A Well-Trained Wife
My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
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4.4 • 90 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The instant New York Times bestseller:
“Today it hit me when he hit me, blood shaking in my brain. Maybe there wasn’t a savior coming. Maybe it was up to me to save me.”
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles––a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.”
Tia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn't risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be “in the world, not of it.” So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme choice: stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.
Told in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Tia Levings shares the shocking true story of her life in an abusive marriage sanctioned by fundamentalist Christians in this gripping memoir. Levings was raised in a family that attended a megachurch, teaching of the evils that lurked outside their strictures. In her teens, she married a man whose fierce belief in fundamentalism meant stripping her of her freedom, while church leaders insisted she was to blame for his physical and psychological abuse. Levings recounts her descent into a damaging, submissive relationship with unsettling clarity and tremendous compassion for her fellow victims, as well as sharing how she started on a long, difficult road to peace of mind and a new life. A Well-Trained Wife is rarely a fun read, but Levings has given us a brilliant cautionary tale of misogyny and paranoia. It’s a message that needs to be heard.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Levings debuts with a searing account of how she fled her abusive marriage and the fundamentalist theology in which it was rooted. Raised in a Southern Baptist church to believe she was destined to become a Christian wife and mother, the author met her future husband at 18 and married him a year later. She worked to accustom herself to his fits of rage, which worsened as he became interested in a strict Calvinist theology and began to physically abuse her. As the grim realities of their fundamentalist life set in ("No consent. No contraception. No choice"), she found solace in her children and the blog she began in the early aughts. Realizing that "I liked writer-Tia way more than church-Tia," Levings sought to take control of her life, eventually leaving with her children in the middle of the night in 2007 and devoting herself to exposing the dangers of Christian fundamentalism. Levings's visceral prose holds nothing back, and her efforts to let go of the patriarchal beliefs of her youth fascinate (after learning in therapy about the "fight-flight-freeze-fawn" response to trauma, she realized that fawning characterized her "entire childhood": "It was in the tone of voice we were taught to use... our servant hearts"). This stands out among the rising tide of memoirs from those who've left the evangelical church.
Customer Reviews
Revealing and inspiring
Following Tia on Instagram, I have learned a lot about fundamentalist Christian subculture. Reading about her journey from a happy child to an adolescent and young mother increasingly isolated and caged in by it was heartbreaking but also enlightening. I see now how insidiously a family can be drawn in to such a community and how deeply children can be affected.
Tia’s writing is totally engaging, with imagery that made me feel like I was with her while it was all happening. I could relate to her as someone who grew up at the same time, wanting many of the same things in life.
What I take away from reading A Well-Trained Wife is that those of us who live outside of religious fundamentalism can make a difference by offering consistent kindness. In her videos and in this book, she mentions part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in which he says, “You will know them by their fruit… Every good tree bears good fruit.” In eighth grade, my classmates and I learned that the fruits of the Holy Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These can be found in all kinds of people everywhere. Tia thanks many of them — friends, neighbors, nurses — who, during dark periods of her life, helped her find hope. This book will stay with me for a long time.
Excellent read!
Well written memoir.