VBB 299: Janice Selbie On Divorcing Religion!

Virgin Beauty Bitch Podcast: inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being Defiantly Different. Your hosts, Christopher and Heather.

Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:19]:

Divorce. It's a word typically used to describe or announce the separation of mortals in love. But what about our relationship with a deity or a God? What do we call it when those relationships end? Janice Selby has an answer. She is the founder of Divorcing Religion. Welcome, Janice, to Virgin Beauty bitch.

Janice Selbie [00:00:48]:

Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.

Christopher [00:00:51]:

Janice, both Heather and I can relate to having a religious upbringing and having that personal come to Jesus moment and deciding our religious fate. But nothing like your relationship with religion. Can you give us a look into your past?

Janice Selbie [00:01:07]:

Oh, sure. Yes. I was raised in British Columbia in a Pentecostal home, so speaking in tongues was a regular occurrence. And when I was sick, my parents loved me very much. They would anoint my head with oil. They would call people over to pray for me. You know, the church was a pretty exciting Pentecostal. Churches in Canada tend to be pretty exciting, with lots of music and sometimes dancing.

Janice Selbie [00:01:35]:

And then I pretty much stayed with the faith. I didn't really doubt it too much until my late teens and, you know, got all those hormones and everything going on, and I wanted to experience more of the world. So, I joined a rock band and just really had some fun. Of course, blew through that whole purity culture ideal. I was no longer a virgin since that's part of this show. That virgin part was no longer there for me. And I had so much shame and guilt after that. I ended up having my own comeback to Jesus moment, as you mentioned. I married a man with whom my pastor set me up.

Janice Selbie [00:02:21]:

This man also wanted to get into ministry. So we moved to a small town on the prairies, Three Hills, Alberta, and he attended Prairie Bible College there. While we were there, I started encountering women in the grocery store, and they looked so chaste and modest and holy. They would always have their hair up and under a covering, and they always wore very modest clothing and no makeup or jewelry. And so I said to my husband then, are they Amish? I didn't know we had Amish here. And he said, no, they're Mennonite. They're a type of Mennonite. And they are just living out a very biblical life because women in the New Testament apparently hadn't been excused from dressing modestly and covering their hair and all these things.

Janice Selbie [00:03:13]:

And I thought, wow, that's really interesting. So I did my own Bible studies, and I thought, you know, I think these people have it right. I was always interested in becoming more holy, holier, and holier. I wanted more rules to follow because rules were very important in my family growing up. So I just did that deep dive down the fundamentalist rabbit hole. I started wearing a head covering. I got rid of all my jewelry, even my wedding ring, I didn't wear anymore. No TV, no worldly influences in the house.

Janice Selbie [00:03:49]:

The Internet was still in its infancy. I'll say I'm giving away some of my age there. This was in the late nineties, and that's how I lived for a number of years. My husband went into ministry, and so that was part of our life. I also homeschooled our daughters. I was extremely conservative until I wasn't.

Christopher [00:04:12]:

And what dark night of the soul brought you to this new realization or awareness?

Janice Selbie [00:04:19]:

Yeah, great question. We had a year in ministry, and we were in another province, Saskatchewan, and it was a really difficult year. I didn't particularly want him to become a pastor. I didn't feel like he was really suited for it, let's just say temperament-wise or personality-wise. I asked him to reconsider, maybe go with teaching at seminary or something, but he really wanted to do the pastor thing.

Janice Selbie [00:04:51]:

And so it was a difficult year because we were somewhat at odds, even though I tried so hard to submit. That's one of the reasons that I started wearing a head covering. I felt I was not submissive enough. Our marriage was difficult, and since I considered him to be my God-given head, I didn't think the problem was him. I felt it must all be me. And so I needed to just be quiet and start submitting, and I really, really tried.  It was very difficult. So then he's pastoring, and things are just going from bad to worse. I was constantly putting out fires in the church if you understand what I mean.

