Ear­li­er this week, Leah Vin­cent wrote about leav­ing the ultra-Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ty and the back­lash that came when she decid­ed to talk about her deci­sion pub­licly. Her mem­oir, Cut Me Loose: Sin and Sal­va­tion After My Ultra-Ortho­dox Girl­hood, will be pub­lished by Nan A. Talese on Jan­u­ary 21st. She has been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

When I was lit­tle, I talked to God con­stant­ly. There were prayers for wak­ing up, for the morn­ing, for the after­noon, before eat­ing, after eat­ing, after using the bath­room, on hear­ing thun­der, on see­ing light­ning, on a long trip, on wear­ing new cloth­ing, on going to bed. These were the required Hebrew prayers, which I aug­ment­ed with per­son­al updates in silent Eng­lish, check­ing in with God like a mod­ern kid sends texts: a stac­ca­to bar­rage of short­hand mes­sages brack­et­ing every emo­tion and event. 

When I left ultra-Ortho­doxy as a teenag­er, I brought God with me on my jour­ney, a silent and watch­ful com­pan­ion in those tur­bu­lent years. Even as I tried cheese­burg­ers and kiss­ing boys, I could still drench the pages of my prayer book with tears. But even­tu­al­ly, about eight years ago, when I read enough sci­ence to squash the last of the mys­ti­cal sto­ries I had been raised on, my grow­ing skep­ti­cism evolved into a firm com­fort with Athe­ism and I stopped talk­ing to God.

I went to yoga, the oth­er day. My mind wan­dered down my to-do list as I plant­ed my legs in the pos­tures for War­rior One, Two and Three. After a sweaty hour, as we low­ered to corpse pose to end the class, I glanced at the woman next to me. Her shorts had rid­den up, reveal­ing a series of scab­by scars on her thigh. I lay back with my palms up, eyes closed and sting­ing with tears. 

Maybe it was the yoga, unfold­ing the pieces of my body, unhing­ing the stuck places, open­ing my heart, but to my sur­prise, I found myself talk­ing to God in my head. Scream­ing at him. 

“Where were you? Where were you, God?”

My throat closed as I tried to swal­low my sobs. 

I knew the scars that the woman beside me car­ried. As a teenag­er, I had tak­en a razor to my arm. Releas­ing blood gave me relief from the ter­ror and con­fu­sion I felt after leav­ing my reli­gious fam­i­ly and find­ing myself alone in the world. My cut­ting has long healed to Braille, but the woman’s fresh wounds sud­den­ly brought me back to that time in my life that now seems so long ago. 

“Where were you God? Why didn’t you save me from myself, from every­one, from everything?”

The anger piled on top of my supine body, a moun­tain of rocky fury hov­er­ing over me. It felt real, three-dimen­sion­al, my for­got­ten emo­tions solid­i­fy­ing above me as I railed at God. 

There was no answer. But sud­den­ly, I saw myself, a lit­tle naked crea­ture, emerg­ing from a door in the anger, walk­ing out, away from it, onto a vast lunar plain. My shoul­ders sank into the yoga mat, as I felt the relief of being free from all of that bit­ter­ness. It was so sim­ple, in this strange lit­tle vision I had. I just walked away from the anger and was free. 

“Roll up to sit,” the yoga teacher instruct­ed us, and my vision fad­ed. But a sense of light­ness remained, along with a strange after­taste from hav­ing struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one who no longer existed. 

There is no God for me, in my under­stand­ing of the world now, but per­haps, I mused, as I rolled up my mat, there is still some place for me to send my hopes and fears. I can’t deliv­er my words to a Divine lis­ten­er, but maybe there is still relief in send­ing my mes­sages out to a psy­chic space beyond myself, in giv­ing myself per­mis­sion to pray, even, as an atheist. 

Leah Vin­cent is a writer and activist. The first per­son in her fam­i­ly to go to col­lege, she went on to earn a master’s in pub­lic pol­i­cy from the Har­vard Kennedy School. In addi­tion to writ­ing for var­i­ous pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing The Huff­in­g­ton Post and The Jew­ish Dai­ly For­ward, she is an advo­cate for reform with­in ultra-Ortho­doxy and for the empow­er­ment of for­mer ultra-Ortho­dox Jews seek­ing a self-deter­mined life. She works with Foot­steps, the only orga­ni­za­tion in the Unit­ed States sup­port­ing for­mer­ly ultra-Ortho­dox indi­vid­u­als. Read more about her and her mem­oir, Cut Me Loose: Sin and Sal­va­tion After My Ultra-Ortho­dox Girl­hood, here: www​.leahvin​cent​.com.