December 2, 2025 • 31 mins
Melissa Williams is the creator of the YouTube channel Lostat50Something and the originator of the “Backwards Confession,” a powerful practice of entering a confessional not to seek absolution, but to name the harm caused by certain church doctrines and actions — and then to offer forgiveness as an act of reclaiming personal power and peace.
This deeply personal ritual has become the foundation for a budding movement and online community, r/BackwardsConfession, where individuals are encouraged to engage in similar acts of active forgiveness and liberation from institutional harm.Through this work, Melissa offers a unique perspective on healing from religious trauma, challenging institutional power dynamics, reclaiming agency in the face of patriarchal structures, and transforming pain into empowerment.
By sharing her own story and guiding others in this practice, she hopes to open new pathways for those navigating religious deconstruction and seeking healing beyond traditional frameworks.
In This Episode
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This deeply personal ritual has become the foundation for a budding movement and online community, r/BackwardsConfession, where individuals are encouraged to engage in similar acts of active forgiveness and liberation from institutional harm.Through this work, Melissa offers a unique perspective on healing from religious trauma, challenging institutional power dynamics, reclaiming agency in the face of patriarchal structures, and transforming pain into empowerment.
By sharing her own story and guiding others in this practice, she hopes to open new pathways for those navigating religious deconstruction and seeking healing beyond traditional frameworks.
In This Episode
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
You can learn more about what I do here:
The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
———
If you’d like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.
Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.
Thank you to our Sponsors:
Incogni - Use code [traumatherapist] and get 60% off annual plans: https://incogni.com/traumatherapist
Jane App - use code GUY1MO at https://jane.app/book_a_demo
Journey Clinical - visit https://join.journeyclinical/trauma for 1 month off your membership
Therapy Wisdom - https://therapywisdom.com/jan/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Trauma Favers podcast. My name is Guiming
Ferson and I interview incredible people who share the story
of how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big
thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest
and our sponsors. So five four, three, two and one,
(00:23):
our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to
have as my guest today. Melissa Williams, Melissa, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thank you, glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Awesome. So Melissa is the creator of the YouTube channel
Lost at fifty something and the originator of the backwards Confession,
a powerful practice of entering a confessional not to seek absolution,
but rather to name the harm caused by certain church
doctrines and actions, and then to offer forgiveness as an
(00:51):
act of reclaiming personal power and peace. This deeply personal
ritual has become the foundation for a budding movement and
online community where individuals are encouraged to engage similar acts
of active forgiveness and liberation institutional harm. All right, Melissa,
just a little bit about you before we go, and
(01:12):
share with the listeners where you're from originally and where
you are currently.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Oh my goodness, I am originally from Norfolk, Virginia area,
actually specifically Newport News, Virginia, and I currently am in Phoenix, Arizona,
but I'm in a transitional stage. I'm getting ready to
move to Spain at the end of this month.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Holy moly. Wow, okay, very cool. Well let's dive in.
How did all this start?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Oh? Wow? So April twenty sixth I had a spiritual awakening.
I had a spa day at my home by myself.
I decided to do.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
It April twenty six like this April.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Twin this here, Okay, yeah, yeah, I had a spa day.
I was I was just doing my own thing, and I,
you know, I took a bath, was listening to Epoch
Chopra's book Reinventing the Body, Reigniting the Soul, or maybe
the other way around, but in any case, I was
listening to him. And afterwards, I decided to meditate on
(02:14):
the love, just like pure love, like he mentioned. And
I started to do that, and all of a sudden,
I had this crazy spiritual experience that unfolded all these
events that happened in my life from that day and
May second, I actually walked out on a thirty two
(02:35):
year marriage.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Okay, yeah, hang on all right. Wow. So in April,
so a few months ago, you're having this.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Self care day, a SPA day.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Specifically, what was happening to you? You had these realizations?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I mean, when what form did they come to?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Okay, it's crazy, so I have to tell you that
this isn't you know? I had become an atheist. I
left the church. I left the Catholic Church in twenty twenty,
and I was pretty much an atheist. But then this happened.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
So I was.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Meditating, right, and I started to think about I started
to you know, as we do when we're when we're meditating,
we oftentimes our brain takes us on a journey that
we don't that we're trying to know. I want to meditate, right,
So I started thinking about Spain and moving to Spain,
and I used to live there back in two thousand
and nine to twenty thirteen, and I was brought back
to this moment where we had just recently moved there.
(03:42):
So it was two thousand and nine. I was sitting
in the car, windows rolled down, and there was this
breeze coming in from because we we we were near
the ocean. So this breeze was coming in. It was beautiful,
and my husband had gone inside to go pick up
our daughter from her friend's house, and the song used
(04:04):
Somebody by Kings of Leon was on. And for anybody
who's inclined to music theory or any of that, it's
a very beautifully arranged piece of music. It's absolutely amazing.
It was the first time I had ever heard it,
and I remember the time just stood still. I was
in complete bliss. I felt like, Wow, this is where
(04:24):
I need to be right now. Spain is my happy place.
And so whenever I'm often brought back to that time
because it was so incredible for me. Well, that evening
we got back to our place, and you know, this
was before like modern texting and all that was completely mainstream,
and so we got an email that night that my
(04:46):
husband's grandmother had died, and so I feel like I
had a shared death experience with her because because Time
stood still, you know, it was just I knew that
that was the moment that she had passed. And so
every time I hear that song, I'm brought back to
that moment and I think about my husband's grandma, who
was totally sweet to me. Well, I was sitting there
(05:08):
and I wanted to comment on the well I got
on the I got on the YouTube. I was music,
and I was like, okay, I have to hear the
song again because I want to be taken back to
that place. I was like, it's my spa day. I
can do whatever I want. So so I skipped the
meditating and I went to listen to this song and
(05:28):
I'm reading the comments and there's so many comments on
there about how this song relates to somebody that had
passed away. Yeah, and so I'm like, oh my gosh.
