I Was Raised In a Cult; My De-Conversion Story.

yes my dad was a bikey yes i was raised in a very strict fundamentalist christian church that was extremely cold-ish and yes i ended up leaving years down the track in my 20s yes all of that is true and i don't know why i'm flicking my pen at you but if you want to hear the story stick around [Music] hey everyone i'm holly i'm from western australia and welcome to my story of how i was raised in a very coldest church and then how i i guess deconstructed and i'm continuing to deconstruct a lot of that this is my healing journey and i hope that this helps you in some way in your life where you're at right now to give a really quick backstory otherwise we'll be here for days um my dad before i was born was involved in a motorcycle biking outlaw motorcycle gang i won't say the name there's no need for that um but he was heavily involved in that lifestyle which meant my mum also was she was my dad's girlfriend and then obviously wife down the track so she was also involved in that whole scene as well and to cut a long story short my mum ended up going to church she went to a christian local church my parents were separated at the time and she took my older brother and myself there's actually four of us now there's four siblings there's my older brother myself my younger brother and my younger sister but at the time it was just the two of us so yeah my older brother kane and myself we ended up going to this church with mum um and then fast forward a while and my dad ended up going as well which was huge at the time so he ended up turning his back on the whole outlaw bikey gang scene and became a christian my dad only knows how to go into something like full-on so once he left the bike gang he became christian he went into it full-on he was the type grabbing the megaphone jumping up on the buildings in the city preaching to people like yeah he went right on into it which meant ultimately our whole family did as well the church that that they went to was a fundamentalist christian church and i was raised in that environment this video is not to suggest for one second that all christian churches are bad that fundamentalist christian churches are all bad i'm not saying that for one second um this is my experience this is my story this is my truth this is what we went through what i went through and it may not mean that that's your experience with your church so i'm not here trying to you know get people out of religion or trying to get you to turn your back on what you love and what has been huge in your life or what brings comfort and joy to you so i just want to make that clear that's not what i'm about this is purely my story that i'm sharing because i know that there's a lot of people out there that do struggle in religion that have been really hurt by religion have been really broken by a lot of things that have gone on in their churches and maybe they're starting to realize that it's not for them and that they don't believe it anymore and the whole deconstruction deconverting period is brutal it is absolutely beautiful people and i just want to be here to show you that you you can do it like you absolutely can you can feel like you've got a new lease on life and realize that you're not broken as well healing is not about fixing yourself you don't need fixing you don't require someone to come and fix you and to come and save you this is just purely you discovering yourself first of all i to get into the whole deegan version obviously i need to tell you the actual story of growing up in a very cultish strict fundamentalist christian church and what that was like so go grab yourself a cup of coffee or a tea because you're probably gonna need it i know i need it and then come back and join me and we'll get stuck into it's not as big as my head all right so the church was in tasmania which for those that aren't from australia or don't know much about australia australia is a massive big island but down below there is a little island called tasmania and that is part of australia it's just detached so that's where i grew up so i'm australian but i grew up in tasmania and that's where the church was i'm not going to mention the name of the church because i just don't see the point there's no point to even mention it to be honest but it started in america so it's started by a man in america it is follows christian teachings but it believes that the bible is 100 the word of god that god spoke that word to men a couple thousand years ago they believed the bible word for word that all the bible stories are not just metaphors and parables and there to to i guess give enlightenment or to to draw inspiration from they see it as it is the word of god it cannot be changed you can't pick and choose what comes out of it it's not open to interpretation and you have to live by it a hundred percent now so yes a book that was written 2000 years ago you have to live to a t now they very much believe in heaven and hell that when you die you only go to one of those two places and that you get to choose but based on how you live your life here they believed that what i believed i grew up in it believed that men are the head of the family as in men were seen as as higher than women in the church only males could be pastors or preachers main leaders were all men a woman is to submit to the man um oh the church the way that it was actually spread worldwide was you as a man you wouldn't go to bible college because that was frowned upon it was seen as having the head knowledge but not the heart experience it very much mocked people that went to bible college and to start a church with the same name obviously you've got the main church in a place in america a preacher there would choose men from his church who were married you had to be married to a woman and those people would then be planted they would say into another location and would start a church there with the same name so it's all under like a big pyramid scheme kind of thing so that's how it spread worldwide so it became a very big church worldwide and i was in the one in tasmania as i said growing up in the church it was extremely strict very very strict i had to go to church sunday morning sunday night wednesday night you would have morning prayer so that would be where you would all meet monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday between seven and eight a.m in the morning so if you were going to work or going to school you had to meet in the morning for prayer for an hour more often the night the men for some reason would walk up and down while they're praying and then the women would all sit around and the children would all sit around and you're on your own you're not praying as a group you'd be in corners or face you'd be facing wall so you're all just sitting around um praying we spoke in tongues so if you don't know what that's like maybe find a video of people speaking in tongues and i'm not mocking it that was it's very real for a lot of people but it is basically speaking like a gibberish like it's not a language that you know and it's seen as the holy spirit giving you this tongue and you would speak this tongue and it's your language between you and god so it's like you're having a conversation with god no one else can understand it you can't even understand it it's like your spirit speaking to god so that's very confronting for people that have never been to a church before or have never heard of that and then they walk into this church and everyone all of a sudden is speaking in these tongues it's it can be very confronting it was normal to me i grew up in it so it was completely normal i i used to do it i spoke a lot about health so from a child from a very young child i was aware of hell i was told that i would go to hell forever if i wasn't a christian if i didn't believe in god if i didn't believe that jesus died on the cross for my sins i was told that i'm inherently a very bad person we are the scum of the earth we are terrible we're sinful creatures and we need we needed jesus to die on the cross for our sins in order for us to make heaven at home that's that's how it was taught to us so from a child i was very fearful of hell i was very fearful of doing anything wrong because i would spend the rest of eternity which means forever once you die forever in a lake of fire where the demons would basically walk around and taunt you and could do anything to you and they said they'd be wailing and gnashing of teeth in other words everyone would be crying forever and you'd feel yourself burning forever so that is already such an abuse to even say to a child like that's just insane we had to watch these video series called a thief in the night if you have ever watched that oh my gosh my heart goes out to anyone that had to endure that as a child or as a teenager even as an adult but especially when you're younger and you i mean you haven't even begun to develop your own critical thinking skills so as a child when something is taught to you by people that you view as good people or people that you trust that are seen as leaders like you you trust what they say and you take it as true you might have some questions but um in this situation your questions were always shut down very quickly you were told that the question means you don't have faith and you don't want to question too much you were told because if you question too much you're opening up your mind to the devil which will mean that the devil now has a foothold they would say in your mind you were basically taught from a young age to not question to just take what they say as truth so before you've even begun to develop any critical thinking skills this is what you're taught as truth so i feared going to hell this the video series about left behind um and a thief in the night was all about end times prophecies that they say were in the bible um and how basically this it's gonna come for the end of the earth where jesus is going to take all of his believers to heaven with him and all those that are left on earth are going to go through the tribulation which is going to be a horrible time on earth obviously if you're left behind but your family were christians it means they're now in heaven without you and you're left on the earth and it was all about that and in the video i mean it was pretty corny now if i'm not going to watch it now but if i was to watch it now i'd probably look back and be like wow that's really corny but as a child it was frightening i had so many fears after watching that video it was it was like torment yeah full-on absolutely full-on and i had fears because the way that was portrayed in the video of what would happen is it's like the the body disappeared but the clothes were left so you could come home after school and i'd be thinking like are my parents going to be at home is my mum going to be here or her clothes going to be there like on the chair where she was sitting and that means i'm left behind and yeah just torment anyway we would have as i said before prayer monday to friday we had a church service sunday morning sunday night wednesday night we would have a bible study at different people's houses on friday nights that would be every two weeks saturday morning we would meet in um at the church and we would do what they called outreach which is where we would all head out into the city and we would preach to people so you would all have like pamphlets and flyers and you would give them to people and the whole goal was to hopefully get them to repent of their sin get them to admit that they are sinners and accept jesus into their life and then come to your church so the whole goal of it was to fill your church because you wanted to save like it was done from a place oh was it really i think it was i think most of the people did it from a place of they they believe they were doing the right thing i mean i sure believed that because that's all i knew but yeah i don't know i have different views now really different views saturday morning we would do this outreach we also did street preaching and yes i street preached that's that's a bad memory so i would street preach i would as a child and as a teenager i would preach out loud in the city because you wanted to be seen as a good disciple you wanted to be seen as you were doing good and you were helping to save humanity like that was the whole the whole purpose of your life was one to make heaven your home and hopefully to get everyone around you to make heaven their home too so that when they died they would go to heaven so again street preaching there are people just wanting to shop and spend time with their families and buy things in the shops and here i am with other christians preaching oh my gosh it's just uh on saturday nights we would have church concert so that would be would have musicians from the church playing christian music of course and it was to try to get people to come into the church and listen and again become a christian sunday mornings we had sunday school for the kids we would have a bible study at the church sunday morning it would be before the church so the basic structure would be you would come and you would have a prayer meeting sunday morning then the children would go off to sunday school the adults would have bible study then the children and the adults would come back together so it's like an hour later and you would have the worship service so you would sing songs they were the worst songs oh my gosh if i could find a video clip i would show you that we sang it was like we're at a funeral the songs were so bad you know how you've got mega churches and things like that out there that some of their music sounds beautiful like it's really well done ours was not like the house was so bad i wish i had a video clip then anyway you would have the main church service and then you'd have what's called an altar call now an altar call would be after everything so an altar call would be after every church service every concert that we had if we had a drama not and that was where the preacher talk about heaven and hell do you have assurance that you know where you're going when you die do you do you want to spend eternity in hell is that where you want to be a lot of pressure a lot of fear-based messages while your head's about your eyes are closed if you wanted to accept jesus as your lord and savior as they would say raise your hand so you'd have your head down your eyes closed and then you would raise your hand and then they would get you to come up to the front and one of the leaders would come and meet you there at the front and you would say what's called the sinner's prayer and accept jesus into your life so that's how it was saying that would do that all the time so yeah as you can see my life was filled with church so we were encouraged to not have on christian friends unless it was with the intention and the goal of getting them to come to church that'll be the only reason why you would have non-christian friends basically so my whole world right from when i was a little girl was surrounded with people that had the exact same beliefs that i was trained to have and your whole life was so busy that you didn't have time to think for yourself in fact you were discouraged to think for yourself if you didn't agree with something you had to keep that to yourself if you voiced it you would be shunned you would 100 be shunned you'd be preached about in front of the whole church they wouldn't say your name but everyone would know that that's who it is it was a very small church so from memory it was around 50 to 100 people i know that's kind of general but like it would fluctuate it was very strict on how we dressed so guys or girls were never allowed to wear jeans to church that's a big no-no you were seen as rebellious if you did never wear caps or anything in church um no like ripped clothes like nothing like that girls had to wear skirts or dresses and they would have to be um to the knee nothing above the knee you'd normally have to wear stockings with them as well um and you could wear like t-shirts like this would be fine but if you wanted to wear something that was that didn't have sleeves it had to be a thick strap anything smaller than that like little spaghetti straps would be seen as you're trying to entice boys basically yeah very strict on clothing guys had to wear suit even like the children would wear suits and ties we were taught that our church so not just the location that i was at in tasmania but the church with the exact same name as us all around the world believed that their church was the only right church they're pretty much every other christian even christian every other christian church was seen as lukewarm as in a bit wishy-washy and it's probably very likely that when they all die they probably wouldn't make heaven their home so that's what we were taught as children so from a very young age i had this kind of elitist mindset i didn't realize at the time i didn't realize till i left an era of arrogance that we were like of the chosen ones that we were we were there to try to save not just the sinners but the people from the other churches who had watered down the word of god and um who were more than likely going to be going to hell we were not allowed to date so at the age of i believe i was 12 or 13. they got all of us to sign purity pledges so basically that was like a certificate that said that i declared and i pledged that i will remain a virgin till marriage i would sign it and then the pastor would sign next to it not only would i was i to stay a virgin till i was married but that that meant like doing nothing so not even kissing not even holding hands like we weren't to do anything ever like anything sexual was completely shut off shut down don't even let your mind go there no masturbation no not like zero also no dating so that that would mean like you don't go out on dates like never be alone with a guy guy would never be alone with a girl why is it seen as playing with fire and you will fall you will do something wrong so we were taught from a young age not to trust ourselves don't trust yourself sexually don't trust yourself with questions that come up don't trust your mind don't trust your heart in fact i'm going to show you something and this broke my heart when i saw this the other day i've got my bible from when i was younger so this is my bible this is i got this in 1995. as you can see i like would highlight things all the time write notes in it from the sermons this was near and dear to me like growing up i found something that i wrote so during sermons i would write things that the preacher was saying and this is something that was said to me when i was young and i wrote it down because i thought it was so profound and now it just like hits me like a ton of bricks says the greatest enemy is the enemy