Mormon to Muse

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If you grew up believing you were chosen, losing that belief doesn’t just hurt. It leaves you asking whether your life matters at all.

In this episode, I break down why “special” is a ranking, why leaving a high-control religion can trigger an existential crisis, and nine ways to build a life that means something on your own terms. I also share what changed for me when I stopped needing to be God’s chosen: I felt more human, less afraid of other people, and carried far less shame.

You are not special. You are specific. And that has always been enough.

In this episode:

• Why “special” is a ranking, and why it keeps you measuring yourself against everyone else
• What you actually lose when you leave a belief system: a meaning structure, not just a belief
• Existential crisis vs. depression, and when to reach out to a therapist
• Nine ways to build meaning after religion: grieve it, separate specialness from significance, build meaning from the ground up, get comfortable with ambiguity, find awe, find your people, join the human race, live specific, and practice creative expression
• The Awe Study, a therapeutic art exercise you can do this week
• How painting taught me to stop asking “is this good?” and start asking “is this mine?”

Try the Awe Study: Take a walk and gather 5 to 10 things that catch your eye. Arrange them on a page and write why you chose each one. Then answer the question underneath it: out of all the humans in the world, what is specific about you?

Go deeper: Step inside the Muse Library for tools and creative practices that help you build inner authority after religion: mormon-to-muse.kit.com/library

A note on mental health: If you’ve felt low most days for more than two weeks, your sleep or appetite has changed, you feel hopeless, or you’re having any thoughts of hurting yourself, please reach out to a therapist, ideally one who understands religious trauma. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 (US).

About Mormon to Muse: Mormon to Muse helps women rebuild identity, self-trust, and inner authority after leaving high-control religious backgrounds. I’m Kristin Martineau, a certified life coach and artist.

If this episode helped, like the video, subscribe to the channel, and share it with someone who needs it.

#MormonToMuse #FaithTransition #ReligiousTrauma #ExMormon #ExistentialCrisis #LeavingMormonism #SelfTrust

Leonora Carrington sent a hyena to her own debutante ball, in a short story she wrote about refusing the life her family planned for her. This episode tells the defiant life of the Surrealist painter and writer, and what her symbols can teach you about the role you were handed.

Born into a wealthy English family in 1917, Carrington was raised for a life decided before she had a say. She refused it, and it cost her a great deal: a war, a lost love, an asylum, and an escape across an ocean. She rebuilt in Mexico, and what she survived became part of her work.

This is the first episode in a monthly series on women artists whose stories were written out of the record. In it, I look at the white horse, the hyena, a lantern, and an apple handed from one woman to another, and I ask what her story says about the roles we were given and the stories we were told.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Teaser
[00:00] Welcome
[00:00] The debutante and the hyena
[00:00] The white horse: Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse)
[00:00] Max Ernst and the muse
[00:00] Portrait of Max Ernst
[00:00] War, Spain, and the asylum (content note)
[00:00] The cost of leaving, and the cost of staying
[00:00] Mexico
[00:00] The poster: Mujeres Conciencia
[00:00] Wrap-up

MAKE SOMETHING WITH THIS EPISODE
The art prompt for this episode is waiting in the MUSE Library, a growing collection of therapeutic art prompts with a new one every week. No art skills needed. Sign up here to receive access to the Muse Library: mormon-to-muse.kit.com/library

READ LEONORA CARRINGTON

The Complete Short Stories of Leonora Carrington, including “The Debutante” https://a.co/d/0958O9iA

Down Below, her account of the asylum: https://a.co/d/0hoJaM3B

The Hearing Trumpet, her comic novel: https://a.co/d/08KY3bOj

Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington: https://a.co/d/02etGc2e

ABOUT MORMON TO MUSE
Mormon to Muse helps women rebuild identity, self-trust, and inner authority after leaving a high-control religion.

Artwork discussed in this episode is © Estate of Leonora Carrington / ARS.”

