06/02/2026
Five years ago today, I did the bravest thing I have ever done.
I left my second marriage.
And I left the Mormon church.
For years, I lived in a growing state of dissonance. The gap between what I was being taught and what I knew deep inside myself became harder and harder to ignore. I spent four years trying to make the duality work, trying to hold two very different realities at the same time.
Eventually, I realized the cost was too high.
It was making me crazy.
When I finally told my husband I was leaving both the marriage and the church, he asked, āWhat are you going to believe now?ā
My answer was simple.
āI donāt know. First I want to unbelieve everything.ā
At the time, I felt called toward plants and planets. Toward nature. Toward the body. Toward curiosity. Toward the possibility that truth might be bigger and more beautiful than I had been taught.
Leaving meant walking away from a community that had been woven into my entire life. It meant letting go of certainty and stepping into a lot of unknowns.
One of the biggest pieces that no longer fit for me was the way LGBTQ+ people were viewed. The more people I met and the more stories I heard, the harder it became to reconcile the love, goodness, and authenticity I saw in real human beings with the beliefs I had been taught. At some point, I could no longer choose a doctrine over people. I wanted to live in a world where people could be fully themselves and be loved for exactly who they are.
What surprised me most was what I found on the other side.
I finally understood something that it seemed like so many other people already knew, but I couldnāt quite see while I was inside it.
The world didnāt fall apart.
Morality didnāt disappear. Love didnāt disappear. Meaning didnāt disappear.
In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to find that so many of the values I cared about were still there. They were just finally mine.
Chinese medicine, sound, embodiment practices, spirituality, and a deeper relationship with nature helped me reconnect with something I had lost along the way: myself.
They helped me trust my body. Trust my emotions. Trust my intuition.
Leaving also taught me something I never expected: how to trust myself. For most of my life, I looked outside of myself for answers, authority, and certainty. Over the last few years, I have learned to listen inward. The deeper I have connected with my body, my emotions, my intuition, and my own lived experience, the more I have learned that I can trust myself. Not because I have all the answers, but because I am finally listening to myself instead of constantly looking for someone else to tell me what is true.
Today, I feel more connected to myself and the living world around me than I ever have before.
I also learned that life is far less black and white than I once believed. People donāt need to believe what I believe. They donāt need to walk the path I walk. We can let people be who they are and love them anyway.
Looking back, I donāt feel fear or regret.
I feel grateful.
Grateful for the courage to trust myself.
Grateful for the questions.
Grateful that I stopped outsourcing my truth.
Grateful for the life that was waiting for me on the other side.
Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is walk away from everything we thought we were supposed to be and give ourselves permission to discover who we actually are.
