This isn't a story about someone who figured it all out. It's a story about someone who stopped pretending they didn't have to.
about
A person doing the
work
, too.
I grew up being
told exactly
who to be.
Church of Christ first. Then Evangelical. Then Messianic Judaism. Three distinct traditions, each one asking for more certainty, more submission, more of myself handed over to something outside myself. I gave it, the way most of us give things we're told are sacred. Completely, and without knowing what it was costing.
Middle school was when the first crack appeared. Not dramatically, but it was the quiet, persistent realization that who I was and who I was supposed to be were not the same person. Being gay in a tradition that treated my existence as a problem to be solved has a way of clarifying things.
The clarification took years. It usually does.
The short version
In 2012, I found yoga. Not as exercise, but as a framework for paying attention to what was actually happening inside me, without needing a doctrine to explain it. I completed my teacher training in 2014, and spent the next six years teaching and managing a group of yoga studios, putting the ideas about presence, embodiment, and inner work to the test in the real world, with real people, every day.
By 2020, the next chapter had already begun taking shape: writing, speaking, making sense of all of it. The conditioning, the exits, the rebuilding, the way it shows up in politics and relationships and the way you hold your breath before you share an opinion.
I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband. I am, on most days, still figuring it out. The difference now is I don't feel ashamed of that.
"I didn't leave religion and arrive somewhere. I left religion and started the real work of figuring out who I was when nobody was telling me."
The longer version
A life in
You can't read your way to this. You can't think your way there either. But you can start to see, and seeing is where everything else begins.
Until 1999
Church of Christ
The first tradition. Structured, certain, complete. A world with clear answers to every question, including the questions a child doesn't yet know how to ask. Rules about authority, about who to trust, about what it means to be good. It was a map handed over before I was old enough to decide whether I wanted it.
chapters
Until 2006–07
Evangelical Christianity
A new tradition with higher stakes and louder certainty. The searching was real and a genuine attempt to find something that held. It did, for a while. And in middle school, the first crack appeared with the quiet, persistent recognition that who I was and who I was supposed to be were not the same person. Being gay in a tradition that treated my existence as a problem to be solved has a way of clarifying things.
Until 2010
Messianic Judaism
A third tradition. Still searching, still trying to find a framework that could hold the full weight of a human life. By 2010, it was clear none of them could. But not because the traditions were entirely wrong. It was because no external map can substitute for the interior work of figuring out who you actually are.
2012
Yoga as a different kind of practice
I found a practice that asked me to pay attention to my own experience rather than measure it against an external standard. The body as a place to begin, rather than a problem to be managed. Two years of practice before the next decision arrived.
2014
Yoga teacher training
Committing to the inner work as a path because it was honest. The work that doesn't come with a guarantee. The work that asks you to show up for yourself instead of for a doctrine.
2015-2020
Teaching and managing a group of yoga studios
This is where the ideas met the room. Five years of teaching the work to real people. Watching what lands, what doesn't, what actually changes someone and what just makes them feel temporarily better. Managing at scale. Learning what it means to hold space for hundreds of people moving through their own unraveling.
now
Author, speaker, teacher
Writing the book I needed to find when I was in the middle of all of it. Building the room I wished existed. Living in Austin with my husband, doing the work of figuring things out as I go without needing to feel shame for the ongoing nature of that process.
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