What sort of space is a Religious Trauma Collective?

It’s a space for gathering those with lived experience of religious/spiritual trauma

When we start to have doubts about faith or faith spaces, it can feel isolating, scary and very lonely. We can spend years gaslighting ourselves, thinking it must be us, we’re the problem, not the systems or beliefs that are beginning to feel suffocating. 

When we leave, it can be as if we were never there and this is often one of the most shocking and confusing parts of faith deconstruction. 

When we thought about creating something like a Religious Trauma Collective, it was from this place of knowing how hard this experience is and how hard it’s been for so many of our clients. 

We wanted a space, across Australia & New Zealand, not only social media accounts but real life relationships and networks, support and collaboration. 

And we wanted people looking for a place to hear someone say “me too, you’re not going crazy”, a place to be seen.

We know what it’s like when your voice starts to shake but it’s so freeing to tell the truth.

It’s a space for rethinking and rebuilding spirituality apart from organised religion

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking about what it could look like to rebuild a sense of spirituality. Apart from grief and anger, it’s what my clients want to talk about the most as well.  

At first for me, it was a more progressive form of Christianity, then over time I moved from spiritual but not religious to now, well, I don’t really have language for, or the need to, define my sense of spirituality. It feels good to be ok with mystery and to feel held by anchors like beauty, love and nature. 

We wanted the Religious Trauma Collective to provide a place where that movement from one to another identity, belief or framing was welcome and safe. 

We’ve provided a broad range of resources on the website for people still within a faith worldview, to those who might feel like they want to burn it all down. It can and does all belong at different times. In time we’ll host online and IRL events where people can share their experiences of this progression too. 

Most of the practitioners and others who’ve connected with us so far agree that fundamentalist ways of being have not served us well. And there are so many ways to be a spiritual person for us to explore and integrate. 

Whenever you are on this continuum, you can voice how this has or is changing for you, here. And if it changes again next week or next year, that’s ok too.

It’s a space for community and connection

We can lose so much when we leave faith communities, even when it was the right thing to do, it can be costly. Even years later it can be so painful to think about friendships and shared experiences with people who we had come to love. 

Often we can feel untethered. We know how hard it can be to try and rebuild that sense of community or know who we can trust with this new version of ourselves who is questioning, trying to figure things out, rebuilding identity. 

Already, since launching the Religious Trauma Collective a few weeks ago, we’ve been able to connect clients to practitioners, create people to people connections in the same cities, and promote Australian & New Zealand resources.

We know we can’t replace all that has been lost but it feels good to be able to support people to feel more seen in their experiences. 

Our practitioner resource group on Facebook has also been a wonderful place to get together, share stories and know who else is working in this space. 

We’d love you to join us, follow along on Instagram or Facebook and be part of the journey as we build something new.