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I Belong to Me: A Survivor’s Guide to Recovery and Hope after Religious Trauma
Not yet published
Expected 5 May 26What 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.
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.
- GenresNonfictionMemoir
400 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication May 5, 2026
4395 people want to read
About the author
Tia Levings
2 books437 followersTia Levings is the New York Times Bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, her memoir of escape from Christian Patriarchy. She writes about the realities of religious trauma and the Trad wife life, decoding the fundamentalist influences in our news and 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, hike, paint, and daydream. Find her on social media @TiaLevingsWriter and TiaLevings.Substack.com. Her second book releases with St. Martin’s Essentials May 5, 2026.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I Belong to Me was a really validating read for me. This book felt like it was written with a lot of care for people who are still trying to understand how deeply religion can shape, harm, and linger in your body and mind long after you leave. Tia Levings approaches this work slowly and thoughtfully, and I appreciated that she never tries to rush the reader toward healing or offer tidy conclusions.
This is much more of a self-help book than a memoir, though it does draw on her personal experiences throughout. If you’ve read A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, you’ll recognize some of what she references, sometimes without much detail. I didn’t feel like reading the memoir first was required, but having that background does help fill in some gaps and add context to what she’s discussing.
She very clearly connects trauma to religion, especially emotional trauma, which was something I found really helpful. It’s easy to minimize or overlook emotional harm when it isn’t physical, and this book does a good job explaining the how and why of that damage without dismissing it or spiritualizing it away. I also appreciated the focus on therapeutic stages and the reminder that healing doesn’t happen on a clean or predictable timeline. This wasn’t a book that challenged me in a confrontational way, but it did make me feel seen. It felt validating more than anything else, like a reminder that what you went through mattered, even if it didn’t always look dramatic from the outside.
Overall, this book felt like a checkpoint on a longer healing journey. I would recommend it to people who are newly out of high-control religion, long-term survivors who are still unpacking beliefs they didn’t choose, and also to therapists or loved ones who want a better understanding of what religious trauma actually does to a person. It’s a steady, compassionate book that reminds you that reclaiming yourself is allowed, and that you belong to you.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
This is much more of a self-help book than a memoir, though it does draw on her personal experiences throughout. If you’ve read A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, you’ll recognize some of what she references, sometimes without much detail. I didn’t feel like reading the memoir first was required, but having that background does help fill in some gaps and add context to what she’s discussing.
She very clearly connects trauma to religion, especially emotional trauma, which was something I found really helpful. It’s easy to minimize or overlook emotional harm when it isn’t physical, and this book does a good job explaining the how and why of that damage without dismissing it or spiritualizing it away. I also appreciated the focus on therapeutic stages and the reminder that healing doesn’t happen on a clean or predictable timeline. This wasn’t a book that challenged me in a confrontational way, but it did make me feel seen. It felt validating more than anything else, like a reminder that what you went through mattered, even if it didn’t always look dramatic from the outside.
Overall, this book felt like a checkpoint on a longer healing journey. I would recommend it to people who are newly out of high-control religion, long-term survivors who are still unpacking beliefs they didn’t choose, and also to therapists or loved ones who want a better understanding of what religious trauma actually does to a person. It’s a steady, compassionate book that reminds you that reclaiming yourself is allowed, and that you belong to you.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I've read all or part of many self-help books. Most of them had some helpful ideas, but very few are memorable as I've aged.
Tia Levings has written a book that describes the layers of overcoming religious trauma that resonated with me for just short of 400 pages. The dominance of the culture of Christian religion has seen a drop in attendance since I was a child, and the sense of belonging to a church community has fallen with it. The surviving organizations are a minority but attempting to take over our nation. This book is a valuable resource for understanding what that means.
As a white male, overcoming what I was taught in a relatively liberal theology has haunted me for decades, and does not compare to what Levings has lived through. But her journey of recovery has been extremely helpful in understanding the methods used for control over the believers. Basically, a spiritual hazing instead of a spiritual journey.
For confronting and moving past dangling unanswered questions I don't have a better modern example to recommend than I Belong to Me!
Tia Levings has written a book that describes the layers of overcoming religious trauma that resonated with me for just short of 400 pages. The dominance of the culture of Christian religion has seen a drop in attendance since I was a child, and the sense of belonging to a church community has fallen with it. The surviving organizations are a minority but attempting to take over our nation. This book is a valuable resource for understanding what that means.
As a white male, overcoming what I was taught in a relatively liberal theology has haunted me for decades, and does not compare to what Levings has lived through. But her journey of recovery has been extremely helpful in understanding the methods used for control over the believers. Basically, a spiritual hazing instead of a spiritual journey.
For confronting and moving past dangling unanswered questions I don't have a better modern example to recommend than I Belong to Me!
December 16, 2025
This was clearly written with a lot of love, wisdom, and care. Tia Levings does a beautiful job of outlining what strategies helped her through her own recovery from abuse and high demand religion. I recommend reading her first book, The Well Trained Wife, first. However, if you feel that her story might be too much for you emotionally, she spends time going over the relevant events in her story in a less traumatizing way in this one. At times, it felt as though she was just rehashing events of her memoir. However, I can understand that for many in her audience who are looking for advice, a way forward, or a manual on recovery from high demand religion and/or abuse, reading a somewhat graphic retelling of someone else’s trauma might be too much. I think she’s done a beautiful job, that I hope reaches and helps those who have the courage to leave these terrible situations.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews