Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back together with the words you write, all the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when you write your story. You got the words and said, don't you think it's down to let them out and write them down on cold It's all about and write your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk about a topic that I actually have been asked to talk about several times, and I've avoided addressing this topic in part because it felt like, well, it's kind of off brand, it's not really what I'm talking about on this podcast anyway, or on my Instagram or anywhere else. And in part also I think, if I'm being honest, I've avoided talking about this topic because it feels a little bit like it's so personal to me, it's so so specific to my situation. It's somewhat of a sacred topic, something that I've been really wrestling with in my personal life over the course of the last decade, I would guess since I went through my divorce, and so it hasn't been something that I've really felt comfortable talking about more publicly. The topic that I want to talk about today is deconstruction. And I think one of the reasons why so many people have asked me to address this topic is because if you're kind of in my ecosystem, if you've heard these episodes, if you follow me on Instagram, you probably have picked up on context clues that although I was raised in the evangelical Christian Church, that my view, my worldview, has evolved so significantly over the course of the last ten years or so that my faith is really different now than it was back then, and I don't hold many of the same beliefs or ideologies that are held by the traditional Christian Church. And so I think people who are all so in that process of evaluating and reevaluating, like how do I see the world, and what do I think about these sort of hot button topics or issues, and what is my theology? And what do I really believe about God? And what do I believe about Heaven and Hell? And where do we go when we die? And these questions that are very human to ask ourselves, and that so many people are asking. I think I believe people who are really healthy and integrated and you know, are very human are asking these questions, and so those people out there who are also asking those questions are looking at me and going it seems like she must be asking them too, And so they're wanting me to share more of my story because this is how we connect us by sharing stories, and so my story is just my story. It's not anything that's spectacular or unique. In fact, I think that there are hundreds of thousands of people who are going through the same process or experience that I am, as it relates to the faith of our upbringing, and not only evangelicals, but like if you grew up Catholic, or you grew up Hindu or Buddhis or you grew up in a cult, or you grew up you know, seeing the world one way. I think it's extremely common to leave your hometown, or leave your nuclear family, or be launched into the world and be introduced to different ideas and different ways of seeing the world in different people who see things different ways, and go, huh, I wonder if there's something worth paying attention to here. I wonder if the way that I was always taught that things went is the only way that they could go or I wonder if there's more to this, and so we start to kind of explore and what I would call deconstruct those original beliefs. And I'm of the belief and one of the reasons i want to talk about this today is I'm of the belief that deconstruction is an extremely healthy thing to do, and healthy people are deconstructing their worldview over and over and over again until they die. And one of the things that I've noticed as I've done my own deconstruction, and as I've talked about deconstruction not even publicly, but just in friend groups or in mixed company sort of thing like mingling at a party, is that when you bring up the word deconstruction, it brings up a lot for people. It's an extremely triggering word, especially for those who grew up in the church, or at least that's just my experience that for those who haven't necessarily deconstructed the original faith container of their upbringing, the word deconstruction is almost like a frightening word. And I think there's a reason for that. I want to talk about the reason why this can be so intimidating and so scary, And so we'll talk about all of this today. We'll talk about what is deconstruction. We'll talk about why, in my view, this is an absolutely integral part of being a healthy human being. Every healthy human, in my opinion, will deconstruct many times over the course of their lifetime. And we'll talk about why deconstructing anything, any worldview can be an extremely unsettling experience. And I want to talk about all of through the lens of sharing my own personal story. So I want to start by saying that I started deconstructing the faith of my upbringing. I mean, it's hard to put a date on it, actually, because I look back now and see moments when I was asking really tricky questions, even as a teenager. But I really started deconstructing when my first marriage fell apart in twenty fifteen. So I was married to a pastor. He and I planted a church together in South Florida, and we were in ministry together for the entire time that we were together, which honestly wasn't that long. We were married almost exactly four years. We were dating and engaged for less than six months. I think from the day I met him to the day we got married was around four months, which is insane, by the way, but was also a product of my upbringing and the container that I was handed as a child and as a teen and as a twenty something. My worldview affected in a massive way the speed at which I met this person and married him, the choices that we made for our wedding and our life together and our wedding night and all those different things. And so I was married to this person. We had this one life together. I uncovered some evidence that was extremely shocking to me because it basically just confirmed for me something that I had been thinking for a while, which is that this person wasn't who I thought he was, and that thread. I used this analogy a lot, but it was like pulling on the thread of a sweater that was coming apart, pulling on the loose thread. The minute I pulled on that thread, the entire sweater unraveled, and the sweater included my business because we were in business together. It included my marriage, it included my worldview, it included my faith. It was like having the rug completely pulled out from underneath of me and kind of having to go back to the drawing board. In terms of what I thought about life and how I saw the world, and what I thought about marriage, what I thought about divorce, And it was a really heavy and horrible and depressing time on the one hand in my life, and also on the other hand, I look back now and I can see that period of time with such gratitude because it was an inherent deconstruction. In fact, I would say a divorce in general is an inherent deconstruction because you have to, in order to get divorced, rethink what you thought when you first married this person. Nobody gets married and goes I'm going to get married. I'm just going to see how it goes, and then after a while we're going to get divorced. I just don't believe anybody walks into marriage with that kind of a mindset. I think there are a lot of different reasons to get divorced. But no matter your reason for getting divorced, it's not a reason that you could have foreseen on your wedding day. Otherwise, probably I'm guessing you probably wouldn't have gotten married. You would have just lived together or had a partnership or something like that that you would have expected to sort of evolve out of. But because of the way our culture works. And because of how, at least how I was taught about marriage, marriage was not something that I walked into lightly. It was not something I walked into thinking that it would end after a period of time. And so when my marriage fell apart, I had to really reconsider, you know, who was I on the day that I chose to marry this person? How have I evolved as a person? And I can't even see things the way that I used to see them. I have to learn to see them in a whole new way. And it was extremely unsettling, and yet, as I mentioned before, it's also a time that I look back on with a lot of gratitude because it initiated my deconstruction. And I said this a few times already, and I'll say it more times before this episode is over. But I really believe with every fiber of my being that deconstruction is something that healthy people do. And so deconstruction, as scary and as unsettling as it can be, is just something that's part of the human experience. And if you're doing it, each time that you're doing it, you're becoming more integrated, you're becoming bigger, you're becoming more evolved, you're becoming. You have a broader worldview, more or compassion, You have a deeper understanding of what it means to be here and to be alive and to be on this planet. I really believe that that's true. I don't think that you can access those things without deconstructing and reconstructing your reality multiple times. And so this is why we have chapters and seasons of our lives. You know, if you never deconstructed, you would also never leave high school. You'd never leave grade school, you never leave college, you'd never leave home, you'd never move away from your parents, You'd never you know, evolve out of something that used to fit you and now doesn't fit you. In order to evolve out of those things, we have to deconstruct and reconstruct. So another layer that I'll add to this part of my personal story is that I have been saying to my