This week’s guest is MJ, the heart and mind behind the Instagram account, @dissident_daughters 

MJ grew up in a conservative evangelical home where Focus on the Family reigned and her whole world consisted of family, church friends, and a few Christian homeschooling families. She believed wholeheartedly, feeling all the existential pressure as a child to “save” everyone around her. 

As a young woman, MJ was surrounded by social workers while in college, and these colleagues were curious. They didn’t ask theological questions; they asked political questions, but for MJ it was all connected. She went to her pastor and was dismissed again and again. 

“I started asking myself, What are the criteria? What are [church leaders] really looking for? They’re looking for somebody who doesn’t question, doesn’t challenge the status quo, doesn’t have a viewpoint that encompasses anything that includes the world along with Christianity.” 

Now MJ uses her love of books and art to encourage others to hear different perspectives on—the inner life, relationships, systemic injustices, religion, and spirituality. Besides lengthening Arline’s personal To-Be-Read list, MJ’s Instagram has shown her that whatever one is convinced is true, there are other possible ways to view it. 

Links

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/dissident_daughters

Recommendations

We Can Do Hard Things podcast (Glennon Doyle & Abby Wambach)
https://wecandohardthingspodcast.com/

I Weigh podcast (Jameela Jamil)
https://iweighcommunity.com/podcasts/

Quotes

“I always assumed that’s why they yelled in sermons, to wake up anybody who might have fallen asleep.” 

“Retreats are what I lived for.”

“I found myself to be like, Is there anybody out there that thinks like me? Is there anybody out there who’s questioning? And I found Rob Bell.” 

“Books were always my escape.” 

“When I uncovered Velvet Elvis, it gave me permission to ask questions. I think that was the first time in my entire life that I was taught, ‘Questioning is not the same thing as losing your faith.’” 

“I started asking myself, What are the criteria? What are they really looking for? They’re looking for somebody who doesn’t question, doesn’t challenge the status quo, doesn’t have a viewpoint that encompasses anything that includes the world along with Christianity.” 

“I kind of think of my deconversion as a series of awakenings.”

“I only referred to God as ‘he’ for thirty years, and that feels really closed-minded now. It definitely feels so much bigger…”

“It hit me hard: I cannot teach my daughter to love herself if I do not learn to love my self.”

“If you see yourself as holy, if you see yourself as being part of god, you have to let all this shame go.” 

“…I still adore Jesus, who he was. I don’t even know if he was real anymore. At this point, I don’t think it’s relevant. I don’t think it’s any more or less relevant than learning lessons from the goddess Freya or the goddess Isis or Kali.” 

“I wanted my world to get bigger, not smaller…” 

“I’ve grown to dislike the word ‘god’ in general. I prefer ‘goddess’ right now…I feel like ‘god’ has so much attached to it already…”

“[In nature,] I feel this awe and wonder and this stirring in me that connects me with everything else…” 

“By using the word, ‘witch,’ for me, that’s just reclaiming my power…”

“For my kids, I feel like I have to make the world a better place than when I entered it…”

“I think that you keep searching, and you keep searching and you keep searching, you’ll find your way out of it.”

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Graceful Atheist Podcast Merch!
https://www.teepublic.com/user/gracefulatheistpodcast

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

David Ames  0:11  
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all the supporters on patreon.com. If you would like an ad free experience of the podcast become a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to go through it alone. Join our private Facebook community deconversion anonymous. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Remember, we have the merch store at T Publix. The link will be in the show notes. Check it out for all your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, our Lean interviews today's guest MJ, MJ has a presence on Instagram at dissident daughters. She grew up evangelical in a Focus on the Family type home. She suffered through purity culture, getting married and having children very early. Later in life, she began to expand her worlds and she began to have her doubts. She asked questions of her pastors, specifically about the last chapter of Mark, culminating in an email to the pastor. As you can imagine, that did not go well. Now MJ considers herself a week in which she recommends books and art on her Instagram page, you can find that at dissident daughters. Here is our Lean interview MJ.

Arline  2:05  
Hi, Mia, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. Hello, you and I connected over Instagram. I'm pretty sure that algorithm at some point in 2021 or 2022 suggested your account. And like your book recommendations, the different art that you share just your own personal stuff. Like I've loved it so much. So I wanted to hear your whole story. If you would like to tell us just start with what was the religious environment of your childhood?

MJ  2:34  
Well, it was evangelical Christian, but I didn't know that. Because my family always called it non denominational. So it wasn't actually until after my deconversion process that I figured out that we were evangelical when I realized that we had mission trips going everywhere, and I was trying to be be the person out there evangelizing. And I'm like, oh, that's what that means. Um, so I was raised in a very fundamentalist Christian atmosphere, in which my parents rejected Catholicism that they had been raised with, moved to Colorado from different parts of the country met each other in Colorado Springs as in the 80s. And I'm sure you probably know what else was happening around that time. So they latched on to focus on the family is how we're going to do our lives. It was Mickey and me it was, you know, homeschooling it was don't be involved in the secular world at all. We had homeschooling circles for each church, we had church on Sundays on Mondays on Wednesdays on Fridays, it was trying to fill up our lives, so that there's nothing that can sneak its way in and kind of detract us from our mission on earth, which is to get as many people to go to heaven with us as possible. So, early off, I felt the pressure of trying to convert all of my friends, anybody in my neighborhood because those are the only friends I was allowed to really have as a homeschooler.

Arline  4:08  
So you're homeschooling world. It was these were all other homeschooling Christian families, and I'm assuming they were all white Christian families and focus on the family, Christian families. You weren't exposed to even different kinds of Christianity.

MJ  4:21  
Yeah, and we often didn't even meet up with the homeschool circles until the testing we would have to do a test at the end of the year to make sure we were on par. So I would see other other homeschoolers there. About once a month my mom would try to set up some kind of like bowling or different activity with a couple other homeschoolers. And I honestly I only ever remember girls, and I only remember white girls and Christian white girls. And I think that's who my mother was hoping to surround me with. Because she, she also had this idea in her head of turning back time. And so we would watch Little House on the Prairie and talk about the prairie settler days and how beautiful and wonderful it was. And when fully we could go back to courting. And so my whole life, I knew that I was never going to get to date. That was not an option. It didn't matter what age I was, I could move out, they said and date, but it was going to be courting. And it was going to be with the intention of marriage, it's going to be with a chaperone. And so I grew up kind of thinking that was normal, because I watched a Little House on the Prairie. Yeah,

Arline  5:27  
wow. So high school did you do like youth group and things like that?