So I'm thinking about it, and I'm like, okay, I
want to write something. I want to write. I want
to write a comment, but I need to get the
date right. So I looked up the exact date that
she died, and then I was like, wait a minute,
(05:51):
is that the same day my dad died? It was.
I looked it up. My dad died twenty nine years
to the day before my husband's grandmother. And at that moment,
I felt these tingly sensations going from my head to
my toes. And I was in that chair, sitting there
(06:12):
like I was being held there, like I couldn't move,
and I know this happened for a long time. I
was getting the tinglees for minutes because another song started
to play before I even came out of it, and
so I was like, oh my gosh, what does this mean?
What does this mean? So I called my friend, who
at the time I called my woo woo friend because
she was into spirituality and stuff but I wasn't. I
(06:34):
was like, what does this mean? And she says, well,
I don't know. It's probably just your spirit guides. They
probably just want to talk to you. And I was like, well,
what do they want? They want to tell me something.
I know it's something, and she's like, well, maybe they
just want you to know that they're there. And I
was like, yeah, okay, whatever. So I went on about
my business, you know, and went to work and I
had this thing on my whiteboard. I'm a teacher. I
(06:56):
was a teacher, and it was from these positive APPA
information things that I got from the podcast Wake Me
Up I used to do every day, and one day
he said, start creating the life you're excited to wake
up to today, and so I wrote that on my
whiteboard and so I saw it every day for quite
a while, and going on about my day and my
(07:16):
week a couple weeks and May first, well really it was.
It was the thirtieth of April because I was watching
a whole other thing. But I was watching a movie
and this movie told me, Okay, I need to go.
So the next day I'm in my therapist office. It
was the thursday, it was the first of May, and
I said, I really want to leave him and she said, well,
(07:38):
you know, and I'm like, but I don't know, I
should just wait till Spain. It's a long story I
want to give that, but anyway, point is I went
to see my therapist on May first, I said I
want to leave him. The next day May second, I did.
Thirty two years, thirty two years we've been married, and
I walked out and that started a whole nother chain
of events that just made me super s super happy,
(08:00):
and I am happy and I am thrilled to be
moving to Spain on my own and yeah, my life
is completely different now. And so that led me to
doing the backwards confession.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
How did that lead you to that?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Because I was well, first of all, I needed to
travel over the summer, which I manifested because I wanted
to do that that was on my vision board this year,
and my daughter and my grandson. I have six kids,
so my daughter and my grandson live in Arkansas. Hated Arkansas,
did not want to go back there. Had to live
there for four years as part of my husband's military service.
(08:40):
It was a terrible, terrible time. It was the worst
five years my entire adult life. I say adult life
because I was a foster child and I have my
own set of trauma from that era. But I went there.
I wasn't happy about it. The next morning, I woke
(09:02):
up after the day that I flew in, and my kids,
you know, they sleep late, you know, even my daughter
and my grandson, they sleep late. So I woke up
and I was like, huh, it's Saturday. It's confession day.
I said, oh, it's confession day. Yeah. So I decided
(09:23):
to go to the church that I went to while
I was there, the church, the very parish that turned
its back on me when I was in severe depression,
severe postpartum depression, severe trauma from some things that had
happened in my marriage at the time. You can guess
it's these military Come on, we know, we all know
what happens. Oh, well, what happens on deployment stays on deployment.
(09:51):
So it's like Vegas, you know, they can sleep around
as much as they want. Well, it didn't stay on deployment.
I ended up. It was a terrible, terrible, terrible time there.
I was dealing with trying to get past his infidelity,
but also making him feel better because he didn't like
that I was upset that he was upset, or that
I was upset that he had done that to me.
(10:13):
So I had to learn to stuff my feelings because
if I got upset, then I had to take care
of him. It was terrible, and I had six kids,
and it was you know, he was deployed a lot,
and I was there alone, and I was working on
my bachelor's and master's degrees at the time. It was crazy.
So I went to that church and as everybody else
(10:37):
was lining up to go to confession, I sat in
the pew and I wrote down every single line of
information that I could think of that they had done
to me, or to my family or to the world.
And I went into the confessional. I was very respectful.
I recorded the whole thing. It's on my YouTube channel.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You recorded it on your phone, yes.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I did. Yeah, verbal I didn't. I did not record
the priest. Obviously that would have been wrong, but but
I recorded everything that happened in there, and I sat
up front, I am not here to confess my sins.
I am here to forgive those of the church. And
(11:22):
I called it my litany of freedom. And I when you.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Went into confession, did you say that to Is that
what you said to the priest?
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Yeah, you're in that that cubicle type thing.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
So you can choose nowadays, for the most part, if
you if you go to there's some churches that do
it differently, but for the most part, you can choose
if you want to do face to face or if
you want to have a curtain between you. I did
face to.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Face to face, okay, and it was private.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It was yeah, okay and.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Okay, So so go on. And you said you want
to forgive them m.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, and uh, And I asked, I told, I told
the priest, please hold space for that. You don't need
to respond, you don't need to give me advice, just
please hold space. And he did, and he was clearly
moved by this whole. I named each of the of
(12:23):
the the things that I could think of that affected
me my family. So my daughter, my oldest, she fled
a severely domestic abuse of relationship and she wanted to
do the right thing and get the moment from the church,
(12:47):
and she she did all the paperwork and everything, and
then they said, okay, well now we need to send
this to your to your husband, and it had her
address on it, and she's like, no, this is not
I don't feel safe doing that. But that was the
only way that they would even consider her annulment. So
that was one of the things that I forgave the
(13:09):
church for was making her feel like she was at
fault and making her feel like she had to jump
through hoops to get an annulment that she probably wouldn't
have even gotten anyway, because it goes before a bunch
of old men, most of whom are not even married.
