Originally Published October 10, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Dorothy Husen grew up in a family with parents who were traumatized and passed their trauma onto their kids. Her father had a mental illness and her mother was very controlling with intermittent fits of rage.In childhood, she survived by becoming the good, quiet, obedient, compliant, and dependent little girl that her mother needed her to be. She scared of her parents and witnessed their anger exploding onto each other and her siblings regularly. When she was 13, Dorothy’s parents converted to Charismatic Christianity through the Jesus movement in Southern California during the late 60’s and 70’s.Dorothy’s parents were seemingly instantaneously “healed in Jesus”. All was forgiven, healed, and made new in Christ Jesus. The Christian faith provided an outer structure in which Dorothy could live her life. It gave her a purpose and role to fulfill as long as she remained within the walls of this structure. The faith held her together but at a high cost. The damage it did to her was that it taught her to repress and deny the pain from childhood. The horrible damage this perpetuated then was that Dorothy passed on her trauma to her children.Both Dorothy’s children sought comfort and solace in drugs and alcohol.  Their home became the chaos of her childhood with the constant fighting over the children’s disobedience and “rebellion” from God and the church.One day Dorothy’s husband said that he was unable to sustain the stress of being an attorney and that he might die of a heart attack if he kept this up. She got really scared because she loved him and was dependent upon him. He asked her to go back to school with him and they both could become Marriage and Family Therapists. Dorothy agreed. And thus began her journey of healing, identity formation, and deconversion.The first day she sat across from her therapist ( a requirement to graduate was 6 months of personal psychotherapy), Dorothy told her that she didn’t know what to talk about because her life was so good and healthy. She thought she was a spiritually mature Christian woman.  The therapist told her, “Dorothy, I think you have PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder]”. Outwardly, she protested, but deep down inside, for the first time ever in her life, she felt validated! She started healing, slowly, by journaling. Dorothy started provided for herself what her parents couldn’t give her…security, acceptance, unconditional love, a safe haven. She discovered her own moral compass and found that she was GOOD. [This is when she stopped reading her bible]Then she moved into the normal human development of curiosity, exploration, and trying new things.She opened up her own private practice, joined Toastmasters, found her voice, and grew in confidence. Dorothy remained agnostic for a couple of years, believing in source, love, or some higher power. Then, in early 2017, she decided to try a Meet-Up with a local agnostic & atheist group. She also started watching TED talks and listening to atheist podcasts. [This is when she completely de-converted and became an atheist]Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson