On today's Honoring the Journey, Leslie sits down with Kallie Klug a somatic practitioner, yoga instructor, and author of Tired of Being Good, to explore the concept of "fawning" as a biological stress response rooted in people-pleasing. They discuss how growing up in religious environments can wire the nervous system for chronic fawning by coupling goodness with salvation and stigmatizing anger as sinful. Kallie breaks down the physiology behind the fawn response and how it layers freeze and appeasement on top of suppressed boundary expression, leading to physical ailments like jaw tension, neck pain, thyroid issues and more physical symptoms. They share personal stories of religious deconstruction, the guilt of leaving faith, and the liberating realization that the body's signals—including anger—carry intelligence rather than sin. Kallie guides listeners through a somatic practice to notice what fawning feels like in the body, offers practical tools for coming out of freeze by inviting small amounts of mobility and self-orientation, and reflects on her own journey of un-shaming her inner experience and embracing the fullness of being human.

This conversation with Vernique Esther went so many places, and I loved every minute of it! Vernique grew up in a beautiful and sometimes chaotic mix of denominations, cultures, and ideas about God, shaped by her Haitian and West African roots. Her journey eventually led her into a legalistic campus ministry that she now describes as “culty,” an early marriage that ended in devastating infidelity and divorce, and the political upheaval of 2016 that caused the cracks in her faith to break wide open. We talked about purity culture, patriarchal church systems, and the impossible burden so many women were taught to carry—the idea that we were somehow the “moral vessels” responsible for holding everything together. We were expected to suffer well, forgive endlessly, stay faithful, remain quiet, and somehow keep everyone else from falling apart, even when we were the ones being deeply harmed. Today, Vernique describes her faith as a Jesus-centered, non-religious spirituality. We had such an honest conversation about separating the character of Jesus from some of the violent and troubling portrayals of God we encounter elsewhere in Scripture, and what it looks like to keep following Jesus after so much of the religious framework around him has fallen away. Vernique also shared her powerful concept of “trauma languages”—the patterns our pain can create in relationships, including control and rejection sensitivity—and opened up about who holds space for her while she continues doing her own healing.

Today, Leslie has a conversation with Rob Zahn, a Lutheran pastor and author of LSD to Galilee. The episode weaves together Rob's unconventional path into ministry, the story of discovering his estranged father on his deathbed and uncovering his father's ties to a 1960s drug-smuggling countercultural movement (the Brotherhood of Eternal Love), and a deeply theological conversation about certainty, deconstruction, and where the divine can be found — including surprising historical and academic parallels between psychedelics and early Christian/religious practice. Together they explore themes of doubt, humility, religious trauma, freedom in faith, and staying curious rather than certain.

In this episode of Honoring the Journey, we hear from the lovely Promise Backlund (Eve Was Framed), a former worship leader in Charismatic Churches, to discuss her deconstruction from an evangelical upbringing to eventual atheism. We explore themes like the fear of hell and losing salvation, the loss and rebuilding of authentic friendships, navigating family relationships after leaving the faith, and the difference between dogmatic belief and lived kindness — all tied to her new book, The Gospel of Lies: Surviving and Resisting Evangelical Extremism.

In this episode of Honoring the Journey, Leslie sits down with writer, artist, playwright, and speaker Rob Bell—someone whose work had a tremendous impact on her own deconstruction journey. If you’ve spent any time questioning or reexamining the faith you inherited, chances are you’ve come across Rob’s work. His groundbreaking book Love Wins famously landed him in hot water within evangelical circles for challenging long-held beliefs about hell, salvation, and the character of God. In this rich and vulnerable conversation, Rob reflects on what it was like to experience rejection from the evangelical world he had once been such a prominent part of, and shares some beautiful wisdom for anyone currently navigating a season of questioning, uncertainty, or deconstruction. He also catches us up on life now—what he’s creating, what he’s discovering, and what midlife is teaching him about growth, identity, and becoming. This conversation is thoughtful, funny, tender, and full of the kind of wisdom that makes you want to grab a notebook. You won’t want to miss this one!

