A Reclaim Sister Circle Message – Shared in Circle Nov 6, 2022

Have you left a high-demand, oppressive religion and are now wondering how to trust yourself? The truth it, reclaiming self-trust after religion doesn’t involve courses, endless therapy, or jumping out of airplanes. It can help, sure. But the truth about your self-trust, your sovereignty, in actuality, may surprise you.

Religion has taught us that to trust ourselves is to consequently not trust in God, the church, or its leaders. As a woman, to trust yourself was to trust the one person you were told was evil. Women were disobedient Eves, the temptresses. We were helpless, beguiling, and misinformed. Women were child-bearers, home-keepers, man- helpers. We were to go give endlessly of ourselves, and never putting ourselves first. Women were not sovereign beings. We were taught to follow, never lead. Women were to stick in groups, never strike out on their own. Religion taught us that to trust ourselves was to go astray, to be unlovable, to die.

To trust yourself is to intentionally question the old truths you were given from others. It means listening to your body, not just your mind. It means feeling your way through the dark, eyes closed, ignoring the distracting lights around you trying to pull you down various avenues. To trust yourself, fully and completely, is to believe that you know what’s best for yourself.

We are women who have come away from religion. By definition, we are women who have chosen to trust ourselves over others. We put down the old book and old voices and turned away from those who claimed authority over us. We questioned our parent’s teachings, our sunday-school teacher’s threats, and cast doubt on society’s imbedded fears of the unknown.

In truth, we chose ourselves. For once, we chose to put our safety, our happiness, our future first, despite the many voices around us telling us we were choosing wrong. How is it possible we were able to ignore so many voices, even the ones from within, disguised as our higher self, telling us to stay put, stay small, stay quite, stay in our box? Because of self-trust.

So though we still may have days of self-doubt, weeks of worry, and even years of stuckness, we know in our heart of hearts, that we are on the path that is best for ourselves. We know we will continue to choose what’s best for ourselves. Even when we don’t know what that is in the moment. We trust we’ll figure it out. Trust that if we choose wrong, we’ll feel it, and can correct course. We trust that if we fall, we will pick ourselves up. We trust ourselves to strengthen our intuition, our self-love, our sovereignty.

Because we are women who chose ourselves when the entire world told us not to. We may feel like we don’t trust ourselves. We may even feel fear over trusting ourselves – beating ourselves up over past choices that didn’t serve our deeper needs, or for falling for religion for so long, or for letting someone else hold the reigns of our life for so long. But in reality, we are a shining example of what self-trust is. We are the poster child of a sovereign woman. And together, we can turn towards this light we’ve already begun shining outward towards others. Perhaps it’s less about self-trust, and more about developing our courage to recognize the profound self-trust we already have.

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To get the most out of these messages, I invite you to join the next live circle, happening every Sunday! Come reclaim self-trust after religion, along with so much more.