It’s Time to Go: Leaving Religious Trauma Behind to Find Myself Through Sapphic Romance

I’ve always had a tricky relationship with myself and religious trauma definitely plays a large role in that. 

I grew up in a very cult-like church.  There were many things I was not allowed to do, especially as a young lady.  I couldn’t cut my hair, I couldn’t wear jeans, go to dances, read certain books, and that’s really the surface level of it all. I was raised to believe that any type of sin would send you straight to Hell and that if you didn’t fall in line with what the church wanted, you had a first class ticket. My parents were deeply ingrained in this as well and any thing I did to rebel, they were punished for. So, I was a good girl. I didn’t rebel, I stayed in line within reason. I spent the first 18 years of my life drowned in body shaming and purity culture that inevitably led to the wrong marriage early in life, then a divorce from an emotionally and psychologically abusive situation. I didn’t cut my hair until I left the church, buying my first pair of jeans and getting my ears pierced around the same time.  It’s little things I still notice to this day that affect me.  The longest lasting effect I feel I endured were all the things I was taught in the name of religion.  My church twisted the Bible to their whims to not only fear-monger, but to teach hate. While my parents did their best to counteract this, teaching us to love everyone, no matter what, it didn’t prepare me for the fact I would hide parts of myself from myself. 

I always thought being attracted to both Milo and Kida in Atlantis was normal, but something inside always told me not to mention it to anyone. I’m glad I never did. I was very much taught that bisexual people just liked having sex and that was inherently sinful. Queer people were just confused or it was an abomination. I was a curious child and always wanted to question things, but was told I could never question the word of God, so I kept all my questions inside or in whispered prayers at night. But never spoken out loud around others. If you don’t say it out loud it doesn't count, right? 

This became even more confusing to me as I went to high school, or more-so college, after I had left the church.  A lot of my friends were in the queer community and I struggled with the thought that God would hate someone for just existing. That even I could be hated for being who I was meant to be. I always felt like I was weighed down, so I was baptized every time I had the option, probably more than 50 times, to help cleanse my soul.  I think in the end all my questions were what was weighing me down.  

Amongst all my questions, I’ve questioned my own sexuality for a long time, in reality since childhood, but I was never given the safety to explore who I thought I was. Being told your entire life that someone deserves to go to Hell for existing will do something to you.  I internalized a lot of my feelings and buried them so deep nothing could find them.  When I started reading sapphic romance, I realized I finally had a safe place to explore things I wasn't allowed to before. I’ll always be grateful for that safe space.  

I remember the day I started my first sapphic romance book.  I wanted to pick up a queer romance novel for Pride Month, as the ally I thought I was, and Penelope Douglas had put Tryst Six Venom up for free that month, so I dove in head first. When I tell you this book changed my life, I genuinely mean that.  I was reading a book celebrating a relationship between two women, something I had been taught was wrong my entire life.  It was beautiful, not something ugly or sinful. I didn’t realize until a bit later that the reason this was so eye opening to me was that I was actively masking pieces of who I was under layers of religious trauma from my youth.

After reading Tryst Six Venom, I wanted more. The next sapphic book I read was The Mad House by Liza James, which only further helped deconstruct things in my own background, something I’ve had to do most of my adult life. I had always enjoyed reading about cults, due to having grown up in a very cult-like religion, but this book opened my eyes to things I hadn’t even considered before. 

This year during Pride was the first time I’ve ever publicly mentioned that I’m bisexual, and that’s only on my bookstagram.  It took me a long time to get to this point, but sapphic romance healed a part of me I didn’t realize was broken and for that I will forever be grateful.  

I live in a very conservative area of the country and it’s not always safe to be out loud, even within my own family.  Through sapphic romance, I realized that I was finding pieces of myself in these characters, like Clay. And in doing so, I started to heal these pieces.I’d always felt like something was missing and even if only in this bookish space, I can be free to be who I am.  I didn’t realize how freeing taking back just one piece of my soul would be and I found that piece in sapphic romance books. 

In a world where the safety of being queer is always in jeopardy, this little bookish net of safety may be the only thing some people can have.  When rhetoric about not liking sapphic romance gets spread, you don’t understand just who might be listening. There could be a religious kid hiding in a closet hearing people spew how disgusting queer relationships are and that only reaffirms the beliefs they have been taught, while teaching self-hate. 

Now that you've made it this far, why should you read sapphic romance? 

Sapphic romance is so direly underrepresented within bookish spaces, more so when you take marginalized voices into account. Reading about sapphic relationships, really any queer relationships, is beneficial to all of us.  These relationships and dynamics exist outside of fiction and deserve to be loved and cherished.  Sapphic romances are beautiful, some of the most beautiful I’ve read, and instead of finding yourself in one character, maybe you’ll find pieces of yourself in two.  These books do exist, tons of them, which was something I quickly discovered when I started my journey into it. My current KU library is mostly sapphic romance right now.  It’s just as important to read about things you may not relate to as it is to read about the ones you do.  Reading diversely goes across a whole spectrum and we should embrace that as much as possible.

There truly is nothing quite like celebrating queer joy in my opinion. And that’s something I think about every day.