These people made the ultimate sacrifice to leave their toxic families and faiths. It wasn't easy, and their family members revealed just how monstrous they could truly be. But through the heartbreak and terror came hope on the other side. Content has been edited for clarity.
The Effects Devastated Him
“I’m almost entirely incapable of love. If somebody hurts me, I automatically sever our relationship in my head, and it’s like I never knew them. I grew up incredibly vulnerable to conspiracy theories because facts didn’t matter. I grew up with no sense of empathy because the church told me what and how to feel about all things. I grew up with no self-confidence because I was expected to be perfect and could not be. I grew up with extreme self-loathing because if I wasn’t happy, it was because I wasn’t close enough to God. Depression was my own fault because I wasn’t close enough to God. Illness was my own fault because I wasn’t close enough to God. If I have financial pain, it’s because I’m not close enough to God. Now that I’m almost thirty, I’ve left that cesspool of lies, and I’m learning how to be a human who feels empathy, sees facts, and is capable of love. It’s so hard.
Sometimes it helps to let the memories in. Let them hurt, let your hands shake for a while. Then they go and their power is gone. If it hurts or makes you cringe, it’s because you’re not that person anymore. It helps if there’s a person you trust to help you work through your emotions. There is actually immense power and comfort in knowing your trauma responses and diffusing them. I don’t have the luxury of a therapist, but it’s been a massive help that my wife and are working through this together. Knowing why you behave the way you do is a godsend. It took years, but I eventually figured out that the politics I was raised with was nothing but projection and fear. It consumes my family. They can’t talk about anything else, and anyone who disagrees is a monster, or the devil’s tool. That’s the most dangerous thing about such intense religions. They strip you of empathy and your ability to think critically. Take a look at the crusades, or any religious war throughout history. It wouldn’t have happened if people could think for themselves.”
Nut Job On The Loose
“My husband’s father is a nut job. He has this superiority sense, like any other religion or denomination are poor fools who won’t get into Heaven. He also thinks races should be separate. He stopped at nothing to stop me (a Jewish woman) from marrying his son. We tried to cut off any and all contact from my husband’s family, but that father-in-law was bizarrely persistent.
He would send me daily emails after he learned we were engaged up until we told him to stop contact or we would call the police. These emails focused on a lot of topics, like how mixed-race marriages would never work. He would also tell me we were rushing into things, even though we had been together for four years prior to the engagement, and we were older than he was when he first got married. He would try to statistically prove we shouldn’t be married because I would be contaminating the bloodline with my Jewish heritage. Apparently, God was speaking to him and telling him that he had to stop our marriage at all costs. My husband and I hired security guards a month and a half after we got married. My father-in-law drove nine hours and showed up at my husband’s place of work, demanding to speak to him. The coworker who first ran into my father-in-law had been my bridesmaid, so she was well aware of this insanity. She warned us and my husband’s boss immediately, so my husband could take the day off and avoid this man.
My father-in-law started sending my husband birthday and Christmas cards every year, telling him how if he smartens up and begs forgiveness for his actions, they’ll forgive him. That thankfully stopped a number of years ago, after my husband got one letter saying it was his ‘last chance’ to beg forgiveness. I was pregnant at the time, and I was absolutely terrified his father would find out and sue for grandparent rights to visitation. Thankfully, he didn’t. And we haven’t heard from them in the almost seven years since. I generally have a rule to not hate or wish ill on anyone. But the pain he caused and is still causing to my husband is immense. My husband used to have frequent nightmares about his father kidnapping him, holding him hostage, and forcing him back into that horribly lifestyle. My father-in-law makes my one rule immensely hard to hold up.”
The End Times Are Coming!
“Some of my earliest memories are driving with my whole family in the Subaru and my dad telling us all that the great Christian persecution was going to begin soon. We all needed to be prepared for them to take us away from him and my mom and how terrible it would be. He got very into Y2K prepping as well, and I remember calling my friends and telling them to believe in Jesus because the world was going to end, and we needed to all be ready. I also remember being confused as to why I didn’t have any good friends. Middle school was pretty rough for me. Nowadays, whenever I wake up from a loud clap of thunder, I have a complete panic attack and think it’s the end times.
