My Story

Understanding, grieving, growing, and healing seems to come in waves for me, sometimes unexpectedly, but often connected to a significant change or event in my life.  New motherhood was, for me, one of the most impactful cycles of re-processing, and was the prompt for starting this blog.  Here is my initial series of posts, started shortly after my first baby was born:

Everyone has a different story to tell, and this is mine.  Although it involves a lot of painful memories, I believe that re-evaluating my childhood experiences will help me not only heal from them but also avoid repeating them now that I'm a wife and mother.  I hope that sharing my story online will encourage others who are recovering from a similar background.  Please don't hesitate to contact me if you need someone to talk to about your own journey: pasttensepresentprogressive [at] gmail.com.

Part 1: Good Intentions, Bad Fruit
Part 2: Homeschooled Girls and Trash Cans: The Social Isolation of Homeschooling
Part 3: Sexuality: The Elephant in the Room
Part 4: Authoritarian Parenting and Emotional Repression
Part 5: Forming Boundaries Late in Life
Part 6: A Tomboy in Christian Patriarchy
Part 7: The World: (Not So) Evil and Dangerous

Here are more key moments of self-understanding for me, the first hints of my ability to show myself compassion and acceptance. 

Bad Evil Psychology Helped Me

My Decision to Try Mental Health Meds

Emotional Flashbacks from Complex-PTSD


And finally, here are several posts that provide glimpses into the process of my deconversion--from fundamentalist evangelical Christian to liberal Christian to my current agnosticism.  I like to call it "How I Became Everything I Feared, With No Regrets".  

Bible Irony

Church: To Go Or Not To Go

De-Conversion Doesn't Have "A Moment"

How I Became Everything I Feared, With No Regrets 

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