EXPLORING FLUID SPIRITUALITY AND DECONSTRUCTING DEEP-ROOTED BELIEFS w DANAE CASTEEL

What if your firmly-held beliefs were challenged and reshaped in a way that changed your life? In our latest podcast episode, we have an illuminating talk with Danae Casteel, a spiritual life coach who specialises in deconstructing such deeply entrenched beliefs. Raised in a fundamentalist evangelical Christian denomination, Danae shares her transformative journey of questioning her beliefs, reshaping her values, and rebuilding her community and spirituality.

We delve into the profound effect our environment has on shaping our beliefs and values and how openness to fresh perspectives can lead to a paradigm shift. Danae's experience serves as a testament to the power of narratives, and how hearing others' stories can lead to a reinterpretation of personal beliefs. We also discuss the struggle of transitioning from deconstruction to reconstruction of beliefs and values, the importance of community, and the wisdom in acknowledging that we don't always have all the answers.

Wrapping up, we touch upon the concept of fluid spirituality and personal growth after such a transformative journey. Danae introduces her Deconstruction Starter Kit, a valuable resource for anyone embarking on a journey similar to hers.  Join us for this conversation as we explore life's uncertainties and discover new avenues to spiritual health and wholeness. Tune in now to learn, unlearn, and relearn. It's a potent reminder that the journey to self-discovery is as important as the destination itself.

CONNECT HERE:

HANNAH: https://www.instagram.com/hannahkategarner/

DANAE:
website: http://dconstructioncoaching.com
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d.constructionist/

Ref in episode:
How I Changed My Mind: http://dconstructioncoaching.com/blog/how-i-changed-my-mind
How I Changed My Mind About Sexual Orientation: http://dconstructioncoaching.com/blog/how-i-changed-my-mind-about-sexual-orientation 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:25

Hello and welcome back to empower thyself podcast. I'm your host, hannah Garner. If you're new here, welcome Welcome. I'm really excited that you found this podcast. Please don't forget to subscribe so that you can make sure you get notified of all new episodes and you have the opportunity to go back and listen to all the amazing episodes that I have out Already. And, for those of you that are regular listeners, thank you for always tapping in.

Speaker 1: 1:48

It doesn't go unnoticed. Now I'm really, really looking forward to deep diving in this conversation today, and the reason I am is because it's actually a conversation that I don't think I have heard Many people have, whether that be in a podcast or on YouTube or in different situations. But I think it's probably going to be more common than people realize. And today we're going to be deep diving in the deconstruction around Belief and fluid spirituality and what that looks like from somebody's well, my guest personal experience today. Now, her experience is very much based around religion and Christianity and what her journey looks like. However, before you kind of get put off by that and think, do you know what? I'm not religious, so this isn't going to apply to me, I think the reason this is going to be such a powerful conversation for everybody to tap into is because Deconstructing any beliefs that were so deeply embedded in your reality can be very, very Disorientating once that happens, and rebuilding community and Looking at life in a whole new light, in a different way, is something that I think Quite a few of us go through. So even if this particular Episode and her experience doesn't resonate with you directly, there will definitely be so much that we're covering that probably is relatable and very powerful for you to use and Navigate with within your own life. And also for me personally, this whole fluid spirituality piece is something I'm really passionate about and that can look again Different for everybody. So I can't wait to dive into what that is and what that looks like and see what you guys actually Resonate with them, what you think.

Speaker 1: 3:33

So my guest today is Denea Castile and the Deconstructionist, and she is a spiritual life coach specializing in Deconstruction. She was raised in Christianity a preachers kid, no less and she spent several years in ministry herself as a campus minister, youth minister and involvement and outreach minister. She also has extensive experience as an editor, graphic designer and marketing strategist. Her sacred soul work is to help those who are questioning their faith and or who have been hurt by the church, to process their grief, deconstruct their belief system and rebuild towards spiritual health and wholeness. Regardless of whether others journeys lead them, denea's desire is that they have. They don't have to walk this path alone, so welcome.

Speaker 1: 4:15

Thank you so much for joining me today. Absolutely Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to have this conversation because, as I've mentioned, I don't think it's one that's a very common one, and I'm so excited for people to learn about your personal experience and how that can actually, you know, help people who might find themselves in some similar situations or similar Experiences, even if it's a different situation in life. So, before we go really deep, I think giving your personal background you know what your experience was and what that looks like would be really helpful for the listeners, just to get an idea of where we're going.

Speaker 2: 4:53

Absolutely yeah. So my Background, as you said, is coming from Christianity. I was raised in the church with my parents who, you know, worked in the church. My dad was a preacher, my mom was a stay-at-home mom who supported him in that work, and so my whole life I grew up going to church every single time the doors were open, and I was really entrenched in that and specifically in fundamentalist evangelical Christianity.

Speaker 2: 5:22

And I think that's an important point and I think that's an important distinction to make, because there's so many different branches of Christianity and, as we'll see, there's also so many different branches of spirituality and yet a lot of times there's overlapping experiences through those that I was raised in a really fundamentalist Denomination, which just means that really fixated on being right about your beliefs and a very rigid belief set, and that belief set was Informed every single aspect of our lives. It absolutely formed our identities and Our my entire worldview was based on the things I believed in, coming from religion. So, yeah, that was my background as a kid grew up through that and Even when I went to college and beyond, I still continued to be involved in church and then ended up being hired several different times as a minister myself and through those experiences, especially working with teenagers, who are?

Speaker 2: 6:33

really good at questioning the things that they experience in the world. They're really good at saying this.

Speaker 2: 6:40

In my reality does not match this thing over here that I've been taught and I have questions about it, and so working with teenagers helped me question a lot of my own beliefs and to start to deconstruct those beliefs, and also just having experiences with people who are different from me and hearing their stories and learning about their experiences. Whenever you have a broader perspective, it tends to change your mind about things, and so, yeah, a few years ago, I started to Do Really become more deeply entrenched in deconstruction. I think I had been experiencing it for many, many years, but around 2015 started really questioning a lot about whether what I was taught was that church was the only way, that christianity, religion, a relationship with god and jesus was the only way To have a truly fulfilling life and it was the only way to be a truly good person, and what I was finding as I was leaving church and experiencing a ton of different other things that were affecting how I felt about church and my beliefs. What I found was that outside of church, there were people who were so deeply invested in learning and self growth and how to live life better and and how to experience life to the fullest, and these were concepts and values that resonated strongly with me, and not only were they invested in that topic. They seemed to be succeeding in that arena, in that growth, in that kind of Just student of life journey, more than I saw most christians, you know, succeeding in it, and that Was really pivotal for me.

