Spiritual Direction for Healing Faith Deconstruction & Religious Trauma with Somatic Experiencing
1:1 Online Spiritual Direction Sessions
A Safe, Compassionate Space to Process Your Journey and Rebuild Your Spirituality
Are you questioning long-held beliefs or feeling lost as you search for a spiritual home after deconstructing your faith? You are not alone in this journey. The journey through faith deconstruction can feel disorienting, isolating, and uncertain. Faith deconstruction refers to the process of questioning, critically examining, and sometimes dismantling long-held religious beliefs. For many, it involves untangling inherited traditions, addressing spiritual wounds, and exploring new ways of connecting with faith or spirituality. It’s a deeply personal journey that often arises from life changes, experiences of harm, or a growing misalignment with past beliefs. It often means letting go of beliefs and practices that once gave you a sense of meaning, identity, and community—while still longing for something to ground you spiritually.
This process often feels like a profound loss, leaving you wondering where to turn or how to move forward. Yet, it also carries the potential for renewal—a chance to uncover what still resonates with you, let go of what no longer serves you, and redefine what spirituality means for your life today. You may wonder: Is it possible to hold space for the parts of your faith you still value while exploring new ways to connect spiritually? What if you could embrace the beauty of what still feels true while allowing room for growth and exploration?
In spiritual direction, we create that space together. It’s a place where you can safely explore your faith journey, reflect on your experiences, and begin to heal. My role is to walk alongside you as you rediscover and rebuild spiritual practices and values that feel deeply aligned with who you are now. Together, we can nurture a spirituality that feels grounded in truth, transformative in its healing, and authentically yours.
What is Spiritual direction?
Spiritual direction is a sacred and intentional process that helps you explore your faith journey—whether you're navigating questions of belief, identity, or the wounds left by past experiences. It’s a space where you can pause, reflect, and make sense of your spiritual story in the midst of transition. To read more about how spiritual direction is guiding people through these transitions, check out this insightful article from The New York Times.
For those who have experienced faith deconstruction or religious trauma, spiritual direction is about honoring where you've been while creating space to rebuild your spirituality on your own terms. It’s natural to feel uncertain about what comes next, but this process is a chance to reclaim a sense of clarity and purpose. As a spiritual director, my role is to walk with you—not to give you answers, but to help you discover your own. I’ll support you in asking the deep questions, sitting with uncertainty, and finding a path forward that feels deeply personal and true to you.
In spiritual direction, we honor the wisdom of the body, mind, and spirit, recognizing that true healing and transformation involve all parts of who you are. This holistic approach allows us to integrate the emotional, physical, and spiritual aspects of your experience, creating space for genuine transformation. This process supports clarity, healing, and the rediscovery of a spirituality that feels whole and authentic.
To deepen your understanding of spiritual direction and its practices, visit Spiritual Direction International.
Why Spiritual Direction
After Faith Deconstruction & Religious Trauma?
Reclaiming Your Spiritual Self: Honoring the Past, Embracing the New
Faith deconstruction often brings a mix of grief and hope, leaving you searching for what’s next while still yearning for connection and meaning. The experience of stepping away from evangelicalism or organized religion can feel like losing a significant part of your identity. But it can also be an invitation—an opportunity to reconnect with your spirituality in a way that is freeing, empowering, and deeply personal.
In our time together, you’ll have the opportunity to:
Process emotional wounds from religious trauma to move toward healing.
Discover spiritual practices that align with your current beliefs and values.
Rebuild an authentic faith, whether by reimagining traditions or forging a new path.
Reclaim your purpose and connection in a way that feels true to you.
While spiritual direction is at the heart of what I offer, I also weave in Somatic Experiencing (SE) principles to support emotional regulation and healing. This body-centered approach helps us address the lingering effects of trauma, making space for deeper transformation. You can explore more about Somatic Experiencing through resources on Somatic Experiencing International’s website.
