Spirituality After Ritualized Religious Torture/Abuse

[Qwerty]

Its been weighing heavy on my heart on how many of us were abused in Gods name. Whether it be a pastor, priest, Brahman, family member, etc etc.
This has lead many of us to cults, self harm and just everything bad one can think of.
But what do we do with the gaping hole left in our souls? For those of us who hate God, don't believe in Him, or are just numb? Or those left who still believe but can never go back for fear of more abuse? And I'm not just talking christianity here. Religious abuse and torture is across the board. Pick any god or religion and there's some evil pond scum using it to inflict pain for their pleasure. This is human history. Bad people exist in all places. But so do good people.
How after we have been through so much do we go on?
There isn't a one size fits all, but here's my two cents. Read. Make your journey your own. Read books from all walks of life. From all religions. Make your home, where ever your new safe place is your temple. Make a place in your life you can go to where it's just you. A place you can talk to the air, the trees, the statues, the icons... whatever it is that you connected with. Even if you are just talking to the sun or the moon.
When I was 18 and in the midst of the worst trauma of my life, that place was a willow tree in a cemetery.
I gave that tree a bottle of water every time i visited. I told it my problems, my hopes, my dreams. That willow tree saved me so many times from suicide I lost count. Humans have an innate drive to connect with something bigger and outside of themselves. We are not just water filled meat sacks. We have purpose, drive, Consciousness.
Don't let that be permanently stolen from you.
You don't need people, buildings, or organized religion to connect with your inner self and outer conscious. Nor would it be safe for most of us to enter organized religions since we seem to have targets on our backs for cults and abusers.
I have purposefully stayed neutral here and not poined to a "good religion" or "good belief system". I know it may come across as new age nonsense, but there's been so many scientific studies and sociological studies done about how devestating killing someones god and belief system is to them.
And ours was killed in childhood. We grew up alone with only the bad side of everything. We learned to hate, hide and lie. But we never learned love, mercy, hope, empathy, compassion. Those were just words. Most of us never even knew fun or joy.
These are things that are still within our reach, but we have to learn them. I had to learn them.

[Oceantide]

Querty,
It feels good to read your words. I resonate. At age 8, after one of my most heinous, near-death experiences of torture, I left my house at night and walked to an urban street corner frequented by drug dealers and prostitutes. I remember the smell of summer grass comforting me. I laid on broken pilings in a parking lot and gazed at the stars. They comforted me. Knowing that broken people frequented that parking lot comforted me. I felt embraced by something larger than myself.

[earthhorse]

I don''t have many words.

This is such a beautiful post and I resonate with it.

I also am feeling more the loss, the devastation of having my belief system so totally undermined and losing my god, as I connect with my childhood abuse memories.

And yes because I was a survivor of abuse it did feel like I had a target on my back in every religious group or 'cult' I was later associated with. And the spiritual abuse, associated with one violation in particular, hurt me anew. Shut me down. I had started to sing to myself, I would go on long walks and sing and sing, I was so lonely. When I was abused again I lost my voice, and it felt like the nourishment was no longer reaching me. Things became smaller and more bitter for too long.

What you say about he willow tree Qwerty, what Oceantides says about the smell of summer grasses. I remember there was a spring that ran out into the sea, and a place to clamber down the cliff with a small plateau where the spring pooled slightly before it ran on out into vastness, The sky a crack between the cliffs. As a teenager I would spend a lot of time there. It saved my life, it saved me.

Love,
EH

[quixote]

Qwerty,
I read your post several times. You shared a lot of wisdom. Thanks for reaching out.
quixote