Speaker 2: 8:48

And yes, deconstruction is also difficult because your entire life is oftentimes built on your beliefs and your values and if you grew up in religion or spirituality of any kind, that's generally where we receive those values from, and so it did. It felt like my world was falling apart a little bit and I definitely lost all of my community because I love church and it was. It was disorienting, like you said, it was scary, it was very painful, um, and I felt very lost for quite a while but bit by bit built back up. Finding community, um in small places here and there looked very different from finding it in one consolidated place like a church.

Speaker 2: 9:34

But I did find it, and through those friendships, and through their experiences, and through my own, I guess my own investment in that growth and learning.

Speaker 2: 9:45

I pieced myself back together in an entirely new way, but I had to do it very much alone in a lot of ways, especially from a spiritual aspect, and so, oh, I guess it's about almost four years ago now. Um, I did that thing called the clarity quest, which is a book by Pamela Amundsen. Highly recommend it if you are coming upon a crossroads of major decisions and you don't know how to proceed in life. And it's just a book that walks you through eight weeks of how to get clarity around whatever issue in your life, and the last week is spent in a sort of sabbatical away from home so you can really concentrate. Otherwise, it's like you know, you would kind of invest two hours a week in your regular life.

Speaker 2: 10:29

And I went to the desert, the high desert in Arizona, which is one of my favorite places. I went camping by myself and finished out the clarity quest and was a little skeptical whether I'd receive the answers I was hoping for. But I did, and the answers I received was that I wanted to spend the rest of my life helping people go through this process, that I had to go through a womb, and I don't care where their journey leads them, as far as? Does it lead them back to Christianity and to God? Does it lead them into atheism? Does it lead them into a whole different spiritual practice of some sort or a different religion? I have no concerns about where it leads them, as long as it increases their spiritual health and wholeness, and they're the only ones who get to define what that is. My only hope is that no one else has to go through it alone. So yeah, that's my work now.

Speaker 1: 11:21

Yeah, amazing, and I think that really sets the tone for this conversation. And just to be clear, obviously some people you know might be listening to this who are Christian, and this isn't by no means any bashing of any religion or anything like that. This is just an experience and a situation that you were in. But I think what's really important is to touch on this, because it's such a difficult situation to find yourself in. In any situation whereby your whole identity is being questioned, whether that be in a religious aspect or in any part of your life, because that can happen to so many people, regardless of whether it's to do with religion. You can question your whole. You know your childhood experiences, what, and then all of a sudden you're like this was my reality, but this isn't what everybody else experienced. Hold on a minute.

Speaker 1: 12:13

What's right, what's wrong, what's you know what's helpful, what's not helpful can be so disorientating and the level of cognitive dissonance that can be there at that moment in time can be difficult to navigate through and can be so, like you say, scary and fearful, especially doing it alone.

Speaker 1: 12:34

And that's why I really wanted to talk about it in today's conversation, because, whether you've experienced it in this way or not, people are still going to experience having to deconstruct certain beliefs that their whole identity was built upon, even as such as things that I've mentioned in another podcast. Rich people are evil because that's what your parents said. That belief in itself can stop you earning money in ways that you can't like. It might not look like this, but there's certain situations where beliefs that you had no longer serve you. So I would love for you to just share your experience specifically around what kind of beliefs you had that suddenly maybe didn't tie up. You know you mentioned that you had teenagers questioning these things like I know this, but I can see this is happening in a way that I can't ever. I can see this is happening over here. What kind of things did that look like for you? Because I think sharing that will be really helpful for people to understand, kind of how this kind of deconstruction started, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 13:37

Yeah, I think teenagers are really good at questioning because it's not so scary to them yet. And I think the older we get, the harder it is to question things, because we do recognize the implications of once you start to pull it. One thread or one brick and it is kind of my favorite analogy is you have kind of this tower of beliefs and values and you pulled out one brick to examine it. It can affect the structure of everything else and everything else starts crumbling. Or if I'm quote, unquote wrong about this, what else could I be wrong about? And sometimes it's not even about being wrong, it's about not being fully right or fully informed.

Speaker 1: 14:20

And.

Speaker 2: 14:20

I think that's where perspective and stories come in. For example, you know most so I grew up in very conservative evangelical Christianity, and so a lot of the beliefs I had to deconstruct were ones that are somewhat controversial, especially in America right now, and so one of those things would be the gay community. Homosexuality, gay marriage those kinds of things I was taught very strictly in black and white terms, were wrong, and yet I had friends who were gay, that were awesome people and who lived beautiful lives, and I did not see anything that represented the bad or the evil or the immoral. That, I was taught, was part of that experience, and you know, and that was just one of many examples Another one was that I was raised very patriarchal where women weren't technically lesser, just different, but that there were limits to what women could do.

Speaker 2: 15:31

And what I found as I got older, especially when I was in church leadership was that sometimes women not because they were a woman necessarily, but that there were women who were more qualified for certain experiences or leadership positions or whatever then some of the men were simply based on their, their giftedness, their talents, their experiences in the career world just their natural personalities, things like that, and that being a man was not a good enough qualification in and of itself, but that the individual person needed to be the right person for whatever job.

Speaker 2: 16:16

And so that was something I learned in ministry and that flew in the face of everything I'd been taught. And so those kinds of things where you have the experiences and you start saying this doesn't jive with what I was taught. And I think part of that I realize, especially when I was working with teenagers, is that we teach specifically in religious settings. But I think this is true outside of religious settings we teach children in very black and white terms. We teach them and that's partly because they're so young that cognitively they can only understand so much, but we also don't. Because we put it in such strict white, black and white term, sometimes we don't leave room for them to grow in that belief or teaching as they get older and can handle more. And it makes me think I was a preschool teacher for a few years, many years ago, and it makes me think about how, in my threes and fours classes, I would teach kids the colors of the rainbow.

