The following is an excerpt from the new book Healing Sacred Wounds: A Guide to Overcoming Religious and Spiritual Trauma by SC Nealy, available now from Bloomsbury.
Drawing on empirical research, therapeutic practice, and the author’s own lived experience, SC Nealy explains how harmful religious environments can produce trauma symptoms comparable to those associated with abuse, coercion, and complex PTSD. It clarifies what religious trauma is, how it manifests emotionally and physically, and why it has remained underrecognized despite its widespread impact. Particular attention is given to the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals, for whom religious harm is often compounded by rejection, shame, and identity-based violence.
Each chapter combines psychoeducation with guided reflection and self-directed exercises designed to support healing. Readers are invited to identify and validate traumatic experiences, challenge internalized blame and shame, establish healthy boundaries, and cultivate self-compassion. Nealy also addresses the complexities of witnessing or participating in harm, offering pathways for accountability, repair, and forgiveness without minimizing injury.
Rather than prescribing a single outcome, the book honors multiple paths forward. Some readers may choose to rebuild a faith identity on their own terms; others may step away from religion entirely. Both choices are treated as valid expressions of healing. Discussion questions support use by clinicians, support groups, and educational settings, while an accompanying online Toolbox for Survivors provides worksheets and additional resources.
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Accessible, affirming, and grounded in years of clinical expertise, this guide offers a hopeful path for survivors and helps them move toward long-term psychological well-being.
“I would never love a grandchild of mine that was born out of wedlock,” my father said to me and the father of the child that was in my womb at the time as we were standing across the kitchen island from him in his home in Florida.
I had been twenty-eight years old when I’d met Trevor, and in the midst of just beginning to publicly explore my bisexuality, which was, at the time, how I thought I might identify as my sexual orientation. I had had secret relationships with women since middle school, but I’d discounted those as nothing more than intensely strong female friendships, or just sexual experiments with women, or convinced myself that all straight women kissed girls sometimes and that it was completely normal.
Prior to meeting Trevor, I’d made many attempts to come out publicly, but this time was the first time I had finally told my girlfriends that I was dating a woman and identified as bisexual in 2018. I didn’t have anyone else in my life then that was openly gay or bisexual, and, honestly, I didn’t really get any support from the cishet world I was in.
A few people just said they accepted and loved me no matter what, an aunt told me it didn’t matter that I dated some women as long as I ended up with a man anyway, my father told me that he hated the sin but loved the sinner, the church I was in at the time chose to actively pretend they didn’t know and refused to acknowledge homosexuality in any manner, and one of my best friends at the time told me she couldn’t be my friend anymore because my life seemed too chaotic for her. No one celebrated with me or made me feel excited and empowered about this new identity, and, at worst, several people actively shamed me for it. So, when I met Trevor awhile later, I made the decision—mostly unconsciously—to stop trying to pursue the queer identity that I had barely tried on for a few months.
I wanted normalcy and acceptance, and he was safely in all of those categories. Normal, down-to-earth man who my parents would easily love and accept and who I could see creating a family happily with. He was as uninterested in traditional anything as I was and was supportive from day one about me figuring out my sexuality and being open about my feelings for women.
Our friendship developed quickly and easily, and while I was never able to participate in all of the sexual activities a straight woman probably would have wanted to participate in, he never pushed me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with, and I truly believed that this was the dream. Being in a cishet-passing relationship that felt safe and comfortable in which I could raise a family and not lose the love and acceptance of my own family and that I didn’t have to do sexual acts that felt uncomfortable felt like I’d found the cheat code to having the life I thought I wanted for myself.
Six months into meeting, we decided to have children and got pregnant on our first try. I was so thrilled and so excited; this was the family that I had always wanted. I had built my life to be all the things my father wanted me to be: highly educated, good job, successful career, handsome cis white partner, and giving him his first grandchild. Surely, my father would love me now.
