Hugs to you. I was that anxious kid and my mom would never be able to admit that she had anything to do with my anxiety - so your kiddos are lucky to have you ❤️❤️
Thank you so much, Lindsey. That really means a lot to me. (and I talked to two of my kids this morning a little bit about it and it was sooooo encouraging. they were quick NOT to blame me, but I want to keep working/talking it out)
You’re making me cry on my lunch break at work Danielle.
I can’t believe those prophecies over you, and yet I can.
Having kids made me doubt original sin. People saying toddler tantrums are evidence of sinfulness? Or a baby crying is manipulative? No. I think I knew it was the beginning of the end, and I was so scared to pick up and examine that particular cornerstone. Side note - and what did that mean about what I thought about myself? The constant shame and passive suicidal ideation?
Then a colouring sheet of Abraham holding a knife over Isaac, with some verse about obedience written underneath was sent home with my four year old’s scribbles all over. It made me realise we would be leaving church just as much for them as for us.
A relative asked recently ‘but what about the children?!’ trying to convince us back to church. Like they would lose out so much by not being raised in church. I couldn’t respond in the moment, but I knew that I was a child in that environment and it deeply hurt me (to put it briefly). So why would I do that to my children?
Relatable! I could never once imagine my child as a “little sinner” once she was in my arms - it was just impossible. That theology just crumbled like dust.
I relate to so much of this on such a deep level. I was the “perfect” one too. I started deconstructing years before I had my child, but parenting accelerated it quickly. How could I tell my tiny, trusting child the story of the flood--of genocide--and make it sound shiny and happy? How could all of the behaviors that made perfect sense from a child development standpoint be evidence that he was inherently flawed in some way? Why would I do anything to keep him safe but God would be ok sending him to hell if he didn’t believe the right things?
And now, as I parent my neurodivergent child, I think back on my childhood, and the sibling who was the “strong-willed” one, and had many similarities to my ADHD-diagnosed kid, and so much clicks into place. I feel for my parents, who were doing all the things they’d been told they must do to keep us out of hell, even as I’m angry that they couldn’t just look at the children in front of them and see and love us for who we were, rather than little sinners in need of fixing.
I don’t know if I’ve fully deconverted. I still love the idea of Jesus, and I miss the rhythms and comfort and friendship I found in church for so many years. But I don’t know if I’ll ever go back.
I relate to a lot of this too. I am the "bad" one. Ugly, unchosen, unfixable, and unlovable. For reasons I can understand but which had nothing to do with me. Ramona's question, "didn't God love Goliath too?" breaks my mind open in the best possible way.
Cuddled up in my bed reading and crying. I’m so so sorry that was spoken over you, at such a tender age. I didn’t experience that, but did experience a friend having a seizure at a slumber party, and the solution (by the adults) was to call our youth pastors wife to pray for her over the phone. I don’t even know how I slept that night. I also carried so much anxiety about martyrs because of the fucking columbine stories. I just knew someone was going to hold me at gunpoint and ask me to denounce my faith. What in the actual fuck. As if gun violence in schools isn’t traumatizing enough, evangelicals had to take it to another sick fucking level.
The only kids Bibles I let in my house were the Jesus storybook & Desmond tutu kids Bible - and I’ll never forget the Easter that I read the Jesus storybook version and my 6? 7? year old asked “.....so God ...had to kill Jesus?” She was so genuinely confused and concerned. I threw the book in the garbage and never looked back. Now my kid would call herself a witch (she says I’m a Christian witch bc I still love Jesus. Lol), and my younger 2 are just happy living life. I loved what someone said above. No coercion. Ever.
It was very interesting to read about your siblings unique responses and in my case, I was definitely the *perfect child* and my brother was the *strong willed* and now lives as far away as possible. He didn’t even call for Christmas and my mom made a quiet comment about how he’s “rejected” us and my grandma cried at Xmas dinner - I feel like I’m doing a terrible job of navigating these dynamics. How to support him, while also continuing to live with my emotionally immature family. Ugh. It’s just a lot. Sorry this is so long. I appreciate your words. Your story. Your vulnerability. You’re definitely not alone. (And I will probably read parts of it and these comments to my therapist next week! Lol)
There's also a piece of the "perfect child" where we always do "a terrible job" of whatever job we have in the family. Because the jobs we have are impossible. You are not doing a terrible job of navigating these dynamics. They are impossible.
I so appreciate you sharing all this. The prophecies really made me ache. I didn’t have anything quite that intense happen to me, but I realized recently that I have never felt truly safe my entire life. The way I internalized stories about God was that if he is in control of everything, then that means he makes the bad things happen and there is nothing any of us can do about it. Last week I was having an anxiety attack and imagining all these horrible things happening to my spouse. After calming enough to analyze, I realized I still have a deep down fear that God will kill my spouse because I love him too much. Wtf??
But that is the god of the OT. Petty if he isn’t the favorite.
I’m glad to be realizing these things but damn if it isn’t hard.
I’m so so so grateful for you taking this lead and sharing. All your stories and these comments make me feel like I’m not crazy after all. ♥️
I am so grateful you had the foresight to see that in your son. That's exactly what happened to me in college: I had an anxiety disorder and was told wonderful things about God. No judging or end times fear here, just a loving Father who, yes, did punish his children as all good parents do, but if you just pray and turn back to him, like the prodigal story, he will run to you and you won't have any fear or depression anymore, or at least, if that doesn't work, you will experience God's supernatural comfort and peace. And if it comes back, you know what to do, just pray and turn back to God from your prodigal ways. And then when that didn't work, maybe I was in a "desert season" of needing to stay faithful as a Jobian test. Maybe "the enemy" was attacking. But never doubt God's presence as a vending machine of anti-anxiety at a prayer's notice!
But, it's just as you said it would be for your son. I didn't experience comfort; I got panic attacks and my body got sick and the doctors wouldn't/couldn't help. I needed my trauma acknowledged as real, I needed meds, and I needed therapy. Years and years and years of it. Still.
YUP. I am actually working on a little essay about this exact experience I had in my 20s. It is so hard because we truly aren't allowed to talk about it/process it without being barraged by spiritual platitudes/being told to "try harder" or that we must have some sin in our hearts!!!!