therapist and to my husband and to my close friends for the last couple of years that I feel like I'm going through my second deconstruction because I started my first deconstruction. It's not really true, because just like I'm saying, I've been through probably ten deconstructions in my life. It's just not. They weren't something that I would have called a deconstruction. So now I'm going through or what I keep calling my second deconstruction, because I had my first big deconstruction in twenty fifteen when I left my marriage and filed for divorce. That was my first big deconstruction. It was like the deconstruction of the faith container of my childhood, which felt like a really big deconstruction because the faith container of my childhood. And you'll notice how different deconstructions feel different depending on how attached you were to the current scaffolding. But the faith container of my childhood was such a massive piece of stability and security for me that to stand back and question those tenants of my faith was like unthinkable in some ways. And I mean the marriage ending really kicked this off because something else that was unthinkable for me in terms of my past worldview was getting divorced. In fact, my unw willingness to consider getting divorced is what kept me in an extremely unhealthy, toxic and abusive marriage for as long as I was because if I had not had the worldview that divorce was wrong and I was never going to get divorced and divorce was for other people, and it wasn't for me, and it wasn't for my family. If I hadn't had that worldview, I would have left that marriage on day one. I mean pretty much twenty four hours after we got married. I would have left the marriage. It was that bad. It was just really that toxic and that uncomfortable. But because I had the worldview that I did, I stayed in that marriage for a really long time. So when the marriage crumbled and fell apart, when I willingly chose to go to the attorney's office and file for divorce, it was inevitable that I was also saying, I'm changing my mind about this, I'm reconsidering my views on divorce, and in order to move forward with my life and make the decision that I could feel that I knew was right for me in that time, I had to completely reconsider that worldview, the worldview that divorce was wrong, divorce was for other people. I was never going to get divorced. Nobody in my family got divorced. I was part of this long lineage of marriages that you know, chose to stick it out. I had to willingly decide that I was going to unwind and untangle that worldview and choose a different worldview. And that's exactly what a deconstruction is is it's unwinding the narrative we were telling ourselves and choosing a different narrative. And so that's what I had to do in order to get divorced. And because that experience took place, because I welcomed that experience, it also cascaded into these other parts of my life, including my faith container and the divorce narrative. The divorce scaffolding was part of the broader faith scaffolding. You know, there were so many different things that I was taught as a young person that I don't categorize necessarily as good or bad. There are some of them that you know, are extremely problematic, But I don't necessarely categorize that initial scaffolding is good or bad necessarily. But there comes a point where the scaffolding that you're using no longer works for you, and you have to be willing to let that scaffolding go and choose a new scaffolding. So did the scaffolding of let's say heaven and hell? Did the scaffolding of save yourself until marriage? Did the scaffolding of don't ever get divorced. Did the scaffolding of make sure you marry someone who's a Christian. Did that scaffolding serve me for a period of time? Obviously it did, or I wouldn't have chosen it. You know, it provided me with a lot of things, including a sense of security and safety, and a sense of moral superiority, because as long as I followed the rules and checked these boxes, then I could feel good about myself and feel like a good person. So I had those that scaffolding for a period of time that served me in certain ways. And then there came a point where that scaffolding stopped serving me, and I had to let the scaffolding go and create something new. And I think this is where a lot of us get stuck. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but I do think this is where a lot of us get stuck because we recognize that the scaffolding that we're holding, or the scaffolding that's built around us, is no longer serving us. But because it's so unsettling to let it go, we choose not to let it go. Sometimes life pushes us out of the nest and I feel like that has been my story over and over and over again. I don't know if I like made some kind of agreement before I came here, you know, if my soul knew that this was my purpose or whatever. And so it's my higher self that's kind of pushing me out of the nest. But I feel like, over and over again in my life, I haven't been really even given an option to stay stagnant. It's just like, Nope, we're gonna move on to the next thing, and it's going to be extremely uncomfortable and unsettling, and yet we're going to do it anyway. And so that's what happened in twenty fifteen when the rug was pulled out from underneath of me, and I feel like that's in some ways what has been happening for me and for Matt since we got married in twenty nineteen. Late twenty nineteen. COVID hit in March of two And I'm not going to repeat the whole story because if you've been here a while, you've heard it a million times. But essentially the sweater began to unravel again in March of twenty twenty when COVID hit and things just didn't go the way that we expected them to go. I have been in a second process of totally deconstructing my worldview that has been extremely uncomfortable and extremely unsettling. And yet I have to trust that this is leading me to more depth, more compassion, a more complete understanding of how the world works. Because you know, when you have one set of scaffolding, you think, oh, I get it, I know how the world works now. And I do think that life or God or the universe or whatever likes to kind of show us like, no, no, no, you don't have it all figured out. You don't have it all worked out. You know, it feels nice for a second to be there where you're like, I have it figured out. I know the way the world works. I understand the inner workings of this thing. And then things begin to unravel and you realize like, oh, there's actually more to the story. There is actually more to the story than I ever knew before. And this deconstruction, any deconstruction, whatever deconstruction you are in, is about you learning more depths to the story than you were ever able to see before. So let me try to summarize this really quickly. So twenty fifteen, my marriage falls apart. I'm deconstructing mostly the faith of my upbringing, my evangelical Christian faith, and trying to ask myself the questions about like, okay, so if that's not how things work, then how does the world work? Is there a God? Is there? Heaven? Is there hell? What do I believe about all these things? Do I need to go to church every Sunday? I've gone to church every Sunday for my entire life. What does life even look like if I'm not connected and involved in a church? You know, what do relationships look like if they don't have to fit this rigid understanding of male roles and female roles? What is the meaning or the sacred dis or the sanctity of marriage if some marriages do end and some marriages should end like in my experience, and you know, how do I conduct myself as a thirty something year old woman who is divorced and who's dating and trying to connect with people and really wanting a partnership and really wanting to be in a partnership slash a marriage hopefully that was my goal that would last where I could build a family. How do I move through the world as a divorced woman in my thirties who's not eighteen anymore. I'm not sixteen. I'm not saving myself for marriage because I've already been married. So how do I move through the world under those conditions? And so these are all questions that I'm asking myself back in that period of time. Then I meet Matt, then we get married, then we start our own family. There's a ton of stability that comes into my life. He and I are both in the same place as far as deconstructing the faith of our childhood and sort of rebuilding a new faith that feels like, Okay, I do feel connected to God. There is something bigger at work here. I am understanding how the world works in a new way. I'm understanding my connected is to all things in a new way. And Matt and I are navigating all of that together. So even though there was always questions, it felt like a lot more stability in my scaffolding came into my life when Matt and I got married and when we started our family together, and then COVID happened, and it felt like it set me on this whole new trajectory of deconstruction. One thing that feels important to say about this second deconstruction was that I found myself deconstructing ideas that were very similar to ideas I'd had in the first deconstruction, but just with a little bit of a different face on them. And I think this is something to think about as it relates to deconstruction, because human beings really cling to certainty and to security. We really like to feel like I know how the world works, I know what this is all about, I know what I'm supposed to do. I have my list of expectations. I can just sort of check the boxes, do the things, follow the rules, and get the payoff that I'm looking for. And so even when we deconstruct, even when we're forced, we're pushed into this season of deconstructing, I think it's extremely