So that was one thing. Another thing was you know,
(13:34):
going in and recut culturalizing people and killing people, because
let's face that they did. They did, there's proof of it.
And my two trans children, you know, I didn't know
(13:55):
I was working for the church, I was volunteering for
the church, and I had no idea that my kids
were trans and I had no idea that it was
going to harm them in the way that it did
and the way that it still does harm trans people.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So you have six kids I do, from the same father.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah, we've been married. We were married thirty two I
mean I'm not divorced yet. So yeah, we've been married
thirty two years. So you have two kids, two trans,
one gay one Bye?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Okay, do you.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Mind if I ask how old the trans kids are?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Seventeen and twenty.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Nine and when did you find out? How did you
find out?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So my twenty nine year old came out to me
when she was twenty one, and then my seventeen year
old was able to come out earlier because she saw
her sister, So she came out at fourteen.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
And what did the church say?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
How did they reacton?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It's not really the church itself, it's their grandmother and
their father. So grandma refuses to use their names or pronouns,
and she thinks it's an abomination. Their father tries to
do everything that he possibly can to support them that
the church will allow, because he thinks he's going to
go to Hell if he doesn't so, or if he
(15:17):
disavows any of those regulations. So his only his thing is,
I won't use their preferred pronouns. I'll use their preferred names,
and I will support them and love them, but I
will not use their preferred pronouns because that's what the
church says. The church says, you can't you can't use
their because God made them boy or girl, and that's
the way it is. And so you have to you
(15:38):
have to respect God. So I did that. I said,
I said, the doctrine that causes my husband and my
mother in law to think that they cannot give the
full amount of love to our children that they deserve.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So this is pretty intense. Why was this important for you?
I mean, has anyone ever done this before?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
No, not to my knowledge.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
School.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So when I left the church, I was never going
to go back there. Like I went a couple of
Christmases just for my husband, but I didn't even like.
I hated it. It just made me gross, It made
me like this horrible feeling in my stomach. I didn't
want anything to do with it. When I went in
there and flipped the script, literally that's what I did.
I took back the power and control. I broke rules
(16:35):
that they that even today people think, even if they
don't belong to the church, they still have to follow
those rules. They have to go in and do the
Sign of the Cross and say bless me Father, for
I've sinned, and you know, the whole thing, because we've
been ingrained to do that, because we have to do that,
Like why do we have to follow the rules? Like
we're not I'm not even in the church anymore, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Right, So it was this essentially, oh, kind of a
one time thing for you.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I don't know, because there I probably will go to
the local church here in Arizona that I went to
before I left, because the guy that priest was pretty
he's very misogynistic and uh, I don't know. He would
he would give sermons or homilies and he would talk
about how he obliterated people on Facebook like oh they
(17:27):
were saying this, And so I said that this guy
was a big part of my deconstruction, Like I was
just like, he just a little So I might I
might go and see him. I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
So what is so?
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And then from that you started a YouTube channel. How
did that come about? What was the purpose of that?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Actually the YouTube channel started before I did the backwards confession.
I started the YouTube channel as like, Hey, I'm reinventing
my life. I just left my husband in middle age,
I left my job. I'm going to Spain and starting over.
That's how it started.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Okay, so it's it's like you're starting anew, starting refresh.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
And then so we're we're where does this backward confession
come into play?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
What's what's what's again? What's I guess what's the purpose
of it for you?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Oh my gosh, so much, so much. First of all,
when I saw how moved that priest was, I knew
exactly how he felt, because because when we are working
for the church and we know in our hearts that
a lot of what we do and what we stand
(18:48):
for is wrong. I knew that when I worked for
the church. I was a director of religious education for
two different dioceses. When I worked for the church, I
knew that telling people they could not express their sexuality
was wrong. I knew that turning perfectly good godparents away
(19:09):
simply because they were divorced or shacked up or whatever
was wrong. Because I was forced to, people had to
go and find strangers to be their kids godparents for
their baptism. It was ridiculous. I knew these things were wrong,
and I experienced that cognitive dissonance and I rationalized it. Now,
(19:31):
think about that. Now I have other job opportunities. I
can still teach, I can be a professor. I don't
need to work for the Catholic Church. But let's think
about what happens to priests when they become a priest.
They don't work in their hometown. They are sent far away,
oftentimes into a completely different country. Huh. I know cults
(19:54):
do that too, and they are you know, they are stuck.
They're stuck. So if they do have that realization that
what I'm doing is wrong, they may feel like they're
in a dysfunctional relationship that they aren't allowed to leave.
And I can't speak on behalf of this priest, but
(20:15):
I do know that at some level he was moved
by what I did. So what I think is that
if more people do it, if more people stand up
and they go and they talk to a priest or,
a pastor or someone who has done the who has
(20:36):
supported that, maybe they're not doing it themselves. Maybe they're
really progressive, but they're supporting this line of thinking. This dogma,
Then maybe this will make a change. Because what we're
doing right now, going on YouTube and Instagram and the
other things, yelling and screaming about how the Catholic Church
(20:57):
and other churches have done certain groups of people wrong,
that's not doing anything. That's just creating more and more
division and more hatred.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Let me just reintroduce you speaking with Melissa Williams. Her
YouTube channel is called lost at fifty something and she's
the originator of the backwards confession. Melissa, is the purpose
(21:32):
here to kind of not just to cry what the
church has done? But is it to do this backwards
confession and then to remove yourself from all affiliation or
association with the church or is it to work within
(21:53):
the church, Because they're kind of two different things, right
to if you approach this as a confession, backwards confession,
and are you still like is one still working within
the church or.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
What soft I officially left the church in twenty twenty.