And then I stood there in his kitchen, pregnant and swollen and all the things I thought he wanted me to be, while he told Trevor that he admired him for putting up with me because I had always been so difficult to love and that he wanted Trevor and me to do the right thing by our child and get married so our child’s soul wouldn’t be damned to hell. I was numb listening to my father speak about how hard I was to love, how difficult I was as a person, and how surprising it was that anyone could tolerate me enough to raise a child with me. I wasn’t healed enough yet at that point to think, “hey, this isn’t okay, and no parent should talk that way about his daughter or his future granddaughter.” All I could think from my complex-traumatized brain was, “okay, we need to get married.” I need to be better for my father—I need to prove that I’m worthy of love.
I was five months pregnant at the altar and had no clue that I was about to embark on a harrowing two-year journey of giving birth to a child with significant medical complications. We’d spend most of her first two years of life in and out of our local children’s hospital during a worldwide pandemic, and that’s when the cracks in Trevor’s and my marital façade would really begin.
COVID-19 regulations didn’t allow two parents to be at the hospital at one time. We’d trade on and off occasionally, but for the most part, as the chest-feeding parent, I had to be at the hospital around the clock. All we had to lean on at that time was our friendship—texting and phone calls back and forth, FaceTime videos of the baby, Zoom calls with our pastor before major surgeries—and any semblance of a romantic connection between him and me just became too tiring for me to pretend anymore. My energy and focus was on keeping my daughter alive, his was on keeping our bills paid, and we stayed in this survival state for years.
While the romantic connection he and I had briefly tried to give ourselves might have gone away, our friendship grew into family. He became my go-to for emotional support and love and taught me through that what actual unconditional love and familial support was. When my daughter was at her sickest, I began battling with my own family dynamics and realizing that the treatment I had accepted was now beginning to happen to my daughter.
My stepmother was angry at me one day for telling my youngest sister that she needed to finish paperwork that would help her pay for college, and so my stepmother decided to get back at me by deleting the fundraising page for my daughter that had her entire medical history on it and the finances keeping us afloat while I was out of work and at the hospital. It was in this moment that I realized my family would use my children to hurt me and that suddenly felt too far.
Until that point, I’d allowed them to hurt me, but I was not going to allow them to hurt my child as well. It was also when I realized that even if I’d curated my entire life to be exactly who I thought my dad wanted me to be that it was never going to be enough. He still took my stepmother’s side, said horrible things to me, and made me feel so small. Trevor’s unconditional support and defense of me and his daughter became my new family, and I slowly began leaning into what it would feel like to let go of everything I’d once known about what family meant.
As my daughter’s health stabilized and we came home years later, Trevor and I opened up our marriage, and I began dating women. I confronted my family and began being more open about who I was, and they quickly faded away. They had only ever loved me conditionally, and when I stopped making myself fit those conditions, there was no real love left to lean on. I began exploring queerness in a whole new way, and Trevor cheered me on every step of the way.
When I realized I probably had always been gaslighting myself into my attraction to men out of my own religious trauma and deep-rooted shame, and, in reality, I was actually a lesbian, Trevor gave me a hug and said he loved me no matter what. We decided to have another child together to create the family that we both wanted to give our children, we got a divorce, and moved in a block apart from each other.
We continue to see each other every day, co-parent as best friends, and our romantic partners all are required to embrace and lean into our unique family dynamic (and they do, so lovingly). Our daughters are lively, secure, and so deeply loved; they’ll never know conditions on his or my love, and they’ll never feel made to fit a narrative of who he or I might want them to be other than held, accepted, and loved. My wife considers him one of her best friends, and our children feel fully loved by every adult in their life without ever having to choose sides.
He and I had broken the cycle.
SC Nealy (they/she) is a licensed psychotherapist, the owner of LGBT+ Counseling Collaborative, and an award-winning speaker and author with over seventeen years of clinical specialty in LGBT+ issues, religious trauma, and relationship counseling. Healing Sacred Wounds: A Guide to Overcoming Religious and Spiritual Trauma is available wherever books are sold.
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