Author: Eleanor Skelton

Eleanor Skelton is a freelance journalist and educator. They were homeschooled kindergarten through senior year of high school within the high-demand subculture of fundamentalist Christianity during the 90s and 00s before completing their bachelor’s degree at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Eleanor speaks about their experiences in leaving a cult to advocate for other survivors. They are currently enrolled in a journalism graduate program at the University of Alabama. They write about deconstruction and mental wellness at www.eleanorskelton.com.

Still learning to love myself: Through eating disorder recovery

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 26, 2022.

Content note: discussion of eating disorders

One year ago, I’d just started a new job, and the first paycheck wouldn’t come for a whole month.

I experienced food insecurity and unstable housing both in college and afterwards. The fear of not making it was so loud in my mind, and a little thought said: “Just don’t eat until you get paid.”

In that moment, I thought it made sense. As if I only deserve food if I do enough—if I work hard enough, if I earn enough money to justify allowing myself to eat.

I now realize this isn’t normal.

Last year, I was diagnosed with atypical anorexia or OSFED, which is just as serious as regular anorexia, but describes an eating disorder that is difficult to categorize according to diagnostic criteria.

Because I’m autistic, it’s hard to remember that I have a body that has needs, so I get busy with work or school and sometimes I honestly forget to eat. But other times it’s been intentional.

I hadn’t been eating enough food on a regular basis for nearly a decade. After a few weeks of trying to live on coffee and little else, I could barely climb stairs. Nerve pain shot down my neck into my arms while driving to work.

I realized if I didn’t stop, if I didn’t get help, it would eventually kill me.

Some of you have known me back when I was stuck in other self-sabotaging patterns like self-harm and unhealthy relationships. Eating disorders are quieter, harder to notice.

Almost nobody sees if you miss a meal.

Learning how to eat again wasn’t easy. It’s hard to find words for how difficult the first few months were—the stomach pain, bloating and falling asleep from exhaustion after meals because my body was struggling to process food.

My nutritionist, therapists and care team keep telling me that I deserve food even if nothing else is going right—even if I make mistakes. They tell me that my body still needs fuel consistently to do what I need.

Most of my friends know that I grew up in high-control communities (read: fundamentalist, Quiverfull, isolationist homeschooling) which left me feeling that I had no choice about what happened in my life and pushed me to wholly identify with a specific religious ideal—to be a living martyr.

And you had to hate your body. The more you hated yourself, your own flesh, the more spiritual you were.

Those born female were under intense pressure to be hypermodest, but also don’t commit the sin of gluttony. Enjoying anything too much—even food—was idolatry because what if you started to like it more than God. Dress like a 90s denim toned-down version of your pioneer farmer great-grandmother. Be just attractive enough to court and marry to repopulate the earth by birthing good little mini-Christians, but don’t be too pretty or someone else might sin just by noticing you.

I was told my flesh was a sin. They told me to “buffet my body” like the Apostle Paul. If only I could suffer enough, hurt enough, finally punish myself enough, maybe I’d become more perfect.

This was the sanctification I was taught. Starving myself seemed holy.

Now I know this is a deeply unhealthy form of Christianity, but this is what I experienced. All these years later, I’m still learning what Love should be.

I’m still learning that I don’t have to seek out painful experiences to become more perfect. I’m unlearning all the ways that I made myself feel less worthy.

And here, I have to give credit to several supportive friends and mentors who always gently remind me of my value. If not for all of you, I would not have survived.

Yes, my recovery comes from the determination I am finding to wake up every day and choose to eat… and live. But I am so grateful for those who remind me when I forget.

“Coming apart at the seams
And no one around me knows
Who I am, what I’m on
Who I’ve hurt and where they’ve gone
I know that I’ve done some wrong
But I’m trying to make it right…
I know that I love you
but I’m still learning to love myself.”

– “Still Learning,” Halsey

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‘But for us, God is not that tiny’: Why I’m #withMalala

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 8, 2016.

Usually the documentaries I enjoy are about religious fundamentalism and cults or evangelical culture. I watch to learn and for research.

The other night I rented two movies from Redbox: the new live action Cinderella and He Named Me Malala.

I thought I’d learn something from Malala. More about the culture of Pakistan and the war on terror, more about equality for women in other parts of the world. I thought I would learn about someone vastly different than me.

Instead, I realized that Malala and I have more in common than I’d guessed.

1.) Isolation in a high control group and disagreeing with the conservative factions of your religion.

Malala’s father explains that when the Taliban first came to the Swat Valley, “We thought they were good people. They promised to follow the Quran.”

The Taliban took over media and had book burnings in the streets. The only information the villager could access was the radio broadcast every night, blaring throughout the whole village. People listened every night to hear their neighbors’ sins. Then the Taliban started killing the people named. They shot and slaughtered people in the square, saying that this could be you tomorrow.