Speaker 2: 17:18

They learned red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. They oftentimes learn pink and brown and black as well, but I didn't teach them lavender or turquoise or the difference between, you know, dark red and regular red and orangey red. I didn't teach them all of those nuances. I taught them what they were capable of that age. But that foundation gave them a place to grow from.

Speaker 2: 17:47

So that way, as they get into school and further into their art classes or whatever other experiences, they are ready to learn that lavender is a lighter color of purple. They're ready to learn about the various shades of gray, and it wasn't. It's not that we teach them the colors of the rainbow in preschool as a defined set of colors and there are no others, but the way we teach beliefs and values often tends to be much more boxed in and doesn't allow for that nuance as they get older. And so then teenagers start to recognize that, huh, life does not look like this black and white box. I was provided and I don't understand what these other colors are that I'm seeing, and I started realizing that we needed to teach life to teens to anybody in a way that allowed them to see all the various colors in life.

Speaker 2: 18:46

And to even understand, as they older and older, that there are colors that exist that we can't see, that there are things we don't understand.

Speaker 2: 18:53

yet and that's okay, but that doesn't mean they don't exist and sometimes even recognizing that some people see more colors than other people you know my partner is colorblind. I can see a broader spectrum of color than he can. Does that mean his way of seeing things is wrong? No, it's just his experience. Does it mean that when I see a color that he can't and you know really comprehend, does that mean I'm making it up?

Speaker 2: 19:19

No, that's my experience, that's his experience, and I think that translates really well to spiritual experiences, religious experiences and anything that has to do with your values and beliefs, your ideology that you might see something and go well, that's purple, and I might see it and go, that's blue. And neither one of us has to be wrong. It's just about our perspective and I think a lot of times religion makes the mistake of teaching things in very clear right and wrong boxes. That doesn't allow for there to be different people's experiences. And as I got older and learned other people's stories and gain that perspective, it actually gave me increased compassion, which I think is what specifically Christianity and I think really any religion and spirituality is so invested in, at least theoretically is to have greater compassion and love in this life.

Speaker 2: 20:12

And I found that gaining broader perspective gave me greater compassion, and I think that's always a good thing.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Yeah, yeah, I think that's so eloquently put and such a great way of explaining it. But I do think what's really interesting is that you're right. There is so much, and this is arguably so. My parents my dad, is Roman Catholic by background, my mom is not, and I know as a child very much. We weren't brought up to religious because, again, there was that questioning of you know stuff happens and what that does not necessarily show the qualities of being you know, love thy neighbor, ensuring that you show more compassion to people, and that was something that for a long time myself I didn't like religion because I saw these.

Speaker 1: 21:05

I'm a very questioning person and I'm a very critical thinker and have been. I've always questioned things. I've always been the devil's advocate since I was little, and it's been a pain in my ass for myself, you know, but it is just the way that I'm, my brain is wired. I've always questioned things. If it doesn't make sense to me and if somebody says something, I'll still say, well, what you've just said still doesn't align to what you're sharing. But that's why I was very being brought up. I wasn't like anti religion, but I didn't understand how people could be so black and white with something and I was like but you're telling me you need the. You know that this is to be a good person, a compassionate person, and this or that. Yeah, we know that things happen from people of all religions that are not compassionate, that are not love thy neighbor, that are not good things, and so that in itself was something for me. But also as well, I think you know just the whole outside of that.

Speaker 1: 22:02

In life, everything's so nuanced and the older you get, the more experience you get. But I think it's very hard to undo, especially as you move into adulthood, those very black and white beliefs, because if you've spent the last 20 to 25, 30, 35, 40 years having them ingrained in you, to just suddenly say, well, they don't exist is is almost impossible for the brain to comprehend. So when you were experiencing this deconstruction, like you said, you were seeing, you know, don't you know, being gay or homosexual, anything like that was really, you know, not okay under your belief system you were brought up about, versus actually seeing others experiences who were your friends. How did you start navigating that deconstruction of the belief and trying to figure out Okay, well, where do I actually stand on this? Is this my belief, or just what I've been told is my belief? And how did that work?

Speaker 1: 23:00

Because I think that part is the part that most people struggle with, whether it be in religion, whether it be outside, as I mentioned earlier with an example about you know, rich people are evil. Is that just what my parents said, or is that what's actually true? Where do is that other truths that exist? How did you navigate that?

Speaker 2: 23:17

Because that's that's a very tricky point to find yourself in Absolutely, and I'm gonna throw out another example that popped in my head.

Speaker 2: 23:25

I think I don't know how prevalent this belief is outside of Christianity, because that's my experience, that's what I know, but I know that a lot of women specifically are their identity is tied to motherhood, that they're supposed to be a mother, that they're supposed to be a good mother, they're supposed to be the kind of mother that wants to stay home and take care of their children, etc. Etc. There's expectations of some level of motherhood placed on women in most societies, especially in the Western world, and I think that's really tough when either you don't want children or you can't have children, or your children are now grown up and now you're an empty nester, or you are thrown into some sort of situation where you're a single parent and you now have to also work. Maybe you even loved being a stay at home mom and now you have to work and you're struggling. That's such an identity thing that has to do with your values and your beliefs and and how you experience the world and how people in the world experience you and perceive you.

Speaker 2: 24:30

I think that's another great example of where, depending on your circumstances or your own desires, you can really struggle with a deconstruction experience of what do I do now. For me so it was always stories. I've always said knowing a person's story changes everything, and so, specifically with the topic of homosexuality, I had always had friends who were gay all the way from high school on up and always got along with them really well, and I actually have a whole blog post on how I changed my mind about sexual orientation and but one of the key things that happened was in 2012,.

Speaker 2: 25:14

I believe I had a friend come to me who was also Christian. He was in the same church I was in. A young single man who came to me one day in my office and said I'm gay. And he had not told anyone.

Speaker 2: 25:28

And he had been really struggling with it because he also been taught this is wrong. And he had kind of come to a critical place that summer where he either wanted to end his life or he needed to accept this about himself that God was not going to change him. There was no level of prayer he could do. He had tried everything to change himself. He either needed to accept himself as he was or not be anymore, and so he decided to accept himself as he was, which is beautiful and hard so courageous.

