I left the church and somehow... I lost my entire contact list too?

When Walking Away Meant Losing Everyone

I thought I was prepared for the fallout.

I'd mentally and quite emotionally rehearsed losing the church building, the Sunday routine, the familiar hymns and praise songs that once felt like home. What I never imagined was losing my people.

Not my mother's voice going cold on the phone. Not my brother's eyes looking through me like I'd become a stranger. And definitely not watching the women I'd called sisters—the ones who'd held my babies, shared my secrets, filled my kitchen with laughter until 2 AM—turn their backs and walk away.

At first, the rejection was surgical. Precise. Almost polite.

Text messages suddenly took hours to get responses that used to come in mere minutes. Conversations suddenly felt like walking through quicksand. Then came the gradual realization that my name had been quietly removed from group chats, dinner invitations, prayer circles.

And then - the intervention disguised as concern:

What they didn't know—what I was forbidden to tell them—was that I'd been escorted out and told to hand my keys over. Then I watched the door close behind me with a finality that echoed in my chest for months.

And I was forbidden to tell anyone: “Don’t you DARE breath a word of this to anyone. Not the praise team, not your ‘little friends’, and no one in the community. AT ALL.”

I was still so deep in the conditioning that I actually kept their secret! Even as they painted me as the one who'd "fallen away," I protected the very people who'd cast me out.

Before I go deeper into this story, I need you to know something—

If you're reading this and your phone has gone silent... if the dinner invitations have stopped coming... if you're sitting in the wreckage of relationships that couldn't survive your evolution...

You are not broken. You are not alone. And you are not the first.

Join us here. You deserve sisterhood that celebrates your becoming, not one that demands your shrinking. Your people are looking for you.

Come find us in The Mystical Meadows—a private group for women who are grieving not just the loss of belief, but the loss of belonging. We're virtual, yes, but the connection is real. The understanding is deep. The acceptance is unconditional.

Back to my former church friends - before I could explain that I hadn't lost my way—that I'd finally found it—they were gone.

No goodbye. No "we'll miss you." No acknowledgment of the decade I'd poured into those relationships.

Just silence. Cold, deliberate, final silence.

Several blocked me on social media without a word.

And that devastation? It cut deeper than any fear of hell ever could. Deeper than the loss of certainty. Deeper than watching my entire worldview crumble.

Because when you've spent your life being the good daughter, the faithful friend, the one everyone could count on—and suddenly you're branded as dangerous? As someone to avoid? As a cautionary tale whispered about in hushed tones?

That's a death no one prepares you for.

I didn't leave because I stopped loving them. I left because I finally started loving me.

I chose to honor my truth. I chose to go to college at 40 as a single mother. I chose to step down from leading worship when my soul needed space to breathe.

That's why I was removed. Because I had the audacity to set a boundary. To say "I need time" instead of "I need to serve."

Now let me ask you something:

Do you recognize this ache? This hollow space where their presence used to live?

Are you carrying the weight of silence from people who once filled your world with noise and laughter and belonging?

Have you been standing in the fallout, trying to make sense of love that disappeared the moment you stopped performing?

Maybe you're still waiting for them to call. Still hoping they'll remember who you were before you became who you are. Still wondering if you made the right choice.

You did.

Here's what I know now, what I wish someone had told me then:

You can survive spiritual exile. What you cannot survive is abandoning yourself to keep people who only loved the version of you that served their comfort.

The silence isn't punishment. It's clarity.

It's showing you what was always true—that conditional love isn't love at all. It's approval. It's control. It's a transaction that costs you pieces of your soul.

And you? You're worth more than that bargain.

You're worth the messy, complicated, beautiful work of becoming who you were always meant to be.

Even if—especially if—that means walking through the desert alone for a while.

Your people are out there. The ones who will celebrate your questions instead of fearing them. Who will hold space for your healing instead of demanding your silence. Who will love you not despite your evolution, but because of it.

You just have to be brave enough to keep walking toward them.

And patient enough to let them find you.

🎨 Visual Oracle: Draw the Space They Left Behind

Use only black, white, and one color that represents your grief.

Draw a container—any shape.
Inside it, sketch a symbol or shape that represents the relationships you’ve lost.
Let your lines tremble. Let your hand shake.
This is not a performance. This is a witnessing.

Then add this phrase:

 🔥 3 Ways to Hold Yourself After Relational Loss

⚡ 60-Second Energy Reset: “Thymus Tap for Abandonment Grief”

(This Donna Eden technique restores energetic confidence, opens the heart, and is rooted in both ancient energetic wisdom and nervous system science.

1. Take two or three fingers.

2. Begin tapping gently on your upper chest, in the center (above your heart but below your collarbones).
   This is your thymus point—connected to the immune system and inner vitality.

3. Tap gently but rhythmically while breathing slowly.

4. With each tap, say aloud or whisper:

Do this for 30–60 seconds.
It reawakens your body’s knowing:
You are not as alone as you feel.

Why it works:

The Thymus Gland (Your Body’s Energetic Confidence Center aka: you’re not just calming yourself—you’re reclaiming your energy.)

The thymus gland sits just behind your upper chest bone, above your heart.
In traditional energy medicine, this point is considered the center of:

• Vitality and life force

• Emotional confidence

• Immune strength

• Heart-based presence

When you tap here, you’re doing more than a physical movement—
you’re sending a message to your nervous system and energy body:

What the Thymus Tap Helps With:

• Releasing emotional fog, fatigue, and grief

• Waking up your life force after freeze, fear, or silence

• Breaking the loop of self-doubt or dissociation

• Restoring a calm, grounded presence when you've been abandoned or ghosted

• Reclaiming your body’s power from systems that told you you had none

For women healing from religious trauma, this tap is especially powerful.
Because you were likely taught to submit, shrink, and suppress your truth.

But your thymus knows better.
It holds your wild pulse, your sacred fire, your remembering.

And when you tap into that center…
you call yourself back.

I know the ache of being ghosted by people who once prayed over you.
And I know what it’s like to feel like you’re the heretic just for listening to your own soul.

But you didn’t lose them.
They lost the version of you that kept shrinking.

And what you’re gaining now—
yourself, your truth, your belonging—
is worth every silence.

If this newsletter met you where you are,
come join us in The Mystical Meadows or grab the free Let It Go meditation to exhale some of this weight.

Join The Mystical Meadows
Download the free “Let It Go” Meditation

💛 P.S. Love Note

If today hurts,
just remember:
you are not the one who left love.
You left the performance of it.

And that, my sister,
is how the real healing begins.

I love you.

Debby