It’s Not God’s Fault

Real talk for survivors. From Suicide Loss, Domestic Abuse, and Sibling Sexual Trauma. Sharing stories and tools needed for healing and reclaiming your life and legacy.

In my last series, we looked at the external markers of relationships—the Red Flags and the Green Flags. I talked about what to look for, what to avoid, and what healthy actually looks like. But if I’m being honest, knowing the difference wasn’t what kept me stuck. I saw the signs. I noticed the shifts. The problem wasn’t my eyes; it was my heart. I simply didn’t trust myself enough to respond to what I was seeing.

This is the beginning of a new series: The Lies Women Are Taught to Believe. I’m not just talking about what happened to me—I’m talking about the beliefs that make us as women stay quiet, confused, and stay longer than we should.

The Godly Woman’s Gag Order

The first lie is perhaps the most subtle because it dresses itself in the robes of virtue. It says, “If I were truly godly, I would just let it go.” We are told that good women forgive, that spiritual maturity means having a short memory, and that bringing up the past is a sign of a bitter heart. I believed that if I were spiritual enough, I wouldn’t need an apology or a resolution. I would just move on. That belief didn’t just shape my prayer life; it shaped my reality.

I remember walking into my (ex) husband’s office one morning with a poem in my hand. I had written it for him just hours before, and I meant every syllable. I wrote about my love, my gratitude, and the honor I felt being his wife. I handed it to him, hoping for a spark of warmth—a moment of connection. Instead, he looked at me and told me it meant nothing. He called me prideful and fake and said that if those words were true, I wouldn’t be the way I am. Then, he tore it up. Piece by piece, right in front of me.

In that moment, I didn’t get angry. I didn’t walk out. I didn’t say, “This is not okay.” Instead, I sat there and searched myself for what I had done wrong. I tried to calculate how I needed to change to make him see me differently. I believed that if something felt “off” in our room, the “off” thing was me.

The Erasure of Reality

The next day, everything looked normal. He acted as if the paper had never been shredded. But I was still hurt. I was still processing. And that is where the lie took hold. It wasn’t in the moment of the hurt; it was in the silence that followed. I was taught that bringing it up meant I wasn’t forgiving, that needing to talk meant I was bitter, and that remembering meant I lacked faith.

So, I stopped. I stopped asking questions. I stopped trusting my own memory of what had happened just twenty-four hours prior. I thought I was practicing humility, but I was actually practicing disappearance. What was happening was the slow erasure of my reality. Every time I was told to “move on” without acknowledgment, a piece of my voice vanished. It sounded spiritual. It sounded like obedience. But it was actually suppression.

Debunking the Lie with Truth

For a long time, I didn’t realize that the “Let it Go” doctrine is actually a distortion of Scripture. We are often coerced into silence by those who misuse the concept of forgiveness, but the Bible offers a much more robust path to healing. In Matthew 18:15, Jesus doesn’t tell us to swallow our pain for the sake of looking godly; He explicitly instructs us that if someone sins against us, we should go and point out the fault. Godliness involves the courage to name the truth, not the cowardice of hiding it.

We are taught that keeping the peace is the highest calling, but there is a profound difference between a peacekeeper who avoids conflict and a peacemaker who resolves it through honesty. Ephesians 4:25 commands us to put off falsehood and speak truthfully to one another. When we are forced to pretend a hurt never happened, we are participating in a lie. You cannot build a godly relationship on a foundation of denial.

Furthermore, while we are called to hold a spirit of forgiveness, biblical reconciliation is a two-way street. Luke 17:3 reminds us that if a brother sins, we should rebuke him, and if he repents, we forgive him. Forgiveness releases the debt, but reconciliation requires a bridge of repentance. Forcing a woman to move forward while the behavior remains unchanged isn’t biblical—it’s enabling.

Reclaiming Your Sanity

God is not the author of confusion, and He is not a God who demands amnesia. He is the God who hears the cry of the oppressed and stays near to the brokenhearted. If the bards of the Psalms could bring their raw, unedited pain before the throne of God, then you are allowed to remember what hurt you. You are allowed to name it. You are allowed to need repair.

Healing does not happen where truth is not allowed to be spoken. Even if an apology never comes from the person who hurt you, you are still allowed to tell yourself the truth about what happened. You are not crazy for remembering, and you are not weak for feeling what you still feel.

This is the work we do inside The Write to Sanity Collective. We don’t rush your story. We help you put language to the experiences you were told to forget, so you can rebuild trust in your own voice. If this resonates with you, I invite you to join us. My upcoming book, Not What God Promised, dives even deeper into how I finally untangled what I was taught from what was actually true.

Next week, we’re going to talk about the second lie: what “submission” was taught to mean versus how it was actually lived. Until then, remember: if you were taught to move on before anything was ever made right, your voice matters more than their silence.

Get full access to Yoli Kae Reynolds at yolikaereynolds.substack.com/subscribe

Search Episodes

The Lie of “Letting It Go”

April 3, 2026

Yoli Kae Reynolds | Author

Episode 12: From Red Flags to Green Flags:

March 10, 2026

Yoli Kae Reynolds | Author

Episode 11: Choosing Green Flags After Trauma

February 26, 2026

Yoli Kae Reynolds | Author

Episode 10 Green Flags: What Healthy Actually Looks Like

February 16, 2026

Yoli Kae Reynolds | Author

Episode 9: Why We Ignore Red Flags

February 10, 2026

Yoli Kae Reynolds | Author

Episode 8: Like Mother, Like Son: Red Flag #6

February 5, 2026

Yoli Kae Reynolds | Author

Episode 7: When Abuse Felt Like Safety (The 5th Red Flag)

February 2, 2026

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Episode 6: The 4th Red Flag – Afraid Even After Leaving

January 30, 2026

Yoli Kae Reynolds | Author

Episode 5: The 3rd Red Flag – When Love Became Control

January 29, 2026

Yoli Kae Reynolds | Author

Episode 4: The 2nd Red Flag: Rage in Public

January 28, 2026

Yoli Kae Reynolds | Author

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About

About Yoli Kae Reynolds

Yoli Kae Reynolds is a memoirist, essayist, and fiction writer exploring grief, deconstruction, survival, identity, and the complicated ways loss changes us.

Her memoir, Not What God Promised: What Happened When I Stopped Waiting for God to Save Me, tells the story of leaving an abusive fundamentalist Christian marriage and leaving the belief system that helped keep her there.

Yoli also writes about grief, including the death of her son, rebuilding after loss, and learning to trust your own voice when the life you expected no longer exists.

She is a certified Journal Therapy and Grief Coach and believes writing can help us find language for experiences we did not know how to name while we were living them.

About

About Yoli Kae Reynolds

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