Ep 87: Reclaiming Your Voice After Religious Trauma w/ Kate Johnson - A Deconstruction Story

What happens when the belief system you were handed as a child starts to feel like a cage? Kelsey sits down with Kate Johnson, evangelical pastor's daughter turned Reiki practitioner and deconstruction guide, for a conversation that is honest, layered, and genuinely moving. Kate's story begins in the PCA church, where she was raised on Calvinism, purity culture, total depravity, and a very clear message about who gets to have a voice and who doesn't. She learned early that her body wasn't her own and that silence was the safest place to live. What followed was decades of quietly unraveling all of that, through discovering her bisexuality, surviving abuse that purity culture left her completely unprepared for, going no contact with her father, and eventually finding her way to Reiki, inner child work, and the kind of creativity that started giving her voice back one layer at a time. She also shares the most beautiful ritual: a paper boat folded from a letter she wrote her dad, a lake at sunset, and a fish that leaped up out of the water at just the right moment. This one is for the awakening woman who has felt the weight of a story that was never really hers to carry. Here you'll learn: - How purity culture set Kate up to misunderstand her own body, boundaries, and desires, and what the path back from that actually looked like - Why shame is the thing that separates us from the divine, not sin, and how Kate found that thread inside the very theology she was deconstructing - How the root chakra, throat chakra, and sacral chakra all showed up in Kate's physical body as she started doing the healing work - What ambiguous grief is and why it might be the hardest kind to move through, especially when the person you're grieving is still alive - Why anger isn't the enemy, and what the image of a white tiger protecting her true identity taught Kate about her own voice - The way grief, creativity, and the Artist's Way worked together to help Kate reclaim her creative life and her sense of self The silence that was asked of you was a system protecting itself, not the truth about who you are. And somewhere underneath all of those rules, there has always been a version of you who knew that. If this conversation touched something in you, whether you are actively deconstructing, quietly questioning, or simply trying to understand why certain parts of yourself have felt so hard to access, you are not alone in it. Connect with Kate Johnson: - Website: Roadmap to Ambiguous Grief Recording - Instagram: @katejohnsonwrites - Substack: Quips and Confessionals Connect with Kelsey + the Reclamation community: → Join Remembrance Rising Waitlist — Here - Book a Soul Guidance Session with Kelsey — Here - Instagram: @kelseyandersonintuitive - YouTube: @KelseyAndersonIntuitive Themes: religious deconstruction, evangelical church, purity culture, shame, inner child, ambiguous grief, Reiki, throat chakra, sacral chakra, no contact, bisexuality, identity reclamation, creative healing, anger as medicine, the awakening woman, Remembrance Rising