Navigating Life After Faith
Leaving a faith background can be very difficult. On this site, you will discover a supportive community for those who have left faith behind or are somewhere on that journey. Explore personal stories, resources, and guidance on finding meaning and purpose in a post-faith life. You may want to ask some tough questions or just read what others have found. Share your own story, chat with us, or just know you are not alone.
Personal Journeys
Join us in exploring and sharing your own journey away from faith and into freedom. It is not an easy journey, but you are not alone.
7 Stages of Grief in Leaving Faith
Shock
Denial
Denial
You enter grief by realizing that what you always believed may not be fully true. This may come by stepping outside of the lines of "acceptable" behavior of your faith, by being given poor answers to your questions, or any number of ways that make you begin to doubt long-held beliefs and patterns.
Denial
Denial
Denial
Denial is a natural response to the shock of disappointing news, new insights that don't align with your faith, or being challenged beyond what you are ready to accept. You want to push back, you want to hold on, you may even want to turn around and go back.
Anger
Denial
Bargaining
In this third stage, you realize that you cannot go back. You have learned too much, seen too much, realized too clearly that what you believed doesn't hold water, in part or in whole. You get angry at being "tricked" into your past belief (perhaps from childhood or at times later). You get angry at yourself, at others, at family, at the systems that perpetuate lies, or any number of other things that might be involved in your journey.
Bargaining
Bargaining
Bargaining
In stage four, you try again to turn around, to find a way out that won't require a complete loss of all your have held dear for so many years. You want to hold on to something, anything, you want God to speak, to send a flash of light, to somehow intervene. It may feel like you are hanging on the edge of a cliff and great fear can often rule this stage.
Depression
Bargaining
Depression
Arguable, this can be the most challenging of all stages. It may even be why you are looking at these very words. You enter this stage when you give up hope of ever going back. The comfort of your faith is no longer blocking the truth but the loss leaves you directionless and hopeless and feeling very alone.
Testing
Bargaining
Depression
As you enter stage six, you begin to look up again. You begin testing the paths forward on what life after faith might look like. You begin to realize that it is not all bad. There is a faint ray of sun beginning to crest over the horizon. You don't know which way to walk yet, but you begin to realize that all is not lost.
Acceptance
Acceptance
Acceptance
In this final stage, you begin to find a new way forward. Acceptance itself is a long journey but one with others, not alone. You realize that many have also walked this path. You begin to feel hope and maybe even a newfound freedom as you fully let go of the past, its pain, and the false beliefs that kept you from living the life that you really want. The sun has risen. The road leads out ahead. The future is full of possibilities.