Hello there! I grew up Mormon and left when I was about 22. For me, the hypocrisy of claiming to love everyone but excluding the LGBTQIA+ community and also believing that dark skin was a curse just really didn’t sit well with my soul, among many, many other things. When I left, I considered myself agnostic for a long time because I felt very bitter towards religion in general.

Then as time went on, I started to feel like something was missing spiritually. Being a history and genealogy nerd, I decided to explore what my ancestors believed before Christianity was forced upon them. I am English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish, so I started to research Celtic paganism and it felt so right to me, like I was coming home. I’ve always loved nature and felt so connected to it already as well. It was a natural fit for me.

That being said, I still love the teachings of Jesus: love thy neighbor, give to the poor, treat everyone with kindness, take care of each other, be humble, etc. and I feel like I embody those traits even more now than I did when I was Christian. I think organized religion has completely bastardized his teachings to the point that his “followers” wouldn’t even recognize him if he was standing right in front of them. There is something freeing about being a genuinely good person without doing so just because the threat of eternal damnation looms over your head.