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Being Catholic After Deconstruction (Part 2)
"Ann, if you go ahead and do this, you know that you will get pushback from the Church right? Our diocese is not ready for this kind of thing."
The year was 2020. I had just shared with a priest I knew that I had felt called to start a podcast about the interior integration healing journey. He wa...
Jun 21, 2026
Being Catholic After Deconstruction (Part 1)
I remember that moment still so clearly when I sat across my confessor and spiritual director and said, "I feel like the container of Roman Catholicism as I have known it can no longer hold my experience of who God is." Having journeyed with me for eight years at the time, this priest was not at ...
Jun 14, 2026
The Mother's Day greeting my inner-child loved
Yesterday, a dear friend told me, “You are a live wire. There is no mediocrity with you. There is no room for inauthenticity.”Her words pierced me because they described my true self so accurately, and yet I grew up rejecting this truth about myself because it seemed to make so many people uncomf...
May 10, 2026
Easter Hope for the Spiritually Traumatised
I spoke briefly with a dear friend earlier before she went to attend Easter morning mass. She is a fellow spiritual and religious trauma survivor who only in the last year or two began to more fully realise she was one. She loves Christ deeply and she has been struggling for some years with how h...
Apr 05, 2026
Before You Ask Catholics to “Come Home” this Easter
I wrote this for Easter 2024 and I am re-sharing a slightly edited version of it now here in my newsletter. There is a new paragraph I added about survivors of religious and spiritual trauma because it was only in the last two years that I understood a great deal more about the embodied aspect o...
Apr 04, 2026
A Good Friday Confession (I Don't Feel Anything)
I wrote the following reflection for my blog three years ago during Holy Week. It was the second time I had shared on my blog that I am numb on Good Friday - the first time I wrote about it was five years ago (You can read "Numbing Out on Good Friday" here.) Do I still feel numb on Good Friday...
Apr 03, 2026
To My Fellow Complex Trauma Survivors Who Struggle with Holy Week
This post was written two years ago on 27 March 2024 on my personal blog. I'm sharing it again as a newsletter post now together with a more recent podcast episode on navigating Holy Week as a survivor of spiritual trauma. May this bring accompaniment and consolation to those who need it!
My dea...
Mar 29, 2026
"Seeking God" vs "Believing in God"
Last month, Pope Leo XVI responded to someone who thinks of himself an atheist, but who "feels the need to love God". Pope Leo wrote:
"the real problem with faith is not believing or not believing in God, but seeking Him!" “[God] allows himself to be found by the heart that seeks him... and perh...
Mar 01, 2026
Do you need a Trauma-Informed Lent?
Recently a dear friend shared with me how the mere thought of Lent and our traditional Lenten practices made her whole body contract. An interesting discussion about the intersection of trauma, family of origin wounds, religion, church and ascetic practices ensued which later made me recall my ow...
Feb 17, 2026
The Grace that Undid Me
Exactly ten years ago today, I started a seven day silent retreat that (on hindsight) marked my entry into ‘spiritual midlife’ and the painful gradual descent into more intense trauma recovery and deconstruction. Here's an excerpt from my retreat journal I wish to share with you:
The grace I seek...
Feb 11, 2026
Naming the Unnameable
"Thanks, Ann, for articulating the 'inarticulatable'!" - A message from a friend about this week's Becoming Me episode
I never know why some of my podcast episodes / videos do so much better than others. My guess is that some episodes strike a particularly resonant chord with more people and get ...
Feb 01, 2026
'Deconstruction' doesn't have to be a dirty word
"You help me stay Catholic." "Your words make me feel like there's still room in the Catholic Church for me." "You make me feel seen in my struggle with the Church."
Ever since I started my podcast in 2020 and converted my social media account from a personal account to a public one to share abou...
Jan 18, 2026