Janice Selbie [00:05:30]:

There were a lot of social problems coming up and then additional personal issues. I heard from my parents that they were divorcing after 43 years, and my youngest nephew went to prison for killing somebody. So it was a lot of pressure, a lot of things. You know, it felt like a beach ball being held underneath the water. And you can feel that pressure building up. My husband ended up leaving the pastorate. It was very difficult.

Janice Selbie [00:06:05]:

And then we still had a really hard time. Our youngest daughter was diagnosed with a life-threatening chronic illness, and we ended up going bankrupt. And that was just it, that beach ball. I couldn't hold it under the water anymore. It just exploded out of the water. And that was the beginning of my deconstruction or deconversion. It was very messy. My kids were still at home at the time, and I was still married to him at the time.

Janice Selbie [00:06:37]:

So then it was a number of years of me kind of running in the complete opposite direction. Really determined that I was going to try everything I had missed out on. It was a really confusing and scary time because I never had a time where I didn't believe 100% in the religion that I was raised with. But it was a time of great exploration and self-discovery.

Heather [00:07:07]:

That is a truly fascinating life story. And I know that's just the nutshell of everything. I'm so intrigued by what I feel is a different coming-to-Jesus moment. So, what was the beginning phase of that divorce like for you? Because as you've already illuminated, I think, for so many people who grew up in a religious household and in a religious marriage, so much of how to move in the world and in yourself and what you expect of yourself has been dictated and put into very strict regime, especially as a woman. What were these initial, you know, deconstructive pieces?

Janice Selbie [00:08:09]:

Yeah, it was as liberating. It was equally terrifying because I did have some fear around hell, and I was terrified. What if now I'm suddenly believing the wrong thing? And I wasn't concerned for myself, but I was deeply concerned for my children. I couldn't bear the thought of them suffering through eternity because I made a wrong decision. So I  wasn't just flippant about it. It really required a lot of searching on my part.

Janice Selbie [00:08:46]:

I gave myself permission to explore other religions and other beliefs. I kind of landed on very Eastern, you know, mysticism and reincarnation, all these. The things that were formerly forbidden. And I'll tell you, forbidden fruit makes the tastiest. And that's something that I definitely figured out. I let myself try all sorts of things, but it was also difficult because I had been raised in religion, so my identity had formed kind of around it. But my husband at the time hadn't become religious until he was almost an adult, till he was 18 or 19. So that's part of why my deconversion was so messy and explicitly explosive. It wasn't that way for him, and we were not deconstructing on the same timeline.

Janice Selbie [00:09:41]:

It was really hard. And we were also navigating life with a child who was kind of in a chronic state. We went to always being on yellow alert, never knowing if we were going to end up in the hospital or what was going to happen. So we're trying to navigate those things and still cope in a marriage. It wasn't an easy marriage from the start. We got married because, as I said, my pastor set us up. What we had in common was that we were both deeply religious, but suddenly, I wasn't deeply religious anymore. And so that was a challenging time.

Janice Selbie [00:10:20]:

I also finally was coming to accept the fact that I'm not entirely straight, and I wanted to be able to explore my sexuality without feeling judged and all these different things. So, in the end, the marriage did not survive. But I can tell you now, we're a number of years out, and I have a lovely friendship with that man who's no longer my husband. It got so much easier when we weren't bound to each other in the same way because now we can just be friends and support each other but not be really deeply touched. If one of us makes a decision that the other one doesn't like, it's okay. We can just kindly support each other and wish each other well. And he no longer believes.

Janice Selbie [00:11:10]:

And my daughters, our daughters are now in their twenties, and they no longer believe. And everybody's good. Everybody's kind about it. So, I went back to school to become a registered professional counselor. That's when I started exploring my own trauma and learned about religious trauma and religious trauma syndrome because those were new words for me. And then I started specializing, and I was off to the races.

