The Religious Harm Recovery Digest | Many high-control religions encourage a version of rapid intimacy built on emotional disclosure, vulnerability, and spiritual performance. This piece examines how those dynamics can continue affecting relationships after leaving, along with practical ways to build trust and connection at a healthier pace.
A Note From Megan | Many high-control religious spaces encourage a kind of forced vulnerability that can feel deeply intimate at the time. In this Note, I reflect on how those dynamics affected my understanding of closeness, emotional safety, and connection long after leaving religion.
The Religious Harm Recovery Digest | After leaving high-control religion, it can be startling to look back on beliefs that once felt like absolute truth. This Digest explores how groups distort reality to keep people compliant, and what it can look like to find your way back to a more grounded sense of reality once you’re out.
The Religious Harm Recovery Digest | Leaving a high-control religion doesn’t always mean you stop questioning your own reality. This RHR Digest breaks down self-gaslighting, how it forms, what it can look like in daily life, and how to start rebuilding self-trust.
A Note From Megan | In this Note, I reflect on my grandmother’s choices and the divergent paths women faced during the rise of feminism and the religious right. As I watch Mrs. America, I can’t help but wonder how different our lives might have been if she had chosen liberation instead of control.
The Religious Harm Recovery Digest | This Digest focuses on Christianity’s martyr obsession and how it’s used as tool of coercive control to more deeply indoctrinate people into a specific system of beliefs. It also covers the lingering impact even after leaving a high-control religion.
A Note From Megan | Last week, I picked up Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates, and it opened my eyes to the alarming connections between the manosphere and Christian patriarchy. This Note offers a high-level look at the manosphere, its overlap with Christian patriarchy, and what it can normalize when it goes mainstream.
A Note From Megan | In this newsletter, I explore the unsettling connection between James Dobson and Jeffrey Epstein, highlighting how Dobson’s influence has contributed to a culture that minimizes abuse and protects powerful men exactly like Epstein.
The Religious Harm Recovery Digest | Many of us grew up in churches that functioned like a cult, even though the pastors didn’t fit the stereotypical “cult leader” mold. In this newsletter, I explore what happens when the cult leader role gets projected onto god, and how an internalized “voice of god” can keep people compliant long after they leave.
The Religious Harm Recovery Digest | After leaving a religious cult, you may start to realize the religious group was only part of the problem. Deeper harm likely existed inside the family system itself. This Digest looks at how religious cults recreate themselves inside the home, why those dynamics are so hard to identify, and how recognizing family cult patterns are a critical part of the recovery process.