🌿 What Spirituality Means to Me

I’ve walked a long, winding road to find my spiritual home.

My earliest memories of religion go back to the Episcopal church when I was just 4 or 5. My parents were both Episcopal then, and things felt… open. Kind. We went to church, but life still felt normal.

But everything changed when I was around 11 or 12. My dad found Apostolic Christianity—and suddenly, the world narrowed. Overnight, it went from “you can do most things” to “you can do nothing.” In that version of faith, the father is the priest of the home. All others, especially women, are subordinate. My mom deferred to him in everything.

I didn’t fully understand the power dynamics at the time, but I felt them. And I carried them for years.

I held onto my faith into my 30s. I really tried. I lived the Christian way—deep in service, in submission, in blind faith that God would see our struggles and step in when we needed help most.

But He didn’t.

There was always this contrast between God’s love and God’s wrath. We were told He loved us unconditionally—but there were so many conditions. And despite our prayers, our obedience, our sacrifices… Jon and I walked through over a decade of relentless hardship. Financial strain. Health battles. Trauma. And most devastating of all, the weight of Jon’s PTSD—an invisible war that nearly took his life more than once.

And through it all, no divine intervention came.

No hand reached down to lift us up.

What saved him—what brought him back—wasn’t God’s love.

It was mine.

It was our strength. Our bond. Our will to survive when no one else showed up.

That realization was both shattering and liberating.

I began to ask bigger questions. And during a college class on world religion, I saw things I couldn’t unsee. I learned how many atrocities had been committed throughout history in the name of Christ. I saw patterns of forced assimilation, of culture erased, of fear used as a tool to control.

And then I found Buddhism.

It helped me reframe everything. Life is suffering—not as a punishment, but as a truth of the human condition. And we’re not saved by some distant, untouchable god. We rise by how we move through that suffering. That belief gave me something I’d never had before: myself. My agency. My power.

And then… softly, gently… came paganism.

It found me during a time of deep illness, when I needed healing on a soul level. I started exploring my roots—curious about who I came from, beyond the story Christianity had told me. I discovered that my mother’s grandparents had come here from Wales. I am of Celtic descent.

I began reading Welsh mythology… and something shifted.

I saw how much history had been buried when Christianity swept through the British Isles. But under that silence, something ancient still stirred. I realized: I come from Druids.
That remembering called to me—so I answered.

Today, my spirituality is no longer something handed down from a pulpit. It’s something I live. Something I embody.

It’s not about fear, hierarchy, or submission. It’s about connection—to the earth, my ancestors, my intuition, and the people I love. It’s about sacred rituals that ground me, beliefs that empower me, and a path that feels like home in my bones.

Spirituality, for me, isn’t about waiting for a savior.
It’s about realizing I already am one.

And I want to be very clear: this story is not an attack on anyone’s faith. I know many people find strength, beauty, and peace in Christianity and other belief systems—and I honor that. But this is my journey. And I share it for those who, like I once did, feel isolated or lost.

Because so many of us who walk the path toward naturism and earth-based spirituality reach this same point:
The questioning. The unraveling. The remembering.

And while my path has shifted, I still carry many of the teachings from my Christian upbringing close to my heart.
I still believe in the golden rule.
I still believe all creatures are precious.
And I absolutely believe in the power of our words.

Some truths transcend doctrine. And I’ve come to understand that what’s sacred doesn’t have to belong to just one path—it can be woven into your own.

If you’re standing in that in-between place, not sure where you belong—I see you. You’re not alone.

You can come home to yourself.
You can find the divine in your own way.
And you are never too far from the path to begin again.🌿