#LeonoraCarrington #WomenArtists #Surrealism #ExMormon #Therapeuticart

"I'm not consistent." "I never follow through." "I've never been athletic."

You say these things like facts. They are not facts. They are the story you built about your past, and you have been using that story to predict your future.

In this episode, I show you how to stop sentencing yourself with your history and start using it as information. You will learn how beliefs about yourself form, why your brain keeps collecting evidence for the story you already believe, and exactly how to build a new one.

I also tell the story of how I went from turning down a 25-mile bike ride in high school, convinced I wasn't athletic, to riding 64 miles over the Colorado National Monument.

In this episode:

* Why using your past as a prediction keeps you stuck
* How confirmation bias edits your memory into a closing argument
* The difference between reflecting to learn and reflecting to sentence yourself
* A three-part evidence audit for "I never follow through," "I'm not consistent," and "I've never been athletic"
* Why dreaming big is a skill many women leaving high-control religion were never allowed to practice
* The six-step process to create a new future: name the story, find the contrary evidence, thank your past self, choose the identity first, act from that woman, and collect new evidence
* A therapeutic art prompt: The Script and the Blank Page

Join the MUSE Library: mormon-to-muse.kit.com/library
Get every therapeutic art prompt in one place. Sign up once and a new prompt is added every week.

About Kristin Martineau
I'm a certified life coach and artist. I help women rebuild identity, self-trust, and inner authority after leaving a high-control religious background. Mormon to Muse is where that work lives.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mormontomuse/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kristinmartineau6

#exmormon #exmormonwomen #selftrust #limitingbeliefs #leavingreligion #lifecoach #mormontomuse

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If you were raised to believe contention is of the devil, anger probably feels like proof that you're doing something wrong. It isn't. In this episode, Kristin explains what anger actually does, why women are shamed out of feeling it, and how to separate anger from aggression. She walks you through a five-step practice for turning anger into action, so you can stop abandoning yourself to keep the peace.

In this episode

• Why anger isn't a spiritual failure, and what it is instead
• The difference between anger and aggression
• Why "being offended is a choice" is gaslighting
• What suppressed anger turns into: snapping, passive aggression, resentment, depression
• A practice for accessing your anger and turning it into action
• How to set a real boundary (and why it isn't a demand on someone else)

Key takeaways

• Anger exists to protect. It guards your body, time, values, people, and sense of fairness. It shows you where you're being hurt and where you're giving up too much of yourself.
• Anger and aggression are not the same thing. Aggression includes yelling, threats, and slamming doors, but also the silent treatment, sarcasm, and withholding affection. It happens when you aren't allowed to be honest about what made you angry.
• Suppressed anger doesn't disappear. It leaks out as snapping at your kids, passive aggression, resentment, depression, or self-directed blame.
• Women are taught the problem is their anger, not the boundary that was crossed. That framing keeps you from detecting where your limits are.
• "Being offended is a choice" shifts blame to the victim. It takes a systemic problem and blames the person harmed by it.

The practice: turning anger into action

1. Feel it in the body. Notice where it lives. Don't rush past it or argue with it. Take a break if you need one.
2. Notice if you're angry about being angry. That means you're resisting anger, not processing it.
3. Find out why you're angry. Free write and ask: what line was crossed? Over time you'll see that many triggers trace back to the same underlying issue.
4. Speak it. Dealing with it silently means abandoning yourself and letting others cross your boundaries.
5. Set a boundary. A boundary is about what you will do, not what someone else is allowed to do. "If you yell at me, I will leave the house" is a boundary. "You aren't allowed to yell at me" is not.

Angry at the church, at the people who kept you quiet, at yourself for staying so long? That is information, not a flaw. Now it needs direction.

Download 5 Things Every Post-Mormon Woman Should Do and start rebuilding self-trust with a clear plan.

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Rediscovering Your Own Taste After Mormonism

When my oldest moved out, I turned the empty basement room into a retreat just for me. I painted it purple. It ended up dark, moody, feminine, and a little sexy. That was the opposite of the light, bright, minimalist house upstairs. So I had to ask whether I'd ever actually chosen the rest of my home, or whether I'd just decorated to the expected standard.

