Healing and Belonging After Loss of Community

When you've experienced significant time in a high control religious environment, you may have noticed the powerful pull towards a sense of community and belonging. One of the most common areas of grief I've heard from those who have left their faith circle, is that of the loss of community. When you belong to a group of people who seemingly think, act, and believe like you do, there's a false sense of safety that you belong.

This need to belong is natural, it's biological, it's a key feature of being human. So naturally, it's common to deeply long for and grieve the absence of one of the very things that has helped you feel safe and connected to like-minded individuals, family, and friends who can feel more like chosen family.

In a world where our lives are often defined by our busyness, it can feel overwhelming at best to try to reinvent your sense of community after leaving your faith group. Oftentimes, one of the noted benefits of being a member of a religious group is the convenience of your social life essentially being planned for you. Depending on your faith background, that can look like weekly Bible study, prayer groups, leadership training, volunteer opportunities, service projects that help you or others in the group, not to mention plenty of "fun-focused" activities or events planned for you by the staff or unfolding organically among your inner circles in the community. You may have even experienced being on the receiving end of a meal train when your people learn you've faced a medical emergency or big life change. Before you realize it, your faith community could easily become your only community and your social calendar is basically planned for you.

Things can get quiet pretty quickly when you decide to step out of the familiarity and safety of that faith community structure. People might maintain contact with you initially with hopes that this is a phase and you'll return. Or they might be more accepting of your unfolding changes and movement away from the group once shared, but they may not be as available when their social calendars continue to orbit around the common cause of the faith community you left.

There can be compounding grief in your loss of community. You may experience the loss of the whole in that you once belonged as one individual in a large group of people and you don't anymore. You may not have even known the names of or recognized the faces of everyone in your faith community but showing up week after week in a large space with a collection of people may have helped you feel rooted in a larger sense of community.

Even years after I've left my own religious community, there are times I miss aspects of the sense of gathering as a collective. While it may feel like something you've once loved is lost forever, it doesn't have to be. There are other ways to experience the electricity of community connectivity in spaces that won't trigger religious trauma. One of the more recent experiences I've had in tapping into that large scale sense of belonging in the whole was this summer at an outdoor concert with roughly 20,000 people. Surprisingly with that many people, I still recognized a handful of people I know in the crowd and it reminded me of that personal level of connectivity I've experienced in large religious group gatherings of my past in a positive way.

But for the most part, at this concert we were surrounded by strangers yet not feeling alone. We were brought together by the magical light of creation, musical creativity offered to us by Jon Batiste and The Cleveland Orchestra. There were numerous moments of emotional movement but it never felt forced, it didn't feel coercive or manipulative. If you've had experiences of your own religious trauma then chances are you know what it feels like to have music weaponized to prompt you to do or act a certain way to maintain your place in the group. Not this time. This experience felt authentic and true.

The most memorable part of the show for me was near the end when Batiste and the orchestra performed Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." I was resting in a sea of 20,000 people, many of whom sang the words, "Hallelujah, hallelujah," as a chorus. In a different setting, in a different context, this could have easily set off all of my internal safety alarms. That wasn't the case there and then. Instead, I experienced something greater than belonging to a group of shared beliefs around one specific deity. I experienced belonging to humanity as a whole with no purpose or agenda other than to enjoy connection, creativity, and expression.

That song transitioned to one of my favorite song's by Jon Batiste, "Butterfly." Sparks of synchronicity surrounded me in that musical transition just moments after collectively singing words past versions of me would have sang in a church building. This time under a blanket of stars and the soft arches of trees I reconnected with parts of a past that at one time felt lost forever. Butterflies are deeply symbolic in my own journey of healing following religious trauma, and as Batiste invited the crowd to move into, "Butterfly" he asked everyone to pull out their phones to represent our inner light in the world. Again reminiscent of church services of years past, congregational singing, holding a little candle precariously melting wax moving towards my small child fingers, this time I'm in a field of 20,000 people, our phone lights glowing in unison, being called fireflies by Batiste as he reminds us of our inherent goodness from the moment of our existence. He calls on us to continue to let our light shine in the world as he leads us to sing along to, "Butterfly." The song in it's whole is stunningly beautiful and deeply resonates with what I experienced years ago leaving my faith community, and over the collection of years of slowly rebuilding a more authentic life for myself.

The road to rebuilding your sense of community, your connection to new friends, a feeling that you belong somewhere after leaving your religious group may take a long time. Healing and belonging after loss of community will reshape the way your life looks moving forward. Connection and belonging probably won't feel as immediate as it may have when you were a part of your belief group. Relationships take time and consistency to feel the growth and safety of mutual trust. Trust isn't a wild weed, it's a garden with layers of diversity and plants of varying degrees of maturation that intertwine to build a beautiful, cohesive established healthy ecosystem. You plant seeds of intention and show up in the discomfort of growing something new.

For me this looked like putting myself out there and embracing the awkward vulnerability of talking to people I hadn't met before. My path looked like finding a new job, taking community art classes, joining a writer's club, participating in book clubs, volunteering in community efforts. Once I became a parent it even looked like befriending other parents on playgrounds and boldly asking to exchange phone numbers for a time. In one season it evolved into networking in career centered spaces and emailing people I'd never spoken to before to ask them out to coffee. I understand how this may sound unbearable to some (to many). I get it, I'm an introvert and all this felt unnatural much of the time for me. Not every attempt lead to something lasting but several years later I'm grateful to past versions of me who did the hard thing over and over, now knowing what it feels like to have rebuilt more authentic connections and a greater sense of community.

I would be remiss to not to mention the key feature of my personal journey of developing healthy, fulfilling connection after leaving my religious group - and that is the deep inner work of learning what it means to belong to myself. When I left my religious group, I was privileged to still have a few social connections outside of that group that I could rely and lean on. And while this was true, I also grew keenly aware of what it felt like to lose it all. It was in this space I was reacquainted with parts of myself I would not have as freely connected with in the religious system I had once stayed within. When I lost my greater sense of belonging in that religious community, I learned the invaluable lesson that no one and nothing can rob me of the connectivity of belonging to myself. When you belong to yourself, you always have a home. When you belong to yourself, you will be more able to cultivate the kind of authentic connection inward and outward you couldn't otherwise have. You can have the appearance of belonging in a group, but when you don't belong to yourself underneath it all, you are missing out on something real, true, and inherently beautiful. When you belong to yourself, you create spaciousness to exist more fully as your true self in the whole of humanity. This is true belonging. Together, this is the space we can cultivate for your life, this is the work I would love to do with you.