A Well-Trained Wife

The memoir opened on October 28, 2007. Tia Levings, thirty-three, lay on the bathroom floor of the Blue House in Lutherville, Tennessee. Her traumatized eleven-year-old son, William, had just struck her cheek at the top of the stairs. Tia realized her children had witnessed the violence she believed she was hiding. Staying meant raising sons who hit women and a daughter who stayed with men who hit. She resolved that no savior was coming and pushed herself up from the floor.

The narrative rewound to 1984. Ten-year-old Tia moved with her parents and younger sister, Monica, from Michigan to Jacksonville, Florida, after the family's bankruptcy. In Michigan, she found God in the trees. In Florida, she stopped eating and could not make friends. Her mother involved the family in First Baptist Church, a sprawling megachurch. Tia learned that compliance kept her parents happy. When a friend's mother died of cancer, the teacher framed the death as God's will, and Tia absorbed the message that God could take anyone at any time.

Her parents enrolled her in Grace Christian Academy, where teachers showed graphic films about the rapture and abortion. Tia was bullied and developed nightmares. She befriended Marci, a bold girl, but when Marci arranged for Tia to meet an older boy, he sexually assaulted her. Tia internalized the assault as a consequence of rebellion and recommitted to Christianity. A talent scout identified her gift for art, but a pastor told her scholarship money was reserved for men. She packed away her portfolios and concluded that denying her desires was the only path to love.

At a Christmas hayride in 1993, nineteen-year-old Tia met Allan Brown, a Navy sailor who pursued her aggressively. He isolated her from her friend Michael with an anti-gay slur. Early on, Allan struck Tia in the throat during a jealous rage, nearly ran her over, and pinned her to the ground. She rationalized his violence as her own fault. A premarital counselor told them they had failed the compatibility test, but Tia dismissed the warning. On December 30, 1994, she married Allan at First Baptist.

On their wedding night, Allan forced himself on Tia three times despite her pleas. A doctor on their honeymoon diagnosed significant genital trauma. Tia studied Fascinating Womanhood by Helen B. Andelin, a manual teaching that a wife's unhappiness is her own fault. When she slapped Allan after he insulted her, he dragged her by the hair, slammed her head into the doorframe, and forced her to scrub the floor on her knees.

Tia became pregnant and chose home birth. William was born at home when she was twenty. Judith Small, a devoted adherent of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), became Tia's mentor. The IBLP promoted strict hierarchical family structures: no birth control and absolute submission under an "Umbrella of Authority" placing Christ over husband over wife over children. A second child, Katie, followed.

During her third pregnancy, an ultrasound revealed the baby had only two heart chambers, a condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Clara was born full-term, and Tia advocated for surgical repair in Atlanta. On Mother's Day, Allan forced Tia to attend church instead of visiting Clara; when she tried to leave, he pushed her out of the car on an overpass. On May 26, Clara died at nine weeks old. Tia held her daughter's body through the night.

After Clara's death, Tia discovered the Trapdoor Society, an online community of homeschooling mothers exploring literature, art, and self-education. She read widely and began writing in secret. A fourth child, Liam, was born at home.

Allan immersed himself in patriarchal theology through writers like Doug Phillips of the Vision Forum ministry. He tightened control: Tia had to call him "my lord," wear only dresses, and submit all writing for his approval. He discovered Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD), a practice framing wife-spanking as holy correction, and made Tia write a contract promising not to accuse him of domestic violence. When Tia detailed the abuse to a church counselor, the counselor instructed her to submit more fully. Allan conducted "discipline" sessions, striking Tia with his belt while she screamed into a pillow.

A fifth child, Gavin, was born. After punching his boss and losing his job, Allan moved the family to Knoxville, Tennessee, to join a covenant church practicing headship theology, the belief that husbands hold God-given authority over wives and children. Tia launched a popular blog called Living Deliberately, but church elders pressured Allan to censor her writing and relocate the family to isolated Lutherville, further cutting her off from support.

Tia discovered Eastern Orthodox Christianity and was drawn to its emphasis on mystery and its treatment of women as valued individuals. Allan joined her, and the covenant elders excommunicated the family. Tia and Allan were chrismated, formally received through anointing, into the Orthodox Church on April 1, 2007.

The hope was short-lived. Allan deteriorated, drinking heavily, screaming about demons, and threatening to kill Tia or take the children. When Tia returned from a hospital stay for exhaustion, she learned Allan had forced William to kill a litter of puppies. William, traumatized, struck Tia at the top of the stairs. Lying on the bathroom floor, she resolved to get her children out.

Father Justin, a priest at their parish, helped her plan. On Halloween night, Allan paced the house wielding a piece of firewood, spitting on Tia, and threatening to kill her. When he abruptly left, Tia loaded the sleeping children into the minivan and fled. Passing through town, she saw Allan's car coming from his office, where his gun was stored. She drove 561 miles to Jacksonville, calling her parents with the truth for the first time. Her mother told her to come home.

Police disarmed and hospitalized Allan after he called, firing a gun. A court-appointed investigator instructed Tia to take the children and hide. Using her Trapdoor network, she sheltered with friends up the East Coast for four months. On May 21, 2008, a judge finalized the divorce and granted Tia the Blue House; the investigator recommended she receive full custody.

Tia enrolled the children in public school and began therapy with Stephanie, who named what happened as rape, abuse, and trauma, tracing Tia's patterns to her religious upbringing. She married a kind man she called C. G., but debilitating migraines and vision loss followed. Diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), she began Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a trauma-processing technique. Through Brainspotting, a gaze-focused therapy, she accessed a childhood memory of standing among trees on the Michigan farm, the first time she had encountered God in nature. Her migraines diminished and her vision cleared.

She watched as fundamentalist leaders fell: Bill Gothard, IBLP's founder, was removed from the organization, and Doug Phillips was exposed for sexual abuse. Tia began creating social media content connecting patriarchal fundamentalism to public headlines. When C. G. asked for a divorce, she absorbed the loss without letting it destroy her. She booked passage to visit William in Italy. The memoir closed with Tia describing herself as a tree rooted deep with arms reaching for the sky, belonging only to herself: a mother, writer, artist, and friend who had departed from the training that nearly destroyed her.