Speaker 2: 26:03

But it now left him with the dilemma of I've been taught all these things and I still believe in God. I still want to be a Christian, but how do I reconcile my faith with my sexuality? And he suspected I was a safe person because I had gotten riled up in a conversation about something that had to do with Christians boycotting Chick-fil-A and or Christians flocking to Chick-fil-A because Chick-fil-A was supposedly against LGBTQ rights and it was a whole thing. And I got riled up and about it in a conversation once and he was like I think she might be safe. So he came and talked to me about it.

Speaker 2: 26:38

I said here's the thing I don't know what to believe about this either, and I had been putting off dealing with this belief for like a decade or more. I just have tried to not think about it much because I don't like it. I don't like what I was taught to believe based on my experiences. And so he and I started reading books and in that particular framework we were trying to reconcile. How can we be Christians who take God seriously, take the Bible seriously, but also are accepting and loving of the LGBTQ community and specifically him?

Speaker 1: 27:17

personally.

Speaker 2: 27:19

And so we started reading a lot the Bible and other books, other people's experiences, and through that really deconstructed our actual beliefs in the Bible, verses that had led to them, and found that we no longer believed that the Bible said it was wrong, that there had been mistranslations that led people to think it was wrong, led people to think the Bible clearly says XYZ and that wasn't true.

Speaker 2: 27:46

So that helped that we were able to kind of dive into it almost academically with research right, and that was a really beautiful experience going through that with him and just hearing his stories, hearing other people's stories through those books, through meeting them at meetings. We lived close to a university and we'd started going to pride events and that really informed our beliefs and our passions. From that point on and I think I tended to do that with everything for a while- where.

Speaker 2: 28:21

I felt the need to reconcile whatever belief with what the Bible said and I found like again the issue of women and their roles in church and in life. Again, I found that the Bible itself did not support what I had grown up believing, but it had been interpreted in specific ways to create that belief and that there were other ways of interpreting that Mm, hmm.

Speaker 2: 28:49

It's possible that no one's wrong and everyone's right, or that we're allowed to interpret things however we want.

Speaker 2: 28:56

I don't really have great answers for that, but I know that I was able to reconcile all of my beliefs within the framework that I had started with, even though I changed the details right.

Speaker 2: 29:10

So I changed the belief, but it was still within the framework of Christianity and the Bible and things like that.

Speaker 2: 29:16

As I got older and further into my deconstruction, I became much less concerned about what the Bible said and I still think it's a great text in a lot of ways for information and history and stories and even lessons and examples but it no longer became something that guided me so rigidly. But what I've learned is that for people who do want and feel that need for the Christian Bible to guide them, there is room for beliefs to change even within that framework. And so I changed my beliefs within that framework before I tore that framework down, and it started with hearing stories and then seeking out more stories, and I think that we underestimate how powerful it is to hear the people's experiences, because when I hear your story and then I hear another person's story that is so similar, and then another, and then another, and then another. It becomes this thing where I go. Maybe this isn't just one person's experience. Maybe there's, like you know, capital T, truth under here and that's very powerful for changing your beliefs.

Speaker 1: 30:35

Yeah, absolutely, and I think what you've shared. There is something that I've kind of touched upon in other episodes, but not in the same way you've so eloquently put, and that is actually when you have a belief that is so strong and so rigid, in order to start overcoming that belief, sometimes it is as simple as looking for another truth of the same belief. Does a does another experience, does another scenario completely contradicting to this belief exist? If the answer is yes, then that means there is multiple truths.

Speaker 1: 31:12

And if that's the case, that means that belief itself is not just as black and white as I first thought. And I think having that awareness and it is getting to that point of self awareness, like you say, where it's like, OK, well, hold on a minute, I thought this, but I've got an awareness now that maybe other experiences exist and because of that that also means multiple truths can exist at the same time, and I think that's a really powerful way to dive into it. But it's not easy. It's not easy to accept that, particularly when that's all you've ever known and that's where it becomes. This journey, like you mentioned and it's what you shared was so powerful and so courageous, both from your personal perspective, what you went through, but also supporting someone else through that. And you mentioned about starting to do research and starting to find other experiences and stories. But, leading on from that, you mentioned about having to rebuild community, because I can imagine this experience is so isolating If you have only ever known this group of people who believe this group of things in a very set structure, in a very particular way, to even have the courage to potentially speak to people within that community, because there is always a risk that you get shunned, you get told that you're wrong, it can set off a catalyst of events that can be really traumatic or it potentially, in your situation when this guy approached you be a safe haven because he was able to identify okay. Well, in this case, Denei appears to be somebody that I can trust, regardless of whether what I'm about to say is wrong. Per our current belief system, how did you start rebuilding that community?

Speaker 1: 33:04

Because for me, I think, as humans, a lot of the time, the reason we stick with in our belief system so strongly and we have this level of cognitive dissonance is not because we're bad or we're ignorant or we want to do that. It's because, as humans, we have basic needs of survival and wanting to fit in. And if we are about to not fit in, that leaves us open to exposure to danger, and our bodies don't want us to be exposed to danger and therefore sometimes it's easier to stay within those confines than to go outside of that. And I think not only in this conversation, where you're going to share your experience, have we had that. I'm witnessing that around COVID, around lockdowns, around what's going on in America generally at the moment and the rest of the world is a lot of people are so afraid to go outside because we're safer in numbers.

Speaker 1: 33:59

As a human, being it's safer to be in numbers To question the status quo, to go outside of that to critical think or maybe safely be able to express my opinion is not always or the body leads us to believe it's not safe to do so. How did you navigate that and start rebuilding that community? Because that sounds like a very scary step for somebody who might not have people to lean upon at that moment in time.

Speaker 2: 34:27

Absolutely. It is a very scary experience and I think it does keep a lot of people trapped in places that are not safe for them, in places where they feel very lonely, in their communities even, but that's still a known and a familiar and that still feels safer leaving it, and I think I was that way to some extent. I will say I do actually have a whole blog post on the phenomenon of how we change our minds about things, and it's something I became a little bit of a geek about reading all these different books and articles about why it is it's so hard to change our minds and how do we change our minds about things. And it's exactly what you said. It's that you know, if you believe in evolution.