easy. And I've watched this happen for not just myself and for mat but also many people that I've watched to go through this experience. It's extremely common to grab on to a new set of scaffolding that is slightly different, but at its essence still the same, because if you think about it, you've got these neural pathways that are carved in your brain, like the neural pathway of divorce is bad. Don't ever get divorced. So if that's a neural pathway that's carved in your brain, then to deconstruct it is extremely upsetting to the equilibrium of your brain. And also like, you have this pathway that you've driven one hundred thousand times in your life telling yourself divorces bad, divorces bad, divorce is bad. So when you try to veer away from that path just human have, it is going to take you back to something that maybe is different, but that sounds kind of similar, and you might not even realize that it sounds similar. Sometimes things that sound similar can actually be quite opposite. Like I don't know if you've ever seen someone swing in the pendulum from being like I am never going to touch alcohol to like I can love Jesus and still drink all the time. And I actually know people who have the pendulum has swung quite far and they're drinking becomes even I would call problematic, even though they're saying like drinking is fine. You know, Jesus turned water into wine. That sort of thing. You can see how the scaffolding. It's so comforting to have that scaffolding that replacing the old scaffolding with the new scaf scaffolding, Like drinking is fine, Drinking is fine, Drinking is fine, but there's still that same kind of attachment to that scaffolding. There's not a real freedom to make a choice out of nothing, like to make a choice out of your own intuition or out of your own the present moment or whatever, because you're still so attached to this scaffolding. So I found myself in this second deconstruction realizing that I had adopted beliefs that seemed different than evangelicalism, but that actually were complimentary or actually were very similar ideas to evangelicalism, and they were comforting ideas to me that I could grab onto or hold on to for the sake of comfort or security. And it's almost like, in these last five years, life has been saying to me, are you willing to really let it go for good? Are you willing to really let go of the white knuckle grip that you have on this feeling like you've got it figured out, like you know how the world works, you know how life works. And I feel like I'm being sort of edged into this new season or new phase of life where I'm being asked or being invited to maybe just not know for a second. And so I started to become aware that in my first deconstruction, as I'm calling it, it was really about stepping back and abandoning some of the theology that I had been taught for my entire life, simply because like there was a lot of stuff going on in that culture, in that environment that was just extremely hypocritical, and inside of my marriage was just simply a microcosm of that, but it was actually going on at a much larger on a much larger scale. So you know, like these famous Instagram pastors or whatever are falling from grace, and you're realizing like behind the scenes, okay, you're preaching on a stage every Sunday, you're saying you believe these things. You're telling people how to live their life, and then behind the scenes you're actually hanging with strippers and hiring sex workers, and so one thing doesn't match the other. So there's like so much hypocrisy that for me to sit in a church building and listen to you tell me how to live my life when you clearly have your own integration work to do as all human beings do just feels like a very strange way to do things. And the other thing that happened in that first deconstruction was an abandonment of the pieces of theology from my upbringing that just simply felt inhumane. So, for example, things like this idea that women are not supposed to be in a leadership positions, like women aren't supposed to be pastors, women aren't supposed to be on stage. Women are supposed to be silent on Sundays at church. You know, the church that I grew up in, the women were allowed to teach in the childcare but only to age only sorry to fifth grade, because based on the understanding of that church's theology, the sixth grade boys were too old to be taught by a woman. The women were allowed to sing background vocals, but they weren't allowed to sing on the main mic. And I have a really vivid memory of being like twelve years old and having on a Sunday, the small group leaders being introduced to the church and there's maybe like, you know, twelve to fifteen couples on the stage, and the guy would get the microphone and he would introduce himself and introduce his wife, and then he would pass the microphone past his wife to the next man, who would introduce himself and introduce his wife and say like, this is where our small group is happening, et cetera, et cetera. There were things like that that I just started putting the pieces together and going like, this isn't how I want to live, and this isn't fair. And just because these this one group of people says that this works this way, how does that make it true? And is their freedom outside of this scaffolding where maybe I could be a leader. I could be in a leadership position, not necessarily in the church, but where like women do have important things to say and should be given the microphone and should be given platforms, and do need to be sharing their perspective and their stories. So things like that, things like shutting out LGBTQ folks, like things like Christian nationalism, for example, this idea that just because you're a Christian that you need to align yourself with a certain political party. Concepts like even abortion, which is just such a sacred cow in the church, but is such a more nuanced conversation than anyone is willing to have in the church, and so I'm witnessing all this happen, the hypocrisy, the gender differentials, the bigotry, all of it, like the whole picture. I was like, this is not working for me anymore. This scaffolding is not serving me, and I would like to evolve beyond this scaffolding. And so as I let go of that scaffolding, I found myself in a place where there was so much freedom to be who I was, to move through the world in a way that felt more comfortable to me, to open my heart to things and to people that I never felt I was given permission to open my heart to before books, you know, teachers, ideas, concepts, people, human beings. Like suddenly, I'm like, wait, I was taught my whole life to be wary and sort of scared of people who lived differently than me, or thought differently than me, or taught these you know, different concepts. It was a slippery slope. If I read this book or listen to this podcast or entertained this person's thoughts, and all of a sudden, it was like the whole world was open to me, and it was such a freeing feeling, even though there were times when it was definitely extremely scary, and yet I found myself at times also latching on to new ideas or new ways of seeing things. Like here's just an example. I'll give you a specific example so you can, you know, sink your teeth into this. One specific example is astrology. I was taught my entire life that astrology was evil, and that if I listened to an astrologer or even entertained the idea of an astrologer, that it was such a slippery slope that it was going to, you know, taint my thinking and drag me down this slippery slope. I was going to go to hell. And when I stepped away from those ideas of my childhood, and when I stopped going to church and left that community and that ideology, I was able to open my heart and my mind to astrology. And so I started listening to podcasts and started reading things, and started learning about my birth chart and learning about my sun moon and rising sign, and having conversations with people about this, and it was so exciting at first. It was like, you know, it's so amazing that there's an opportunity to get to see the world through a different lens. And that's just one example of a hundred I could give you of ways that I was like, I can connect with God or spirit or universe or whatever you want to call it. I can connect with this thing that's bigger than me, that's operating. It's so clear to me that I'm not alone in the universe, So I can connect with that without it being this old way of thinking. And it felt so open and really free. And then over time, as I dug into this even further, I realized it's not just astrology. I'm not bagging on astrology at all, but I did begin to realize that I had in some ways replaced the old with the new. So, in other words, like if you have an attachment to astrology and you always need to know like what's going on in the stars, or what's going on the planets, or you know, something weird happens, so mercury must be in retrograde if you always have to be so attached to that one way of thinking, it almost is like this weird replacement for the old scaffolding. So it's like old scaffolding gone freedom, But now I have this new scaffolding, and so the freedom doesn't I can't taste the freedom quite in the same way, I don't have as much access to it as I used to have, And so I began to realize a couple of months ago that this process that I've been going through for the last couple of years is actually, I'm calling it my second deconstruction. It's basically an opportunity to let go of the tight, white knuckled grip that I have on needing to know how things work, needing to know how the universe works, needing to know where we go when we die. I think it's extremely human to have these questions, and I think it's also human to not totally have the answers. We can feel into the answers, we can imagine what the answers might be, we can have long conversations about what the answers are, we can try on a million different lenses about the answers. But the fact of the matter is, you don't know where we go when we die. And think about this. This might be triggering for you if you still are very attached to a certain worldview or a certain scaffolding, and it is triggering for me on some levels too. But think about how insane it would sound for you to say you know what happens when we die. Unless you've had a death experience where you've died and then come back, you don't know what happens when we die. You know, it's everything that we could imagine aspecative. And so for someone to say like, no, I know it's specifically this, I know it's reincarnation, or I know we go to heaven, or heaven looks like this or is like this or whatever, is all just like, think of the insanity of it for you to act like you know something that you don't know. And yet many of us do this, and I still find myself doing it on many occasions. So this is not like a you're doing this and I'm not thing. It's like it's a human tendency to grab on to whatever makes us feel a sense of stability and security and certainty when the reality of the matter is that life is an uncertain thing and there are no guarantees in this life, and the more that we can relax into that and surrender into that, the happier I believe that will be. And yet everyone has their coping mechanisms, and maybe this is just my coping mechanism is certainty, But I think certainty is a coping mechanism for so many people who say, like, no, I know for sure. The Bible says this, you know, God told me that I'm supposed to X, Y and Z or whatever. The fact of the matter is, we don't have certainty about anything. And I'll share this last story and then i'll wrap up. But one of the reasons why the fall apart of this business venture that my husband and I had been working on for the last couple of years was so devastating for me, and this is one of the things that initiated my second deconstruction, as I'm calling it, was that I had these really spiritual experiences where I here's an example, I had a dream and in the dream, an angel came to me and told me, I have a message for your husband. I've been trying to get the message through he's not hearing the message. So here's the message. And it was three things that were very specific that one of which I completely didn't understand, and only Matt understood when I told him. And there were so many moments spiritually where it felt like I had such certainty that this was the path that we were meant to be on, and the way that I would have said it back then was like, this is going to work. This is going to work. You know, we are way out on a limb, but this is going to work. And I felt so sure of that. I felt like God had told me. I felt really affirmed and confirmed in our position. So when everything fell apart, it really shook me because I thought, how can you be so certain that something is going to happen. How can you feel that you're having this experience where you're connected to something bigger than you that's saying like, keep going, You've got this, Yes, this is happening, this is going to happen, and then still have it not unfold the way that you expected. It's an earth shattering experience to someone who thinks they've got it under control. It's an earth shattering experience to someone who thinks like, Okay, because I had this dream, that means that you know that we're safe, that everything's going to be taken care of, and you know even as I'm hearing myself say this, and this is part of the deconstruction that I'm in the reconstruction, is I'm hearing myself say, well, I thought we were going to be safe. The fact of the matter is we are safe. You know, here I am, I'm here, I'm recording this podcast. I'm telling you the story. I'm safe, my kids are safe, everyone's fine. You know. It's been devastating. Yes, it has wiped out our entire savings. It has put us in really tricky financial positions at times over the course of the last couple of years. It's been extremely stressful. It's been a stressful time to have two little kids and to feel responsible for people and feel like our financial world is crumbling around us. So, yeah, it's been really stressful. But the fact of the matter is we are safe. And so maybe even my attachment to needing the numbers and the bank account to look a certain way to feel safe is part of what's deconstructing itself right now. So I tell this whole story really simply to say that deconstruction is a healthy, natural part of human development. That if you never deconstructed your worldview and reconstructed it to something different, you'd still think the same way that you did it two years old or three years old or four years old or whatever, you know, those first couple of years of development. I watch this happen with my kids two or three and four. Like there, they change from one season to the next. Their brain is quite literally changing and developing all these new neuropathways and dendrites, and you know, like all the connections that they're making on any given day. They're a different person from one day to the next, and they go through different seasons and phases. Like six months ago, I would have said to you, like, Charlie, my three year old is the sweetest, most tender, most loving, you know, snugly buddy and just wants to crawl up in your lap and has the biggest heart and could burst into tears when he sees anyone being hurt. And in the past couple of months, because of his development and because of a natural, healthy human way of developing, he's become a little bit more just you know, like stubborn and resistant and not always wanting to snuggle. And yeah, he still has like that tender, sensitive heart, but he also stands up for himself and pushes back. And so you see your kids go through these different seasons, and you just think like there's different seasons for different things. There's different seasons for different ideas, and part of natural human development is to deconstruct your ideas about something and reconstruct it into something different, and just know that every time you reconstruct your ideas into something different, you may not have it right. And maybe there's no such thing as right. Maybe that's part of the freedom that I'm talking about, is a willingness to just be like I don't know, I don't need to get it right, Like I don't have to get my theology right in order to feel okay about myself and the world. I actually can try on these different lenses, like astrology is such an interesting lens to try on, to go like, what if I look at the world through this lens? Then what do things look like? What if I look at the world through the lens of oracle cards? What if I look at the world through the lens of honestly, like, pick a lens that feels really triggering for you, and try to see the world through that lens, Like if make America great again? And the Trump lens feels like a triggering lens to put on? See about it? Just see about putting on the lens. What does it look like to look at the world through the lens of of those people I'm not saying adopt the lens if it's not a fit for you. I'm just saying your worldview will expand when you're willing to see the world through someone else's lens who maybe someone who you vehemently disagree with. And maybe for you, the triggering one is astrology, or maybe the triggering one is something totally different that I haven't mentioned, but maybe you try it on. Maybe you are willing to look at the world through a different lens so that you can expand your understanding of how the world works. And this is to me, this is the beauty of personal storytelling, is that the more stories we listen to, the more we expand our lens of how we understand the world around us, how we understand people around us, how we connect to people. You know, you cannot listen to the story. I just finished listening to a memoir on Audible that's called The Secret Lives of Mama Love and it's a few years old or maybe a year old, and it was an Oprah Book Club pick. It's so phenomenal, like so phenomenal. I was riveted at every turn. And it is a story about a mother who becomes addicted to drugs and ends up going to prison, and you know, lives this whole experience that because I'm a mother and I can connect with that part of her experience. Understanding how she got to where she got, Like, what was it like to see the world through her eyes and make the choices that she made? It honestly just made me a better person. Listening to the story. I just felt such a deep well of compassion for her and felt like, gosh, life is such a fragile thing, you know, and the human body is such a fragile thing. Any of us, given the circumstances that she was up against, could have made those same choices and could have been in that same position. And it allows me to move through the world with a more open heart when I understand where other people might be coming from. So as challenging as that is, I do challenge you. I challenge you, and I invite you to try on a lens, a different lens than the one you normally see through. If you have a lens that feels really comfortable to you, You've got your friends who all kind of see the world the same way that you do. You're surrounded by people who agree with you. Try to see about trying on a lens that feels really different from the lens that you're used to. I hope you find that exercise helpful. I hope you find it freeing. I hope you find the courage to share your own story, of your own deconstructions that you've been through, because we've all been through them, whether we can acknowledge it or not. And I will see you back next week on the Write Your Story podcast

Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back together with the words you write, all the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when you write your story. You got the words and said, don't you think it's down to let them out and write them down on cold It's all about and write your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk about a topic that I actually have been asked to talk about several times, and I've avoided addressing this topic in part because it felt like, well, it's kind of off brand, it's not really what I'm talking about on this podcast anyway, or on my Instagram or anywhere else. And in part also I think, if I'm being honest, I've avoided talking about this topic because it feels a little bit like it's so personal to me, it's so so specific to my situation. It's somewhat of a sacred topic, something that I've been really wrestling with in my personal life over the course of the last decade, I would guess since I went through my divorce, and so it hasn't been something that I've really felt comfortable talking about more publicly. The topic that I want to talk about today is deconstruction. And I think one of the reasons why so many people have asked me to address this topic is because if you're kind of in my ecosystem, if you've heard these episodes, if you follow me on Instagram, you probably have picked up on context clues that although I was raised in the evangelical Christian Church, that my view, my worldview, has evolved so significantly over the course of the last ten years or so that my faith is really different now than it was back then, and I don't hold many of the same beliefs or ideologies that are held by the traditional Christian Church. And so I think people who are all so in that process of evaluating and reevaluating, like how do I see the world, and what do I think about these sort of hot button topics or issues, and what is my theology? And what do I really believe about God? And what do I believe about Heaven and Hell? And where do we go when we die? And these questions that are very human to ask ourselves, and that so many people are asking. I think I believe people who are really healthy and integrated and you know, are very human are asking these questions, and so those people out there who are also asking those questions are looking at me and going it seems like she must be asking them too, And so they're wanting me to share more of my story because this is how we connect us by sharing stories, and so my story is just my story. It's not anything that's spectacular or unique. In fact, I think that there are hundreds of thousands of people who are going through the same process or experience that I am, as it relates to the faith of our upbringing, and not only evangelicals, but like if you grew up Catholic, or you grew up Hindu or Buddhis or you grew up in a cult, or you grew up you know, seeing the world one way. I think it's extremely common to leave your hometown, or leave your nuclear family, or be launched into the world and be introduced to different ideas and different ways of seeing the world in different people who see things different ways, and go, huh, I wonder if there's something worth paying attention to here. I wonder if the way that I was always taught that things went is the only way that they could go or I wonder if there's more to this, and so we start to kind of explore and what I would call deconstruct those original beliefs. And I'm of the belief and one of the reasons i want to talk about this today is I'm of the belief that deconstruction is an extremely healthy thing to do, and healthy people are deconstructing their worldview over and over and over again until they die. And one of the things that I've noticed as I've done my own deconstruction, and as I've talked about deconstruction not even publicly, but just in friend groups or in mixed company sort of thing like mingling at a party, is that when you bring up the word deconstruction, it brings up a lot for people. It's an extremely triggering word, especially for those who grew up in the church, or at least that's just my experience that for those who haven't necessarily deconstructed the original faith container of their upbringing, the word deconstruction is almost like a frightening word. And I think there's a reason for that. I want to talk about the reason why this can be so intimidating and so scary, And so we'll talk about all of this today. We'll talk about what is deconstruction. We'll talk about why, in my view, this is an absolutely integral part of being a healthy human being. Every healthy human, in my opinion, will deconstruct many times over the course of their lifetime. And we'll talk about why deconstructing anything, any worldview can be an extremely unsettling experience. And I want to talk about all of through the lens of sharing my own personal story. So I want to start by saying that I started deconstructing the faith of my upbringing. I mean, it's hard to put a date on it, actually, because I look back now and see moments when I was asking really tricky questions, even as a teenager. But I really started deconstructing when my first marriage fell apart in twenty fifteen. So I was married to a pastor. He and I planted a church together in South Florida, and we were in ministry together for the entire time that we were together, which honestly wasn't that long. We were married almost exactly four years. We were dating and engaged for less than six months. I think from the day I met him to the day we got married was around four months, which is insane, by the way, but was also a product of my upbringing and the container that I was handed as a child and as a teen and as a twenty something. My worldview affected in a massive way the speed at which I met this person and married him, the choices that we made for our wedding and our life together and our wedding night and all those different things. And so I was married to this person. We had this one life together. I uncovered some evidence that was extremely shocking to me because it basically just confirmed for me something that I had been thinking for a while, which is that this person wasn't who I thought he was, and that thread. I used this analogy a lot, but it was like pulling on the thread of a sweater that was coming apart, pulling on the loose thread. The minute I pulled on that thread, the entire sweater unraveled, and the sweater included my business because we were in business together. It included my marriage, it included my worldview, it included my faith. It was like having the rug completely pulled out from underneath of me and kind of having to go back to the drawing board. In terms of what I thought about life and how I saw the world, and what I thought about marriage, what I thought about divorce, And it was a really heavy and horrible and depressing time on the one hand in my life, and also on the other hand, I look back now and I can see that period of time with such gratitude because it was an inherent deconstruction. In fact, I would say a divorce in general is an inherent deconstruction because you have to, in order to get divorced, rethink what you thought when you first married this person. Nobody gets married and goes I'm going to get married. I'm just going to see how it goes, and then after a while we're going to get divorced. I just don't believe anybody walks into marriage with that kind of a mindset. I think there are a lot of different reasons to get divorced. But no matter your reason for getting divorced, it's not a reason that you could have foreseen on your wedding day. Otherwise, probably I'm guessing you probably wouldn't have gotten married. You would have just lived together or had a partnership or something like that that you would have expected to sort of evolve out of. But because of the way our culture works. And because of how, at least how I was taught about marriage, marriage was not something that I walked into lightly. It was not something I walked into thinking that it would end after a period of time. And so when my marriage fell apart, I had to really reconsider, you know, who was I on the day that I chose to marry this person? How have I evolved as a person? And I can't even see things the way that I used to see them. I have to learn to see them in a whole new way. And it was extremely unsettling, and yet, as I mentioned before, it's also a time that I look back on with a lot of gratitude because it initiated my deconstruction. And I said this a few times already, and I'll say it more times before this episode is over. But I really believe with every fiber of my being that deconstruction is something that healthy people do. And so deconstruction, as scary and as unsettling as it can be, is just something that's part of the human experience. And if you're doing it, each time that you're doing it, you're becoming more integrated, you're becoming bigger, you're becoming more evolved, you're becoming. You have a broader worldview, more or compassion, You have a deeper understanding of what it means to be here and to be alive and to be on this planet. I really believe that that's true. I don't think that you can access those things without deconstructing and reconstructing your reality multiple times. And so this is why we have chapters and seasons of our lives. You know, if you never deconstructed, you would also never leave high school. You'd never leave grade school, you never leave college, you'd never leave home, you'd never move away from your parents, You'd never you know, evolve out of something that used to fit you and now doesn't fit you. In order to evolve out of those things, we have to deconstruct and reconstruct. So another layer that I'll add to this part of my personal story is that I have been saying to my