Schea Unfiltered: The Real Story Blog

When Her Well Wasn’t Well for Me

Part Three of The Real Story – My Story Series

My Experience at a Christian Crisis Center: When a Place That Claimed to Restore Voices Became Uncomfortable With Mine

When a Safe Place Became Unsafe

Twenty years after leaving an abusive relationship, I found myself inside another system that claimed to understand safety, trauma, voice, and healing. The setting, language, and people were different, but something in the pattern felt familiar. At the time, I was trying to rebuild my relationship with Christianity, which had never been simple. I had spent years wrestling with religious trauma, hypocrisy, exclusion, judgment, and the pressure to become the right kind of Christian in order to belong. I had watched people be pushed aside when they did not fit someone else’s idea of faithfulness, and I had questioned teachings that seemed more concerned with obedience than truth. Still, part of me wanted to believe there might be a healthier way to reconnect. I was not looking for someone to tell me what to believe; I was trying to determine what I believed for myself.

At the same time, I wanted to work in mental health peer support and gain experience serving survivors of domestic violence. One day, I searched online for organizations near me, and Her Well Center appeared. At that point in my life, I interpreted finding it as meaningful because it seemed to connect my lived experience, my interest in peer support, and my attempt to rebuild spiritually. I applied to volunteer, attended orientation, met people, became involved with the organization, and was invited to Bible study. Before going further, I told them about my religious history. I explained that Christianity had been a source of conflict and harm for me, discussed exclusion, hypocrisy, pressure to perform belief, and the ways religious spaces had caused me to question whether I was acceptable. I made it clear that I was uncertain, approaching spirituality on my own terms, and did not want to be forced. I was assured that I would not be and was also told that, because the organization was a nonprofit, Christianity could not be imposed on me. That assurance mattered because it gave me enough trust to continue.

How I Became an Employee

Through Bible study and volunteer work, I met the founder and director. She appeared drawn to my directness, energy, and willingness to engage, and she encouraged me to become more involved and interview for an advocate position. I also completed victim-advocacy training through the organization. When a job became available, I applied, but several weeks passed without anyone contacting me, so I assumed I had not been selected or did not meet the qualifications.

Then, during Bible study, the director asked why I had not applied. I told her that I had applied four weeks earlier, and she appeared surprised and questioned why no one had contacted me. After that, the process moved quickly, and I was hired. The person who became my supervisor did not appear to have been the one pushing for me to join the staff. She later commented that she understood why the director liked me because we were supposedly alike. At the time, I viewed that as evidence that the director saw something valuable in me. Looking back, it also meant I entered the role partly because someone higher in the organization had strongly supported my hiring, which contributed to a difficult dynamic from the beginning.

The Feeling I Ignored

I had doubts almost immediately. Something felt off, although I could not fully explain what I was noticing. At that time, I did not know I was autistic or had ADHD. I knew I processed people, communication, and systems differently, but I did not yet have language for it. Because I had spent much of my life second-guessing myself, I assumed the discomfort was mine to correct.

I questioned whether I was overreacting, being difficult, misreading the situation, or creating the problem myself. That belief had kept me in harmful environments before, and it kept me from trusting myself in this one. Instead of treating my unease as information, I treated it as another flaw that needed to be managed.

What I Valued and What Concerned Me

There were parts of the work I appreciated. I valued the experience, cared about survivors, and wanted to understand advocacy, crisis work, and the realities of supporting people after violence. At the same time, I observed practices that concerned me. The organization frequently spoke about teamwork, but I experienced a clear division between leadership and the rest of the staff. Although there were only a few employees, several appeared to function as a leadership group while advocates and case-management staff occupied a lower tier.

Decision-making also seemed heavily centralized. Staff members had limited freedom to act without checking with the director, and questions sometimes had to be placed on a spreadsheet and left there until she reviewed them, including some involving time-sensitive client or CPS matters. I found that structure impractical and controlling. People working in crisis settings need clear supervision and boundaries, but they also need enough authority to respond responsibly when an issue cannot wait days for an answer.

I raised concerns about communication and suggested that leadership needed to address its own functioning before asking the entire staff to participate in team building. I did not intend that as a personal attack. I said it because I saw confusion, delayed communication, unequal treatment, and an environment where people seemed reluctant to act without approval. My concerns were not welcomed.

Trying to Leave

My direct communication also created tension with my supervisor. I often felt that ordinary, task-focused statements hurt her feelings or were received as personal criticism. I did not yet understand how autism, ADHD, masking, and years of being misunderstood shaped these interactions. I only knew that I seemed unable to speak clearly without causing discomfort.

I told the director that I did not believe I was a good fit and tried to quit more than once. Each time, she discouraged me from leaving and told me to stay. That became important later, when my communication was presented as an ongoing problem that supposedly justified terminating me. From my perspective, if the problem had been considered serious and persistent, I had already offered a solution by trying to remove myself. Leadership chose to keep me there.

The Team-Building Trip

Eventually, we were told we would attend a team-building trip in Galveston. I expected the trip to focus on communication, trust, roles, conflict, or practical staff functioning, and I was prepared to participate in that kind of work. Instead, we were placed in a room and shown material about how to be Christian.

The experience felt like a return to the religious pressure I had already disclosed. I had been honest about my history, assured that I would not be forced, and had already tried to leave the job. I had even offered to remain behind and answer the phones rather than attend the trip, but I was still required to go. A coworker had quit shortly before the trip and was allowed to leave. I had also tried to leave, but I had been persuaded to remain and was then required to attend.