In this episode I look at how high-control religion shapes your aesthetic, and why your taste is one of the fastest places to rebuild your identity.

In this episode:

• Why I'd never decorated a space for myself before. I married at 19 and never lived on my own.
• The approved Mormon aesthetic, from temple pictures and the Proclamation to the Greg Olsen painting and the vinyl lettering. It was never about beauty. It was about evidence.
• The rainbow Jesus painting I hung after one of my kids came out, and why it felt so risky
• How aesthetic choices become moral choices in a high-control system: "Is this appropriate?" replaces "Do I like this?"
• Identity foreclosure: Erikson's model of adolescent exploration, and Marcia's term for committing to an identity without ever exploring
• Why your taste often circles back to what you loved at 14, 15, and 16
• Why clothing and decor are the low-stakes, everyday practice ground for rebuilding self-trust

Practical tips for rebuilding your taste:

1. Listen to the question you're asking. Is it "Is this appropriate?" and "Is this too much?" Or is it "Do I like it?"
2. Go back to before the foreclosure point. What you loved as a teenager is often your last real data point.
3. Find your version of the unmonitored room. A Pinterest board works. It requires no commitment and no money.
4. Treat it as creative practice, because it is.

Resources mentioned:

• Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and Crisis. Norton.
• Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3(5), 551–558.

Start your own reclamation: Book a free Reclamation Call HERE

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Therapy treats. Coaching builds. If you left Mormonism or another high-control religion, knowing which one you need is the first decision, and evaluating the person you hire is the second. This episode gives you a clear test for the first and a practical checklist for the second.

You will learn how to tell clinical pain from identity disorientation, how to find a qualified therapist or coach, and the red flags that signal a practitioner is rebuilding the authority structure you just left. Run the same check on me.

In This Episode

• The core difference: therapy is licensed clinical care for diagnosing and treating mental health conditions; coaching is a forward-facing process for people who are functional and ready to build
• Why coaching is an unregulated industry and what that means for your search
• Why leaving a religious system makes this choice harder, when guilt, shame, and anxiety were treated as moral failures instead of psychological experiences
• The two kinds of pain that get tangled together: clinical symptoms and identity disorientation
• The test: Are you trying to understand why you feel broken, or are you trying to build what comes next?
• Reasons to seek a therapist, and reasons to seek a coach
• How to find a good therapist: specialty filters, credentials, consultation calls, and how to avoid waiting weeks for a second try
• How to find a good coach: real training, a specific niche, clear scope, and no guarantee language
• Red flags for both roles, organized by scope violations, manipulation and dependency, competence gaps, ideological overreach, and practical issues
• The one pattern that matters most: a practitioner who recreates the authority structure you left, with better marketing or a licensure badge
• Where I stand: what I do, what I do not do, and why art-making is part of the work

If You Need a Therapist, Start Here

Seek a therapist first if you are dealing with panic attacks, dissociation, intrusive thoughts, months of insomnia, grief that is stopping you from working or parenting, or suicidal ideation. If any of that is true right now, get clinical help right away. Consider a therapist who specializes in religious trauma or high-control group recovery.

Work With Me

I am a certified life coach. I am not a therapist. I do not diagnose, and I do not treat trauma. If a client discloses something clinical, I say so and I refer out.

What I do is work with the thought patterns underneath identity collapse. You outsourced your internal authority years ago and nothing has replaced it. Coaching is how you build that replacement, by learning to generate your own conclusions and trust them, not by adopting a new authority to obey. Art-making is part of the process because it draws a response from you outside of language and outside the doctrine-trained part of your brain that looks for the correct answer. No art experience is required.

Book your free Reclamation Call: [insert booking link]

It is a 45-minute conversation about where you are and whether coaching is your next move.

