Reclaiming Your Voice

High-control religion can shape identity, silence intuition, and leave lasting trauma—especially when faith, purity culture, and authority collide during adolescence. Darls Centola is a trauma therapist who explores how navigating faith under intense control shaped her path out of religious trauma and into healing. Darls shared a teenage friendship with Michael Jackson inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her new book, Finding Truth with Michael: A Memoir of Friendship, Faith, and First Love, offers a deeply human counterpoint to celebrity narratives and a timely lens on reclaiming one’s voice.