How I reclaimed my testimony, my recovery, and Real Jesus — rhinestones and all.
Silenced in a faith recovery group, I reclaimed my story by bedazzling my chip. A testimony of freedom, healing, and Real Jesus’s gentle light.
I entered a faith recovery group with one raw, holy desire: to attach to Real Jesus and to myself after years of severe spiritual abuse. I worked the program diligently for three years with my sponsor. We celebrated the small wins, sat in the hard work, and I reached the goal I’d set for myself — a holy victory — three years of steady recovery. When the three year anniversary approached, I asked to give my testimony. I expected it to be a gentle hand between me and my sponsor, the culmination of the work we had done together. To honor Real Jesus in my journey.
Instead, the process was handed to a male leader I did not know. My testimony — the story I had lived and labored to name — suddenly had to go through him for approval. Just like the silenced traumas that landed me in that recovery group. That bureaucratic gate felt like re-entering captivity. He asked me to rewrite my testimony into two different versions to meet his formula requirements. I spent two weeks doing that work of refining it to shine inside his framework while the very process triggered my Complex PTSD I had named. Then, without warning, I was put on a call with the male leader and my sponsor and blindsided: I was told I wasn’t ready to give my testimony.
In a room that claimed safety, my voice was stripped from me again. The reason offered was “my protection” due to my complex PTSD, named aloud as though the only response needed was exclusion. No one called my therapist to ask about readiness. No one spoke with curiosity about my progress. My sponsor did not say a word on that call. The male leader made the decision prior to my even getting on that call and closed the prison door to my testimony locking it with his key claiming for my good and his benevolence, my sponsor as witness.
Told I could serve in other capacities the system deemed me suitable for that once again bound me and stripped me from my voice. A voiceless object to be used.
This time, my spirit rose up and said, “No.”
I told my sponsor I still planned to collect my three-year chip I had earned — the physical mark of the work I had done. At the meeting, a lady handed me a two-year chip instead, saying they were out of the three-year ones. The gesture felt like they were casually stripping a year from my recovery — a minimization of everything I had earned and walked through with Real Jesus. Then the male leader who had silenced my God-won testimony for this given night that should have been a celebration handed me a mic and said I could say a few words. I put up my hand and said no. I took that chip and I walked out the door.
I knew in that moment I would not return to that system. My recovery would not be canceled by their gatekeeping or their lack of care. I continued my work — alone, with Real Jesus, my therapist and with the intuitive practices I had cultivated that had held me steady. I never once stopped attaching to the Real Jesus who sees me, who never demanded my story for approval or silences my voice.
That evening I went home and bedazzled my two-year chip with three extra rhinestones. I did it for me. For the Trinity. I did it because nobody in that room recognized the work I had done, but I had lived it. I took what they tried to minimize and made it shine — louder, truer, and tenderer than any approval they could grant or a mic.
My chip is now a small milagro of reclamation: Real Jesus’s light reflected in three extra rhinestones shining bright. The chip is mine. My testimony is mine. My recovery is mine.
I never received a check-in from the leader who used my complex PTSD as the reason to silence me. No one called to ask if I was okay after being told I could not share the very story I’d risked to reclaim. That absence spoke volumes. It was the final proof that the system was not built to hold the healed — it was built to preserve control.
During that last meeting, the male leader had given an example of another marking his thirty years in recovery. I had just taken my self-assessment with results that lit up my neurodivergence instantly aligning my lifetime of puzzle pieces into one lightbulb reality giving it a name: AuDHD. Hearing this man exude about another’s 30 years, I knew deep in me that was the system’s goal. To keep me attached in dependence on a system that pathologized my wiring while binding my voice. Deeper still, I knew I was cutting the ties to captivity systems designed and controlled by male leadership who did not care to know me at all.
Leaving was the moment I reclaimed my freedom.
That was when my sanctuary work began. In the sanctuary I speak my truth in safe spaces. I have told my story there and even to a new male pastor, trauma-informed and neurodivergent affirming, in a completely different denomination. Not once have I been retraumatized by speaking it. Telling it in places that honor my voice has not broken me — it has steadied me. That showed me something vital: the problem was never me speaking. The problem was the system that tried to own and silence my voice. Again.
What they meant for control, I turned into witness and blessing. What they meant to take, I reclaimed. Thanks to Real Jesus, that little bedazzled chip now shines with a light no leader can dim claiming my survival brilliance.
Blessing for the Beautiful Survivor
May every attempt to erase your work fall short.
May every minimization be transformed into the proof of your persistence.
May Real Jesus hold you steady when systems fail you and give you back what was taken — in truth, in peace, and in light.
Beautiful soul, you earned every rhinestone. You earned your story. You earned your recovery. Walk in freedom — your testimony is not for their approval; it is for your healing.
Go in peace with your head held high, and may Real Jesus’s peace go with you.
Special Note
I want to say this with tenderness: my decision to walk away does not erase the gratitude I hold for my sponsor. She, too, is a survivor. For three years, she stood beside me as I unraveled my testimony, anchored myself to Real Jesus, and learned to attach to my own soul. Her presence was part of my healing, and I will always honor that gift.
Leaving was never a rejection of her heart — only a release of the system we both found ourselves in. I can walk away with peace, knowing I made the right decision for me, holding to the truth that my intuition about the system was sound. I carry forward the good she offered, even as I cut ties with what was harmful. That is freedom.
Dear Survivor,
If you are in Recovery, and it is working for you, Stay. There are valid reasons to stay in recovery. I am not opposed to recovery. Just please make sure it is not your God-given neurodivergent survival brilliance that is pathologized keeping you stuck in a system not designed for you. Secondly, your trauma responses are not sin to be named as pathology to repent of but wounds that need to be healed. Take your experience to Real Jesus who knows every part of you and your story and to a trusted therapist or confidante that can help you determine what is most helpful to you, your unique wiring and your healing. You are not broken. You are healing.
With Love,
Raya
The Gentle Rise 