When Church Girls Become Conjure Women

for the Black girls who discovered Jesus wasn't enough

“They’re going to think you fell off a cabbage truck.”

That’s what a family member told me when she found out I was done with Christianity and picking up tarot as a means of communicating with the Dead and Divine.

Looking back on that moment now I am present to the fear that this person must have been feeling, thinking that perhaps I was putting myself in spiritual or real jeopardy. I imagine they were probably afraid of how I would be perceived by others because as a good Christian girl I was taught that Jesus was the only way and therefore anything else was fraudulent, demonic, a lie, an abomination.

How could someone who I loved and who I believed loved me say such words? From my perspective, they cared more about public perception of my spiritual choices than about me.

No, what mattered more was the appearance of Christian holiness, goodness, and purity. What mattered most was how I was representing the family.

They couldn’t see that I was finding myself. The real me. Not the girl who had been taught to be submissive, obedient, and chaste to prove her worthiness (while also being taught that there was nothing I could do to earn God’s love or favor anyway). I was meeting myself. And I think that this would've been celebrated if the self that I was finding was also willing to continue her subjection to Christian servitude. No.

Once I dared to walk out of those church doors, there would be no celebration for me, only criticism, judgment, and isolation.

I remember weeping to my best friend a lot after that conversation. I could not understand why.

Why did it have to be this way?

Why couldn't they be happy for me?

No love, no support. Not even kindness.

Nearly thirty years of obedience and doing life the Christian way…and I was somehow not even worth the benefit of the doubt that I could have a mind of my own. It was as though if my plans or purpose didn’t include Jesus, I couldn’t be trusted. That somehow I must have been influenced or sick or going through something.

Suddenly my integrity, my wellness, even my parenting were called into question and subject to scrutiny because I no longer believed the lies the Church told me about myself or my African and enslaved Ancestors.

As a person who was completely in her deepest codependency, approval-seeking, and people-pleasing patterns, this sort of familial rejection and shunning felt like the end of the world. I was devastated, but I was also determined because the glimpses of the whole person I was beginning to see when I looked into the mirror gave me hope. I admired her. I felt a power that had not been accessed or activated before. I felt more connected to my spirit and my purpose than at any other time in my life.

And it really made me wonder who benefited from me being small inside of the Christian Church? Surely not me.

Now, back then I was such a long way from daring to call myself a conjure woman. But at that time, I was already remembering my magic.

And I was already coming home to me, to my body, to my knowing, to my Ancestors, and yet there was such a deep longing for approval. A deep fear of what my family and former church members would think of me. These were the people who saw me grow up, the people who held me when I was a baby, who led me in teen ministries and choirs and step teams. People who I had seen chew folks up and spit them back out for lesser offenses. People who stood on pulpits and spat curses of death and sickness upon anyone who dared end their church membership. And here I was, not only having left their church… I was ready to leave their faith, their Jesus, too.

Oh, I knew they were gonna have a field day when they saw that I was slinging cards and wearing head wraps and saying, Ase, instead of Amen.

I expected that they would say all manner of evil against me, and as a result, probably judge my family, too. 

As that family member said to me: they're going to think that I fell off a cabbage truck. And for a minute I thought that maybe I had. I almost bought into it myself.

I started to fear.

I started to question.

I started to doubt.

But then I’d see the conjure woman in the mirror–the conjure woman in the making, and I remembered her. And I wanted to know her and I wanted to bring her into this timeline. 

I wanted to be her.

She told me: You are me.

…and thus began my healing journey and the abundant life available to me outside of the Church.

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This is just a piece of my story. And if it stirs you, if it reminds you of your own story, or if it intrigues you, I invite you to watch the replay of my conversation with conversation with Ms. Barbara Edwards and Gullah Gullah Island’s Mrs. Natalie Daise. Two powerful women who shared their stories of what life is like beyond the church walls. They inspired us and championed us through sharing their hardships and their triumphs.

So many people will cause you to believe that leaving the church marks the end of your life. And I'm here to tell you it was the beginning of mine.

Stay tuned because When Church Girls Become Conjure Women is not only a one-day event; it is soon to be a group coaching experience that I’m happy to present! If you want more information, sign up now for the wait list.

We have many, many, many, many roads to travel down because the former church girls are healing and ready to reclaim ourselves!

This is for the girls who have left the Church and determined life gets better from here on out. 

See you soon.