I stopped working for the church in twenty nineteen. The
answer to your question is, first of all, when I
did it, I just wanted the release. I just wanted
(22:27):
the freedom from that hatred and the anger. Which it worked.
I mean to tell you my life is so much better.
I feel freer, I feel lighter. I used to like
the only person that I knew in my personal bubble
who was still Catholic was my husband, and I would
put a lot of that weight of my anger on
(22:50):
him because he was the representative for me, he was
the representative of the Catholic Church. And I don't do
that anymore. I mean, we're still not together for other reasons,
but I don't put all that on him anymore. And
I feel like now I'm able to spread so much
joy and happiness and love to other people because I
(23:12):
have lifted that off of my heart. And there's actually
something I've been doing that i'd like to share with
you that I think has been really good for the
universe and for people. Whenever I go. Yeah, so whenever
I go somewhere. I started doing this at the airport,
and because I've been traveling a lot this year, anytime
(23:35):
i go anywhere, like the airport, to coffee shops to wherever,
I'll just stop somebody, some random person, maybe you know,
like a worker, somebody who is unrecognized, but oftentimes just
a random person on the street, and I'll say, hey,
I think somebody forgot to tell you something today and
they look at me like I'm like, what what did
(23:55):
I do? Like you know, something wrong, and say you
are appreciated and loved. Oh my gosh, the responses I get,
it's incredible. Like I've even had conversations with people like
you know, one time I was in the airport and
there was a pilot and he was sitting by himself
and I told him that and he says, wow. He
goes thank you. He says, I'm really having a day
(24:19):
and I needed to hear that. And I said, well,
I got some time we want to talk, and he
did and we had a full on conversation. I have
noticed for my own self that doing that has put
you know, how we are when we when we are
in public. You know, we'll look at somebody and we'll think, oh, yeah,
they're probably blah blah blah, so and so right. I
(24:40):
don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
My thought is, so, first of all, that sounds incredible
and amazing and beautiful. Were you always like this? No, No,
let's shift. Was it this Spa day of yours a
chip to everything?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It was like this domino effect from the Spa Day
from the spiritual awakening that I had on April twenty
sixth and everything that has happened since i've I've actually
had this year of yes that has begun. And because
of my year of yes, I went to Hawaii a
week and a half ago on the like, I bought
the ticket the day before I left. I did not
(25:25):
have to pay for a place to stay. I did
not need a ride from there. They came and got
me from that. I mean, it was crazy like and
it wasn't like Tinder or anything like that, so don't
think it was. It was totally completely platonic. It was
just it was just an experience that I It was
an opportunity and I said yes to. And I've said
yes to so many opportunities. I have so many stories
(25:45):
I could tell you that you don't have time to hear.
But yeah, like so many wonderful things have happened. But
I do want to get back to what your question was,
because this is the interesting part. I didn't have any
intention of working with the che I was gonna be like,
I'm whatever, because I'm not you know, organized religion. No,
(26:07):
thank you, not for me, not for me, but because
of my year of yes. I went to San Francisco
a few weeks ago. I have a good friend that
lives there, so I didn't have to pay for a
place to stay there either, and we went. I went
to a conference and at this conference, we were having
(26:27):
dinner a bunch of us, and this guy says, Hey,
you should come to my church tomorrow. And I was
like church, no, no, thank you, and he's like he's like, no, no, no, no,
you don't understand. This church is different. It changed my life.
It was Glide Memorial, so you know GLDE Memorial. Yeah. Yeah,
(26:50):
So that's when he said that it was filmed. It
was used in the movie Pursuit of Happiness. I was
I'm a film buff. I love movies, and I was like, well,
it is my year of Yes, I guess i'll go.
So I had to convince my friend that I was
staying with Hey, let's go to church tomorrow, and he's like,
I going to church. And then I was like, look,
(27:13):
if you take me to church tomorrow, I'll eat sushi.
I'll try sushi for the first time, so which I
absolutely loved. Of course, So we go there and I
end up talking to the pastor, well, the cecil has
passed away. He passed away recently. But the new pastor
there I ended up talking to and he's like I
(27:33):
was telling him about the backwards confession and how it
would really suit their situation there, and he said, oh, yeah,
this is great. So he said, do you have a
worksheet or something, and I said, yes, I do. It's
linked on my YouTube, the YouTube video. It's right there
for anybody to use if you want to use it. It's
a template and you can make your confession however you want,
your backwards confession. And so he took that and he
(27:56):
said he's going to make a workshop at that church,
which I don't even like calling it a church because
it is so everything opposite of what I've ever seen
a church to be.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Just to reiterate and to clarify the backwards confession is
to tell the church how they have harmed you, hurts you,
negatively impacted you, to basically stand up for yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
When I was in there doing that, I felt like
I was going to my parents and saying, this is me,
this is who I am. However that is defined for
a person deal with it, and however you want to
respond is your business. But I forgive you, not for you,
(28:52):
but for me, And I'm telling you what it. You know,
there's a lot of stuff going around nowadays where they're like, no,
forgiveness is overrated. Forgiveness is a tool that they use
to control you, not if you do it right, not
if you do it right. I didn't go in there
to re join the church. I didn't go in there
(29:16):
to do anything except release myself, release all that anger
and hate from my soul, which did nothing but make
me a better person. And now I'm out there spreading
love and joy in everything that I do.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Wow, all right, Melissa, damn inspiring. I'm gonna have myself
a spat day pretty soon. Jesus. All right, Look, how
do people learn more about you and what you're doing
and everything?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
So really, I just have the YouTube channel right now.
