Mormon to Muse

Faith deconstruction isn't a clean process. You're rebuilding a self while still going to work, parenting, managing a marriage and a household. There's no roadmap for it — you're improvising for the first time in a life that used to hand you all the answers. In this episode, I'm walking through the things I got wrong along the way. Not to give you one more thing to get right, but so you can spot t...

There's a particular kind of longing that shows up even when my life is good. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is happening. And still — something feels missing. A low hum of restlessness, the sense that I forgot something, that there's supposed to be more. This is the human void, and every healthy person carries it. Even small children. In this episode, I walk through how different traditions have tried...

You know you don't have to do what everyone else wants anymore. So why is it still so hard to figure out what you want? If you left the Mormon church and you're still second-guessing every decision, still scanning for the "right" answer, still feeling like a stranger in your own life — this episode is for you. Here's the thing I see more than anything else in women who leave: you're trying to find...

I spent years experiencing my own aliveness as a problem to manage. I was a mother of young kids, restless out of my mind, bored without intellectual stimulation — and certain something was wrong with me for wanting more than playdates and toddler story time. My husband was off chasing his dreams through medical school and residency while I sat home feeling guilty about mine. In this episode I nam...

We don't usually realize it, but most of us are carrying an unwritten rulebook about how the people around us should behave so that we can feel okay. Brooke Castillo calls it a manual, and in this episode I unpack why it has such a fierce grip on those of us who grew up Mormon — where the manuals weren't unwritten at all. They were handed to us, assigned to God, and wired straight into whether we...

If you're somewhere in your forties and it feels like everything is coming apart at the same time — your faith, your body, your sense of who you are — you're not broken. You're in the midlife trifecta: faith transition, perimenopause, and kids leaving home, all colliding at once. In this episode, we'll talk about why this season hits women raised in high-control religion harder than most. You were...

What if the system that claimed to be making you good was actually the thing standing in the way? In this episode we go deep on one of the most important distinctions for women rebuilding after Mormonism — the difference between unconditional positive regard and worthiness culture. Not as abstract concepts, but as two completely different operating systems for how a human being understands their o...

Download the 7 Day Reclamation Sketchbook There is a feeling you know very well. You felt it in sacrament meeting, reading scripture, bearing your testimony. It was warm. It was certain. It felt like coming home to something true. And you were told — explicitly, repeatedly, from the time you were small — that feeling was proof. That it was the Holy Ghost confirming the church was true. Then you fo...

Episode 51: The Sinfulness of Selfhood: Why Differentiation Feels Dangerous After Mormonism There is a word the church uses for a woman who trusts her own mind over the institution. The word is proud. There is a word for a woman who grows in a direction the people around her didn't agree to. The word is deceived. There is a word for a woman who becomes too much of a self — who wants too specifical...

It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I really understood what consent meant. I knew the word. I could have given you a definition. But the actual lived understanding of it — what it means to check in with yourself before you agree to something, to treat your own yes and no as information worth collecting — that didn't come until much later. This episode is about that. About every place the ch...

You've said it a hundred times. About what you want, who you are now, what comes next. I don't know. And it feels true — honest, even. But what if "I don't know" isn't always a fact? What if sometimes it's a thought your brain is using to keep you safe, small, and exactly where you are? In this episode Kristin breaks down why "I don't know" has such a hold on women who've left the Mormon church —...

Mormonism didn't just teach you to feel shame. It built a system where being human was the problem — and the church was the only solution. In this episode, Kristin breaks down exactly how that system works: how ordinary human experiences like doubt, desire, anger, and ambition get reframed as spiritual failure, how the shame it creates is designed to be chronic and self-replenishing, and why the l...

What do you do with your conscience when the institution that claimed to own it is gone? This episode is about one of the most disorienting parts of leaving — not the grief, not the social fallout, but the quiet, unsettling question underneath all of it: who decides what's right now? Many women leave and find themselves in one of two places: doing all the things they were told not to do (without a...