Speaker 2: 35:10

Obviously you know, not everyone does but based on evolution theory, the experience of people humans coming into community was an involved trait that helped us survive. We survive better in community. That's how our species survives better and, in order to exist in community, thought and beliefs and practices that are assimilating help us get along better and therefore we work better together and therefore we survive more likely, and so that experience has shaped the way that humans reason, and our human reasoning is actually not based on logic. It is based on this evolved trait of staying safe, and I always found that so fascinating and I did not say it anywhere nearly as well as the authors do that I read, but it was just a really fascinating topic for me to kind of dive into, and I do think that we tend to stay in spaces that are not necessarily best for us, and I think this is also true in even individual relationships. We talk about 100% right.

Speaker 2: 36:26

Just a one-on-one relationship, whether it's with a parent or a friend or a partner. We oftentimes stay in relationships that are no longer healthy for us and possibly no longer healthy for either person, because it's familiar and that seems safe. In my case, I left church somewhat unintentionally. I knew I needed a break from my current church. I was serving as an involvement and outreach minister at the time and my husband at the time was also very involved and we were both feeling very disconnected, even though we were very involved and we realized we kind of needed a break from everything. But you can't take a break from serving in a church that you're serving in, because people are all still going to come to you with questions and needs and expectations. So we decided we would kind of take a sabbatical from that church that we were with and we had been at for seven years and just go to another church just on Sunday mornings, just sit and be spectators of church for a little while and just, you know, get the rest that we needed.

Speaker 2: 37:37

And things happened during those few months that were hurtful to us being ignored, being forgotten, being neglected by the church we had been members of for seven years and had been so involved in, and that led us to eventually just leave that church altogether. And we spent three years, you know, hunting for a new church, and during those three years I had two pregnancies and two babies and so I spent a lot of time not going to church on Sunday mornings because sleep was more valuable and I found I did not miss church as much as I thought I would. I missed community very much and sometimes I missed church, but not as much as I thought I would. And when I left my church I was very not purposefully shunned but forgotten by people who just go on with their lives and if they don't see you, they don't see you and they forget. And that's very natural, it's very human. It's unfortunately common that when someone stops showing up, we forget to check in on them and that's not good, healthy community.

Speaker 2: 38:56

But it is understandable to an extent, and I think that was very hurtful to me that all of a sudden I had no local friends to turn to or at least I felt that way because I hadn't talked to them, they weren't checking in on me, and that was when I started seeking out community in the cybersphere you know, online and it was when I I mean it was like on Instagram you know you follow an account, someone who may write about things that are really compelling like living life well and you know self growth, whatever and you start to see the same people commenting on their posts over and over, because they also follow them and are invested in that same work or thought.

Speaker 2: 39:44

And you start to connect with them a little bit as you respond to their comments and you comment a lot and it's so strange really to create community online and yet that's exactly what happened to me was I took whatever little bit of communal feeling I could from those spaces and I actually ended up meeting one of my dear in real life friends via comment sections on Instagram like that, and I which I think is so cool that you know that can translate to in real life at some point.

Speaker 2: 40:26

I think that it's important to have in person community, but I think when we don't have in person community in our day and age, where we do have the technology to create community across hemispheres, that we should take advantage of it.

Speaker 2: 40:43

Find people who are invested in the same questions that you're invested in, who are investing in questions at all, and you know it's what you were saying earlier that it was tough for you with religion, younger, because you questioned, and I think that's something that not all religions, but Christianity, and I think specifically Western Christianity, does not do a good job of right now.

Speaker 2: 41:05

They do not do a good job at allowing room for questions and there's always exceptions but I think, in general, we've not done a good job of creating an environment that invites questioning, that invites doubt, that invites different perspectives. I think that's an area that could be improved upon, because when you are a questioner, sometimes you get ostracized for it. So, seeking spaces where people are interested in the same topics as you and have questions, that they have questions they don't know at all, they're willing to admit they don't know at all, they're willing to have conversations, to explore topics together, to share their experiences, to listen to your experiences, and that can be found online when you are in that in between time of in person community.

Speaker 2: 41:55

So that was one that was kind of the first step for me was.

Speaker 2: 41:59

I happened to just kind of stumble upon that unintentionally, but now I advise people to do it purposefully. You know, that's something that I kind of lucked out in and I think it was helpful for me as I took the time to find in person community and then I started reconnecting with some of my old friends that I'd known for years, but we lived in different places. Some of them are former students of mine who were realizing that I was also maybe either dissolution with the church or not as fundamental as I either had been before or as they thought I was before, and they also were either deconstructing or no longer in church. And so then all of a sudden they realized I was a safe space to talk about that experience and so reconnected with former students and old friends none of them that lived locally to me, but still people who I did know in real life and already had a relationship with. And so those conversations via texting or phone calls, even video chatting, anything like that, was really helpful because it was like that next step of it's still long distance, based on technology, but these are people I have had an in real life experience in relationship with, and through that experience I kind of created this little motley core of about five people. Maybe that became my close friends and became my community. But I didn't live near any of them and I finally, about a year ago, knew that I wanted to move closer to where I could find in person community and so I moved to where I currently live, which is Raleigh, north Carolina, because I had two very close in person friends here that had become part of that very core community and we had been long distance for so long but had visited each other and usually saw each other once or twice a year and so finally having in person community that way.

Speaker 2: 44:08

Not everyone has the ability to move, but that's how I did it. I also when I was I lived in Myrtle Beach before this and I try to do things like take classes or join meetup groups or volunteer, but I was lucky enough that this was all happening during the pandemic lockdowns, which made it very difficult to create friendships in real life. But I did gain through those experience, through with a meetup group. I did gain one in person friend who I'm still good friends with and so, yeah, you just kind of it looks different, because it's not that consolidated community like church necessarily that you may not.

Speaker 2: 44:48

You might may not find that quite the same way again if that's what you grew up used to, but but you do find it. You do find those people who align with you, that are willing to grow with you, that are fine with disagreeing, that you no longer have to be the same as people who value our differences, and and you find that, and my, my little community of five is probably doubled by now, where my close community is probably 10 people now and I have friends outside of that. But you know, my, my core community gets bigger and bigger over time as we kind of add on to each other. You know, we introduce each other to each other's friends and and it's a really beautiful thing and I love that I think that whether you're intentional with the going to meetups and volunteering or finding outside experiences to seek out friends, or whether it's happenstance where you happen to connect with an old friend, either way I think it is important that we seek out in person relationships but in the meantime take advantage of the technology we have.

