Faith after deconstruction

Writing, workbooks,and live workshops for returning to what's sacred.

For people rebuilding faith, identity, and belonging after inherited belief no longer fits. Do the work on your own, or do it in a room with others who left too.

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For the threshold season

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“I do not want to lose the sacred; I want to find it without losing myself.”

Faith after fear

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Body-rooted practice

“I want to walk with people who understand this process.”

Real belonging

A digital refuge

An edition for those returning to themselves, slowly.

“Here you'll find weekly reflections, honest language, and grounded spirituality—for people rebuilding reverence toward themselves, the divine, and their humanity.”

Reflections that accompany

Stories, tools, and exercises for your process of personal reconstruction.

Truth without performance

No dogma, no judgment. Only deep content, real integration, and space to be yourself.

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You are not alone. Here you find a safe space to return to yourself, in community.

The work

It exists for those navigating faith deconstruction, queerness, cultural identity, and the slow work of becoming whole.

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Rebuilding ReverenceA 30 DAY RETURN TO WONDER AFTER THE RUINS OF RELIGION

A guided workbook to help you rebuild reverence for your own becoming—away from inherited fear, and back toward the sacred in you.

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The Circle

When you're ready to go deeper: The Rebuilding Reverence Circle.

A small, live 4-week group experience capped at 15 people, where we move through the journey together with Ashley in the room.

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The In-Between

Somewhere to keep returning.

A grounded, affirming online community for reflection, honest conversation, and people walking the same in-between road.

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Recent writing

Essays from the in-between.

New reflections on faith, identity, healing, and return.

Seeking First, Again

Lately, I've been thinking about how much my context has changed. A decade ago, I was deeply religious. And in those spaces, you’re often taught to deny yourself. That phrase can mean many things, but in Western evangelical Christianity, it usually translates to denying your desires, your dreams, your body. In other words, abandoning yourself for the mission of God, the kingdom of God, and what He has for you. And I did that. If I had to put it in percentages, I’d say back then my spiritual life made up about 95% of everything. What I thought about. What I prayed about. What I cared about. How I spent my time. My identity revolved almost entirely around God, church, and ministry. My material life barely registered. Not only did I not pay attention to it, I genuinely believed it was wrong to. I lived well below the poverty line, largely because I thought caring about material things was unspiritual. I wasn’t always explicitly told that, though sometimes I was, but it was implied everywhere. The material didn’t matter. Until it came time to tithe. Then, of course, it mattered. But that’s not the point of this reflection. What I’ve been noticing lately is how healing often works like a pendulum. In our search for wholeness, we usually swing hard from one extreme to the other before we find balance. And I think that’s exactly what’s happening to me. Today, it feels like the tables have completely turned. I’d say 95% of my energy now goes toward building a material life. Building security. Building income. Building something sustainable and prosperous. And I don’t want to demonize that. There’s something deeply redemptive about even being able to want this. About reclaiming parts of myself I once thought were sinful. But I’ve started to notice a pattern in my thinking. If I can just build this life. If I can just get the house. If I can just create passive income. If I can just reach that level of stability. Then I’ll finally have the spiritual life I want. Then I’ll be on the farm. Then I’ll pray more. Then I’ll be more present. Then I’ll connect more deeply with God, with myself, with my wife, with my friends. It’s like I’ve convinced myself that once the material work is done, the spiritual life will finally be unlocked. And lately, I’ve been wondering… what if I have it backwards? What if I’m doing this wrong? What if I’m being invited, in this season, not to swing back to the extreme I came from, but to find equilibrium? To return to the basics. To the elementary things. Prayer. Meditation. Scripture. Presence. Purpose. Letting go of what is temporary and fixing my attention on what is eternal. “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.” I don’t want to romanticize the past or return to self-abandonment. But I do feel an invitation to re-center. To ask what it would look like to live from the inside out again. How does that work practically, day to day, as someone with a corporate job and a growing business? I don’t have those answers yet. But I know where to start. I’m going to start praying again. Intentionally. Because maybe, just maybe, the path to the material life I’ve been chasing runs through the spiritual life I’ve been postponing. Maybe it’s true that when I seek first the kingdom, the rest follows. And if it doesn’t, maybe I won’t care. Maybe fulfillment at the level of the spirit changes what we need from the world. I don’t know. But I wanted to leave this here with you, because I’m certain I’m not the only one standing in this tension. With love, ADL