That's all I have, you know. I try to stay
off with the other thing.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And that's five o something. Ye okay. We'll have that
linked up here at the show notes page at the
Trauma Theaverist podcast dot com. And so you were traveling
or moving to Spain.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
I'm moving for I have a year visa for studying Spanish.
I'm going to study Spanish for a year. In the meantime,
I'm going to work on making this a retreat and
I'm going to possibly be working with the Navy chaplaincy,
which is interesting because you said, will I be working
with the church because I'll be close, fairly close to
(30:37):
the naval base where we used to live. Wow, when
I'm there. So yeah, So I'll be in I'll be
based in Katie, Spain, which is also pronounced Kaddish, and
that's where I'm going to hopefully be having these No,
not hopefully these retreats are going to happen. I'm going
to have these religious trauma retreats and I'm going to
have anything from a day retreat to a whole ten
(30:57):
day retreat.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Wow from Melissa, Awesome. Awesome, We'll be in touch. Thank
you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Thank you, appreciate you too.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
M
Welcome to the Trauma Favers podcast. My name is Guiming
Ferson and I interview incredible people who share the story
of how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big
thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest
and our sponsors. So five four, three, two and one,
(00:23):
our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to
have as my guest today. Melissa Williams, Melissa, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thank you, glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Awesome. So Melissa is the creator of the YouTube channel
Lost at fifty something and the originator of the backwards Confession,
a powerful practice of entering a confessional not to seek absolution,
but rather to name the harm caused by certain church
doctrines and actions, and then to offer forgiveness as an
(00:51):
act of reclaiming personal power and peace. This deeply personal
ritual has become the foundation for a budding movement and
online community where individuals are encouraged to engage similar acts
of active forgiveness and liberation institutional harm. All right, Melissa,
just a little bit about you before we go, and
(01:12):
share with the listeners where you're from originally and where
you are currently.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Oh my goodness, I am originally from Norfolk, Virginia area,
actually specifically Newport News, Virginia, and I currently am in Phoenix, Arizona,
but I'm in a transitional stage. I'm getting ready to
move to Spain at the end of this month.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Holy moly. Wow, okay, very cool. Well let's dive in.
How did all this start?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Oh? Wow? So April twenty sixth I had a spiritual awakening.
I had a spa day at my home by myself.
I decided to do.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
It April twenty six like this April.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Twin this here, Okay, yeah, yeah, I had a spa day.
I was I was just doing my own thing, and I,
you know, I took a bath, was listening to Epoch
Chopra's book Reinventing the Body, Reigniting the Soul, or maybe
the other way around, but in any case, I was
listening to him. And afterwards, I decided to meditate on
(02:14):
the love, just like pure love, like he mentioned. And
I started to do that, and all of a sudden,
I had this crazy spiritual experience that unfolded all these
events that happened in my life from that day and
May second, I actually walked out on a thirty two
(02:35):
year marriage.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Okay, yeah, hang on all right. Wow. So in April,
so a few months ago, you're having this.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Self care day, a SPA day.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Specifically, what was happening to you? You had these realizations?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I mean, when what form did they come to?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Okay, it's crazy, so I have to tell you that
this isn't you know? I had become an atheist. I
left the church. I left the Catholic Church in twenty twenty,
and I was pretty much an atheist. But then this happened.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
So I was.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Meditating, right, and I started to think about I started
to you know, as we do when we're when we're meditating,
we oftentimes our brain takes us on a journey that
we don't that we're trying to know. I want to meditate, right,
So I started thinking about Spain and moving to Spain,
and I used to live there back in two thousand
and nine to twenty thirteen, and I was brought back
to this moment where we had just recently moved there.
(03:42):
So it was two thousand and nine. I was sitting
in the car, windows rolled down, and there was this
breeze coming in from because we we we were near
the ocean. So this breeze was coming in. It was beautiful,
and my husband had gone inside to go pick up
our daughter from her friend's house, and the song used
(04:04):
Somebody by Kings of Leon was on. And for anybody
who's inclined to music theory or any of that, it's
a very beautifully arranged piece of music. It's absolutely amazing.
It was the first time I had ever heard it,
and I remember the time just stood still. I was
in complete bliss. I felt like, Wow, this is where
(04:24):
I need to be right now. Spain is my happy place.
And so whenever I'm often brought back to that time
because it was so incredible for me. Well, that evening
we got back to our place, and you know, this
was before like modern texting and all that was completely mainstream,
and so we got an email that night that my
(04:46):
husband's grandmother had died, and so I feel like I
had a shared death experience with her because because Time
stood still, you know, it was just I knew that
that was the moment that she had passed. And so
every time I hear that song, I'm brought back to
that moment and I think about my husband's grandma, who
was totally sweet to me. Well, I was sitting there
(05:08):
and I wanted to comment on the well I got
on the I got on the YouTube. I was music,
and I was like, okay, I have to hear the
song again because I want to be taken back to
that place. I was like, it's my spa day. I
can do whatever I want. So so I skipped the
meditating and I went to listen to this song and
(05:28):
I'm reading the comments and there's so many comments on
there about how this song relates to somebody that had
passed away. Yeah, and so I'm like, oh my gosh.
So I'm thinking about it, and I'm like, okay, I
want to write something. I want to write. I want
to write a comment, but I need to get the
date right. So I looked up the exact date that
she died, and then I was like, wait a minute,
(05:51):
is that the same day my dad died? It was.
I looked it up. My dad died twenty nine years
to the day before my husband's grandmother. And at that moment,
I felt these tingly sensations going from my head to
my toes. And I was in that chair, sitting there
(06:12):
like I was being held there, like I couldn't move,
and I know this happened for a long time. I
was getting the tinglees for minutes because another song started
to play before I even came out of it, and
so I was like, oh my gosh, what does this mean?
