Leaving my religious framework created a peculiar kind of homelessness because I did not merely lose a belief. I lost an entire map of reality. The “culture” I belonged to was my understanding of the universe itself. For me, that absence became both disorienting and expansive: once the inherited map disappeared, I discovered how much larger reality could be and how many more possibilities existed for what I could believe, explore, and become.
Underneath the excitement of discovering a larger world was the realization that I had trusted an institution with my perception. I had effectively allowed something outside myself to function as my eyes and ears and tell me what reality was. Discovering that I no longer trusted that account created a deeper mandate: if I could no longer outsource my perception, I had to learn to trust the skin on my own bones.
