Recent Posts
Do Shame and Fear Make Us Gravitate Towards Toxic Teachings?
What if our deepest wounds drive us to fundamentalism? A few months ago a reader sent me a beautiful story of healing that exemplifies a common dynamic that I see: People who can’t face the wounds they have from childhood often gravitate to a very legalistic form of...
7 Ways Your God-Given Stone Age Brain May Influence You
What if the reason you often feel stuck is actually your brain trying to protect you? I seriously loved Dr. Merry Lin’s book Rebecoming, that we talked about on the podcast last week. I was so excited when they sent it to me, because I know so many of you can’t afford...
Let’s Stop Excusing Sexual Assault on a Technicality
Remember Bill Clinton and it depends on the definition of "is"? In the 90s, in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal (which, in retrospect, is so full of uneven power dynamics), Bill Clinton denied having an affair based on a silly definition. And, because of...
PODCAST: Rebecoming–Figuring Out Why You’re Stuck
What if you could have therapy--with just a book? And what if that book could help you understand all the therapy terms you hear, like trauma, Stone Age brain, fight and flight, attachment theory, and more? And what if those exercises could actually help you work...
Learning to Be Kind When the Body Keeps the Score
My son Christopher died 28 years ago today. That's such a strange phrase to say--"My son Christopher died." I remember practising saying it when he was in the ICU, preparing myself for what may come. The words didn't seem to go together, like they were fighting hard...
Young Women Are STILL Fleeing the EVANGELICAL Church
Women have pretty much always attended church more than men. Christianity started off as a religion of “women and slaves”, which was a common insult hurled at the fledgling new religion by the Romans. And it has continued to be a religion with more women than men....
PODCAST: Making Faith More Tangible in the Holy Everyday
Ever feel like faith and holiness are out of reach? You want to look like Jesus, but you know you need to pray more. Read your Bible more. Do more spiritual disciplines. Volunteer at church more. It's a long list of things you don't get to, and you know God must be...
Was Purity Culture All Bad?
Should we be nuanced about the effects of purity culture? On episode 247 of The Bare Marriage Podcast, we decided to open things up to all of you to ask us anything you’d been dying to ask about sex, marriage, purity culture and everything else related to healthy...
What Do the “Obligation Sex Message” and the “All Men Lust” Message Have in Common?
What if there's a thread running through obligation sex and normalizing men's lust? Or rather, what if there are multiple threads? When we wrote The Great Sex Rescue, based on our surveys of 20,000 women, we identified four big teachings about sex that are common in...
Are You Caught in the FOG(C) of Coercive Control?
Sheila here! Last week, Bethany Jantzi joined us on the Bare Marriage podcast to talk about how the elements of coercive control are actually found in the marital dynamics that so much of our evangelical marriage advice creates. Which is horrifying! At the end of the...