Surviving Wonderland: A Journey Beyond Control

by Brittany Hart

What happens when the faith you trusted becomes the cage you can't escape?



Brittany Hart knows. She spent six years inside a high-control religious group-a place where love looked like control, devotion meant erasure, and questioning was betrayal. 



Surviving Wonderland is her map out. 



Through haunting, visceral poetry, Hart traces the journey from manipulation to freedom, using the story of Alice in Wonderland as a guide through the disorientation of spiritual abuse. Each poem  



The subtle ways control disguises itself as careThe impossible standards that break you down-The courage it takes to trust yourself againThe slow, sacred work of reclaiming your voice 

For anyone  



Is rebuilding after leaving a controlling religious environment Struggles with spiritual trauma or religious PTSD Is deconstructing faith and feeling lost in the process Needs permission to grieve what was taken from them

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Surviving A Journey Beyond Control is published by Tehom Center Publishing, an independent press elevating marginalized voices. Learn more at www.tehomcenter.org.

172 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 8, 2026

Reviews

[Myranda Swartzwelter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brittany is a beautiful writer and these poems are salve for the soul if you have experienced religious trauma. Her poems are raw and both painful and hopeful as she describes her journey. Her poems about girlhood and friendship made me tear up.

[Danielle Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Surviving Wonderland felt deeply familiar. As someone who also came out of a high control evangelical environment, I recognized the psychology immediately. Not just the beliefs, but the fear, urgency, and slow loss of self that follows.

What I appreciated most is that this book doesn’t rush healing or spiritually bypass what happened. It allows anger, grief, humor, and clarity to exist together, and it names how spiritual harm lives in the body as much as the mind. That felt rare and honest.

I didn’t feel talked at or instructed. I felt understood. For anyone still making sense of their experience with high control spirituality, this book feels like a steady and compassionate companion.

[zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARC Review

Poetry has a way of pulling emotions out of me that most literature can’t do and Surviving Wonderland was no exception. The way Brittany was able to pour her experiences onto the page was phenomenal, I felt myself thinking about my own experiences with religion. It doesn’t compare to what the author went through but I found solace in the poetry that I haven’t before.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of poetry is beautifully written. Brittany creatively captures the readers’ attention throughout the whole book. It is one that I will continue to come back to, knowing that each turn of the page I’ll find something new.

[Maree Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brittany tells her story of escaping a high control religious group — International House of Prayer, Kansas City or IHOP KC — using poetry inspired by Alice In Wonderland. It happens to be my all-time favourite book, so I was excited to read an early copy.

Brittany uses the metaphor of falling down the rabbit hole to describe the descent into madness that was her time in the cult; she recounts the confusion and her desperate desire to please God.

The book is beautifully illustrated and written, utilising different styles of poetry to chronicle her early captivation with the group's leader, the exhaustion at the height of her involvement, and finally the process of healing and finding belonging after leaving.

I found the first half quite heavy and emotional — the spiritual abuse endured by the author and the pain of believing she had to try harder to deserve God's love is tough to hear. But learning how she processed all of that after leaving, and decided for herself what beliefs to discard, finding her genuine self and a faith that is her own is beautiful.