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You don't have a talent problem. You have a permission problem. If you've ever felt drawn to paint, dance, write, or make something — and then talked yourself out of it because it felt ridiculous for "someone like you" — this episode is about why that happens, what it's actually costing you, and how to stop waiting for permission that isn't coming.

Drawing on Julia Cameron's concept of the "shadow artist" from The Artist's Way, Kristin breaks down the difference between people who are stuck circling a creative life and people who are actually living one — and it isn't talent.

What You'll Hear

• What a shadow artist actually is: someone caught between the dream of action and the fear of failure, feeling a vague discontent or restlessness they can't quite name
• Why "I'm just not talented" is a story, not a fact — and why Kristin says drawing (and most creative skill) is learned, not inherited
• The five signs you're a shadow artist: consuming instead of creating, surrounding yourself with art without claiming it, being quietly (or not-so-quietly) critical of people who do the thing, feeling restless despite an objectively fine life, and having a long list of practical reasons why now isn't the time
• Why Kristin called herself "an art lover" instead of an artist for a long time — and what that phrase was really protecting her from
• A story from Kristin's first drawing class at the community college, and what happened when she walked in scared instead of waiting to feel ready
• How martyrdom gets rewarded in Mormon culture specifically — and why "look what I gave up for my family/the gospel" is a sophisticated excuse, not a virtue
• Steven Pressfield's idea of the "unlived life" — and why unexpressed desire doesn't disappear, it resurfaces as resentment, jealousy, and irritability
• Why you should "have the audacity of a mediocre white man" and stop waiting for permission or credentials before you start

Key Takeaways

• Talent is not the gate. Showing up repeatedly and tolerating the discomfort of being a beginner is the entire difference between you and the person whose art you admire.
• The urge to create doesn't fade with neglect. It goes underground and comes out sideways — as restlessness, irritability, or a hum of dissatisfaction you can't explain.
• Waiting until you're not scared is waiting forever. Fear is a passenger on this trip, not a stop sign.
• Martyrdom (for family, for the church, for anyone) is often just a well-dressed excuse for staying small — and no one is handing out a reward for it.

Your unlived desire is not going anywhere. It goes underground and comes back out as resentment, as restlessness, as that low hum of something's missing that you can't quite name.

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You didn't leave because you wanted to sin. You left because you saw things you couldn't unsee, and you followed your integrity out. This episode is about the price of that: being misunderstood by the people who used to know you best, and what to do about it.

What This Episode Covers

Kristin's husband recently saw extended family for the first time in a while. His text afterward: "they are afraid of me." Nothing about him had fundamentally changed — a tattoo, some facial hair, a different drink order. What changed is that he no longer fits their worldview, and that's enough for a "family-focused" religion to quietly write someone off.

This episode breaks down why that happens and five ways to stop letting it run your life.

Five Ways to Navigate Being Misunderstood

1. It's not about you, it's about them. The labels — lazy, deceived, never had a testimony — aren't an assessment of you. They're a release valve that lets believing members avoid examining their own foundation. Your leaving threatens a worldview built on decades of labor, money, and identity. It's easier to decide something is wrong with you than to ask whether something is wrong with the system.

2. What other people think of you is none of your business. This isn't generic self-help. Exmormon women were raised in a system where worthiness was measured by visibility — temple recommend interviews, callings, how the ward perceived you. Being well-regarded was treated as proof you were living correctly. Untangling your identity from other people's opinions means something different when that's your starting point. This also isn't a license to ignore all feedback — feedback on your actions is useful. Someone's private verdict about your character is not.

3. Stop auditioning. You don't owe anyone a performance of your outcome — good or bad. You can't be present in a hard season if you're managing how it looks. You can't enjoy a good one if you're performing for an audience. The church trained you to audition for your worthiness. You're allowed to opt out of the trial entirely. Replace "how will this look to others" with "what do I actually want here."

4. Find the people who don't label you. A friend's group of Mormon friends dropped her the moment she started wearing pants to church. That's the ceiling on belonging in a system built on conformity — step out of line once and you're out. Finding people who love you without requiring proof of anything is one of the real, unexpected rewards on the other side.