What does this mean? So I called my friend, who
at the time I called my woo woo friend because
she was into spirituality and stuff but I wasn't. I
(06:34):
was like, what does this mean? And she says, well,
I don't know. It's probably just your spirit guides. They
probably just want to talk to you. And I was like, well,
what do they want? They want to tell me something.
I know it's something, and she's like, well, maybe they
just want you to know that they're there. And I
was like, yeah, okay, whatever. So I went on about
my business, you know, and went to work and I
had this thing on my whiteboard. I'm a teacher. I
(06:56):
was a teacher, and it was from these positive APPA
information things that I got from the podcast Wake Me
Up I used to do every day, and one day
he said, start creating the life you're excited to wake
up to today, and so I wrote that on my
whiteboard and so I saw it every day for quite
a while, and going on about my day and my
(07:16):
week a couple weeks and May first, well really it was.
It was the thirtieth of April because I was watching
a whole other thing. But I was watching a movie
and this movie told me, Okay, I need to go.
So the next day I'm in my therapist office. It
was the thursday, it was the first of May, and
I said, I really want to leave him and she said, well,
(07:38):
you know, and I'm like, but I don't know, I
should just wait till Spain. It's a long story I
want to give that, but anyway, point is I went
to see my therapist on May first, I said I
want to leave him. The next day May second, I did.
Thirty two years, thirty two years we've been married, and
I walked out and that started a whole nother chain
of events that just made me super s super happy,
(08:00):
and I am happy and I am thrilled to be
moving to Spain on my own and yeah, my life
is completely different now. And so that led me to
doing the backwards confession.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
How did that lead you to that?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Because I was well, first of all, I needed to
travel over the summer, which I manifested because I wanted
to do that that was on my vision board this year,
and my daughter and my grandson. I have six kids,
so my daughter and my grandson live in Arkansas. Hated Arkansas,
did not want to go back there. Had to live
there for four years as part of my husband's military service.
(08:40):
It was a terrible, terrible time. It was the worst
five years my entire adult life. I say adult life
because I was a foster child and I have my
own set of trauma from that era. But I went there.
I wasn't happy about it. The next morning, I woke
(09:02):
up after the day that I flew in, and my kids,
you know, they sleep late, you know, even my daughter
and my grandson, they sleep late. So I woke up
and I was like, huh, it's Saturday. It's confession day.
I said, oh, it's confession day. Yeah. So I decided
(09:23):
to go to the church that I went to while
I was there, the church, the very parish that turned
its back on me when I was in severe depression,
severe postpartum depression, severe trauma from some things that had
happened in my marriage at the time. You can guess
it's these military Come on, we know, we all know
what happens. Oh, well, what happens on deployment stays on deployment.
(09:51):
So it's like Vegas, you know, they can sleep around
as much as they want. Well, it didn't stay on deployment.
I ended up. It was a terrible, terrible, terrible time there.
I was dealing with trying to get past his infidelity,
but also making him feel better because he didn't like
that I was upset that he was upset, or that
I was upset that he had done that to me.
(10:13):
So I had to learn to stuff my feelings because
if I got upset, then I had to take care
of him. It was terrible, and I had six kids,
and it was you know, he was deployed a lot,
and I was there alone, and I was working on
my bachelor's and master's degrees at the time. It was crazy.
So I went to that church and as everybody else
(10:37):
was lining up to go to confession, I sat in
the pew and I wrote down every single line of
information that I could think of that they had done
to me, or to my family or to the world.
And I went into the confessional. I was very respectful.
I recorded the whole thing. It's on my YouTube channel.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You recorded it on your phone, yes.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I did. Yeah, verbal I didn't. I did not record
the priest. Obviously that would have been wrong, but but
I recorded everything that happened in there, and I sat
up front, I am not here to confess my sins.
I am here to forgive those of the church. And
(11:22):
I called it my litany of freedom. And I when you.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Went into confession, did you say that to Is that
what you said to the priest?
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Yeah, you're in that that cubicle type thing.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
So you can choose nowadays, for the most part, if
you if you go to there's some churches that do
it differently, but for the most part, you can choose
if you want to do face to face or if
you want to have a curtain between you. I did
face to.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Face to face, okay, and it was private.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It was yeah, okay and.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Okay, So so go on. And you said you want
to forgive them m.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, and uh, And I asked, I told, I told
the priest, please hold space for that. You don't need
to respond, you don't need to give me advice, just
please hold space. And he did, and he was clearly
moved by this whole. I named each of the of
(12:23):
the the things that I could think of that affected
me my family. So my daughter, my oldest, she fled
a severely domestic abuse of relationship and she wanted to
do the right thing and get the moment from the church,
(12:47):
and she she did all the paperwork and everything, and
then they said, okay, well now we need to send
this to your to your husband, and it had her
address on it, and she's like, no, this is not
I don't feel safe doing that. But that was the
only way that they would even consider her annulment. So
that was one of the things that I forgave the
(13:09):
church for was making her feel like she was at
fault and making her feel like she had to jump
through hoops to get an annulment that she probably wouldn't
have even gotten anyway, because it goes before a bunch
of old men, most of whom are not even married.
So that was one thing. Another thing was you know,
(13:34):
going in and recut culturalizing people and killing people, because
let's face that they did. They did, there's proof of it.