MJ  5:31  
I got introduced to youth group in seventh grade. It was through our church, obviously. And as I got into this group of kids, first I realized that I was boy crazy. I think being so isolated, made every boy the most handsome person on the world in the world. So it ended up being kind of a, I'm going to youth group to learn more about God. But I'm also like, more interested in learning about boys. But now the shame of that feeling is destroying my relationship with my parents, because I feel like they would know that I'm a horrible person if they knew my real reasons for wanting to go. So there's just this conflict of I want to do the right thing. I want to be here for the right reasons. But I also want to meet my future husband, was the way we saw this youth group was my release, it became such a important part of my life that my mother actually used it to punish me whenever I would mess up. She didn't really have anything else to like, take from me since I was very isolated. So it would be okay, well, you don't have youth group this week. And then it would be like, Well, I have to wait until church and we can't talk at church. And we have to sit with our parents and I have to wear a dress and all this. It was just a different atmosphere, the adults versus the youth. And I always felt like the youth actually cared about God. It was weird growing up and thinking that, Oh, well, you know, you sit down and you listen to a pastor and half the time the adults fall asleep trying to listen, I assumed that's why they yell and service was a wake up anybody who might have fallen asleep. That's a good time. And and I would just want to be a part of the youth who I thought were being, you know, motivated going on these retreats. retreats were what I lived for. And then by ninth eighth grade, my mother actually sent me to school, she sent us to a private Christian school. I think that if she had known what we were going to get into, she probably would have not made that choice. I'm grateful because my my school was not, was not white, it was very diverse, which was very interesting, because they had different outposts in London, in Liberia. In fact, I would meet my my first husband there who his his dad was from Liberia, her his mother was from here. And they weren't allowed to marry at their church because it was an interracial relationship, and had to go back to Liberia to get married and come back here in the 80s. And so that was my first like, kind of introduction to outside world, but it's only from a Christian perspective, very small classes, you know, 15 to 30 kids per class K through 12. And so it was a great experience to be out and around other kids, but also still closed off from we never learned about evolution. We had Bible class, we didn't have other electives. And so it was kind of the No touching and the purity culture is where that ended up becoming what it means to be a woman and especially a Christian woman for me. So that was a hugely, like, huge change in my life. But it was more of a buckle down on what we already believe a woman's worth is.

So it was it was really intense atmosphere. But I think that that was where I began to distance myself from my parents and realize that Hmm, I think that there, they wanted me to just be a wife and mother. They always talked about college like there was there was the goal of going to college. My mother put me through piano lessons for 10 years in the hopes of getting the scholarship by joining the orchestra, which, as an adult, I would ask her all often why did you pick piano there's only one piano in the orchestra. My sister got violin there are 60 strings in an orchestra. I'm like, I didn't have to be the best if I got violin, I just have to be mediocre. So I did piano lessons for 10 years quit it because or quit because I hated being in front of people. I'm I have stage fright like nobody's business. And so it was watching that their plan for me didn't include anything really outside of the proverbs 31 woman getting up to take care of my family. You can go to college, you can get a degree, but what your ultimate job is going to be is To be taking care of a family, which, as a younger girl, you know, I loved that idea. I had a dream of having six children and I had them on names and my best friend and I wrote letters to our future grooms. And it was just the atmosphere that the homeschoolers were raised. And we kind of all agreed I didn't know that it was different from what other people were getting. I think after my eighth grade year, my mom actually decided that I was not mature enough Emotionally, I think it was because she finally picked up on the boy craziness, and pulled me and my sister back out of school to homeschool us for another year. That was in my freshman year in 99. Enough 8090 98 to 99, which is when Columbine happened. So in Colorado, that kind of like was my 911 event for I think the rest of the world looks at 911 as this like life shaking Oh my god, the world is like bigger than we think it is. And it's more dangerous. And for for me, Columbine was that I think everybody in Colorado knew somebody who had been affected. I personally knew people who had been shot. And it was definitely one of those things where it was like, Well, this is community building thing. We're all coming together now. Like everybody's turning to God like we're it was almost like this religious movement in Colorado, to be like, turned back to Faith, like this will be your way back out. And so I kind of rededicated my life like tried to, like push hard into youth group, it was also all I had at the time, because now I was out of school. And so it became more and more of my passion. Then I went back to school, and in 10th grade back to that same private school where I would meet my first boyfriend, who I would end up marrying, because of purity culture. We were married for about three years and then divorced. So I do have two children from that, that marriage. And that was a such a an enlightening experience of what does it mean to actually encourage your child to marry the first person they sleep with. And so just another like, purity culture slap in the face. Like, this is not like, where it's going for me. But I transition from, from young adult or from child to adult immediately. And it was, oh, now you're a mother. So now you don't get to be kid anymore. You're 18, but you're an adult. And so it was a well, I'll just raise my child the same way I was raised, you know, it worked like churches helpful. Church will keep them out of trouble. It was kind of what I had always been taught is either sports or church, or both, if you want to make sure your kid graduates. And yeah, so it was a learning experience.

Arline  12:46  
They make it sound so easy. Just do these things. Everything will turn out great.

MJ  12:50  
Oh, absolutely. Um, around the end of that time, or ending high school, I decided I want to be psychologist. And so I went to kind of a liberal school, Metro, Metro State College of Denver, it was at the time is now Metro University. And so I went in for a liberal arts degree and found myself surrounded by people in social works. Settings, being like, why do you vote the way you do? Why do you vote against your own interests? You're a single mother, you're this demographic, you need this assistance from the state? Why? Why are you voting the way you do? Why do you have this certain preferences that you do? And I was always taught that it always came back to abortion. And so in my upbringing, I would be taken to abortion rallies outside of or route pro life rallies outside of abortion clinics, where we would hold signs and I would have nightmares from seeing these fake images of babies mutilated on on people's posters. And so it was a very like, well, it doesn't matter what happens to me, like the children matter, like the children matter. And I it's like, it's really hard to forgive myself for some of the indoctrination I think that I went through. But I spent years and yours just saying, Well, I agree with everything that this party like does for the community. But but the children like I can't I can't justify doing what's right for all these people. While these you know, these innocent people are being hurt. And so it became this is me against everybody else. Everybody hates me and my not hates me it was this perceived outcast, like perspective of myself. I thought that I didn't fit in that I didn't fit in into the social work setting that I was working in. And I didn't fit in into the Christian circles that I found myself in in church, and I found myself to just be like, is there anybody out there that thinks like me? Like, is there anybody out there who's questioning and I found rock Well,

Arline  15:01  
that's a big jump from James Stubbs to Rob Bell.