Christopher [00:11:36]:

Something that we spoke about before this conversation began was that this is not an indictment on religion, religious faith, or beliefs. This is about individuals having the agency to make that decision for themselves. And whatever direction you go, this is not a conversation to support one over the other. This is just a conversation with an individual who made a decision in her life about her religious connections and has discovered something else and wants to help others who find themselves in the same space. I just want to make it clear that that is what this conversation is about.

Janice Selbie [00:12:25]:

Oh, you put it so beautifully. And I would say the same thing. One thing I learned in my training to become a counselor is that trauma is subjective. So two people might happen across a terrible car accident, and one person might look at it and then think, wow, that was really bad, but I have to get to work. And then they're off to work, and they don't really think about it again. The other person might be brought to their knees by the horror of it all. And so whether something is traumatizing to us, there are lots of different factors that go into it. So I know religious people who remain deeply happy and content in their faith, and so I'm happy for people who are happy and living fulfilling lives that are meaningful to them.

Janice Selbie [00:13:13]:

My job, if I can paint a word picture? If you think of a church, an old-fashioned church, and you go up the steps to get to the church. I'm standing outside at the bottom of the steps to catch the people that tumble out, fall out, or are thrown out. People who recognize they don't belong there anymore. And I'm here to tell them it's going to be okay. You're going to make it. It is possible to live a fulfilling life apart from everything that you have been taught before. Part of that is that we need to clarify some values to figure out what we believe and what's important to us now. And then we order our life around that and arrange our life around that. It also means building a new community because finding a community is incredibly important.

Janice Selbie [00:14:05]:

When your whole life has been one religious community, it's really, really hard in adulthood to reach out and find other people who are safe and non-judgmental.

Heather [00:14:16]:

I think what you've illuminated there is so important because I think for different avenues, for different reasons, and religion being one that people have bought into or, you know, just given how you were raised and the family values that you were raised with, you've been carved into believing that a certain set of values is supposed to be what you believe in and is to be what you believe in. And I don't mean that just in religion; there could definitely be many other families and many other circumstances. That's what you saw growing up, and it became part of your identity. So I think that what you're speaking towards around taking the time with the people that you help now to take an assessment on really what their values are and understanding that in a fulsome way where you can create community and friendships and even chosen family kind of relationships around those values. It's entering a whole new chapter. It can be a very scary one.

Christopher [00:15:31]:

Yeah, it's a whole new library.

Heather [00:15:34]:

No kidding.

Janice Selbie [00:15:35]:

It's true because we expect that in childhood, our identity is being constructed, and then in adolescence, we're pushing against boundaries and exploring who we are. I didn't entirely have the freedom to do that since I was raised in a religious home. So, the main losses that we have when we divorce religion are we lose our identity, our community, and our worldview. And that is extremely jarring. When you're used to seeing things through a certain lens, and suddenly that lens is removed, it's very jarring. It's concerning, and that's really where we need support, and that's what I do.

Janice Selbie [00:16:23]:

That's also when I started connecting with other people who had had similar experiences. Now I work with people who've left everything from the Amish way to Scientology, and people who've left yoga cults, people who have just left every sort of high demand, fundamentals kind of group you can imagine, and they make their way to me. I started the conference on religious trauma because I wanted to help other therapists develop an understanding of religious trauma. Also, just anyone who's interested, can go on my YouTube channel and find videos about religious trauma and recovery, or my podcast and learn about those things and find out that they're not alone and there's recovery help available.

Christopher [00:17:09]:

What is the foundation of recovery? It's like six steps, nine steps. How does that work from your perspective?

Janice Selbie [00:17:18]:

Yeah. What an interesting question. So, for me, I was divorcing religion and divorcing my husband about the same time. I saw tremendous parallels there because both were deeply painful. I was married for about 20 years, and that's a long time to be with one partner. I ended up writing and developing a workshop called the Divorcing Religion Workshop. And I did it in six modules, just kind of to reflect on what I went through when I was losing my marriage. So part of it, the first part of it was figuring out how do we get together in the first place. Why am I with this person? Or why did I develop these religious beliefs? Another part of it is realizing it's over and starting to mourn those losses. We can't mourn what we don't acknowledge.