I did find really good friends after a while. A lot of therapy and a wonderful spouse got me to having decent mental health. I haven’t talked to my dad in six years after he called me stupid during an argument. All I did was tell him, ‘honor your father and mother’ was not license for them to treat me however they wanted. My mom and I have found neutral space, so we have polite chats and avoid discussing politics or the insane amount of nonsense she shares on social media. I’m pretty sure she’s just a Russian troll now. Other than that, my friends have become my new family, and it’s getting easier to deal with every year that passes that my family will never be mentally healthy or what I want them to be. It’s hard, but manageable.”
“Hallucinations Of My Parents Yelling At Me”
“I moved thousands of miles away to get away from my family. It was terrible. I remember getting into an argument with my parents when I was fifteen about how terrible my life was. I had no times for friends, because I would wake up, go to school, come home, do the dishes, do homework, chop firewood for two hours, clean the floors, and maintain the fire in the wood stove. I would basically have to take care of my parents. I would make food for them and keep the fire warm for them. Neither of them worked. They would just sit for sixteen hours a day on their computers, smoking five packs a day between them. They stained the entirety of the house an ugly yellow-brown. I used to get bullied in school for smelling like smoke. The argument started when my dad was bragging about his parenting skills, so I told him to get off his high horse. That was one of the few times I ever talked back to him. He shoved me as hard as he could and stormed out of the house, cussing up a storm.
I would burn my arms occasionally while stoking the fire, and my mom would tell me, ‘If you think that’s painful, just imagine the torture that’s ahead of you if you don’t respect your parents.’ She also told me, ‘God will make it so that I forget you ever existed when you go to Purgatory and I go to Heaven, because God takes care of mothers.’
Thankfully, I’m doing a lot better these days. After meeting my wife seven years ago, who my parents naturally hated, I got to see what a normal family looked like. It was wild. Her parents didn’t yell, they went outside to smoke, and they cooked for their kids every day! It was crazy. I remember their expressions when I chopped all their firewood and washed all their dishes. I just did it without thinking. I thought that was just normal. They were so nice to me. I ended up living there on and off for many months. It was because of them that I was able to move out, and eventually they helped me move very far north because our old city was getting far too expensive.
My parents still live in that disgusting mess of a structure. Also, they don’t work because they are both on disability, and sadly I am too now after I was diagnosed with schizophrenia earlier this year. Turns out schizophrenia is on both sides of my family. My wife has been incredibly supportive, and I am living quite normally and managing my symptoms pretty well. The worst part is that sometimes I have hallucinations that sound like my parents yelling at me, so that sucks. Otherwise, I’m in a much better place and I do have career aspirations, so that’s what I’m working towards right now.”
Her Parents Had Wicked Plans For Her
“To give some background, I was adopted from the Ukraine when I was six months old. I was adopted with a boy who was NOT my brother, but he happened to be born exactly one day before I was. My adoptive parents considered us a divine miracle, as our mom couldn’t have kids, and the baby twins they were originally going to adopt passed away. Basically, there was INCREDIBLE pressure because God had some great plan for my life that I had to live up to. I was raised in a version of Christianity that looked modern on the outside, but it was extremely cult-like on the inside. In fact, I wasn’t able to move out until I was 21 due to my parents’ attempts at making me entirely dependent on them. Here were some of the rules and traditions I grew up with:
My parents took the ‘Wives submit to your husbands’ verse quite literally, so as a female, my opinion was rarely considered, if it was even heard. They were obsessed with modesty culture, and women saving themselves for marriage, and making sure they didn’t cause their fellow ‘brethren to stumble.’ Yet it didn’t matter what the men did. The head pastor’s son was running the youth group at one point while addicted to pills, and the head pastor knew it. My father would hit on other women in the church as a married man. He loved giving them verbal compliments and touching or hugging them. I later found out that one women’s husband actually stood up to him and told him to stop, and my father almost fought the man. The head pastor was OBSESSED with the rapture. Women who had abortions were murderers, no matter the reason. Divorce did not exist. Even when our music minister was being verbally and physically abused by her husband, they made them go through couple’s counseling to save the marriage. She divorced him anyways, and they removed her from her position. She later left the church.
