The silence was deafening. One day I had a family, friends, an entire community. The next day – nothing. No calls. No texts. Not even eye contact at the grocery store. In 2007, I became a ghost in my own hometown, exiled from the only world I’d known for 35 years.
I remember the moment it happened. The hard wooden chair beneath me. The sterile fluorescent lights humming overhead. Five men in dark suits – all whom I had served alongside as a fellow “Elder” in the congregation just weeks prior – seated behind a table, pronouncing judgment: “a wicked man.”
Words that would sever me from everyone I held dear – my father, mother, two brothers, every friend I’d ever known. All because I dared to question, dared to think differently, dared to be human.
The Fall
When the Jehovah’s Witness elders officially “disfellowshipped” me, it wasn’t just a spiritual exile. It was an emotional execution.
Every member of the faith was now required to shun me completely – to treat me as if I were dead. My entire support network vanished overnight, leaving nothing but echoing absence where connection once lived.
Let me tell you something about silence – it has texture. Weight. The silence of being shunned feels like invisible hands pressing against your skin, like trying to breathe underwater, like screaming into a vacuum. It’s a silence that seeps into your bones and whispers: you are alone.
They do this very intentionally. They want you to feel alone. Isolated. Diminished. That’s the violent experience they desire to coerce you to return to “the fold” of God’s chosen people.
It’s fucking evil.
And this wasn’t even my last experience with spiritual trauma.
Years later, it would happen again – another group, another sudden exile, more public shame. Different verse, same old song: men wielding power like weapons, using spirituality as a shield for violence.
The Darkness
Here’s what they don’t tell you about spiritual trauma: it doesn’t just break your faith – it fractures your very sense of reality, your sense of self.
Everything you thought you knew about love, about truth, about the Divine… it all comes crashing down like a house of cards in a hurricane.
For years, I wandered in that darkness. Lost my spiritual practice. Lost my prayer. Lost my community. Lost my way. I’d spent my whole life allowing others to “show me the way,” to tell me how I was supposed to approach God.
But listen now, because this is gospel truth:
You don’t need their permission to pray
You don’t need their blessing to believe
You don’t need their approval to love
The Divine is not their property
The Divine is not their prisoner
The Divine is not bound by their rules or their walls or their judgments
The Divine is free.
And so are you.
The Light
Freedom, though – real freedom – isn’t just about breaking chains. It’s about building something new from the broken pieces. And that’s where my real journey began.
I discovered something revolutionary: I get to choose what I believe.
Let that sink in for a moment. Feel the weight of it. The power of it. The sheer, audacious liberation of it.
But don’t be fooled either. With liberation comes excruciating terror when your soul is at stake – especially when you’ve never decided on your own and been told that you can’t trust your own heart.
I started small. Reading books that had been condemned by my former religion. Testing ideas in my heart.
Eventually, I began exploring new spiritual practices, including the Sufi practice of Remembrance. Oh, was that terrifying at first! My hands would shake. My heart would race. Every fiber of my conditioned being screamed “DANGER!” There was even a time when I would use hard drugs whenever I started the practice in an effort to numb the fear and pain that arose (not a strategy I recommend, by the way).
But here’s what I learned about healing: it’s not about being fearless. It’s about being gentle with your fear. About understanding the difference between discomfort and trauma. About giving yourself permission to explore, to pause, to step back, to try again.
The Wisdom
Through this journey, I became a master translator – not of languages, but of spirit. When I encountered triggering words or concepts, I learned to ask: “What else could this mean? What truth lives beneath the trigger?”
Take the name “Allah” – a word that once filled me with terror due to years of conditioning. But I began to play with it, to explore it, to make it my own. I noticed how it begins with “all” – which speaks to the all-encompassing nature of the Divine. How it ends with “ahhh” – like a sigh of relief, like coming home. All-ahhh. A breath of the infinite.
This isn’t about religion. This isn’t about doctrine. This is about finding your own path to the Divine – whatever that means to you.
The Integration
Today, I see my trauma differently. It’s not just a wound – it’s a watchman, a protector, a teacher. When those old fears arise, I don’t fight them. I thank them. I love them. Then I use the tools I’ve learned to find my way forward again.
Because here’s what I know now, bone-deep and blood-true:
I choose to believe Love.
I believe the Divine is Love.
I believe Love is the answer… all-ways.
Full stop.
Do I still struggle sometimes to reflect that Love? Absolutely. But I celebrate how imperfectly and relentlessly I try. Because that’s what this journey is really about – not perfection, but persistence. Not certainty, but sincere searching. Not someone else’s truth, but your own heart’s wisdom.
A Word to Fellow Travelers
If you’re reading this with tears in your eyes, if you’re carrying your own spiritual wounds, if you’re still finding your way through the darkness – I see you. I hear you. I understand you. You are not alone.
Your journey won’t look like mine. It shouldn’t. But I hope you’ll remember this:
It’s okay to be uncomfortable when trying new spiritual practices. It’s not okay for them to traumatize you.
It’s okay to question. But it’s not okay to be silenced.
It’s okay to find your own path. It’s not okay to let others define your relationship with the Divine.
Take what resonates from my story. Leave what doesn’t. Trust your heart’s knowing. Because in the end, that’s what spirituality really is – not a set of rules or rituals, but a love story between your heart and the Divine.
And that story? That’s yours to write.
—
*A note to readers: This piece isn’t meant to invite pity or advice about “good” spiritual groups. Instead, I hope it opens a door for you to explore your own journey with fresh eyes and tender heart.