Janice Selbie [00:18:15]:

So that's when we really need to start acknowledging some of the profound losses that we experience when we lose our religious faith, or we divorce religion. Then, I developed something about assassination and separation agreements because they are important boundaries. We need to have boundaries in place. Most of us who were raised in religion didn't get to have boundaries, especially if we were in a fundamentalist religious organization or home life. So we're learning about boundaries and then starting to develop our new philosophy of life. I'm not there anymore. Now I'm here. What does that mean? It's giving ourselves permission to try out new things.

Janice Selbie [00:19:06]:

I like to tell people life is like a buffet table. As far as you can see, there are all these dishes, and they're piled full of experiences. Fundamentalism would have us starve to death right at that table. But we don't have to. We can try anything. Take a bite from any dish. We might want to go back for seconds or thirds, or we might say, no, that doesn't agree with me. I'm going to keep going. But we don't have to be judgmental about it.

Janice Selbie [00:19:30]:

We can be curious. And as long as we're not hurting somebody, not hurting ourselves, we can try all these dishes. And that's such a different way of thinking than the very rigid way I was raised with.

Christopher [00:19:45]:

You said one word earlier that I think is probably the major barrier: guilt. How do you step through that monster? How do you get around that monster?

Janice Selbie [00:19:59]:

Yeah, guilt. I would say fear, guilt, and shame are the unholy trifecta. Those are really what keep a lot of us bound when we don't need to be. So, certainly, exploring when we feel guilt or when the shame feeling comes on us again just rises up to really explore that feeling. Who told me that I need to feel guilty about that or that I need to feel shame? If we picture shame is like a big garbage bag, and someone's walking over to us, they're carrying this big bag, it has the word shame printed on it, and they're trying to give it to us and say, here, I insist that you take this. We actually don't have to take it. We don't have to take their shame. We can say, no, thanks, that's yours. I don't have to take that on myself.

Janice Selbie [00:20:48]:

Now, some things we do find that we have actually hurt somebody else where we have made a decision that maybe wasn't the best decision to make. As an adult, as a mature, autonomous human person, I can recognize that and do what I feel I need to do to make amends, including an apology and whatever else might go along with it. But then, I can keep moving forward. I do want to bring up one word that I think can also be a real stumbler for people coming out of religious backgrounds. With my clients, I call it the f-word. And that word is forgiveness. I call it the f-word because the concept of forgiveness can be and has been weaponized by abusers and in religious circumstances, especially predatory people. And if we've been raised in religious homes, forgiveness is demanded of us, as is obedience. And those can be really dangerous.

Janice Selbie [00:21:52]:

They can keep us in a vulnerable position. What I tell my clients they might want to work on instead, or what I offer to them, is the idea of acceptance. Let's accept the reality that something bad happened or something was done to you; something happened that was beyond your control, and that's a true thing. But when you don't have the pressure of having to forgive the person, you can make a reasonable and well-thought-out choice. How do you want to proceed, whether that person still should have, is it safe to have entry and access to your life, or do you prefer to keep going without that person in your life? The choice is yours. I want people to know that they have agency and autonomy.

Heather [00:22:42]:

Thank you so much for bringing that up. The concept of weaponizing forgiveness, I think it happens a lot for women throughout history when people have acted in a way that hurt us or hurt someone else, that the expectation of grace or femininity, or being feminine, or the prized possession of feminine was forgiveness and your ability to almost pull the goodness out of people. And if you weren't able to do that, then it was a reflection of what you lack as a woman. I see a lot of parallels in just how strict that can be in a religious household. And I'm sure it is something that a lot of women and all genders have experienced in their lives. But I really want to thank you for saying that because even in today's world, you hear a lot about forgiveness will set you free. And I think there's a difference between giving yourself, as you said, an arena to decide how you want to approach, you know, certainly with just not having that person or that circumstance or that environment around you, and that boundary is clear. But you get to make the decision to forgive.