MJ  15:04  
I think it was the title that grabbed me. I was like, that sounds different. And I really don't know what made me pick up that book because I was not reading nonfiction at the time, I spent my entire life being drawn to fantasy, wanting to look at books as an escape, I didn't watch a lot of television. So books were always my escape, and I always would tell my kids, you know, it's, it's a much longer escape, because you can be lost for days or weeks in a novel, and you can only be lost in a show for 30 minutes or two hours, you know. So for me, it was I mean, I taught myself how to write and elvish I took it very serious. Yeah, I loved books. And so when I uncovered velvet, Elvis, it gave me permission to ask questions. And I think that was the first time in my entire life, I had been taught that questioning was not the same as losing your faith. And for me, that was huge, because I never wanted to be that person who could be critiqued as not being faithful.

I discovered Brene, Brown a couple of years ago, who is a type one on the Enneagram. And that's how my therapist actually promoted her to me was, she's a type one too. So you would probably like her? Well, the type one is all about reformer and doing what's right being perceived as good, instead of evil, right, instead of wrong. And so I spent my whole life not wanting to look wrong or sound wrong. And, and I remember my best friend crying to me one day and being like, what kind of pressure you must be under, because I'd be like, I'm a reflection of Jesus, like, everything I do is reflection. So people see me and every mistake I make, like, looks bad, like, on my faith, and like on all the people I care about, and my Savior, and like, it was just this, she was just heartbroken for me because she's like, how you're trying to be perfect. I was like, well, as close to it as I can be. Like, I didn't even try to deny it. I'm like, Well, isn't it in the Bible? We're supposed to be perfect. Like Jesus was perfect. Like, yes, yes, that's what I'm trying to do. And so obviously, that's a lot of weight to carry. And over over the course of, of many, many years, and finding my own church and going through divorce and feeling like an outcast once again, because nobody wanted me to volunteer, I wasn't allowed to volunteer for young life, because at the time, I was working at a dispensary, and even though it's legal in Colorado, it was a hard line for churches to draw. So I wasn't allowed to volunteer for young life. I wasn't allowed to be a church leader, for a small group at my church, because they asked five questions, and one of those were what are your opinions on marijuana? And I said, Why aren't you asking me about the Bible? Why? Why does our pastor talk about the bourbon? He drinks every week from the pulpit? Like, why are you asking this question? And then they never responded to me. And I never got asked to come be a leader. Um, I tried to volunteer in every capacity, and just got shut down and shut down and shut down and shut down. And so I started asking myself, What are the criteria, then? What are they really looking for? They're looking for somebody who doesn't question doesn't challenge the status quo doesn't have a viewpoint that kind of encompasses anything that includes the world, along with Christianity. And so it kind of felt like a line was being drawn in the sand. And I was trying to stand across both and be like, Well, no, I see their point. And I see their point. Why can't we just come together and discuss this, like, you know, and so I started emailing my pastor. And they directed me to his son, who was younger than me about 10 years younger than me, for all my theological questions. He had just graduated seminary school, and that was their theologian, Pastor. And so I started asking questions and deep wounds, and probably the most annoying ones, like, you know, why did they stop using incense like incense seemed like it was such a huge factor in the beginning church. It was even around a Jesus's day. And all of a sudden, like, if you missed instances, God would kill you. But then all of a sudden, it doesn't matter anymore. It seems like a God who would have killed for that might have cared about it later on. There was just different like, yeah, he didn't have any answers. I realized quickly that their their response to what they didn't understand or a question that they hadn't heard before, was to point to somebody else who had gotten a similar question and give a similar answer. And so I was constantly being pointed to this theologian or this theologian or this person or this person. And I think the most the last question I ever asked was, why, why were the extra chapters added to the book of Mark and then And, you know, in some in some versions and not other versions, I was like, but still credited to Mark and his his response was something along the lines of, well, I'd agreed with the other gospel slip. So they kept it in there. And I'm like, Wait, so we knowingly plagiarized. That doesn't. That sounds a little off to me like, and that was where it was like, Okay, I don't think I can trust my pastors to leave me, even though they're men. And I'm supposed to defer to men, which ended up being the step into my real deconversion was what I call my sacred feminine awakening, I kind of think of my deconversion as a series of awakenings. And so I feel like that's probably why the, the Conservative Party or the Christian church in general has kind of taken a very negative stance against woke. And so it almost is triggering for me to hear that be referred to in a negative connotation, simply because it was such a positive for me over and over and over again, it was like, you would think that this is the aha moment that changes everything. And then I'd have another one two months later, and I'd be like, but that changes everything. But that changes everything. And so it was just a series of awakenings. And the feminine Awakening was the one where I was like, I have to draw a line in the sand here. Because I'm never going to be able to be a leader in this church, like women are never going to be respected to the extent that men are I'm still being told that my husband is supposed to be my my spiritual leader. He was an atheist when I met him, he is still not a you know, still wasn't a Christian at the time. I'm like, he's, he goes to church with me, but I'm supposed to let Him lead me. Like it was just this. Something doesn't feel right about giving away my intuition and my like, conversations with God to somebody else. And say, you tell me what this is what God is trying to tell me.

