Many people leaving fundamentalist Christianity don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They want to keep what mattered without walking back into something that controlled and restricted them. I’ve been in that conversation a lot lately — and I always come back to the same piece of advice..
Someone was sharing about leaving fundamentalist Christianity — the specific, particular grief of it. Wanting to keep what mattered. Not wanting to walk back into something that controlled and restricted you. The thread was full of people who recognised that exact tension, because it’s one of the most common experiences I encounter in this space.
I jumped in. Because I’ve walked this path. And because I think there’s one thing that matters more than anything else when you’re standing in that particular gap.
Leaving fundamentalist Christianity: what nobody tells you
When you leave a high-control religion, you don’t just leave a set of beliefs. You leave a community, a calendar, a language, a way of making sense of the world. The structure was suffocating — but it was still structure. And the absence of it can feel enormous.
A lot of people respond to that absence by reaching outward. They try things. They pick up practices, attend workshops, follow teachers. Some of it helps. A lot of it doesn’t, because they’re still operating from a template that belongs to someone else.
Here’s what I said in that Threads conversation, and I meant every word of it.
Get to know yourself first
Before you commit to anything — any tradition, any teacher, any practice — take the time to know yourself. Not the version of yourself that was acceptable to the institution you left. The actual you.
Start small if you need to. What’s your favourite colour? What music makes you feel like yourself? What time of day do you come alive? These aren’t trivial questions. They’re the beginning of a much more important conversation.
Then go deeper. What are your values — the ones that were actually operating in you, not the ones you were taught to perform? What do you believe about the world, about other people, about what makes a life well-lived? What are you willing to stand on, even when it’s uncomfortable?
This is the work that changes everything. Not because it gives you all the answers, but because it gives you a foundation to stand on when you start looking for them. For anyone leaving fundamentalist Christianity, this is especially true — the version of yourself that the institution knew may be very different from the one waiting underneath.
Why this matters for your spiritual path
A spiritual path that isn’t built on genuine self-knowledge tends to become another version of what you left. Different content, same dynamic — looking to something external to tell you who you are and what you should believe.
A spiritual path built on genuine self-knowledge is something else entirely. It grows with you. It holds you. It can absorb uncertainty without collapsing.
That’s what I’ve been building at Brigid’s Forge for years, and it’s what The Guided Path is designed to support — a structured, supported six months of doing exactly this work, with Brigid as a guide and a small group of women beside you.
The founding cohort starts in two weeks. There are still places available.
If any of this is resonating, I’d love to talk. You can find out more and get in touch at the link below — or just reply to any of my emails. I read everything.
Find out more about The Guided Path
Drop a comment below if something here landed for you. I read everything, and I don’t share what people tell me.