how damaging do you think that would be to have that in your mind and in your heart from since you were a child but that's all that you know honestly that brings up emotions for me and not because i'm hurting because i'm not like i've reconciled a lot of that now i'm not hurting i feel that for people that are still stuck in that mindset that the greatest enemy and the greatest problem with you is is you the inner you but that's uh it just so growing up um in the church as well there was obviously we had this mindset that that we were better than everyone and again we i didn't realize it at the time um it's only looking back that i can see that but our whole goal was to save everyone from eternal damnation and um you know we believed that we had the answer for everyone and even to the point where it would be shoved down people's faces and i look back and think of who i've shoved things down their throats and um is painful to think about um with me growing up when i was in year c my teacher was a male and he was gay oh this is a hard story for me to even tell obviously in the church that i went to um in the extremely coldest church that i went to they believed that if you're gay you are going to hell sorry this is a really hard story for me to tell so they believed that you would be going to hell that um obviously they believed that all sin would lead you to hell but there was a real emphasis on certain sins that were seen as wailers and being gay was seen as one of them um and any sort of sexual sin so if you had sex before marriage that was seen as as really bad as well but yeah being gay was like they believed that um there's something wrong with you that you have to repent from it um you were not allowed to be gay and in the churchiness you're actively trying to not be gay that's how it was seen you definitely would not be allowed to have any leadership roles in the church um yeah we we didn't have any from memory i don't remember anyone in the church openly saying they were gay because if you felt that you were can you imagine the pressure on that individual the utter disdain that they would have for themselves and the pressure to change like why would you voice that out loud like you're basically caging your soul because if you say out loud that you're gay oh i can't even begin to imagine what they would go through my heart just breaks but yeah i had a gay school teacher and he was he was fantastic he was such a great teacher but there was pressure at the time on my parents to have me change classes because we just had the one class one teacher sorry for everything so my parents went to the school principal and uh who was also a christian man but my parents didn't know him personally and they requested that i'd changed classes that i have a new school teacher because um there was talks of you know the school teacher having too much influence maybe he'll influence children to be gay and that type of thing um the principal said no and looking back i want to applaud that man for having the courage to do that and in the end i was changed schools so i had to change schools because my teacher was gay and because our principal would not change my class that's a it's a hard pill to swallow that one i genuinely hope just oh i genuinely hope that that teacher didn't know that that's why i changed schools looking back i i really hope he never knew that that that man could feel so rejected and so shunned because of who he was that i struggle with that one a lot i really do oh um [Music] i'm back for my crying yeah so anyway in the church we were taught obviously not to question not to think for ourselves we were taught that we're being watched 24 7 by god as well as by the devil that the devil is out to get us and god loves us we were taught that god loves us but if we don't accept jesus as our lord and savior that he would have to hand us over to the devil basically and cast us into the lake of fire it was a very disjointed love and we were always taught that oh you have free will you have free will and god will never force himself upon you and we were taught that but at the same time looking back i can see the emotional manipulation and i can see the coercion there like to be told that yeah god loves you and he doesn't want to send you to the lake of fire but if you do something wrong he's going to have to send you that yeah a lot of on a child honestly there is so much damage can happen before you're even of the age to be able to really think for yourself you trust your leaders you trust your parents you trust the church that you're in and i think what happened to me was i learned that the parts of myself that were that were deemed as not good enough or as shameful or as ungodly i had shelved those parts of me somewhere deep deep down in my psyche and in my soul and essentially cage my own soul that's that is the only way that i can describe it and if if this resonates with you you you'll get it because you've been through something similar you have to shelve and cage pieces of yourself because they're not good enough and they're not worthy to be bought into the light and that's that's how it is for a lot of us and essentially we had to wear masks not a physical mask but i couldn't be the real me and i didn't realize that at the time this is that was who i thought i was but essentially i couldn't be the real me because the church that i was raised in um and obviously people will say why didn't you just leave but that's all we knew that's all i do that all seemed right that all seemed truth like it seems like it was all the truth and to leave because obviously we're taught that other churches are possibly all going to hell to leave meant that i would be accepting that i'm going to hell and that the only way for me to fix that would be to come back to the church so why leave and honestly from a young age like it is a mental game it is the biggest mental game and so much pressure is put on you to be perfect and to be performing in front of everyone and to say the right things and to not follow the crowd as they would they would say yeah so many my games so much manipulation and that's hard to break free from that really is another thing was um obviously we had tides and offerings so there was a big pressure in this particular church when it came to our money we we had to give 10 of our entire income to the church every church service or every kind of meeting at church they would hand around a basket so preacher would first talk about how when you're giving money to the church you're storing up money in heaven essentially so you'll get a bigger i sound so ridiculous again i was taught this from a child don't judge me you get a bigger mansion so the more money that you're giving the bigger blessing would be waiting for you in heaven because for every coin that you're giving god would be storing i guess essentially it's like god has your bank account in heaven but with a bigger gold mansion i didn't even like gold i don't know why that was appealing to me anyway but yeah so because i genuinely had this love for what i believed was god i had this i really did i had such a profound love for what i saw as the creator i wanted to do all the right things so any money that i got i gave 20 because i felt like i'm going above and beyond and my whole life i just wanted to please god i just i felt his love i'm gonna elaborate more on that after i felt his love and i just wanted to be accepted by him and i wanted to be seen as his child and someone that he just adored and i just adored him so everything that i could do that would be seen as right i would do and i would throw myself fully into of something called hell's gates sorry heaven's gates hells flames um which i think was started by someone in america and basically it's like a big drama skit a big drama show that you would put on in your church it was like a big production good practice for this people in the church you wouldn't get paid actors because obviously they wouldn't be christians so it had to be christians so people in the church would act out different scenes and it was all about these people dying and then whether they would get to heaven or hell um and it was very graphic um there would be scenes that were very graphic this might be triggering for some people but suicide scenes abortion scenes domestic violence all sorts and basically someone would die in the scene and then um everything would go black and then when the lights come back on you that person would either go to heaven or hell and it would be acted out as um you know the angels would take them to heaven or the demons would come and drag them to hell it was very dramatized very it was very real very scary um we used to do them as at halloween time for obviously we didn't celebrate halloween that was seen as being of the devil but we would do it as like a horror show so it was a way to entice people in our city to come and think that they're going to watch some halloween horror show but then they'd be almost kind of like locked in the building um and would have to see this and then there'd be like um a preaching at the end where they would be encouraged to give their life to jesus otherwise they're going to end up in hell so as a very young teenager i was a part of this and i had to do the suicide scene and just looking back that's really creepy that's a very creepy thing i had to do i had to pretend to shoot myself so in the scene like i'm crying