After Rob Bell, I found Megan Watterson. She wrote Mary Magdalene Bradfield, which was this, this new approach to praying that I had never heard of, and it was really just meditation. But she calls it the soul voice meditation. And through it was the first time I felt like I was hearing back, I felt like, for 30 years, I had prayed to God and ask God and throw stuff out there. And never felt like I was really getting any kind of response. I was like, I might feel something I think I am getting an idea of what I'm supposed to do. Is this conviction like that. I'm even thinking about it. Like, does that mean it's wrong, like constant like questions, but no answers. And through the Soul voice meditation, I felt like I started to actually hear from God like personally have, no, you're not broken? No, there's nothing wrong with you. No, I love you. In fact, the first time I went inward on a soul voice meditation, and this is going to sound pretty woowoo. Which is funny, because Rob Bell just released an episode on the proper level of Whoo. It was right, that's, he's the best title ever, I need to get out, get a hold of him to title my book when I finished it. But it was trying to visualize God, like go to a safe place in your mind. For me, that was always a cabin, a cabin in the woods that has taken different visualization form over the years, or over every time I go into into my part. And while I was there, God appeared to me in my own face, which was really hard for me. Because it was like, Oh, I can't look at you like me, like I can't. And all I heard back was until you can see me in yourself, I'm going to come to you like this. And it was such a powerful like, mind shifting, life shifting, like, Oh, I am part of God already. Like, and I didn't have to, say a certain magic phrase to get there. I didn't have to be baptized. I didn't have to do a certain amount of things to become perfect. Like God has always been a part of me. And is this like connection that I made to Oh, God isn't everything and everyone and like, it's not like you can take God out of things, or put God into things. God is all encompassing. And so it became this like, much broader picture. And then I found myself trying to explain that to people and feeling like Oh, am I telling people that their idea of God was closed minded? Kind of, um, like, I only refer to God as He for 30 years, and that feels really closed minded now. It definitely feels like God just got So much bigger like I let her out of the box, you know, it was just something that shifted in me that was, well until I can see God in myself, then I'm not seeing God and female in the female body or in women. And then I got pregnant with my daughter. And I found out I was having a girl, I have three older boys. And I had already resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be a boy Mom, this is my fourth boy, my grandma had four boys, I'm excited. That way, when we went in for the ultrasound, it was just shock. I wasn't even excited when she said, Girl, I was just like, you sure. I'm pretty sure I only do boys like this is, this is not a thing for me. But something inside me started changing as she was growing and developing. And I started to come face to face with my own self loathing, and my own. My own internal misogyny honestly, I remember starting to like come up, or remember, like times in my life where I asked my mom, if God liked boys more than girls, I started to come back to like this realization Have you never felt equal in this religion? Is that what you want to do to your daughter, and a part of me feels guilty for never having that like, moment with all three of my boys. My oldest son is now 20. So hidden many years to kind of come to this, but it wasn't until she was developing inside of me that it was like, I want it to be different for her. Like, I don't want to talk about my weight in front of her. I don't want to use Snapchat filters. Because I don't want her looking back for it. It's a weird morbid thought. But I was thinking of the pictures that would be chosen for me, like at my funeral, like, if they would pull them off Instagram or Facebook, Facebook at the time. And if they were all going to have filters on them. And I was like, everybody's gonna be like, she looks like a different person. And each picture. And that hit me hard. I was like, I cannot teach my daughter to love herself if I cannot learn to love myself. And so self love became tied up in this feminine awakening, it became this interconnected. If you see yourself as holy, if you see yourself as being a part of God, you have to let all this shame go. And back to Brene Brown, like thank you, for my therapist, who I also started going to and 2020 like it was it is a great year for me, honestly, left church started over got therapy, but um, when she introduced me to Brene Brown's stuff on shame, I just realized that that's what my whole religion had been. My whole belief system had been based in, I'm worthless in and of myself. But Jesus died for me. If I say these magic words, he will come to live inside of my heart, and all of a sudden, I won't be worthless anymore, not because of me, but because he's in me. So it was still you're still worthless in and of yourself. And I wanted to change that and be like, No, you have worth in and of yourself. It'd be you being born you being taking your first breath like that is valuable in and of itself. And you have a lot to offer. Whether you were born with these genitals or these general rules, or these chromosomes or these chromosomes or how you identify, it has become a it's a really learning journey of knowing how much I didn't know, that I thought I knew. And coming to the end of this quest of the answer is to not have the answers. I feel like my whole life has been about finding the answer the truth. And now it's about well, maybe there are many truths. Maybe there are many paths, maybe there, there isn't one one, just one way and kind of reevaluating just my approach to everything might my holidays that I do with my family, the traditions that we hold the clothing that we wear, from A to Z, it's just now all of a sudden, this reframing and I'm kind of think I'm coming out of my deconversion process I'm well into the reconstruction of like, what do I want my life to look like now? What do I want to incorporate? What of Christmas do we take?

I have a weird, probably perspective that maybe a lot of D D converted people that don't have and that I still adore Jesus who he was. I don't even know if he was real anymore. At this point, I'm like I don't think it's relevant. I don't think is any more or less relevant than learning lessons from the goddess Freya or from the goddess Isis or Kali? I am like it doesn't make any difference to me whether or not he was real who he was. In what he spoke of was justice for the poor and the marginalized and, and not forgetting people. And that was the Jesus that I have fallen in love with. And so a part of me still holds on to that part of my faith, but I don't feel like that came from my faith. I look back at the church and my pastors, and I'm like, they didn't have this idea of Jesus that I met, like, they have like this white Jesus, this, like macho, like, you know, my, my former pastor is all into military and MMA and UFC and has is touted and is very macho Jesus. He talks about not wanting to follow up with the Lord. And, and so it's definitely been one of those things where I had to come to terms with this isn't the Jesus that you were taught, but it is the Jesus you discovered in the Bible. So you can't just say this whole book is evil, and throw it all out, because it introduce you to some really important truths. And that knowledge of being like you can sift through and find truth and claim it and you don't have to take anything at face value. You don't have to say, Well, if you don't believe all of it, then it's you don't believe any of it was so critical. For my I would say my emotional awareness, my development of, or my understanding of myself, my understanding of my relationships with other people, like understanding that nothing is all or nothing. That's a fun one, right?

Arline  31:31  
Yes, it is. Because we are taught that everything's black or white, it's either good or evil, it's right or wrong, rather than being able to take from Buddhism, or Shakespeare, or Toni Morrison or great movies, and just find your values and the things that you love and the things that you believe and yeah, piece it together. Because my dad has always been like that my dad's never been a Christian. He's always just kind of, you know, whatever he wanted to believe he kind of pieced together. And I thought, How do you do that? Then you're clearly just creating your own religion. Well, now, where I am now, I'm convinced everyone just creates their own religion. And I'm like, actually, this is a great idea if it you know, not harming people. So no, that's awesome that you're able to Yeah, just find truth wherever truth is found.