They were anti-government, saying that any police or soldiers who attacked Muslims were infidels.

They said girls could not attend school. Three schools were bombed in one night. The Taliban singled out the women, telling them what they ought to do and be. “The women only have one window open and only one man is speaking.”

“if you don’t follow the real Islam that we are showing you, then you can be the next person like this man.”

And the destructive mentality of the Taliban leaders just fed the cycle. Malala’s father said, “When I am willing to kill myself, others are nothing to me.”

The Taliban is more like the subculture I grew up in than most are comfortable admitting. I’m not the first to notice this.

There’s some odd similarities.

Limiting educational access for women, telling them their place is only in the home and using religion to justify this.
Controlling information about the outside world. The Taliban radio broadcasts sounded eerily similar to tapes of Prophet Warren Jeff’s sermons that the FLDS people listened to regularly.
The government is wrong, not the group. Backlash is dismissed as persecution.

2.) Ideologies are more dangerous than individual people.

Malala’s father named her after a folktale about a woman killed in battle in the Swat Valley. The invading enemy seemed too great, but according to the story, the women told her people, “Live like a lion for one day or be a slave for a hundred years.”

She led them into battle. They were victorious, but she was fatally wounded.

Malala’s family watched the changes taking place in their village.

“I was feeling if I don’t speak, then I would be the most sinful and most guilty person in this world,” her father explained. “If you keep silent, you lose the right to exist, to live.”

Her father started calling out the Taliban publicly: “They have tarnished the beautiful face of Islam.”

Malala corresponded with a journalist on the outside and kept attending school.

“He didn’t push me. He let me do what I wanted.”

Malala’s mother doesn’t approve of all of her daughter’s boldness and activism. She is still too afraid that it’s not something a woman does.

“My father only gave me the name Malala. He didn’t make me Malala. I chose this life.”

Pakistanis and Taliban leaders try to discount her because they think that her father is behind this, that “Malala is just a character.” They can’t believe that a woman could actually do this.

“There is a moment when you have to choose whether to be silent or to stand up,” Malala said. “I’m not a lone voice, I am many. And our voices have grown louder and louder.”

Then Malala and two other girls were shot by the Taliban one afternoon on a school bus.

Her father feared that even if she survived her head injury, she would blame him: “I was a child, you should have stopped me, what has happened to me was because of you.”

But Malala says she would still make the same choice. “It does not matter that the left side of my face does not work.”

When the documentary makers asked her about the shooter, Malala said:

“It was not a person. It was an ideology.”

“The Taliban is a small group of people. They think that God is a small conservative being. But for us, God is not that tiny. We think that God has sent us to this world to see if we choose a good way or a bad way.”

This is why I stand #withMalala, why I can empathize with her story.

I also believe that it was fundamentalism that harmed me. My parents and conservative colleges like Bob Jones operate under a similar abusive system.

Often individual people have empathy, but they believe they must do destructive, terrible things to obey God. This is how they silence their own conscience.

They miss their country. Malala wants to go back and see their old house just once.

Sometimes, I miss my country, too. Some days I feel like I have no roots.

Malala is not that different than me. We actually have a lot in common.

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I overheard a church discipline meeting

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on November 30, 2018.

So last night I was closing up for the night at the coffee shop where I work, and there were these people sitting at a table who go to an evangelical-ish hipster church in my community.

I’ve seen some of their events advertised on Facebook and I talked to them when they were part of a protest this fall. Working two jobs means I encounter many people in different spaces and sometimes it overlaps because I live in a small community.

I had mostly good feelings about them. They’ve been very friendly with me and easy to talk to when they come into my store.

But I didn’t like the tone of this meeting. They told one of their worship team members that everyone is trying to make their lives less busy and more “intentional” and he needed to be off the worship team for a few weeks.

I have no idea what sin he allegedly committed. It’s probably not sexual, because usually the punishment would be longer than a few weeks. Maybe he didn’t read his Bible often enough.

The whole thing felt off and not good.

The leadership woman who’s about my age was confronting the guy with the pastor sitting beside her, and they got him to sign this paper about church discipline.

I thought I heard her tell him, “Now this doesn’t mean stop coming to church, because then you’ll never play on the band again.”

“For me to get on the platform and sing, there’s certain requirements I have to meet,” she said.

I just kept mopping around them, silently, slowly losing more and more trust for them. The words they used were harsh and I didn’t feel like they valued him. They kept making it seem like they were the spiritual ones and he was not.

I couldn’t hear the entire conversation, and I don’t know everything about the situation. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it’s a story I know all too well.

They told him over and over the pastor was there for him, and if he needed to talk to him during this period to please reach out, but that it was his job to seek help like he was this bad, lost person.

It felt like a total power trip. This poor guy was sitting there all shame-faced trying to survive this awkward situation, like he had no idea what they had planned to talk to him about. Like he’s just trying to not lose his community.

