I like this. A little space to write, all by my cozy lonesome.

I’ve been writing on Instagram for a while, but most concentratedly since last spring. I began a deconstruction account as a way to process my journey out of the evangelical industry. It was a way to finally feel like myself again, after trying to process with friends from my personal life who couldn’t, wouldn’t understand. A way to fully accept where my evangelical upbringing had failed me and dig into the root system of my beliefs, unearthing what was dead, rotting, and in need of nourishment.

Since then, I have met some of the loveliest people, filled with truth and fire and wisdom and grace and kindness. All spiritual wanderers, leaving the confines of industrialized worship for richer, deeper, purer faith. I’m so grateful to have been met with curiosity and welcoming. I didn’t know people like this existed and it’s a true gift to count so many of them as my friends.

As grateful as I am for that space, and it will still be a key outlet for exercising my voice and creativity, I’m looking for a less visible place to simply be, as I am. Just like when I was an all-in evangelical Christian and made it my entire identity, deconstruction can seem all-consuming at times. “Can’t you talk about something else?”

For a while there, no, I couldn’t. Realizing your entire life was built on sinking sand when you were guaranteed the stone foundation is not easily accepted. It’s panicky, it’s frightening, and after the initial tornado of unanswered questions and doubts tears through, it leaves you searching through all the rubble, frantically asking, “What’s left? Is it all gone now?”

I’m stronger for that. For a while, I thought I was just going to turn out as a dried-up cynic. But the waves have started to calm. The fog has started to lift. Fresh air and quiet stillness have become my soul’s state and I am savoring every contemplative, holy moment.

But I am also more than my heady and hearty spiritual pursuits. I am a wife, a mother, a baking enthusiast, a cookbook collector, a musician. I love books and observing how authors harness vocabulary and grammar to create new worlds that can awaken within you, catching glimpses of their imagination within yourself. I’m nichely nerdy about makeup and skincare. I’m out of practice, but I successfully taught myself how to read Hindi, what would have been a mother tongue for me.

All this and more. I want to find a place to share those parts of me too, away from catering to a flighty algorithm or consumption-based aesthetics or word count constraints. So I’ve settled here. My own little nook.

I don’t know all of what will be here. But I will be, in the everyday and mundane paces of life, hobbies, love, and faith.

And if you’ve stumbled upon this, thank you for being here too.