Speaker 1: 45:55

Yeah, 100%, and I think what's really useful about sharing that is because, especially when you've gone through this, you know potentially very traumatic experience. You know undoing everything you've believed can be very traumatic. It's not necessarily a straight healing journey. It's not a straight line for people. Using an online space is very easy in comparison to in person, because you can seek out specific groups that have a specific thing that you're looking for or you can also practice building community online with it. But it's much easier to remove yourself if you don't want to be in it anymore or if you don't want to do it. So or you know, you find out actually, you know I'm not really vibing with these particular people and there's nothing wrong with that, but you can have a play about and I think that's a really useful tool. Not to mention, you know we always criticize social media and there are a lot of negatives to it, but there are so many positives. Even for me, from my experience, I've had more connections found for the podcast of them become in real life friends or women that I can go to for advice and help on certain things that actually I would never have found if I wasn't in the online space because I would be physically impossible to connect with somebody like yourself in America or somewhere else on the globe. That wouldn't be possible in real life if you're living, you know, 10 hours away or whatever, a 10 hour flight away. So I think that's a really useful tip. But in person is definitely something that as humans we are all lacking at the moment, particularly post COVID.

Speaker 1: 47:31

And just to kind of add into this now, I actually did an episode, literally the episode, before recording this one. I'll link it in the show notes and you know everything we've mentioned in this conversation will be linked in the show notes. I actually did a community building, a friendship building episode with somebody else, because it is something that as adults, we do struggle with anyway. It's not something that necessarily comes naturally to us, you know, we really do have to put ourselves out there.

Speaker 1: 47:59

But one thing I'd like to say is from what you mentioned is it's very, very, very important to realize you're not alone. There are going to be people going through the same thing as you or similar, who want, who are craving the same things as you. You just might not be able to see it in your current situation. So not giving up on that and realizing. Yes, it might seem like a really distant thing for you to find something outside of where you currently are, but it does exist. It has, it always exists. And so having the belief that, okay, I might not be able to see where that community is right now, but if I go, put myself out there, I'll find it, that should give you the hope to actually go and do it. And I think that's realizing. That is a really powerful energetic shift from thinking oh, this is the only community I know and how am I ever going to replace this? And I think that's really important to mention.

Speaker 2: 48:57

So I love that.

Speaker 1: 48:58

Yeah, following on from the community building piece, then you obviously are now at a stage where you've deconstructed your beliefs, you've started building a new community and you know you're in a situation where Christianity and your, your belief system may be completely in question, may be completely deconstructed by this point. You then, how did you then move into a space of this fluid spirituality? How did you get to a point where you thought, okay, I know, I still have certain beliefs, I want to have certain connection with a higher power, god, whatever you want to insert here for your own personal beliefs. How did you get to a space where you were? You were comfortable with that Because, obviously, going from being a, you know, fundamentalist evangelicus, is that even evangelical? Yeah, that's, that was a bit of a tongue twister. Then it is From that to where you are now. What did that look like? How did you start exploring? Obviously, now I've deconstructed these beliefs, what are my new beliefs? What do I believe? Where do I? How do I want to sit on that spectrum?

Speaker 2: 50:07

Absolutely. I think that's actually a big part of deconstruction is that at some point you need to reconstruct. And there are people in the deconstruction kind of world and that work who will buck against this idea. And I understand why, because oftentimes people will use the term reconstruction or rebuilding to mean that you have to rebuild that same faith, and I don't use that term that way. When I say that it is important to reconstruct after deconstruction, I mean that you need to reconstruct what do I believe and what are my core values, what is my purpose, who am I and what do I want to do in this world. And that might be something that you can do and return to the same framework you came from before. Like you can return to Christianity and maybe find a different church that aligns with you better, and I have friends who have done that. I have clients that have done that.

Speaker 2: 51:07

And I think that's beautiful. Not everyone does do that and I also think that's beautiful. Sometimes the healing is in the staying, sometimes the healing is in the leaving and that is a per person experience and only the individual can decide which one is right for them. And I think for me, once I left church I started having just increasing experiences where I found especially former students coming to me because they had left church and they saw I had become. I was called myself the accidental activist because I got into the social justice activism space somewhat accidentally.

Speaker 2: 51:52

I didn't quite realize that that was the trajectory my life was going to go in, but very thankful for it. But with putting that information that hey, I'm doing this protest or hey, I'm, you know, seeking signatures for XYZ, and I started putting those things on social media, it gave other people from my world that I had connected with across many years to see that and go, oh, she's no longer like this, the way I was, she's now like that, like I am now too.

Speaker 2: 52:26

And so it creates a new connection where we now have a different foundation for the same relationship, and so I started having, especially former students, but also other peers, reaching out to me and connecting. Everything's like that, and I think that that helped me again, hearing their stories and their experiences. It helped me one, like you said, realize I'm not alone. I'm not the only one experiencing this. But it also made me increasingly see that church was not the only place to be moral, to be good, to find community.

Speaker 2: 53:04

And I always say that, having grown up in the church, and specifically so intimately in ministry whether as a preacher's kid, you know, or as an adult, actually as a pastor I have seen the church at its most beautiful and there are beautiful things about that form of community, but I've also seen it at its ugliest, and what I found was that all the things that I sought in church I could experience outside of church. Not the message I was taught growing up, but that was the reality I experienced and for me personally, that felt like a healthier experience to find community outside of it, and I have plenty of clients and friends who still want to and do, seek it inside of it. That's great and I love that we can still be friends even though we chose different paths, and I think, that's just so great.

Speaker 2: 54:02

I think my experience of deconstruction, the scariness, the lostness, the trauma, even that when you said it helped me in some ways be less scared of the unknown because I survived the unknown. I survived, in some ways, one of the worst things I could have ever imagined when I was younger. And when you become less afraid of the unknown, it creates room in your life to feel comfortable with the unknown, and I became increasingly comfortable with I don't know. I don't know what I think about that, I don't know what I believe about that.

Speaker 2: 54:47

I had started embracing that when I was teaching teenagers, because they would ask questions that I didn't have the answers for and, unlike many teachers who will either make something up or shut down the conversation or redirect, I would flat out say I don't know, and I've had so many of them come to me years later and go. That was one of the most powerful things to me was to have an adult tell me I don't know, and it made me realize it's okay to not know everything and I think that's powerful. Regardless of the sphere you're in, whether you, whatever your career, industry, your, your parenting, your friendships, I think no matter the arena, it is unspeakably influential to be able to say I don't know to something.

