It's Book Release Day!
I interview myself about my hopes for this book
Cue the confetti: Recovering from Purity Culture is out today! It feels a little like a birthday and a due date all in one!1
Celebrate the birthday of Recovering from Purity Culture with me as I interview myself today2! I’ll share my hopes for the book and the future of the purity culture discourse. I’ll also take us back to why I wrote this book, who this book is for (and not for!), and how you can help celebrate its birthday with me!
Question: Why did you write this book?
Answer: My editor,
3, always asks writers, “What’s the boldest statement your writing makes?” For me, why I wrote this book was its boldest statement: we can heal from purity culture and hold onto our faith. This is the both/and of finding freedom and healing your faith from toxic beliefs.From the Introduction:
In this conversation, we need to hear from diverse perspectives about how to reconcile purity culture and faith. Many of purity culture’s loudest critics are those who have left the faith. But as a Christian who still values an ethic of premarital sexual abstinence (yet no longer adheres to legalism and strict gender roles), I struggled to see myself in their stories. And I know I am not the only one.
Second, I wanted to provide an evidenced-based resource that goes beyond describing what the problems with purity culture, but how to heal from them.
In this book, I aim to provide you with that how. I want you to not only discover how purity culture affects you but also learn how to overcome those effects. As a mental health professional, I want to use the tools I’ve gained in my education to help you reject toxic beliefs, understand trauma, and recover from the sexual shame caused by purity culture.
This is the only purity culture book written by a psychologist and the only one written by an author who has both personal experience as a woman growing up in purity culture and professional experience as a therapist4. I hope you come away from reading it with new insights, greater clarity, and most importantly, a toolbox of techniques, exercises, and skills that you can apply to your own healing.
Q: Who is this book for? Who is it not for?
A: They say write the book you needed. Well, considering I first had the idea for this book seven years ago, and published the first article about it five years ago, I think this book is for me ten to fifteen years ago.
-The early to mid-20s me who was still judging others by purity culture standards. Who was angry at God for not fulfilling his end of the bargain by bringing me a husband.
-The me who had just begun to deconstruct my faith thanks to the empty promises of the Fairy-Tale Myth. Who was trying to make sense of the stories of suffering I was hearing from my clients while reconciling my own grief in my singleness.
-And the me of eight years ago who was starting to see clients and college students who were wholly unprepared for marriage, mired in shame, and disillusioned in their faith and sexual values all because of the myths of purity culture.
I’m not here to convince anyone that purity culture is harmful—that claim has already been very clearly and convincingly made. I’m also not going to debate the merits or good intentions of purity culture, or argue for a particular sexual ethic—those are for theological books and your personal experience to expose.
This book is for purity culture survivors—those of us who lived through it and are still haunted by its messages every time we put on a tank top, every time we go on a new date, every time we go to have sex with our spouse, every time we sing of our “good, good Father” while secretly doubting his goodness. Yes, this book is for the survivors.
And who is this book not for? While I am hopeful this book can be a helpful resource to any reader, even those who do not share my sexual ethic and faith orientation, I know that one book can’t be for everyone. When you’re writing a book about sex and religion, you’re bound to get some haters in the Amazon reviews section. So, this book is not for those who like black and white answers, want someone telling you what to believe and how to act, or prefer a legalistic faith OR are anti-religious.
Q: What is it like to put this book out there?
A: I’ve heard it said that once your book is released into the world, it’s not really yours any more. I used to disagree with this. After all, it’s my name on the cover, I’m the one who put in all the words and work, it’s still my book.
But now I see what they mean.
It’s not just my book any more, now it’s ours. Now it has readers who will read my words with their own lenses and from their own lived experience and interpret it and apply it in many different ways. In a sense, it has legs of its own now, no longer contained inside my mind, in my computer, for just me to read, but it is living and breathing among you now too. It belongs to me, but now it also belongs to all of us purity culture survivors.
I like this quote from
about the release of her book:They call it “release day” for a reason.
Because . . . the book is going to do what the book is going to do, and my work is not to manage outcomes but to unfurl my fingers, breathe deep, and be attentive to the rumblings of the soul.5
Q: What do you hope this book is going to do in the world?
