Navigating Grief After Leaving A High Control Religion

On May 4, 2019, I sat in shock as I took in the news that an influential figure in my life–Rachel Held Evans–had died. The shock of Rachel’s death was coming just a few days after, I received a text message that one of my clients had died as well (unrelated to Rachel). 

Death was not new to me; I had experienced the loss of loved ones many times throughout my life. Grandparents, friends from high school…my youth pastor. But this time around was different. 

It was the first time I was experiencing the death of people I knew, cared about, and had a relationship with where I did not believe in the promise of an afterlife. About a year or so before Rachel and my clients’ deaths, I had come to the end of years of trying to ‘make it work’ with God and had begun my own grieving process in a new way. For the past year leading up to their deaths, I had been grieving the version of God I had been taught about and how this version of God had impacted me in micro and macro ways. 

Now, I was learning to grieve the death of people who mattered to me and I didn’t have the “go-to” statements and methods of coping I had previously used to deal with overwhelming loss. “They are in a better place” no longer gave me hope. “They are no longer suffering”...it brought some relief to know that they were no longer in pain, but I ultimately knew that these three vibrant souls who were passionate about life and relationships and had so much more they wanted to do here on earth. 

Later that evening as I crawled into bed, I began to sob. The shock of Rachel and my client’s death felt heavy and something inside me broke; I became a puddle. I set aside my tendency to try and make sense of my tears and simply let myself feel what needed to be felt. It was then that my grandparents–who had died within 6 weeks of each other, years before–faces came to my mind and my sobs became more intense. At some point I fell asleep–exhausted, tear stained, and feeling as if I had been hit by a bus.

***

While I wasn’t shocked that the death of my client and Rachel had also opened the window of grief for my grandparents’ death to come back up to the surface, I was surprised at how different it felt.

When my grandparents passed away, I was at a place in my life and deconstruction that death and the questions and experience around it felt so overwhelming that I stuffed it deep inside me and hoped that as time wore on, it would eventually settle and dissipate. I can see now that this was a coping mechanism–one that I had previously employed frequently–learning how to numb and dissociate when things became difficult. 

This time, however, the emotions and tears would not remain stuffed away in the hidden compartments of my soul. I was at a place in my life where grappling with these hard, human experiences didn’t feel as scary as they once did, and so I allowed myself space to consider the existential questions of life. 

***

In religion, we often use mechanisms of spiritual bypassing to skirt around the issues we struggle to deal with. It’s why statements such as “well at least they aren’t suffering any longer” or “they are in a better place” are common. Statements like this circumvent the human emotional process and tell us that how we are feeling isn’t that important since the other person is “in a better place”. Statements like this, however, are not for or about the person who has died. 

They are for us–those who have survived. A way to make us feel better, even though it doesn’t offer us an actual way to process the heavy emotions and grief that settles into our body. Spiritual bypassing, instead, gives us quippy statements to try and make sense of that which is unfathomable. 

***

Six months after my client and Rachel died, I received a call that one of my licensure supervisees, whom I had known for several years by this point, had been in a horrific car crash and died at the scene of the accident. I knew enough from my experiences previously in the year to give myself permission to ride the waves of emotions as the news of her sudden passing sank deeper and deeper. 

Later that evening, as I sat on my couch, trying to ward off the numbness and freeze that I was used to employing at times like this, I caught myself and asked my body if there was any other way that we could deal with this. I didn’t want to become numb and shut my emotions down. It was then that I realized that my emotions–my sadness, my grief, my tears…they all showed just how much this person meant to me. My sadness honored who she was, who she was in my life, and the incredible influence and encouragement she was for others. In what felt like an audible voice, I could hear my supervisee saying back to me “your tears honor what we had and I am honored by that”. She meant something to me; my emotions about her death affirmed that and affirmed the importance of her life. 

***

The experiences I have with those I deeply cared about who have passed away, have led me through a deeper and more meaningful process of grieving the life and experiences I had within high control religion. Grief includes facing the things that we would rather not see and beginning to let ourselves grapple with the hard stuff. It’s not about getting to an end point of acceptance where we think that everything is ok and we are no longer impacted by what has happened. Rather, it’s a process of recognizing that many things have deeply impacted us and that it is ok, and necessary, to be accurate and honest so that we are free to be present and moving forward in life.

I’ve grieved my departure from religion many times–not because I wish I could be back in that system or because I do not recognize how deeply toxic most of the messages and practices were. I grieve because that time in my life, my identity, my relationships, my passions and my purpose meant something to me. They were valuable and important; losing those things hurt on the deepest levels. 

Like I’ve learned from the deaths of loved ones, grieving my life inside religion needs more than mere cognitive statements and recognitions that life on the outside is so much better, or that I ‘dodged a bullet’. Those things may be true, but in most cases not only are they not helpful, they bypass the gravity of loss that most people experience when their identity, community, and system of belief is pulled away from them. 

This month I am talking about grief across all of my platforms (social media, blog, newsletter, etc.) I often tell my clients and colleagues that resolving and recovering from trauma is “just” a process of grief. …it’s this process of recognizing what happened, being accurate and honest, and letting ourselves move through the ups and downs as we integrate that into our current life.