and like i mean i'm having the emotions come up as if it's real then i have to shoot myself and then i get dragged to hell because it's seen as if you kill yourself that you go to to hell and yeah just the indoctrination from a young age just blows my mind the things that i used to believe the things i used to be a part of it makes sense as to why it can take a really long time for some people to break free from that kind of mindset and that kind of thinking i can understand because i've been through it myself when i was 15 my mum had breast cancer she's totally fine now um i just want to say that for anyone that that might wonder she's totally fine now she's yeah that was i mean i'm in my in my 30s now so that was a long time ago so when my mum was 15 when i was 15 my mom had breast cancer and another thing we used to do in the church was hands-on healing which now i see as a form of energy healing because it's you're putting hands on people yeah so we would pray for people for healing one of the things that they would do is they would get people to come up the front in front of everyone and the preacher would like physically touch you like on your head or your shoulders and then everyone in the church would would put their arms out towards the person and would would pray to god for healing when my mum had to go up for pushing hafter my mom went up for prayer this will never leave me one of the things that they did was try to cast out rebellion in her so for you to have an illness or a disease it was seen as you were you were sinful so my mom it was seen as she was given cancer because she must have been rebellious and that yeah that broke my heart i remember sitting down in one of the chairs just watching everyone praying over her and trying to cast rebellion out of her because she had cancer and yeah that that will never leave me i'm sorry if you've been through something similar like that and i'm sorry my mum went through that it makes fun of kragen i'm just yeah i mean that would have been pretty confronting for my mum to go through that and yeah that makes me sad another thing i'm going to say this because it's kind of funny now just to stop me from crying um another thing was when my mama also had cancer and i'm i'm not smiling at that but she was going through chemotherapy radiation treatment and everything and at one point she was at home there was four of us kids so she was at home um my dad was working a lot obviously and trying to you know provide for the family and my mom had the drip in her arms and she was resting in bed with the drip in her arm she was so sick so unwell obviously just doing basic things around the house would have been so hard for her so it meant that i was like cooking and cleaning and doing the ironing because obviously the guys had to wear suits to church some ironing all their shirts and sorting their ties and just doing stuff around the house anyway we had um i remember it was a saturday we had a church concert to go to that night my mom was way too sick to go for the church concert we would have a prayer session so everyone would get together and do their prayer and then you would have the church concert i was late for the prayer so i was not late for the concert i was late for the prayer i think i was like 30 minutes late for an hour prayer session i was taken into the office the next morning so the next morning was sunday morning church and the pastor asked me to go into the office with him and the assistant pastor i had a little job in the church where when we would sing songs before church we had the words up on a projector so my job was to put the words up which was on a sheet on the projector which the light would then obviously project onto a screen so my job was to move it up and down so people could read the words when they had to sing it and then change it for the next song and i was so proud of my little job in the church i thought i was such a good girl so the next morning taken into the office by the pastor and his assistant pastor and told how bad i was that i was late for prayer the night before and i explained to them it was because mum was sick i've always been a little bit outspoken and i explained that the reason why was because mum was so sick obviously with cancer they knew she was going through cancer treatment not once was i asked you know how's your mum are you okay i'm really sorry not nothing like that i was told how bad i was and that because of it i was being disciplined and i was going to be taken off the projector and i wasn't allowed to do that for a period of time to discipline me as a way to teach me for how bad i was for missing prayer so i'm telling you this just to paint a picture of what it was like in in the church it was full on very very full-on another time when i was doing my little projector they called it new ministry i was doing my little projector ministry i had a top on my straps weren't thick enough apparently so instead of covering my entire shoulder it was something like like that kind of thickness and i again got disciplined got taken into the office and got told this time by the pastor's wife though she was a tyrant but told by her that i was being way too suggestive in my attire and that i was trying to entice the boys um sexually and to mislead them and therefore i was being disciplined because of my inappropriate attire i didn't even know myself now if i met who i was back then i wouldn't even know myself as i said before you don't date so there's absolutely no dating and obviously um at 13 i had pledged my purity all sexualness in my life was completely shut down i i as soon as i would even begin to have a sexual thought i would shut it down like instantly because otherwise i'd be scared that i'd go to hell so i was so detached from myself sexually there was a row zero room for anything of a sexual nature in my life in my mind in my heart like at all it was completely shut off i wasn't attracted to the to the boys um in the church in that way anyway other than like a brother type of thing i never really liked guys that just were seen as like yes men that were seen as like would just do anything that the pastor said and wouldn't and wouldn't stand up for themselves i didn't really like that and not that all of the guys in the church were like that there were some beautiful guys that i was raised within the church we just weren't that way inclined um so yeah i didn't date at all i did not date you went all out a day anyway like you would always have to have a chaperone so if you wanted to let's just say as an adult you wanted to date let's say a guy wanted to take a girl out on a date he would always have to have at least one person else there so there's always the three of you always have a chaperone you're never allowed on your own because otherwise it'd be seen to be playing with fire and you would just end up having sex basically you can't trust yourself so crazy so yeah so while i was in this church i didn't date remember one time i wore jeans to church and i did it because this was in my later teens when i started to really question a lot of things and just saw a lot of things that weren't making sense for me in the church i still 100 believed in god i still 100 wanted to make heaven my home um believed in heaven and hell believed in all those things but i just thought that maybe some of the other churches out there wouldn't be so bad maybe there's way too much control here and i just started questioning a lot of things and i wore jeans to church such a rebel a pair of jeans no ribs in them they were nice jeans and i wore them to a church service and i got preached about in front of everyone he didn't say my name but he mentioned the person wearing jeans and i'm the only girl in the church wearing jeans so um everyone looked at me and i knew it was about me it was about how rebellious most of the sermon ended up being about me so that's kind of funny too another thing was parents were encouraged to go through their children's belongings on a regular basis we were encouraged to get rid of a lot of our things that might be seen as ungodly so we had to continually go through this process because you'd be seen as you you'd get slack or you'd fall away so for instance the music we listened to pretty much only allowed to have christian music you weren't allowed to have what was called secular music but i remember sometimes you'd get something you know you'd buy yourself a cd whatever and then they'd disappear because either your parents threw them out um well yeah your parents probably did throw them out or we were encouraged to bring them to church and they would get burned so we didn't have a tv growing up so actually this is a funny story so we were all encouraged once you become a part of the church to get rid of your television so to throw it away or sell it because that was also seen to be ungodly to have a television in your house [Music] when i was a child i'm gonna guess i was probably about eight i actually quit before that i was very in tune looking at it now i would say that i was very in tune with my intuition when i was a child um very in tune with nature with animals with what i considered to be god um and i could really manifest things like with ease in i i would think of something and it would come to pass like i bet very quickly as well as i became older like in my teens that that that died down to a point where it completely stopped there for a