Before we dive into the good, clean fun (explicit fun, so with all the swears still) of the episode, please take note if you are a human with regular human emotions. This episode contains a few campfire horror stories about strange events and spooky shit that happened in our youths. Content warning includes: demon possession, youth pastors grooming…well, youth, animal death (in a DEEPLY disturbing way), and, if you love Sarai’s conspiracy theories, there’s a real humdinger in this episode. 

For the bravest among us who can wade these dark and murky waters, carry on.

As Good Christian Girls®, Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai grew up in the shadow of the Satanic Panic, which made Halloween a ghastly time for Evangelicals. To create a safe haven from the ghosts and witches and satan worshippers (can we stop for a moment and appreciate that this was a THING we all learned??? That satan worshippers are marauding about your suburbs and sacrificing stray cats??)…ahem, the safe haven, that is, was one that was nestled inside the holy walls of a church. Harvest Parties! (Or Harvest Festivals! If you were extra). 

Wind your way through the emerging Halloween appreciation your 40-Something Mom Friends are experiencing in their own special ways. And then?? Then! Get on the sosh meeds and tell us your favorite Evangelical childhood antics - anybody dress up like Larry the Cucumber? We need to know, and we need to see the photographic evidence, PLEASE!

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Witches and Christians haven’t always enjoyed one another’s company (see: all of church history, witch hunts, etc), but what if there’s more to it than ladies with ergot poisoning who may or may not have rode brooms around the house as a way to…pleasure…themselves…and a systematic femicide perpetuated by the patriarchy? 

When we met Dr. Melissa Bird and heard about her work as a Christian witch, we had to know more. Join your triumphant trio of 40-something moms to learn how there just might be room in the world to make space for all of who we are. Even if we’re charting new territory. In fact, it’s not really new at all - it’s just casting spells aka prayer and joining into the ongoing work of creation. 

Content heads up for this episode: prepare to hear the worst (or most epic) pickup line in the history of pickup hackery. Other than that, it’s rather shockingly trauma free for once.

Awaken your own graceful revolution and connect with Dr. Bird drmelissabird.com

FB, Twitter, TikTok, and IG @birdgirl1001

A message for our listeners from Dr. Melissa Bird:

For the last 3 months of 2022 I am offering a special 3 month coaching package. 7 1:1 coaching sessions, 1 misfit magic hour, 2 clairvoyant meditations. https://www.drmelissabird.com/coachingoffer

Through the month of October I am offering a Misfit Magic Hour BOGO special buy one get the next 50% off. 2 1 hour readings! Whoohoo! https://www.drmelissabird.com/misfit-magic-hour

I am booking speaking engagements at spiritual and religious conferences for women. Here is the link to learn more about my speaking https://www.drmelissabird.com/live-events

Books Dr. Bird Recommends:

Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson

Waking the Witch by Pam Grossman

Inspired by Rachel Held Evans

If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie

Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans

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Something Old, Something New: a Tale of Two Mexicos 

Plus: save your soul and the world, inquire inside!

If you were an evangelical in your coming of age period at the turn of the millennium, you or several of your close God-fearing friends took a mission trip (or dozens). Mission trips were like…I guess a wandering train of [Jesus] Freaks setting up shop in one nation or another. Instead of fortune tellers, strongmen, and bearded ladies, mission trips brought a gimmicky way to “spread the gospel”.

Anyhoo, these trips were SO emo. We all got on board a bus or a plane or some kid’s mom’s minivan and entered the mission field. Once there, we’d build (and/or rebuild - allegedly) a playground or a church or an orphanage, or dress up like mimes, or stand on actual soapboxes on street corners - all to shout about the wonderful plan Jesus has for your life. Then, Mission Accomplished, we would leave enriched with culture, travel, and the uncanny feeling that perhaps this trip was for us all along. We’d reflect, shocked, that maybe we learned more from the people we came to help than we ever had to teach them. White saviors start early.

Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai talk about their experiences going to exotic places (including Oklahoma!!), spreading the gospel like a linen duvet cover (shout out to our 40-ish mom friends!). Cringe your way through the past and remember that oh, so fresh feeling of saving souls and taking names.

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Chances are if you were assigned the tender feminine gender at your evangelical birth, well, ya probably have a lot of baggage and issues that stem from questionable portrayals of women in the Bible.

Among the vagina-laden humans celebrated in the canon, we have everyone from a literal teenager, whose virginity inspired millennia of penis-havers to idolize purity, to the wily, vengeful Judge Deborah, who straight up murdered a Philistine with a wicked tent peg through the temple. Pretty badass, tbh. 

But greatest among these female role models, as few and scattered they were amid the many, many Jezebel-style characters (by the way, “eaten by dogs” is my preferred way to describe a death)…there stood alone a perfect prototype of the ideal wife. The Proverbs 31 Woman. This strong, gluten-free woman (she eats not the bread of idleness), stays awake all damn night working on her embroideries and preserves, dresses her children in scarlet, herself in purple and linens, and gets busy making food, importing and exporting goods, feeding the poor, feeding her lovin’ man/king, and fully celebrated by all excellence at everything. She surpasses all other women with her tireless, industrious, wise work ethic. But when does she get to take a damn nap? 