Heather [00:24:11]:

Nothing necessarily as an element of allowing that back in, but a reconciling of; I can also have distance from this experience and keep myself psychologically, emotionally, and religiously safe.

Christopher [00:24:29]:

There's an ecosystem, and that ecosystem wants to keep you within that ecosystem; stepping out of it means there are consequences to your psyche, your person, your image, and everything that is affected. I don't know if someone has not been, especially for yourself and women like yourself who are basically from birth ingrained into your identity, being represented by this belief of a religion that is like blowing up your house, the foundation, and the entire neighborhood and trying to start over.

Janice Selbie [00:25:11]:

Exactly. Yeah, that's really what it felt like. And then also having the judgment heaped on top of it. And even, at times, trying to force myself into believing again when really I just couldn't. And there's a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes that goes something like, once the mind has been expanded, it can never return to its former dimensions.

Janice Selbie [00:25:43]:

That was something that was very true for me. Even though I missed Sunday services, I loved singing with people and being around other people. For me, church was quite a joyous experience a lot of times, but I just didn't feel I could go back. So, my choice was to go forward and rebuild and develop safe, supportive, secular communities for myself and explore humanism. That's one thing that's been really important to me.  Now, I'm the president of my local atheists, skeptics, and humanists. So, there are other groups out there and other belief systems and ideologies that people can explore.

Christopher [00:26:29]:

What was your conversation like with the author of Handmaid's Tale?

Janice Selbie [00:26:33]:

Oh, my gosh. I was so nervous because Margaret Atwood is so iconic. And, yeah, so I had some questions written out for her, but I realized pretty quickly in the interview that I was not gonna be asking those questions. She was just going to be able to talk free form and express all those things. I mean, she's extremely knowledgeable about history. She is a very smart person, and I love listening to her and learning from her. So that was really a high point, I'll say, in my whole life, but definitely in my career, to interview Margaret Atwood on my podcast. And the only reason I even met her is because of my husband, who is quite a bit older than me.

Janice Selbie [00:27:19]:

We were watching The Handmaid's Tale Series on TV, and he said, oh, I know Peggy. And I'm like, who's Peggy? He says, Margaret. I know Margaret. I'm like, you know Margaret? He said, yep, I've stayed at their house before because my husband was an environmentalist, and Margaret and her late husband, Graham, were also. So they knew each other that way, but that was news to me. So then I wrote her a letter right away, and she was so gracious to come on my show.

Christopher [00:27:46]:

I mean, the parallel, obviously, is eerie.

Janice Selbie [00:27:50]:

Yeah, definitely. In your life, the handmaid's tale is wearing the head covering and just being stifled and forced into obedience and submission.

Heather [00:27:59]:

So we love to ask our guests if there is one or all of the archetypes or words that are very. They affect a woman's life; that's the name of the podcast. Is there one or all that really struck you between Virgin, Beauty or Bitch?

Janice Selbie [00:28:19]:

Oh, absolutely. And it used to be the word I hated so much, and that's bitch. But now I have come to understand bitch as meaning babe in total control of herself. And that's me. I'm like, yep, I'm here for that. I'm all about empowering myself and empowering other women to live lives that are meaningful for them. And sometimes that requires shaking things up and trying new things that feel so scary and foreign to us, but giving ourselves permission.

Janice Selbie [00:28:57]:

We're not going to judge ourselves. We're just going to be curious and see what that feels like. So I am proudly a bitch.

Christopher [00:29:10]:

On that note, maybe you can enlighten us about another piece of what you do. Shameless sexuality.

