The Pastor’s Wife Called - I Hung Up and Put On Jeans

The unexpected crisis of realizing you can actually choose your own clothes.

Three weeks after being kicked out of the cult in 2018, my biggest style crisis was whether to keep dressing like the pastor’s wife or risk showing both knees in public.

You have to understand, for years, I’d been told that the pastor’s wife was the blueprint for godly womanhood and high fashion. She was our runway model, our Vogue cover girl, our Pinterest board - if Pinterest was allowed, it would have been just 47 slightly blurry photos of the same woman in a knee-length elastic waist band skirt, orthopedic sandals, and a cardigan in “Shades of Beige Vol. 4.”

And then there was the hair. Oh my fucking God, the hair was everything. Uncut, knee length, swept up into a severe bun that could survive an Oklahoma tornado, a month of fasting, and the Second Coming. You could set your watch by the tightness of that bun!

So when I landed in the outside world, suddenly surrounded by women I could become - in jeans, tank tops, and hair that actually… moved, it was fucking jarring. I didn’t know whether to cover my eyes or take notes.

I remember walking through a grocery store for the first time, with the freedom of choice, standing in the cereal aisle, just staring at the sheer lawlessness. No one cared about my skirt length, no one told me to smile more and not one single person asked me about my “modesty standards.”

It was terrifying, exhilarating, and confusing. What do you mean women can show their shoulders, knee caps and lower back without burning alive????

I was seeing stars. None of it made sense but I was drawn to the rebellion like a deer to headlights.

And somewhere between my first mirror selfie and my first outing in an outfit that wouldn’t get me rebuked, I realized the unthinkable: I was going to be okay without the cult.

And maybe, just maybe, without the knee-length skirt too.

And is!