Why the Basement Exists (and Why You Probably Belong Here)

I didn’t build this basement because I’m holy.
I built it because I’m ruined.

And honestly? That’s the whole point.

I spent most of my life trying to be the kind of person institutions approve of — the church girl who never asked too many questions, the recovering addict who stayed quiet, the queer woman who tried to fold herself into shapes that made everyone else more comfortable. I tried to earn grace by shrinking myself. I tried to survive shame by pretending it didn’t burn.

But shame is a wildfire, and pretending never saved anyone.

So I crawled into the metaphorical church basement — the place where the misfits go, the place where truth has permission to smell like sweat and grief and coffee that’s been sitting out since 2013 — and I built something I wish existed when I needed it most.

A sanctuary for the unchurchable.
A halfway house for the spiritually homeless.
A confessional for the queer, the broken, the grieving, the recovering, the soft, the angry, the tired.
A place where nothing is sacred and everything is meaningful.

The Feral Church Basement wasn’t born from ambition.
It was born from survival.

I made this space for the ones who still feel the ghost of the sanctuary but can’t walk back into the building.
I made it for the ones who left religion but still crave ritual.
I made it for the ones who carry too much history in their bones and not enough forgiveness in their pockets.
I made it for the ones who heal sideways — messy, backwards, feral — because that’s the only direction that feels honest.

And maybe most of all, I made it for me.

Because I needed a place where my queerness wasn’t a footnote.
Where my recovery wasn’t a warning label.
Where my trauma didn’t make me unclean.
Where my desire for meaning didn’t make me naive.
Where my story didn’t need to be polished to be worth reading.

If you’re here, you probably needed that too — even if you didn’t realize it until this exact moment.

You belong here not because you’re perfect, but because you’re human.
You belong because you survived things you don’t talk about out loud.
You belong because you’re still soft, even after everything.
You belong because healing isn’t holy — it’s feral. And you’re doing it anyway.

The basement exists to give you a seat in the dark where no one asks you to perform your pain or sanitize your story.
It’s a place to rebuild yourself without pretending you were never broken.
A place to wear your ruin like a relic instead of a curse.

So pull up a folding chair, babe.
The lights are flickering, the prayers are unhinged, and the saints here are anything but pure.

Welcome home.

— Beverly, founder, heretic, recovering saint