while and i've only just recently kind of in the last few years been working on that again but as a child i could manifest things very very with just with ease i just believed that good would happen to me all the time i didn't doubt it i believed in good um so yeah to go back to the story we didn't have a television and i was in the supermarket with my mum one day and they had a raffle where you could win a television and all you had to do was put your name and address and phone number on a little bit of paper or whatever and put in the raffle i think you had to pay like two dollars and i said to my mom can we go in this raffle and she's like oh but it's like for a tv we can't have a tv and i remember we had some sort of discussion about it you know we could sell it or whatever but in my mind i was like i'm going to win as a television like i i was just like i'm going to win it i really want to watch cartoons like i really want to watch some some kid stuff like i'm gonna get us a television i won it i won the television and then ended up getting sold because we weren't allowed to keep it and i got a dress and then the money went to my family which was all good but it's just funny looking back so many things like that happened in my life and um yeah it wasn't till i was later in my teens where that kind of got snuffed out i think i was just so broken and so mentally bruised by a lot of the stuff that was happening in the church a lot of stuff that i witnessed a lot of it i can't even say on camera because it's not my story but there is some brutal things that went on in that church that happened to some people in that church i feel like i was more protected because my parents i guess because of who they were before they became christians i wasn't messed with um to a certain extent i was mentally but not never physically we also used to have what was called revivals where visiting preachers that were still part of the same church again would come from say america in fact it was mainly america or different parts of australia and would hold church services every night of the week for x amount of days it might be seven days it might be ten days whatever it was and we had to go to every single one of them so we would again have prayer in the morning before school or before work and then that night you would go to church and you would do that as i said seven to ten days and it was a way to bring as many people to church as he possibly could i would pray over people for healing all sorts of things so my life very much revolved around that moving back to the whole sex thing i was extremely naive actually i need to give a back story to this so as i was in my late teens so getting towards 19 our family we absolutely had had enough and we could see that there were massive cracks we had all red flags that we had been denying for a long long time forms of abuse within the church mental abuse especially but lots of abuse abuses of power that were just so wrong and things that just were not right that we were witnessing and we'd had enough we were also we were also scared to go to hell because remember we'd been taught and had been ingrained in us for so many years that any other church out there was possibly bad they were all going to hell so we were so scared to join another church it came to the point where we had friends in other churches around australia that were still under the same umbrella we would have church conferences in different in different parts of australia and so my parents had begun to hear and began to see that even though they're part of the same denomination even though they're part of the same church they were run slightly different because maybe their preacher was slightly different long story short we packed up and moved away from tasmania to go live in perth western australia on the other side of the country because we thought that it was run a lot better it was run better to a degree it wasn't as controlling but it was still controlled so we moved there now i had never had a boy i had never been on a date in my life i was 19 when we moved there and turned 20. i had no intention of dating as soon as i got there or anything they still had strict rules on all the fundamentals of it were still the same but anyway we we held church conferences there so everyone from all over australia would come to perth western australia for this church conference once a year so i had been in perth for a year so i was 20 going on 21 from memory anyway and i met a guy at the church conference and he was from sydney so he was a part of the exact same church but in he had only been a part of the church for six months we hit it off i thought he was very different to the other guys probably because he'd only been a part of us for six months he wasn't raised in it i actually had a bit of an edge about it and i thought he was cute he got my phone number he messaged me once he'd gone back to sydney we we didn't really speak that much during the week at the conference but there was just something i don't know we heated up he yeah exchange numbers and then he messaged me after the conference and i was like look i'm going to be really upfront with you i don't see this going anywhere like i'm not doing a long distance relationship i just want to be honest with you it'll be no more than friendship i was very blunt he was like whoa chill i'm not asking you to marry me girl like he was i liked his response i was like oh okay you're not like the other guys we did eventually start a long-distance relationship and we fell in love we fell madly in love so a year later he proposed to me because he came back for the following church conference a year later and he proposed and four months later we got married now leading into that i'm gonna understand i had suppressed everything sexually everything i had no clue i didn't know dirty jokes i didn't watch movies that would have a sex scene in them even if a couple were kissing in a movie i would look the other way i wouldn't watch the movie we weren't allowed to go to the cinemas i didn't have a tv in the house so like i i wasn't exposed to anything sexual my sexuality wasn't awakened like it was dormant like there was nothing so anyway as i'm dating this guy obviously it's a long distance relationship we saw each other twice in the year that we were dating twice and in two two periods of time he came over to perth during the year with a friend from the church who was the pastor's son and he spent time with me we were never alone so he spent time with me as in we'd go to the beach with friends like we'd go to church and then maybe we'd go out somewhere after for dinner but it was always with people around her i also went to sydney once to meet his family i never even met his mother before we got married that's crazy but i went over to sydney with my mum so again i had someone with me we did spend some time alone there and that was at a restaurant that was it so we never we never really had alone time so how can you really get to know someone honestly we never kissed i said to him right at the very beginning i'm a virgin i i'm going to remain a virgin until my wedding night and i don't want you to even try to kiss me because it's not going to happen yeah he was very respectful about that anyway leading up to us getting married i became nervous at the fact that i just was so dumb to a lot of things sexually to the point and this is pretty funny i didn't even know what a head job was let that sink in for a second i mean i kind of understood but i didn't i had to ask people what it was and get them to explain it to me that's how naive i was i had no clue about anything but yeah we got married obviously our first kiss was on our wedding day which just so you know when you get married in this in these churches our wedding was part of the normal church service so you would have a normal church service as in you would have the normal worship song then they would have the song for you to walk down the aisle to it would be a church song that you would walk down the aisle too normally this is how they would do it you'd get married then you'd both sit at the front of the church and listen to the pastor preach your sermon and then you would go off to your reception that's how it was done you do not question it you do not change it that's how it's done so our first kiss because the perth church was a lot bigger was about 500 people in it our first kiss was in front of 500 people and we got married in front of them and then we went and had our reception and everything and obviously i lost my virginity virginity that night and just to explain i mean this is a bit personal but i don't care i'm such an open book because i think honestly i think a lot of you will resonate with this there's a lot of women out there that have had similar experiences it was it was beautiful it honestly was he was very respectful and i was extremely ready extremely ready think about this if you're a guy or a girl but especially for women because we're made we're made so different if you've closed off a part of yourself your whole life how can you expect to just with a click of a finger to now open that entire part it doesn't just happen that way and especially when you're also taught that you're second rate citizen to a male and that men are better than you and men are the head of you and you're there to serve the man how can a woman that's been raised in that receive so as a as