On writing the final chapter of my book on Spiritual Abuse

When my novel Hartfords was finally done—like, done done, going to print. Signed, sealed, and delivered—amidst the frenzy of deadlines and marketing and planning a book tour, I remember the feeling of satisfaction. Of pride. I’d succeeded at writing a book I’d want to read. I love the characters and the dialogue and the witty, tongue-in-cheekness. I’m proud of all the little details and breadcrumbs and themes that all converge at the end. 

From the very beginning of writing a book on Spiritual Abuse (which is far different from a fictional, period, romantic comedy), the experience has been…well…different. I wrote Hartfords while seated on the floor of my Los Angeles apartment, in the wee hours of the morning before work. I completed revisions during the pandemic and spent a lot of time walking from my bedroom to my kitchen to refill my coffee, becoming very acquainted with the beige walls of my home.

With the Spiritual Abuse book, I found it more conducive to write in large chunks, rather than short bursts. I’d block out entire Saturday afternoons and spend several hours at one of many coffee shops. Sometimes I’d write in the company of a friend. Most of the time not. While Hartfords flowed onto the page with relative ease, I had to get in the zone each time I sat down to write a very personal story about the experience, impact, and recovery from Spiritual Abuse. 

With these differences, it’s no surprise that the experience of writing the final chapter was also different. 

Gosh, I remember how proud I was of that final chapter in Hartfords. I wrote it in one sitting. Other than a few minor tweaks, the final chapter is pretty much the original. The last paragraphs are as close to perfection as a piece of comedic fiction can get. 

Not so with a book on Spiritual Abuse. With my original final chapter, I cried and I cried. Then I re-wrote it and cried again. After the first round of edits with the editor, I realized I wanted to re-work it once more, so I spent another two weeks with another round of re-writes. To keep it from feeling too Frankenstein, I ended up making some edits to the chapter that came before, piecing the ending together like a patchwork quilt of experience, research, and art. 

The difficulty was in ending a book about horrific abuse with a message of hope that doesn’t negate the devastation. I thought about not ending it with hope at all—the screen goes dark on everyone still bleeding. The End. 

But even the bloodiest, creepiest horror stories often end with a little hope. One person gets away, even if everyone else perishes. The hero dies while taking down the monster, preventing further destruction. A little sunlight pushes its way through dark clouds.

This might be one reason I find horror and thrillers cathartic. They get it. They capture the reality that yes, horrible things happen, and maybe there’s a little bit of hope on the other side of all that devastation. 

But my Spiritual Abuse book is not in the horror genre, though a book on Spiritual Abuse could fall into this category (taking a mental note for a future fiction project). If you’ve ever watched a film from the subgenre of religious horror, you know what I’m talking about. 

I hope my book captures a bit of hope throughout the entire 70,000 words. But the ending, the ending really needed to. I realized in the writing that my experience of Spiritual Abuse impacted even my ability to write about hope. I spent three decades inundated by a “God is still good” message slapped on to any experience of grief or pain from a collective of Christians. Evangelical Christians cannot sit in pain. They must bypass it with Jesus or their faith is on the line. 

Therein was the struggle: How do I write a final chapter that accepts the pain for what it is and affirms the survivor that even with the injuries and scars inflicted upon them, they are still whole?

I turned to fiction again. A woman, covered in scars she did not ask for, kept appearing in my mind. She’s a warrior, but she did not want to be. She can take care of herself, but she wishes she did not have to. Her enemies think twice before messing with her, but she wishes the enemies did not exist. 

I suppose that’s the answer, then. It’s both: Devastation and hope. Weeping and laughter. Pain and joy. Injured, but healing. Perhaps this is not only the answer to the final chapter, it’s the answer to all of life.