For this vast, wide, deep, multi-layered topic of Belonging, I've got a powerful conversation to share with Madison Morrigan. Madison is a life coach and speaker whose work is centered on self-responsibility and full expression. She coaches ambitious and creative womxn to shed layers of old programming that are keeping them small so they can finally come home to their true selves. Madison is also someone who has left the evangelical church, grew up in a household of narcissistic abuse, and has recently come out as queer, so she's been doing a lot of personal work in the realm of belonging, unbelonging, and false belonging.
Together we talk about belonging as sovereignty, as well as her story of leaving the evangelical church and growing up with an alcoholic father who went to prison and became born again. We chat about how she joined a radical church and spent 5 years questioning the abuse in that space before leaving and processing that trauma, and then how she found her own wholeness after leaving the church. Madison sweetly shares that in the last two years she's discovered that she's queer and fell in love with a woman. We talk about the behavior of defaulting to rigid belief systems when you aren't willing to heal and the either/or response to uncertainty stemming from traumatic events over generations. Finally, we discuss whether or not there can be beneficial uses of shame and breaking down narcissistic abuse in our culture.
"Patriarchy is a narcissistic, abusive system that uses grandiosity, gaslighting, basically crazy-making — and a lot of women don't even know that they're a part of it." -Madison Morrigan
Resources:
- I mention how in my virtual community, Hearthfire, we often have conversations about conflicted relationships with religion
- Belonging Episode #33: Belonging to Spirit after Leaving Patriarchal Christianity with Barbara Erochina
- Madison mentions Richard Rohr as one of her favorite teachers
- Belonging Episode #62: Normalizing Death and Interrogating our Unquestioned Beliefs with Rachael Rice
- I mention For the Wild Episode #135: Pádraig Ó Tuama on Finding Uncommon Ground in the conversation about shame having potentially beneficial uses
- Untamed by Glennon Doyle
- Madison mentions Terri Cole as a source for learning more about narcissistic abuse
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