In my conservative Christian homeschool world, American Girl books were approved reading. Asking certain questions about or understanding our own world was another matter.
I loved those stories. I still do. But looking back, I’m struck by the difference between admiring a girl who challenged expectations in another century and making room for a girl who questioned the expectations in her own home or church.
That difference feels personal now.
If you were a homeschooled girl in the 1990s or early 2000s, Pleasant Company or American Girl may have been part of your childhood, too.
I can still remember flipping through the catalogs when they arrived in the mail. Even when buying something wasn’t possible, the catalog itself felt like an event. The photographs were beautiful. The clothing, accessories or furniture, the girls’ costumes that matched the dolls, and even the introduction of a new collection- everything spurred imagination and wonder.
The stories felt important. The books traveled from homeschool co-ops to library sales to church friends’ houses and back again. Some of us owned the dolls. Some of us borrowed the books. Some of us mostly dreamed over the catalog pages.
In the circles I knew, American Girl occupied a rare cultural category: it was trusted.
Parents appreciated the historical focus, the educational value and the emphasis on character. These were viewed as character stories about courage, perseverance, kindness, responsibility and doing the right thing. In communities where books, music and entertainment often passed through layers of scrutiny, these stories frequently made the cut.
They were considered safe.
That approval wasn’t universal or permanent. As the collection expanded, some families became more selective about which stories they welcomed into their homes. Conservative Christian homeschooling was never one uniform experience. Families differed in their theology, restrictions and willingness to make room for questions.
But when I was a girl, the historical focus fit comfortably within our world. Pleasant Rowland’s collection invited children to encounter American history through the lives of young girls. And in the circles I grew up in, love of God and love of country were often taught as though they belonged to the same lesson.
Looking back, I wonder whether those white-covered, beautifully illustrated books gave some of us more room to imagine than anyone realized. We were allowed to admire courageous girls on the page. Becoming women who practiced that courage could be more complicated.
The Values We Carried Into Adulthood
Through my work with people affected by religious trauma, I’ve noticed something that often gets lost in conversations about faith deconstruction: questioning what we were taught does not necessarily mean abandoning everything we valued.
In fact, it sometimes means taking those values seriously enough to ask whether our communities are living by them.
That is one reason I struggle when deconstruction is dismissed as rebellion, bitterness or a desire to escape moral responsibility. It’s been called sexy, an excuse to sin and a rejection of God. For many people I meet, the questions begin somewhere much quieter.
Something doesn’t add up. Someone gets hurt. An explanation that once felt reassuring no longer accounts for what is happening right in front of us.
We were taught to tell the truth, but telling the truth about a respected leader is called divisive, trouble-making, or lying. We were taught to protect vulnerable people, but protecting the institution takes priority. We were taught that character matters, then asked to overlook behavior we would never excuse in someone outside the group.
Granted, not every family or church responds this way. And not every disagreement is evidence of abuse. But when questions are repeatedly punished, harm is minimized or loyalty is measured by silence, the contradiction becomes difficult to ignore.
The women I meet are often deeply concerned with integrity, justice, compassion and protecting others. Those commitments haven’t necessarily disappeared. Sometimes they are precisely what makes staying silent impossible. What looks like rejection of a group or belief from the outside may be an effort to stop betraying their own conscience.
What happens when the values you were taught lead you to question the people who taught them?
For some of us, that is where the conversation begins.
When Honesty Threatens Belonging
One of the hardest things to explain about religious trauma is that the greatest fear is not always theological. Sometimes it is relational.
When family, friendships, education and spiritual life have been woven into the same community, questioning or tugging at one part can unravel all of it.
People don’t necessarily remain in harmful environments because they agree with everything being taught. They may stay because they love the people there. Because their children’s friendships are there. Because their marriage, livelihood or relationship with their parents could be affected. Because leaving might mean losing the people they would normally turn to when life falls apart.
That is not a small thing.
And staying, questioning quietly or taking time to decide what comes next should not be mistaken for a lack of courage. People deserve room to consider their safety, responsibilities and resources without being pressured into someone else’s timeline or opinion.
For some, questions lead to changes within their faith. For others, they lead to a different religious community or away from religion altogether. There isn’t one destination that makes someone’s experience legitimate.
The struggle is often less about winning an argument than discovering whether there is room to be honest without losing love.
Can I name what happened?
Can I disagree and still belong?
Can I set a boundary without becoming the problem?
For many people I meet, the grief isn’t only about losing certainty. It is about discovering how much connection depended on remaining the person everyone expected them to be.
When belonging is threatened, compliance can begin to look like agreement.
But doing what is expected because you are afraid of the consequences is not the same as freely choosing it. That distinction matters when we look back at our own lives - and when we decide how to respond to someone else’s questions.
Why Felicity Still Feels Familiar
As a child, I wasn’t thinking about any of this while reading American Girl books. I wasn’t connecting historical fiction to future conversations about spiritual abuse, trauma or religious harm. I wasn’t analyzing power or wondering how communities respond when someone challenges the accepted story. I was simply drawn to girls who felt meaningful to me.
Felicity was my favorite.