a female that was raised that way i was all about giving i was all about loving and doting on my man but i struggled to receive that i seriously did and i couldn't orgasm and our entire marriage i couldn't orgasm and that's not i'm not saying that that's his fault it absolutely was not his fault how can i blame him for me not knowing myself for me not being connected to myself that was how i was raised that's how i was trained to be to have a disconnect with my own soul with my own sexuality with my own being that was something that i absolutely struggled with and i'm sure he did too in fact he did because that would be seen as like oh he's not doing his job and that's not what it was at all there was a massive disconnect with myself and i'm gonna do a whole nother video on that on sexuality because that's a whole nother story in itself another thing that we were taught was if you leave the church you will lose your marriage you will probably be high up on drugs all the time drinking all the time you'll become a party animal you'll be this you'll be that every time someone left all we heard about was all the bad things that had happened to them it was almost like like the people in the church would be waiting to hear bad news about them and then spread it because you can't possibly have someone leave and have good things happen in their life because then that shines a light on the belief systems and so god's not meant to be with them anymore god's not meant to be blessing them that's how it was seen so obviously the thought of you leaving is like oh my gosh all these bad things are gonna happen to me i'm gonna have really bad luck and my life is is gonna be terrible so you know you're scared again to question or to leave with me getting married um another thing within the church is if you're from obviously it's the same church but different locations the woman has to go now to the man's church so he was from sydney um which is on the east coast of australia and arms from perth which is the west coast so i then again do not question it i then had to move to sydney to live with him it would not be the other way around even if even if he really wanted to live in perth that that could not happen you had had to be the woman following the man otherwise it'd be seen as the woman was um the ruler of the household and it's not she's not submitting to the man so i had to move to sydney living in sydney this was the first time that i had been away from my family that i was in the church on my own i mean i had my husband but that i was on my own as i didn't have that family unit and again i was a young naive girl i mean i was i was 22 i wasn't that young but i was probably very naive still again it was part of the same church group so it's still very controlling very very controlling still the same structure the same sort of sermons the same mind games and i slowly broke down not me as in emotionally i broke down my beliefs a lot during that and i started questioning a lot and i just i think i had time to think a little bit to myself it's when i started looking at other churches online and there was one locally actually it's called hillsong i'm sure many of you have heard of it and that was one that our church used to always mock and say oh it's lukewarm it's of the devil they're watering down the word of god they're this feather and it appealed to me and i kind of had this little like rebellious moment where i'm like i want to go there if that seems rebellious i want to be a part of it i don't want to leave god but i want to be a part of it and it really appealed to me so after it was after a couple of years i said to my husband i was like i'm i want to change churches i can't do this anymore like i just i don't agree with the control i don't agree with a lot of the the doctrine that's being preached i just don't i don't agree with it anymore and he was obviously shocked at first he also understood which i really appreciated and i did it slowly so i would go to our church together on the sunday morning and maybe the sunday night instead of going to our church i would go to the hillsong church i did it over time until slowly i stopped going to our church together which was huge you gotta think this is the first time in my life and i was about 24 at that point that i was leaving the church that i was raised in you know how much fear that put in me it was a time of a bit of healing for me or the beginning of some healing and i remember my husband came home from church one day because he was still going to the other one and he's like you won't believe what was said to me tonight and i was like what and he goes one of the leaders and he told me his name came up to me and said that he'd heard that i'd left obviously i wasn't going anymore and he said to my husband at the time you need to grab her by the hair and drag her back into church and he wasn't joking he was dead sex serious he said you need to grab her by her hair and drag her back into church because this is where she needs to be and i tell you that just so that you can understand how full on how full on it the whole thing was fast forward a few years and my husband and i ended up living in perth yeah we had nothing to do with the with the old church anymore at all our marriage started to break down not because we left the church i'm sure someone's going to want to comment on that it's because you left your church no we were still going to church at the time anyway but there was some cracks and i mean i won't go into a lot of it maybe in another video it'll be too long for this we didn't really know each other before we got married you think about it we had a one year long distance relationship spent time with each other on two occasions like two periods of time we're never alone except for dinner i think one night and the rest was all just over the phone and we really didn't know each other what brought us together was the fact that we were part of the same church and they used to say things like you're a man you're a woman what's stopping me from getting married like it wasn't about compatibility none of that so things were breaking down and i ended up um wanting to separate it was a very difficult decision it broke me to my core it broke him like i'm not going to deny that for one second that was probably the most painful experience of my life and i'm sure it was for him as well i do want to say that i don't hold any malice in my heart towards him at all i genuinely don't i'm going to talk about another video how i managed to heal post-divorce especially young i mean i was in my late 20s how i managed to heal what the process was for that and how i can genuinely hand on heart say that i wish i wish him nothing but love he's now remarried i'm now remarried and we're at complete different places in our lives and if i saw him i would want to send him all the love in the world like i don't hold malice in my heart for anything i truly believe that in order to be able to move on in your life with peace you have to be able to in your heart at some point forgive and for some people that may take a long time and understand that but it's not even for them it's it's for yourself and i think that that's a big thing for me was i was able to forgive and able to move on um with love and with grace in my heart but again that'll be a whole nother video right when we were going through a divorce i was becoming a police officer i had wanted to be a police officer for a few years and i before i even got married i said to my now ex-husband you know i really want to be a police officer and before he got married he thought that was really cool he's like oh cool you know once we're married he's like you're not doing that like you just you're not doing that yes i think it was just something that i was like i need to do this for myself and especially from someone that had been so controlled mentally especially but so controlled my entire upbringing from the church structure this is something i wanted to do for me and i wanted to feel powerful and not powerful in a way of it gives me power over other people not that at all i've always wanted to help people but it was more of a it gives me power from within like i did this for me i did something that i was told that i wasn't allowed to do i did something that i was told i couldn't do and i did it for me and i became a police officer that was pretty life-changing that was pretty amazing and during my time as a police officer i witnessed some pretty horrific things obviously saw a lot of death some suicides some terrible domestic violence situations i went to all sorts of jobs and right from the very beginning of my police career it was very full on but it was a great experience for me it truly was and it was during that time that again i was starting to process a lot of things i stopped going to church i wasn't going to church at all i needed a break from it i needed a break from the structure i needed the break from being around just church people i just i i was just like i need a break from it and it was a time of clearing my head i'm gonna fast forward quite a lot of the story because otherwise we'll be here all day i ended up um following madly in love with a guy who's my now husband yeah we ended up getting engaged and then it was five years after that that i actually we got married so it yeah with this time this one i took a bit of time we got engaged quite quickly we're only together