Update: This Kickstarter campaign was a success!
Sign up to be notified of preorder availability for Holy Disobedience here!
I’m Melissa Duge Spiers, and I’m writing to ask for your help bringing my memoir, Holy Disobedience, into the world.
Holy Disobedience is my reckoning with the silencing, secrets, and shame I experienced inside the strict, fundamentalist Seventh-Day Adventist church—the biggest church no one knows—that taught girls like me to be obedient, self-effacing, and subservient.
But what I didn’t know—what no one wanted to talk about—was that a respected family member, a pastor within our rabidly conservative and closed society, was also a serial child predator. Protected by the church. Enabled by silence.
When I finally learned the truth, my world came crashing down. But that was just the beginning of the story.
Holy Disobedience is about what happened after: the risk-taking, the recklessness, the long, messy, liberating process of reclaiming my voice, my body, and my story. It is a portrayal of traumas and programming repeated long after leaving, the process of learning to define a self that was denied, and the fight to speak out against a culture of silence and hiding.
In 2020, as I finally began that painful struggle of identification and reclamation, I started posting my story and exposing the abuses and hypocrisies of fundamentalist, conservative, and high-control religions—like Adventism—on TikTok and Instagram. I had no idea what the response would be.
I soon learned that there are so many of us who are realizing that we were raised in environments that are unhealthy for our sense of self, our ability to make our own way in the world, and even for our physical safety. However, it's not easy to overcome these dynamics, and many often recreate them repeatedly after leaving, as I did.
This book is for you. It's a story for anyone who has experienced harm in holy spaces or been told that their truth isn't true. It is for both those who have struggled for years—or those only beginning to recognize the need—to unearth and find power in the knowledge, skills, and internal permission to claim their own healing and self-determination.
I am absolutely delighted to have signed with Lake Drive Books, an independent publisher committed to bold, outsider voices like mine. However, this means I will need help funding some of the next steps—editing, design, production, and promotion—that are usually swallowed by big publishers. So I’m launching this Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday, August 12. I’d be honored if you’d consider supporting and sharing it.
By backing this campaign or spreading the word, you’ll help:
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- Raise awareness about spiritual abuse, survivor stories, and personal growth
- Support an independent publisher working outside the gate-kept publishing world
- Help bring a brave, healing, and beautifully told story into print
Different levels of support will be listed, each with its own rewards, such as a signed copy of the book. We also offer a way to customize your level of support.
Thank you so much for reading and for any way you might help amplify this story!
With deep gratitude,
Melissa Duge Spiers
Sign up to be notified of preorder availability for Holy Disobedience here!
