Tag Archives: Deconversion

It’s been well over a year since I blogged about what it’s like to deconvert from Christianity. (New readers, click on the Deconversion tag on the righthand side of this page for the whole story. It’s a long one).

At first it was sort of like phantom limb syndrome. A part of me was gone. Sort of. I wanted to go back to the way things were, but at the same time I couldn’t fit into those boxes anymore.

It took years to settle into my new reality. Blogging helped. Reading how other people adjusted to their deconversions was soothing as well until it wasn’t anymore. After a while there’s not much else to say about the transition between Christian and Atheist/Agnostic/Apatheist (or however else they identify).

You can’t form a new habit overnight. It takes time to not only get used to this new thing but to begin to forget what life was like before such massive changes took place.

My blog has been getting a lot more hits for phrases like deconversion and depression than it did in the past.

Stuff like this makes me wish I knew who created the search terms I see in my analytics. I’d love to take all of the lonely apostates out for hot chocolate. There’s a big difference between reading a screen and sitting next to a living, breathing person who is a little further up the trail. I wish I’d had that kind of mentorship when my doubts first spilled over.

It’s peaceful here. Yes, there were twinges for a while, but they’ve steadily become more and more rare as I’ve made new friends who have no connection to the life I knew 10+ years ago. Things have changed so much that it really isn’t relevant anymore.

There might come a time when I don’t identify as anything at all. To be honest, this isn’t something I spend a lot of time thinking about until or unless someone else triggers that part of my brain. It’s just is what it is.

Longterm readers might remember how often I used to talk about my deconversion from Christianity when I first started this blog. Eventually I ran out of things to say about that topic, though, and I drifted to more interesting questions.

It wasn’t easy to shrug off something that had such a profound impact on my childhood and young adult experiences.  I was never an angry or confrontative non-theist. That’s never been my style regardless of what I believed. But while I was adjusting to my new life it was hard to completely disconnect from my old one.

For a while I followed half a dozen or so Atheist blogs in order to see how other people have handled certain situations that can be sticky to navigate. Seeing how much attention they paid to the dumb things Christian leaders said was surprising, though. I understand the urge to keep tabs on the small percentage of them that are unethical, especially in cases where religious leaders have been protected by their churches or communities for years on end even when multiple adults knew they were doing terrible things.

I slowly grew less and less interested in these sites as I realized that I have absolutely no interest in deconverting theists or arguing with people who find  hope and comfort in their religion.

If it works for them and it isn’t harming anyone else, I don’t care what other people believe.

There are so many other interesting things in this world to explore. I want to read about macroevolution, first aid, and physics. I want to learn how to make homemade freezer jam when you have to wash everything by hand and have a tiny freezer. One of these days I might even talk my husband into getting back into hiking regularly!

But arguing about religion? N0, thanks.

(I was originally planning to pepper this post with half a dozen gifs because I’m slightly obsessed with them at the moment, but I decided to pare it down to one so I don’t annoy my readers. 😉 )

I love my life now but deconverting wasn’t always an easy process. Because so many new visitors have discovered On the Other Hand by searching for terms like deconversion grief and depression and deconversion I thought I’d tell my story for them.

It started when I stopped attending church at seventeen. While I was relieved to no longer assume all of the social and emotional responsibilities that came with being a preacher’s kid I missed the automatic sense of community I’d found in the churches I knew as a child.

Soon after The Ooze  became my new home. One of the advantages of switching to an online church was that there was always someone around. Rather than waiting until Sunday or Wednesday night to ask tough questions I could start a thread and talk about it right away.

After several years, though, I realized that I was no longer Christian enough even for The Ooze. Sticking around when I no longer identified with even the most liberal idea of god seemed disingenuous but shedding that label (and even more so the emotional connections I’d made) wasn’t easy.

Posting this entry isn’t going to be easy because of the assumption some people make that everyone who deconverts is either full of rage or horribly depressed. I don’t want my words to be twisted, to be thrown into other people’s faces as an example of how horrible life is without belief. It isn’t.

I’m actually quite happy in my everyday existence…but that doesn’t mean the transition was without a few bumps in the road. There were days when I wondered if it would be better to fake even the faintest whisper of a reconversion so I could justify finding a new community. In the end I just couldn’t do it.

Instead I created a new circle of likeminded friends. If you click on the Recommended Reading list on the right hand side of this blog you’ll meet some of them. Not all of them are non-theists but every single person on that list is open to and invigorated by new ideas.

One day I hope I can gather all of them in the same room. We would have a wonderful time together.

Respond

What have been your experiences? Do you ever feel like you should self-censor in order to avoid reaffirming stereotypes about your group?