Unlearning
I pulled up the driveway and thought … Where's the barn?!? Oh right! It’s GONE.
My daughter is helping out on a project of disassembling a large old barn. The last time I stood in this spot, a post and beam barn towered over me. Today, only a freshly poured cement slab foundation exists in the original footprint. Beams and boards are stacked in tidy piles and each item is carefully labeled.
As I scanned the scene, a word popped up - one that's used a lot in the worlds I travel in: Deconstruction. It’s the complex process of re-evaluating religious doctrines that ended up harming instead of helping. Although people from all sorts of cultic groups talk about "deconstructing", it’s most commonly referred to in Christian circles. I mean, unchristian circles.
I just finished reading Tia Levings stellar and horrifying memoir A Well-Trained Wife, that draws back the curtain on church-sanctioned psychological and physical abuse. Towards the end of the book, after she left, she said:
My heart failed to comprehend how a good Christian girl who chose what God wanted ended up this way. Tia Levings
For Tia, and so many others, coming to terms involved dismantling the structures she had so scrupulously lived by.
In the Writing to Reckon Journal, prompt # 12 is titled ‘Questions I Never Asked.’ In controlling environments, questioning the leader or doctrine is considered a sign of weakness or resistance to the teachings. Once we are free, critical thinking can wake up. 💫
My friend and colleague Kathleen calls this unlearning. I think of it as identifying all that you were taught, all that you trusted was true, beneficial and sacred - and taking it apart bit by bit. Looking at life through new eyes and sometimes... stacking experiences into tidy piles and letting the new names for old familiar experiences sink in. The structure is gone but there’s a lot of reckoning to do with all the pieces.
This is where writing ✍🏼 can be so helpful. Hit reply and let me know about your deconstruction and unlearning process.
