Hi. We're the Deconstruction Doulas. Deconstruction Doulas is an organization that helps people escape abusive, high-control religious spaces through education, peer support, and practical assistance.
Since we informally started in 2021, we've helped over 200 people (and counting) escape and/or begin to heal from such situations. While religious abuse might seem like an isolated issue, the truth is that coercive religious abuse is actually rather common.
Between 10-15% of American adults are experiencing high-control religious abuse right now. This is a massive number of people (>26 million), but because it involves religion, Americans tend to be "hands off" about the subject, treating it like it's just a "private matter."
But the stats are ugly. And without interventions, it gets even uglier.
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Hi. My name is Margaret. A few years ago, me and my friend Erin, along with my husband David, informally started a peer-support group for women who had suffered spiritual abuse in American and Canadian evangelical churches. Before we knew it, we had a whole network of abuse survivors on our hands.
The stories of abuse, violence, fear, and toxicity we heard were absolutely crushing: women, children, and even men sexually assaulted, physically attacked, financially ruined, emotionally destroyed, abandoned by their churches and families, forced into continued intimacy and proximity with their abusers -- and much, much worse. And everywhere we looked, we saw these survivors condemned for speaking out by the very institution that claimed to be their protectors: the American church.
We felt that we had to do something about it. It took a few years of thinking and working, but we committed to throw ourselves at this problem body and soul, and we launched the Deconstruction Doulas website at the end of 2024, officially taking our work public. In February of 2025, we started a GoFundMe to try to raise enough funds just to survive the year.
But then, over on the Deconstruction Doulas Instagram account, a funny thing happened: we began to build momentum. It didn't come with much in terms of funding -- we survived 2025 by the skin of our teeth -- but it did come with visibility.
Margaret has since made several media appearances already to talk about Deconstruction Doulas' work, including Pinkpill RX, Bodies Behind the Bus, The Young Turks, Your Therapist Needs Therapy, The Substance, Freestyle Theology, and more. We've been able to help even more people with education, peer support, and direct help getting out of high-control religious situations - in both mind and body. We expanded our educational offerings and successfully launched one of our first men's cohorts on an absolutely threadbare budget (not even a shoestring!).
We've got the bit between our teeth, in other words, and we're ready to pull. We just need to "feed the steed."
Deconstruction Doulas has always been a "by the people, for the people" operation, funded by normal folks like all y'all. We're not backed by any big donors, corporations, or activist groups. We're just private citizens -- some Christian, some not -- who want freedom for the suffering people we try to serve. In other words, exactly the kind of ground-level work that it's really hard to get "Big Money" to care about.
This is a big goal. Heck, it's an insane one. But we think a little happy, well-planned insanity is needed. In 2026, we want to be able to:
- Provide more survivor retreats
- Establish local "survivor hubs" to make in-person community more accessible
- Bring on another part-time staff person to deal with the mounting administrative needs (we're not good at paperwork!)
- Start a volunteer "rapid support" team for people in crisis
- Formalize our outreach to educate pastors and churches about the epidemic of religious abuse in their circles
- Get 501(c)3 status, and professionalize our operation
So here's where your money is going when you give to this GoFundMe.
- Paying Margaret and Erin. We need to actually pay our people in 2026 if Deconstruction Doulas is going to take advantage of our current momentum; we want to keep giving full-time effort to deliver full-time results for survivors.
- Survivor care. With these funds, we'll be able to take even more direct action to help survivors, especially those in situations of financial abuse or strict social control (these survivors often don't even have driver's licenses or access to their own vital documents). If we really let ourselves dream, we'd love to even be able to provide temporary housing if we can raise enough.
- Getting 501(c)3 status. We're good at the survivor care part, but we have both skill and knowledge gaps when it comes to this part. If we raise enough funds, we're going to hire someone to help us get this done. (If this is something you've got know-how in, and you'd be willing to help, please reach out!) We want all our donors to be able to benefit from tax-exempt status, and under IRS rules, we've got 27 months from when we launched. The clock's ticking, and this is one of our top priorities. It's also the thing we are least personally equipped to make happen.
- Administrative costs. There are a lot of costs associated with all the paperwork and technical work, and being able to pay for professional help with that will allow us to keep running a tight ship. Accounting, IT, and tight data-privacy management are all extremely important parts of this. We want to do it right, and we don't want to fall into the common trap of just trying to do everything ourselves. We know our limitations, and caring well for survivors means, in part, acknowledging those limits and getting help.
Would you consider giving today? Survivors of religious abuse rarely have anywhere to go. Secular authorities (police, doctors, therapists) are often entirely unequipped to handle religious abuse.
As far as we know, Deconstruction Doulas is the only organization specifically helping people escaping high-control religious groups (especially Christian/evangelical ones). So even just $5 is another drop that's going to help fill this bucket.
Help us lead them out.
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If you've got more questions, or you'd like to help in other ways, head over to the website. We have an intake form for folks who want to offer their help.
If you're a survivor of spiritual abuse and you need help, click this link. It will take you to a confidential form you can fill out to receive help from the Deconstruction Doulas.
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