WHEW yes. I started doing all the "why don't you just"s just so I could check off the list to say they didn't work. haha Essential oils, daily Bible verses, multiple church activities a week, weighted blanket, yoga, water, sunshine, exercise... the whole list. Some of it worked and some didn't, but the things that made it WORSE were the spiritual ones, whether thinking of it as a "spiritual attack" because I was being such a good girl or thinking of it as divine corrective from straying or charismatic growing pains because I was about to "unlock new levels of the spiritual realm and experience breakthrough" or whatever. At least the essential oils smelled good and the yoga helped me breathe more intentionally and the sunshine improved my mood, though none of them "fixed" my anxiety itself, but they didn't damage me the way the spiritual crap did.
I have had an absolute laundry list of mental health issues; primarily unipolar depression but also some anxiety; all of which likely have their source in autism (who knew) and C-PTSD. None of which was ever helped by a steadfast (and pretty healthy) faith and prayer life. Fortunately for me no therapist or psychiatrist I ever had suggested that I should just pray more (or less). Atheist, agnostic, and Jewish psychiatrists listened very patiently to me as I explained that I really didn't understand why, if I believed (as I do) that God loves me unconditionally through the free gift of grace, why I also experienced intrusive thoughts of suicide for years on end. So we unpacked, and unpacked, and unpacked, and medicated, and even briefly went to a hospital when I couldn't stay safe.
I did (and do) find some comfort in externalizing these thoughts as "the adversary" -- something that felt almost external to me, that was actively seeking to do me harm, that God did not want for me, that I could fight against. (also it makes it easier to read all those bloodthirsty sections of the psalms...personify those intrusive harmful thoughts as the adversary who's destroying my mental health! Dash its brains against a rock!). and this is what I think about when I pray "deliver us from evil" -- I do not know why, but this is the manifestation of evil that I experience, that internal voice that says I don't deserve to be here on this beautiful earth. Wherever that thought comes from -- it's definitely not good, so yes, in addition to my daily bread, I'll happily pray to be delivered from that.
But mainly: therapy. medication. validation. Guided by a mental health professional, NOT a spiritual guide.
I was less isolated, but just as undiagnosed autistic and just as all-in on Christianity, so my story is very, very similar. I started deconstructing (I guess? I didn’t call it that but the term fits) in college when I realized I was gay. You’d think having a decade+ head start before raising children would help with parenting them away from evangelicalism but I am here to tell you: it did not. I still have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to fielding questions about religion, or how to raise my kids in a community, or figuring out what I believe and how to communicate it to my kids. (They’re 4 and in utero, respectively, so the nuances of “I’m not sure what I believe and need a lot of space from religion right now” do not currently translate well.)
"Through parenting, I’ve realized that all kids fundamentally need to know that being loved, cared for, and accepted is not conditional upon them repeating the party line. I didn’t receive that." This, completely.
Though I'm not in the process of deconverting (probably some heavy deconstructing though), I feel the pain of growing up evangelical in the 80s and 90s. I try to remind myself that our parents did the best they could, but the lines you've drawn between the apocalyptic mindset married to the "we're the ones who have the answers" and the current political/economic/cultural things happening in the white evangelical church are so astute.
My internal work is inviting me to silence these days, but I'm glad your freedom involves telling your story because it's so helpful for so many people.
And, I just gotta say, one of the best things any human can do, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof, is allow other people the freedom of their own journeys. I love that offering that freedom to your children taught you to offer that freedom to yourself as well.
yes it's very important for me to honor other people's agency and autonomy as I am discovering my own! People can (and do) have knee-jerk defensive reactions when I share my story, but that doesn't mean I was coming for them or their individual spirituality :) People have said it before and I agree that a lot of the more prominent atheists are just as annoying/toxic as fundamentalist Christians. I'm happily agnostic, but I do want to take down James Dobson!
I’ve been following lots of people’s versions of this story (some form of deconstructing) and something about yours is speaking to me personally, in a way that I’m like are we friends in a different life...? But I think that’s how stalking starts. 🤔
I’m so proud of you for sharing this and also in awe, this takes so much bravery and I’m so sorry for the lifelong trauma this has caused. I’m also grateful to see your story continues, that is so hope-giving to me.
Our family has left church in the last 6 months, and I’m new to ALL of this, I don’t even have language for most of it. I mean I just found out about Substack two weeks ago.
I came from very rigid reformed/Calvinist circles (so fun thinking about how totally depraved I was as a child and what if I’m not of the elect?) I’m always thinking about what am I doing to my kids without church, what if they never know God, what about Deut. 6 - I’m failing!
But this has given such a different and helpful perspective, some peace to me actually. And even Part 1 of this post...like calling it indoctrination. I’ve been chewing on it all week. Grateful for your voice and it’s helping me to take the next step without being terrified. ❤️
"it was prophesied over me multiple times that I would die a martyr’s death at the hands of the antichrist before I was 16." This is potentially a very inappropriate response, but OMG when I read this I thought, "OF COURSE THEY DID" and laughed. Because if this weren't so terrible it would be funny in its ridiculousness.
Like who ARE these people that think this is an uplifting thing to preach over kids? My sister was prophesied over at age 11 that she had some kind of sexual demon (and she had already survived assault by then, so it was both ugly and abusive and weirdly prescient). Those same people were afraid of her listening to -Madonna-, but you're going to put that sexualized crap on her at that age?
And I just wonder: what playbook are all these yahoos reading from? I swear the lack of judgement is like people who are addicted to drugs. Which, perhaps religious indoctrination is just that.
So, I have to laugh, because at the same time that these wingnuts are traumatizing children they are ALSO so sure they are paragons of health, virtue and love. Which at least the drug addicts do not delude themselves about! The druggies know that the drugs are probably a bad idea! Or the mobsters! They also know that putting horses heads in people's beds is an -evil thing to do-. Mobsters have more judgement than the toxic religious people! This is, oddly enough, just what Jesus pointed out!
This is a lot of exclamation points. I am just so enraged on every child's behalf.
Ramona's comment about Goliath got me in the stomach. Yes, I can't handle childrens' bibles at all. I just don't know how you are supposed to talk to kids about faith without harming them in some way. Which is probably why my kids are now both atheists. :P
I came to faith on my own, mostly (my parents are practicing Christians now, but weren't at the time) and so I have always known it was, for the most part, my choice. In my early twenties, I came a hairs-breadth from de-converting, but had a spiritual encounter of God's love complete, unconditional acceptance at that moment that made me realize that if I was not -forced- to stay a Christian on pain of hell the idea still had meaning for me. But I think that's the only reason I could stay. Had it been something my parents put on me, it would have had to go, like so many other things. No coercion for me, or my kids, or anyone else. Ever. That has to be the baseline.
So I have to also say this: prophesying, out loud, that your child will die isn't OK. It's understandable (your parents probably really feared this) but it is NOT OK.
