It didn't all fall apart at once.

I became the kind of girl churches love to hold up as an example. Eager. Obedient. All in. I led Bible studies, memorized verses, and said yes to every opportunity to serve. I wasn’t just part of the Church—I was one of its rising stars.

But behind all the gold stars and good behavior, there was a quiet undercurrent of tension. The deeper I went, the more I noticed the cracks. The rules didn’t apply the same to everyone. The men held the microphones, and the women made the casseroles. I was told my desire to preach was admirable—but misdirected. I could teach children or women, but not men. I could be passionate, but not too passionate. Spiritual, but still small.

It was hard to name at the time, but I felt it in my body. That slow shrinking. That quiet ache of being tolerated instead of truly seen.

I was starting to lose myself.

In my early twenties, I started doing mission work in Utah, which meant studying Mormonism in depth so I could evangelize more effectively. I remember reading through their beliefs and feeling certain I was on the side of truth—but every now and then, a small, inconvenient voice would pop up inside me saying, “But… isn’t this kind of what you believe, too?”

It wasn’t enough to make me leave, but it planted something I couldn’t ignore. A seed of doubt. A flicker of curiosity. A quiet, internal shift that would take years to fully bloom.

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But the dissonance kept growing. It wasn’t until grad school when I was 27, that everything finally broke open. I was assigned to write a paper on the inerrancy of the Bible—a doctrine I had been taught was untouchable. 

But the more I researched, the more I saw how fragile the whole foundation really was. The contradictions. The historical inconsistencies. The deep, complex humanity of a book I had been taught was divinely perfect.

By the end of that paper, I came to a conclusion I never thought I’d reach: the Bible is not the inerrant word of God. And if that wasn’t true, then the entire structure I’d built my life around began to crumble.

When I graduated, I closed the door on the Church. There was no big dramatic exit. No final sermon. I just… left. And I never looked back.

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For a while, I told myself I was fine. I had left. I was free. I could think for myself. Believe—or not believe—whatever I wanted.

But the truth was, I felt completely ungrounded. The structure I had been raised to rely on was suddenly gone, and with it went my sense of identity, purpose, and belonging. I had spent years being trained to be holy, to deny myself, to find meaning through sacrifice and service. And now, standing outside of all that, I felt like a stranger in my own life.

I would listen to old worship music and cry—not because I wanted to go back, but because part of me missed the certainty. I missed knowing exactly who I was supposed to be. I missed the community, the clear answers, the illusion of safety.

For the first three years, I felt like I was drifting. I wanted to go back, even though I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to live in a world where I got to decide what was good and true. I had been so deeply conditioned to measure my worth by my spiritual performance that I didn’t know who I was without it.

And maybe the hardest part? No one from my church reached out. Not a phone call. Not a message. It was like I had disappeared—and in some ways, I had. I left behind everything I knew. And no one seemed to notice.

It was lonely. And it hurt. And at times, it felt like I had made a huge mistake

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Eventually, the ache started to loosen its grip.

Not all at once. Not in some dramatic “and then I healed” kind of way. But in small, almost imperceptible shifts. A little more space in my chest. A little more curiosity. A moment of laughter that didn’t feel guilty.

I didn’t rebuild my life in one go. Honestly, I’ve rebuilt it several times since then. What I thought was healing would later become another layer I had to unravel. What felt like freedom one year, I’d realize was just another form of self-protection the next.

But little by little, I started coming home to myself.

I started learning how to live without needing to earn my worth. I started listening to the quiet voice inside me—not the one that had been trained to quote scripture, but the one that hummed underneath it all, the one that had always been mine.

I found new ways to connect. I found friendships that didn’t require a shared belief system to feel sacred. I let myself feel joy without justifying it. I started to notice that I wasn’t trying to be “good” anymore. I was trying to be whole.

And that changed everything.

And because I’m more than just my story...

Here are a few things that make me, me:

I still have a playlist titled 2000s Christian music

There was nothing that was going to make me leave Christianity. 

Originally from Orange Country, CA, I now live in Chicago with husband and son (and 2 kitties, Kit and Cali). That's us! My husband and I joke that we were Midwesterners born on the wrong side of the country. We really love it here.

We are big baseball fans (go Dodgers!) and all 3 of us are trying to visit every MLB stadium.

My passion is to work with women who were the “good girls” in religion—like I was. The ones who followed the rules, tried to be selfless, holy, faithful… and slowly lost complete touch with themselves, their voice, and body.

I help them unravel the guilt, make sense of what they were taught, and start building a life that actually feels true.

I work with women who’ve already left religion behind—the former good girls who did the deconstructing, walked away, and are now wondering how the hell to rebuild a life that’s truly their own. I help them unpack the lingering guilt, rewrite their inner narrative, and finally feel at home in their own body, voice, and truth.

What followed was disorienting in ways I didn’t expect.

I thought leaving would be the hardest part. But the real reckoning came afterward. For years, I longed to return—not because I believed again, but because the absence of structure left me feeling completely unmoored. I would cry while listening to old worship music, aching for the version of me who had certainty, belonging, and a clear set of rules for how to live.

I felt like a child in an adult’s body, suddenly without the script I’d spent my whole life memorizing.

The loneliness was crushing, but it was also clarifying. Without anyone to perform for, I started asking questions I’d never allowed myself to ask.

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The work I do now isn’t something I chose from a career menu.

It’s the work that chose me, because it’s the work I had to do for myself first.

After walking away from religion, I realized that the hardest part wasn’t the leaving—it was learning how to live after it. How to trust myself. How to hold my own complexity without needing someone else to tell me I was “right.” How to build a life rooted in my own values, not someone else's version of holiness.

There wasn’t a roadmap for that.
So I had to make one.

Now, I support women who have already made the courageous choice to leave high-control religion behind—and who are standing in that same wide, disorienting space I once stood in. They don’t need someone to debate theology with them. They don’t need someone to help them leave. They’ve already done that.

What they need is someone who understands the grief, the loneliness, the messy beauty of starting over—and who knows that rebuilding a life after religion isn’t about finding new rules to follow. It’s about finally learning how to trust the voice that was inside you all along.

That’s what I offer. Not answers. Not certainty.
Just a space where it’s safe to be fully human again.

A space to laugh, cry, rage, rest, and rebuild.
A space to become the version of yourself that no church ever taught you to imagine.