My Story

The deepest parts of our soul are not shaped in easy, sunshiny moments —
Most often they are forged in the fire of exquisite pain.

Life was good in my small midwestern town. My childhood had love, stability, and structure, but under that steady rhythm there were quiet emotional undercurrents I didn’t have words for at the time. I often felt things deeply, and sometimes those feelings were missed by those who loved me. Even as a child, I learned to carry a lot inside.

So many of us have this story. And it feels like we’re blaming someone, or that someone has to be blamed. That’s just not how it is. Often our families have the best of desires and intentions, and in many ways they even do a phenomenal job. And yet there’s something more. Something waiting to be discovered that waits in the darkness.

My childhood was filled with many fond memories. I loved art, poetry, reading, and creating. I also loved more complex things — even from a young age, I asked philosophical questions. Did we all perceive colors the same way? There was no way to know. Was heaven in this dimension or another? I didn’t know the word for “dimension” and try as I might, I could not find a single adult who understood my inquiry. Or cared. And yes, around the age of 8 I even pondered if perhaps I was the only truly sentient being. Now I know for a fact, it’s true (ha!)

I remember questioning my faith in my preteen years, wondering if I might be in a cult. I knew if I were, no one would tell me — I would have to figure it out myself. I didn’t understand why we labeled Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses as cults while following our own prophet, Ellen White. I never got a satisfactory answer, and at 12, I chose to put my head in the sand.

Even so, my curiosity never left me. At age 16, I went on a mission trip to Mexico and brought a college psychology textbook, devouring it during the trip. Physics and psychology were my lifeblood, even as life steered me toward nursing, marriage, and family. 

Life moved quickly. I became a nurse, married my husband Ryan, and we began building a family. But by 2018, everything changed. I was 35 weeks pregnant with our first baby when Ryan was diagnosed with a rare leukemia. That month that we spent in John’s Hopkins, watching him fight for his life–
That month cracked open everything I thought I knew about God, prayer, faith, and meaning.

After our first baby was born, life continued in chaos: chemo, a home renovation, and then COVID, which left me home with not one but two young children, sleep-deprived, isolated, and struggling with my mental health. My faith, once a source of certainty, had become a weight.

During this period, I had intense spiritual experiences and vivid dreams. One dream in particular held profound meaning. In it, I realized my life’s purpose, or at least that’s what the dream meant to me.

Heal trauma.

The intensity of these experiences eventually became overwhelming. Parenting my children felt impossible, my marriage strained, and my mental health deteriorated. One day in the summer of 2021, after separating from my husband, I admitted myself into a psych ward.

As a nurse, I was terrified. I had always feared the mentally ill. And now I was on the wrong side of the nurse’s desk. But in the ward, instead of danger, to my astonishment, I found life-giving love. I met people who became my teachers. I learned how pain shapes us, how trauma lodges in our bodies and hearts, and how humans long to be known and loved.

I thought God sent me to the psych ward to save them.
I soon realized that my beautiful, broken cohorts were going to save me from myself. They loved me in a way I never knew was possible.

After leaving the psych ward, life remained difficult. I spent time at a religious mental health center in California that was the pinnacle of toxic trauma before finally finding treatment that helped. My husband and I went to marriage counseling, which offered some structure, but real healing doesn’t come from formulas.

That fall I moved back home to our quiet ranch in the hills of Maryland, but I was not functioning. I had shut down my spiritual experiences, thinking that would help me survive, but I had lost myself entirely. Depression and anxiety consumed me. In need of help from family, we made a difficult move to Michigan in the middle of winter, leaving our peaceful countryside retreat for a mouse-infested trailer in the winter of 2022. I have always hated Michigan. I had lost friends, home, financial stability, dignity, self-esteem — but the most devastating loss was myself.

The darkness was profound. I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. My marriage seemed like it might end, and I couldn’t see a way forward.

And then one day, for the first time in a long time, I felt something.

Anger.

And in that moment, I realized every piece of it was justified. 