Janice Selbie [00:29:20]:

Yes, that. I told you a little bit earlier that I started the conference on religious trauma, and I realized after so many interactions with people who had been raised deeply religious purity culture is massive. It's so people who were raised thinking they must never have sex outside of marriage, and marriage is only to be between a man and a woman, all these judgments and rules and restrictions. So I decided I was going to do something shocking, and I put together a conference called Shameless Life After Purity Culture. I held the first one online, and it was very well attended and had fantastic speakers. All my conferences have been online because of the pandemic. But next year, in May in Seattle 2025, I'm hosting the first in-person shameless sexuality, life after purity culture.

Janice Selbie [00:30:16]:

I'm very excited and nervous to be doing that. It's going to be just great.

Christopher [00:30:21]:

That's so in line with us. Heather and I did a four-part series where we talked specifically and exclusively about the virgin, virginity. The obvious purity culture was part of some of those conversations as well. So we definitely align with you in the understanding of that word and what it means in the lives of women and men, but most particularly for women.

Janice Selbie [00:30:51]:

Yes. Yeah. I mean, that was part of my own journey, as I mentioned, exploring that part of me and recognizing I am bisexual, and I'm quite happy with it. I don't mind that. I really enjoy it. Right now, I happen to be married to a male partner different than my previous husband, but I still feel quite comfortable identifying as a member of the LGBTQ community. This is also something I noticed with people who divorce religion if they were indoctrinated from birth or ingrained in birth, as you said, and their identity couldn't develop without those constraints and restraints. Sometimes, when they leave, they're not only questioning what they believe from a religious standpoint but are they even straight? Do they want to remain married to this person who they married only under duress because of religion? And those are very big questions.

Janice Selbie [00:31:53]:

They can feel like scary questions to ask themselves. I hope that I provide an opportunity for people to explore those questions safely.

Christopher [00:32:03]:

If someone wants to reach out, obviously, this is a very personal, private decision that an individual is making. So if they wanted to reach out, how might they go about that?

Janice Selbie [00:32:13]:

People can reach me right through my website, divorcingreligion.com. They can go straight there and contact me through the website. I'm all over social media, also, as Divorcing Religion. I have a book coming out called Divorcing Religion, a memoir and survival handbook, so people can look up Divorcing Religion, and they'll find me. My YouTube channel is called Divorcing Religion, as is my podcast.

Christopher [00:32:42]:

Beautiful consistency.

Heather [00:32:44]:

Yes, consistency is key. I love it. And a huge congratulations on your in-person conference next year. That is so exciting.

Janice Selbie [00:32:53]:

Thank you. Yes. People can find out more about that by going to shamelesssexuality.org. I tell people it's like dot-orgasm. That's how you can think of shamelesssexuality.org.

Heather [00:33:07]:

Amazing. That'll stick for sure.

Christopher [00:33:12]:

We can't thank you enough, Janice, for first reaching out to find us. We appreciate that you see some kinship in what it is and how we practice what we do in helping others. We really appreciate that. And for being so open, honest, and vulnerable about a topic that impacts so many women. However, as I said, it's the last thing they feel they can talk about.

Janice Selbie [00:33:37]:

Yeah, wow. What a joy it's been chatting with you both. Maybe I can come back sometime when my book is out or talk about anything related to any of these topics. It's really been nice getting to know you.

Heather [00:33:48]:

You too. Honestly, we would love that. I'm definitely gonna tune into your podcast, too. So it's been great to have you.

Christopher [00:33:56]:

Here and you have been listening to.

Heather [00:33:57]:

The Virgin, the Beauty, and the Babe in Total Control of Herself [B.I.T.C.H].

Christopher [00:34:06]:

Find us, Like us, Share us! Come on back and contribute to the conversation. Let us know how you feel. We are always open to your messages. Thank you so much for joining us to become a partner in the VBB community. We invite you to find us at virginbeautybitch.com. Like us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Share us with people who are Defiantly Different, like you. Until next time, thanks for listening.