Sitting in that room, I felt trapped. The message being presented was that Jesus did not force himself on people, yet I was in a mandatory workplace setting being instructed on how to be Christian after clearly explaining that religious coercion had harmed me. The contradiction became unbearable. I cried, became angry, raised my voice, and walked out. I reminded them that I had warned them, that they knew my story, and that I should not have been placed in that situation.

I did not need to be treated like a client in that moment. I needed someone to acknowledge that I had clearly stated a boundary and that, from my perspective, the organization had crossed it. Instead, a coworker moved into victim-advocate mode and attempted to guide me through a grounding exercise. I told her not to advocate me. I did not want to be reduced to a distressed survivor who needed to be managed. I was a coworker responding to a situation I had tried to prevent.

What Came Out

I eventually returned to the room, and much of what I had been holding back came out. I spoke about leadership, communication, limited staff autonomy, and the way employees appeared to wait for permission before acting. I also spoke about how some clients were discussed behind their backs. I had heard comments that reduced people to statements such as, “That is just how she is.” That disturbed me because people in crisis are already vulnerable to being labeled, dismissed, and treated as problems.

When staff reduce someone to a personality judgment, they may stop asking what the behavior means, what happened to the person, or whether the environment itself is contributing to the conflict. I knew what it felt like to be reduced to “That is just her.” I knew what it was like when people decided your reactions were the problem without examining the conditions producing them. I also challenged comments made during the retreat that I experienced as racially insensitive and inappropriate.

By then, I was overwhelmed. My delivery was not polished. I was crying, angry, and speaking directly without softening everything I said. I can acknowledge that my delivery may have been difficult to receive while still believing the underlying concerns were real.

How the Room Responded

After everything came out, the room did not immediately turn against me. People hugged me. One coworker said she had been praying for me to release what I had been holding, and the director acknowledged that I was not the only person who had not wanted to attend. Her grandmother held my hand, told me she loved me, asked for my address, and said she wanted to pray for me. The atmosphere shifted, and the moment was treated as though something meaningful and healing had occurred.

By the end, people were dancing and laughing. I believed that although the day had been messy, something honest had finally been said. I thought perhaps the organization had heard me. The next day, I was fired.

The Explanation

The termination was presented in formal workplace language. I was still within the introductory period of employment and was told there had been repeated concerns about my communication. I was also told that the director and leadership team had decided I made them uncomfortable and that they no longer wanted me employed there.

That explanation did not match the sequence as I experienced it. I had raised concerns about whether I was a good fit, tried to leave, and been persuaded to stay. I had not been clearly told that my employment was in immediate danger. Then, after I objected to a religious activity I had tried not to attend, challenged leadership practices, and named concerns about how clients were discussed, I was removed the next day.

I cannot know every private motive behind that decision. I can only describe what happened from where I stood. My directness had been welcomed when leadership found it useful, my personal story had been welcomed when it aligned with the organization’s image, and my distress had been welcomed when others could interpret it as a spiritual release. When my voice challenged leadership, questioned control, and named contradictions, however, it became a problem. The organization said it wanted survivors to reclaim their voices. My experience was that my voice was accepted until it made leadership uncomfortable.

The Distance Between Language and Practice

Her Well Center publicly described itself as a sanctuary for survivors of sexual trauma and intimate partner violence and spoke about compassion, integrity, safety, empowerment, restoration, holistic healing, and helping survivors regain their voices. Those are serious promises. A mission statement is not only promotional language; it creates expectations and tells vulnerable people what they may be able to trust.

My experience raised difficult questions about the distance between stated values and internal practices. An organization cannot meaningfully claim to restore voices if people experience consequences for using them. It cannot claim to understand power and control without examining how power operates within its own leadership, nor can it credibly describe itself as trauma-informed while disregarding disclosed religious trauma or requiring participation in an environment someone has said was harmful.

It also cannot speak about empowerment while limiting ordinary autonomy or making staff dependent on one person for nearly every decision. Nor can it promise safety while allowing people seeking services to be discussed dismissively behind closed doors. Trauma-informed language is not the same as trauma-informed behavior. Christian language is not proof of love, and a stated commitment to safety is not proof that everyone will experience the environment as safe.

The real test comes when someone asks a difficult question, disagrees, refuses to perform gratitude, names a contradiction, or tells a truth that makes the institution uncomfortable. That is where values become practice or remain performance.

What the Experience Changed for Me

At the time, being fired hurt. I had entered the organization believing it might help me rebuild my professional life, explore my spirituality, and move toward work supporting survivors. I had invested time, trust, effort, and hope. Being removed carried its own rejection, but the hurt did not become the final truth. What felt like rejection also became release.

I was no longer inside a place where belonging required me to ignore my own perception. I was no longer trying to force myself to fit an environment I had already recognized was wrong for me or giving my labor to people who appeared to value my energy more than my voice. I may have been hurt at the time, but I also became more free.

The experience did not end my desire to work with survivors. It clarified why I needed to approach that work differently. I did not want to build another space where people had to become compliant in order to be considered healed. I did not want to use spirituality to override consent, confuse emotional discomfort with danger, or speak about empowerment while keeping control for myself. I wanted people to retain authority over their own lives. I wanted support to mean walking beside someone rather than managing her into acceptability, and I wanted honesty to matter more than image.

Her Well did not give me a model I wanted to follow. It gave me a clearer picture of what I refused to recreate. They may have believed they were removing me from the well, but what the experience ultimately did was release me from a place where there had never been water for me. Outside of it, something in me began to return.