There's a particular kind of silence that happens after everything collapses and before anything new has taken shape. You're not who you were. You're not yet who you're becoming. And nobody around you quite understands what that space actually feels like to live in. This episode is for you if you're in that gap. Kristin talks about what it really means to be in the in-between — why it's disorienti...

Leaving a high-control system doesn’t automatically make you self-directed. Many women walk away from Mormonism expecting freedom—but instead find themselves stuck in indecision, self-doubt, and confusion. Why? Because obedience isn’t just a belief. It’s a skill that was trained. And self-leadership is a skill most of us were never taught. In this episode, we break down: How obedience conditions y...

Nobody prepared me for the fact that leaving the church might be the hardest thing I ever did — not because I made a mistake, but because of how completely my identity was woven into it. In this episode, I name what so many women in faith transition feel but struggle to articulate: the grief of leaving isn't weakness, and it isn't a sign you got it wrong. It's one of the oldest, most documented hu...

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with your schedule. It's the exhaustion of spending years showing up, giving, serving — as a version of yourself you never quite chose. In this episode we name what so many women coming out of high-control religious systems experience but rarely have words for: identity disorientation. The moment you realize you've been so good at bein...

Resentment gets a bad reputation. Most of us have been taught that resentment is something to suppress, overcome, or repent of. Especially if you were raised in a high-demand religious culture, resentment is often framed as a character flaw—evidence that you’re selfish, ungrateful, or lacking humility. But resentment is not the problem. Resentment is information. It’s your internal signal that som...

Why managing your emotions matters more than any rule you enforce-  Most parenting advice focuses on what your kids should do. Obey. Choose wisely. Make good decisions. Stay on the “right” path. But what if the real work of parenting isn’t managing your children — it’s managing yourself? In this episode, I explore why emotional regulation is the most important parenting skill you can develop....

Most people pursue healing, awakening, or personal transformation because they believe it will make them feel better. That eventually, if they do enough work, they’ll reach some stable emotional state where doubt, grief, anger, and uncertainty no longer touch them. This episode challenges that assumption. Awakening doesn’t remove pain. It removes the psychological structures that kept certain pain...

Doubt has a bad reputation. We’re taught to resolve it quickly. To replace it with certainty. To override it with belief, obedience, or confidence. But doubt is not the enemy of creativity. It is the beginning of it. In this episode, we explore why doubt is not a weakness—but a generative psychological state that makes creativity, intuition, and personal authority possible. Drawing on philosophy,...

Flow isn’t passive happiness. It’s deep immersion. It’s the state where time bends, self-consciousness softens, and you stop narrating yourself long enough to fully engage in what you’re doing. And research shows it’s one of the healthiest states the human brain can enter. In this episode, we explore: What flow actually is (and what it isn’t) The neuroscience of transient hypofrontality — when the...

For many women, spirituality was never meant to make us smaller—but that’s often what it did. In high-demand religious systems, spirituality is frequently defined by obedience, self-suppression, and service to the institution. Authority is external. Worthiness is conditional. Expansion beyond assigned roles is quietly discouraged. In this episode, we explore how feminine spirituality operates diff...

Audacity Over Permission Why Waiting Isn’t Wisdom—and Showing Up Changes Everything. We’re often taught that patience is a virtue. That waiting is wise. That if we just prepare a little more, heal a little more, learn a little more—then we’ll be ready to speak, create, lead, or take up space. But for many women—especially those raised in high-demand or patriarchal systems—waiting isn’t neutral. It...

  Feel calmer in 5 minutes.  Click HERE to download free anxiety calming art prompt.   Want to be the first to know when an in person class opens? Sign up HERE so you won't miss it! There’s a belief that surfaces during times of collective crisis: now is not the time for creativity. That when the world feels unstable, violent, or overwhelming, art is indulgent—or even irresponsible....