My hair was more strawberry blonde back then, and in my mind, that connected me to her red hair. But it was more than appearance.
She was spunky. She pushed against expectations. She had a boldness I recognized inside myself but didn’t always know how to express. Felicity even wore pants when pants weren’t acceptable for girls to wear - a teaching I understood from my own life.
American Girl clearly emphasized Felicity’s preference for riding horses over the activities expected of her and her growing courage to stand firm in her beliefs. What stayed with me was the possibility of being a girl with a will and mind of her own.
In some of our communities, girls could be praised for intelligence, creativity and conviction while still being expected to fit a narrow vision of womanhood. We could admire courage in a fictional girl without knowing what would happen when our own courage took an inconvenient form. We were encouraged to and supported when “standing alone” or standing up to people who questioned or pushed back against our theology and religious standards of living, but we were expected to be submissive and meek servants in our own spaces. It was one thing to read about a girl challenging expectations in another century. It was another to question the expectations governing our own lives.
Looking back, I can recognize why Felicity appealed to me. This is a connection I am making now, shaped by the life I have lived since. The question isn’t whether Felicity would agree with every conclusion I have reached. It is why I could so easily admire her “independent spirit” while being taught that I wasn’t allowed to have one.
What We Can Keep
I was one of the few girls in my conservative homeschool circle who had more than one American Girl doll. The catalogs were free and endlessly studied, but the dolls and accessories were generally far outside our budget.
I kept my dolls and the few other pieces I had collected until my daughter was old enough to appreciate them. Over the years, they have become a way for us to connect. They are one part of my childhood I have been able to share with her without the same heaviness attached to so much else.
When we talk about religious trauma, there can be an assumption that naming harm requires us to disown every good memory associated with the world where it happened.
I don’t believe that.
I can recognize what hurt me without surrendering everything I loved. I can question the framework around my childhood without declaring every experience inside it false.
The happy parts were real. So was the harm. Making room for both does not excuse what happened. It allows me to tell a fuller truth about my own life.
For me, these dolls connect the girl I was to the mother I am without requiring me to return to the beliefs or expectations I have outgrown.
I can carry something good forward without carrying everything else with it.
The Conversations We’re Having Now
Recently, I began imagining what the American Girls we grew up with might bring to today’s conversations about religious trauma and healing.
Not because their stories were written about religious trauma. Not because I can know what these fictional girls would believe if they were women living today. But because the themes I remember in their stories feel familiar to the conversations I now have with survivors.
Conscience. Belonging. Grief. Identity. The courage to recognize that something is wrong and the uncertainty of deciding what to do next.
That connection became the starting point for a series of graphics pairing familiar characters with reflections on religious trauma. My daughter and I developed the wording together. These are my interpretations, shaped by my childhood, my work and the people whose experiences have deepened my understanding of harm and healing. (They are not quotations from the books or claims about what their authors intended.)
With Felicity, I keep coming back to conscience or conviction.
What happens when doing what you believe is right means disappointing someone who expects your unquestioned obedience? When does being called “rebellious” tell us more about the expectations than the person questioning them?
Other characters bring different questions into focus. Not because their experiences are interchangeable, but because stories can offer a familiar place to begin a difficult conversation. About the pressure to remain agreeable. About grieving a community while recognizing that it was hurting us. About discovering who we are when familiar roles no longer fit. About learning to trust our judgment without expecting ourselves to be right about everything.
For some of us, these stories were part of closely guarded childhoods. They were approved reading. A shared reference point. Something we could love without having to defend it.
Now they offer a doorway into conversations we once struggled to have.
More Than Admiring Courage
I don’t think these books caused us to question our communities. Our lives and personal stories are more nuanced than that. But they became part of the imaginative world we carried with us. They gave some of us girls to identify with who were more than obedient, pleasant or easy to manage.
Perhaps that is part of why they still matter.
For those of us taught to be good girls, healing may include asking who benefited from our definition of “good.”
Did it leave room for a no?
Did it allow us to recognize harm?
Could we disappoint someone and still be worthy of love?
Could we become ourselves without being accused of becoming someone bad?
We should not have to prove that we are still good in order to deserve safety, dignity or the freedom to make our own choices.
I want more for my daughter than the ability to admire courage in a story. I want her to know that she is allowed to practice courage, freedom, hope, independence, questioning or deep conviction in her own life, including when it inconveniences me, I don’t fully agree with her or when I don’t completely get her why. I want her to be able to disagree with me without fearing that our relationship depends on her surrender.
And when I get that wrong, I want to be willing to listen, take responsibility and make changes - not ask her to call my discomfort her disobedience or my disagreement her mistake.
That is where this connection becomes more than nostalgia for me. It becomes a question about the kind of belonging I am willing to offer.
The girls we grew up with and the conversations we’re having now absolutely meet religious trauma.
Note: This independent commentary reflects my personal interpretations of American Girl stories and their connection to my experience and work concerning religious trauma. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by American Girl or Mattel.
This article is not intended to treat or diagnose any condition.
Rebekah is not a licensed therapist or clinician. Any advice or opinions given on this site are strictly her own observations and insights based on personal experiences and study. It should in no way take the place of professional assistance.