There’s a particular kind of grief that sits beneath so many stories of religious trauma, one that doesn’t fit neatly into words, or get named often enough.
It’s the kind that doesn’t come with hot meals, flowers, sympathy cards, or the language of mourning. Because from the outside, it might not look like loss at all. You left the church, right? You’re free now. You made a choice.
And yet, there it is. That deep, hollow ache that shows up when you remember how it felt to belong, even if that belonging came at a cost. The lump in your throat when a song from church plays in a café and, just for a second, you feel it again. The certainty, the comfort, the purpose all before the pain comes crashing in.
Religious trauma isn’t just about what was done to us; it’s also about what was taken from us or what we had to let go of to survive. And that means, inevitably, we grieve. This isn’t the kind of grief that fits inside tidy stages. It’s messy, confusing, and it doesn’t end just because we’ve left.
The Grief No One Talks About
When people hear “religious trauma,” they often imagine fear, shame, guilt; and yes, those are all there. But grief? That’s the quiet undercurrent so many of us swim in, often without realising it.
- It’s the grief for a faith that once gave us meaning.
- For the community that once felt like family.
- For the structure that made life make sense.
- Even for the version of ourselves who believed, before the betrayal, before the awakening, before the floor fell out from under us.
In trauma work, we often talk about “ambiguous loss”, the kind of loss that isn’t clear-cut or publicly recognised. That’s what this is. You don’t get to have a funeral for your belief system. There’s no socially acceptable way to say, “I miss God,” when you’re also angry at what that version of God cost you.
So instead, it leaks out sideways.
- In the nostalgia that hits when you see old friends at Christmas (or the pain of knowing your won’t see anyone at Christmas).
- In the anger that surfaces when people say, “At least you’re free now!” or “You made your choice.”
- In the quiet loneliness that comes from knowing no one really understands what you’ve lost.
We grieve what was, even if what was wasn’t good for us. And that’s the hardest part for many people to accept.
Loving What Hurt You
One of the cruelest layers of religious trauma is the emotional confusion that comes from loving something that harmed you.
How do you mourn something that both gave you life and took parts of it away?
I and many people I work with describe this as an impossible tension, it’s the deep affection for their community, their youth group, their worship team, their “church family,” sitting right beside memories of control, fear, exclusion, or abuse.
You might find yourself remembering moments of joy, all the late-night conversations about faith, shared meals, mission trips and then feeling guilty for missing them. Or maybe you feel angry at yourself for still loving something that caused so much pain.
But this is exactly what makes religious trauma trauma: it’s not simple. It’s attachment and harm intertwined., where love and betrayal live in the same breath.
You’re allowed to miss the safety of certainty, the warmth of belonging, the simplicity of believing.
You’re allowed to grieve the good, even if it was built on something that ultimately broke you.
Grief doesn’t need the past to be pure to be valid.
The Loss of Certainty
People often underestimate just how much certainty shapes our sense of safety. When you grow up in a faith environment (especially a high-control or fundamentalist one) certainty is everything. There’s an answer for every question. A verse for every emotion and a rule for every decision.
And while that might sound stifling from the outside, when you’re in it, certainty feels like peace. You know who you are. You know who God is and you know how the world works.
Until you don’t.
When that certainty crumbles, whether through spiritual abuse, rejection, exclusion, or simply waking up to a truth that no longer fits, it’s disorienting. The world can stop making sense.
You might find yourself longing for the days when you just knew or when life felt clear and right and simple. Even if you can never go back.
That longing is grief. It’s not weakness or regression or “backsliding.” It’s your nervous system trying to find its footing again after years of anchoring itself to something absolute.
When certainty is gone, we don’t just lose beliefs, we lose identity, structure, and predictability. And that loss deserves to be grieved. Healing, in this space, often looks like learning to tolerate uncertainty without collapsing. About slowly building trust in your own inner compass, even when it wobbles.
You’re not meant to feel steady right away. Certainty was borrowed safety and you’re now learning how to build your own.
Community and the Ache of Loneliness
Then there’s the community piece.
Leaving a religious system often means losing your people and not because you want to, but because the system demands it. You become the cautionary tale, the backslider, the lost one. Sometimes you’re outright shunned; other times, it’s just the slow fade of awkward distance.
Either way, it hurts.
