Teresa B. Pasquale - Sacred Wounds: A Path to Healing from Spiritual Trauma

So many people have been wounded by religion. So few understand the personal, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of these wounds. As a pastor and a professional therapist, Teresa Pasquale is the first person I would go to for help in processing spiritual pain. Now, her gentle wisdom is available widely through Sacred Wounds. It is beautifully written and pastorally rich. Highly recommended!

Brian D. McLaren, Author/Speaker

In the changing landscape of faith, there are so many men and women across ages, demographics, and faith traditions, lying on the side of the road bleeding. Scarred and hurt from unhealthy systems, many often dont know where to turn or how to find their way toward healing. Sacred Wounds is an incredible tool of hope! Teresa Pasquale is an amazing guide, tender and wise, and offers her own experiences, others powerful stories, and practical, gentle, and meaningful exercises for healing. I will be sharing it with the many people I know longing for hope after experiencing religious trauma.

Kathy Escobar, Co-Pastor of The Refuge and Author of Faith Shift: Finding Your Way Forward When Everything You Believe Is Coming Apart

Sacred Wounds is a literary liminal adventure into the holy terrain of trauma, healing, brokenness, and openness. In these pages lie a call for us to be wounded healer-warriors in a fear-ful trauma-saturated culture. May it be so!

Anthony Smith (Postmodern Negro); Pastor, Mission House (Salisbury, NC)

Teresa Pasquales gentle voice of wisdom has never been more needed than it is today. With clinical expertise amplified by a personal journey from victim to survivor to victor, Teresa is the perfect wounded healer, and her words are exactly the balm that all those with Sacred Wounds need!

Reba Riley, Author of Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome: A Memoir of Humor and Healing

This is the book you need if you or someone you know has survived religious trauma. A definitive guide to the origins of religious trauma, effects on the body and mind, and most importantly, how to heal, Sacred Wounds is written by a sensitive therapist and survivor with a full cache of honest, loving, insightful, and creative ideas for how to feel better. Offering illustrative vignettes, therapeutic guidance and practical suggestions for healing processes Pasquale elegantly illuminates the imminent path to recovery.

Michele Rosenthal, Author of Your Life After Trauma: Powerful Practices to Reclaim Your Identity

The author speaks from both personal and professional experience, and her ideas are well grounded in academic theory. Her writing is both compassionate and full of humor, and tying healing from trauma to the twelve steps of addiction recovery is brilliant.

Gail Horton Chewing, MSW, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Florida Atlantic University

Sacred Wounds is not merely an academic expos on church abuse. It is both personal and poignant, reaching deeply into the souls of those who are still haunted by the abyss between what we expect church to be and sometimes what it is. This book offers a balm of healing, sacred and pure. Teresa B. Pasquale has heard us. She sees us. She knows us. And she offers us the tools we need to rebuild our lives, our hearts, our souls. This is a brilliant and safe guide through our anxiety, our triggers, our panic attacks, and our nightmares. Reading the stories of those whose wounds are still open, I found myself among them. Each one who so generously shares their stories of healing brings light to all our dark places and reveals the God with whom we are safe. Beautifully written.

Daisy Rain Martin, Author of Juxtaposed: Finding Sanctuary on the Outside and Hope Givers: Hope is here

Teresa Pasquale looks deep within religions wounded shadows and, like Christ the wounded healer, finds grace and hope there. Her project in Sacred Wounds is twofold: to name the traumas in which religion is complicit and to provide a map of the healing pilgrimage. Among the unique features of this compelling work are: individual stories, including Pasquales, of religions role in perpetuating wounds; a sophisticated awareness of body-mind healing modalities; and an application of the twelve-step recovery tradition to articulate a positive way forward for transformation. Pasquale believes the end result of our wounds does not have to be cynical rejection or wounded avoidance of religion, but a maturing ability to transcend and include even the most painful stages of our lives. This compassionate, wise book will help many people.

Mark Longhurst, Pastor and Writer

Teresa B. Pasquale takes us on her own brave journeyand ultimately, intimately, into ourselves. The spiritual traumas are most sacred. No more averting our eyes. We are gently challenged to look, see, sense. Teresa teaches us to remember and trust our instincts once again. She gives us hands-on applications we can use in our lives. Her book is our guide. Take this pilgrimage with her and emerge transformed.

Sharon Daugherty, Sexual Assault Outreach/SART Co-Facilitator; Palm Beach County Victim Services & Certified Rape Crisis Center

If one of the definitions of trauma is any experience less than nurturing, then life on this planet is daunting, risky business for us frail humans. While the Church can be an agent to bring healing to that trauma, more often than not our religious experiences end up less than nurturing and typically at the hands of well-meaning, yet misguided folks. Teresa B. Pasquale shares with brutal and refreshing honesty her journey in spiritual healing. Hers is not just a story of ongoing restoration, it is one demonstrating that in the midst of the pain, the Divine is there weaving all things into the fabric of a new garment designed to give us and others protection, shelter, and life. As a clinician and healer, the insights she presents bring a bright ray of hope where light is more than ever needed. I am grateful for her voice to those inside and outside of the Church. She is a refreshing change agent who speaks from both clinical expertise and deep, personal experience.

Jonathan Benz, MS, CAP, ICADC, CDWF; Author, The Recovery-Minded Church

Also by Teresa B. Pasquale

Mending Broken: A Personal Journey Through the Stages of Trauma and Recovery (2012)

SACRED
WOUNDS

A Path to Healing from Spiritual Trauma

TERESA B. PASQUALE

FOREWORD BY FR. RICHARD ROHR, OFM

Copyright 2015 by Teresa B Pasquale

All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, www.copyright.com.

AUTHORS NOTE: Some names and details have been changed in the anecdotes of the author as well as in the stories of others hurt by church to protect identities. The content as a whole has been kept intact so that no essential material has been altered.

Cover design: Jesse Turri

Interior design: Elizabeth Wright

www.ChalicePress.com

Print: 9780827235373EPUB: 9780827235380EPDF: 9780827235397

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pasquale, Teresa B.

Sacred wounds : religious injury, spiritual trauma, and healing / by Teresa B. Pasquale. First Edition.