MJ  32:17  
Yeah. And that was actually in a Rob Bell quote, actually, I don't remember if it's a book or online. But he said once to affirm truth wherever you find it, because all truth is God's truth. And I remember bringing that up with my dad, who was definitely Rush Limbaugh like, Hart, he ran for House of Representatives in the Republican Party, against an incumbent Democrat and actually got like, 35% of the vote in a very democratic area. So it was very much so that our politics and religion went hand in hand. But then it was also like telling him about, hey, you know, we can affirm you all truth is God's truth. Right? If you if you search for the truth, they will find you, right? And he would be like, Well, yeah, I've never really thought about it that way. But that opened the door. So then I can be like, What do you think of this truth? And then tell him where I got it from? And it was like, not necessarily a biblical truth. But he would be like, yeah, yeah, that's true. Like, I can recognize that as, and I've watched him change. And I think that him changing more than any other person in my life has shown me that it's possible that somebody who was the most hardcore, like fundamentalists, like Christian that I could think of, even vocally anti feminist. And, and now today, I would say he's beside me, he still calls himself Christian. But he doesn't go to church. He doesn't he doesn't like to be identified in the group of American church goers. He talks about a different kind of Christianity, the Christianity that follows the real Jesus and it sounds like somewhere in there, he began to see this like, shift in, okay, this isn't right, this isn't right. This isn't right, and actually acted on it instead of just staying in the church, because I would watch my parents stay in a church long after long after it was being abusive to them. One church wouldn't allow women to pray a lead prayer in Bible study, and they would stay through that but then ended up leaving because they got a divorce and my dad was asked to step down from teaching because once you're divorced, you're no longer able to teach. Suddenly, all your Bible knowledge goes out the window. So there was just different in watching him at 65 years old, like twist and change and morph into this beautiful like human being who sees like the need for social justice in addition to love your neighbor and seeing seeing those as being the same really and being one isn't an act of love, and one is not just voicing it. So I definitely, I have hope for society. And so I keep talking to people, even if they think I'm crazy, or I've had most of my Christian friends and family kind of shun me at this point, or tell me I know what side you're on. And I'd be like, Wait, we haven't had this discussion yet. How do you know what side I'm on. But it was just a while we're here, and you're here. And so no matter what the topic is, you've already had your side has already picked, like, you have to pick one of these two. And I just kept rejecting that and rejecting that and rejecting that and being like, no, that's not how this works. I'm a human being. And I get to make a choice every time like, not just I'm pigeon holed into picking one or the other because of my faith. And I wanted my world to get bigger, not smaller. Through my my reconstruction. And it's, it's been, it's been a lot of fun. I holiday scare the crap out of me. It's, I feel like I have nothing to do like when it comes around to we're trying to change Christmas into you'll, and looking what what does that look like? Do we still acknowledge Jesus's birthday? We know it wasn't in December, but we're not celebrating it any other time. Like, do we still acknowledge it? You know, is? Is the Bible, something I do want to read with my kids at some point? Probably not all of it. Like, there's a lot of parts that I'm like, that was not kid appropriate ever. And I'm not sure I was given the Bible reading as punishment. Sometimes it would be like go to your room and read a gospel. So I learned Mark was the shortest possible, which is why I noticed that there was chapters added to it. But yeah, I mean, the reading the Bible was what set me free.

Honestly, it got me asking so many questions that things didn't add up. And I fell in love with history. And I fell in love with like trying to figure out where does this piece in with what was happening in Asia at the time? What was happening in Africa at the time, like, how does it all tie in to the bigger world picture so I can see what was happening instead of narrowing in on, you know, 911 and thinking, you know, what was happening in other parts of the world in 2001? You know, it's just one of those things where we I don't think we do it very often, if we're not taught to do it. And psychology taught me how to think critically, they had a research methods class, it was always about challenge your sources. Where are you getting that from? Did you get it from Wikipedia, because it was right after the internet had come out. Like, you know, you can't just pull things from here or here, we need, you know, peer reviewed articles. So we're gonna do real science. And I began to fall in love with the scientific method, the idea of proving yourself right, by proving yourself wrong by trying to prove yourself wrong. And so I tried to do that with my life and kind of just be like, how sure am I of this? Can I prove it wrong? Because if I can't, then it kind of like confirms my bias, you know, but it's like, there could be something else that comes up later that throws that out. And all of a sudden, you're just like, Well, no, what? Like, no, I don't know what to think anymore. Back to Rob Bell, he actually wants what did he use, he used the metaphor of trampoline versus a brick wall. So he said, you can either build your belief system out of a wall, and you pull out a brick and the whole thing crumbles. Or you can look at it more like a trampoline, and it's springy, and it's adaptable. And you can have fun with it, and you can enjoy the ride. And I just remember thinking I would much rather have the trampoline in the wall. Like I just, I want to have a springy like attitude towards life. I want to be adaptable, and I want to be open minded. And it's something I always thought I was. And even my husband like tells me Yeah, you were really open minded for a Christian. You definitely changed my mind about them. You definitely made me see that I was putting them all in one category and saying they're they're all the same people that you know, were cursing out girl saying they were going to hell for wearing short miniskirts at my college in Florida like, because that was his idea of the Christians are the ones with signs at your college telling all the girls are going to hell. And so when he met me, I spent my you know, first two or three years trying to change his mind about me, and then be like, wait, I think he's kind of right about me and in some ways, like I think that there are certain things that are just very close minded very unadaptable I'm still thinking I write I'm still hoping he's gonna convert. I'm still believing that might influence on him is stronger than his influence on me. So am I really really open minded? Or am I just open enough to make it seem like I'm listening?

Arline  40:07  
Who I need to pay attention to that because I can find myself in conversations. Similarly, no longer a Christian no longer a believer in anything supernatural, but wanting to ask questions that maybe can get the other person to think rather than just letting them be where they are. And like still being an Evan Jellicle, just for something completely different. Like, does that make sense? Yeah. The fun, the fundamentalism and the the evangelizing those kinds of behaviors and ways of thinking are hard to kick. Because for you, you were in it way longer than I ever was, like, it's a lot to get rid of.