That summer, we found a new home, a cabin in the woods, by water — a quiet place to land. I began to awake. Religion had lost meaning. I kept trying to do CPR on my faith, but there was no heartbeat. Atheism seemed the only sensible choice. But I had absolutely no one I could talk with. I was done with the empty religious rituals.

So I chose something new: I chose to love myself.  I rediscovered my love of exploring wild spaces, started wearing makeup and rediscovering my sense of style, and reconnected with the parts of me that had been left behind. Slowly, I also began to make new friends who loved me well.

During this period, I met someone who held space for me — someone who allowed me to question freely. That encounter opened the door for me to finally be honest about my faith, or lack of it. To ask the hard questions. To own the painful realizations that already lived inside of me.

I was done.

I was done with Adventists, for sure. I wasn’t quite sure exactly what to do with “God,” as they called this faceless deity.

Telling my husband about my deconstruction was painful, terrifying, and transformative. My husband at first tried to show me I was wrong, but quickly concluded I was right. Well, that I was right about Adventists–the facts didn’t stack with the Bible.

But as scary as it was to tell my husband, it was infinitely more painful breaking the news to our families. To feel the weight of the pain in their hearts. What felt like freedom to us felt like fear for them. And there is no way to comfort that pain.

Yet, as I emerged from that journey, I began to reclaim my life.

And after burning religion to the ground, I started sorting through the rubble. Seeing if anything worthwhile was left. One of the best pieces of advice ever given to me from a friend was profoundly helpful in that season: life is like a book. We don’t learn everything all at once, just like we don’t finish a book in one evening. Sometimes you just put the bookmark in it and come back to it later.

All faith had died. And yet, in that space, I sensed something new spring up. Possibility. Wonder. Curiosity. But I didn’t want bullshit, I wanted something real.

We visited some churches in our area, but I quickly realized that the power and control structure was infinitely worse in Christianity at large than it even was in the Adventist church. I wanted none of it.

Then I found something new. A hidden gem. A small country church just up the road from us. But it was… different. Open and expansive. It didn’t operate on theological bullet points. There wasn’t an “in club” and an “out club.” Everyone was actually welcome and actually equal.

And most importantly, everyone was truly loved.

I began to explore different spiritual traditions looking for practices that were actually helpful. I had always looked to my faith for happiness and peace, and instead I was handed a black trash bag of devastation and despair. Yet, as I explored other faith traditions, beauty and hope sprang forth.

I found peace through meditation, learned to protect my energy, and witnessed love, grace, and guidance in ways I had never known. I came to understand that the Divine, whatever He or She or it is, seems to meet us in the depths, hold us through darkness, and transform us into who we truly are.

And little by little, I found courage to throw off the old and step into who I truly am. My coaching business was birthed in this story. After bouncing from therapist to therapist, each with a simple solution, an opinion, or a quick fix, I knew there must be more. I felt what people truly needed in a healer, too often from experiencing all the things I didn’t need. Some therapist’s opinions. Someone else telling me I was broken. One more gratitude journal. Just set a few more goals.

Fuck that.

What I needed was love.

What I needed was love and someone to believe in me when I didn’t believe in myself.

Ironically, that person stepped into my life in the form of my pastor. I don’t even like that word and I certainly don’t like that role. And yet, sometimes love comes from the strangest of places.

And through all of this I became aware of something more.

Something within.

Something made of the Infinite.

She was wise. And She was courageous.

And something in me knew. I would become today who I needed back then. Not someone with an opinion, but someone who is a companion. Someone who can heal with the wisdom of silence. Someone who will not tell you what to do, but rather to take your hand and walk alongside as you take life’s most important journey–the journey into your own self.

My deepest heart is to journey with you into your story, to sit with your pain, and to gently guide you toward a life rich with depth, joy, and meaning.

I long to create communities— safe, deep, authentic spaces. Too often, we seek healing in institutions that offer simple solutions without a soul. I believe the healing is already in us, in the way we hold space for each other, and in the space between us, where love grows.

The light that is within me honors the light that is within you.

-Kristi