Speaker 2: 55:33

And that that makes that end of itself, makes other people feel safer with you and feel more confident in themselves.

Speaker 2: 55:40

And so I think that's one of the most valuable lessons I learned was that it is okay to not only say I don't know, but to not know. Yeah, it's okay to not have all the answers. And that was not how it was raised. We were supposed to have an answer for everything. And I became increasingly okay with not having answers and exploring. And I think I'm a natural, like I'm always called myself a student of life. Actually, my teenagers coined that phrase for me. I love learning. I, like you, I'm a natural questioner and so I just started exploring other beliefs, other ideas, other practices, and I kind of make it a habit to explore new things every year, even still, just even though I kind of feel more subtle in my spiritual spirituality now, just for the sake of learning and gaining perspective. It does also help that. It helps my work and helps me help my clients. The more.

Speaker 2: 56:37

I know you, but I think I would do it for myself regardless, where I just want to explore different belief systems, different spiritual practices and broaden my horizons with that, and so I think that's a valuable practice to just learn and explore. I have a tool I use for my clients to help them kind of see which sort of like world belief systems slash religions that they most align with based on their beliefs, and sometimes that helps us direct. I had a client who really wanted to explore Taoism because he aligned so much with that with this tool, and so we did, and I think that's that's great to just explore new ideas, see what resonates with you and you know, if it doesn't, that's okay, you can just chalk it up to a great experience, and if it does resonate with you, you are better off for it than you have taken another step towards spiritual health and wholeness. So, yeah, I became very comfortable with not knowing, and I don't think that's easy for everybody. It wasn't necessarily easy for me, but I do think maybe it might have been easier for me than others, just based on personality. It was harder to tell my parents things like I don't know or I don't have all the answers, but in the rest of my life it became something I became very comfortable with and in exploring other things and deciding this works for me and this doesn't, and sort of taking this sort of buffet style to my spirituality, which I had been told growing up in Christianity was like the worst thing you could do was doing buffet style spirituality or Christianity. And so I but that's what I did was taking what resonated, taking what felt good, taking what healed my body, what healed my mind, and continuing to use those things as long as they served me. And I think that's key to that.

Speaker 2: 58:41

This idea of fluid spirituality is it's okay to let your practices and beliefs change over time, because what serves me right now may serve me for the next year, but after a year it may no longer provide the same benefit, and that's okay. It's okay to change. It's okay that right now maybe what's really important to me is connecting to nature. Maybe it grounds my body and and helps me really feel embodied, which also then heals my psyche and and my emotions and my thoughts, and but in a year I may not need that practice as much and that's okay, I'm allowed to change. And that's that fluid spirituality where it is okay to not fit in the same box for the rest of your life, and I talk a lot about eclectic spirituality too, which is that no one can put you in a box if you don't want to be, or they can, but you don't have to stay there, and I think labels can be valuable for you, but I don't care about the labels others have for me.

Speaker 2: 59:52

And sometimes, even when you leave a specific belief system, people want to know what's the new box they can put you. They want to be able to understand you and put you in another box, and for me I found I kind of fit in multiple boxes. I had this eclectic spirituality and and for a while I really struggled with what to call myself.

Speaker 1: 1:00:13

Am I a?

Speaker 2: 1:00:13

Christian? Am I a humanist? Am I, you know, my Taoist and what am I? And I finally came to the point that I didn't need a label, at least not one that other people used, and I started calling myself a liminal Christian, meaning that I was in this, in between, that I felt really comfortable in this space between Christianity and whatever else was on the other side and helping people travel back and forth along that that bridge.

Speaker 2: 1:00:42

And and now I don't even really resonate, I think I can still do that but as far as my personal spiritual path, that label doesn't really resonate with me anymore. And so, and that's okay, that's a good, beautiful thing because it helped me in a season in my life and if it's no longer useful, I don't have to use it anymore, and so I can take the pieces of spirituality that helped me be spiritually healthy and whole and push me down that path of greater health and wholeness, and I can let go of all the rest and those pieces can change at any moment, and that's okay. And I kind of wonder if that's how life was supposed to be, if life was supposed to be, even in religion. Yeah, it was okay to change your mind, it was okay to resonate with certain practices more than others at different seasons. That you know, maybe in the Christian world, that for a season of your life prayer really resonates with you, but then in another season that's just not as much of a priority and maybe singing is a greater priority.

Speaker 2: 1:01:42

Or there are going to be seasons where you cling to maybe praise and worship music and other seasons where that's not what you need. You need podcasts that teach you things about the Bible, or and then in another season it's about serving others and understanding others better. Who knows, even in a framework like Christianity, I think it's okay that certain seasons of your life are going to mean that something serve you better than others. So whether you're in a specific religion and that framework, or whether you have a more eclectic spirituality, like me, I think that fluid spirituality is still important and I think it's important to embrace that. I think that that will help you grow in whatever faith path you choose, and I think that again, that translates really well to your professional life and your personal life, your family life as well that there are going to be seasons where certain things, certain practices, certain beliefs, certain values serve you more than in other seasons, and it's okay to let those things transition, and not just okay, but healthy.

Speaker 1: 1:02:44

Yes, yes, everything you just said there was so powerful and the reason that it resonates so strongly with me and, hopefully, my audience, is because the fundamental baseline and reason I started this podcast called empower thyself is because I wanted to share stories, share experiences, share insights, whether with guests or myself, whereby we discuss topics, but within that, I wanted people listening to be able to take what they needed resonate. If they resonated with this, go and explore that further. Leave what doesn't resonate, but accept that we can have different opinions, thoughts, feelings, experiences and still be a community, still stay connected, still stay in a position where, okay, they've experienced that. They believe that I don't believe that whatsoever, but how magical that. That's their experience and this is mine and that was like the fundamental for me. So what you've just explained is literally like a real life example of what that looks like for an individual and something that I'm so passionate about and what the overall arching thing that stands out for me there is that the most powerful thing you can do, whether you are in a religion or whether you're in your own journey of development, whatever that looks like, is getting to know who you are, getting to know your inner being, what that looks like how your intuition works, how your beliefs work, how your values work, what they are and all of those things. Because that then, when you have a strong connection of that, it then allows that fluidity piece to come in, because you know, this is my baseline and I know this so well that actually right now this need is actually been sorted or I, you know I've worked really hard on that. So actually I can focus on this, or my body needs this, or my mind needs this right now, or this is more important to me right now than this. But I still know what all of that looks like.

