Is There Life After An Existential Crisis?
It’s Christmas Eve, 2025.
We’re at dinner with our daughter, Claire, enjoying the delicious food, drinks, and ambiance of How to Cook A Wolf. It’s the first time in 38 years of marriage that we’ve celebrated Christmas Eve away from home. And in a quiet moment between bites and laughter, it hits me just how wildly unpredictable life can be.
If you had told me twenty years ago what my life would look like today, I would have laughed in your face.
In 2005, I never would have imagined that we’d be celebrating Christmas with our transgender daughter, sipping cocktails in Madison Park. That version of my life wouldn’t just have felt unlikely—it would have felt wrong. Impossible. Terrifying.
That year, we celebrated Christmas at church, dressed in matching cream-colored dresses and black suits. We were “a good family.” A faithful family. A worthy family.
Back then, the thought of walking away from life as a “saint” would have terrified me. I couldn’t imagine a life without the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—and any life I did imagine without it looked bleak, empty, and destined for misery.
And yet… here I am.
Happier. Calmer. More at peace than I’ve ever been.
The Lie I Was Taught About Life After Religion
One of the greatest lies I was taught—explicitly and implicitly—was that leaving the church meant losing everything that mattered.
Purpose. Morality. Family. Joy. God.
I was taught that certainty was safety, obedience was love, and doubt was dangerous. So when my faith began to crack, it didn’t feel like curiosity—it felt like free fall. The ground disappeared beneath me, and I spiraled into what would become a decade-long existential crisis.
Who am I if I’m not “chosen”?
What guides me if I don’t have answers?
What’s the point of any of this?
If you’ve been there, you know this isn’t an intellectual crisis. It’s a nervous system one. A grief response. A total identity collapse.
And no one prepares you for that.
The Long, Unsexy Middle
Life after religion hasn’t been all butterflies and rainbows.
It’s been therapy and tears. Anger and grief. Rewriting my moral compass from the inside out. Learning to trust myself after decades of outsourcing my authority. Letting go of the version of me who was praised for disappearing.
There were years where I felt unmoored—like I’d been dropped into the ocean without a map, clinging to whatever floated by just to stay alive.
But here’s what no one told me then:
That disorientation? It’s not failure. It’s reorientation.
You don’t lose yourself when the old story collapses. You finally get the chance to meet yourself without the script.
What I Found on the Other Side
I didn’t lose meaning when I left religion.
I lost borrowed meaning.
And in its place, I found something sturdier.
I found values instead of rules.
Compassion instead of fear.
Curiosity instead of certainty.
Connection instead of conformity.
I found a deeper love for my children—not because of who they’re supposed to be, but because of who they are. I found a marriage that’s more honest. A life that fits. A spirituality that breathes.
And yes—joy. Real joy. The kind that doesn’t require pretending.
If You’re In the Middle of It Right Now
If you’re reading this while quietly wondering whether your life is falling apart… let me say this clearly:
You are not broken.
You are not lost.
And you are not behind.
You are grieving the death of a worldview. That’s not weakness—that’s courage.
The existential crisis doesn’t mean there’s nothing left. It means everything is available to be rebuilt—this time, by you.
You don’t need to have answers yet. You don’t need a new belief system. You don’t need to know what comes next.
You just need to stay.
Stay curious. Stay honest. Stay willing to let the old certainties burn so something truer can emerge.
Because I promise you this:
Life after an existential crisis isn’t empty. It’s wide open.
And one day, you might look up from a candlelit table—surrounded by love, laughter, and a life you never would have dared to imagine—and realize:
The crisis didn’t destroy you.
It freed you.
If This Resonated, You’re Not Meant to Walk It Alone
If these words stirred something in you—if you recognize yourself in the unraveling, the questioning, the quiet fear mixed with unexpected relief—then you’re exactly who I work with.
I don’t help women deconstruct their faith. I help women rebuild their lives after the certainty is gone.
Women who are past the angry phase. Past the “Google everything at 2am” phase. Women who are ready to stop obsessing about what they left and start creating what’s next.
That’s why I created Unbecoming U—a space for women who were raised in high-demand systems and are done proving their worth, shrinking themselves, or waiting for permission to live fully.
Inside Unbecoming U, we:
Untangle religious conditioning and perfectionism
Rebuild self-trust and inner authority
Learn how to set goals from freedom, not fear
Create a future that actually fits who you are now
This isn’t about becoming someone new.
It’s about unbecoming everything you were told you had to be so you can finally become the amazing woman you were meant to become.
👉 If you’re ready to move forward—not just heal, but live—
You don’t need to have it all figured out.
You just need to be willing to choose yourself.