And my two trans children, you know, I didn't know
(13:55):
I was working for the church, I was volunteering for
the church, and I had no idea that my kids
were trans and I had no idea that it was
going to harm them in the way that it did
and the way that it still does harm trans people.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So you have six kids I do, from the same father.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah, we've been married. We were married thirty two I
mean I'm not divorced yet. So yeah, we've been married
thirty two years. So you have two kids, two trans,
one gay one Bye?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Okay, do you.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Mind if I ask how old the trans kids are?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Seventeen and twenty.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Nine and when did you find out? How did you
find out?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So my twenty nine year old came out to me
when she was twenty one, and then my seventeen year
old was able to come out earlier because she saw
her sister, So she came out at fourteen.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
And what did the church say?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
How did they reacton?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It's not really the church itself, it's their grandmother and
their father. So grandma refuses to use their names or pronouns,
and she thinks it's an abomination. Their father tries to
do everything that he possibly can to support them that
the church will allow, because he thinks he's going to
go to Hell if he doesn't so, or if he
(15:17):
disavows any of those regulations. So his only his thing is,
I won't use their preferred pronouns. I'll use their preferred names,
and I will support them and love them, but I
will not use their preferred pronouns because that's what the
church says. The church says, you can't you can't use
their because God made them boy or girl, and that's
the way it is. And so you have to you
(15:38):
have to respect God. So I did that. I said,
I said, the doctrine that causes my husband and my
mother in law to think that they cannot give the
full amount of love to our children that they deserve.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So this is pretty intense. Why was this important for you?
I mean, has anyone ever done this before?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
No, not to my knowledge.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
School.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So when I left the church, I was never going
to go back there. Like I went a couple of
Christmases just for my husband, but I didn't even like.
I hated it. It just made me gross, It made
me like this horrible feeling in my stomach. I didn't
want anything to do with it. When I went in
there and flipped the script, literally that's what I did.
I took back the power and control. I broke rules
(16:35):
that they that even today people think, even if they
don't belong to the church, they still have to follow
those rules. They have to go in and do the
Sign of the Cross and say bless me Father, for
I've sinned, and you know, the whole thing, because we've
been ingrained to do that, because we have to do that,
Like why do we have to follow the rules? Like
we're not I'm not even in the church anymore, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Right, So it was this essentially, oh, kind of a
one time thing for you.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I don't know, because there I probably will go to
the local church here in Arizona that I went to
before I left, because the guy that priest was pretty
he's very misogynistic and uh, I don't know. He would
he would give sermons or homilies and he would talk
about how he obliterated people on Facebook like oh they
(17:27):
were saying this, And so I said that this guy
was a big part of my deconstruction, Like I was
just like, he just a little So I might I
might go and see him. I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
So what is so?
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And then from that you started a YouTube channel. How
did that come about? What was the purpose of that?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Actually the YouTube channel started before I did the backwards confession.
I started the YouTube channel as like, Hey, I'm reinventing
my life. I just left my husband in middle age,
I left my job. I'm going to Spain and starting over.
That's how it started.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Okay, so it's it's like you're starting anew, starting refresh.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
And then so we're we're where does this backward confession
come into play?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
What's what's what's again? What's I guess what's the purpose
of it for you?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Oh my gosh, so much, so much. First of all,
when I saw how moved that priest was, I knew
exactly how he felt, because because when we are working
for the church and we know in our hearts that
a lot of what we do and what we stand
(18:48):
for is wrong. I knew that when I worked for
the church. I was a director of religious education for
two different dioceses. When I worked for the church, I
knew that telling people they could not express their sexuality
was wrong. I knew that turning perfectly good godparents away
(19:09):
simply because they were divorced or shacked up or whatever
was wrong. Because I was forced to, people had to
go and find strangers to be their kids godparents for
their baptism. It was ridiculous. I knew these things were wrong,
and I experienced that cognitive dissonance and I rationalized it. Now,
(19:31):
think about that. Now I have other job opportunities. I
can still teach, I can be a professor. I don't
need to work for the Catholic Church. But let's think
about what happens to priests when they become a priest.
They don't work in their hometown. They are sent far away,
oftentimes into a completely different country. Huh. I know cults
(19:54):
do that too, and they are you know, they are stuck.
They're stuck. So if they do have that realization that
what I'm doing is wrong, they may feel like they're
in a dysfunctional relationship that they aren't allowed to leave.
And I can't speak on behalf of this priest, but
(20:15):
I do know that at some level he was moved
by what I did. So what I think is that
if more people do it, if more people stand up
and they go and they talk to a priest or,
a pastor or someone who has done the who has
(20:36):
supported that, maybe they're not doing it themselves. Maybe they're
really progressive, but they're supporting this line of thinking. This dogma,
Then maybe this will make a change. Because what we're
doing right now, going on YouTube and Instagram and the
other things, yelling and screaming about how the Catholic Church
(20:57):
and other churches have done certain groups of people wrong,
that's not doing anything. That's just creating more and more
division and more hatred.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Let me just reintroduce you speaking with Melissa Williams. Her
YouTube channel is called lost at fifty something and she's
the originator of the backwards confession. Melissa, is the purpose
(21:32):
here to kind of not just to cry what the
church has done? But is it to do this backwards
confession and then to remove yourself from all affiliation or
association with the church or is it to work within
(21:53):
the church, Because they're kind of two different things, right
to if you approach this as a confession, backwards confession,
and are you still like is one still working within
the church or.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
What soft I officially left the church in twenty twenty.
I stopped working for the church in twenty nineteen. The
answer to your question is, first of all, when I
did it, I just wanted the release. I just wanted
(22:27):
the freedom from that hatred and the anger. Which it worked.
I mean to tell you my life is so much better.
