Inside the Deconstruction Doulas’ network for former tradwives and ‘ex-fundies’

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (RNS) — On a September evening in Colorado Springs, about a dozen women wearing an eclectic array of formal wear, nighties and hobbit costumes spun and stomped their bare feet on a makeshift dance floor in an Airbnb living room.

“Twenty-four seven baby machine, so he can live out his picket-fence dreams,” they sang defiantly to Paris Paloma’s 2023 song “Labour.” “It’s not an act of love if you make her. You make me do too much labor!”

The dance party marked the final night of a retreat for the Deconstruction Doulas, a network of ex-fundamentalists and former real-life “trad” wives who left insular religious groups where long skirts, early marriage, physical abuse and educational neglect were often the norm.

But through Deconstruction Doulas , they are working to disentangle their identities from the coercive communities they’ve left. Sometimes, that process looks like dancing cathartically in clothes that evoke their inner child. Often, it involves curriculum that “deprograms” all-or-nothing thinking, sharing personal stories on Zoom and pooling resources to…