A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

Tia arrived at her parents’ partially built farm in Florida in a state of hypervigilant shock. Though physically safe, her body remained trapped in a trauma response for years, flinching at unexpected noises. A week after her arrival, Allan called in a drunken, suicidal state. Tia heard what sounded like gunshots over the phone before her mother took the receiver and hung up. A police officer later called to clarify: Allan was intoxicated and unarmed when officers arrived, had threatened them, fell face-first off the porch, and was taken into custody for evaluation by a mobile crisis team; a gun was found in their bedroom. This event prompted Tia to file for an Order of Protection. When she returned to Tennessee to retrieve her belongings, someone apparently alerted Allan, who unexpectedly arrived at the house; police responding to a report of an intruder arrested him for violating the protection order. Tia hired a lawyer who, at their initial consultation, gave her the book The Battered Woman, which began challenging her resistance to describing her experience as abuse. 

Later, Dr. W, who was conducting the court-ordered forensic evaluation, met with Allan and then urgently called Tia, telling her to take her children and hide, telling no one but her priest where she was going. Using her online network of friends, Tia embarked on a four-month road trip, staying with supporters up the East Coast. During this time, she realized that much of her grief centered on the idealized dream of the life she had been promised, the years she had lost, and the person she might have become.

Tia also began therapy with a counselor named Stephanie, who identified her experiences as rape, abuse, control, and trauma and prompted her to examine how her religious upbringing had shaped her understanding of marriage and obedience. On May 21, 2008, Tia and Allan’s divorce was finalized, and Dr. W later recommended that Tia receive full legal and physical custody. As Tia began rebuilding her professional life, a work trip to New York led to a new job opportunity. Back in her father’s woodshop, she allowed herself to imagine becoming “more” than the roles that had previously defined her and accepted the job.

Tia set out to rebuild and reclaim her life. She deactivated her old blog, started painting again, joined a domestic violence support group, and enrolled her children in public school, a decision that challenged her long-held belief that the outside world was inherently dangerous, which she later connected to a wider evangelical culture of fear and isolation. With friends, she read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. The book introduced her to the idea of choosing oneself and reconceptualizing God as a magnificent, loving presence beyond restrictive rules. Tia continued therapy with Stephanie, although she remained hypervigilant and found that talking about her experiences did not provide the relief she had expected. At her new Orthodox church, she was introduced to a man she privately nicknamed “Cary Grant” (C. G.). Their relationship blossomed, introducing her to freely chosen attraction, desire, intimacy, and pleasure for the first time. As she reassessed her former beliefs, Tia began keeping a notebook of teachings she now considered wrong and what they had cost her. Later that year, accompanied by her father and C. G., Tia returned to the Blue House one last time to pack her things, performing a symbolic ritual of burning her old clothes. When the new school year began, she moved into her own apartment with her children, feeling prepared to become whole.

Tia’s healing journey was complex. She and C. G. dated for three years and married, but she found herself slipping back into old habits of people-pleasing to maintain harmony. Shortly after their wedding, she was struck by debilitating physical symptoms, including chronic migraines, vision distortions, and severe pain. A third neurologist tentatively suggested multiple sclerosis, though a later specialist at the Mayo Clinic cleared her of serious pathologies and instead diagnosed adrenal fatigue and possibly complicated grief. The health crisis led her to seek treatment from Bette, a trauma therapist who identified her symptoms as PTSD and believed that the extended, repetitive nature of her traumatic experiences indicated Complex PTSD (CPTSD). 

Bette used Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a therapy that helped Tia process traumatic memories without discussing them in depth. The sessions provided significant physical and emotional relief. Tia also joined Al-Anon, where she learned about codependency and boundaries. When her migraines later intensified, a specialist at the Mayo Clinic cleared her of serious pathologies and diagnosed adrenal fatigue and possible complicated grief. After losing her job and deliberately slowing down, Tia encountered the term “religious trauma” online and recognized that her experiences with religion continued to affect her so strongly that she could no longer tolerate attending church. She began working with another therapist, Pat, who used a technique called Brainspotting. Through this process, Tia revisited interconnected childhood memories and traumatic experiences involving church teachings about hell and bodily shame. The therapy culminated in a powerful session where she reconnected with her joyful, free, “eternal self,” as her vision and physical strength began to return.

The 2016 presidential election and the vocal support for Donald Trump from evangelical leaders clarified for Tia that her conflict was with the systems of religious power, not with spirituality itself. She became politically active, attending the Women’s March. As the #MeToo movement gained prominence, Tia reflected on scandals and consequences involving religious leaders and institutions associated with her past, including Bill Gothard. She noted that Joshua Harris, author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, publicly disavowed his former teachings on courtship and purity culture. These developments intensified her concern about the continued influence of fundamentalism and its growing intersections with political power. While processing her past, she read David Richo’s How to Be an Adult, which helped her recognize the need to grieve losses she had previously bypassed and to become her own advocate. She began replacing the either/or thinking she associated with high-control religion with a “both/and” perspective that allowed her to acknowledge the harm she experienced alongside her resilience and growth. This perspective also allowed her to extend compassion toward Allan by considering how trauma, fear, addiction, and patriarchal religious teachings had shaped many of his behaviors without denying the abuse she experienced. At her son William’s Navy graduation, she walked past Allan without recognizing him. Later, standing with William beside Lake Michigan, Tia reflected on how far they had come and symbolically released the losses she had carried with her.

The 2019 federal raid on the car lot where Josh Duggar worked was a catalyst for Tia to speak out publicly. Believing that Duggar’s actions could not be separated from the high-control IBLP system he was raised in, she began creating social media content to share her experiences of fundamentalism and high-control religious practices. Her account quickly attracted a growing audience, including fellow survivors. A visit to her childhood home in Michigan helped her reconnect different parts of her past and present self, even as she recognized that she had to let the property go.

The narrative then shifts to October 2022, revealing that her husband, C. G., had asked for a divorce. Though shocked and hurt, Tia resolved to handle the separation by prioritizing her own well-being, a principle she had learned from Eat, Pray, Love. With her divorce hearing scheduled for October 31, the anniversary of her Halloween night escape from Allan, Tia recognized that she had grown past trying to persuade someone to stay and prepared to grieve the marriage without sacrificing her health. She then planned a solo, slow-travel adventure to Europe by sea. The book concluded with Tia reflecting on her new, private spirituality, which was founded on love, not rules. She fully embraced an identity independent of prescribed roles and affirmed that she belonged to herself, guided by the internal truth that led her home.