My secular parents, had a much more limited prophecy for me: "you'll never have any friends."
I’m so, so sorry those adults put that awful anxiety and dread on you.💔 that is heartbreaking and infuriating.
There is something freeing and terrifying about not parenting your own kids without the fear and guilt we grew up with. On Christmas Day, my 6yr old started a tearful conversation about death because he is ‘going to miss me so much’ and if there was one time I wished so badly for concrete answers to give him, it was then. It’s so hard. I told him that no one really knows what happens to our spirits, but our bodies become part of the earth in a different way, and that’s a good thing. Some people believe in heaven, but nobody knows what that’s like, if it exists at all. I told him I wasn’t going to lie to him. But at one point he kept bringing up heaven and asking repeatedly if he would see me there and I said yes. Now I feel terrible that I handed him an answer that is false comfort.
just real quick--the vast majority of human history has some kind of story about the afterlife/getting comfort from thinking/hoping that this life is not all there is, and I think it's really important to remember that. It's not giving false hope to kids when they aren't developmentally ready for frank discussions, it's doing them a kindness sometimes when we do a bit of wishful thinking or fall back on old comfort ideas! Obviously you need to do what you feel comfortable with, but depending on the kid it can give them WAY more anxiety to stare mortality in the face at 4 years old!
I agree with DLs response to you. You don’t have tell them anything that feels false or like lying, but you can give them comfort. We really *cant* know - whether there is or isn’t! When they get a little older I’d recommend the His Dark Materials trilogy if you like fantasy books - it has one of the most beautiful depictions of an “afterlife” imo.
Okay, now I really want to read these. I think they came out about 20 years ago, right? I had just started having kids and I vaguely remember people at church or a pastor saying they were bad, which means I would LOVE them now. Ha!
Yes! I was never allowed to read them or HP when I was a kid (still super salty about it). Churches wouldn’t allow them because the “god” figure in the book dies! 😂 “the first rule of fight club is never admit that our all-powerful being is the worst” lol. It’s a beautiful critique of fundamentalist religion and the ways that we use belief to hurt others. And it also poses super imaginative explanations for consciousness & the “soul”. Pullman is an atheist and explicitly wanted to critique religion, but I’ve also read people who consider his books liberation theology! They also just made the series on HBO and as someone who hates movie remakes, I actually think it was beautifully done. Not the same as the books, but still good. ☺️
I just bought the trilogy for $15. And I asked my kids (22, 20, 17) if they'd read them, and two of them had (I had already started deconstructing by the time they could read and I didn't censor any books). They both said they loved them. "Watch out," my 20yo said. "Christians think they're satanic." :)
this is SO funny to me because I had a knee-jerk reaction about Pullman as a writer/those books but it's just because that's how conservative Christians talked about them! I think both him and Rowling (who is also on my shit list, but for different reasons) went to Oxford and were rebelling against the HEAVY Tolkien/Lewis/western Christianity vibes in the English department. I think? Now I want to go research it more . . .
Not a book for children, but I enjoyed reading his book “the good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ.” Not for the faint of heart. And you can see why the conservative Christians would REALLY hate him --it’s a very provocative and profoundly atheist book.
Pullman is a very thoughtful writer about religion and faith -- a committed atheist who explores these ideas in beautiful detail. I think his books, as well as the HP books and the Narnia books are excellent for tween kids going through existential struggles.
but then again I take a very open stance about a lot of things and am disinclined to "cancel" people -- maybe just because I'm a hyperlexic with a habit to feed so I read a LOT from all over. I'm up for any book that takes on these existential challenges (What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? What happens when we die? How do I know my life matters?). These are both essential and existential questions and as you all point out, we all, in the end, have to discover these answers for ourselves.
Yes!!! Read them, and watch the HBO series. It’s absolutely gorgeous (lots of kids in danger though - that’s pretty triggering for me - take care). The Nicole Kidman movie version just doesn’t exist. 😂
There's no way to answer this question for a 6 year old that doesn't "feel terrible."
My child told me, when he was 5, "I don't want to exist."
"You don't want to exist?"
"No. Because I don't want to die. If I don't exist, then I don't have to die."
There was really not an answer to this one. "I'm sorry I brought you into existence? That was selfish of me?" I gave it some thought.
"You are right. We all die. It is part of existing. Maybe the hardest part. All I can tell you is that you are not alone in struggling with this. Every person has a really hard time when they realize that they are going to have to die. And every person finds a way to be OK with it. You are going to be OK. We are here with you."
I don't know if my child was OK with this answer. He is still uncomfortable, even fearful, around the whole idea of death.
So yeah. Existential terror. it's a thing. and at 6, your child may be asking to back into it slowly.
That’s a really good way of putting it. The next day my son handed me a ballpoint pen and asked me to draw a tombstone with “rip” on it because he’s gonna miss me. He didn’t seem distressed, just ardent, and I actually had to fight back a laugh because he was so matter of fact about it.
My youngest (17) has a LOT of existential angst (and always has). It's so tough to know what to say/how to help. I read somewhere a few months ago that "You're right. Life has no meaning. But we can still MAKE meaning."
It was parenting that pushed me to deconstruct too. Being handed Baby Wise and Shepherding a Child’s Heart and saying spanking anytime kids disobey is Gods heart for them and keeping them safe by training them to obey. The fear of deconstructing while parenting older kids is intense for sure, fear of them going to hell if I didn’t force Jesus on them - it pushed me to therapy and I’m so darn thankful that my first choice was exactly who I needed to see.
I’m pretty sure I’m not an undiagnosed autistic, but I did go all in. I couldn’t understand how others around me didn’t feel as strongly as I did. If everyone who didn’t hear about Jesus was going to hell, weren’t we responsible for preaching the gospel all the time and saving them? I mentioned this to a friend and she said I was taking things too seriously. Another friend didn’t get how I took all the pastors words as gospel - if he didn’t let his kids watch Disney movies because they showed rebellious kids, I wasn’t going to either.
Anyways, I’m ranking. Thank you for sharing - its really hard to deconstruct with kids. World shattering. ❤️
I remember a judgmental group of Christian moms at a birthday party clucking their tongues at another (struggling) mom and whispering that she needed Babywise. I tried to read that book with my first baby and it amplified my anxiety dramatically until my fantastic midwife told me to throw it away. So grateful for that very good advice.
