Holy and Hurt: Finding A Roadmap for Spiritual Trauma Recovery
Sometimes I imagine holding the books I want and need in my hands years before they exist. In these imaginings, fantasy and prophecy combine forming a dream for cohesion in the midst of fractured landscapes. My wandering self asks: Will someone please give me a map? In these moments, I rely on the work of time and the passion of scholars who will one day convey complex concepts in a way my brain and my body can absorb.
Over the past several years, I felt a longing for a new work like this germinating as I paid attention to trends in research on religious identification, hearing terms like “deconstruction” and “trauma”, and “post-Christian” gain traction and as I began uncovering layers of harmful rhetoric within my own being. I pictured the tools I’d one day call indispensable. In response to the dwindling number of people identifying as Christian in the U.S., who would be willing and able to gather those holding such disparate parts and offer a message of hope?
With immense joy and gratitude I can say a book like this has finally arrived and the author is a dear sister and a beloved teacher.
Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing by Dr. Hillary McBride released on April 15, 2025. This book flowed from her podcast by the same name which I listened to studiously in the Summer of 2024. Months after this podcast drop, I participated in a small group Hillary facilitated. We gathered around questions of changing spirituality, religious re-identification, and meaning-making in a brave new world. When the opportunity came to join the launch team for Holy Hurt, I couldn’t sign up fast enough. For me, supporting McBride’s newest book has also involved some courageous steps of my own, like forming a local book group and -gasp!- even making an Instagram reel.
These steps may seem small to an outsider, but to me, these are brave actions from someone who is in active reflection and remorse regarding her former life as a Christian leader.
For many years I led small groups, mentored younger disciples, and created rituals to foster religious belonging. I sharpened all the tools I knew as part of my profession. Christian conferences hated to see me coming. There isn’t adequate space here to address how radically my life has changed since those years. To re-approach religious material with a completely new framework of trauma recovery feels like a tender leveling, like a gentle force pressing my back to the earth, reminding me how small my place is within her.
Here’s what I know now that I couldn’t say 10 years ago: religion and spirituality is both beautiful and dangerous. Faith at the expense of human dignity severs the soul. Choosing belief over relationship burdens every connection with principles. And no matter how worthwhile those principles claim to be, they cloud my vision of myself and the world around me. The faith I clung to during the first half of my life offered so much potential for growth. Yet it also simultaneously cut me off from wholeness. My belief system convinced me that goodness was always outside of myself somewhere, in another person, another confession, another moral prescription. Eventually with enough relational safety and support, I would be able to say “enough”.
This is the insidious nature of spiritual trauma: it declares you “good” for dismantling your worth. In a hierarchy where only one can be named king, feudalism doesn’t have to be codified as the law of the land in order to rule. For those of us already sensitive to social dynamics and eager to please, the lesson of subservience becomes our livelihood.
Here is what I’ve learned in my own recovery from spiritual trauma:
-Restoring choice is paramount.
-Flexibility, adaptability, coherence, energy, and stability are signs of health.
-Making your wants and needs explicit to others is a gift. Knowing them in the first place takes a lot of work.
-Sharing my lived experience is worthwhile even if I’m the only one willing to hear it.
-Belonging and authenticity are sometimes at odds. The search for both extends out from families of origin into families of adulthood.
-My path is unique. Right now, it involves a pause on committing to a spiritual community. And one day, I may start again. “At least if I return, it will be honest,” I said with my whole chest to my last pastor and dear friend.
-When perfection used to be a requirement, imperfection is medicine. If you were once advised to embody being a “model Christian”, and implied in such a statement was adherence to a particular code of conduct, your sign of freedom may very well be someone else’s disappointment in you.
-Walking the path will reveal the tools you need.
To all who walk a similar path, please hear these words as an echo in the wild: You are not alone. You never were.
Whether by reading a book like Holy Hurt, connecting with others who honor your journey, resting your back against soft spring grass, or finding some ancient, new-to-us way through this treacherous terrain of recovery, may you find every tool you require to sustain your precious life.
