The Safe Questions

When I started writing this memoir, I wasn’t sure what the actual story was.

I knew it had to do with the intersection of religious trauma, growing up with a mother who I now know had serious codependency issues, and learning from emotionally unavailable parents. How that trifecta affected the way I saw myself, the way I approached relationships, the things I learned about safety. How it influenced the environments, both work and personal, I found myself in for most of my life.

And how difficult it’s been over the past 20 years to unravel, to unlearn, those lessons and find a better path.

This excerpt is one of the defining moments of my childhood when I started to recognize how hurtful religion could be—and how it could even override family love.

I was seven when I realized religion made no sense. At least not the religion that had been forced down my throat my entire life.

We were driving home from our weekly pilgrimage to church, and something I’d heard was stuck in my head. I can’t remember if it came directly from the mass or from something my parents said on the way out, but it had lodged itself somewhere and I needed to understand it.

The idea was this: only Catholics got into heaven. Everyone else was basically out of luck when they died. No promise of a happy afterlife, whatever that may look like. It was only some clouds and some Catholics. The ones who didn’t get suck in purgatory, anyway.

So I asked. “Where does everyone else go? Like the Jewish people? They can’t just fall into a black hole, right?”