5. Allow the grief. You're allowed to miss the relationship you used to have, even while knowing you made the right call. The people you love may never see what you see, or feel the freedom you've found. That's a real loss. It doesn't undo the decision.

Key Takeaway

You are not required to win back a verdict from people who were never actually weighing the evidence. Their judgment is self-preservation, not truth. Stop trying to prove you're happy. Find the people who don't need you to be anyone other than who you are — then go live your life.

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A woman posted on an LDS forum that her garments were so uncomfortable, she'd stopped wearing them — and then asked permission. Is this okay? Am I sinning? That question is the entry point into this episode: a close look at how Mormonism trains women to defer their own authority to outside approval, how that shows up far beyond garments or sexuality, and what it actually takes to reclaim full ownership of your own body, voice, and life.

Kristin unpacks infantilization as a system — not a single rule, but an infrastructure that teaches women to check in before acting on their own desire, comfort, ambition, or anger. She shares her own experience starting pole dancing and painting as embodiment practices, walks through the difference between compliance and ownership when your choices look the same from the outside, and offers a concrete way to tell the difference between old conditioned fear and real danger.

What's Covered

• The forum story: a woman asking strangers for permission to trust her own body, and what that reveals about paternalistic control
• Infantilization as an infrastructure, not a single moment — how it shows up in sexuality, ambition, anger, physical strength, intellectual authority, voice in conflict, solitude, rest, and rage at injustice
• Why sexuality in Mormonism is routed through male permission, and what it means for a woman to own her sexuality as hers first
• Kristin's experience starting pole dancing as an embodiment practice with no audience and no justification required
• Reclaiming womanhood as a four-part practice: noticing where you give away authority, separating compliance from ownership, expecting discomfort without mistaking it for danger, and dropping the need to justify your own desire
• A real test for telling old conditioned fear apart from an actual danger signal
• How Kristin and her husband had to rebuild their marriage from choice instead of obligation after leaving the church
• Painting and dance as embodiment practices — why physical, repeated, unsupervised creative expression rebuilds self-trust in a way thinking alone can't.

If you recognize that habit of checking outside yourself before you trust your own answer — that's exactly the work I do with women one-on-one.

I offer a free Reclamation Call: one conversation, just you and me, where we look at where you're still deferring your authority and what it would actually take to reclaim it. No pitch, no pressure — just a real look at where you are and what's next.

You can book yours at the link in the show notes. You don't need the forum. You don't need permission. You just need one honest conversation to start.

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Resistance Isn't a Stop Sign — It's a Map

This week I'm breaking down Resistance — the concept Stephen Pressfield writes about in The War of Art — and why it ambushes you right at the exact moment you're closest to the thing you actually want. I'll walk through where Resistance really comes from, how to tell it apart from real intuition (this part matters especially if you grew up being taught your feelings were a moral compass), and what it actually takes to move through it — not by white-knuckling your way past it, but by understanding the game your own brain is playing.

What You'll Learn:

• The difference between the surface reasons you avoid your work (fear, perfectionism, distraction, self-medicating with food/shopping/scrolling, manufactured drama) and the real reason underneath all of them
• Why Resistance is proportional to how much something matters to your growth — not to how physically risky it actually is
• Why the loudest Resistance shows up right before the things closest to your calling
• Five ways to tell Resistance apart from your intuition: timing, content vs. noise, direction, physical signature, and whether it holds up under scrutiny
• Why this is a distinct challenge for women raised in high-control religion, where doubt was pathologized and your own emotional signals were used as the mechanism of control
• The Amateur vs. Professional framework — and why "turning pro" is about your relationship to the work, not your skill level
• A track-record practice for rebuilding trust in your own signal over time

Key Takeaway: Resistance isn't proof you should stop. It's proof you're close to something real. The work isn't waiting for it to quiet down — it won't. The work is learning to stop believing what it tells you, and showing up anyway.