therapist and to my husband and to my close friends for the last couple of years that I feel like I'm going through my second deconstruction because I started my first deconstruction. It's not really true, because just like I'm saying, I've been through probably ten deconstructions in my life. It's just not. They weren't something that I would have called a deconstruction. So now I'm going through or what I keep calling my second deconstruction, because I had my first big deconstruction in twenty fifteen when I left my marriage and filed for divorce. That was my first big deconstruction. It was like the deconstruction of the faith container of my childhood, which felt like a really big deconstruction because the faith container of my childhood. And you'll notice how different deconstructions feel different depending on how attached you were to the current scaffolding. But the faith container of my childhood was such a massive piece of stability and security for me that to stand back and question those tenants of my faith was like unthinkable in some ways. And I mean the marriage ending really kicked this off because something else that was unthinkable for me in terms of my past worldview was getting divorced. In fact, my unw willingness to consider getting divorced is what kept me in an extremely unhealthy, toxic and abusive marriage for as long as I was because if I had not had the worldview that divorce was wrong and I was never going to get divorced and divorce was for other people, and it wasn't for me, and it wasn't for my family. If I hadn't had that worldview, I would have left that marriage on day one. I mean pretty much twenty four hours after we got married. I would have left the marriage. It was that bad. It was just really that toxic and that uncomfortable. But because I had the worldview that I did, I stayed in that marriage for a really long time. So when the marriage crumbled and fell apart, when I willingly chose to go to the attorney's office and file for divorce, it was inevitable that I was also saying, I'm changing my mind about this, I'm reconsidering my views on divorce, and in order to move forward with my life and make the decision that I could feel that I knew was right for me in that time, I had to completely reconsider that worldview, the worldview that divorce was wrong, divorce was for other people. I was never going to get divorced. Nobody in my family got divorced. I was part of this long lineage of marriages that you know, chose to stick it out. I had to willingly decide that I was going to unwind and untangle that worldview and choose a different worldview. And that's exactly what a deconstruction is is it's unwinding the narrative we were telling ourselves and choosing a different narrative. And so that's what I had to do in order to get divorced. And because that experience took place, because I welcomed that experience, it also cascaded into these other parts of my life, including my faith container and the divorce narrative. The divorce scaffolding was part of the broader faith scaffolding. You know, there were so many different things that I was taught as a young person that I don't categorize necessarily as good or bad. There are some of them that you know, are extremely problematic, But I don't necessarely categorize that initial scaffolding is good or bad necessarily. But there comes a point where the scaffolding that you're using no longer works for you, and you have to be willing to let that scaffolding go and choose a new scaffolding. So did the scaffolding of let's say heaven and hell? Did the scaffolding of save yourself until marriage? Did the scaffolding of don't ever get divorced. Did the scaffolding of make sure you marry someone who's a Christian. Did that scaffolding serve me for a period of time? Obviously it did, or I wouldn't have chosen it. You know, it provided me with a lot of things, including a sense of security and safety, and a sense of moral superiority, because as long as I followed the rules and checked these boxes, then I could feel good about myself and feel like a good person. So I had those that scaffolding for a period of time that served me in certain ways. And then there came a point where that scaffolding stopped serving me, and I had to let the scaffolding go and create something new. And I think this is where a lot of us get stuck. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but I do think this is where a lot of us get stuck because we recognize that the scaffolding that we're holding, or the scaffolding that's built around us, is no longer serving us. But because it's so unsettling to let it go, we choose not to let it go. Sometimes life pushes us out of the nest and I feel like that has been my story over and over and over again. I don't know if I like made some kind of agreement before I came here, you know, if my soul knew that this was my purpose or whatever. And so it's my higher self that's kind of pushing me out of the nest. But I feel like, over and over again in my life, I haven't been really even given an option to stay stagnant. It's just like, Nope, we're gonna move on to the next thing, and it's going to be extremely uncomfortable and unsettling, and yet we're going to do it anyway. And so that's what happened in twenty fifteen when the rug was pulled out from underneath of me, and I feel like that's in some ways what has been happening for me and for Matt since we got married in twenty nineteen. Late twenty nineteen. COVID hit in March of two And I'm not going to repeat the whole story because if you've been here a while, you've heard it a million times. But essentially the sweater began to unravel again in March of twenty twenty when COVID hit and things just didn't go the way that we expected them to go. I have been in a second process of totally deconstructing my worldview that has been extremely uncomfortable and extremely unsettling. And yet I have to trust that this is leading me to more depth, more compassion, a more complete understanding of how the world works. Because you know, when you have one set of scaffolding, you think, oh, I get it, I know how the world works now. And I do think that life or God or the universe or whatever likes to kind of show us like, no, no, no, you don't have it all figured out. You don't have it all worked out. You know, it feels nice for a second to be there where you're like, I have it figured out. I know the way the world works. I understand the inner workings of this thing. And then things begin to unravel and you realize like, oh, there's actually more to the story. There is actually more to the story than I ever knew before. And this deconstruction, any deconstruction, whatever deconstruction you are in, is about you learning more depths to the story than you were ever able to see before. So let me try to summarize this really quickly. So twenty fifteen, my marriage falls apart. I'm deconstructing mostly the faith of my upbringing, my evangelical Christian faith, and trying to ask myself the questions about like, okay, so if that's not how things work, then how does the world work? Is there a God? Is there? Heaven? Is there hell? What do I believe about all these things? Do I need to go to church every Sunday? I've gone to church every Sunday for my entire life. What does life even look like if I'm not connected and involved in a church? You know, what do relationships look like if they don't have to fit this rigid understanding of male roles and female roles? What is the meaning or the sacred dis or the sanctity of marriage if some marriages do end and some marriages should end like in my experience, and you know, how do I conduct myself as a thirty something year old woman who is divorced and who's dating and trying to connect with people and really wanting a partnership and really wanting to be in a partnership slash a marriage hopefully that was my goal that would last where I could build a family. How do I move through the world as a divorced woman in my thirties who's not eighteen anymore. I'm not sixteen. I'm not saving myself for marriage because I've already been married. So how do I move through the world under those conditions? And so these are all questions that I'm asking myself back in that period of time. Then I meet Matt, then we get married, then we start our own family. There's a ton of stability that comes into my life. He and I are both in the same place as far as deconstructing the faith of our childhood and sort of rebuilding a new faith that feels like, Okay, I do feel connected to God. There is something bigger at work here. I am understanding how the world works in a new way. I'm understanding my connected is to all things in a new way. And Matt and I are navigating all of that together. So even though there was always questions, it felt like a lot more stability in my scaffolding came into my life when Matt and I got married and when we started our family together, and then COVID happened, and it felt like it set me on this whole new trajectory of deconstruction. One thing that feels important to say about this second deconstruction was that I found myself deconstructing ideas that were very similar to ideas I'd had in the first deconstruction, but just with a little bit of a different face on them. And I think this is something to think about as it relates to deconstruction, because human beings really cling to certainty and to security. We really like to feel like I know how the world works, I know what this is all about, I know what I'm supposed to do. I have my list of expectations. I can just sort of check the boxes, do the things, follow the rules, and get the payoff that I'm looking for. And so even when we deconstruct, even when we're forced, we're pushed into this season of deconstructing, I think it's extremely