Join your new favorite heretics as they discuss what The Proverbs 31 Woman meant to them, why 3/3rds of them *still* have a hard time letting their lamp go out by night, and where and how we might like to grow in perhaps less hurried and productive ways. Welcome to radical uselessness. And yeah, you can wear all the scarlet and purple and strength and dignity you can handle - no shame in that. Just know that it’s good to take a beat sometimes and even better to remember this P 31 woman (as I’ve seen her referred to on her most devoted fan websites) - she was never a real person at all. What if we could become our own heroes instead of living up to an impossible idea? What if we got to enjoy the fruit of our labor too?

Let’s try it. After we take a wee nap.

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In the harrowing days of puberty, evangelical young women and girls were foisted into a shame spiral that kept them tame and readily codependent for…maybe their entire lives. Their every move governed by the grave understanding that it was their job to “not cause your brother to stumble,” they walked about with hunched shoulders, tucked their butts, and generally shut their every desire or bodily sensation DOWN, and fast. They were especially horrified by their own breasticles, as they seemed to cause their “brothers” to stumble despite their best efforts to wear Modest Is Hottest fashion (read: not fashion). 

Join Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai - three cisgendered ladies whose boobs have haunted them their entire post-pubescent lives - as they uncover the real meaning behind the context of that stupid “brothers stumbling” BS, and reckon with the aftermath of blaming oneself for literally everybody else’s problems and working their lifelong butts off to appease and make others feel more comfortable in their presence. 

If you’re a former church kid who grew up when Modest really was Hottest, whether cis, trans, queer, or straight, you’ll recognize these damaging ideas. Hopefully, as these three boob-havers discuss their experiences with the oppression and abuse grooming inherent in Purity Culture, you might be able to unwind a little bit of your own bosom-or non-bosom related woes. Good news, though: knowing is half the battle, and…half is pretty good progress, tbh. 

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From the one-piece swimsuits and the oversized free t-shirts all the way to the tearful confessionals and personal testimonies around a bonfire, Evangelical Christian summer camps were a masterpiece of emotional manipulation and unadulterated peer on peer action. 

Join Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai - a bevy of former camp attendees (and a lifer in the bunch, who would reconvert TODAY if a lifelong summer camp job opened up for her) - as they discuss the Camp ExperienceTM. Whether they were finding sneaky ways to be near crushes, witnessing gross-out challenges in the mess hall, or reliving an experience with a rattlesnake that is less parable and more badass than you'd expect, these maidens were camp mavens. 

If you’re a former church kid who grew up going to camp, you’ll find some familiar tales of the dust-laden camps where craft shacks ruled the day, all the way to the fanciest-pants California camps with pools and comparatively luxurious cabins *with bathrooms INSIDE THEM*, and hopefully, it will be a relatively soothing trip down memory lane. Hey, even Exvangelicals need a break sometimes, and what’s better than some good, clean, camp-based fun?

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What does one do with the conundrum of abortion? When Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai were growing up, the Evangelical Christian stance on abortion was never, ever, no way, no how. The church made specious (and racist, xenophobic, peri-holocaust denying or at best minimizing) arguments meant to tug at the heartstrings of nice, Christian, white ladies. Present-day: billboards litter the interstates of America, showing bright-eyed (almost exclusively white) babies with ominous words like “abortion stops a beating heart” emblazoned across their tidily diapered butts; pro-choice and pro-life people don’t even speak the same language much less know how to fight in the same battle; and the powers that be have successfully edged Roe v Wade toward the dustbin of history. 

Enter some deconstructing, young former Evangelicals (one of whom shamefully admitted she voted for George W. Bush…TWICE) and they start to ask questions about this once untouchable medical procedure. Your 40-ish mom friends talk through the taboo tornado of purity culture (patriarchy), Nice Christian White Ladies (white supremacy), and hit action movies from bygone decades, oh and abortion...all while we realize it was never really about the babies…and Evangelicals didn’t give any toots about abortion until, like, a year or two before our hosts were all born. How would we have known when we were standing on the streets in our respective hometowns begging people to just realize that life begins at conception (but where does conception begin? Oh…I think we’re in an inception now)…anyway…give it a listen! And join the conversation with us at HolyGhosting.com

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If you or someone you know needs abortion healthcare call the NAF Hotline at 1-800-772-9100 for help and to learn about safe options for ending a pregnancy.

ProChoice.org

Samatha Bee Episode

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Here we are, June of 2022. Welcome summer, and farewell Mental Health Awareness Month (May!). But if we go back in time, just a little bit, to remember the good old days of the freewheeling 1980’s - when Evangelical churches and politicians were in the golden age of knitting together the interests of church and state (so cute!)…people were too busy to talk about mental health (at least not at church)…even though Mental Health Awareness Month started WAY BACK in 1949 - oh, we’ve had Mental Health issues all along as humans? No Way!

In this inaugural episode of Holy Ghosting, you’ll meet Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai - a bunch of former church girls who came of age in 80s and 90s American Evangelicalism. With a veritable host of mental health diagnoses between them, you’ll learn more than you ever thought you’d want to know about their own journeys through mental health by way of the church, and you might find echoes of your own experience if you were once a church kid too. 

We cover everything from the laying on of hands, the shame of mental health issues, using the Bible as therapy (instead of therapy because that wasn’t a thing we ever considered doing), and everything from visual hallucinations to the revolutionary idea that maybe, just maybe, telling other people the truth about our own mental wellbeing can help everybody be a little safer and a little better. 

If you or someone you know needs mental health support: text BRAVE to the Crisis Text Line at 741741

A trained crisis counselor will receive it and respond within minutes. Then, the crisis counselor will help you de-escalate your situation and connect you to help locally.

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