I Belong to Me - by Tia Levings Hardcover

Book Synopsis

What does it mean to heal from trauma caused by the people, beliefs, and practices of your faith? And to rebuild a sense of self, when high-control religion said you shouldn't have one?

Indoctrinated from early childhood to obey, conform, and want what others wanted for her, Tia Levings learned love and acceptance meant being someone other than herself.

After years of abuse in a violent marriage and high-control religion, Tia Levings escaped with her children (a story told in her memoir, A Well-Trained Wife) and thought the hardest was behind her.

But leaving was just the beginning.

With an audacious persistence to reclaim her life, Tia set off on a 15-year quest to psychological peace. The result is an emotionally regulated, actualized, self-aware woman who is able to tell her harrowing story without retraumatizing herself --a woman who can reach back to help others claim what's theirs. If trauma took your past, it shouldn't get your present and future too.

Through a series of personal stories, therapeutic stages, and resources, Tia Levings guides readers through the journey that helped her leave abuse, rediscover selfhood, and heal her mind, soul, and body after religious trauma --so that you can too.

Review Quotes

"I'm so glad for a book that doesn't emphasize conversations about bad theology or bad ideas about Jesus vs. the correct ones. It's not incorrect, but it's the wrong conversation much of the time. Tia Levings's I Belong to Me thoughtfully and skillfully expresses the developing path forward for those of us deconstructing faith, not necessarily to replace it, but to rediscover what our trumped-up religion itself replaced and repressed: our humanity. The written voice is imagination put into words, and Tia's is a voice that helps us explore our own. It's time we do that together." -David R. Morris, author of Lost Faith and Wandering Souls

About the Author

TIA LEVINGS is the New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife. She writes about the realities of religious trauma, decoding fundamentalist influences in today's culture. Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, the Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Based in North Carolina, she is mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, paint, and daydream.