I remember asking our naturopath/midwife whether our baby was in “metabolic chaos” and in her wry wisdom she said, “well she doesn’t look too chaotic to me”
I wish I’d done the same! It makes me so angry remembering how I was taught my baby’s sinful nature was making her cry for me to get me to come - “manipulating me” at an early age. 😡
Lol stupid baby wise. Sorry my 1 week old didn’t conform to a rigid eat-sleep-play every 2 hours schedule. 🙄 That book and all the “well-meaning advice” from church people made my first years of parenting hellish. Ugh.
My biggest memories are just of confusion. My peers and mentors I trusted were recommending something that felt so wrong, but I didn’t have the internal agency yet to trust my body’s gut reaction.
This idea of loving and reparenting or renurturing our child selves has resonated with me. I grew up as a little baby Enneagram 1 who just wanted to be good, and the evangelical hellscape we landed in when we moved to town (no joke, it was known as Bob Jones University West) provided so many harmful ways for me to try to be good.
Madeleine L’Engle wrote something that I’ve held closely to when I find myself feeling grief over the little me who tried so so so hard to do the right thing in a rotten system. “I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.”
I think about this quote and imagine myself as a nesting doll. If I can picture the work I’m doing as building the next bigger nesting doll as a safe place to cradle all my inner ages’ nesting dolls, I feel hopeful and able to better love the earlier me’s that I honestly sometimes fear and am often ashamed of.
What a lovely quote and the image of the nesting dolls is resonating with me. “To forget us a form of suicide”. Forgetting leads to apathy. To remember and empathize with yourself, to give grace to yourself, is to heal. Thank you for sharing.❤️
My neurodivergent and non-binary 10 year old had basically an existential crisis about the war in Ukraine last spring and about being different, and has declared ever since that they don’t believe in God (they believe in Thor apparently, but that’s beside the point, haha). It has been yet another opportunity to face the debris of my deconstructed faith, and to consider the remnants of fear for their soul, “just in case it’s all real”! But my parents’ angst about my kiddo’s loss of faith clarifies for me that I really do believe my kid gets to be an individual, think for themself, and that I absolutely don’t feel the need to insist that there is a God (honestly not sure how I would go about that). I am so grateful for my little trailblazers.
Also, just feeling so grateful to hear all of your stories. I find myself thinking about this stuff almost constantly and it means so much to process it with others, even others who are strangers.
My kid (who identifies variously as a pantheist and an agnostic) feels very passionate about Thor also. I think probably the Marvel/Chris Hemsworth representation of Thor is a relatable and aspirational god for many 10 year old boys.
I feel grateful that both my kids are actively engaged with these existential and faith questions and that they feel equipped to ask them critically with their heads and hearts. What do I believe? Why? Who am I? How do I know? Is that static, or will it change over time? I feel like it’s my job as a parent to provide a “holding space,” and resources, for them to explore those questions.
Danielle, you just blew my mind. Sitting on my couch, reading this on my phone, BOOM, a revelation. After aaaalll these years of deconstructing, I still don't think I'd put the pieces together that my middle kid's anxiety (she's 20 now and it started when she was 9 maybe?) was BECAUSE of my religious beliefs. I think I'd always thought she was just "a kid with anxiety" and I tried to make it all better with my prayers and all of that, and I was most likely trying to fix the problem WITH THE PROBLEM. Oh my god.
I have so many Jesus Storybook Bible stories too (that I've probably mostly pushed down deep in my mind). That same kid saw the Abraham/Isaac page one night before bed and said, "Oh, I don't like that one! Would you ever do that, Mom?" And I said, "If God told me to." NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. And she said, "Well, do it on Livi or Nina." (her sisters) OH MY GOD.
She actually doesn't struggle with anxiety much at all anymore and we talk every once in a while about how she managed to deal with it on her own. She developed routines, started working out, a bunch of stuff. And now I'm putting MORE pieces together. I deconstructed and let go of harmful beliefs and stopped fixing things with prayer, and that gave her room to heal. (I realize she—and all of us—still have a lot of healing to do, but man)
Also thinking about aaaallll the ministries I've been involved in over the years helping vulnerable kids (like the ones trafficked in Cambodia) and my own kids were vulnerable and being harmed, and sooooo many other kids are STILL being harmed.
So much to think about and if I didn't have to work today, I'd just sit here and reread this and all the comments and keep talking to you. Maybe this is for the best—ha!
Last thing—I am soooooo sorry about those prophecies over you. What in the actual hell??
love you friend, and you modeling your relationship with your child now is so healing for me!!!! I LOVE that story of them and the Abraham/Isaac story. One of the truly worst stories I tried my whole life to reconcile!!!!
I'm just going to respond that I grew up relatively unchurched and my first deep dive into the Abraham and Isaac story was in a highschool "bible as literature" class. The cool boy in my highschool, a Jewish hippie who grew up on a back-to-the-land sheep farm, (and on whom I had a hopeless crush) told our teacher (a black-church Baptist) that HIS first exposure had been from Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 revisited:"
"God said to Abraham, kill me a son
Abe said, 'man, you must be putting me on.'
God said 'know'
Abe said 'what'
God said 'you can do what you want, Abe, but
the next time you see me coming, you better run'
Abe said, 'where you want this killing done?'
God said, 'out on Highway 61'
and that was MY first exposure to Bob Dylan.
Okay, WOW. I need to go listen to that song.
So I found my way to Christian faith as an adult -- and the mainline, ultraliberal, Anne Lamott church was my refuge from a judgmental and traumatizing childhood environment where religion wasn't the tool, but where the message was similar - your essential nature is bad and you will not receive love unless you are with the program. As I was becoming a Christian as a young adult, I was doing so in an intellectual and progressive milieu in which Dylan was the primary songwriter in the hymnal. His command of folk story, of the Bible, of feeling -- it's unmatched. he even went through a (brief) period of Christian faith in the 1980s -- for sure not his best musical epoch - but the man's traveled through, and he 100% deserved that Nobel Prize in literature. 2 thumbs up for Dylan for "recovery from fundamentalist approaches to religion."
Thank you so so much, friend. I feel tons of awe and gratitude today over how much my kids and I have been through together and how amazing they are. Love you too.
I was sooo determined as a kid that if I were ever placed in an Abraham/Isaac situation (WTH?!) I would be MUCH more pleasing to god than Isaac because I would joyfully submit. I can laugh at my poor little self now, but that story did so much harm, didn't it?? Like Danielle said, it's so encouraging to see a mom like you doing the work to heal - that can't be easy.
“Joyfully submit” has been used in SO many ways to keep power in the hands of the powerful!
Sooooo much harm. Thank you, Heather.