My parents tried to force me to ‘court’ a 26-year-old white man when I was just 18. They wanted me to marry him because he was a man of god who had a good job and could take care of me. They also wanted me to live with them until I was married to him, so I could then live with him. It came out that I was interested in a black guy and my parents were livid. If you were sick or were going through a hardship and it didn’t get better, it’s because you weren’t surrendered to god fully or putting enough faith in him. This was the lord’s way of testing you. For example, my insanely painful and heavy periods were a test from god and I had to have faith I could make it through them. My family was partially anti-vax, but I ended up getting three sets of shots after I was 18 to make up for what they didn’t get me when I was growing up. My family’s reputation mattered above everything else. If I wasn’t making my father and his ministry look good, I was in trouble. Harry Potter was satanic.
My father was an abusive narcissist and beat my mom before they ‘got saved’ through religion. Their marriage was incredibly dysfunctional and was still verbally, financially, and emotionally abusive. His temper came out several times, and once he put his hands around my throat shortly before I turned 18. Nothing like praying your parents would get divorce. I should also mention my adoptive brother harassed me for well over a decade when I lived at home, and he continued to verbally harass me when I moved out, until I eventually cut off all contact with him and my family. I was homeschooled my entire life with a Christian-based curriculum that most obviously denied science. I spent anywhere from three to seven days a week at the church, and that was the majority of my social interaction. My family was incredibly prejudiced as well, and hearing slurs in the home from my father was incredibly normal as well. I moved out about seven years ago and cut off all contact a little over two years ago. I am now medicated and doing amazing. I’m married to a man who isn’t white, and who loves me and supports me in every aspect of life.”
No Way Out
“I grew up hardcore Mormon. I’d like to stress that my childhood isn’t as common as other Mormon kids. When I was growing up, I was spanked and experienced the belt, but that isn’t why I have some psychological problems now. The real punishment was shame. From the earliest age I can remember (around six), I was told that I was lazy and I was throwing my life away. I would have to talk to the local bishop every month for a checkup. In every school I went to, my parents told the school counselors that I wasn’t allowed on computers because I might look up scandalous pictures of women. I never did this. I deeply internalized the shame. Being so young, I just accepted that I was what my father called me and hated myself for it. I was a lazy failure at six. It didn’t stop me from doing any of the things I was doing before, I just learned to fear my father’s footsteps as if it was the devil himself walking down the hallway. I lived my life in the brief intervals between punishments. I am still not beyond this at 24 years old. I later found out that the reason my father lashed out at me, and called me these names was because he was fighting his own battles on these issues. He lost jobs and felt inadequate. He was directing his own self-hatred at me. Now both of us hate ourselves and digging our way out seems impossible.”
“Low-Key Version Of PTSD”
“It was a quite tough, obviously. However, there are many layers to the difficulty beyond the basic and obvious aspects. For a start, every single thing I have done since walking away from that religion was viewed as wild or rebellious by my family. Me hooking up out of wedlock was apparently a crime against humanity. My trying some bubbly for the first time was deeply sinful. Profanity? Rebelling! If I had a dollar for every time my family told me I would realize the error of my ways and come back to them, I would be sitting in a mega-yacht off the coast of a Caribbean island I own. Growing up, I was never allowed to watch The Simpsons. In fact, there is a massive list of media that was simply not an option for me, which I still haven’t felt comfortable enough to dig into. I got a severe spanking for repeating this laugh from a Beavis And Butthead, all because one of my church friends would do it all the time. That time was the first where I ever received the buckled end of a belt, and it was my first spanking that drew blood. It was six months after my eighteenth birthday when I finally talked to a woman on the phone without a parent in the room. Normally, my parents would stand there, making sure that I would ‘mind my manners’, which was code for anything remotely inappropriate. For most of my youth, I believed that holding a girl’s hand seemed downright scandalous and naughty.
It’s funny because I’ve been distancing myself away from the faith for coming up on fifteen years now, and ‘really rebelling’ (my great aunt’s words) in the last five. Earlier this year, I finally started listening to heavy metal. It was just a few months ago that I discovered Iron Man by Black Sabbath, arguably one of the most iconic metal songs ever. Prior to about ten years ago, it felt physically unsettling to listen to ‘devil music’, and I find that the influences last far longer than the teaching. Even now, there are some songs that still feel ‘wrong’ to me, like they’re unsettling and uncomfortable. There are some TV shows I still can’t watch just because they elicit a visceral ‘this is wrong, you’ll be punished for this’ reaction that makes me feel like a 14-year-old boy about to be spanked again. This is just one form of the baggage that’s lingering. It’s like a low-key version of PTSD.
