As promised, though at the last moment, I am posting the final three giveaways for 2025. More are planned for 2026, so you may want to subscribe for notifications of new posts. There will hopefully be one each month.
As with all of our giveaways, this is only open to those with a USA mailing address. There is absolutely no cost to enter.
“Cult victims and those who have experienced abusive relationships often suffer from fear, confusion, low self-esteem, and post-traumatic stress. Take Back Your Life explains the seductive draw that leads people into such situations, provides insightful information for assessing what happened, and hands-on tools for getting back on track.”
Jana Lalich is an international authority on cults and coercion and has a website, which is found here. (At the time of this post, it was not available, so a link is shared to an archived version.) She is the founder of the Lalich Center on Cults & Coercion. If you watch documentaries on unhealthy groups, you have probably seen her.
We have a playlist of many interviews and talks she has given here.
This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on January 3, 2026 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.
Be sure to check back to see if you have won as in the past some people have not responded after winning and so a new winner had to be drawn. You will then need to email me your mailing address if I do not already have it, so be sure to watch your email and check the spam folder. If I know your Facebook profile, I will message you there.
Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.
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Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on October 15, 2019.
It’s just not worth it to live with secrets.
My social media feeds have been flooded with National Coming Out Day posts over the last week, and I realized while reading through them that it’s such a relief to able to tell people the truth, to not have to hide anything.
I keep thinking about October three years ago when I started telling people at my church that I dated women, that I was in a relationship with someone in college who broke my heart, that I’m attracted to someone’s soul more than their gender.
I took a big risk. Someone who hasn’t been in that kind of situation might not understand that risk.
I really didn’t know what my church people would do.
I had only moved back to my childhood home, back to the first church I could remember about a year before, and of course, I hoped they wouldn’t cast me out like the fundamentalist cult I’d been in as a teenager did, for so much less. But I had no guarantees.
You learn who loves you unconditionally when you start telling people who you really are and seeing what they do next.
A friend once told me that sin could be defined as “treating people like objects” — essentially not valuing other human beings. It resonated with me because it puts most of Christian theology and doctrine into one idea.
After I started telling people about who I had dated, Christian friends I’d known for years had told me I was no longer welcome in their homes to hang out with other friends, that they could no longer speak to me, as if being gay was contagious and they might catch it.
I already knew how some people in my family felt about LGBT people.
Growing up, I was told not to eat my cousin’s cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving because “he lives with his boyfriend and we don’t know how clean their house is.”
They didn’t exactly say it, but their words hinted at fears of catching AIDS from dirty kitchen utensils.
But still my secret kept burning on the inside.
I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t feel this way, even though it was costing me so much to be honest and open.
Reading this, you might think my church is affirming. They aren’t, but that’s okay and here’s why. They showed me that they accept me just as I am, even if they didn’t agree with my choices.
Two of my pastors gently guided me and went out of their way to show me that they didn’t see me any differently than before they knew. They told me they believe that we all have different issues and no one’s secrets are any worse than anyone else’s.
And this meant the world to me.
Through their love, I grew more confident. I learned to hold my own in the world. I stopped cycling through romantic relationships with people who were using me.
Because they valued me, I started to value myself.
I realized if sin was objectifying human beings and not recognizing their value, how I had been living was a sin, because I was letting people treat me as an object. I started believing I was worth more.
If I said I wasn’t gay anymore, that would be a lie. I am still attracted to women. Getting baptized again didn’t change that either — even if some of my relatives thought it did.
Now, I ended up choosing side B, the celibacy option, but that’s wasn’t really about “trying to not be gay” — it was about making healthier, wiser choices. You can read more about that part of my story over here.
And if I find someone one day that I want to marry, great. If not, that’s ok, too. I also don’t believe anymore that you have to find a partner to be complete.
Now I believe everyone is made whole as they are and they don’t need other people to make them whole, and if you’re not feeling that just yet, that’s ok, and you might not be quite done healing.
I’m not going to get into the semantics of whether or not people should say they’re gay or that they’re someone with same-sex attraction because I don’t think that’s ultimately helpful. (I’ve heard the “you shouldn’t be identifying with something that’s a sin” argument — I’m using the term to describe how I am, it’s just a label that helps explain how I feel.)
