Gaslit by God
How I Unlearned Shame and Reclaimed My Faith
Desirée Elder knows what it means to be a Black woman of faith in a church culture that often confuses control with care. A pastor and church girl in recovery, she offers a guide for navigating the spiritual dissonance between what we were taught and what we now know to be true. Through vivid storytelling, cultural critique, and scriptural reexamination, she confronts the spiritual gaslighting that has shaped generations of women.
She names the bindings that disguise themselves as modesty but become spiritual abuse. The waiting that hardens into procrastination with a halo. The submission that becomes silence. She names the little gods who weaponize scripture, shame, and tradition — and reveals what they cost us in faith and in ourselves.
This is not a how-to guide. Gaslit by God is a movement — for the women who left church but never left God, for those who stayed but lost themselves along the way, and for the ones still sitting in the pew on Sunday wondering if they're the only one asking these questions. It is an invitation to trust your own knowing, reimagine your relationship with the divine, and walk boldly into a faith that makes room for your full humanity and accepts nothing less.
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“For the women who stayed, the ones who left, and the ones still deciding.”
Desirée Elder
You are not too much for God. You just had the wrong pattern.
Why The Book Matters
I was the girl who checked out every book from the library and created whole worlds in her head. It never occurred to me that my own words could do the same for someone else.
This book is the hardest thing I have done so far. And it is the book I needed in my twenties — the one that would have told me that God had never left, that all the crap in between was not God, and that I was allowed to untether from it.
What I know now is that language does something singular. It takes an experience that feels completely isolated and builds a room where suddenly you realize — oh, there are other people in here. That is freedom. That is what I wanted to give.
In my most formative years of building a relationship with God, options were limited. I didn’t always see my experience in what was being conveyed. So I poured myself into what existed and made it fit.
But God is not one-size-fits-all. May this book loosen the belt straps enough to make room for your experience — so you don’t spend another decade getting a spiritual muffin top trying to squeeze into what was never made for you.
What People Are Saying
Beautifully written, authentically shared...liberation is here for the church girl with a pure heart, a set of rules to follow, and even more questions about God and faith!
— Katara Washington Patton, Author of Faith of Our Teen Girls: Passing Belief From Mother to Daughter (Feb 2007) and eight other Christian Living titles; Christian Publishing Veteran; katarapatton.com"There are some books you read. And then there are books that read you. This is the latter. Gaslit by God is not merely commentary. It is testimony. It is the voice of a woman who refused to surrender her mind in order to keep her faith. And perhaps that is what makes this book so necessary."
— Pastor Michael A. Walrond Jr., Author of Searching for Agabus