I learned at a young age that everything I was to base my life around was purified fear. ‘Heaven’ was downplayed a bit while the threat of ‘Purgatory’ took the foreground. I knew that for anything I did, the primary repercussion would be some form of physical discipline. I was what you might call a difficult kid and between the age of 4 and 14, I figure I averaged two or three light spankings and one bad one per week. A light spanking would be a few swats with a leather belt, not hard enough to leave a mark, but enough to sting. A bad one would raise red welts that’d make sitting uncomfortable for a day. Over the course of more than a decade, I have to think after all that repetitive motion, my mother would have been able to throw one heck of a fastball if she wanted to play baseball. That sort of muscle memory must account for something!
Contact with girls was simple: I could never be alone, never hang out with a girl who didn’t attend our church, and I could never have any physical contact. Money was simple. I was allowed to suggest potential purchases, and if mom said no, then the answer was no. Every penny had to be accounted for, and any sort of discrepancy likely ended with at least a lecture. If I wasn’t forthcoming with an explanation, that meant the belt for me. I was expected to read the bible for two hours every evening. Church attendance with note-taking during the sermon was non-negotiable. All told, I’ve gone through that version of the bible seven times cover to cover, verse by verse, and if I still had my notebooks it would have to be forty pounds of handwritten notes.] It sucked. A lot. It’s also given me mental baggage I’ll probably have until I die. It was a very pervasive sort of programming, and it does have lingering effects, even though I am totally distanced from it now. It’s given me some pretty objectionable opinions about the subject, and made me personally ashamed of things I know aren’t things I, a 34-year-old man, should be ashamed of. There is no way to live your life if you don’t leave the church. Yes, I have my baggage, but it would be so much worse if I was still there. The worst part is that, compared to some people, I got it comparatively easy. Few things are more harmful than somebody who is totally convinced that they’re righteous in all that they do. Those people weaponize that self-appointed righteousness, which is truly horrifying.”
His Childhood Revelation
“I was gifted the rare combination of religious extremist academic parents. I was regularly told to read the bible and then write an essay on the passage I had just read. I would go to church every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening. My older siblings would bully me constantly because I was smaller and weaker, and the bible condoned. a lot of violence. My mouth would be washed out with soap by my parents, if I ever tried to retaliate against my siblings. I was repeatedly belted for things that I didn’t do, just because my siblings thought that it would be funny to tell on me. I couldn’t complain about anything. If I complained, then I was obviously at fault. I couldn’t ever invite friends over to my house, because my parents would spend an hour preaching to them, and I didn’t want to put my friends through that. I wasn’t allowed to watch any cartoons of the Disney Channel because my parents thought they were demonic.
I had undiagnosed ADHD, not realizing this until halfway through college, since my parents genuinely didn’t believe that it existed. They would just say, ‘He’s a boy, they aren’t made to just sit and learn.’ The worst part of that? My mother has a PhD in child counseling. With me being the way I am, she never should have received that license. I’m so jealous of anyone who actually gets along well with their parents. When I was a child, I realized that I needed to walk away from this faith. My parents raised me with the understanding that Santa, the tooth fairy, and the Easter bunny were all myths. I figured out that if magic wasn’t real, then why would this faith they believed so much in? I decided to test this faith. I was taught growing up that prayer is a really powerful tool, so that was the mechanism I decided to test out. Every day, I would pray for it to rain the following day. After a few weeks, I concluded that the weather is random, and therefore there was no power in prayer. Right then, when I was ten, I completely stopped believing in the faith.”
Can’t Escape The Feeling
“I was always under my parents’ watch. They were helicopter parents, and I couldn’t do anything against our religion. If anyone in my school wasn’t a part of my religion, then I had to convince them to come to our church. Otherwise, what was the point of being friends with them? Women weren’t equal, and we were told that all we were working towards was to be a good wife and mother some day. Apparently that was our true calling, and nothing else mattered. If we planned to go to college, it was seen as a way to teach our future children some day.
