On Twitter, I follow several accounts of former fundamentalist Christians who have gone through what they call ‘deconstruction’. From what I can understand, this is when they break down all the beliefs and crap they were raised with to find the truth, and to heal from the pain and abuse they suffered. Most of them become stronger in their religious faith though many do not attend any kind of church or identify as a specific member of any organized religion. A lot of this discussion has come about from the documentary, ‘Shiny, Happy, People’ on Amazon.com about the fundamentalist Christian movement and specifically the Duggar family who were the stars of the reality show, ’19 Kids and Counting’. I haven’t had a chance to watch the documentary yet but from what I can gather, it’s devastating and incredibly painful for those who grew up in that type of environment and have had to recover and heal from it.
I’ve followed this movement for quite some time and I wondered why because my own upbringing didn’t resemble this, but I know my mother’s upbringing did. My mother was raised on what I call old-school, pre-Vatican II Catholicism which greatly resembles fundamentalist Protestant Christianity as in the above-mentioned documentary. It’s a culture that is based on complete and total obedience to patriarchal authority, extreme conformity, and abuse to maintain that order. My mother didn’t talk a lot about her upbringing like this, and she didn’t talk about religion very often either. As a child, I was sent to Sunday School and did my First Communion but shortly after that, my parents stopped going to Church. As a kid I thought that was pretty cool because then I didn’t have to dress up and instead could read the Sunday papers and listen to my radio shows.
Now as a teenager, my parents started going back to Church and I started getting into the Catholic religion and I seriously thought about becoming a nun. I considered that because I thought since I was fat and ugly no guy would want to marry me so why not devote my life to others. Then I read a book called ‘Through the Narrow Gate’ by Karen Armstrong, which is Ms. Armstrong’s account of her ten years as a nun in the 1960’s. It’s a harrowing and painful account but in the end she wrote that anyone who enters religious life to run or hide from something will not succeed there. I realized if I had pursued that course of action that’s what I would have been doing- running and hiding from the words and feelings that were inside me.
What I’ve had to deconstruct is not believing in the ugly things that have been said to me or the painful things that have been done to me. This means I have to learn how to stop speculating as to the motives of this and instead focus on my own life and learning how to think and feel better. Deconstruction for me is about breaking down shame and guilt and learning what needs to be repented and what doesn’t need repentance at all.
As for my spiritual or religious beliefs they’re very simple: try to live with love and kindness to all and try to think before speaking and acting. I believe in God, in Heaven and Hell, and that human beings have a non-corporal soul that travels through time and space when not in a mortal body. But I do not subscribe to any organized religion and I don’t really see it as a force for good nearly as much as it should be.
I am forever grateful to my parents for those years away from the Catholic Church and for always giving me the freedom to find my own way intellectually and spiritually, and to be a free-thinking person. This hasn’t always been a popular thing and yes, some of my deconstruction and breaking my silence is dealing with that. But I’m grateful I didn’t get caught up in conservative Catholicism, or Purity Culture or any bullshit like that as that’s one less one thing I have to deal with. But to anyone who has survived that, my heart goes out to you and I support you completely on your path of deconstruction and healing.
As for my mother, I never really talked about religion or spirituality with her very much. I think she had faith, but I think what resonated with her was messages like in the song, ‘One Day at a Time’ by Cristy Lane about cherishing moments of joy and happiness in life. I think she also tried very hard to be careful in what to say and how to say it. I know she loved the beauty in the Catholic Mass and I think she tried to embrace that over the stern and austere way Mass and religion like she was raised in. Through her, I could see the good in religion though I have parted company with the Catholic Church for my own reasons.
As for my father, he and I had many discussions about religion and spirituality, Heaven and Hell, and all kinds of esoteric ideas. He was the far-reaching, incredibly detailed, and wide-thinking person I could always have a far-out-there discussion about stuff like the meaning of Life and our existence and the Soul and all kinds of stuff. I’m forever grateful to him for giving me those opportunities to think and talk out loud without judgment or insisting on strict dogma.
Silence is broken not just when the questions are answered, but when thoughts and feelings are built into something better.
MicheleSayre.com 