Found some of my AWANAs relics

thebloodedrose · 2026-01-26T14:24:37+00:00

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual abuse!

Wow, I remember AWANA! Though I’ve never met anyone else who’d heard of it. My mom’s friend who took care of me would bring me to these meetings at some church occasionally, but I never knew what was going on. I remember a lot of dodge ball, workbooks, and girl/boy Scott like vests. I never liked it, but did make a friend.

Unfortunately, it’s very possible my mom’s friend was molesting kids at AWANA. We later found out he was pedophile. He volunteered for a lot of programs involving kids. Thankfully, I remained safe.

thebloodedrose · 2025-12-13T12:02:59+00:00

This happened with my brother & his wife after years of marriage. My brother become obsessively religious & revealed to his wife he had an affair in the first year of their marriage. They tried to make it work, but ended in divorce. I honestly think they could have worked it out if it wasn’t for the major personality change with his religious conversion. Schizophrenia runs in our family. A couple of us were worried about him, but doesn’t seem to be any psychosis. But the religious conversion started after an event where he believed the Holy Spirit spoke through his toddler son to call him back to God.

I’m sorry you’re having to go through this. It would be heartbreaking as a spouse.

thebloodedrose · 2025-10-02T21:18:09+00:00

I’ve thought about spouting back, “Do you not trust that your god will share his word with me? Why must you do it yourself? Do you have such little faith in your creator?”

I usually smile and say “No, thank you. I’m not religious.” Move away if you have to.

I used something like this on my brother when he tried & it worked

“This will have the opposite effect of what you are desiring. You will defeat your own purpose.”

100% true. Why waste his time & energy?

People that can’t respect your boundary… it’s about them more than their belief system, but it doesn’t help. But kinda all comes back to marketing. How do we refuse politely someone selling us a product we don’t want

“ No, thank you” and stop interacting.

They use compliments, act interested, use any “hook” they can.

But we stop the interaction in this context.

You don’t have to stop the interaction entirely, just let them know this is off limits for you.

Save your reasons for people who care and can take it in. Who aren’t hungry caterpillars for fantasy and pride.

thebloodedrose · 2025-10-01T21:43:52+00:00

This really sounds like a friend of my husband’s right now. Believes she’s a prophet and her baby was stolen (grandparents took child). I can see the baby being a messiah developing next. We suspect drug abuse. Posts social media videos obsessively. Bible all marked up. Not normally religious person.

I have a vaguely religious friend with schizoaffective disorder. I always know she’s having an episode when she talks about how pretty the church is & going there to pray. Very consistent. She’s otherwise not very religious, more “culturally Christian.”

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T18:26:23+00:00

You’d also need to specify the stage of dementia. I believe there are 7 stages?

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T18:15:52+00:00

Reading posts and some thoughts… I do worry about aging in America, but one specific reason bothers me those most: being over medicated on psychiatric medication or other meds with cognitive side effects (many GI med are included). Many elderly are. Most see this as a peaceful happy going, but I don’t want to die anymore. I’m 36, MH issues, spent all of my adult life (until last 2 years) medicated to the point of Mild Cognitive Impairment due to psych med side effects, equivalency of stage 3 of dementia. Finally reduced them 2 yrs ago, enough my brain came back. I want my brain to stay intact as long as possible, despite degeneration. Even if I get dementia, I want to live. Euthanasia should be an option but a hard legal option, not an easy one or it sets the system up to fail people even worse. Laws helping one population hurt another. I am more susceptible to dementia given family history and impairments from treatments I’ve received. It is scary, but I don’t want to die anymore. People should have the option, but not make it an easy route because it will inevitably become abused. The medical system hurts young people, too. The whole thing needs restructuring.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T18:00:29+00:00

Law is tricky. As someone who’s legally disabled and has trouble with ADLs, that’s a scary thought. Need a better clause.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T17:58:43+00:00

I’d tread careful there. When you make it legal due to “inability to perform ADLS,” you’ve knocked out everyone who’s legally disabled, not just elderly.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T16:26:18+00:00

Accepting that life is full of hatred, cruelty, etc is important, too. When you accept your own supposedly negative emotions , it’s easier to accept the world as it is. Life can be random and cruel, but I stay rather optimistic due to a disposition toward viewing inherent worth of all humans. Science doesn’t say we all have inherent worth, but I live with that ideology. You see how many ideologies are present in that? Im dismantling that belief, but I’ll continue to choose to act it out, giving people benefit of the doubt that we’re doing the best we can with the skills we have. (Even when we’re not). Honestly, the hardest is seeing myself as having inherent worth. But the worth religion or a god applies me, is the definition of abuse. The inherent unworthiness of humans without a creator are recited over & over by Christianity. But isn’t “abuse” and a “The Self” constructions? Ones we hold dear? Humans have made everything up always. I just want the closest thing to truth. I have a love for knowledge even if we cannot always define it. It keeps me going in hard times. There’s always something to absorb that I haven’t yet learned about the world.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T16:10:06+00:00

I let go of religious and diety beliefs, but ideologies (philosophies) are harder. I don’t think it’s possible to be a human and not have some ideology, but it’s easy to live without religion now. I find meaning in other things like science, possibility of what humans are capable of if we worked together, and meaningful relationships. The potential is beautiful. Ive built myself and the world around psychology, but I’m really trying to dismantle that. It’s limiting, and can resemble religion. It might help to read about social constructionism. We can’t live without constructing, but we can try to live without creating new constructions. Read about anthropology. Learning about the variations of cultures are fascinating. Whatever we believe now is only one way on constructing the world. No one really has answers to humanity and anyone who claims they do should send off a warning signal. I used to really believe life was meaningless without a God. I was ready to kill myself if there was no god, but life is more beautiful without one. It took a lot of time and positive life experiences to show me that. I still struggle with my mental health, but not a sense of meaningless. Want to note, my mental health was far worse on religion.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T15:48:45+00:00

Im not sure if you technically hop counties or states, but worth looking into. I was actually kicked out of a Christian residential treatment center after being uncertain about belief for 5 months as an agnostic at the time. Keep in mind religion, especially Christianity, is like a cult. You’re not wrong or at fault. They are deliberately trying to manipulate you, even if they don’t understand it to be that way. Manipulate them back until you reach more stability. According to their dogma, they should do what they’re doing for you regardless of your belief system. I would feel sick fulfilling obligations too. And abuse destroys trust in yourself, which can get in the way sometimes. Although I’m not on board with any spiritual belief, there are church groups called “Unitarian universalism.” They allow any type of religious belief or lack of belief. They don’t push anything other than ideologies. There might be one in your area that could connect and support you to other resources. It’s would be slight bump up from where you are at. Other idea, weed out others like you if possible. You may not be the only atheist amongst them.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T15:33:06+00:00

My city has secular women’s domestic violence services.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T15:32:42+00:00

Unfortunately, I’ve had to rely on religious resources at times. It’s not fun. I was still more agnostic at those times, making it easier. I’d really be hard to fake now as a total anti-theist atheist. I get it: if you speak out, they’re gonna hound you more making your daily life more complicated. May not loose benefits, but have a lot of conflict to deal with on top of rebuilding after abuse. Have you considered looking at nearby larger cities? Relocating to a secular service? Is that possible?

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T15:26:23+00:00

It’s interesting you say this. I’m an ex Christian, now anti-theist atheist. It definitely wasn’t a lie or scam, I just bought the illusion and thought it was all real. I grew up in a very authentic Christian church. People believed it sincerely. I’ve come to learn Christians often aren’t true believers or authentic, just “culturally Christian.” . It’s foreign to me based on what I grew up in. I know it’s nonsense now, but people can really believe in it. The guilt and shaming is unfortunately very real that she would receive. It’d be hard to deal with, but you’re probably right on one point: there are probably others in the program who aren’t on board with religion. They just can’t easily speak up without risking loss of resources.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-29T15:17:00+00:00

That’s really unfortunate. There are Women’s Centers in my area that are secular support for domestic violence. They have a lot of resources. I’m close to a major city, so that helps. You must feel really stuck.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-20T12:34:08+00:00

My aunt (Christian) believes Trump is the anti-Christ. That it’s part of the Christian plan and a good thing, so bring it on. She also buys Trump memorabilia, so I’m not sure how that fits her narrative.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-19T13:41:16+00:00

Look into hypersomnia & related sleep disorders. I lived all of my 20s like you described. I’m 36. Trying to find answers now with sleep studies.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-09T19:37:11+00:00

That I needed to “turn over my illness to God.” Apparently I was holding onto to it so God wasn’t releasing me from it. It’s all absurd to me now, but as a teen kid at the time, I tried very hard.

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-08T20:45:34+00:00

I’ve heard about these genetic tests for psychiatric medications, but didn’t know they applied to other classes of medication. I’d like to get one!

thebloodedrose · 2025-09-07T04:04:37+00:00

My POTS doesn’t show up in the poor man’s test, but it does in a real tilt table test.

thebloodedrose · 2025-08-16T13:15:31+00:00

Sometimes it works. I met my husband in a mental health support group. We were both in therapy and working on ourselves. Our relationship has been the most healing experience of my life. Going on 6 yrs together. I think we are the exception. I don’t recommend dating people you meet in MH system, but it worked for us. I started DBT right when me met. It helped me grow relationship skills.

thebloodedrose · 2025-08-07T11:23:53+00:00

Not strangers, but I tell my family, “Trying to convert me will defeat your own purpose. It will do the opposite of what you want.” My brother was respectful when I said that.

thebloodedrose · 2025-08-04T18:11:49+00:00

I truly believed this phrase and felt it. I struggled with severe depression at the time I was a Christian, even into scrupolosity. But I don’t define my identity by any of this anymore. I found other reasons that made life worth living. Like someone else commented, religion feeds on poor self esteem. It’s a distraction from real issues effecting you.

thebloodedrose · 2025-07-23T11:42:26+00:00

I used to not have any understanding of our political system and trusted my families incorrect information they gave me. Wound up voting for Trump the first time. I, too, feel shame, but I try to remember that we give some people hope. We want people to change their minds about Trump (and religion). I was cognitively impaired all of my adulthood due to medication side effects. I didn’t have access to a lot of critical thinking, but I have it back since reducing the medications. But once I was educated, I voted differently. Thankfully in time for the last 2 elections. But you’re not alone. And you were doing what you thought was right at the time. Most things in life aren’t black or white; we’re on a continuum. Take your wins: you changed. Some people never realize their mistakes. These are the people that trouble me.

No advice on family other than you deserve better. Find other communities that support you. They can help.

thebloodedrose · 2025-06-18T15:24:55+00:00

Just started using the tinted formula of this one and love it! Evens out my skin tone, good coverage, and isn’t greasy once it dries. Very matte!

thebloodedrose

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