Life Beyond Religious Trauma

Jessica again invites her therapist, Dr. Russell Surveyer and Fr. Carl Chudy into a conversation about her experience of grooming. Dr. Russ explains about what grooming is Jess shares her own experience. It was that experience that helped her be alerted to help her young son, whose bus driver allegedly arrested for child porn possession. Jess recounts Fr. Kane and the child porn ring in the Diocese of Worcester years in the 1980's and 90's. Understanding grooming is not only an integral part of healing, but for abuse prevention as well.

In this episode, Jess shares her struggle with anger. Childhood abuse of any kind creates trauma that can include side effects, many of which don’t magically go away, even when you grow up. However, while trauma is responsible for multiple side effects, anger is often seen in adult survivors of childhood abuse. In dialogue with her therapist and spiritual guide, Jess shares her struggles and insights.

I continue to talk of layers of healing that intersected with the work of therapy, a failing marriage, and a number of other issues that became part of my healing, including returning back to the church to seek sources of healing in the very places where I was abused. That proved to re-trigger many things. Dr. Russ and Fr. Carl continue to offer their concerns.

The first episode will be an opportunity to briefly share the first part of my religious trauma story and a Thealing journey I embarked on, particularly in the last seven years. As destructive as some Catholic church leaders were in my life, they could not kill my spiritual hunger. (Trigger Warning) Some of the episodes are in collaboration with Dr. Russell Surveyer and Fr. Carl Chudy, D.Min.