I feel freer, I feel lighter. I used to like
the only person that I knew in my personal bubble
who was still Catholic was my husband, and I would
put a lot of that weight of my anger on
(22:50):
him because he was the representative for me, he was
the representative of the Catholic Church. And I don't do
that anymore. I mean, we're still not together for other reasons,
but I don't put all that on him anymore. And
I feel like now I'm able to spread so much
joy and happiness and love to other people because I
(23:12):
have lifted that off of my heart. And there's actually
something I've been doing that i'd like to share with
you that I think has been really good for the
universe and for people. Whenever I go. Yeah, so whenever
I go somewhere. I started doing this at the airport,
and because I've been traveling a lot this year, anytime
(23:35):
i go anywhere, like the airport, to coffee shops to wherever,
I'll just stop somebody, some random person, maybe you know,
like a worker, somebody who is unrecognized, but oftentimes just
a random person on the street, and I'll say, hey,
I think somebody forgot to tell you something today and
they look at me like I'm like, what what did
(23:55):
I do? Like you know, something wrong, and say you
are appreciated and loved. Oh my gosh, the responses I get,
it's incredible. Like I've even had conversations with people like
you know, one time I was in the airport and
there was a pilot and he was sitting by himself
and I told him that and he says, wow. He
goes thank you. He says, I'm really having a day
(24:19):
and I needed to hear that. And I said, well,
I got some time we want to talk, and he
did and we had a full on conversation. I have
noticed for my own self that doing that has put
you know, how we are when we when we are
in public. You know, we'll look at somebody and we'll think, oh, yeah,
they're probably blah blah blah, so and so right. I
(24:40):
don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
My thought is, so, first of all, that sounds incredible
and amazing and beautiful. Were you always like this? No, No,
let's shift. Was it this Spa day of yours a
chip to everything?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It was like this domino effect from the Spa Day
from the spiritual awakening that I had on April twenty
sixth and everything that has happened since i've I've actually
had this year of yes that has begun. And because
of my year of yes, I went to Hawaii a
week and a half ago on the like, I bought
the ticket the day before I left. I did not
(25:25):
have to pay for a place to stay. I did
not need a ride from there. They came and got
me from that. I mean, it was crazy like and
it wasn't like Tinder or anything like that, so don't
think it was. It was totally completely platonic. It was
just it was just an experience that I It was
an opportunity and I said yes to. And I've said
yes to so many opportunities. I have so many stories
(25:45):
I could tell you that you don't have time to hear.
But yeah, like so many wonderful things have happened. But
I do want to get back to what your question was,
because this is the interesting part. I didn't have any
intention of working with the che I was gonna be like,
I'm whatever, because I'm not you know, organized religion. No,
(26:07):
thank you, not for me, not for me, but because
of my year of yes. I went to San Francisco
a few weeks ago. I have a good friend that
lives there, so I didn't have to pay for a
place to stay there either, and we went. I went
to a conference and at this conference, we were having
(26:27):
dinner a bunch of us, and this guy says, Hey,
you should come to my church tomorrow. And I was
like church, no, no, thank you, and he's like he's like, no, no, no, no,
you don't understand. This church is different. It changed my life.
It was Glide Memorial, so you know GLDE Memorial. Yeah. Yeah,
(26:50):
So that's when he said that it was filmed. It
was used in the movie Pursuit of Happiness. I was
I'm a film buff. I love movies, and I was like, well,
it is my year of Yes, I guess i'll go.
So I had to convince my friend that I was
staying with Hey, let's go to church tomorrow, and he's like,
I going to church. And then I was like, look,
(27:13):
if you take me to church tomorrow, I'll eat sushi.
I'll try sushi for the first time, so which I
absolutely loved. Of course, So we go there and I
end up talking to the pastor, well, the cecil has
passed away. He passed away recently. But the new pastor
there I ended up talking to and he's like I
(27:33):
was telling him about the backwards confession and how it
would really suit their situation there, and he said, oh, yeah,
this is great. So he said, do you have a
worksheet or something, and I said, yes, I do. It's
linked on my YouTube, the YouTube video. It's right there
for anybody to use if you want to use it. It's
a template and you can make your confession however you want,
your backwards confession. And so he took that and he
(27:56):
said he's going to make a workshop at that church,
which I don't even like calling it a church because
it is so everything opposite of what I've ever seen
a church to be.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Just to reiterate and to clarify the backwards confession is
to tell the church how they have harmed you, hurts you,
negatively impacted you, to basically stand up for yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
When I was in there doing that, I felt like
I was going to my parents and saying, this is me,
this is who I am. However that is defined for
a person deal with it, and however you want to
respond is your business. But I forgive you, not for you,
(28:52):
but for me, And I'm telling you what it. You know,
there's a lot of stuff going around nowadays where they're like, no,
forgiveness is overrated. Forgiveness is a tool that they use
to control you, not if you do it right, not
if you do it right. I didn't go in there
to re join the church. I didn't go in there
(29:16):
to do anything except release myself, release all that anger
and hate from my soul, which did nothing but make
me a better person. And now I'm out there spreading
love and joy in everything that I do.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Wow, all right, Melissa, damn inspiring. I'm gonna have myself
a spat day pretty soon. Jesus. All right, Look, how
do people learn more about you and what you're doing
and everything?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
So really, I just have the YouTube channel right now.
That's all I have, you know. I try to stay
off with the other thing.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And that's five o something. Ye okay. We'll have that
linked up here at the show notes page at the
Trauma Theaverist podcast dot com. And so you were traveling
or moving to Spain.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
I'm moving for I have a year visa for studying Spanish.
I'm going to study Spanish for a year. In the meantime,
I'm going to work on making this a retreat and
I'm going to possibly be working with the Navy chaplaincy,
which is interesting because you said, will I be working
with the church because I'll be close, fairly close to
(30:37):
the naval base where we used to live. Wow, when
I'm there. So yeah, So I'll be in I'll be
based in Katie, Spain, which is also pronounced Kaddish, and
that's where I'm going to hopefully be having these No,
not hopefully these retreats are going to happen. I'm going
to have these religious trauma retreats and I'm going to
have anything from a day retreat to a whole ten
(30:57):
day retreat.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Wow from Melissa, Awesome. Awesome, We'll be in touch. Thank
you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Thank you, appreciate you too.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
M
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