Welcome to Idlewild.
Reclaim your embodied experience and find healing in your story.
Trauma recovery coaching is about working together to build a vibrant life full of joy, freedom, and peace. You don’t need to stay stuck in cycles of shame, self-doubt, or hyperarousal. Recovering from trauma involves gently working toward embodiment and developing values, stories, and relationships that sustain the life you want.
I’m Victoria and…
The name Idlewild originated from my favorite childhood story, Anne of Green Gables.
Idlewild represents a sacred safe space where you can dream freely and imagine a new future without fear. This is a place for healing the parts of us that were silenced or shamed.
Come home to yourself with curiosity, gentleness, and wonder. It is a return to the sacred.
I work closely with people recovering from purity culture and religious trauma. If you’re longing to come home to yourself, I help you find healing in your embodied story. This work is for you if you carry the weight of shame, isolation, or disembodiment in the aftermath of religious harm.
Let’s chat if you:
Feel disconnected from your body or intuition.
Are unpacking the impact of purity culture, religious control, or other harm that affected your sense of self and connection to others.
Are seeking to build a life that is grounded in freedom, joy, peace, and connection.
Want support as you navigate grief, anger, doubt, or confusion as you process your experiences.
Idlewild offers a space for rediscovering the sacred in ourselves, our bodies, our stories, and our relationships.
Returning to the Sacred Self
A 6-Session Journey
My signature 6-session coaching series is designed to help you gently reconnect with your body, your story, and your sense of self beyond the frameworks of purity culture and religious control.
Together, we’ll explore the places where you feel disconnected. This can range from desire, safety, belonging, voice, relationships, or other areas where you want to learn to rebuild trust in your own inner knowing.
Each session offers a rhythm of reflection, embodiment, and integration: a chance to slow down, make meaning, and reimagine what wholeness feels like in your life now.
What you can expect:
Six 60-minute sessions over 8–10 weeks.
Access to the “Return to the Sacred” workbook.
Trauma-informed coaching rooted in nervous system awareness, narrative reflection, and compassionate inquiry.
Personalized practices to support regulation, grounding, and self-trust between sessions.
Optional journal prompts and reflection exercises for deeper integration.
Email support between sessions for questions or continued reflection.
This coaching journey is a space to develop the life you want. Learn to live tenderly, slowly, and without shame.
Investment:
$750
Payment plans available.
Single sessions are available for returning clients at $150.
We’ll work together to develop:
A clearer sense of your identity.
Methods for building safe and healthy connections and community.
Tools to regulate your nervous system and reconnect with your body’s cues.
Language for your story that honors both your pain and your resilience.
A renewed connection to the sacred—not as doctrine, but as presence, imagination, and aliveness.
Return to the Sacred Workbook
This 10-page digital workbook offers trauma-informed guidance for those healing from purity culture and religious shame. With reflective prompts and embodied exercises, Return to the Sacred supports your journey toward self-trust, safety, and wholeness.
Investment: $10
Altared Bodies
Altared Bodies is where I write about the slow, sacred work of healing from purity culture and living a life in your body that you love. This work exists at the intersection of theology, trauma studies, and embodiment.
My essays explore how we might reimagine the sacred in the context of our lived experiences, not as something outside of us, but as something we live and breathe.
Subscribe to receive new essays and offerings—and to join a growing community of people learning to live fully, freely, and in their bodies again.
You’ll find writing on:
Releasing toxic shame
Embodying and expressing sexuality
Using practical tools for healing
Developing healthy understandings of intimacy
Building healthy relationships
Setting boundaries for yourself
Navigating gender and sexual identity
Learning how to let go of the past
Learning how to hold on to community
Embracing intuition and inner wisdom
Meet Victoria Houser.
I’m a trauma recovery coach and author. I’ve been researching and writing about purity culture for the better part of a decade.
My work is shaped by both personal experience and deep research. I grew up within a fundamentalist cult and evangelical purity culture. When I left, I dedicated myself to understanding and processing the effects of religious trauma. I earned a Ph.D. with my work in these areas and continue to research and publish on topics of religious trauma and purity culture.
As a professor of writing and rhetoric, I focus on exploring the power of embodied storytelling—how writing our lived experiences can uncover truth, invite healing, and return us to our bodies. That same passion now guides my coaching practice. I help people disentangle from the internalized messages of purity culture and religious control, rebuild a sense of safety in their bodies, and reclaim the sacred in ways that feel authentic and alive.
I’d love to hear from you.
Fill out the form to schedule a free 20-minute consultation to talk through your story, goals, and next steps.
Whether you’re curious about coaching, have a question about my work, or want to explore a potential collaboration, this is the place to reach out.
And, if you’re ready to reconnect with your body, reimagine your story, and move toward a grounded, embodied, and vibrant life, I’d be honored to walk alongside you.
