In a culture that hands us identity labels like name tags, walking away from an errant and immoral lifestyle can feel impossible.

On Trending with Timmerie, Timmerie sits down with Taylor Fogarty, who grew up in a nonreligious home and once identified as a “self-proclaimed atheist and lesbian.” Through the grace of God, Taylor later graduated from Columbia University, became a mother, entered the Catholic Church, and left her life of substance abuse behind.

Timmerie points to how label culture traps people — especially young adults — by convincing them they have to stay where they once planted their flag. Taylor agrees that pride plays a big role.

“People don't want to admit that they could have been wrong about something.” And when someone starts believing a label is “integral to their identity,” leaving it can feel like abandoning their “true self,” along with the community that came with it.

Taylor’s message to the twenty-something who feels stuck is simple and strong: “You are so much bigger than these things that you're identifying yourself with.” Even after wounds and mistakes, “there is truly nobody on this earth that is too far for redemption and for grace.” That hope, she says, is bigger than the self, and it’s found with God, in the mercy she’s discovered through the sacraments.

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