I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Religious Harm Recovery Coach.
I’m also someone who creates content about religious trauma, purity culture, cult mind control, and cultivating a full and joyful life on the other side of a high-control religion.
You can access my various forms of content by visiting my social media pages (Instagram, Threads, Facebook), subscribing to my weekly newsletters, or viewing the Resource Library page on this website.
My work centers the intersection of personal healing and social justice, and I approach both my content and my clinical coaching practice from a progressive, anti-oppression lens.
In an age where many people are looking for “neutral” sources of information, I think it’s important to be clear about something up front: I don’t believe neutrality exists.
Every person who creates content or provides care does so through the filter of their own worldview, influenced by their identities, experiences, and values.
Rather than claim neutrality, I believe transparency is more honest and more useful.
This page identifies the values and worldview that influence my content development and my approach to clinical work.
You can use this information to decide whether my perspective resonates with you or whether you’d prefer to seek out other voices in this space.
What informs my worldview
Here are a few details about my identity and experiences that have influenced my worldview over the years.
I’m a cisgender, heterosexual, white, able-bodied, straight-sized, millennial woman (she/her).
I grew up in rural central Pennsylvania in an evangelical fundamentalist household, and I now recognize that the churches we attended we really religious cults.
My family would have been considered working class, but we were definitely impoverished and relied heavily on my grandparents and, at times, government assistance just to get by.
I was homeschooled K-12 with a faith-based curriculum and had limited exposure to cultural differences or sexual diversity during my formative years.
I began deconstructing my faith during college and was fully out of Christianity by age 27.
I no longer identify as a Christian, and I believe any religious group that claims to have the “correct” approach to god, the afterlife, or how people should live and behave veers into religious cult territory.
Since leaving, I have done significant work to educate myself and cultivate more diversity in my relationships.
I trained as a social worker at both the undergraduate and graduate level, which is how I cultivated the deep conviction that caring for individuals means also actively identifying and resisting the systems that cause harm.
Oppressive religious systems are just one example of this.
Because of my orientation as a social worker and a licensed mental health professional, I’m unable to separate personal healing from the broader social context in which harm occurs.
Values I hold personally & professionally
How my values influence my work
On my public platforms I primarily share content that addresses religious harm, but I may also weave in content that speaks out against racism, transphobia, sexual stigma, and other forms of oppression that commonly intersect with religious harm recovery work.
In both my content and my clinical practice, you will encounter respect for gender identity, sexual orientation, relationship choices, and sexual expression. I do my best to follow people’s lead on names and pronouns and welcome correction if I get it wrong.
My public activism never involves clients directly, and clients are never asked to participate in my advocacy.
I also do not intentionally share details that are specific to any one client or member of my religious harm community, although many of us share startlingly similar experiences with high-control religion, which may cause some of my content to sound eerily familiar.
As mentioned above, I am not politically “neutral,” but I don’t introduce politics into clinical work or focus on politics unless clients explicitly bring this forward as an area of focus.
My work assumes that high-control religion is one of many systems that oppress people within a patriarchal, capitalist society. If you’re looking for content that examines religion in isolation from other oppressive structures, my content probably won’t feel like a comfortable fit for you.
Why I prioritize transparency over neutrality
Even though someone may claim neutrality, their content and clinical work is always being influenced by their worldview and values. It’s unavoidable.
This is why I believe openly identifying my deeply held values and what has shaped my worldview is more honest and more caring, especially since my community is mostly made up of people who are recovering from coercive religious systems.
By offering this transparency, my hope is that you can make an informed choice about whether my content and perspective serves you.
You certainly don’t need to share all my values to engage with me or my work.
What really matters is that you have enough information to decide for yourself whether you want to continue engaging or whether you’d prefer to seek out other recovery spaces.
I absolutely support whatever you feel is right for you.
Where to go from here
If my perspective and values feel aligned with where you are in your own journey, here are some ways to engage with my work:
Subscribe to my newsletters
I send out two weekly newsletters: A Note From Megan (personal reflections about my ongoing journey) and The Religious Harm Recovery Digest (educational content about religious trauma and recovery).
Join the Facebook group
The Religious Harm Recovery Community is a small, thriving space for people to more deeply connect with one another around their recovery journeys.
*You must be an active newsletter subscriber to join.
Work with me
I offer one-on-one religious harm recovery coaching for people who are looking for a qualified clinician who also “gets it.”