MJ  40:42  
I saw the most convicting meme, I think, were posts on Instagram the other day, and it was about how, how was your fundamentalist upbringing still playing into your deconversion? And so he says, Are you trying to pull people out of the church the same way that you tried to pull them into the church, and I'm not gonna lie, the first year of my deconversion I was, I was tagging my former church and my former pastor, and almost every one of my posts and being like, this is flat tires, this is that this is who they are. This is the man series like this is sexism, this is patriarchy. And just trying to like, convince people that it was a cult. And I'm like, you learn something there, though. You spent nine years and you didn't learn nothing? Like, so you got something out of it? What if they're getting something out of it? And so I'm like, Okay, well, is there a right way to warn people about what they're getting into. So it's kind of a, I started listening to this new podcast sounds like a cult, and they have three cold categories. And one of them is, you know, live your life and then watch your back and then get the f out. And so the beginning of my deconversion was that get the f out and take everybody with you it's dangerous is going to destroy the world. Like they're, they're making these misogynist out of just hold legions of, of young boys in youth group I watched my son get targeted on online by all these like misogynist groups, his whole youth group is is very, I would say the worst like influence on him that I could have probably imagined. But it was just a an anger period that I had to work through a whole lot of anger. And Sue Monk Kidd describes that in the dissonant daughter about years of anger. And, and that is why that book spoke to be so deeply of trying to let yourself like feel angry and allow yourself to feel angry, and then do something about it. And so I loved her approach and being I'm going to surround myself with the sacred feminine kind of try to balance this imbalance. For me, that has been step one of deconversion is like relating to God in the feminine. Before I can go to Goddess genderless, God is bigger. And so it's kind of one of those, I spent 30 years here, like I would like to spend a couple of years loving her getting to know her, and then getting to know something even bigger. The My son is already kind of there my 17 year old, I feel like he like just bypass like all of it. And it kind of makes me jealous sometimes to be like, how did you just know? Like, how did you just know I raised you in the church too? Like, how did you just know this was just lunch, a bunch of crock? Like, it just seems like he knew innately like what was right what was true for him and was just like, I like that, but I don't like that. And I'm just not going to do that. And I don't believe that. But that's okay for you and are just like, well, I did something right, at least you know, like, maybe my kids will do better than I did. I'm still trying to undo all of that here. But he's already got this idea of calling it source or absolute. So so many different names out there. I think I find a different one. And every book I read read whether it's like on Zen or Buddhism or quantum healing, it's just I feel like science has a name for God, like we have a name Allah or Muslims have a name. So it's just all these different names for the same source that is just something other. For me, it is just something other than myself. That has well intentions for me. And I think that that has been the source of my self love healing journey of establishing a sense of worth of rebuilding who I think I am. When I met my husband, I told him if you don't learn anything about God in my face, because I told him how do you have a critique on a book you never read? He said he would never read the Bible. And, and I just told him early on that if you think that you know You cannot without knowing my face, like it is so entwined in who I am that I don't know who I am without it. And so now redefining myself as well, is it still faith? It is in a sense, but is it so core to who you are that you don't know who you are without it? So when I get to the part of supplying a bio to people, or online, or for my literary agents trying to get a book published, it's like, well, I don't want to start with I am this or I am that I'm like, these are just roles I play, like, how do I figure out who I am? Like, you know, Knowledge Seeker, and then I'm like, Well, you know, if you were a part of God, then all the knowledge is already there. So even if that identity was taken from you, if you could not seek Who are you at the core? And that has been what the last like six months has been about just trying to figure that part out and being like, I don't know anymore. But I don't think that that's the answer to, to arrive at a conclusion. Because I think if I concluded who I am at 38, then by the time I'm 58, I'm going to have to undo all that.

Arline  46:05  
You'll be a completely different person, then like, there may be like, I think about one of the things that was, I guess, shocking, I don't know if that's the right word for my husband and me, he d converted before I did. And that sent me on a journey to figure out like, Okay, what do I believe? And now we're both in similar places. But it was like, our values didn't change. Like, we were so surprised. They're surprised, because being Christian had been such an integral part of both of our lives for so many years. And then when we realize like, we can't believe this stuff anymore, but it was like, oh, but our values are still the same compassion, empathy, kindness, justice, wisdom.

Where are you now as far as like, what your beliefs are about supernatural like, for me? I've read the Brene. Brown and the Sue Monk Kidd, and like, they were all they've all been so good for me. But I've kind of landed in a place where I don't believe in the supernatural stuff. But what do you believe now about sorcerer universe? Or any of those kinds of words? I guess about God in general, like your definition if you have one?

MJ  47:20  
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I have grown to like, dislike the word. God, kind of in general. I prefer goddess right now. Simply because it feels more. I feel like God has so much attached to it already. And when I think the word God, I think, a white man in heaven.

Arline  47:44  
It's hard to disconnect that from Yeah, I understand.

MJ  47:48  
I think that kind of rings true. Whether you were raised in any faith or not, is kind of you hear the word God and you kind of it's kind of been taken over. And so I try to avoid that word at all costs. I think my journey actually kind of led me full circle. When I was about 1415, I began to explore Wicca and I remember having this falling in love with the idea of God being represented through nature, and feeling like Well, that's the only place I ever feel like there's something bigger than me here. Like, I feel this awe and wonder, and this, this, this stirring in me, that connects me to everything else in nature. And so I go to the mountains on hikes every every month because it's, it's my like, fill back up with with goddess. And so when I was studying Wicca my parents obviously freaked out. Like, oh, my God is our worst nightmare, our daughter is becoming a witch. Um, but there was one hangup for me. And that was in a Wiccan religion, they focus on a goddess instead of a god. Or they focus on the sacred feminine instead of the masculine. And I remember thinking at 1516 years old, well, but I know God is, is Jesus, you know, so I know God is the man. And I could never allow myself to be a part of any ritual or any ceremony that said, Goddess, I would change it to God. And so it was this aversion to seeing God in the feminine. That kind of made me walk away from Wicca for a long time. And in my adult life, I've come across a lot of books that kind of brought me back to, I wouldn't say Wiccan anymore, because I would say that's one, one branch, just like evangelicals, one branch of Christianity. I consider myself an eclectic witch at this point, which in the sense that I didn't necessarily become one so much as remember who I am as a woman, I think which is worth the healers. They were the midwives they were the the wise women and I I feel like that is our birthright as women. And because our stories haven't been told, it's been his story instead of her story for so long, that it's gonna sound like a side by side trail real quick. But have you ever heard the red tent by Anna or Anita Diamont?

Arline  50:17  
No, I have lots of people who've loved it, but I've never read it.

