📽 Q&A Video Transcript
👋 Introduction
Hey friends, welcome to our last Q&A for the summer read-along—because guess what? We’ve made it through most of September, and that means it’s officially about to be fall.
For this last week, I wanted to talk a bit about a shift I made in how I understand the Forward-Facing approach to trauma recovery—particularly in the area of intentionality. That theme of focus and function shows up a lot in Chapter 12. And if you’ve spent time in toxic religious spaces, the idea of choosing a focus or seeking meaning can feel… suspicious.
🧭 Why Intentionality Can Feel Threatening
In many ways, where I went in my book with Chapter 12—which is about focus and function, specifically how you define your sermon’s focus and what you want it to do—I used that as a way to look at intentionality. Because what I’ve found, both in myself and with a lot of clients I work with around religious trauma, is that having some sense of grand meaning or purpose can feel very threatening.
There needs to be a certain sense of empowerment that comes with that. And this can be very different for people who’ve experienced other kinds of trauma, or who are preparing for secular workplaces where meaning and purpose haven’t been used as weapons. For those of us with religious trauma, meaning and purpose were often exploited to force compliance in high-control spaces.
So after leaving those spaces, the idea of having meaning and purpose can feel nearly identical to being controlled.
🔓 How Focus and Function Can Set You Free
But what’s ironic is that being able to identify where you want to focus in your life—and what you want to do—can be the very things that free us. They can look like meaning and purpose, but they don’t have to be those exact things. The difference is that we get to choose them for ourselves instead of being told what our focus and purpose are supposed to be.
📚 Calling and the Family Business
For example, right after I quit pastoring, I struggled a lot with the idea of calling. Even while I was pastoring, I used to joke that I was in the family business. My sister has an M.Div and has pastored. My dad has an M.Div and works in chaplaincy and pastoral care. My mom is deeply involved in Bible study and cares a great deal about the Christian tradition—she’s super nerdy about it. So for me, it’s very much a family affair.
I know that for other people with religious trauma, the family dynamic is different. Some people’s whole families were deeply in it and still are. Others had more of a one-off experience—like, “Hey, we got free childcare and we don't know what happened to you.” So it’s a mix.
🧑🎓 When Calling Starts to Shift
But I say all this to come back to calling. At some point—usually in adolescence, sometimes later—we start to choose things for ourselves. We begin to ask what we want for our lives and where we want to focus. And that doesn’t always match what our caregivers would have wanted for us.
That’s good and healthy. That’s the beginning of boundaries. We start to say, “I don’t have the same goals as you—and that’s okay.” I’m going to pursue my own goals. And when they intersect with yours, great. When they don’t, that’s fine too. We don’t have to be involved in the same things.
🛑 Differentiating From High-Control Spirituality
But for people with religious trauma, where everyone was expected to have the same goal—convert the world, love it, use your gifts to serve that one big aim—differentiating from that can feel scary. Saying “I want different things, I have different values” feels dangerous.
🔄 Focus Isn’t Forever—It’s a Practice
Now, with focus and function, what’s helpful is that it’s not about finding your one life purpose and following it forever. That can feel like just another set of rules. Instead, it becomes cyclical. You get to ask:
What’s this week about?
What’s this moment about?
That question—What’s this moment about?—can still be protective. It’s an invitation to return to yourself and ask, “What matters to me right now?”
🔊 How to Filter Out the Noise
When we’re able to pick a focus, we can start to identify the noise—all those external voices pushing different goals—and filter it. Is this helping me do what I actually want to do? Is this voice supporting my chosen focus, or not?
That’s how I decide which voices matter.
And yes, sometimes it’s unclear. Sometimes we don’t know what’s going to help. But we still have that measuring stick: is this getting me closer to what I want?
🌿 It Doesn’t Have to Be Deep
And that “want” doesn’t have to be capitalistic or grand. It can be:
I want to notice the seasonal shift into fall.
I want to enjoy the flowers in my yard.
I want to feel the cool breeze instead of getting sucked into my phone.
It can also be deeper:
I notice I get triggered when people seem angry.
I want to build tolerance for discomfort without assuming it’s about me.
There are so many ways we can choose our focus—and we get to change it whenever we want. That’s what makes it freeing. That’s what lets us stop reacting to what everyone else thinks we should be doing.
✨ What We Survived For
So let’s end on a positive note.
There is so much available to you when you get to choose it. When you’re in conversation with your body—not shutting it down, not taking everything it says as absolute truth, but staying in relationship with it—and when you get to decide where you want to go and what you want to do, there's so much out there.
And there's so much in you, too, to discover.
I hope you get to enjoy that.
This is what we survived for.
Please enjoy your life. And if you have questions or want to talk, feel free to reach out.