Missing What Never Was

I think it’s okay to miss something and not want it back. In my previous relationship, my partner and I almost had a baby together. We had a miscarriage. And years later, I guess I’m still working through it. There are days I go back to the imagination I had of what my baby was going to be like. His face. His hair. His eyes, like his father’s. I pictured him as a toddler. I pictured my dynamic with him. I pictured myself trying my best to create a life for him that I didn’t have, or maybe one I would have wanted. Years later, I’m no longer in that relationship. I don’t have my baby. I’m in another relationship now, and I’m very happy. And yet I still hold the tension. I still imagine what my life would have been like if my baby had been born. The trajectory it might have taken. I can’t say I know exactly why things happen. I have my ideas, my theories. Most of them are probably coping mechanisms. Maybe some of it is divine revelation. What do I know? But on days like today, it’s like my body remembers. It feels like something was meant to be and just chose not to be. And I say “meant to be” through my own filter. Because if it really was meant to be, then he would be here, right? This is the interesting part of the human experience. We like to think in all or nothing. But it’s not always all or nothing. Sometimes it’s a little bit of everything. And sometimes it’s a whole lot of nothing. So today, I don’t miss what I used to have. But I do miss what I imagined could have been. I still wonder what it would have looked like. Am I guilty for that? Am I wrong? Is it selfish? I don’t know. What I do know is this: it’s okay to grieve even something that didn’t happen. You can grieve what your imagination hoped for. You can grieve the story your mind thought was going to unfold. Because whether I admit it or not, my body knows grief. The moment I get quiet with myself, the tears come. Like my body has been waiting all this time for me to feel it. So yeah… that’s that. That’s where I’m at today.

Deconstruction and Beyond: A Story of Loss and Rebirth

Life After Deconstruction: Where Do We Go Next? Lately I’ve been thinking about the reality of life after deconstruction. So what do I mean by deconstruction? It’s the process of unlearning and relearning. Of questioning what you’ve been indoctrinated with, what you grew up with. Belief systems you held as true for so long suddenly cracked open. It’s not just challenging those beliefs. It’s opening yourself to the possibility that they might not be true. Or not true in the way you thought they were. ⸻ Life Before Deconstruction Before my deconstruction, I was an extremely devout Christian. And when I say devout, I mean devout. I wasn’t just a “good church girl.” I was a full-time missionary. I lived on mission. Every day. I couldn’t leave the house without feeling the weight of it. Without needing to tell someone about the gospel, about Jesus, about the kingdom of God. Gas station. Restaurant. Grocery store. Living my “ordinary” life wasn’t enough. I had to proclaim. Always. I went to seminary. I was part of a house church. I lived and breathed Christianity as I knew it then. My whole life’s purpose was to make Jesus known. Expand the kingdom. Win souls. Give my life to the “cause.” And I did. I even lived for abroad for a year, in what we called at the time an “unreached people group.” Learning the language. Immersing in the culture. Doing the work. That year changed my life. In beautiful ways, encounters with people I’ll never forget. And in painful ways, because it was there that the seeds of deconstruction were planted. ⸻ When It Started Cracking Living inside the machine of missions, I saw the other side of it too. The superiority. The domination. The subtle (and not-so-subtle) control. The imposition of “truth” at the expense of humanity. And I couldn’t unsee it. So when I came back, I started questioning. It wasn’t overnight. It was years. Years of unraveling. Years of pulling at threads. Years of stepping away. From church. From reading the Bible religiously (even though I’d read it cover to cover more than five times). I realized: the Word is in me. In my heart. In my body. In my nervous system. And church? It’s not bound to a building. Not even bound to a religion. Church is love in action. ⸻ What Deconstruction Cost Me As I challenged what I once believed defined me, everything changed. My friends shifted. My environment shifted. My sense of self shifted. Because here’s the reality. We humans tend to only accept people who look, think, act, and believe like we do. We struggle to hold duality with compassion. To hold tension with grace. So when you stop fitting, whether consciously or unconsciously, you get pushed out. Or you isolate yourself. It’s not about blame. It’s just reality. ⸻ The “What Now?” So what’s the point of this blog? It’s that I’m here now, stuck in the what now? What do you do when you gave your whole life to something, and then realized you can’t give it the same way anymore? What do you do when your whole purpose was expanding the kingdom of God, and now you’re working a 9 to 5, paying bills, trying to care for yourself… but it doesn’t feel sufficient? For years I told myself, deny yourself, deny your flesh, care only about the kingdom. But the truth is: I care. I care about where I live. I care about my quality of life. I care about my health. I care about prosperity. I care about succeeding. And is God so narcissistic that He hates that I care? That He only wants me to care about Him? The answer is no. ⸻ A New Way It’s taken me years to realize this. To love my neighbor, I must love myself. To care for others, I must care for myself. To have empathy and compassion for the world, I must first have empathy and compassion for me. It’s all connected. It’s not separate. ⸻ Still Searching But I’m still here. Asking: Where do I go next? Where do all of us go, the kids, the teens, the adults, who gave our whole fucking lives to the gospel? How do we live now? How do we carry purpose? How do we still feel like our lives matter beyond ourselves? Because that matters to me. My life mattering to humanity, it matters to me. ⸻ The Question I Can’t Shake So this is where I’m at. How can I live in balance? Not building God’s kingdom at the expense of having no kingdom for myself. Not building my kingdom at the expense of ignoring God. But both. Purposeful and prosperous. A life that is sacred and sustainable. How do I do that? I don’t have the answer. Maybe this is a cry for help. Maybe it’s just me venting. But maybe the answers will come simply because I’ve finally started asking. Where do I go next?

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