I remember having SO much cognitive dissonance over the Abraham and Isaac story as a kid. Like are you telling me that God might tell my parents to kill me and that would be okay?? It just didn't add up, but there was no space in my world for it to not add up.
And sometimes our job is to create space for things to not add up and for that to be totally OK. I think this is one of the biggest ways in which I envy the neurotypical. Which in general I do not. I like things to ADD. UP. (I actually add things up, I used to not be able to function around digital clocks because I have to add up the digits...). My experience with neurotypical people is that they do not have this same super need for things to MAKE. SENSE. To BE. RIGHT. They can watch football without worrying about whether they are complicit in injuring players. They don't see patterns EVERYWHERE and ask themselves where they fit in those patterns.
I have to make space for myself to say "there's a pattern here. But I am not seeing all of it, because I have a limited perspective. There is space in my world for me NOT to be omniscient."
I relate to this so much. I forget that not everyone sees connections in everything everywhere all the time and not everyone is always trying to make everything make sense.
This is amazing. Thank you.
Right???
I really appreciate how you framed this (re: your kiddo anxious *because* of religious beliefs, not saved from them by praying, etc) because I’ve been so debating on whether I should be telling my kids “just pray when you feel sad/mad/anxious. It’ll be all better.” That’s what I was told as a kid and it’s true I don’t think it actually helped. Just prayed my heart out and felt nothing really. I think I’ll focus on other calming and regulation techniques.
This has been so tough for me personally when I have anxiety and want to calm/regulate. I sometimes just say, "please, mama god" even if I don't know what I believe about God.
Hugs to you. I was that anxious kid and my mom would never be able to admit that she had anything to do with my anxiety - so your kiddos are lucky to have you ❤️❤️
Thank you so much, Lindsey. That really means a lot to me. (and I talked to two of my kids this morning a little bit about it and it was sooooo encouraging. they were quick NOT to blame me, but I want to keep working/talking it out)
You’re making me cry on my lunch break at work Danielle.
I can’t believe those prophecies over you, and yet I can.
Having kids made me doubt original sin. People saying toddler tantrums are evidence of sinfulness? Or a baby crying is manipulative? No. I think I knew it was the beginning of the end, and I was so scared to pick up and examine that particular cornerstone. Side note - and what did that mean about what I thought about myself? The constant shame and passive suicidal ideation?
Then a colouring sheet of Abraham holding a knife over Isaac, with some verse about obedience written underneath was sent home with my four year old’s scribbles all over. It made me realise we would be leaving church just as much for them as for us.
A relative asked recently ‘but what about the children?!’ trying to convince us back to church. Like they would lose out so much by not being raised in church. I couldn’t respond in the moment, but I knew that I was a child in that environment and it deeply hurt me (to put it briefly). So why would I do that to my children?
Relatable! I could never once imagine my child as a “little sinner” once she was in my arms - it was just impossible. That theology just crumbled like dust.
Having children and being a parent has for sure made me rethink original sin.
I relate to so much of this on such a deep level. I was the “perfect” one too. I started deconstructing years before I had my child, but parenting accelerated it quickly. How could I tell my tiny, trusting child the story of the flood--of genocide--and make it sound shiny and happy? How could all of the behaviors that made perfect sense from a child development standpoint be evidence that he was inherently flawed in some way? Why would I do anything to keep him safe but God would be ok sending him to hell if he didn’t believe the right things?
And now, as I parent my neurodivergent child, I think back on my childhood, and the sibling who was the “strong-willed” one, and had many similarities to my ADHD-diagnosed kid, and so much clicks into place. I feel for my parents, who were doing all the things they’d been told they must do to keep us out of hell, even as I’m angry that they couldn’t just look at the children in front of them and see and love us for who we were, rather than little sinners in need of fixing.
I don’t know if I’ve fully deconverted. I still love the idea of Jesus, and I miss the rhythms and comfort and friendship I found in church for so many years. But I don’t know if I’ll ever go back.
Yes, yes, yes.
And I wish the same for my parents. 💔
I relate to a lot of this too. I am the "bad" one. Ugly, unchosen, unfixable, and unlovable. For reasons I can understand but which had nothing to do with me. Ramona's question, "didn't God love Goliath too?" breaks my mind open in the best possible way.
Cuddled up in my bed reading and crying. I’m so so sorry that was spoken over you, at such a tender age. I didn’t experience that, but did experience a friend having a seizure at a slumber party, and the solution (by the adults) was to call our youth pastors wife to pray for her over the phone. I don’t even know how I slept that night. I also carried so much anxiety about martyrs because of the fucking columbine stories. I just knew someone was going to hold me at gunpoint and ask me to denounce my faith. What in the actual fuck. As if gun violence in schools isn’t traumatizing enough, evangelicals had to take it to another sick fucking level.
The only kids Bibles I let in my house were the Jesus storybook & Desmond tutu kids Bible - and I’ll never forget the Easter that I read the Jesus storybook version and my 6? 7? year old asked “.....so God ...had to kill Jesus?” She was so genuinely confused and concerned. I threw the book in the garbage and never looked back. Now my kid would call herself a witch (she says I’m a Christian witch bc I still love Jesus. Lol), and my younger 2 are just happy living life. I loved what someone said above. No coercion. Ever.
It was very interesting to read about your siblings unique responses and in my case, I was definitely the *perfect child* and my brother was the *strong willed* and now lives as far away as possible. He didn’t even call for Christmas and my mom made a quiet comment about how he’s “rejected” us and my grandma cried at Xmas dinner - I feel like I’m doing a terrible job of navigating these dynamics. How to support him, while also continuing to live with my emotionally immature family. Ugh. It’s just a lot. Sorry this is so long. I appreciate your words. Your story. Your vulnerability. You’re definitely not alone. (And I will probably read parts of it and these comments to my therapist next week! Lol)
There's also a piece of the "perfect child" where we always do "a terrible job" of whatever job we have in the family. Because the jobs we have are impossible. You are not doing a terrible job of navigating these dynamics. They are impossible.
Thank you💔
Thank you for sharing this, Lindsey. So much love to you.
That Desmond Tutu bible storybook is pretty awesome
Yes we love it. Don’t read it with any regularity but when we do…it’s the only kids Bible still standing 😂
I so appreciate you sharing all this. The prophecies really made me ache. I didn’t have anything quite that intense happen to me, but I realized recently that I have never felt truly safe my entire life. The way I internalized stories about God was that if he is in control of everything, then that means he makes the bad things happen and there is nothing any of us can do about it. Last week I was having an anxiety attack and imagining all these horrible things happening to my spouse. After calming enough to analyze, I realized I still have a deep down fear that God will kill my spouse because I love him too much. Wtf??