MJ  50:21  
It's about Dinah, so the only daughter of Jacob and her experience is a woman in the in her culture and the the birth of the Israelites in her perspective of how not great these men were. But it talks about this red tent where women would sit during their cycles. And because it all syncs up in the same village, they would all sit there for a few days and talk to each other. And that was how women's stories were passed down. And so I had this heartbreaking moment. And I think it was in dancer, the dissident dancer, the Dissident Daughter, where I realized there was this break, where women who didn't have daughters had nobody to pass it down to. So there was just storyline last, and last, and last. And last. And so we don't know, the stories of these wise women are these, you know, these these witches that were able to use their power, they're tap into nature, there's own cyclic nature, and be like, Oh, I can read when when this cow was going to give birth, or I can tell you, you know what herbs are going to work for this. And it just became a discrediting of ourselves and the, in the beginning of the taking of our power. And so by using the word witch, for me, that is just Reclaiming my power. So I know it has a lot of connotation to a lot of people. And it can mean a lot of different things. For me, I'm more of the eclectic, which in the sense that I, I take from different ideas. I like the the gardening is like my favorite thing. Mostly retouching nature. I'm also vegan. So I think the connection to nature has always been there. For me, it's been something that I used to beg my church to, like, recognize, like, hey, like, why is he still talking about hunting or eating chicken wings in heaven. I'm like, I'm really hoping that we're not slaughtering animals by the billions and heaven. It's just, I really feel like we'll get past this someday, like if we can start to see all life as as valuable. And so I feel like I was already there. I just didn't know what to call myself. And so I still believe in a supernatural in the sense that I believe that when I use my tarot deck, it's like doing the soul voice meditation, but getting a clear answer, because I can doubt myself, when I do this whole voice meditation, I can be like, was it really me talking to myself? Is this what you said? But was that my intuition? Or was that my head because my head is kind of crazy. Like, I have all sorts of thoughts that go on up here. And so I'm trying to ask, you know, questions and get answers. And I'm like, Well, I got an answer, but I don't trust it. And so I'll pull up my tarot deck, and then I'll get an answer. That's like, yes, trust yourself. And I'm like, Okay, right. Um, so I feel like, I do get answers from something outside of myself. And that's kind of my idea of supernatural at this point, that and I do believe in multiple lives, reincarnation, I don't necessarily believe that they're all human, I don't even necessarily believe they're all on Earth. And I don't believe that time is linear, necessarily, I don't know if you know, some of my past lives are yet to happen. I'm like, I don't think that that's the point. I feel like whatever lessons I've learned here on Earth are lessons that I didn't get to any past life. And so like, when I see somebody struggling with something over and over and over again, the woman who accused Emmett Till of rape passed away today. And my first thought was, she's gonna have to come back and learn that lesson of race racism, like she's going to have to come back as somebody who suffers, you know, or somebody who loses somebody, you know, like, or, or somebody who, you know, has to, like, just face this somehow. Because in in my idea of the afterlife, and a lot of this is formed by a near death experience I had when I was four, and also reading up on other people's near death experiences because of my experience. I watched the show called Life After Death by Tyler Henry on Netflix. And he talks about how people still grow after they're gone. We don't just stop our growth cycle, we're still growing as spirits. And so that to me, was something that I held on to because it was it felt like there's so much that has been passed on and passed on and passed on for people not healing. And you see it in epigenetics with the African Americans holding on to more stress levels in their bodies because of their past. And I feel that women have some reckoning too. To Do With, with the witch burning and and the I mean, kind of genocide on women that was never really talked about or never really like, you know, even reported on like numbers were really not written the people who did write about it were men like, the things that we don't know are what I feel like my new mission in life has become of getting people to tell their stories, I find myself buying people journals all the time of like, Dad, tell me your story, Mom, tell me your story. And it's like, tell us your story. And it has like prompts and everything. But I'm just like, I'm not letting one more person go without hearing what they have to offer. Because I feel like we're missing out on the everyday perspectives, and getting the good writers perspectives. And I just want to have a history that encompasses men and women. And all cultures, and I want it to be moving towards a better Earth. So I feel like my spiritual idea or practice today is is that this earth can become heaven. Here. I don't know if that's something that has already happened in the past and comes back around. And it's a circle, that we just keep repeating. I like to tell people, we are God's evolution. Our evolution is part of God's evolution, as we are growing, God is growing like we are becoming more compassionate than we are caring more about every person, like we're not going back in no matter how much certain groups of people want us to, like, we're not willing to go back to being second class citizens, we're not willing to go back to the way things were We want a world that is more inclusive to everybody. And that I think was is my idea of God and heaven. And this interconnectedness of like realizing that my healing is your healing and that my my hurt is your hurt. And then once that happens, there's no identifying this as right or wrong or good or bad. Or it's just, well, if that hurt you, then it hurt me and I don't want to do that to you. So just a simpler way of living.

And for my kids, I feel like I have to make the world a better place than when I entered it. Just make sure that I am not leaving my daughter in worse hands. After Roe v Wade being overturned, then then she was going into it. Fortunately, I live in Colorado. So I have a lot of protections in place for for me here. But my sister lives in Texas, and I have you know, friends all over the country. And I'm like, I'm not willing to let anyone go. I'm not willing to let anybody be oppressed without saying something about it. And so in I mean, the racial awakening, Awakening was the other, you know, huge part of my deconversion that actually was my nail in the coffin of like, leave this church now and never come back. was right after George Floyd. Our church pretended like they were going to talk about it. They did one sermon on race, and they had their youth pastor, their young pastor, obviously the pastor's son in law off because it's only sees in the family. But they got him to get up there and give a speech about race and how racism has no place in the church and got a huge pushback online. And that was where I got called the terrorists for being a Black Lives Matter protester. And started to hear the words critical race theory and and have people like, come at me with this stuff. And, and my response was, I don't know what that is. But I do know what racism looks like. And I do know what it looks like when people are treated horribly, because I was married to a black man. And I was with him since I was 14 years old. I got pulled over when we were together, and he got a ticket. And I didn't know I was driving. Like there were different things that I would witness personally. And nobody would believe my stories. And it became this like gaslighting scenario, I felt just completely gas lit by the church. Like they're saying, No, we don't see race. No, we don't see race. And so the following week, the main pastor got up and said, We are not going to be that church that talks about race. And he said, and if you think we need to defend that, please read Romans 13. And that was the last sermon I ever listened to. And I was like, I can't be here. My kids depend on me. They depend on me standing up for them, because they are kind of being brainwashed in your youth group to think that they're gonna be treated like all their white peers. But if they get pulled over, guess who's going to jail first, it's my kid, not your kid. And so it was just this kind of heartbreak at realizing that even the people that I grown up with didn't believe me or trust me My opinion or thought that I was making a political statement by saying, you know, black lives matter, because I have been saying it long before, like back when Trayvon Martin was murdered in 2012. So I had been saying it for so long, that by the time it like really picked up in the light of Elijah McLean and George, George Floyd in Colorado, it became this. You're just jumping on the bandwagon kind of idea. And I'm like, oh, no, but these are my children. Like I've been saying their lives matter since day one. I've been calling out racist in the parking lot at their schools, like, I have been on this. But I had been alone in this, I thought that the church, if they knew would be like, oh, what? And that's actually what started my page, the dissident daughters page. It was, if people only knew this, like, maybe it would shift a perspective. And and I was like, Well, how do I share that I can't just keep giving our books to people this gift. And 99% of the time, they don't read it, or they get annoyed with me. And I'm like, you don't have to read I'm just giving you a free book. Like, for me, that's like the best gift you could give me. Because like, I didn't realize it would be so offensive or to do lists for people. And so that like became a Okay, so you can't reach out to people to give them stuff, because then you're like, targeting them? What if you created this other page? And I was too worried about my parents finding out that I wasn't Christian anymore. Yeah. So I kind of created an anonymous page that was separate from my personal page that so that it's funny, because everybody had already stopped following my personal page already, because it's black lives matter for four years.

