Grounded Spirituality, Unfolding No. 2

Choosing Love When Fear Remembers

A Tidbit to Thread continues with an invitation to discover along side of me.

I finished reading the books.

Three different women’s journeys from trauma to finding a spirituality that felt authentic and true for their own lives. Each story was unique. Each story was deeply personal. And yet there was a common theme, a common thread, if you will.

I read as each author embarked on her own heroine’s journey, one that was drawing her toward something greater than where she had been. Something was calling her forward. Something was inviting her beyond pain and toward love. The path each woman took looked different, but the direction was remarkably similar.

That was the thread I found woven through each story: not a journey toward certainty, but toward greater authenticity; not toward fear, but toward love.

In the first story, the author reclaimed her ancestral memory, her intuition, and the sacred truths whispered by Spirit and the water.

In the second, the author reclaimed her right to search, question, and learn from an eclectic mix of healing modalities that eventually led her to a place of peace, the place she desired to live from.

In the third, the author said yes to becoming part of a healing collective, being guided by her True Self as she took one step after another until she became part of a global community dedicated to healing individual and collective trauma in hopes of creating a better world.

Three stories. Three women. Three very different journeys.

I set out to read each book without judgment; my intent was to read each story with a genuine curiosity to understand the world through another person’s lived experience. And if I’m being truthful, there were moments when I needed to stop and reground myself. Why? Because even after all the work I’ve done to deconstruct and reclaim my own life’s journey, having been over immersed for over five decades in an evangelical and charismatic worldview, one that is shaped by categories of right and wrong, what is safe and what is not, good versus evil, God vs Satan etc., has left its imprint. And there are definitely still moments when those old narratives are stirred and fragments rise to the surface, asking to be sifted through. They need to be noticed, digested, metabolized, and eventually released by both my nervous system and my thinking.

Reading these three memoirs have allowed me to do more of this this sifting work that obviously needed to be done. I can say with certainty that these books, and the women I met through their stories, existed well outside the worldview that once defined my own, and maybe that’s why these women’s memoir found their way into my hands. I found myself being reminded that understanding another person’s story doesn’t require me to agree with it, which was something that indoctrination asked of me, but what I am asked to do now on this side of deconstruction, is to read a story and to remain curious enough to listen and learn from story.

Sounds simple but that’s a big shift.

One of the skills I developed during my deconstruction season was learning how to untangle tension points through critical thinking and reality checking. Rather than immediately accepting or rejecting something, I learned to become curious and reality test what I was ingesting, whether that came in for form of reading, watching, conversations or teachings.

As I read these stories, I noticed familiar words appearing that, years ago, would have immediately placed them in the category of what I would have called “the enemy’s territory” or “the devil’s playground.” Energetics. Reiki. Channeling. Dream work outside the church. Past lives. Ancestors. Spirits and even mermaids. Yet when I met and spoke with each of these authors at the Vancouver International Writers Conference in June, there wasn’t a hint of “evil” about them. Their intention was healing and finding truth.

But still, reading their memoirs I could feel my old belief system being taxed.

If you’re still with me, there’s a reason I’m sharing this.

It all comes down to one of my non-negotiables. Can you guess which one?

IT must increase my capacity to love.

And that brings me to this present writing.

As I read these memoirs, I realized I wasn’t actually entering “the enemy’s territory.” I was encountering old narratives trying to replay themselves. The first narrative was easy to identify. It was my childhood indoctrination into God versus Satan, who would be taken up, who would be left behind, and which side would I be on. My old apocalyptic narrative replaying in live time in my mind and body.

When I could see the why, and see where those roots came from made it an easy Hard No to that story line. Full stop. That story no longer fits me today. Seeing it and naming it stopped the looping thoughts and allowed my nervous system to recalibrate.

The second narrative was more interesting.

It led me back to the subtle “devil tricks” I had absorbed during the 1990s while immersed in the Satanic Panic. Even after years of healing and integration, I could feel my nervous system responding.

