“I’m warning you, if you proceed to Stage 5, and you’re not ready to be ostracized from the relationship—the larger relationship, perhaps the family, the job, the social group—then you’re not ready for Stage 5." (Ross Rosenberg, “On Becoming a Psychological Orphan: When Losing Your Family Is Good, But Hurts,” 7:29.)

Ross Rosenberg is an author and psychotherapist who specializes in codependency, narcissism, and trauma. He’s developed a 10-stage Self-Love Recovery™ treatment program for victims of narcissistic abuse. Stage 5 is the climactic act in the story, in which the victim sets boundaries with their abuser, sometimes for the first time in their life.

This never goes well.

But it is always necessary to cross that mountain in order to reach the fertile plains on the other side.

No, it’s not a mountain. It’s an earthquake.

And that’s how it was for me, too.

And then there’s the rebuilding afterward.

I was born a Pentecostal.

My background was not as extreme as Kim Davis’s Pentecostalism, but I did grow up on Jimmy Swaggart and “That Thing” and homophobia and overt misogyny and stories of demon sex spirits imprinting pornographic images on my mind and shoving me into a pit of fornication and adultery and infidelity and shame and misery— But I’m jumping ahead.

More progressive religions—UU, Reform Judaism, Buddhism—don’t necessarily have these problems. But I didn’t grow up in any of those traditions.

When I lash out, I’m lashing out at the person I used to be, at the stories I tell myself about me and my own sexuality. I hate those stories. My life improves every time I leave another behind.

I grew up in a shame-and-blame religion.

The so-called Good News, as taught to me, is that we humans are fundamentally evil, unholy, sinners, distant from God. And so to save us, God needed to execute the perfect blood sacrifice. And there was only one person perfect enough to serve as that sacrifice, God himself. So he came to Earth in the form of a man who was without sin, and allowed himself to be executed, the perfect scapegoat, in order to take upon himself the sins of us all. As a result, we can blame him for all the shame we feel about who we are.

When I’ve told this story, I have gotten shocked looks of disbelief. “That’s not what Christianity is about, is it? I thought it was a religion of love and peace and helping people.”

But I grew up in fundamentalist Christianity. I grew up an Evangelical. I grew up on Jimmy Swaggart and James Dobson and patriarchy and homophobia and the Holy Spirit über alles. And I grew up singing classic Evangelical hymns and praise & worship songs.

I’m not sure exactly where I’m going with this blog site. I haven’t posted much over the last year, but that’s because I am a different person—in a sense—than I was in January 2014. I know I entitled this blog “Hope, Love, and Peace,” and I still believe in those qualities. But I also believe in authenticity, and I am more comfortable in my own skin than I have ever felt before. I want to blog more. You’re going to see a lot more of me—a lot more genuine me—probably a bit more edgy, and hopefully more inspiring. If you stick around, you might even witness me coming out some more. But you might not like it. I can’t help that last part.

Kate Schell recently published a long list of modesty “rules” that girls have to deal with, especially in religious fundamentalist families. These messages teach girls to be ashamed of their bodies, ashamed of being women, ashamed of themselves.

Her series is about messages that we send to girls. Unfortunately, boys encounter similar rules—not rules of modesty, but rules nonetheless. We all encounter messages from people who think they know who we are and who we should be. And when gentle persuasion fails to persuade us to comply with their dogmatic view of reality, they turn to judgmentalism and suppression, and push fear and shame. As self-aware adults, we know to push back. But as children, we internalize these messages as emotional triggers, and they may saddle us for the rest of our lives.