easy. And I've watched this happen for not just myself and for mat but also many people that I've watched to go through this experience. It's extremely common to grab on to a new set of scaffolding that is slightly different, but at its essence still the same, because if you think about it, you've got these neural pathways that are carved in your brain, like the neural pathway of divorce is bad. Don't ever get divorced. So if that's a neural pathway that's carved in your brain, then to deconstruct it is extremely upsetting to the equilibrium of your brain. And also like, you have this pathway that you've driven one hundred thousand times in your life telling yourself divorces bad, divorces bad, divorce is bad. So when you try to veer away from that path just human have, it is going to take you back to something that maybe is different, but that sounds kind of similar, and you might not even realize that it sounds similar. Sometimes things that sound similar can actually be quite opposite. Like I don't know if you've ever seen someone swing in the pendulum from being like I am never going to touch alcohol to like I can love Jesus and still drink all the time. And I actually know people who have the pendulum has swung quite far and they're drinking becomes even I would call problematic, even though they're saying like drinking is fine. You know, Jesus turned water into wine. That sort of thing. You can see how the scaffolding. It's so comforting to have that scaffolding that replacing the old scaffolding with the new scaf scaffolding, Like drinking is fine, Drinking is fine, Drinking is fine, but there's still that same kind of attachment to that scaffolding. There's not a real freedom to make a choice out of nothing, like to make a choice out of your own intuition or out of your own the present moment or whatever, because you're still so attached to this scaffolding. So I found myself in this second deconstruction realizing that I had adopted beliefs that seemed different than evangelicalism, but that actually were complimentary or actually were very similar ideas to evangelicalism, and they were comforting ideas to me that I could grab onto or hold on to for the sake of comfort or security. And it's almost like, in these last five years, life has been saying to me, are you willing to really let it go for good? Are you willing to really let go of the white knuckle grip that you have on this feeling like you've got it figured out, like you know how the world works, you know how life works. And I feel like I'm being sort of edged into this new season or new phase of life where I'm being asked or being invited to maybe just not know for a second. And so I started to become aware that in my first deconstruction, as I'm calling it, it was really about stepping back and abandoning some of the theology that I had been taught for my entire life, simply because like there was a lot of stuff going on in that culture, in that environment that was just extremely hypocritical, and inside of my marriage was just simply a microcosm of that, but it was actually going on at a much larger on a much larger scale. So you know, like these famous Instagram pastors or whatever are falling from grace, and you're realizing like behind the scenes, okay, you're preaching on a stage every Sunday, you're saying you believe these things. You're telling people how to live their life, and then behind the scenes you're actually hanging with strippers and hiring sex workers, and so one thing doesn't match the other. So there's like so much hypocrisy that for me to sit in a church building and listen to you tell me how to live my life when you clearly have your own integration work to do as all human beings do just feels like a very strange way to do things. And the other thing that happened in that first deconstruction was an abandonment of the pieces of theology from my upbringing that just simply felt inhumane. So, for example, things like this idea that women are not supposed to be in a leadership positions, like women aren't supposed to be pastors, women aren't supposed to be on stage. Women are supposed to be silent on Sundays at church. You know, the church that I grew up in, the women were allowed to teach in the childcare but only to age only sorry to fifth grade, because based on the understanding of that church's theology, the sixth grade boys were too old to be taught by a woman. The women were allowed to sing background vocals, but they weren't allowed to sing on the main mic. And I have a really vivid memory of being like twelve years old and having on a Sunday, the small group leaders being introduced to the church and there's maybe like, you know, twelve to fifteen couples on the stage, and the guy would get the microphone and he would introduce himself and introduce his wife, and then he would pass the microphone past his wife to the next man, who would introduce himself and introduce his wife and say like, this is where our small group is happening, et cetera, et cetera. There were things like that that I just started putting the pieces together and going like, this isn't how I want to live, and this isn't fair. And just because these this one group of people says that this works this way, how does that make it true? And is their freedom outside of this scaffolding where maybe I could be a leader. I could be in a leadership position, not necessarily in the church, but where like women do have important things to say and should be given the microphone and should be given platforms, and do need to be sharing their perspective and their stories. So things like that, things like shutting out LGBTQ folks, like things like Christian nationalism, for example, this idea that just because you're a Christian that you need to align yourself with a certain political party. Concepts like even abortion, which is just such a sacred cow in the church, but is such a more nuanced conversation than anyone is willing to have in the church, and so I'm witnessing all this happen, the hypocrisy, the gender differentials, the bigotry, all of it, like the whole picture. I was like, this is not working for me anymore. This scaffolding is not serving me, and I would like to evolve beyond this scaffolding. And so as I let go of that scaffolding, I found myself in a place where there was so much freedom to be who I was, to move through the world in a way that felt more comfortable to me, to open my heart to things and to people that I never felt I was given permission to open my heart to before books, you know, teachers, ideas, concepts, people, human beings. Like suddenly, I'm like, wait, I was taught my whole life to be wary and sort of scared of people who lived differently than me, or thought differently than me, or taught these you know, different concepts. It was a slippery slope. If I read this book or listen to this podcast or entertained this person's thoughts, and all of a sudden, it was like the whole world was open to me, and it was such a freeing feeling, even though there were times when it was definitely extremely scary, and yet I found myself at times also latching on to new ideas or new ways of seeing things. Like here's just an example. I'll give you a specific example so you can, you know, sink your teeth into this. One specific example is astrology. I was taught my entire life that astrology was evil, and that if I listened to an astrologer or even entertained the idea of an astrologer, that it was such a slippery slope that it was going to, you know, taint my thinking and drag me down this slippery slope. I was going to go to hell. And when I stepped away from those ideas of my childhood, and when I stopped going to church and left that community and that ideology, I was able to open my heart and my mind to astrology. And so I started listening to podcasts and started reading things, and started learning about my birth chart and learning about my sun moon and rising sign, and having conversations with people about this, and it was so exciting at first. It was like, you know, it's so amazing that there's an opportunity to get to see the world through a different lens. And that's just one example of a hundred I could give you of ways that I was like, I can connect with God or spirit or universe or whatever you want to call it. I can connect with this thing that's bigger than me, that's operating. It's so clear to me that I'm not alone in the universe, So I can connect with that without it being this old way of thinking. And it felt so open and really free. And then over time, as I dug into this even further, I realized it's not just astrology. I'm not bagging on astrology at all, but I did begin to realize that I had in some ways replaced the old with the new. So, in other words, like if you have an attachment to astrology and you always need to know like what's going on in the stars, or what's going on the planets, or you know, something weird happens, so mercury must be in retrograde if you always have to be so attached to that one way of thinking, it almost is like this weird replacement for the old scaffolding. So it's like old scaffolding gone freedom, But now I have this new scaffolding, and so the freedom doesn't I can't taste the freedom quite in the same way, I don't have as much access to it as I used to have, And so I began to realize a couple of months ago that this process that I've been going through for the last couple of years is actually, I'm calling it my second deconstruction. It's basically an opportunity to let go of the tight, white knuckled grip that I have on needing to know how things work, needing to know how the universe works, needing to know where we go when we die. I think it's extremely human to have these questions, and I think it's also human to not totally have the answers. We can