I Belong to Me: A Survivor's Guide to Recovery and Hope After Religious Trauma

Name: I Belong to Me: A Survivor's Guide to Recovery and Hope After Religious Trauma
Brand: St. Martin's Essentials
SKU: 9781250374271
Price: 36.00 USD
Availability: InStock

$36.00

Product Variants

Biographical Note:
TIA LEVINGS is the New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife. She writes about the realities of religious trauma, decoding fundamentalist influences in today's culture. Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, the Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Based in North Carolina, she is mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, paint, and daydream.

Review Quotes:

"There is no more powerful kind of knowing than the one that lives in your bones. Levings offers us this knowing- translating her story into the wise, fierce, and clear guide needed for the pathway of recovery. With Levings by your side, you will be able to feel brave enough to turn stones over, learn what was kept from you, and return home to yourself. This book is an invitation out of who you had to be, into the fullness of who you are." --Hillary L. McBride, PhD, author of The Wisdom of Your Body and Holy Hurt

"Tia has the exceptional gift of meeting you with the kind of care I recognize as sacred. Through her gentle guidance and stories, she finds the unique, often elusive space for the complexity of trauma and deconstruction. This book will be a reference guide for years to come for those seeking the healing that can only come from doing the work. No one explains that work better than Tia Levings." --Karla Kamstra, author of Deconstructing

"Eloquent. [I Belong to Me] focuses on how to recover hope after a religious trauma--in fact, any trauma--examining the journey in minute detail with the goal of nurturing a healthy mind and body." --Booklist

"Tia Levings's I Belong to Me thoughtfully and skillfully expresses the developing path forward for those of us deconstructing faith, not necessarily to replace it, but to rediscover what our trumped-up religion itself replaced and repressed: our humanity." --David R. Morris, author of Lost Faith and Wandering Souls

"Today, when the devastating effects of religious trauma are widespread and well known, Tia Leving's book I Belong to Me is an essential lifeline. Tia not only identifies the effects of high control religion, but offers a gentle, nourishing pathway for recovering agency and strength to chart a new path. Tia's helpful practices are only matched by her superb way with words! A pleasure to read." --Julie Bogart, author of Raising Critical Thinkers

"Tia Levings has an unflinching way of turning wounds into maps and making hard truths bearable. I Belong to Me reaches through the darkness like a knowing hand and refuses to let go until you find your way back to yourself." --Bethny Ricks, author of Face Forward

"Compassionate and empowering, I Belong to Me offers a road map to help the betrayed children of American evangelicalism navigate the uncharted landscape of religious trauma. Her pages on estrangement in Christian families are the best I've read on the topic, and the way Tia carefully respects reader agency really makes this book stand out." --Marissa Franks Burt, author of The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families

"Few people write about religious trauma with the honesty, clarity, and compassion that Tia Levings brings to I Belong to Me. This book is both a witness and a guide, naming the harm so many have endured while offering a path toward healing, wholeness, and self-reclamation. For anyone trying to find themselves after toxic faith, this book will feel like the lifeline they have been longing for." --Brandan Robertson, Author, Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place At The Table

Publisher Marketing:

What does it mean to heal from trauma caused by the people, beliefs, and practices of your faith? And to rebuild a sense of self, when high-control religion said you shouldn't have one?

Indoctrinated from early childhood to obey, conform, and want what others wanted for her, Tia Levings learned love and acceptance meant being someone other than herself.

After years of abuse in a violent marriage and high-control religion, Tia Levings escaped with her children (a story told in her memoir, A Well-Trained Wife) and thought the hardest was behind her.

But leaving was just the beginning.

With an audacious persistence to reclaim her life, Tia set off on a 15-year quest to psychological peace. The result is an emotionally regulated, actualized, self-aware woman who is able to tell her harrowing story without retraumatizing herself --a woman who can reach back to help others claim what's theirs. If trauma took your past, it shouldn't get your present and future too.

Through a series of personal stories, therapeutic stages, and resources, Tia Levings guides readers through the journey that helped her leave abuse, rediscover selfhood, and heal her mind, soul, and body after religious trauma --so that you can too.

Review Citations:

Booklist 04/01/2026 (EAN 9781250374271, Hardcover)
Library Journal 05/08/2026 pg. 1 (EAN 9781250374271, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

Contributor Bio:Levings, Tia
TIA LEVINGS is the New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife. She writes about the realities of religious trauma, decoding fundamentalist influences in today's culture. Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, the Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Based in North Carolina, she is mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, paint, and daydream.