Hi! My name is Joy Hoffman.

This retreat isn’t really so much about my story as it is about your story. I’ll share a few personal stories along the way but here’s a little context and background about me…

I grew up as a pastor’s kid in the Bible Belt—actually, a daughter of generations of pastors in Atlanta—and I married a pastor. I know the deep roots of Christian culture for better and for worse.

After being married for sixteen years (and having four children), I initiated a divorce. I don’t think either of us are horrible people. We were both hurting and both contributing unconsciously to hurting one another.

The shoulds of Christian culture can also leave us feeling hurt and conflicted. Like many of us, I’ve lived such complex tensions of love and grace on the one hand and hurtful, pressuring patterns on the other. I know how it feels to want to walk away from it all completely. But so much of what we believe about God, ourselves, and our relationships with others is just our culture.

I’ve been learning more and more that God is compassionate and loving and that love liberates.

Studying other cultures and other ways of knowing God has been really helpful for me. I’ve been informally studying human flourishing for over ten years and holed up the last two years soaking in things like polyvagal theory, neurophysiology, indigenous wisdom, Eastern and Christian mystics, and metaphysics. It’s been really helpful and healing for me.

The inspiration to write this retreat struck (hard) as I talked with a few women from Christian backgrounds in the throes of considering divorce. A couple described undeniably abusive and dangerous situations. They said they felt pressure to stay because of the Church/what they had internalized from the Church. Some described much more grey areas of painful, unhealthy marriages. I wrote this retreat with these specific women in mind, but I trust it will all apply to you, too.

I’ll share with you some of the helpful discoveries I made while I was wading through these hard decisions, as well as things I’ve learned since then that I wish I’d known at the time. I’m not claiming to have all the answers or to have done everything perfectly. I just want to share what I’ve learned in the hopes that it will make your journey less difficult.

I have lots more to learn. But I can say at this point that I’m grateful for the pain I’ve been through. I can already see how it’s grown me into a more alive, peaceful, and joyful person. And because of that, I can genuinely say—I’m sorry for the pain you’re in now…and excited for the relief and freedom that’s possible for you on the other side of all this—whichever path you choose.