Beyond Spiritual Bypassing: Being Present to What’s Here
In many faith traditions, difficult emotions or experiences of stuckness are often bypassed with spiritual platitudes or abstract beliefs. While these may provide temporary comfort, they can prevent us from fully processing our feelings and hinder growth.
Spiritual bypassing doesn’t just minimize emotions; it creates patterns of avoidance, leaving you disconnected from yourself, your spiritual path, and your deeper truth. For more on how spiritual bypassing can affect your healing, read this article from Psychology Today. Without a space to confront these challenges, it’s difficult to stay grounded and authentic in your faith journey.
Unlike bypassing, spiritual direction offers a grounded approach to processing and integrating these experiences. In spiritual direction, all of you is welcome—including the uncertain, hurt, or stuck parts. Together, we create a compassionate space to sit with emotions, acknowledge challenges as part of healing, and explore areas of stuckness with reflective questions and somatic practices. By being present to your body, emotions, and spiritual longings, you can deepen self-connection and rediscover an integrated spirituality.
The experience of faith deconstruction or religious trauma can leave you feeling untethered, questioning everything you once believed. However, this untethering can also open the door to reconnecting with your spirituality in a way that is freeing, empowering, and deeply personal.
How I can help
Compassionate Processing: Share your feelings, doubts, and experiences in a safe, non-judgmental space where you can show up exactly as you are.
Somatic Healing: Use body-based tools like somatic experiencing to release emotional tension, rebuild resilience, and process religious trauma. By working with your body’s nervous system, we can address lingering pain and foster emotional balance.
New Spiritual Practices: Discover mindfulness, breathwork, or other nourishing practices to support your unique spiritual path.
Rebuilding Your Faith: Create a spirituality that feels empowering, authentic, and fully aligned with who you are now.
No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, I’m here to help you process, heal, and rediscover your path in a way that feels true to you.
What to Expect in Spiritual Direction Sessions
Safe, Judgment-Free Support: Bring your full self into a space free from judgment, where you can openly share your doubts, pain, and hopes.
Body-Based Healing Practices: Grounding exercises, breathwork, and mindful movement help process emotional wounds stored in the body, fostering resilience and transformation.
Meaningful Spiritual Exploration: Engage in reflective practices and guided questions to uncover new perspectives and possibilities for your journey.
Practical Tools for Growth: Every session leaves you with insights and practices to carry into your daily life.
Somatic tools invite the body into the healing process, helping release tension, process unresolved trauma, and reconnect with your inner wisdom. These practices are particularly powerful for addressing the physical effects of religious trauma and fostering a sense of safety.
Each session is designed to meet you where you are, offering clarity, healing, and practical tools to support your continued transformation. Together, we’ll nurture a spirituality that feels deeply personal and life-giving.
Who is Spiritual Direction for?
Spiritual direction is for anyone navigating the complexities of faith, identity, and healing. Whether you’re questioning long-held beliefs, healing from religious trauma, or reimagining your spirituality, this space is designed to meet you exactly where you are.
Faith Deconstruction: For those questioning or redefining long-held beliefs, including untangling from ideas rooted in Christian nationalism.
Religious Trauma: For anyone who has experienced harm or shame within a religious community, such as purity culture or exclusion based on identity. To learn more about the impact of Religous Trauma, check out The Holy/Hurt Podcast.
Post-Evangelical Spirituality: For those exploring spirituality beyond evangelicalism, seeking to honor justice, inclusion, and authenticity.
Rebuilding Faith: For those ready to rediscover and reimagine their spirituality in a way that feels life-giving and authentic.
No matter where you find yourself, this is a space to process, heal, and move toward a spirituality that feels true to who you are now.
About Your Guide
The work I do is deeply personal—born out of my own journey of questioning, healing, and rediscovery.
I am a Pastor at Good Shepherd New York, and my career in Christian ministry has been shaped by both tradition and transformation. As a single female pastor coming from a moderately conservative evangelical and charismatic background, I began to notice the gaps between the promises of my faith tradition and my lived reality. This led me to explore issues of inclusion, intimacy, and belonging, especially for those often pushed to the margins—like the LGBTQ+ community.