Speaker 1: 1:04:51

And I think that is the scariest and the hardest part, but also the most powerful and beautiful part of self development, growth, expansion of an individual is figuring out who you are. Once you're able to do that, you are in such a strong position to have that unwavering faith in self that, no matter what happens, like you say, in the unknown, you can still draw from that inner knowing of what you believe and what you are. So, even if you don't know the exact answer, you know I can figure this out because I know me, and I think what happens is when people don't know themselves or have allowed, over time, the conditioning and the experiences and the opinions of outside world, others, family life, all of those things to overtake who they are and what they know about themselves. That is when you get people suffering from anxiety, from depression, from situations where they feel like life is working against them and you know that's a hard realization and some people don't get to that. But if you have that level of awareness to get to, okay, you know we've gone through it, the deconstruction and all of that.

Speaker 1: 1:06:06

You are now in a season of life that opens you up to endless possibilities and that, to me, is very empowering and very amazing. Yes, it might feel scary because it's not all you know, black and white, not known, but literally what you shared was just the exact reason I do this podcast is to make sure that people realize we are changing beings in every moment. Who I was, even a month ago, a day ago, a year ago, is not the same now, because I might have a conversation like this and I'm like hold on a minute. Some of the stuff you shared just completely opened up a new world to me that I wasn't even aware of. What does that now look like for me, what is my new experience, what is my new belief, and it's just that whole openness that allows the magic to happen. So I'm hoping from that that what we've discussed, people can think hold on a minute, let me just see, even if I can just open myself up one percent more than I did yesterday, what's sitting on the other side of that.

Speaker 2: 1:07:08

I love that.

Speaker 1: 1:07:09

Yeah, so that's what you shared was just so powerful, and I hope the listeners really do understand that it's about what resonates for you and getting to know yourself. So we've deep, deep, deep, deep, deep dove into a lot of a lot there and I really do appreciate your vulnerability and your courageousness and sharing your experience. Is there anything else from what we've shared that you think you would like to touch upon or that we may have missed?

Speaker 2: 1:07:35

before we kind of round up the episode Now, I think that we've covered to me what I kind of consider the basics, right. These are the starting points for me when it comes to anybody deconstructing any aspect of their life, specifically, like you said, identity issues. And I always like to tell people to start with, whatever, what is your foundation? And you know, coming from Christianity, my foundation was God and Jesus and as I transitioned I decided I wanted my foundation to be love, because if I stayed in the framework of Christianity and you believe God is love, that means God is to my foundation, but love is also universal and that if I ever decided I didn't believe in God, my foundation could still say the same. And love is this universal, without agenda thing. And so I decided that would be my foundation for every other value, every other choice, my identity, all of it.

Speaker 2: 1:08:33

And I decided that I no longer want to kind of erect a tower of bricks or stones around myself, with every single belief being a stone. That's all set and strong and isolating and kind of cold and lonely. I wanted to do something more like a tent where, like you said, you know you have this sort of this plumb line, this baseline. I kind of think about that. It's the poles of the tent right. That's my structure. But they're still flexible. They're still relatively easy to change.

Speaker 2: 1:08:59

If I decide in a couple of years that I want to change one of my core values or I want to add a core value, I can without nearly as much destruction as pulling down a building, and so I have my core values and everything else overlays on that foundation, on those core values. And it's very flexible, it's nomadic, it can go with me wherever I go, it's inviting, it's open to other people coming in and going out. And that became the way that I reconstructed my whole worldview, but particularly how I saw myself and who I knew myself to be. And I think that you're right that that is foundational to all of these experiences and changes is when you know who you are yourself is when you figure that out everything else falls in line. Everything else can be held up to that and say does this resonate with me or not? And then you know whether to keep it or let it go.

Speaker 1: 1:10:04

Yeah, I think that's an amazing way to round up the episode and so powerful for people to take away and just open their minds and have a think about and reflect on everything that we've discussed and see where you land. You might be in a position where right now, you're very happy and you know where you are and what that looks like, but for others, it might be that they need to start pulling at some of these things to look at them in more depth. So, just before we end, I always love to ask my guests this, and it's not related to the particular episode, it's more just to see where people are at and give inspiration. But what is the one thing right now that you are most excited about, most lit up by whether that's a material thing, a product, a service, something you're working on? What is the thing that's really lighting you up in this moment?

Speaker 2: 1:10:52

Well, I've actually been restructuring my coaching business for the last year and am relaunching products and courses that I'm very excited about. My newsletter is coming out soon in the next week. I now have a what I call a deconstruction starter kit. That is specific to people coming from Christianity who need resources to read or podcast to listen to or music to listen to that resonates with that experience, and I have a sort of like an ebook guide that's coming out soon. That's called Be Still and Know I Am Good, and I think that that's something we struggle with.

Speaker 2: 1:11:33

A lot coming out of religious experiences or really any kind of traumatic relationship experience is am I good? Am I good enough and am I good enough in and of myself? And I think that's an important part of that building who am I thing. And then I'll be starting my first cohort in August, which is called Finding your Footing. So all of these things can be found on my website under resources, and I'm really excited about diving in deeply with. What I have found is my sacred purpose. My sacred purpose is to help people go through these changes, not alone, with community.

Speaker 1: 1:12:23

So, yeah, amazing, I love that. What a great way to end, and obviously everything will be in the show notes. But is there a best way to connect with you if people wanna get into your energy and want to connect?

Speaker 2: 1:12:33

Absolutely so. I always tell people to start with my Instagram because it's the easiest way to find me. It's dconstructionist, that's on Instagram and you can find my website via that, but my website is dconstruction, not DE, but dconstructioncoachingcom, and we'll have that in the show notes too.

Speaker 1: 1:12:53

I'll make sure it's all in the show notes, but thank you for being so open, vulnerable and sharing such a great story. Thank you.