One Year of STRONGWILLED!

A celebration, and a look forward

Celebrating one year of a survivor-led project

It has been one full year of STRONGWILLED content. We have published 14 chapters, 10 podcast episodes, 22 community discussion posts, 3 interviews — plus 11 Patreon-only podcast episodes. We have made Tikoks and posted on Bluesky and started a vibrant Discord community. In one year we have grown from zero to nearly 4,000 subscribers, all from word of mouth sharing. 

It has been a harrowing year to publish our work on religious authoritarian parenting practices and how they paved the way for an authoritarian figure like Donald Trump. Like many of our readers, we have been in a constant state of balancing our engagement with the political situation in the United States and prioritizing our mental health. We who have been punished into compliance in childhood are uniquely situated to notice and name the abusive dynamics being perpetuated in our society at the hands of angry white men — be they Christian fascists or tech bros or petulant presidents. 

STRONGWILLED has largely flown under the radar of major platforms. Perhaps it is due to the nature of our content, our multi-media approach utilizing Substack, or to the reality that we are writing from a non-Christian and gender-diverse social location — but STRONGWILLED has flourished despite the lack of engagement with the wider writing world. Instead of our content being shared by big names, we have slowly grown by writing to and for survivors of religious authoritarian methods. At the same time, we are grateful for those who have given us a platform in the past year — from mentions in Time magazine to being a part of a short audio documentary on Focus on the Family. 

The biggest gift over the past year has been seeing the comments from readers that validate both our research and the lived experience of growing up in a high control environment like white evangelicalism. We cannot imagine a better group of readers. Our audience is composed of people who are ready and willing to do the work of processing the pain of childhood in order to break cycles of violence against children. It is made up of people like yourself, who desire to work towards a world where the white supremacist patriarchy is not the only vision for society. It is full of beautiful, traumatized, honest folks who are learning and growing and doing the hard work of connecting to their true selves. Even — or perhaps especially — when the patriarchs are ready to punish those who dare to have their own will.

When we started working on our project in early 2023, we didn’t know what the outcome of the 2024 presidential elections would be. We had reason to be cautiously optimistic that full-throated authoritarianism could be avoided. Yet we were also driven to publish our content as soon as possible in the hopes of pointing out the ties between violence in childhood and supporting violent leaders. Now, with the patterns of authoritarian control tactics on display for the world to see, we believe that it is more necessary than ever to continue to identify, process, and heal from the long-term impacts of religious authoritarian parenting practices. 

In the coming months, we have more chapters to publish — on gender, sexuality, the sin of empathy, and more — plus a few more side quests. We are excited to do a podcast miniseries on The Hunger Games trilogy and discuss how violence against children is essential to authoritarian control. We are also excited to announce we want to partner with our readers and work towards an oral history project for folks who grew up with RAP methods. For paid subscribers we will continue to put out discussion prompts with the goal of helping people process their individual experiences with RAP methods while also noticing the patterns that connect us to each other.

We are so proud of this project and the ways it has resonated with our target audience — you. The people who grew up in homes or churches or communities where children were used as collateral damage in a white supremacist patriarchal power grab. We cannot do this work without your financial and emotional support, and we are so grateful for the ways we have been supported. 

As we grieve, process, and rage against the violence of authoritarian power we are also incredibly privileged to be in a community of folks who are cycle breakers in every sense of the word. We do this work of processing the pain of childhood not because it is easy, but because it is essential to the survival of the planet, and to humanity itself. A society that accepts violence against children as a necessary tool of control is a society that is already destined for destruction. We who are doing the work of demanding better for children are truly investing in the world as a whole. 

Thank you for being here, and for making STRONGWILLED possible. May we all continue to connect and nurture our inner strong-willed child, and may we continue to resist authoritarian control wherever we might come across it.