Not of My Making: Bullying, Scapegoating and Misconduct

Have you ever been teased or bullied? Or perhaps you have seen someone else being cruelly teased or maybe you were the bully. Like most of us, Margaret believed that once she graduated from high school the teasing and bullying would stop. She was wrong. The bullying just took forms that were more sophisticated. High school bullies often remain bullies. Bystanders still fail to take any action that will help the victim. Victims continue to find it difficult to find a place for themselves at work, in social settings and at church. Not of My Making tells the true story of how one woman’s childhood victimization left her easy prey for the grownup bullies at church, the one place she foolishly believed would always be safe. Read about Margaret’s personal growth from victim to survivor to thriver.

Clergy and church leaders did everything they could to silence Margaret and prevent her from joining another church. This book breaks that silence and tells the author's struggle to belong to and be accepted by three mainline churches. Feeling a desire to deepen her own spirituality while providing her children with a religious and moral education, she joined a Unitarian Universalist Church. After expressing unpopular opinions and feelings she was shunned and blacklisted by her congregation. She joined another church only to be dechurched a second time when she objected to clergy and church leaders gossiping about her childhood history of sexual and emotional abuse. She took refuge in a Lutheran Church only to be dechurched a third time. Shattered she desperately sought to understand what had happened to her and why. At first she believed her dechurching was an unusual event but as she read books on spiritual abuse and bullying she came to realize that such behavior is common in religious institutions. Individuals with a history of childhood victimization are especially vulnerable to be singled out, marginalized and rejected by church members.