But that is the god of the OT. Petty if he isn’t the favorite.
I’m glad to be realizing these things but damn if it isn’t hard.
I’m so so so grateful for you taking this lead and sharing. All your stories and these comments make me feel like I’m not crazy after all. ♥️
I relate so much to internalizing the idea that anything you want/love too much, God will take away, because that's how you learn.💔
I internalized this SO HARD.
I am so grateful you had the foresight to see that in your son. That's exactly what happened to me in college: I had an anxiety disorder and was told wonderful things about God. No judging or end times fear here, just a loving Father who, yes, did punish his children as all good parents do, but if you just pray and turn back to him, like the prodigal story, he will run to you and you won't have any fear or depression anymore, or at least, if that doesn't work, you will experience God's supernatural comfort and peace. And if it comes back, you know what to do, just pray and turn back to God from your prodigal ways. And then when that didn't work, maybe I was in a "desert season" of needing to stay faithful as a Jobian test. Maybe "the enemy" was attacking. But never doubt God's presence as a vending machine of anti-anxiety at a prayer's notice!
But, it's just as you said it would be for your son. I didn't experience comfort; I got panic attacks and my body got sick and the doctors wouldn't/couldn't help. I needed my trauma acknowledged as real, I needed meds, and I needed therapy. Years and years and years of it. Still.
YUP. I am actually working on a little essay about this exact experience I had in my 20s. It is so hard because we truly aren't allowed to talk about it/process it without being barraged by spiritual platitudes/being told to "try harder" or that we must have some sin in our hearts!!!!
WHEW yes. I started doing all the "why don't you just"s just so I could check off the list to say they didn't work. haha Essential oils, daily Bible verses, multiple church activities a week, weighted blanket, yoga, water, sunshine, exercise... the whole list. Some of it worked and some didn't, but the things that made it WORSE were the spiritual ones, whether thinking of it as a "spiritual attack" because I was being such a good girl or thinking of it as divine corrective from straying or charismatic growing pains because I was about to "unlock new levels of the spiritual realm and experience breakthrough" or whatever. At least the essential oils smelled good and the yoga helped me breathe more intentionally and the sunshine improved my mood, though none of them "fixed" my anxiety itself, but they didn't damage me the way the spiritual crap did.
"At least the essential oils smelled good..." feels like a fun slogan for something.
I have had an absolute laundry list of mental health issues; primarily unipolar depression but also some anxiety; all of which likely have their source in autism (who knew) and C-PTSD. None of which was ever helped by a steadfast (and pretty healthy) faith and prayer life. Fortunately for me no therapist or psychiatrist I ever had suggested that I should just pray more (or less). Atheist, agnostic, and Jewish psychiatrists listened very patiently to me as I explained that I really didn't understand why, if I believed (as I do) that God loves me unconditionally through the free gift of grace, why I also experienced intrusive thoughts of suicide for years on end. So we unpacked, and unpacked, and unpacked, and medicated, and even briefly went to a hospital when I couldn't stay safe.
I did (and do) find some comfort in externalizing these thoughts as "the adversary" -- something that felt almost external to me, that was actively seeking to do me harm, that God did not want for me, that I could fight against. (also it makes it easier to read all those bloodthirsty sections of the psalms...personify those intrusive harmful thoughts as the adversary who's destroying my mental health! Dash its brains against a rock!). and this is what I think about when I pray "deliver us from evil" -- I do not know why, but this is the manifestation of evil that I experience, that internal voice that says I don't deserve to be here on this beautiful earth. Wherever that thought comes from -- it's definitely not good, so yes, in addition to my daily bread, I'll happily pray to be delivered from that.
But mainly: therapy. medication. validation. Guided by a mental health professional, NOT a spiritual guide.
Thank you for sharing.
Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for sharing this!
I was less isolated, but just as undiagnosed autistic and just as all-in on Christianity, so my story is very, very similar. I started deconstructing (I guess? I didn’t call it that but the term fits) in college when I realized I was gay. You’d think having a decade+ head start before raising children would help with parenting them away from evangelicalism but I am here to tell you: it did not. I still have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to fielding questions about religion, or how to raise my kids in a community, or figuring out what I believe and how to communicate it to my kids. (They’re 4 and in utero, respectively, so the nuances of “I’m not sure what I believe and need a lot of space from religion right now” do not currently translate well.)
"Through parenting, I’ve realized that all kids fundamentally need to know that being loved, cared for, and accepted is not conditional upon them repeating the party line. I didn’t receive that." This, completely.
Though I'm not in the process of deconverting (probably some heavy deconstructing though), I feel the pain of growing up evangelical in the 80s and 90s. I try to remind myself that our parents did the best they could, but the lines you've drawn between the apocalyptic mindset married to the "we're the ones who have the answers" and the current political/economic/cultural things happening in the white evangelical church are so astute.
My internal work is inviting me to silence these days, but I'm glad your freedom involves telling your story because it's so helpful for so many people.
And, I just gotta say, one of the best things any human can do, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof, is allow other people the freedom of their own journeys. I love that offering that freedom to your children taught you to offer that freedom to yourself as well.
yes it's very important for me to honor other people's agency and autonomy as I am discovering my own! People can (and do) have knee-jerk defensive reactions when I share my story, but that doesn't mean I was coming for them or their individual spirituality :) People have said it before and I agree that a lot of the more prominent atheists are just as annoying/toxic as fundamentalist Christians. I'm happily agnostic, but I do want to take down James Dobson!
I'm so on board with taking James Dobson down!
I’m in too! My mom still defends him (with tears in her eyes…).
I WILL TAKE JAMES DOBSON DOWN WITH YOU.
Count me in!
I’ve been following lots of people’s versions of this story (some form of deconstructing) and something about yours is speaking to me personally, in a way that I’m like are we friends in a different life...? But I think that’s how stalking starts. 🤔
I’m so proud of you for sharing this and also in awe, this takes so much bravery and I’m so sorry for the lifelong trauma this has caused. I’m also grateful to see your story continues, that is so hope-giving to me.
Our family has left church in the last 6 months, and I’m new to ALL of this, I don’t even have language for most of it. I mean I just found out about Substack two weeks ago.
I came from very rigid reformed/Calvinist circles (so fun thinking about how totally depraved I was as a child and what if I’m not of the elect?) I’m always thinking about what am I doing to my kids without church, what if they never know God, what about Deut. 6 - I’m failing!
