Former Religious People, When Did You Realize You Needed To Leave Your Church?
If you were part of a religious denomination, church, or cult and have since left that part of your life behind, I want to know: When did you realize you needed to leave?
Was it a simple moment of you visiting your parents' home after being gone for a long time, and you heard the way you your parents talked about people outside of your church and you just knew that it wasn't right?
Maybe you grew up Mormon and started noticing cracks in the beliefs your parents once you started going to public school, similar to Tara Westover's journey in her memoir Educated. When you tried cutting off contact with your parents, just to see how it affected you, you realized how much more light your life felt. You were happier.
Perhaps you're an ex-Evangelist who was really embedded in that community. You even went to a conservative college. You got married at a young age to a man, though deep down, you felt an attraction towards other women. You believed that if you just followed "God's order" and stayed with your husband, those feelings would go away. They never did. It felt like you were living a life that wasn't yours, and you realized you didn't even care if you were alive anymore — that's when you realized if you wanted to still be alive, you needed to leave that community you spent your whole life in.
Or you might have a story like mine. I was a devout Catholic. Religion played a supportive role in my parents' lives when they first moved to the country, so it was very embedded in my life growing up. Our family prayed the rosary every night together, and my parents even founded a weekly prayer group. I started going to church less in college when I came out as gay in college, and totally denounced my faith after I came out to my parents — my dad told me, "I love you, but I hate what you're doing. It's a sin." Once I made the connection that my dad's response was hugely influenced by what our religion told him, I no longer wanted to be associated with Catholicism at any level.
Whatever your story is, I want to hear it. Share your truth of leaving your former faith in the comments, or through this Google form — please also fill out this form if you're open to me reaching out to you for an interview. And for those interested, I'll be drawing portraits of you to represent you in your truth now. If you prefer, your identity will be anonymous and protected in the final post, unless you indicate otherwise.
To be clear, we're collecting responses so that people can have the anonymous space to reveal why they left their former institutions of belief — this is not an attack on religion, it's a platform for people's actual experiences.
