This is something I never talk about, mostly because it’s uncomfortable, but it’s something that’s coming through right now, wanting to be shared.
I was raised Catholic. I made all of the sacraments and went to church and religion classes every week. I was taught about things like original sin and needing to confess your sins and be forgiven for them and God judging you to decide whether you’ve lived a life worthy of getting to go to Heaven after you die.
And none of it sat well with me. Especially now, but even as a kid. I just always felt like there was something off about what I was being taught.
For years of my adult life, I carried around what I call “God trauma.” I was raised to believe things about life and about God that did not resonate with me. Not only did it not resonate, but it felt like a lie.
That was NOT the experience of God I’d been having my entire life… and yet that was what I was being taught to believe.
I didn’t know what to trust. How could I trust in a God who would judge me and who needed to decide if I was worthy enough or if I was too much of a sinner?
I felt totally disconnected from God, and yet I had also been experiencing a deep sense of inner and outer connection with something that felt beyond me.
It didn’t make sense. I was so confused.
Until the day I heard the phrase “the Universe.” I started to resonate more with that then with the word “God.” It felt more real to me. More truthful. It felt like unconditional love, not the judgment and sinning I’d been raised to believe in.
But I was torn–torn between what I had been taught and raised to believe my whole life and what I had always felt was the truth, I just couldn’t put words to it until later in life.
So I walked around feeling torn, half-trusting in God and half-feeling like I was all alone to do everything myself.
A big part of resolving and healing my God trauma was a little truth-bomb that my late-grandma dropped on me one day when I asked her why she did a rosary every night but didn’t go to church. And everything I was learning about life and the Universe at the time fit that truth-bomb she shared with me.
In that moment, I made two decisions–two very scary decisions.
First, I decided I would let go of the stuff I had learned growing up about God that didn’t feel good to me or didn’t resonate with the truth I knew in my soul. I decided to trust myself and trust what I felt was true about God, even if that’s not what the outside was presenting to me.
And second, I decided I would no longer call myself a Catholic. If someone asked me about my religion, I would simply say, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.”
It took me YEARS before I was willing to admit out loud that I had renounced being Catholic (and this is the first time I’ve ever written about it). My mom still gets upset to this day when I say it.
But it was something I knew I had to do if I wanted to heal my God trauma and step into a new relationship and experience with God. I had to create new beliefs around God that actually fit what I knew was true in my soul, and not what I was taught to believe by someone outside of myself.
God is not looking down on you and judging you and deciding if you’re living a good life or a life worthy of getting into Heaven or if you’re a sinner who should be punished. That is a FEAR-BASED way of looking at God and so that cannot possibly be the truth.
God is Unconditional LOVE. God is energy. God is Source Energy. God is everywhere and in everything, including YOU. You are a divine expression of God in human form. And you are worthy and deserving and enough because you were born. Period.
AND–this is the most important part–you are here to CO-CREATE with God a life beyond your wildest dreams. You are here to be a VESSEL for God to do and create and be and experience LIFE.
God created you and sent you here to be YOU and to live life fully expressed as you. To create the art that you’re inspired to. To feel and express the emotions that come through you. To share the message that dances in your soul. To act on the inspired ideas when they come to you. To do the things and be the things that you dream of and desire to.
Those dreams and desires and inspired ideas are not random and they’re not “sinful.” They are INSTRUCTIONS FROM GOD, given to YOU SPECIFICALLY because it’s something God wants to do, be, create or experience THROUGH YOU. Your eyes. Your mind. Your heart. Your perspective.
THAT is what I have always known and believed about God, but as a kid, I couldn’t put it into words. And I just knew what I was being taught to believe did not feel good, it did not feel truthful and it did not feel like the experience of God I’d been having my whole life.
So I let it go. I released it. I made the decision to walk away from something that felt like part of my identity–being Catholic–but that did not align or feel good to me.
Healing–and continuing to heal–my God trauma was one of the best things I’ve done for myself. It has helped me to have more self-trust and trust in the unseen higher power than ever before, and that has allowed me to co-create magic with God, in my life, and in the world.