But this has given such a different and helpful perspective, some peace to me actually. And even Part 1 of this post...like calling it indoctrination. I’ve been chewing on it all week. Grateful for your voice and it’s helping me to take the next step without being terrified. ❤️
Allison your comment about stalking made me LOL for reals. Welcome to the club of we don't know what we are doing but it's all happening anyways!!!!
I've also followed a LOT of people's stories, and there is absolutely something special about Danielle.
Reformed theology is a special kind of awful. Glad you found Substack and cheers to learning and growing, even if we’re walking in the dark. 🙃
"it was prophesied over me multiple times that I would die a martyr’s death at the hands of the antichrist before I was 16." This is potentially a very inappropriate response, but OMG when I read this I thought, "OF COURSE THEY DID" and laughed. Because if this weren't so terrible it would be funny in its ridiculousness.
Like who ARE these people that think this is an uplifting thing to preach over kids? My sister was prophesied over at age 11 that she had some kind of sexual demon (and she had already survived assault by then, so it was both ugly and abusive and weirdly prescient). Those same people were afraid of her listening to -Madonna-, but you're going to put that sexualized crap on her at that age?
And I just wonder: what playbook are all these yahoos reading from? I swear the lack of judgement is like people who are addicted to drugs. Which, perhaps religious indoctrination is just that.
So, I have to laugh, because at the same time that these wingnuts are traumatizing children they are ALSO so sure they are paragons of health, virtue and love. Which at least the drug addicts do not delude themselves about! The druggies know that the drugs are probably a bad idea! Or the mobsters! They also know that putting horses heads in people's beds is an -evil thing to do-. Mobsters have more judgement than the toxic religious people! This is, oddly enough, just what Jesus pointed out!
This is a lot of exclamation points. I am just so enraged on every child's behalf.
Ramona's comment about Goliath got me in the stomach. Yes, I can't handle childrens' bibles at all. I just don't know how you are supposed to talk to kids about faith without harming them in some way. Which is probably why my kids are now both atheists. :P
I came to faith on my own, mostly (my parents are practicing Christians now, but weren't at the time) and so I have always known it was, for the most part, my choice. In my early twenties, I came a hairs-breadth from de-converting, but had a spiritual encounter of God's love complete, unconditional acceptance at that moment that made me realize that if I was not -forced- to stay a Christian on pain of hell the idea still had meaning for me. But I think that's the only reason I could stay. Had it been something my parents put on me, it would have had to go, like so many other things. No coercion for me, or my kids, or anyone else. Ever. That has to be the baseline.
The drug user metaphor is sad but true. And James Dobson is the dealer. 🤮
So I have to also say this: prophesying, out loud, that your child will die isn't OK. It's understandable (your parents probably really feared this) but it is NOT OK.
My secular parents, had a much more limited prophecy for me: "you'll never have any friends."
needless to say, I believed them, too.
I try so hard not to prophesy.
Ugh. I'm so sorry, Emily.
I’m so, so sorry those adults put that awful anxiety and dread on you.💔 that is heartbreaking and infuriating.
There is something freeing and terrifying about not parenting your own kids without the fear and guilt we grew up with. On Christmas Day, my 6yr old started a tearful conversation about death because he is ‘going to miss me so much’ and if there was one time I wished so badly for concrete answers to give him, it was then. It’s so hard. I told him that no one really knows what happens to our spirits, but our bodies become part of the earth in a different way, and that’s a good thing. Some people believe in heaven, but nobody knows what that’s like, if it exists at all. I told him I wasn’t going to lie to him. But at one point he kept bringing up heaven and asking repeatedly if he would see me there and I said yes. Now I feel terrible that I handed him an answer that is false comfort.
just real quick--the vast majority of human history has some kind of story about the afterlife/getting comfort from thinking/hoping that this life is not all there is, and I think it's really important to remember that. It's not giving false hope to kids when they aren't developmentally ready for frank discussions, it's doing them a kindness sometimes when we do a bit of wishful thinking or fall back on old comfort ideas! Obviously you need to do what you feel comfortable with, but depending on the kid it can give them WAY more anxiety to stare mortality in the face at 4 years old!
I agree with DLs response to you. You don’t have tell them anything that feels false or like lying, but you can give them comfort. We really *cant* know - whether there is or isn’t! When they get a little older I’d recommend the His Dark Materials trilogy if you like fantasy books - it has one of the most beautiful depictions of an “afterlife” imo.
Okay, now I really want to read these. I think they came out about 20 years ago, right? I had just started having kids and I vaguely remember people at church or a pastor saying they were bad, which means I would LOVE them now. Ha!
Yes! I was never allowed to read them or HP when I was a kid (still super salty about it). Churches wouldn’t allow them because the “god” figure in the book dies! 😂 “the first rule of fight club is never admit that our all-powerful being is the worst” lol. It’s a beautiful critique of fundamentalist religion and the ways that we use belief to hurt others. And it also poses super imaginative explanations for consciousness & the “soul”. Pullman is an atheist and explicitly wanted to critique religion, but I’ve also read people who consider his books liberation theology! They also just made the series on HBO and as someone who hates movie remakes, I actually think it was beautifully done. Not the same as the books, but still good. ☺️
I just bought the trilogy for $15. And I asked my kids (22, 20, 17) if they'd read them, and two of them had (I had already started deconstructing by the time they could read and I didn't censor any books). They both said they loved them. "Watch out," my 20yo said. "Christians think they're satanic." :)
this is SO funny to me because I had a knee-jerk reaction about Pullman as a writer/those books but it's just because that's how conservative Christians talked about them! I think both him and Rowling (who is also on my shit list, but for different reasons) went to Oxford and were rebelling against the HEAVY Tolkien/Lewis/western Christianity vibes in the English department. I think? Now I want to go research it more . . .
Not a book for children, but I enjoyed reading his book “the good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ.” Not for the faint of heart. And you can see why the conservative Christians would REALLY hate him --it’s a very provocative and profoundly atheist book.
Rowling is on my shit list too. Ava (my middle) told me the Golden Compass books are better than HP.
Yes, I was told to stay away from HP and his dark materials too. Haven’t read the second, now must be the time.
Pullman is a very thoughtful writer about religion and faith -- a committed atheist who explores these ideas in beautiful detail. I think his books, as well as the HP books and the Narnia books are excellent for tween kids going through existential struggles.
but then again I take a very open stance about a lot of things and am disinclined to "cancel" people -- maybe just because I'm a hyperlexic with a habit to feed so I read a LOT from all over. I'm up for any book that takes on these existential challenges (What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? What happens when we die? How do I know my life matters?). These are both essential and existential questions and as you all point out, we all, in the end, have to discover these answers for ourselves.