I’ve been in his spot before.

It’s disorienting to feel like your people are making you feel like you’re not a part of them for some perceived spiritual failing.

It hurt a lot to see people who are supposed to represent Christ treat another human this way. This is not what Jesus would do.

Note: After this happened, I asked two pastors that I trust if they would ever consider having a church discipline meeting with someone in a Starbucks. They both said they thought it was unethical and possibly humiliating to the person to have a meeting like that in a public place.

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Dear Church

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on May 1, 2017.

This was originally posted by my friend Travis last year on his Instagram.

It’s a moving letter, explaining how a lot of people in the LGBT community feel about the church, loving it and just wanting to be loved and embraced in return.

// // //

dear church,

there are millions of us. millions who just want you to understand.

millions who want to belong. millions who have been turned away where faith, hope, and love are said to abound.

we are LGBT+. we have many different struggles, pasts, and paths. but yet we are still human. we want to be a part of the things you are doing. we simultaneously feel the love of a savior and the condemnation of the saved— the latter is why many of us won’t be in your building on Sunday.

as we have grown and matured, we found our way through life, broken, alone, and silent. we didn’t talk to others about our struggles. we bottled them up so we could still be a part of the joy that comes from being around others who believe the same as us… but eventually, it’s not enough. we all come to a point where we cannot hide who we are any longer. we open up and tell the masses, while at the same time, your doors close.

your eyes no longer see the person you once saw, and without saying it, we know you see someone who is unworthy of your love, time, and affection.
when we come out, there is such a relief and joy that overcomes us.

but you feel it is your responsibility to quench that. you stomp on our joy until it is no longer breathing. our newfound hope and happiness is quite literally put to death inside us.

so… many of us choose to follow Jesus on our own, without the community of believers we once had and still need. it’s lonely here, but we have a savior who still listens and wants us to live and gently teaches us how to breathe when we forget, shows us the love and compassion we need to spread, and gives us everything we don’t deserve to have.

but church… we still want to belong with you. we still want to be a part of what you’re doing. we want to be in your building on Sunday, worshiping our Creator, hand-in-hand with you.

open your doors, open your eyes, love with your hearts, and please, don’t let us stay in the cold any longer. we’re freezing.

too many of us are falling apart without you. our silent cries for help are slowly but surely tearing us apart until there’s nothing left.

so i have one question for you, church:
will you love us?

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I’m not the little matchstick girl anymore

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on January 7, 2017.

Christmas is hard when you don’t feel loved by the people who should love and accept you. Many of us ex-cult and isolated homeschool escapees feel this.

We were taught to be focused on our family and only our family and when we figure out our family is broken, sometimes really broken, well. Some of us don’t have anyone to spend Christmas with.

Two years ago, I wrote this in my journal during a shift at the call center where I worked:

12/21/2014

I’m on a quest again. It’s the one I dreamed of last year. Maybe it’s a quest to find Christmas. I just want to go home, to where I began, to my own church, to my pastor.

I want to have Christmas with them. Even if I have to sleep in my car to do it. But I’ll be at [a friend’s] the first night at least. I feel like some kind of hobo again. But maybe that’s the point. Going out on a quest, it’s not meant to be an easy, simple journey.

Why does my whole life feel like going through a dark tunnel right now? I know the light will come, it has before. But it’s like riding a train through the dark. Just like all-night drives on roadtrips through New Mexico.

And you know what? I drove to Texas for Christmas.

Now I live in Texas. And I am learning how to live in a community. How to know other humans. How to be vulnerable with the right people.

My church is very, very different from other churches, and I want to write more about my healing and why I was able to come back to any church at all, but this Christmas was good.

This awesome hippie family from my church with two neurodivergent kids adopted me for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. They’re about my age and nerdy and awesome. We drank wine like heathens and ate all the foods and suddenly I realized I wasn’t alone anymore.

The realization of what a chosen family does for you when your blood family can’t or won’t resonated with me again.

Healing is a process.

It’s this slowly, daily thing that creeps along until one day you look back and go, holy crap, I’m way different than I was a year ago. Heck, I’m not the same person that I was six weeks ago.

I’m healing in therapy when I finally find words for things I’ve never said out loud before. I’m healing when I watch my friends explain and teach their children instead of screaming at them and shutting them down. I’m healing when I watch Netflix shows in the evenings when I get home from work and go, oh, oh, oh, that’s me.

Two years ago, I felt abandoned and alone like the little matchstick girl in the story, you know, the one who freezes to death on New Year’s Eve after no one will buy her matches.

My family had made excuses not to spend Christmas with me for years and I decided that I’d have to make my own. But I felt like I’d been locked out in the cold.

I can’t forget where I came from. Or how I used to feel. And I don’t want to.

But I don’t feel orphaned anymore. I’m home.

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