I Wrote About Religious Trauma Before I Knew What That Was. Here’s What I’ve Learned.
Many writers explore shame, family conflict and loss without realizing they're also writing about religious trauma. Here's what I learned when I finally recognized the pattern in my own work.
Hola, writers! Reminder that we’ll be live today at 1pm ET with NYT Contributor Susan Saulny for a convo on “How to Report Family Secrets.” On a similar note, Sara Moslener has been teaching university courses for over fifteen years that focus on the religious roots of racism, misogyny, and authoritarianism, and she’s the author of two books on evangelical purity culture. Next week at Narratively Academy, Sara’s leading our first-ever workshop class on Writing About Religious Trauma (just 2 seats left!) For this week’s StoryCraft post, we asked Sara to share a little about what she’s learned.
I certainly didn’t start out to study religious trauma. I just started by asking questions. Questions about gender, sexuality, the faith I’d grown up with, and how I’d come to realize it failed to provide me with the tools I needed to make sense of the most human of experiences. Now, having interviewed many people about their own religious trauma, taught students at the college level, and written two books on evangelical purity culture, I have new understandings about the depth of harm religion can cause. The topic feels as vital as ever, including within my academic field, Religious Studies. But in recent years I’ve learned to see the limits of academic analysis. Research can only tell you so much. So I have turned to creative writing to sort through memories and experiences that need surfacing.
Writing about religious trauma begins as a conversation between yourself and your most hidden parts. It requires careful attention, self-compassion, and a good dose of bravery. Many writers write about trauma without fully realizing that is what they are doing. I was one of them, and now I want to create conversations that help people take care as they write about their own trauma. Here are a few key things I’ve learned:
1) There’s No Guidebook
The study of trauma is still a young field — and it’s very unsettled. The first book study, The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel Van der kolk, remains the most prominent contribution (at least in terms of book sales). But it’s not without controversy. In 2018 Van der kolk was removed from his position as director of the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute. Staff members reported bullying and other aggressive behavior. At the same time, the Executive Director was removed from his position for his treatment of female employees. So, the first rule of studying trauma—it is a messy bitch.
2) Your Body Will Respond
That messy bitch will get its claws into you. The conventional wisdom is that to be human is to experience some level of trauma. I’m speaking here from my experience interviewing over 60 people who grew up in evangelical purity culture, including a focus on sexual abuse in religious communities. If you are dedicating a significant amount of time to understand trauma from any perspective, memories may surface and your body will respond. Know that you will have to navigate new feelings and responses as you dive into your experiences.
3) Trauma is Bigger Than Any One Event
Trauma is often misidentified as a singular “traumatic” event. Trauma is not an adverse experience, it is the result of one. Trauma is your body’s attempt to protect you from physical or psychological injury when your nervous system is unable to absorb the shock of an adverse experience. Whenever your nervous system anticipates a similar injury, it will respond with learned protective measures such as fatigue, depression, confusion, rage, or any number of feelings and behaviors.
An adverse experience isn’t necessarily a single incident. Complex trauma is a term used for responses that result from repeated incidents or a set of enforced norms that negatively impact the nervous system. High-control religious communities fit into this categorization.
4) You’ll Go Places You Don’t Expect
Writing and speaking about trauma and the environments and incidents that precipitated it is a significant challenge for those who experience it. Trauma disrupts our nervous systems, our memory, our ability to trust ourselves and our perspective on the world as we experience it. It can make us an unreliable narrator of our own experience and that can be weaponized against us. The hard work of telling our stories allows us to reclaim our experiences as our own: to name the hurt, name the perpetrator(s) if necessary, and piece together a narrative that allows us to reclaim the space we take up in the world as our own.
Much of what I have learned is well documented in the academic literature. But it is also felt in the body, a guide we are often compelled to ignore against our own best interest. If anything, trauma forces us to attend to our bodies and this is often where academic analysis fails us and where creative engagement provides a helpful way forward.
Ready to Tell Your Own Story?
In this intimate six-week workshop, author and scholar Sara Moslener will guide writers through the complex process of writing about religious trauma. You’ll explore the emerging language of religious trauma studies, read writers who have navigated this terrain, and begin shaping your own experiences into work that is both truthful and compassionate. The class includes group discussion, workshop opportunities, and instructor feedback. This is a space for serious reflection—and serious craft.
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