My name is Sonja. I’m the oldest of seven children and the last to leave the church. My siblings all left in their teens and twenties. I left just before my 48th birthday. 

One of the most vivid memories I have is seeing my mom, sitting at the dining room table, head in her hands, sobbing. Her tears were for her children, and they fell from her face with a heavy weight of responsibility she felt for it all. She blamed herself and had been punishing herself internally everyday. She believed she hadn’t done enough and that if she could just do it better and do more, they’d return.

I could never quite find the right words to comfort her.

A few years after her unexpected death, my beliefs seemed to shift beneath my feet without warning or permission and what I experienced brought me to my knees with empathy for every single person who has been through a faith crisis/transition. 

My unraveling beliefs were unsought, unwelcome, and unwanted. What I experienced nearly destroyed me, but when the pain and grief of it all finally began to lift and all the dust cleared, what remained was the exquisite beauty of my own worth. Again, it brough me to my knees and in an instant I knew the worth of every soul was this beautiful too. It changed the way I see everything and everyone.

I also discovered a well of love within my own heart that I think I could spend the rest of my life exploring and never reach the bottom. I found that when I drank from that well, I was less thirsty for outside approval and validation. So I began a new journey of learning to live from this abundant innate worth and love rather than always trying to fill its lack.

I wish I had to the chance to go back to that moment at the dining room table with my mom knowing what I know now. I’m less afraid of the pain of another, because I’ve had to come face to face with my own. Now, rather than trying to fix it or make it go away, I’d enter into it with her, witness it, mourn with her, and hold loving space as we move through it together.

I’d wrap a warm blanket around her shaking shoulders and kiss her forehead, then sit at her feet and look right into her eyes and with all the love in my heart, tell her the entire epic journey I took, both the pain and the beauty. I want her to know all of who I am and I want to know all of who she is.

I now see that when our hearts are breaking open with pain, the cracks are making more room for only more love to enter in. No matter what we believe, there is a more beautiful way of relating to each other that honors each individual journey and increases deep authentic connection to each other.

Of course it won’t always go perfectly, that’s impossible. Mistakes will be made, fortunately, with self-compassion, we can return to the love that exists within us as often as needed.

I will spend the rest of my days advocating for only more love and compassion for those who experience this seismic shift in their beliefs and those who love them.

I’ll be drawing on my education from the Center For Mindful Self-Compassion, The Internal Family Systems Institute, Compassionate Inquiry, and The Santa Fe Institute For Shame-based Studies. More importantly, I’ll be drawing on my own hard-won wisdom and life-changing experience with my own self-compassion practice.

I’m also in community with thousands of people just like me. I’ve sat and listened to hundreds of stories just like mine. Although we each go through this experience in different ways, there are many common threads.

I’ve spent the last three years dreaming up this program. This is the common ground we can all meet on and create a more beautiful way to relate to ourselves and each other.

Welcome. Come in. Sit Down. Wrap a warm blanket around your shoulders and let’s get started.