for six months when we got engaged but i didn't want to get married straight away i was like no i need to take some time on this let's not rush this one shall we my husband adam he has no background in religion whatsoever he has no background in christianity in any religion like i i'm such a deep thinker i'm always like what do you think about this what do you think about that he's like i don't think about it like he's not the type to think about is there a god he doesn't think about a lot of big questions in life he's just he's just not that way inclined and i guess in a way he balances me a lot and i balance him he calls me a little tin foil hat person because i'm always the one that's like looking into conspiracy theories and he always laughs at me but yeah we balance each other out a lot to get to my awakening part of the story massive awakening before we got married it was actually three months before our wedding we found out that i was pregnant we weren't trying at the time it was a beautiful surprise though and we were super excited and exactly one week before our wedding i miscarried right at the three-month mark it was devastating it cracked my heart wide open because at that point obviously like we're madly in love with the idea of this little baby and we were super excited and especially one week before the wedding was just a bit of a crazy time my husband also been given a promotion with his job which meant that we had to move from australia to canada so that was happening a couple weeks after the wedding so there was a lot going on anyway i had the miscarriage a week later we got married two weeks later we moved to canada in canada i had no job lined up and my husband had to travel a lot with his job so this was the first time in my life that i was on my own for a lot of time and it was the best thing for me hands down the best thing for me at that time in my life i had time to think and it dawned on me i never really had a lot of time to think and obviously we can think but i mean really think and really question things and think for myself and it was the best thing i remember one time when he was home from from work we were watching um oh my gosh what's her name she's been part of scientology i can't think of her name right now but she was part of scientology she's a celebrity she left and she did the whole series on it i was watching that series and i wanted to reach through the screen and grab some of these people that were part of scientology and be like you can leave like get get out of it like you can go like this is crazy what you believe and i had this little light bulb moment of like that's you because i still had a lot of those beliefs i still had a lot of them ingrained in me of like if i die i probably will go to hell because i'm not going to church like i still think i'm a christian but am i like i still had a lot of those belief systems and she's like this light bulb movement of like that's that's still you like you still have some crazy belief systems holly you've still got them ingrained in you like you've never really really challenged them or looked into them what started as a little bit of questioning was like going down a rabbit hole i would look at the bible and read scriptures and be like i don't agree with that i don't think that that's right or i'd read something and be like oh my gosh god sounds like an absolute tyrant like a violent maniac that is just after blood like how how can i read that be like you know god is loving and god is pure and god is all this but then read something so violent and something so graphic and be like yeah i agree with this part but not with that part and then in looking at it i'm like but that that's meant to be the same god like he sounds like an absolute maniac and i start to question a lot of things and i was like well what about hell and i don't take that literally that's not a literal place and the more i went down the rabbit hole the more i was just like mind blown and you will understand this if you yourself have had a spiritual awakening you will get it you will 100 get this that once you have that light bulb moment once it's like your mind is open you cannot go back to how things were before you can't you see life so differently you see people so differently and that's what it was like for me and i just started to question things and i just started to be like i don't i don't agree with a lot of this i i can't agree with a lot of this it goes against my very nature i was someone that believed in god massively and i felt something powerfully i felt what would be i considered a relationship with god i considered a relationship with the creator it was it was powerful it was it was huge to me and i couldn't deny that there was something there's still something the only way for me to explain it now as i'm going through this and as i'm still i guess unraveling things and still questioning things i can't help right now but believe that there's more to life than just us like i still believe that i am a soul i have a soul i'm physically in this body right now but there's more to me than just this physical body there's more to life than what i just see and i truly believe that there is more after death but i don't believe that hell is a place you go to or heaven is a place that you go to i think they're a construct of our minds i think i've been to hell i think growing up in that religion was a form of being in hell i think hell can be a place that we can be in our minds here on earth any minute of the day i used to be closed-minded person i wouldn't have thought it at the time i probably thought i was very open-minded but looking back i can see i was super close-minded anyone that would say something that would challenge the way that i lived or challenge my belief systems and i would shun it instantly i would not even entertain the thought i wouldn't even look into it because it scared me and i also thought that would be a sin to look into it any further now honestly since this big awakening that i've had in my life i strive to be very much more open-minded i've had a lot of things challenge my belief systems and now i look at things from a critical perspective i look at things and and i will evaluate if something holds up to scrutiny does my intuition trust it also i always come back to myself and be like how do you feel about this because that was something i was never asked growing up i was never asked holly what are your thoughts on this what do you have questions about this what are your concerns it was never even asked it was always this is the truth and that's it so now i i question and i and i want answers and i also realize i'm probably not going to get the answers on everything in life this this world is magnificent this world is huge this world blows my mind and there's so much more than what we even see that i may not get answers for right now but i want them and i'm always going to ask the questions and i think that that's a healthy way to look at things i no longer believe that hell is a place that someone goes to and you know if you've never believed in hell you'd probably be like oh yeah i can't believe you're in your 30s and you're coming to that conclusion but when you're raised in it that's a huge thing to be able to say i don't believe people are doomed to go to hell forever based on how they live their lives that you get one shot at this that there's a god up there that created everything and one little life for someone and how you live that life determines the entirety of eternity for you that is just absurd to me there's so many things that just did not weigh up to scrutiny when i truly truly looked at them scriptures in the bible that that made god sound like an absolute tyrant i could not ignore any more i couldn't and that would be a whole nother video because it's too much for here and again if you believe that the bible word for word is a hundred percent the truth i am not judging you i have been in your shoes i'm also not trying to tell you that you're wrong because who am i to tell someone else that they're wrong i don't do that anymore your journey is your journey this is mine and i'm just simply saying i don't believe it to be true i no longer need labels i really don't i don't follow any religion i think there's beauty in a lot of them i think there's some good in a lot of them and there's some things that we can take from a lot of different religions but i don't follow one particular religion i don't need a religion you know i believe that i am an eternal soul that i do have a soul and i'm just inhabiting this body right now at this time space reality on planet earth but i do believe that there's a lot more to life than what we see absolutely and i'm exploring that i'm exploring a lot of mystical ideas i'm exploring a lot of things to be honest but i'm not putting pressure on myself to have to know the answer because how how can someone say they ultimately know the one answer for everyone i think that's arrogant to be honest i can i can see a lot of truth in a lot of different things and and i think that that's okay and i just want to say that where you're at right now is 100 okay and if you're deconstructing and if you're going through your own journey of deconversion it can be really painful it can be so confronting so confronting as you see things about yourself that you're like i can't believe that that was how i was and i can't believe that i held