Yes!!! Read them, and watch the HBO series. It’s absolutely gorgeous (lots of kids in danger though - that’s pretty triggering for me - take care). The Nicole Kidman movie version just doesn’t exist. 😂
The trilogy is so good. Good on audio too!
There's no way to answer this question for a 6 year old that doesn't "feel terrible."
My child told me, when he was 5, "I don't want to exist."
"You don't want to exist?"
"No. Because I don't want to die. If I don't exist, then I don't have to die."
There was really not an answer to this one. "I'm sorry I brought you into existence? That was selfish of me?" I gave it some thought.
"You are right. We all die. It is part of existing. Maybe the hardest part. All I can tell you is that you are not alone in struggling with this. Every person has a really hard time when they realize that they are going to have to die. And every person finds a way to be OK with it. You are going to be OK. We are here with you."
I don't know if my child was OK with this answer. He is still uncomfortable, even fearful, around the whole idea of death.
So yeah. Existential terror. it's a thing. and at 6, your child may be asking to back into it slowly.
That’s a really good way of putting it. The next day my son handed me a ballpoint pen and asked me to draw a tombstone with “rip” on it because he’s gonna miss me. He didn’t seem distressed, just ardent, and I actually had to fight back a laugh because he was so matter of fact about it.
My youngest (17) has a LOT of existential angst (and always has). It's so tough to know what to say/how to help. I read somewhere a few months ago that "You're right. Life has no meaning. But we can still MAKE meaning."
It was parenting that pushed me to deconstruct too. Being handed Baby Wise and Shepherding a Child’s Heart and saying spanking anytime kids disobey is Gods heart for them and keeping them safe by training them to obey. The fear of deconstructing while parenting older kids is intense for sure, fear of them going to hell if I didn’t force Jesus on them - it pushed me to therapy and I’m so darn thankful that my first choice was exactly who I needed to see.
I’m pretty sure I’m not an undiagnosed autistic, but I did go all in. I couldn’t understand how others around me didn’t feel as strongly as I did. If everyone who didn’t hear about Jesus was going to hell, weren’t we responsible for preaching the gospel all the time and saving them? I mentioned this to a friend and she said I was taking things too seriously. Another friend didn’t get how I took all the pastors words as gospel - if he didn’t let his kids watch Disney movies because they showed rebellious kids, I wasn’t going to either.
Anyways, I’m ranking. Thank you for sharing - its really hard to deconstruct with kids. World shattering. ❤️
Baby wise and Shepherding were so horrible! I remember how guilty I felt when my husband and I decided not to stay with these programs.
I remember a judgmental group of Christian moms at a birthday party clucking their tongues at another (struggling) mom and whispering that she needed Babywise. I tried to read that book with my first baby and it amplified my anxiety dramatically until my fantastic midwife told me to throw it away. So grateful for that very good advice.
I remember asking our naturopath/midwife whether our baby was in “metabolic chaos” and in her wry wisdom she said, “well she doesn’t look too chaotic to me”
I wish I’d done the same! It makes me so angry remembering how I was taught my baby’s sinful nature was making her cry for me to get me to come - “manipulating me” at an early age. 😡
I felt so guilty too, like my kids wouldn’t follow Jesus because of it. Which seems crazy now…
Lol stupid baby wise. Sorry my 1 week old didn’t conform to a rigid eat-sleep-play every 2 hours schedule. 🙄 That book and all the “well-meaning advice” from church people made my first years of parenting hellish. Ugh.
Yes!
Seeing my (then) friends do this with their sweet babies was so hard. “Blanket training”
Among my regrets is not speaking up louder.
My biggest memories are just of confusion. My peers and mentors I trusted were recommending something that felt so wrong, but I didn’t have the internal agency yet to trust my body’s gut reaction.
Ugh - blanket training 😩
*”I’m rambling”
Nope, you are healing.
This idea of loving and reparenting or renurturing our child selves has resonated with me. I grew up as a little baby Enneagram 1 who just wanted to be good, and the evangelical hellscape we landed in when we moved to town (no joke, it was known as Bob Jones University West) provided so many harmful ways for me to try to be good.
Madeleine L’Engle wrote something that I’ve held closely to when I find myself feeling grief over the little me who tried so so so hard to do the right thing in a rotten system. “I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.”
I think about this quote and imagine myself as a nesting doll. If I can picture the work I’m doing as building the next bigger nesting doll as a safe place to cradle all my inner ages’ nesting dolls, I feel hopeful and able to better love the earlier me’s that I honestly sometimes fear and am often ashamed of.
Thank you for sharing. You are so seen. ❤️
What a lovely quote and the image of the nesting dolls is resonating with me. “To forget us a form of suicide”. Forgetting leads to apathy. To remember and empathize with yourself, to give grace to yourself, is to heal. Thank you for sharing.❤️
This is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that ML quote - love her!
I love that Madeleine L'Engle quote. And the nesting dolls! Yes!
I really love the things that break us wide open. "Didn't God love Goliath too?"
My neurodivergent and non-binary 10 year old had basically an existential crisis about the war in Ukraine last spring and about being different, and has declared ever since that they don’t believe in God (they believe in Thor apparently, but that’s beside the point, haha). It has been yet another opportunity to face the debris of my deconstructed faith, and to consider the remnants of fear for their soul, “just in case it’s all real”! But my parents’ angst about my kiddo’s loss of faith clarifies for me that I really do believe my kid gets to be an individual, think for themself, and that I absolutely don’t feel the need to insist that there is a God (honestly not sure how I would go about that). I am so grateful for my little trailblazers.
Also, just feeling so grateful to hear all of your stories. I find myself thinking about this stuff almost constantly and it means so much to process it with others, even others who are strangers.
My kid (who identifies variously as a pantheist and an agnostic) feels very passionate about Thor also. I think probably the Marvel/Chris Hemsworth representation of Thor is a relatable and aspirational god for many 10 year old boys.
I feel grateful that both my kids are actively engaged with these existential and faith questions and that they feel equipped to ask them critically with their heads and hearts. What do I believe? Why? Who am I? How do I know? Is that static, or will it change over time? I feel like it’s my job as a parent to provide a “holding space,” and resources, for them to explore those questions.
Much love to you and your kiddo. And Thor's pretty awesome. :)