Today on Honoring the Journey, Leslie welcomes back Britt Hartley from No-nonsense Spirituality for a wide-ranging conversation about navigating relationships with family members who are still religious after leaving the faith. The two cover the emotional dynamics of deconstruction, including the desperate need for validation, the defensive reactions of loved ones, and why leading with vulnerability rather than debate tends to be far more effective for maintaining connection. They explore how differing core values (truth-seeking vs. loyalty) can explain why people have such vastly different experiences within the same religion, discuss the ethics of sharing one's evolving worldview publicly without destabilizing others, and reflect on what it means to follow Jesus outside of institutional religion. The conversation also touches on existential crisis, the psychological benefits of releasing the need for ultimate truth, and the meaningful distinction between religious deconstruction coaching and spiritual direction — all woven together with warmth, humor, and a shared sense that human-to-human connection ultimately transcends theological differences.

Today, Leslie chats with Kurt Kirton & Jason Beetz from the bands Inevitable and Kurplunk! These two gentlemen grew up in Evangelical Christianity and both realized at early ages that they were gay. Their struggles into finally accepting who they are and continuing to follow Jesus were not easy, but it led to incredible freedom! They share openly about their experiences, and also about the music they create with their two (very different) bands. A fun and relatable conversation that I'm sure you'll enjoy.

What happens when someone wakes up and starts to question their entire life? He was MAGA, happily patriarchal and deep in evangelicalism, but one day he began to question it all. In this episode of Honoring the Journey, Leslie chats with Steven Francisi, founder of Healing Roots On Up and author of From A-Hole to All Right. Steven shares a raw and wide-ranging story that begins with a difficult childhood in New York marked by inconsistent parenting, feeling like an outsider in his own Italian family due to his red hair and fair skin, and early trauma that led to a suicide attempt at 16. He joined the Navy at 17 partly to earn his father's approval, later got drawn into evangelical Christianity through an Amway meeting, and spent years in high-control religious environments that deepened his shame while masking his unresolved trauma. After a serious motorcycle accident in 2015 that left him with a traumatic brain injury, a subsequent marriage breakdown, and a second suicidal crisis, Steven finally entered trauma-informed therapy through the VA, where he experienced a breakthrough moment of grief that unlocked decades of suppressed emotion. Through therapy, a close friendship with a younger, non-Christian man, and reading works like The Power of Myth, Steven began deconstructing not just his faith but also his patriarchal worldview and far-right political identity, including walking away from the MAGA movement. The conversation is an honest, compassionate exploration of shame, healing, masculinity, religious trauma, and what it means to become a whole person.

Today on Honoring the Journey, Leslie interviews Marla Taviano — a former evangelical Christian author who wrote books for conservative Christian wives and later went through a very public deconstruction. Marla shares her journey from being deeply embedded in evangelical Christianity (as a missionary, author, Christian school teacher, and camp counselor) to leaving the faith altogether, driven by growing questions about salvation-focused theology, racism, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and the pro-life movement. The conversation covers the role books like Love Wins by Rob Bell and Rachel Held Evans's work played in her shift, how humor and poetry became her tools for processing and communicating her deconstruction, the personal cost of losing her sister and other relationships, and her belief that true love — not religious obligation — is the guiding principle worth living by.

In today’s episode, Leslie talks with theologian and activist Lisa Sharon Harper about her faith deconstruction. Lisa traces her family's centuries-deep American roots, from enslaved ancestors to Indigenous heritage and describes how a 2003 pilgrimage retracing the Trail of Tears forced her to reimagine the evangelical gospel through her great-great-great-grandmother's eyes, sparking a year of depression and ultimately a full "decolonization" of her faith. The conversation weaves through the suppressed history of the Alamo, the "tyranny of certainty" in evangelical culture, marriage equality, and the isolating dynamics of tightly-bound church communities, arriving at the hopeful conviction that humility, pilgrimage, and genuine listening are the path back to shalom, which is the radical relational wholeness at the heart of Jesus's message.