For many of us, our whole social world was built inside that structure. Church wasn’t just Sunday mornings, it was your family, your friend group, your hobbies, your emotional safety net, your sense of purpose. So when it’s gone, it can feel like you’ve been exiled from your own life.
This is where grief often hits hardest. Because it’s not just the loss of connection, it’s the betrayal that the love you thought was unconditional turned out to have conditions all along.
You might try to find new community and you should, but nothing quite replicates that intensity of shared meaning and identity. It’s okay if you miss it. It’s okay if you find new spaces that are gentler and truer, but still sometimes long for what once was.
Missing the people who hurt you doesn’t make you weak; it makes you human. And as you rebuild community, remember this: you’re not looking for a replica of what was. You’re building something new, from a place of truth instead of fear. That’s sacred work.
The Body Holds the Grief
Grief doesn’t just live in the mind, it lives in the body.
If you’ve ever found yourself crying during a song you don’t even believe in anymore, or feeling anxiety before walking into a church building years after leaving, that’s your body remembering.
Religious trauma often includes both emotional and somatic imprints, sensations tied to worship, prayer, rituals, or authority figures. And when those are suddenly gone or reinterpreted, the body reacts.
You might experience exhaustion, numbness, restlessness, or an ache you can’t explain. That’s grief, too. It’s the body’s way of metabolising loss.
If you can, let yourself feel it. Grief asks to be witnessed, not fixed. It doesn’t want your explanation, it wants your presence.
Gentle practices can help here; grounding, breathwork, walks in nature, therapy, journaling, or simply giving yourself permission to name what you miss.
Sometimes, grief just needs to be spoken out loud:
- “I miss my old life, even though it hurt me.”
- “I wish I still had that sense of certainty.”
- “I feel lonely, and I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Saying it doesn’t make you regress, it helps your system move.
Letting Grief Be Sacred
One of the most healing shifts I see in this work is when people stop seeing grief as the enemy, and start seeing it as sacred.
Grief means you loved deeply. It means you cared enough to have something to lose. It means you’re human and still capable of tenderness, even after what you’ve endured.
In many ways, grief is the proof that your capacity for connection survived the control.
So instead of trying to rush through it, what if you honoured it?
- What if you let your grief have its own rituals, a journal entry, a candle, a playlist, a walk by the ocean?
- What if you allowed it to remind you that you are still capable of love, just not the kind that costs you yourself this time?
Healing from religious trauma isn’t about “getting over” what happened. It’s about integrating it and allowing the pain, the love, the loss, and the learning to coexist. Grief is the bridge between what was and what’s yet to be.
And on the other side, you might find something quieter but more grounded than certainty, a sense of peace that doesn’t demand perfection. A belonging that doesn’t require conformity.
What Grieving Might Look Like
Grief in this context can take many forms and none of them are wrong.
It might look like:
- Crying when you least expect it.
- Feeling nostalgic for worship music you no longer sing.
- Avoiding religious holidays because they bring up too much.
- Longing for old friendships even after they hurt you.
- Feeling guilty for not being “over it” yet.
- Laughing at the absurdity of it all one day, and sobbing the next.
This is all grief doing its job, helping you process what’s too heavy to hold all at once. You don’t need to tidy it up or to justify it. You just need to let it move through you, in its own messy, unpredictable way.
Grief is not the enemy of healing. It’s the heartbeat of it.
You’re Not Broken
If there’s one thing I wish people knew about grief and religious trauma, it’s this: you’re not broken because this hurts. You’re bereaved.
You’ve lost more than just belief; you’ve lost identity, belonging, structure, community, certainty, and sometimes family. That’s not something you “get over.” It’s something you live with, learn from, grow around, and slowly integrate.
The ache you feel isn’t a sign of weakness or failure, it’s a sign that you’re human. That you’re still capable of love and meaning, even after the structures that defined them collapsed. You’re allowed to mourn what was, even as you build something new.
And one day, without you even noticing, you’ll feel a little more room inside your chest. The grief won’t disappear, but it will soften. It will become part of your story not the whole of it.
If this kind of grief feels familiar, you don’t have to carry it alone. Working with a trauma-informed therapist who understands religious harm can help you process what was lost and begin to rebuild a sense of safety and belonging on your own terms.
You can reach out to me directly here or you can find a therapist through The Religious Trauma Collective.