Sundays were for church only or church related activities. No television and no playing outside on those days. We were just normal enough that we thought we were normal, until we grew up and realized that we didn’t have any self-esteem or value in ourselves without the church giving us our worth and value. I’m still trying to detox and to find ways to raise my kids, because I know I don’t want to raise them how I was. But I also don’t know the right way to raise them any other way, and I fall into the pattern of being like my parents. Yep, I was raised Mormon. It really sticks with you!”
Horrifying Family Secrets Emerge
“My father was 51 when I was born, so he had no clue how to relate to children. As far as I can remember, he hardly ever had a job, and he really loved the idea of living on war rations. That dude was super strict, and there were constant beatings for literally anything. I was always told that he’d much rather be giving me kisses and cuddles, but truth be told, I don’t remember a single one of those things coming from him. We moved around Australia a lot, never in one place for more than two years, so I never got the hang of making and keeping friends. Not that I was encouraged to have friends outside ‘The Truth’ anyway, and there were never any kids my age in the congregations. Because we were poor, I only ever had clothes from the second hand stores, and television was forbidden. Naturally, I got picked on at school because of these things. We often had to rely on the generosity of other families in ‘The Truth’ to feed us. We would go ‘visiting’ just in time for dinner to be served at their houses, so they would always feel obliged to feed us. We had to go ‘witnessing’ every weekend. This meant that we would knock on every neighbor’s door, trying to convince them about how amazing Jehovah’s Witnesses were. I’ve blocked most of that part from my memory. We would have three bible study meetings a week: two meetings in the Kingdom Hall and one in the Elder’s house. I used to fake illness to get out of these meetings.
Fast-forward to age eleven or so, and my sister finds out she’s not my father’s daughter. A few months after this, my father had a heart attack or something and was in hospital, and my sister comes out and tells our mother that he’s been assaulting her all along. So we finally leave the man, but Mom is still invested in being a Jehovah’s Witness. My father is disfellowshipped (excommunicated), so he’s lost everything that made his identity, like I cared anyway. Mom still donated most of her sole parent pension income (which wasn’t very much) to the organization while trying to raise two kids on her own. At age 14, I tried to get a girlfriend with the help of a school friend, but my complete ineptitude with other people made that impossible. I asked my mom for advice, but got told that she didn’t want me to have a girlfriend anyway. I should focus on my studies and ‘The Truth’ instead, and Jehovah would provide for me. I moved out of home at age 15. I lived with school friends for a few years, then with my sister for a few more. When I turned 18, I was still in school (I dropped out for a year when I was 16). One day, the school counselor came and told me that my father had been requesting my school photos all along, and gave me a letter from him. Since I’m now legally an adult, I can request they stop sending the school photos, so that’s nice.
The letter tells me that my father has ‘repented’ and been accepted back into the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and goes on to preach to me about something about coming back to ‘The Truth’ and all that jazz. I briefly consider replying and telling him about all the heavy metal I’ve listened to. I continue to receive letters from him, no matter where I move to. It’s beyond weird. Then one day when I was 22, one shows up that basically says, ‘If you are reading this, then I am dead. And by the way, you are a bad son.’ Was it finally over? A few years later, I receive a letter from a woman in the United States, who tells me that my father is still alive and well, and married to her mother over in South Carolina. Apparently, this had been going on since I was 18 or so. Every single letter he had sent me had been posted in Australia, meaning that he was sending them to somebody in the Jehovah’s Witnesses over here, who was then forwarding them on to me. Anyway, my new step-sister goes on to tell me that she’s needed to stay with her mother and my father for a while, and that he’s been ‘acting funny’ toward her kids. He was super abusive to her son and super nice to her daughter, and that one day, she caught him going into her daughter’s room for no good reason.
So, I think back on some things, and everything clicks. My father had been assaulting young girls in every place that we lived. The reason we had been moving around so often was that each time he was caught, he would ‘repent’ in the church. Instead of turning him over to the authorities, the local congregation just asked him to move on. In fact, they would simply put him in touch with the local congregation of the place that we were moving to! Now, fifteen years later, I am a bubbling mess of neuroses. But I am so relieved to be free of that waking nightmare.”