those beliefs so i did come from a place of no judgement and just sit with with those feelings and learn from them and grow from them i really do truly believe that you can heal and again healing is just discovering more of yourself hats off to you because so many people are in so many different religions around this world that they don't even agree with that they feel trapped by that if they said anything publicly they would be shamed so therefore they choose to stay in a box they choose to stay in their cage their souls are continually caged every day crying out to them to be released and they're ignoring the cries of their very own souls and that breaks my heart we can't make decisions in life based on the opinions of other people we can't we absolutely cannot you would be robbing yourself if this is your one life here on earth who knows i i believe we leave more than one life to be honest one life in this body maybe but i i truly believe we have more than one life but let's just say this is your one shot do you seriously want to be living out for other people do you honestly want to be living it just to please other people why you absolutely cage your very own soul if you're questioning things that is a hundred percent okay it's healthy too and wherever that leads you whatever journey that takes you on you may end up somewhere completely different to where to where i am on my journey i think that's beautiful in life we're not meant to be the same we're not meant to all think the exact same way i also want to say one thing and that is if you're gay i think you're perfect and i'm truly sorry that i once had a belief system that i had to save you even though i would never have publicly probably said that and even though that was taught to me from childhood it was still my belief system and that that truly breaks my heart and i'm truly sorry because there is absolutely nothing wrong with you and you probably already know that but i'm sure that you cop a lot especially from religion that tries to make you feel like you're lesser than or that there's something wrong with you or that you need to be fixed there is absolutely nothing wrong with you and you are perfect as you are and you don't need to change for anyone and i'm sorry that religion has put you in a box and i'm sorry that religion has made you feel less of that and i'm sorry that i was a part of that system i truly am i think that some of the belief systems that we've held can be very damaging and yeah i'm really truly sorry for that i really am i just want to read a couple of things here there's a book that i've been reading called women who run with the wolves highly recommend this book it's amazing pardon here that talks about people that are exiled or the exile themselves even though there are negative aspects to it the wild psyche can endure exile it makes us yearn that much more to free our own true nature and causes us to long for a culture to match even this yearning this longing makes a person go on it makes a woman go on looking and if she cannot find the culture that encourages her then she usually decides to construct it herself and that is good if she builds it others who have been looking for a long time will mysteriously arrive one day enthusiastically proclaiming that they've been looking for this all along that just really resonated with me and i feel like that's where a lot of us are at at the moment constructing what makes sense to us i also i don't believe in god as far as the way the bible talks about god i still believe that there's something there i still believe i i say source i have power i absolutely believe that we are all one and all one is in literally all connected part of the same source i don't consider myself an atheist but i i don't follow a religion i'm i'm doing my own path i'm doing my own thing and i think that that's perfect for me here right now i still believe that there's absolutely a higher power i still believe that there's a meaning to life i don't i don't think we live just one life on this earth i think i think that there's a lot more than what we realize yeah they say religion is for people that are trying to avoid hell whereas spirituality is for those that have already been to hell i believe that to be very true for myself that i've been through a form of hell and come out the other side and i feel a lot better for it i feel like i'm a lot more inclusive a lot more loving a lot more understanding less judgmental person since my i guess you would say deconversion another thing when you do leave a religion or when you choo when you publicly say that you're turning your back on say fundamentalist christianity one thing i guarantee you'll probably have said to you and it was one of the first things that was said to me by someone that i love really dearly is well you mustn't have ever had a real relationship with god or you mustn't have ever had a real christian experience that can feel like a bit of a knife at the time and how can someone comment on you and your life and your experiences and what goes on internally and and how do they see what your heart speaks of you know at night time when no one's around or you know the things that you're saying internally to yourself no one can speak on that and only you know that experience one little thing i would say is you often you don't have to offer any explanation to anybody for the decisions that you make in your life as far as you know a religion that you follow or what your belief systems are you don't have to explain yourself to someone and if someone is having a hard time the understanding i get it like i was going in this direction in my life and now i'm going in a different direction so i understand the questions and when they come with love i'll entertain them and i discuss it but if someone's coming from a place where they're really not getting it but they're also not willing to try to get it that's something they have to reconcile with themselves not it's not my job to explain that to them and i think that makes for a much easier experience i would also say that if you know someone that is questioning their faith or know someone that is questioning a religion that they're following give them space give them understanding don't try to convert them don't don't try to get them to think the same way that you think you know i've never understood even though i used to do it i've never understood why people need to constantly be defending their faith and constantly be challenging other people's views and get them to believe the same it only makes me think that maybe you don't believe it as much as what you think you do why do you have to keep defending it all the time or why do you have to keep trying to ram it down people's throats all the time why did i have to do that i just want to encourage you on your own journey to give yourself time give yourselves space but i promise you you will begin to flourish again i absolutely have i went through a period so i only really started publicly saying stuff over a year ago of my doubts and and publicly i mean by like on facebook or instagram it was mainly instagram but of how you know i was questioning things and i took a few hits from people some were done lovingly um but you know some people really slammed me with some messages and but a lot of that comes from ego as well like their ego is bruised you're now saying i don't believe the same way as you i would say it took a bit of time to really start to deconvert and to start to question and i will continue to do that once you find your feet again like it's incredible the way that you view the world is so different and so freeing i honestly honestly have never felt so free in my life since i call it my awakening since my mind has been absolutely blown it was like going down a rabbit hole that has just blown my mind it truly has i'm sending you all the love in the world i'm sending you all the love on your own deconversion journey in your own spiritual journey whatever that means for you you may end up in a complete different religion you may end up with no religion you may end up an atheist you may find yourself more spiritual whatever it is that's okay for you i have no judgment whatsoever on your own path your own journey and i think that if we all shared a bit more love with one another and a bit more understanding there will be a much more beautiful place so i'm sending you love this is only my first youtube video it's taken me a while to even do this because it's a hard story to kind of tell because there's a lot of moving parts to it so i knew it would take some time but i'm going to be doing a lot more videos on youtube so stick around hit the subscribe button and we'll have a lot more conversations so many things that have had impact on who i am now and the way that i view the world and yeah i think it'll be fun so sending you all the love [Music] [Music]

Channel: Hollie Saba

Views: 10,737

Keywords: deconversion, leavingchristianity, deconversionstories, comingoutoffundamentalistchristianity, deconstruction, fundiekids, exfundie, exvangelical, religioustraumasyndrome, christianmystic, lightworker, spiritualawakening, lawofone, reconstructingbeliefs, fundamentalist, growingupfundamentalist, spiritualjourney, selfhealer, religiousabuse, spiritualabuse, evangelicaltrauma, christconsciousness, reincarnation

Id: IQ0_Gc9dKhA

Length: 74min 42sec (4482 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020