A: I hope it will help you see that you don’t have to walk away from your faith or your values about sex in order to heal from purity culture. I hope it brings healing (so much healing) to the broken places of our faith.
As I write in the Introduction, and then in the Conclusion:
I hope you’ll invite Jesus into this journey with you too. He cares about all of you—body, mind, heart, and soul—and he wants you to experience healing and be set free from these lies. […]
Ultimately, our healing is found in Jesus; he is both the source and the destination. He is who we’ve walked this path with but also who we are walking toward.
Beyond that, I hope this book will just be one more offering on the shelf of healthy books on sexuality, trauma, emotional health, and faith. I hope the purity culture discourse doesn’t stop here—individual healing is needed, yes, and that is undoubtedly the focus of my book, but there are macro changes that need to be made too in order to heal our systems from patriarchy and legalism.
There are other conversations to have—how purity culture uniquely affects BIPOC people, queer people, and disabled people. There is still the problem of sexual abuse in the Church, and how patriarchy covers and excuses it. There are still books being published with toxic teachings—ones that present narrow definitions of “biblical womanhood” and the same tired stereotypes of men’s sexuality. There is still black and white legalism rampant on social media, presenting an either/or dichotomy of resolving religious trauma: walk away from your faith or stay in a toxic, high-control religion.
As long as this legalism persists, I’ll keep walking the middle path and searching for the both/and in our faith: that we can reject toxic teachings and still hold onto (and reconstruct) a healthy faith.
Q: How can people help birth your book into the world?
How can you help? Well, thank you for asking! I am so thankful for my readers’ support! If you’d like to help the message of this book get into the hands of people who need it, here are some ways you can help:
Buy the book. This is always the #1 way to support an author, especially a first-time author like me! The more this book sells, the more we send a message to booksellers, publishers, and stakeholders that we need more nuanced and healthy resources like this.
Add it to your GoodReads. Add it to your “To Be Read” shelf. Then mark is as “Read” and rate and review it when you finish reading!
Speaking of reviews, post a review of the book. You can post the same review on GoodReads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any other retailer! Amazon reviews are especially helpful, especially if you purchased it from Amazon (they call that a verified review and give it an algorithm boost).
Spread the world on social media! If you got your copy of the book today, would you take a picture of it (or even better, a selfie with the book) and post it? Share quotes from the book and like, comment, or share my social media posts as well to help the word spread!
Share word-of-mouth. Who else needs this message of purity culture recovery? Could you text a friend about the book? Tell your pastor? Ask your library, local indie bookstore, or local B&N to stock a few copies? Maybe you could even start a book club, church class, or group to discuss the book together6.
My goal in my work is always to validate, challenge, and empower you. And I hope my book does just that.
I can’t get through reading the Acknowledgements section of my book without crying (that made for a challenging audiobook taping!). I thank the usual suspects (my agent, editor, and assistant) and give touching tributes to my husband and kids. But this is what I end the entire book with, and what I want to end today here with you:
And thanks to you—my fellow purity culture survivors—for giving me a deeper why to write this book.
With gratitude, Dr. Camden
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Other New Releases This Month
My book is not the only one that released this month! I wanted to share the birthday celebration with these other October releases that I am excited for:
Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway.
Chuck DeGroat, Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering.
Nedra Glover Tawwab, Consider This: Reflections for Finding Peace.
Kendra Adachi, The PLAN: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius.
- , The Mary We Forgot: What the Apostle to the Apostles Teaches the Church Today.
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Although physically I feel tons better than I did on both babies’ due dates, hooray!
Stephanie also has a book that released today. Happy shared birthday to her beautiful book, Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway.
There are two other books about religious sexual shame written by mental health professionals, but none fit the specific description I provide here. However, I do cite these books favorably in my chapter on Overcoming Shame.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/145498991
For groups, you can use “Finding the Path Forward Together”, the group discussion guide I provided as a pre-order bonus. If you didn’t get it but you are leading a group, message me and I’ll be happy to share it with you!
Okay trying this again since my brain used your last name as your first name last time. 🤦🏽♀️ Forgive me.
Happy release day, Camden. Well done. 💙🎉
Congratulations! So excited for you!!