My deconstruction journey taught me how disorienting it can feel to question long-held beliefs, grieve the loss of certainty, and miss parts of yourself that existed before. Yet, I’ve also experienced the freedom and renewal that comes from rebuilding spirituality in a way that feels authentic and empowering.
After attending General Theological Seminary, an Episcopal seminary, I became trained as a spiritual director and turned my focus toward inner healing practices. My work now integrates Somatic Experiencing, contemplative practices, and trauma-informed care to create compassionate, transformative spaces for healing.
Whether you’re processing the harm of purity culture, navigating identity as an LGBTQ+ person of faith, or wrestling with the impacts of Christian nationalism, I bring empathy, understanding, and a grounded approach to your journey
You don’t have to navigate this journey alone. Whether you’re processing faith deconstruction, healing from religious trauma, or seeking a new spiritual path, I’m here to support you.
Schedule a session today to start rebuilding your faith in a way that feels authentic and empowering. Together, we can create space for healing, growth, and transformation.
Let’s begin Your Journey
I offer a sliding scale of $125 to $200 per session, allowing you to pay based on your ability while also honoring the value of my training and expertise. This approach ensures that our work together respects both your needs and the skills I bring to our sessions. I welcome the opportunity to dialogue, so please contact me if you have any questions.
FAQ’s
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Sessions are 50 minutes. I offer both virtual and in-person sessions in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
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Both Spiritual Direction and Coaching sessions in my practice are grounded in a somatic-based approach, focusing on the wisdom and signals of the body. However, they serve different purposes:
Coaching Sessions are goal-oriented and collaborative, designed to help you reach a specific outcome or destination. Together, we identify your goals and create actionable steps, using body-based interventions to support your progress. The aim is to guide you toward tangible results, whether in your personal life, career, or spiritual journey.
Spiritual Direction Sessions, on the other hand, are more about holding space and asking deep, reflective questions. The focus is less on achieving a specific goal and more on exploring your spiritual life, discerning your path, and noticing how the Divine is moving in your life. While a Spiritual Direction session might feel similar to a coaching session due to the shared somatic-based approach, the intention is different—it's about being present, listening, and allowing insights to emerge naturally.
There is significant overlap in the methods, interventions, and body-based processes used in both approaches, but the key difference lies in the focus and objectives of each session.
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Absolutely, yes!
My tradition and training are in Christian Spirituality, but religion (see questions below) does not, unless the clients asks, play a primary role in sessions)
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This is client-specific. I will recommend weekly or every other week.
If we are working with trauma, it is important to meet weekly and on-going.
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The body carries in its physiology our embodied stories and, inevitably, our trauma. When working with the nervous system, it's only a matter of time before you bump into activation, from mild to intense. Activation can also be known as nervous system dysregulation and triggers. A Somatic Spiritual Director needs to be able to appropriately work with activation through resourcing, which is any internal or external element that supports an individual's well-being, resilience, or growth.
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Somatic Spiritual Direction offers a unique approach to spiritual guidance, integrating the exploration of spirituality with the embodied experience. It builds upon the principles of traditional spiritual direction but with a distinct focus on the body. Recognizing the body as a profound source of wisdom and insight, this practice invites individuals to deepen their spiritual journey by paying attention to the subtle cues and messages of their bodies, fostering somatic healing.
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I acknowledge how spirituality manifests in individuals' lives as multifaceted, encompassing bothorganized religion and the inner journey of personal growth and transformation.
To best describe Somatic Spirituality, it's helpful to differentiate between content spirituality and process spirituality. Content spirituality encompasses what informs your spirituality, including theology, faith traditions, meaning, and belief systems. On the other hand, process spirituality focuses on the inner journey of growth and transformation, emphasizing spiritual experience leading to healing and personal transformation. Both aspects are crucial, but our sessions will prioritize spiritual experience over religious form.
A strength of Spiritual Direction lies in its provision of a non-judgmental and loving space to companion you exactly as you are, without requiring you to change, making it irrelevant for us to align theologically or spiritually.