A woman who got married at 21 and divorced at 24 says she regrets letting religion skew her understanding of love
Kristjana Hillberg dealt with feelings of unworthiness since she was a teenager.
Six months into her marriage, Hillberg began to see how religion pushed her to settle for a life as a housewife that wasn't aligned with her beliefs in women's empowerment and curiosity. In grade school, for example, Hillberg remembers being told it was a woman's duty to "replenish the earth." She sang songs that reinforced gender stereotypes of women as homemakers and men as breadwinners, and learned that partaking in alcohol, marijuana, and pre-marital sex made someone a sinner.
Getting a divorce four years later, leaving the church, and healing through therapy helped Hillberg find shame-free sources of love and joy, she said.
She opened herself to trying things that didn't involve being a mother or wife, like dance, and later co-created Step Into Your Magic, a course to help people figure out who they are and what they want out of life.
Hillberg said internalizing the teaching that pre-marital sex is a serious sin that made her feel unlovable following a sexual assault in college. Since she was sexually assaulted while drunk, she assumed at the time she deserved it and needed to repent.
https://www.insider.com/woman-married-21...022-10?amp
Kristjana Hillberg dealt with feelings of unworthiness since she was a teenager.
Six months into her marriage, Hillberg began to see how religion pushed her to settle for a life as a housewife that wasn't aligned with her beliefs in women's empowerment and curiosity. In grade school, for example, Hillberg remembers being told it was a woman's duty to "replenish the earth." She sang songs that reinforced gender stereotypes of women as homemakers and men as breadwinners, and learned that partaking in alcohol, marijuana, and pre-marital sex made someone a sinner.
Getting a divorce four years later, leaving the church, and healing through therapy helped Hillberg find shame-free sources of love and joy, she said.
She opened herself to trying things that didn't involve being a mother or wife, like dance, and later co-created Step Into Your Magic, a course to help people figure out who they are and what they want out of life.
Hillberg said internalizing the teaching that pre-marital sex is a serious sin that made her feel unlovable following a sexual assault in college. Since she was sexually assaulted while drunk, she assumed at the time she deserved it and needed to repent.
https://www.insider.com/woman-married-21...022-10?amp
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"