I live with a chronic pain condition. Yesterday, I laid down in the afternoon to rest and put on some music that I used to use to help me release all the energetic and emotional wounds I was carrying from the warriors I was counseling at the time. Back then, I would visualize piece after piece of armor being removed from me, as I lay back, face toward the sky and breathed all the horrors of combat out of me to be swallowed up back into the vastness of the Universe. It was one of the ways I regularly processed what my Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans were confiding in me.

My calling as a healing guide for warriors ended about seven years ago, right at the time I was called to serve the healing of one man, instead of thousands. I married that man.

So yesterday, when I laid down, I expected my mind to go to the usual visualization of the armor being removed, releasing pain. Instead, I experienced something that shook me.

Women, on their knees, crying, weeping, broken with deep grief and so much trauma. Priestesses, healers, wise women, our mothers who were tortured and murdered because they loved God without Christianity, ourselves, nature, Mother Earth, Mother God.

The intensity of the grief was so overwhelming that I burst into tears as well. I just lay there and wept thousands of years of grief as my cat nuzzled me.

And then, clarity: it’s time to stop hiding.

It’s time to stop letting my fear of Christianity keep me from being visible for who I really am. It’s time to break hundreds of years of silence.

I felt a deep desire to gather my sisters from everywhere, those of us who have been priestesses, healers, wise women, who love and live close to God without Christianity, who have lost and suffered severely at the hands of the Christian Patriarchy, who feel the wounds of it all still…who, like me, hold the terror of being visible deep in our bones.

Because we remember. And Christianity is as dangerous now as it has ever been.

I wiped my tears, got up, took my laptop out on the porch in the balmy July air and watched the wind move through the pines in the lush forest around me. And I wrote.

An invitation.

A messy, I don’t know where I’m going with this, hashed together invitation.

To what exactly?

I don’t know really. Not fully.

But I feel it coming into form. Feel it pressing forth from within me.

Feel the consequences of hiding outweighing my need for safety.

The time has come to stop hiding.

And to invite my sisters to join me.

This isn’t a rallying cry to take up a cause.

It’s a call to come home.

What is pulling at me is not the enormity of mending to be done on this earth or even the deep power we hold as women of the Divine Feminine who know in our bones what it is to be healers, menders, peacemakers, guardians, warriors, defenders, the bridge between the Unseen and the Seen…

No. It’s how collectively and deeply hurt we are. Here and now. The trauma we carry from the last few thousand years of Patriarchy’s attempt to demonize and annihilate us. It shapes how we show up in our lives today. Wounds from past lifetimes are still with us. As well as what we’ve experienced in this one.

I keep seeing the women in my visualization: the grief, the utter exhaustion from being strong alone for so long, the loneliness of being denied your identity, the trauma that has been buried because survival and safety demanded it, the fear that exposing what you really believe will get you killed – even if it’s your reputation or belonging that is murdered.

Which is why my invitation is not to do more.

It’s to experience acceptance and belonging together.

It’s to create a private online space within the broader Heart Tru Living brand just for us where we are safe to be seen, to reveal who we are, to be women who love God deeply without Christianity and for that to be acknowledged, accepted, and the norm. Where we can fully remember all of who we are.

It’s for those of us who remember our past lifetimes and those who do not; but know in our core that we are deeply spiritual women who represent the Divine Feminine on this earth.

Who know in our soul DNA that we are here for this time.

Even if we don’t know what that looks like.

Even if we don’t have the energy for it right now.

What I’m sensing is that for us to be resourced to do the work, we need to experience belonging with each other. We need a place where we don’t have to hide.

Where we can weep and mourn all that’s been taken from us, all that we’ve endured, all that the Christian Patriarchy has attempted to destroy in us… and heal with each other.

We are powerful women. But we’ve been surviving the Patriarchy on our own, in silence, in fear, in hiding for far too long now.

We need each other.

I think it’s that simple.

I also know it’s that complex. This certainly is for me. That man I married? He’s a Christian. He knows I’m not. I used to be. I grew up in the church, I was a devoted believer, I was going to be a missionary. The Divine Beloved liberated me from Christianity in my early 20s.

But part of my devotional love for my husband is to be with him in the things that matter to him. And to be a healing priestess in his life. So, I voluntarily attend an evangelical free church with him. I wholeheartedly disagree with everything in the Christian narrative and many Sundays it’s all I can do to endure the service. But my husband has experienced being ostracized by Christians in his past and I know that me being with him is meaningful to him. He encourages me to be me. I don’t try to change his beliefs.

Until now, I have been too afraid to let the Christians know who I really am. Because I know exactly what will shift, the judgment that will fall on my husband for marrying a “nonbeliever”, how they will villainize me, how I will become “one of the lost” and they will “pray for my salvation.”

Most Evangelical Christians are unable to handle truth outside of their own and I learned long ago that the truth can and will get you ostracized, judged, demonized, and killed by people who are convinced that their truth is the only truth and the only way.

To say I’ve wrestled with this is an understatement.

Until now, it's been easier and safer to hide who I am, what I believe, and the spiritual abilities I actually have.

I have vivid memories of past lifetimes where I suffered unspeakable trauma by Christians, and they have caused some of my most intense pain in this lifetime, too. I am still processing those wounds.

And if you’re reading this, I believe you are, too.

You may even consider yourself a Christian but still feel the collective harm Christians, the Church, and Christianity itself has done to you. You can certainly see what Christians have done to anyone in this world who has defied, denied, or dared to not accept their Truth.

I’m not here to change anyone’s beliefs. Or to discuss apologetics. (I was trained in Christian apologetics. I know all the defense arguments.) In fact, I will not engage in those discussions.

No. This is for you if you feel a deep resonance with what I’m saying here and you just know I need this. You need this belonging. You need the healing. You need a place where you can exist openly in your truth and be accepted and allowed to be who you really are.

You need to be among ancient priestesses, healers, wise women, leaders who are here again in this lifetime because the Divine Feminine cannot be annihilated. She is always here. She has never left. Neither have we.

It’s time we find each other. And feel safe.

So, I’m not sure exactly what form this wants to become, but I am leaning in, listening and I will respond to what moves me.

If you want to be included, sign up for my email list.

It’s time we welcome each other home.