P.S. My memoir, “Religious Suicide: Learning to live after Christianity” is out now as an ebook and paperback! If you have already read it, I gratefully appreciate reviews. They really do help with increasing its visibility. My goal has always been to make it as accessible as I can to reach the hands that need it. If you can’t pay the $0.99 that Amazon requires me to list it at, message me and I will send you a free copy.

I was pushing harder than necessary, trying to keep up with everything happening around me. The instructor moved us into a series of more advanced poses, and I felt something inside me break (mentally) almost instantly. I knew that I could not do it.

Normally, I would have forced it anyway. I would make it happen. I would force it into existence.

That has been the pattern for most of my life.

Force it.

Push harder.

Overcome it.

Achieve anyway.

Instead, I stopped.

I sat there on my mat while everyone else continued flowing around me. Sweat dripped off my arms onto the floor as I stared down at the mat trying to figure out why simply stopping felt so uncomfortable. No one around me cared that I stopped. No one was judging me. Still, it felt like some deeply ingrained part of me was screaming that I needed to keep performing.

For the first time, I didn’t listen.

I just existed there exactly as I was.

Oddly enough, that moment affected me more than successfully completing the pose ever could have.

I think that is where I currently am in life.

For most of my existence, my worth felt attached to performance. Achievement. Productivity. Fitness. Academics. Survival. Becoming. Even healing eventually became something I felt like I needed to optimize and accomplish correctly.

I do not think I realized how exhausted I was until this realization. I couldn’t realize it until I finally stopped.

Those of you who have read my memoir already know I can be fairly blunt with my opinions and perspectives. I say this not to scare anyone away, but because honesty has become necessary for me. Releasing Religious Suicide was never meant to be some final destination where everything suddenly made sense. If anything, it was a snapshot of a particular version of myself trying to survive long enough to understand what had happened to him.

Life has continued moving since then.

So have I.

I have not taken some dramatic left turn or abandoned every belief I once held. Truthfully, I think life is far more nuanced than that. What I have done is allow myself to evolve alongside my experiences instead of trying to force myself back into old frameworks that no longer fit.

For a long time, grief consumed almost every corner of my identity. Grief over religion. Grief over self-hatred. Grief over the person I thought I needed to become in order to deserve love, acceptance, or peace. Somewhere along the way, though, I realized survival alone was no longer enough for me.

I wanted expansion too.

That realization has changed the way I approach almost everything now.

These days I spend a lot of time reading psychology, philosophy, Taoism, and practicing yoga. I have become increasingly interested in what happens after survival. What happens after the identity collapse. What happens when the constant need to prove yourself finally starts quieting down.

Truthfully, I am still figuring that out.

I currently have several books in various stages of completion. Some are close to finished. Others exist only as fragmented thoughts scattered throughout random notes on my phone. The difference is that Religious Suicide felt inevitable from the beginning. The framework already existed inside me because it was my lived experience. Writing it felt less like creating something and more like excavating something buried alive for years.

What comes next feels different.

Less certain.

Less urgent.

Less fueled by grief.

And maybe that is a good thing.

I no longer feel interested in endlessly dissecting my past. My past matters, and some of it nearly destroyed me, but I know better than to build a permanent home there. Lately, I feel much more interested in understanding what it means to actually live after rebuilding yourself.

Not perform.

Not prove.

Not overcome.

Just live.

That uncertainty is ultimately what led me here.

This blog will be my in-between space.

My thoughts may not always be fully formed here. Some ideas may contradict each other. Some perspectives may evolve in real time. I am learning that growth rarely happens in a straight line anyway. Sometimes life drags you back through the same wounds repeatedly until you finally understand what they were trying to teach you in the first place.

Still, I have realized far more people than I expected are asking themselves these same questions.

People seem tired.

Disconnected from themselves.

Burnt out from performing versions of themselves that no longer fit.

I understand that feeling deeply.

This space will probably cover philosophy, Taoism, Stoicism, yoga, psychology, spirituality, Christianity, identity, current events, and whatever else happens to consume my thoughts at a given moment. More than anything, though, I want this space to reflect honest processing rather than polished certainty.

I invite anyone reading to participate alongside me. I welcome disagreement, discussion, reflection, and perspective. Some of the most important growth in my life came from uncomfortable conversations and painful realizations.

For too long, I negotiated my existence with the world around me.

I negotiated my personality.

My voice.

My beliefs.

My body.

My worth.

These days, I think peace may begin when you stop negotiating who you are simply to make other people more comfortable.

Maybe healing is not becoming an entirely new person.

Maybe it is finally sitting still long enough to meet the person who has been underneath all the performance the entire time.

Truthfully, I think I am still learning how to do that too.

That’s all I have for now. We will dig deeper in future posts, rest assured!

Till next time, take care of yourself.