feel into the answers, we can imagine what the answers might be, we can have long conversations about what the answers are, we can try on a million different lenses about the answers. But the fact of the matter is, you don't know where we go when we die. And think about this. This might be triggering for you if you still are very attached to a certain worldview or a certain scaffolding, and it is triggering for me on some levels too. But think about how insane it would sound for you to say you know what happens when we die. Unless you've had a death experience where you've died and then come back, you don't know what happens when we die. You know, it's everything that we could imagine aspecative. And so for someone to say like, no, I know it's specifically this, I know it's reincarnation, or I know we go to heaven, or heaven looks like this or is like this or whatever, is all just like, think of the insanity of it for you to act like you know something that you don't know. And yet many of us do this, and I still find myself doing it on many occasions. So this is not like a you're doing this and I'm not thing. It's like it's a human tendency to grab on to whatever makes us feel a sense of stability and security and certainty when the reality of the matter is that life is an uncertain thing and there are no guarantees in this life, and the more that we can relax into that and surrender into that, the happier I believe that will be. And yet everyone has their coping mechanisms, and maybe this is just my coping mechanism is certainty, But I think certainty is a coping mechanism for so many people who say, like, no, I know for sure. The Bible says this, you know, God told me that I'm supposed to X, Y and Z or whatever. The fact of the matter is, we don't have certainty about anything. And I'll share this last story and then i'll wrap up. But one of the reasons why the fall apart of this business venture that my husband and I had been working on for the last couple of years was so devastating for me, and this is one of the things that initiated my second deconstruction, as I'm calling it, was that I had these really spiritual experiences where I here's an example, I had a dream and in the dream, an angel came to me and told me, I have a message for your husband. I've been trying to get the message through he's not hearing the message. So here's the message. And it was three things that were very specific that one of which I completely didn't understand, and only Matt understood when I told him. And there were so many moments spiritually where it felt like I had such certainty that this was the path that we were meant to be on, and the way that I would have said it back then was like, this is going to work. This is going to work. You know, we are way out on a limb, but this is going to work. And I felt so sure of that. I felt like God had told me. I felt really affirmed and confirmed in our position. So when everything fell apart, it really shook me because I thought, how can you be so certain that something is going to happen. How can you feel that you're having this experience where you're connected to something bigger than you that's saying like, keep going, You've got this, Yes, this is happening, this is going to happen, and then still have it not unfold the way that you expected. It's an earth shattering experience to someone who thinks they've got it under control. It's an earth shattering experience to someone who thinks like, Okay, because I had this dream, that means that you know that we're safe, that everything's going to be taken care of, and you know even as I'm hearing myself say this, and this is part of the deconstruction that I'm in the reconstruction, is I'm hearing myself say, well, I thought we were going to be safe. The fact of the matter is we are safe. You know, here I am, I'm here, I'm recording this podcast. I'm telling you the story. I'm safe, my kids are safe, everyone's fine. You know. It's been devastating. Yes, it has wiped out our entire savings. It has put us in really tricky financial positions at times over the course of the last couple of years. It's been extremely stressful. It's been a stressful time to have two little kids and to feel responsible for people and feel like our financial world is crumbling around us. So, yeah, it's been really stressful. But the fact of the matter is we are safe. And so maybe even my attachment to needing the numbers and the bank account to look a certain way to feel safe is part of what's deconstructing itself right now. So I tell this whole story really simply to say that deconstruction is a healthy, natural part of human development. That if you never deconstructed your worldview and reconstructed it to something different, you'd still think the same way that you did it two years old or three years old or four years old or whatever, you know, those first couple of years of development. I watch this happen with my kids two or three and four. Like there, they change from one season to the next. Their brain is quite literally changing and developing all these new neuropathways and dendrites, and you know, like all the connections that they're making on any given day. They're a different person from one day to the next, and they go through different seasons and phases. Like six months ago, I would have said to you, like, Charlie, my three year old is the sweetest, most tender, most loving, you know, snugly buddy and just wants to crawl up in your lap and has the biggest heart and could burst into tears when he sees anyone being hurt. And in the past couple of months, because of his development and because of a natural, healthy human way of developing, he's become a little bit more just you know, like stubborn and resistant and not always wanting to snuggle. And yeah, he still has like that tender, sensitive heart, but he also stands up for himself and pushes back. And so you see your kids go through these different seasons, and you just think like there's different seasons for different things. There's different seasons for different ideas, and part of natural human development is to deconstruct your ideas about something and reconstruct it into something different, and just know that every time you reconstruct your ideas into something different, you may not have it right. And maybe there's no such thing as right. Maybe that's part of the freedom that I'm talking about, is a willingness to just be like I don't know, I don't need to get it right, Like I don't have to get my theology right in order to feel okay about myself and the world. I actually can try on these different lenses, like astrology is such an interesting lens to try on, to go like, what if I look at the world through this lens? Then what do things look like? What if I look at the world through the lens of oracle cards? What if I look at the world through the lens of honestly, like, pick a lens that feels really triggering for you, and try to see the world through that lens, Like if make America great again? And the Trump lens feels like a triggering lens to put on? See about it? Just see about putting on the lens. What does it look like to look at the world through the lens of of those people I'm not saying adopt the lens if it's not a fit for you. I'm just saying your worldview will expand when you're willing to see the world through someone else's lens who maybe someone who you vehemently disagree with. And maybe for you, the triggering one is astrology, or maybe the triggering one is something totally different that I haven't mentioned, but maybe you try it on. Maybe you are willing to look at the world through a different lens so that you can expand your understanding of how the world works. And this is to me, this is the beauty of personal storytelling, is that the more stories we listen to, the more we expand our lens of how we understand the world around us, how we understand people around us, how we connect to people. You know, you cannot listen to the story. I just finished listening to a memoir on Audible that's called The Secret Lives of Mama Love and it's a few years old or maybe a year old, and it was an Oprah Book Club pick. It's so phenomenal, like so phenomenal. I was riveted at every turn. And it is a story about a mother who becomes addicted to drugs and ends up going to prison, and you know, lives this whole experience that because I'm a mother and I can connect with that part of her experience. Understanding how she got to where she got, Like, what was it like to see the world through her eyes and make the choices that she made? It honestly just made me a better person. Listening to the story. I just felt such a deep well of compassion for her and felt like, gosh, life is such a fragile thing, you know, and the human body is such a fragile thing. Any of us, given the circumstances that she was up against, could have made those same choices and could have been in that same position. And it allows me to move through the world with a more open heart when I understand where other people might be coming from. So as challenging as that is, I do challenge you. I challenge you, and I invite you to try on a lens, a different lens than the one you normally see through. If you have a lens that feels really comfortable to you, You've got your friends who all kind of see the world the same way that you do. You're surrounded by people who agree with you. Try to see about trying on a lens that feels really different from the lens that you're used to. I hope you find that exercise helpful. I hope you find it freeing. I hope you find the courage to share your own story, of your own deconstructions that you've been through, because we've all been through them, whether we can acknowledge it or not. And I will see you back next week on the Write Your Story podcast