And I’m not here to argue about LGBT issues — whichever side you’re on doesn’t really matter to me for the purpose of what I’m saying.
I’m just asking you to treat other people as humans equally deserving of respect. And just listen to their stories. Let them tell you their secrets, and don’t recoil when it’s something you’re not expecting.
This is how they’ll feel safe around you. And this is how they will heal.
If you’re reading this and you’re still part of my story, thank you for sticking around through the rough patches and loving me so well.
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This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on December 5, 2024 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.
Be sure to check back to see if you have won as in the past some people have not responded after winning and so a new winner had to be drawn. You will then need to email me your mailing address if I do not already have it, so be sure to watch your email and check the spam folder. If I know your Facebook profile, I will message you there.
Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.
You may want to subscribe to the email notifications of new blog posts in order to not miss these. While we try to share about our giveaways on social media, those platforms often do not show the posts to many people.
******** Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.
Take Back Your life is a revision of Captive Hearts Captive Minds which was released in the 1990s. We have given away well over 50 copies of that book through the years.
Lalich is very knowledgeable and her book can help you in your recovery from unhealthy groups or cults.
This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on November 14, 2024 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.
Be sure to check back to see if you have won as in the past some people have not responded after winning and so a new winner had to be drawn. You will then need to email me your mailing address if I do not already have it, so be sure to watch your email and check the spam folder. If I know your Facebook profile, I will message you there.
Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.
Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on May 18, 2019.
It only takes a few words to send me back. Certain phrases just set me off.
It can be something simple, so common that most average Christians wouldn’t even notice it. But those words meant something else in the fundamentalist cult I grew up in.
I go to a not-crazy church now because it’s helped me heal and find peace. Last week, I slipped into the service on my lunch break. I work two jobs and Sunday mornings are a time I get to stop and breathe.
The worship pastor was talking between the songs and he said something like “our joy is not based on the things of this world.”
My stomach dropped.
This is probably not what he meant, but this is what I felt. You’re not allowed to enjoy your life. Don’t be happy with the work you’re doing. You shouldn’t be proud of the awards you’ve won for journalism. The only thing that matters is heaven.
He didn’t say any of those things. If I asked him if he meant that, he probably would have looked at me bewildered.
This is all about context.
A catchphrase that means one thing in fundamentalist and even most evangelical churches doesn’t mean the same thing to mainstream, non-extremist Christian denominations.
Those who have been through spiritual abuse, especially growing up, are not going to hear what you are actually trying to say. I’ve had many conversations with my pastors about this, and they’ve been very understanding about translating for me. I’ll ask them, so this thing you said, did you mean this or something else? If you didn’t mean the legalistic interpretation I’m used to, what did you mean?
Some Bible verses were weaponized and used against me for my whole life. I have to work to reorient myself to their actual meaning. It’s a process of rewiring the connections in my brain, trying to find new associations.
I thought about that phrase again.
I’ve been going to yoga since not long after I was kicked out of my parents’ house. Yoga teachers usually ask you to take your mind off everything you feel like you have to do and just be, just for an hour. Just exist.
They tell you that your worth is not based on what you do, and it’s okay to just breathe. Their wording is different, so it doesn’t usually have a religious connotation for me.
I kept asking myself what a reasonable, healthy person would mean if they said our joy isn’t based on this world. They probably mean that your successes and failures at work or school don’t determine your worth as a person. That you’re more than your productivity. That life is made up of both tragedy and triumph and while it’s okay and necessary to grieve and feel all those emotions, you can reach out to hope beyond the exhaustion.
It would mean encouraging mindfulness, trying to lower stress.
Basically, the idea is don’t let temporary circumstances hinder you or define you. But that’s not what I first thought.
I still don’t like the phrase.
By definition, it plays into the evangelical “not being of this world but of another world” dynamic which brings up a host of other issues because of how it’s often interpreted, but it doesn’t have to mean what I was told as a child—that you couldn’t be an active part of your own life, that you couldn’t be present, you had to dissociate from your thoughts and feelings in your own mind because you were evil from birth, that enjoying ordinary experiences was a sin.
It’s been absolutely essential for me to parse out phrases like this to break free of the chains in my mind and find a deeper healing.
Maybe it will help someone else who is raw and healing too.
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