I was 11 years old when I turned to my Dad in the church of our hometown and said, “I don’t want to come here anymore.”
My Dad, a devout Catholic who fought wars on behalf of his religion, was horrified. Sometimes I wonder if he thought he had given birth to Satan’s spawn, but my argument was very simple…
If God is everywhere, why do I have to come here?
Every Sunday, he’d attempt to wake me up to attend mass, and I’d either play dead, throw a fit until he was too tired to fight me, or just comply because I was too tired to fight him.
But I didn’t like being in that place. It didn’t feel pure.
There was something about the energy I felt when I’d hear the sermons, that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was like I was catching something everyone else was missing…
Guilt, shame, and fear weaved in between every other word. The type of backhanded toxicity that takes you a few days to fully process, because in the moment it’s too slick to comprehend.
And there I was, younger than most of the people there, hearing every strategically placed words that seemed to put people under a spell, which conveniently came right before the basket for financial offerings was passed down each pew.
Hey, you’re a sinner. But if you give us some money, maybe God will let you into Heaven.
Classic manipulation. And every week, when my father would put more money than I knew we had to spend in that basket, I not only felt disgusted. I felt rage.
At that time, I thought God was inherently tied to the church. It was his house, after all. So when I broke away from the church, I figured God wasn’t really my thing either.
I broke up with God.
But God, the true God, never let go of me.
I’m getting emotional writing this, because it was such a visceral experience. I was so young, and yet so aware. And that detachment, despite being necessary for my journey, also created a feeling that I was completely alone in this world.
Was I Satan’s spawn? Why was no one seeing what I was seeing? Why was no one hearing what I was hearing? And who could I possibly talk to about this without feeling judged?
I was angry that I couldn’t just play along. That would’ve been much easier, but my life is evidence that the easy route was never really my strong suit. Blame it on the Saturnian influence of my chart, I guess.
Writing became my safe space. The page never judged me, although it took me some time to be honest with it. My mask of being a “good girl” was so strong that I couldn’t even take it off when it was just me, and perhaps that’s because I inherently knew that it’s never just me.
There’s always someone, or something, watching. And I never wanted to disappoint them. Clearly, that Catholic guilt seeps in deep.
I never ever thought I’d be writing about God so passionately, let alone doing the work that I do with clients. But life has a funny way of surprising you.
When I first got on Facebook nearly 100 years ago (or so it seems), I distinctly remember answering the questions about religion and politics on my profile with, “I don’t care to discuss topics that divide people.”
Religion and politics? No, thanks. I can find a million other things to talk about, because religion and politics were the background of my entire life. Religion and politics got my family and I exiled from our country. Religion and politics killed my family and ravaged my country.
Religion and politics, as far as I was concerned, were at the epicenter of all the problems in the world, and as we can see now, that isn’t entirely wrong.
However, here I am, talking about it. Quite often, actually. And I’m just as surprised as everyone else who knew me back then.
When I turned away from God, I treated it like every other breakup—I don’t talk about them, I don’t think about them, I avoid anything that has to do with them. A complete cut-off. The word “God” alone would make me exit a conversation.
Yet at the same time, I’d experience synchronicities I couldn’t ignore. Moments where I was protected from harm, moments of serendipity that garnered no logical explanation, and moments of magick that felt like I was being invited into a secret world within this one.
This is what the Gnostics talked about. Gnosis. An intuitive, spiritual, deeply intimate journey to knowing the Divine—not an intellectual one. I’ve learned a lot of people, including myself at one point, prefer intellectual relationships. It’s safer that way (allegedly).
Many years later, after numerous nights of screaming into the void and crying to the ether, it was clear that I was fighting for my relationship with God, but not the God that I was told to believe in. The God that I always knew in my heart.
The God that would never need your obedience, compliance, or sworn pledge to only follow them, because God knows there is no other God.
But a fake “God” would ask that of you.
A false god would demand loyalty, blind obedience, and authority over all, which in and of itself, proves that there are others you could choose to follow instead.
I didn’t break up with God. I broke up with the false God. The fraud. The clone that had everyone else fooled, but not me. Turns out, I was actually fighting for God, fighting for the love I never forgot, fighting for the remembrance of what was always there but somehow disillusioned.
Fighting the spell that has captured too many souls for lifetimes.
I know the truth when I see it, because I feel it. And that’s been my greatest gift.
Perhaps the world is finally catching up.
Xo