ENTER THE DRAWING!! Donate to the Honor Project Movement! https://heatherelizabeth.org/page/support-honor-project-movement To see the painting, check out this video: YouTube 45:28 Key Takeaways: Elle Arters interviews Megan Owen about Give Her Wings: a nonprofit Megan started. They discuss the impact it has had on them and why Megan left it behind Notable Quotes: "I know that there [are] probably wisdom and seasons and speaking and not speaking and sharing your story and not sharing your story and deciding when and where and with who. And I just love that this seemed to be the right season and the right people." — Elle Arters "[O]ne of my favorite parts about Give Her Wings was really being, what my friend would call, hands in the dirt. Like not being afraid to drive to go see this woman who was hurting and assess her needs. You know, being able to manage a phone call from a woman who might feel pretty unhinged and feral because she's desperate and not having to judge her." — Megan Owen "Everything was gone. I have no copies of anything that I did. ...if you go to their Facebook page, there are pictures of all of my friends that I did the Academy with. And I'm not in any of those photos. Like, I don't know how to describe that feeling. Like you've been scratched out of something. Like you didn't ever exist." — Megan Owen "...I counted 142 women who reached out to me that I had helped through Give Her Wings. They reached out privately, they sent texts, they shared their stories right there on the [Facebook] post. And something healed in me and just broke open and said, 'Megan, you were erased from all of everything with Give Her Wings, but nothing you did was erased.'" — Megan Owen Resources: Mountain City Christian Counseling: mountaincitychristiancounseling.com Donate HERE: https://heatherelizabeth.org/page/support-honor-project-movement See Megan's Facebook Post: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18vsszyjYi/ MEGAN: (0:03) This is Pretty Psych, the podcast where we discuss and deconstruct the impact of Evangelical Christianity and cultural phenomena on the psyche, the deep and sometimes uncharted territory of the mind. We venture into raw, rough, and sometimes triggering moments, but we know that through this what we will find will be pretty fascinating, amazing, and pretty intelligent. My name is Megan Owen. I'm a pastoral trauma counselor, and I have spent decades studying the science of human behavior. I draw parallels between therapy and connection to God, self, and others. I love what I do, and I will walk hand in hand with you through the fire to help you find healing and rest. Most importantly, I want to bring you home to yourself. (1:12) Hi friends, Megan Owen here with Mountain City Christian Counseling. Welcome to Pretty Psych. Of course, I have my dear friend and amazing co-worker/colleague, Elle. Renee Arters here. She's joined me today for a very special podcast. I pitched the idea of talking about something that's been happening not just in my life, but also in Elle's life, and she liked the idea. And then it was actually Elle's idea to say, you know what, why don't we sort of flip the script this time and do something different, and I will interview you, Megan, which I don't think that's ever happened. Maybe a couple times many, many years ago, but I'm excited about this and nervous, of course. Welcome, Elle. ELLE: (1:59) Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I can understand that, of course. You've taught us this, and we all know what it's like to share something that's very vulnerable, and it's very valuable, and I wanted to say right off from the bat, thank you for trusting me with it, and I know you're trusting the audience and the listeners, so thank you for finding us trustworthy, and we're going to be committed to being trustworthy to your story, and thank you for just letting me have the honor and privilege of holding space for you. I do just want to say real quick, I just want to acknowledge, my goodness, you have listened to so many stories from hundreds, thousands, probably, of women at this point, and you just do it so, so well. You always do it without judgment, with belief, and with support, and I just feel really blessed to be able to hold space for you this time, so this hour is yours, and yeah, I'm excited to, I know some of this story, I know there's going to be stuff that I don't know, and I'm excited to hear it all, so are you ready to get started? MEGAN: (3:16) Yes, thank you, Elle. ELLE: (3:17) Okay, we had found out earlier this week that there are some changes going on to a non-profit that we used to be involved in, and more specifically, that a non-profit that you had started way back in 2012 called Give Her Wings, so I would love to hear a little bit more from you on, like, how that all got started. MEGAN: (3:44) In 2011, my kids and I escaped a very abusive relationship in a different country, from a different country, back to the U.S., and I had expected that I might have support from my own family, from my church, from my friends, from people who knew us, and by the time we landed the plane going from Europe to here in Colorado, my kid's father had called my family, told them I was crazy, basically, and I didn't have the support that I had hoped to have. I don't know what I expected, but what I didn't expect was the harassment that I received, the discrediting that happened, the emails, the pastor showing up on my door, and I found myself in a shockingly horrific place and in poverty. Within a year, we were in a better place, the kids and I were, and I had started being open and writing about my story, really based on someone else's counsel to me, because I had been so discredited that I decided and chose to go somewhat public, and what I found were countless women who were going through the same thing, who were being harassed by their churches, who were being told to go back to abusive relationships, who were told that they were not being honest, and that they just wanted an easy way out of the marriage, which is, as you and I both know, that's not an easy way to end a marriage, to take the children and leave and just hope that the courts will believe you when you share your story, right? And so I started writing for another blog that sort of picked up on my story that was pretty popular back then, I don't know if you remember that one, and by that time, I feel like maybe you and I had connected through another small group that we found online, which you and I have talked about before, and that was a lifeline for us, and then while I was writing for this other blog and was kind of finding my sea legs for this new way of living, I decided that I wanted to raise money for one of the mamas who had written in. And so the founder of that blog, that was, you know, we're talking a long time ago when blogs were like a whole big thing, he was in her area, so he went to visit her, sort of vetted her, came back and told me what was going on, and then with a couple of cool cats, we raised $2,000 for her one month. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can raise money for people. ELLE: (6:56) That was fun. MEGAN: (6:58) And we were able to buy, he could buy mattresses for her kids, because I guess they were sleeping on the floor, and it was a home that had, you know, it was mice and just, it was just gross. And so we were able to get them mattresses and blankets, she got a new haircut, she got some new clothes, we helped her get started with a resume, sort of taught her how to break out on her own. And it was thrilling to me, to my soul. It was energizing, I found that I loved it. And then there was another woman the next month, and we did it again. And I feel like we called it something like, she is worthy or something. And then we just kind of started naming the mamas because we didn't want to make it public who they were because of the dangers they were in and the harassment they were receiving. So this kept going for several months. And then eventually, we incorporated into a non-profit called Give Her Wings. And I became the executive director of it. And it was amazing. It was a startup. It was exciting. I never drew a paycheck or anything like that. This was just, I wanted to give to women what I didn't receive. And that was emotional support, financial support. Just people saying, you're not going to hell was a big deal for me. So it was just, it was an amazing experience. And it just kept growing, Elle, as you know, because you were there, you witnessed this whole thing. And some people like kind of fell away because we'd sort of break open and then we'd grow again. And then we would break open a little bit and then we'd grow again. And people sort of came and went. We had a fantastic reputation. We were legit. Financials were public. It was, I loved it. It was wonderful that you and I didn't have anything like this. So I created something like this for other women because it was so devastating to be so alone in that situation. And having been taught that we were, I mean, we were homeschool moms. Yeah. We didn't know we could do hard things yet. We just found ourselves being spiritual widows with orphaned kids. ELLE: (9:20) Yeah, no, that's exactly it. And I forget too at that time, you know, just how few people really understood what we were walking. And so not only are you through Give Her Wings, like not only were you meeting people like practically, you know, through finances and that emotional and physical support, but even just having language like that, just being able to validate and attune what we were experiencing, which was this spiritual widowhood and yeah, like trying to raise orphaned kids, even though, yes, that wasn't literally what our experience was. Just having that language, having somebody who really saw that and creating a space was extraordinary. I remember when you started that. And I think I know we've shared th