It makes perfect sense that following my curiosity and allowing Grounded Spirituality to unfold for me outside any man made rules, and by reading how these women had come to define spirituality for themselves might activate old memories and body sensations that hadn’t yet been fully metabolized. I’m aware that if I let my brain and nervous system run on the track that has been conditioned to scan the world for signs that “Satan is everywhere,” I won’t get very far. That’s why I’m tracing those roots, uprooting the fear narrative and replanting in its place:

Love over fear. Love wins. Anchored in love. Love as my compass. However you want to say it.

Let me give you an example of how this unfolded in my own life.

It happened in a coffee shop.

Imagine three women sitting in a brightly lit coffee shop on a sunny fall afternoon. We sit by the window to make the most of the light. We’ve known each other for almost a decade, and in the last few years we make a date to meet every so often to catch up and see what interesting things we’re doing in life. As the conversation turns to me and what interesting things I was doing, I couldn’t help but share that I just did some research for my writing and was so surprised to learn just how deeply I had been immersed in the Satanic Panic during the 1990s. I even told them about seeing graffiti painted on a nearby rock wall and noticing my first thought:

“I wonder if that’s a Watcher.”

How easily that thought came…back in the 1990s, videos like The Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults (1994) taught police officers to interpret graffiti not as random acts of teenage rebellion but as deliberate occult messages. Symbols were believed to map territories, signal upcoming rituals, or identify target locations.

Yes...there’s more.

As I was talking, one of the women, I’ll call her Dorothy, looked at me and said, “Susan, you know the Satanic Panic started here in Victoria, don’t you?” The look on my face answered her question. Then she asked, “You’ve heard of the book Michelle Remembers, haven’t you?” Again, my expression gave me away. Nope. I hadn’t heard of it. Wasn’t on the approved list in my church - Apparently, I had some homework to do.

Here’s my Coles Notes version.

If you’re interested, I’ll post some links at the end of the article so you can begin some of your own research, but before I go any further, one of my guidelines is always asking, What’s helpful? rather than, How far down the rabbit hole do I need to go? Because sometimes deeper isn’t healthier or helpful.

Michelle Remembers became a bestselling book published in 1980 by psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient Michelle Smith. Through recovered-memory therapy, Michelle Smith claimed to remember elaborate Satanic ritual abuse she had supposedly experienced as a child growing up in Victoria, British Columbia. Recovered-memory therapy caused enormous harm to many people. Dorothy shared that members of her own extended family experienced direct fallout from “Larry and his methods.”

More recently, journalist Sarah Marshall explored this history in her eight-part CBC podcast series The Devil You Know. The series traces how the Satanic Panic spread from Victoria across North America and examines the people, institutions, and cultural forces that allowed it to grow. Episode Two, Marilyn Remembers, examines the relationship between Lawrence and Michelle, and how that single story helped ignite a movement. I won’t go into all the details because I don’t want to give unnecessary airtime to the panic itself.

What I appreciated, especially after writing Velcro Kisses about religious trauma, prophecy, and undue influence, was Sarah Marshall’s approach. Rather than simply debunking the claims, Sarah explores how sincere people came to believe extraordinary stories, how recovered-memory therapy gained credibility, how media and institutions amplified the panic, and how those same dynamics continue to appear in modern moral panics and conspiracy movements.

Despite a lack of corroborating evidence, many people accepted these claims as fact and what emerged was what sociologists call a moral panic, which is a period of widespread fear driven by extraordinary allegations that are not supported by reliable evidence.

When I revisited many of the Christian influences I had followed during the 1990s, I discovered that some had built entire ministries around these false narratives.

Here’s a tidbit, I was introduced to Satanic Panic by a friend of my first husband (isn’t that another common theme in how these things work) this friend was in our wedding party for my first marriage, he was also a board member for the Bob Larson Ministries. It all started with a simple conversation while visiting him and his family in Vancouver, British Columbia. We returned home with lots of book to read and VHS tapes to plug into our VCR. I now understand that although my initiation into fear began with apocalyptic theology, it was Bob Larson’s ministry that drew my first husband and me deeper into the Satanic rabbit hole.

Doing research and reality testing I learned that Bob Larson became one of the most influential evangelical voices associated with the Satanic Panic throughout the 1980s and early 1990s through books, radio, television, conferences, and later, exorcism ministries that still continues today. I also came to learn that many of these ‘Satan hunters in God’s name’ that I followed, names like: Mike Warnke, Rebecca Brown, Johhanna Michaelsen and Texe Marrs, many eventually lost credibility, while others were removed from ministry, and some were later diagnosed with mental health conditions. Yet at the time, they had enormous platforms.

It’s no wonder that reading books outside my former “approved” evangelical reading list stirred unmetabolized fragments in me. It makes complete sense to me now.

And it also makes complete sense to me why I’ve chosen to do this work from the inside out.

To know and trust that my search for spirituality doesn’t need to be driven by fear, certainty, or someone else’s approval, but allowing it to emerge slowly, honestly, and from a place that feels deeply grounded within me.

In rooting, I’m finding that my answers come through first asking, then trusting, waiting, and noticing. Yes, some of those answers can still feel a little ‘out there’ at times but they also have a grounded feel to them. And, most importantly, I’m making sure my feet are literally planted if not rooted in love with each step I take.

Which brings me back to my non-negotiables, because Grounded Spirituality, for me, is growth from these roots.

I think it worth restating them from Grounded Spirituality, unfolding No.1.

IT must be viewed and processed through the lens of love. If an interpretation leaves me feeling afraid, ashamed, or fundamentally “less than,” then I need to question the interpretation before I question myself.

IT must be rooted in self-compassion and goodwill. The voice guiding me forward should sound more like kindness than condemnation. And if it doesn’t, I will retrace my steps until I find that kindness speaking in my narrative.

IT must honour that I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. I can reflect honestly on my choices without rewriting my story through the lens of shame. Learning asks different questions than self-punishment ever could. I will choose, over and over again, to speak kindly to the younger version of myself. She survived a great deal. She was doing the best she could with the understanding and resources she had. She deserves my compassion, not my condemnation.

IT must leave room for curiosity instead of demanding certainty. I don’t need every experience to have a hidden message. Sometimes life is simply life. Sometimes a bird’s nest is just a bird’s nest, and sometimes mystery is meant to remain a mystery.

IT must be grounded in reality before interpretation. I’ve learned that my mind can rush to connect dots that may not belong together, especially when uncertainty stirs old patterns of hypervigilance. So I pause and ask: What do I actually know? What am I assuming? What story am I creating to make uncertainty feel more manageable? Those questions invite me back to reality before I reach for meaning.

IT must increase my capacity to love. To love myself more gently. To love others more generously. To hold life with greater openness. If my spirituality consistently narrows my world through fear or an all-or-nothing lens, then it may not be leading me where I want to go. I’m learning to treat this as a kind of felt-sense compass, paying attention to what expands me and what contracts me. When love, openness, and flexibility are present, I feel more grounded and more myself. When fear and rigidity take over, I take it as information that something in how I’m relating to life needs to be gently re-examined—not with judgment, but with curiosity.

I’ll let it rest here. If there is a desire, a prayer, an intention, this is it for each of us: as we continue to discover what Grounded Spirituality means for each of us, may our roots continue to deepen. May we trust that we don’t need every question answered ‘right now’, and may we have the courage to believe that the answers are on the way and they will unfold in their own time, in the right time. And may these roots help each of us discern our unique paths ahead, as they keep us rooted in love rather than fear, and as we continue unfolding one choice, one question, one courageous step at a time.

And for me, that’s a life worth growing toward.

I love for you to join me.

Thank you for reading Tidbits to Threads: where small moments, insights and deep threads become a return to self-trust, reflection and healing.

Small moments. Deep threads. A return to self-trust.

Author of Velcro Kisses: prophecy, trauma bonds and Reclaiming narrative.

Link: CBC The Devil You know with Sarah Marshall/ also on Apple podcasts

CBC The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall