The Farm Girl Who Lost Her Religion

So… I grew up on a farm in the Free State of South Africa, inside a conservative, religious community where fear was basically the family business.

Fear of God. Fear of the devil. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. Fear of not working hard enough. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of not fitting in. Fear of scarcity. Fear of dreams. Fear of people who looked different. Fear of farm attacks. 

And when fear marinates in a community, people eventually stop seeing it as fear and start accepting it as just the way things are.

Just like I accepted intolerance and violence as normal.

One day my father caught one of the farm workers taking our dog hunting without permission. When the man came back, my father beat him unconscious then dragged him to the outdoor tap and told me to open the water over his face so he would wake up.

I was about six or seven.

I stood there conflicted. One part of me wanting to obey my father, another part horrified and scared.

Then later, my father retold the story proudly to family friends like some heroic farm anecdote. I became “the tough little girl who helped her father...”

That afternoon stayed buried deep within me for decades.

The uncomfortable truth is that despite feeling disturbed by it, I still absorbed a lot of the prejudice around me. Conditioning is wild like that. Especially when fear gets repeated enough times that it settles into your bones and starts masquerading as common sense.

A little bit of context.

Farm attacks were common where I grew up. Stories circulated about farmers being tortured, assaulted, burned, strangled. People we knew. People we went to church with. The people in our community were always on high alert. Armed and scared.

Then in 2022, it happened to my own parents.

I got a WhatsApp message from an old school friend at 5AM one morning asking if my parents were okay. He had heard a disturbing message over the farm community’s two-way radio channel. It felt like it was dropped into an ice bath mixed with knives. My mind raced off in a thousand directions. 

I immediately phoned my father. He answered in a defeated tone that I’d never heard him speak with before. Good, I thought. At least he’s not dead. He was in the ambulance with my mother who had been shot. Sad to say, but I was relieved to hear that she had been shot. There are much worse accounts of people being tortured during these types of attacks in the most unthinkable ways. And by the looks of it, they had planned to. The police found a bag with cable ties among their things.

It was only after the shock and disbelief settled that I found out what had happened. Five men entered the farm house at night and ambushed my father in his sleep. They strangled and beat him while my mother heard the noises from the room next door. My mother, who is one of the bravest humans I know, walked into that room knowing full well she could die. The men started shooting at her. She shot back. One attacker died. Another was wounded. My mother was shot three times. One bullet shattered her femur.

What followed was months of blood-etched memories and what if scenarios replaying in my mind, mixed with gratitude that they were okay. But somewhere underneath that fear, a whisper kept telling me that hatred was not the answer. It took me forty-two years to finally hear it.

Thinking back to my childhood, I realize that it was actually quite a chaotic emotional environment. My mother fell pregnant with me at eighteen. She was an incredibly talented athlete and had dreams of taking it further professionally. She also loved composing songs on her guitar. She desperately wanted to pursue a singing career. But then she became a wife and mother inside a very patriarchal system. A life sentence. My father believed men earned the money and women raised the children. So my mother became financially dependent on him. Makeup. Underwear. Anything that she wanted for herself needed permission. 

As the years went by, her beautiful songs became sad and bitter, and after decades of empty hope, it finally went quiet. You could hear the resentment of stillborn dreams echoing louder and louder in her voice each time they fought. 

And they fought. 

Their marriage became a Free State melodrama. No, it was actually a tragedy. Because something died inside of her. Her playful nature and charismatic personality withered with her dreams. And because children are adorable little meaning-makers, I internalized all of that as my fault. I felt like my existence had cost my mother her dreams, her life. That I had forced my parents into a prison of unhappiness. 

At seven years old I was sent to boarding school. It was the norm for farm kids to go, regardless of how close you lived to town. Our farm was a quick 15-minute drive out. But the farm kids who were driven in and out daily were seen as soft. So when my mother asked me, I decided to go. 

Being the quiet introvert that I was, the matron placed me in a four-sleeper room with the other shy kids. The cool, popular kids all slept together in the big room. And just like that, an identity was formed. 

The outsider. 

I remember the afternoons after study time spent crying on the phone while the well-adjusted kids were loudly frolicking outside. One afternoon, my mother told me that I shouldn’t phone her anymore. The matron had told her that phone calls prolonged the homesickness. As a mother, I understand her approach. But grade one-me translated that moment differently: Your feelings are not important. You do not have support. Needing help is weakness. Self soothe. Figure it out alone.

And that became a blueprint. For decades I lived by the motto: come hell or high water, I won’t ask for, or accept any help. I don’t need it. Suck it up, shrink and just get on with it. After all, kids should be seen and not heard, right? That’s what the grownups told you when you interrupted an adult conversation.

So I never really talked much. Especially not about my fears or feelings. Instead, I shrank and kept it to myself. Like the fact that I always felt like the odd one out among the popular, wealthier kids whose parents moved in the right circles. And the shame I felt when I tried out for tennis and everyone laughed at my outdated, battered racket. 

Then Grade 8 arrived and suddenly puberty did what puberty does. I went from awkward duckling to sporty swan overnight. I lost weight and became athletic. Boys started noticing me. 

Jealousy is a nasty thing. After one athletics event in grade ten or eleven, a group of girls pinned me to the grass and smeared me with watermelon skins until I was bleeding. I only recently recalled this and it occurred to me that my watermelon baptism explains so much of my adult visibility wounds. Newsflash: standing out is physically unsafe. I mean, nothing says stay small and know your place quite like a group of teens turning you into a fruit salad if you got too big for your boots. Message received: dare to have a little too much self confidence, be too visible, or get too much attention, and you’re going to get sliced up for it. 

And oh, it gets better. Achievements became dangerous too. I entered the school beauty pageant and placed third. Entering the science class, I overheard my teacher reacting with obvious disgust that I had been crowned. 

Around this same time, my mother tried to leave my father (again). My sister and I moved schools. Then moved back. Then had to explain ourselves. Public humiliation going for an Oscar.

And somewhere during my high school years, something in my nervous system decided it’s time to check out. Orals - even book readings in class - became a mini panic attack. Racing heart. Hyperventilation. Dry mouth. Trembling. Terror. Sleepless nights weeks beforehand. 

And yes, you’ve guessed it, little old I’ll-deal-with-it-myself me never went up to somebody saying, hey listen, I’m kind of thinking my life is going to end every time I open my mouth in class, is there something you can do to help? 

Which makes what happened next hilarious. Because despite all of this, I wanted to become an actress. An actress! This wasn’t exactly met with encouragement in a community of

conservative status-quo followers. 

As you near the end of your matric year, you’re bound to bump into a tannie at the Spar or church, asking the same tired question, So, what are you going to study next year? [awkward silence enters stage left] Oh!” 

Because dreams. Who needs them, right?

Growing up, I idolised Brümilda van Rensburg and I desperately wanted to be on screen. Something in storytelling and performing felt alive to me. 

So guess what I did. 

I went and I studied Drama at Stellenbosch University. (Free State farm girl culture shock! But that’s a story for another time.) 

My mother fully supported me. She didn’t want me to follow in her unfulfilled footsteps. My father… less enthusiastically. It must be hard for a boer who speaks in acres and cattle breeds to understand the arts. You could feel his logic-driven concern in every holiday conversation. He wanted practical certainty. Backup plans. Preferably something involving less emotional volatility than theatre students chain smoking outside rehearsal halls discussing existentialism. 

So I did a post-grad in English as my plan-B. And brewing in the back of my mind the entire time, was this heavy guilt of my dad’s hard-earned money being poured into my studies. 

Let me give you a little context on this money situation. As the dux scholar, my father had the opportunity to study with a bursary after he matriculated. But no title or corner office prospect could trump the smell of soil. Unfortunately, he had to start from scratch. When he was 13, his father had a heart attack in the mielie crops and his older brother inherited the farm, which he eventually lost. 

When I was born, my father had gotten a bank loan for the farm. It was make-or-break in those early years. The first loan repayment was at the mercy of the weather and how big the yield would be. By the grace of God, the first few seasons were successful, and so the road was paved to my university privilege. It was a long, hard road. In the early years, we were living in an old tiny stone building. The workshop next door had been converted into my parents’ bedroom, which I shared with them. Our big family home, built brick-by-brick by my father’s hands, only came later. As the yields returned, imagined spaces slowly took shape in the form of lived-in rooms. The labour of love. 

My father loved working the land. Even though it came with risk and the devastation that the inevitable veld fires, droughts, floods and hail storms brought. The story of his faithful labour and hard-earned wealth is told by his grease-stained hands and prayer-calloused knees. A religion of sweat.

So, needless to say that because my father often complained about how expensive university was, and that money doesn’t grow on trees, I felt indebted and enormous guilt. 

So the pressure was on for me to make this delusional dream a success. We were rehearsing a Reza de Wet play in class and I received critique on my performance. It was like somebody pushed the wrong button in a war room. Something inside me finally erupted. A cathartic explosion of pus-filled emotional wounds. 

The guilt of wasting my father’s money. The terror of not succeeding. The shame of the I-told-you-so’s and the I-knew-that-she-was-never-going-to-make-its. The cruel irony. God, why did you give me this passion, this dream if I wasn’t capable of making it?

My teacher, Antionette Kellermann, tried to console me on the steps outside the classroom. Even with her veteran theatre knowledge, she had no way of knowing the complexity of these decade-old emotional layers.

I felt like an absolute failure.

So after university, I found advertising. Or maybe advertising found me. If you’ve gotten so used to emotionally scanning rooms filled with people for emotional danger, congratulations, you’re now excellent at being a behind-the-scenes copywriter. 

It has now been over twenty years. I have the portfolio. I have the awards. But it came at a cost. Missed moments with my kids. Late nights. Hours and hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic. And that little voice inside asking, is this all there is to life?

About two years ago the chronic unease of the rat race started progressing into an acute painful throb. My life force was gone. It had been seeping through the emptiness of the unpaid after-hours, the meaningless meetings and senseless schedules. So I became that mom. The one working on her laptop way past five and ignoring her three-year-old son’s proud LEGO moment. When I finally managed to tear my eyeballs away from the retail campaign on screen, I saw the neglect and disappointment on his little face. It broke me. 

Meanwhile my husband was trapped in his own soul snare. Black Friday season in the SEO e-commerce field is not a picnic. Hunched over an endless abyss of spreadsheets and reports, he was functioning on caffeine, stress hormones and tranquilizers. The strained sounds coming through the bathroom door of him vomiting before work became my morning alarm. Totally normal, we told ourselves. This was adulthood. Living the dream.

So I started praying. No, begging. At this point, I was way past the polished church-appropriate prayers. These were exhausted bathroom-floor negotiations with the Universe. Desperate cries for help while hushing my baby and anticipating the inevitable arrival of another work-group WhatsApp.

God, I cannot do this anymore. Please. I simply cannot. I want to close my laptop at 5 PM. I want to cook dinner for my family without needing to check Workbook every two seconds. I want to play with my kids like a normal mom. I want to actually listen to my son, not pretend to listen while answering an email. I want to be able to go on a date night without needing to “book off” an evening first. I want my life back.

Then in 2024, God answered. I got a new job. Better boundaries. Less pressure. Breathing room. Balance.

It was the calm before the real storm broke loose. 

One Tuesday evening, scrolling through social media, a near death experience video randomly appeared on my Facebook feed. And with one tap, the sturdy stone upon which my religious foundation had been laid, became like sand. People’s accounts of consciousness, life reviews, the absence of hell, souls as fractals of God experiencing itself through us humans. Which, for someone raised with the Jesus-Christ-our-only-Savior-from-eternal-fire narrative, felt like accidentally downloading forbidden spiritual software directly into the operating system.

I didn’t know what to make of this. All I knew was that I wanted to know more. So I spiraled. For about a year, I consumed NDE videos and Next Level Soul podcasts obsessively. And at the same time, I thought I might be damning my soul to eternal hellfire by considering these alternative truths. 

Fun times. 

I’d lie awake crying quietly next to my unsuspecting husband, begging God for the truth. Not confirmation of what I thought was true. Not spiritual enlightenment. Just the plain truth.

God sent me the answers I was craving through the book Conversations with God - I devoured the trilogy like my salvation depended on it, my thirsty soul drinking in every nugget of wisdom. 

And then judgement day came. 

I shared my new enlightened beliefs with my family, who of course, thought I was being led astray by the devil and needed to return to the light immediately, or risk damning my soul. But instead, I kept going further down into the unknown. 

My sister once told me she could see the Holy Spirit had left me. She said my eyes looked empty. Which was deeply terrifying at the time and also, in hindsight, one of the most dramatic lines ever delivered over casual weekend snacks. I was mortified. The new truths still hadn’t fully settled. Was she right? Was my soul an empty vessel, addressed to hell?

Despite my existential fear, I was feeling so guilty for putting my family through this. I knew that they were genuinely fearing for my soul. And honestly, I understand it. If you believe your child is risking eternal damnation, of course you panic and preach. 

I started dreading the weekly telephone calls with my parents, fearing the judgemental warnings that God would bring me back to the straight and narrow path via a traumatic event if I didn’t listen. Eventually, we stopped fighting and debating. Now, we coexist around the topic like ideological rivals in a theological ceasefire. I don’t think they will ever understand my point of view or accept my truths as their own. But it’s okay. My peace does not need their approval.

Today, I no longer fear for my soul. My old religious foundation, now an ancient ruin, is being rebuilt with a much sturdier base of inner knowing.

The story I tell myself is this: My spiritual awakening was not about abandoning God or rejecting Jesus. It was about letting go of fear induced by inherited multi-generational limiting religious and societal beliefs. Dogma.

Somewhere during all of this, I started healing. I learnt how to identify my wounds, acknowledging them and let them go. I’m teaching my body that it is safe to exist. Safe to receive. Safe to be visible. Safe to want more. Safe to take up space. Safe to speak my truth. Safe to dream. Safe to be vulnerable. Safe to not always be liked by everyone, because who is?

What I’m now busy dealing with is the money wound. It’s funny how it takes decades to gain objectivity on the events that shaped your identity. For me, money has always been tied to scarcity, sacrifices, hard work and guilt. Seeing how hard my father had to work to get where he is today, I always believed that the only way to get money, or deserve abundance, was through effort.

The religion of sweat again. 

So now I’m unraveling that. I’m learning that my worth is not tied to exhaustion. That I do not need to bleed for every good thing I want. That wanting more and having more, does not mean that it needs to be at someone else’s expense. I am learning to fully step into and embody my sovereignty. Because I know that I am worthy of every blessing and every dream I have ever dreamt.

Financially, things are still intense. After more than a year, my business is still barely profitable. My credit card is maxed out. My website payment literally declined the other night because my bank account is functioning on quantum potential. For a control freak like me, this would’ve sent me straight into panic mode a few months ago - and at some stage it did. But now, I’m learning to soften into it. To surrender. To trust the journey.

Fuck it. I’m no longer defining myself against my bank balance. And I’m definitely no longer letting systems that benefit from my exhaustion rob me of my valuable family time.

I trust myself now, my inner knowing. I trust the growing voice inside me that says there is more to life than survival. More than performing for approval. More than shrinking and hiding. More than constantly needing to people please.

I believe there is a version of life available to us all that includes abundance, beauty, freedom, joy and creativity. Not because we’ve earned it. But because we are inherently worthy. Maybe, human beings were never designed to live as depleted nervous systems trapped inside fluorescent corporate cages. Maybe we were designed to create. To connect.

To heal. To remember.

And if a healing guilt-ridden, people-pleasing outsider who failed at acting and rejected the version of God she grew up with can begin rebuilding her life from the inside out… then you can too.

If you are currently going through a spiritual awakening, religious deconstruction, or the painful process of healing religious trauma, please know that you are not alone. And more importantly, you do not have to walk through this alone. I know how terrifying and isolating it can feel when your entire belief system begins to unravel beneath your feet. The confusion. The grief. The fear. The existential freefall. It can feel like losing your identity, your certainty and your place in the world all at once.

That’s why I wrote a guide to help others navigate the painful transitions, uncertainty and emotional chaos that often accompany a dark night of the soul. It’s the guidance I desperately needed when I was going through mine.