Arline  1:01:43  
I totally get it. A few people have asked like, because on Facebook, I'm like, super anti racist, ever anti religious heifer on Facebook. And they're like, how does your family respond to your like, the things that you write about being an atheist, and I'm like, in 2014, when I first started waking up to the racism in the United States, and I attacked whiteness, they quit following me, like, they're not seeing anything that I'm writing. When I attacked, and I attacked the one true God of white Christianity. They stopped paying attention a long time ago, I was like, so they probably don't even see anything that I write. So I understand, yeah,

MJ  1:02:23  
they quit ironic, too, because my mother, like grew up, you know, she, we, she bought hook line and sinker, the idea of being submissive to your husband, and, and living under him and you know, quit her job and was taking care of her kids and being a good home housewife. And until she hit her, you know, late 30s, early 40s, and had her. I mean, Brene, Brown calls it her spiritual awakening, and other people call it a breakdown. In my mom's form was definitely the worst way you could do it, you know, turn to alcohol and affair and leave. And so it was kind of a well, it's all or nothing. It's either you're all in or you're all out. And now she's all in again. And so now it's just I'm praying for my grandchildren, please let my you know, please let my grandchildren go to you wouldn't keep them, you know, out of heaven, would you? It was like, Well, Mom, I'm not afraid of hell anymore. I stopped believing in that. So when you're not afraid of something that doesn't work as well. With like, wow, manipulation? 101. Yes.

Arline  1:03:25  
Some kids on the playground told my older son that like you put your family's gonna go to hell, if you don't believe in God, he goes, what, but we don't believe in hell. So we don't really care. Like, it's like, whatever. As we wrap up in Jay, is there anything that I did not ask that you that you want to mention?

MJ  1:03:44  
Oh, no, I think I kind of went in circles a little bit, I am still writing out my story, because it's hard to tell where it, you know, really starts I feel like I've been on a deconversion program since since I was four and fell out of a window. And, and it's like that near death experience, like convinced me that there is something bigger than me. But it also reminded me that I wasn't going to get answers from the people around me, because they didn't know either. And so that search is where I think that you keep searching and you keep searching and you keep searching, you'll find a way right out of it.

Arline  1:04:22  
Yes. And it is wonderful to be in a place where I don't know, is a perfectly acceptable answer. Like there doesn't have to be a right answer. There doesn't have to be a wrong answer. There doesn't even have to be an answer. It can be like, I don't know. And I'll keep looking or I'll stay where I am. But you don't have to have any answers and you don't you don't have anything to prove anybody you have to to make feel a certain way so that they know that you believe this or that and those are good things. Do you have any book podcasts, YouTube, any kind of recommendations that and I know you have book recommendations but like cuz we will direct everyone to your Instagram page. But um, yeah. Any recommendations that have been just just super helpful to you in your in your deconversion journey?

MJ  1:05:11  
Absolutely. I would say we can do hard things. By Glennon Doyle Abby Wambach and her sister Amanda Doyle, the podcast, right? It's a podcast. Yeah, the podcast, along with the AI way podcast by Jamila Jaleel. Those two, for the last year, I had been going through my LGBTQ like awareness, like, and realizing that I had no trans friends and being like, I don't understand their perspective in life, I need to know more. And so these podcasts have like, opened my eyes to perspectives I've there are people I don't even know their names. And hearing their perspectives has been so fascinating. And so mind blowing that I'm just like, how did how am I just discovering this now? And how did I think that I had a good idea of from all the books that I've read, have different personalities, when I'm like learning that there's a whole whole group of people out there that have never like shared and their stories are the most fascinating.

Arline  1:06:09  
Thank you so much. Where can people find you online if they want to connect with you?

MJ  1:06:14  
Right now it's just the Instagram dissident underscore daughters. And from there I am working on finishing up my book this year. We'll see if that ever gets published, I may just publish it myself. We'll see. But that's going to be kind of a just an in depth like story of my life. I feel like I've got a lot of things that I relate to different groups of people that usually are on opposite sides of the aisles. And hoping that my my book brings a perspective that you know, some people see themselves in.

Arline  1:06:47  
That's fabulous. Thank you so much for sharing your story. MJ, I really enjoyed this.

MJ  1:06:51  
Thank you, Arline Have a great day.

Arline  1:06:58  
And final thoughts on the episode in Jays amazing reading life that she shares on her page, dissident daughter's has been highly influential in the things that I've read over the past few years. And I think her story, if we as graceful atheist podcast listeners, if we can not dismiss her story because of words like witch or divine feminine or supernatural source universal that stuff. Her story is so similar to so many other people's stories. We're often raised with this black and white thinking where there's no nuance. There's only good and evil, right and wrong. It's filled with shame and purity culture and an inability to trust ourselves. Because we're explicitly taught, we can't trust ourselves, we cannot trust ourselves. We have to trust people outside of us to interpret what truth is. And I think just realizing how much nuance there is in life, how much we can learn from religions, from spirituality, from rituals, and traditions, what we can learn from women, because the atheist world is not exempt from misogyny, or white supremacy. And so yeah, just being willing to hear her story, and how much it resonated with me because I have read su MK kids, the dance of the Dissident Daughter, I did go through a time where I was like, I don't know if I believe in God. But I want God to be some something more feminine than what I have believed for so long. And I needed to go through that. I feel like I needed to go through that. And now like for me, I'm an atheist. I don't believe there are supernatural things in the world. I need more evidence than people stories. However, there is so much value in people's stories, so much value in the ancient stories, the ancient myths, and I hope we can be open to hear that. And MJ, thank you again for being on the podcast, and keep up all the amazing work that you're doing on Instagram. And I'm excited that you're writing a book I love it's

David Ames  1:09:35  
the secular Grace Thought of the Week is about trying to prove yourself wrong. My favorite part about this conversation with MJ was when she talked about the scientific method and attempting to prove yourself wrong. This is so counterintuitive to humans. We want to find corroborating evidence. We want to find things that line up with what we already believe as MJ captured in this quote, I started asking myself, What are the criteria? What are the church leaders really looking for? They're looking for somebody who doesn't question doesn't challenge the status quo doesn't have a viewpoint that encompasses anything that includes the world along with Christianity. We were in such a bubble that had no countervailing information or evidence. And when we come out the other side, and experience the world as it is, we can still take with us that need to only consume information that agrees with our existing opinions. The hard part is reaching out and finding information with which we disagree. It doesn't mean that we accept that entirely, but it does challenge the way we think trying to disprove ourselves or to prove ourselves wrong is healthy and a significant way to grow. Next week, I interview Amanda, that's going to be an amazing conversation. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai