Originally Published September 14, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Kitty Bo Wilson was born in Dallas, TX, in the early 1950’s, and raised in Highland Park.  Her parents were Methodists but not really committed Christians.  Although very much a believer in God anyway, and not really understanding who Jesus was as savior or anything about the concept of original sin, at 14, she went through a questioning, agnostic phase.  At 16, her mother introduced her to the concept of reincarnation, which seemed to explain why there was suffering in the world, and also gave her a book about the psychic, Edgar Cayce.  This was the ’60’s, the Age of Aquarius and eastern religions, and pot and psychedelics. Kitty Bo and her mother went to a study group centered around the readings of Edgar Cayce and meditation.  At 17, she paid $25 to a transcendental meditation teacher, received a personal mantra, and began transcendental meditation.  During her sophomore year of college at the University of Texas, after finding an Edgar Cayce youth study group, she learned of a living psychic, there in Austin, who gave readings like Edgar Cayce.  3 weeks after meeting this psychic, at the age of barely 20, she married him.Kitty Bo became the conductor of the readings.  There were also group meditations where members of the White Brotherhood spoke, which even included Jesus on rare occasions. Her husband claimed to see people’s auras. He was also deep into UFOs, and a station to signal UFOs was set up on some land outside of Austin.  What made all this difficult was that her husband was also a paranoid and extremely abusive.In 1977, on a lark, they went to a Pentecostal tent revival and ended up leaving the metaphysical field and attending that church, which was in many ways a cult.  Finally, after 12 and half years of terrible abuse, Kitty Bo took her 3 children and fled.She remarried a wonderful Christian man, moved to Indiana, where the moldy house they were living in cratered Kitty Bo’s health.  They moved back to TX, settled on 20 acres in the hill country, and after menopause, Kitty Bo finally yielded to all the struggles she’d had with believing in God and became an atheist, in part due to her children becoming atheist after leaving home.Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson

Originally Published August 24, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Dave Warnock became a born-again Christian at the age of 18. He is now an ex-Evangelical Pastor who left Christianity after over 30 years as a part time/full time minister. He and his wife have 3 children, 2 of whom have exhibited the “Good Christian” virtue of “Shunning the Sinner”, as they view their now-atheist father. This has been very difficult for Dave. After 6 years of living this difficult life and not being allowed to see his grandchildren, he decided to change his future after feeling like a “dead-man walking”. He took 2 months off in 2016 and made some big life-changes including deciding to leave his 37-year marriage. Dave talks about the difficulty of family relationships, the challenges of divorce, the stress of being shunned, and the freedom found after choosing to move beyond belief. He challenges other men who have left religion to realize when habits of patriarchy, chivalry and misogyny get in the way of seeing women as equals.Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson

Originally Published August 17, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Janet Aiken is a middle aged former-evangelical homeschool mama who studied Biology and Secondary Ed at universities in New York & Washington, D.C. Once upon a time she dreamed of rescuing all of the ill and downtrodden children of the world by becoming a Pediatrician. Those dreams died when she failed to get in to Medical School.Janet rose above the discouragement & disappointment & determined that she could still save the world, one child at a time, by becoming a die hard fundamentalist Christian. This led her on a 20+ year journey into the domain of falsehood, deception & tyranny. Of late, thanks to the critical thinking skills of her then teenage son, Janet has rejected the truth claims of religion. Today she strives to make every effort to rediscover the harsh beauties of life. She counts devouring content by the likes of Hitch & Harris, marathon training, wandering near & abroad, and deep conversation among her myriad of interests.Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson

Originally Published August 10, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Mandisa Thomas is the founder and President of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. Although never formally indoctrinated into belief, Mandisa was heavily exposed to Christianity, Black Nationalism, and Islam. As a child she loved reading, and enjoyed various tales of Gods from different cultures, including Greek and Ghanaian. “Through reading these stories and being taught about other cultures at an early age, I quickly noticed that there were similarities and differences between those deities and the God of the Christian Bible. I couldn’t help but wonder what made this God so special that he warrants such prevalence in today’s society,” she recalls.Mandisa has a number of media appearances to her credit, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and JET magazine. She has been a guest on podcasts such as The Humanist Hour and Ask an Atheist, as well as the documentaries Contradiction and My Week in Atheism. Mandisa currently serves on the Boards for American Atheists and the Reason Rally Coalition, and previously for Foundation Beyond Belief and the Secular Coalition for America. She also is an active speaker, and has presented at conferences/conventions for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Secular Student Alliance, and many others.As the president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc., Mandisa works to build community and support, as well as encourage more Blacks to come out and stand strong with their nonbelief in the face of such strong religious overtones. “The more we make our presence known, the better our chances of working together to turn around some of the disparities we face. We are NOT alone.”Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson

Originally Published August 4, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Danielle was raised as an Evangelical Christian and went to the same church from the time she was a little kid up until her early 20’s.  When her mom was 38 years old, she was diagnosed with cancer. It went into remission but then the cancer came back and she ended up passing away a month before her 50th birthday. Danielle was a senior in college at that time.  When her mom was first diagnosed with cancer, Danielle was told over and over again how prayer had saved her, when the cancer was in remission. But when her mom ended up dying, Danielle felt like she had failed somehow.  It took several years and several churches later for her to finally give up Christianity.Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson

Originally Published July 31, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Colleen Jousma was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She has one older brother. Her parents separated when she was about 3 or 4. She lived with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend for most of her childhood after her parents separated.  Colleen’s parents were both members of local Seventh-day Adventist churches, but when her mom separated, she stopped attending church. Her dad continued to attend and when they would visit him on weekends, he would bring them to church, both on Saturday and also on Sunday.Her earliest religious memory was when she was 5 years old. They were in church one Sunday and the pastor called a young couple to the front of the church. The couple was going overseas to be missionaries. The pastor asked people in the church to come forward, place hands on the couple, and pray for them. Colleen’s grandma remembers she looked up at her and asked if she could go and pray for them. She considers that day to be a strong example of her desire, even at a young age, to help people. There was a time that she thought it was a sign that god had called her to be in ministry.Around middle school, she stopped visiting her dad on weekends, and consequently, stopped attending church. In high school, Colleen attended a retreat at her friend’s church. When they were having an altar call, she “rededicated her life to Christ”. However, instead of attending her friend’s church, a “Sunday” church, she decided to go back to her dad’s old church because it was the “true” church.After high school, Colleen went to a public university for one year. From there, she transferred to the “flagship” university of Adventism, Andrews University. Her first term there, she was a history major. Then she switched to religion. She loved her time at Andrews, loved the bubble she lived in and planned to be a pastor (even though female pastors were a very small number in the Adventist church).She decided to go overseas to do a year of missions work. She had gone one summer to teach English in Ukraine and felt like that was the best place to go. Colleen raised the funds to cover the year, and off she went. After returning from Ukraine, she went back to the Seminary instead of going back to the counselling program.Colleen received a Master’s in Religious Education, which enabled her to go overseas to teach English. She taught English in South Korea: first with a Seventh-day Adventist school and then high school with another denomination. She had a lot of anxiety for a decade and after finishing undergrad, she made the difficult move out of dorm life. Then, during the weekend of her graduation, she found out that something was wrong with her mom. Later that summer they found out it was a brain tumor. She dealt multiple tumors for 10 years before she succumbed to them.Grad school really didn’t go as planned. When Colleen went to South Korea it was hard to deal with. Her anxiety got the best of her (she now realizes that she didn’t know how to deal with anxiety until a few years ago). She came back to America in 2009 and jumped around to different jobs and took a self-development course, which, really opened up a lot for her. At the time, she remembers saying that she found out who she was “in Christ”.   Her departure from religion started with her departure from the Seventh-day Adventist Church in January of 2011. She dabbled with the Unity Church after she’d read some of Shelby Spong’s books. The one that really broke her worldview up was, Biblical Literalism, A Gentile Heresy. After only reading part of the book, she started to understand that the Bible was man-made and her faith fell apart.Colleen felt that her beliefs were all based on the evidence in the Bible. So,

Originally Published July 27, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Emily Karp is an asexual atheist living in Maryland. Emily found the journey to figuring out and accepting her sexual orientation, for her personally, was much more difficult than the journey to atheism! (Coming out as asexual tends to be more difficult, too.)She grew up with divorced parents, mainly living with her mentally ill, abusive, ostensibly Catholic mother, and she and her brother were raised in Catholicism. Her father, who was always a part of her life as well, came from a Jewish background. For Emily, the questioning started young. She doesn’t think she ever really had faith, fully believed in God or that heaven was real or that Catholicism was correct. For a long time, she didn’t know it was an option to choose “none” as the answer to what religion you were affiliated with. So, she kept trying to believe. She chose not to be Confirmed at age 14.   Immediately after taking a World Religions 101 course in her sophomore year in college, Emily officially declared herself an atheist a month before her 20th birthday. At that time she also discovered and joined the New Atheist movement with excitement, passion, and relief!Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson

Originally Published July 6, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Alice Herron was born into an Irish Catholic family who had moved to Scotland after the end of WW2. She was educated in a convent school, was briefly married to a Muslim man. She then spent 27 years as a devotee of the New York based Indian Hindu guru Sri Chinmoy. For over 20 years, as a member of his group, she gave meditation classes to seekers, becoming one of the most experienced meditation teachers in the UK at that time. Over her years as a devotee, she witnessed the guru become increasingly authoritarian, demanding, among other things, complete obedience from his followers. Over time, she says, the group developed all the classic characteristics of a cult. Sri Chinmoy’s focus changed from pursuing spiritual goals to seeking name and fame for himself, in particular, initiating a campaign to win himself the Nobel Peace Prize. In such an environment Alice became progressively unhappy, and eventually left the group in January 2002. Around the same time, Sri Chinmoy, who had always claimed he was celibate, was exposed by several of his former female devotees as a sexual predator. Perplexed to discover her former guru had lied consistently to his followers, she began to study the psychology of religion, attaining an MA in the subject. Her Master’s dissertation was entitled, “Psychological Factors in the Emergence of New Religious Movements”. She remembered how many of her fellow members in the Sri Chinmoy group believed in him because they they had mystical-type experiences associated with him. She was intrigued that such powerful experiences could be associated with someone who had been exposed for exploiting his followers in the worst possible way. This contributed to her decision to study for a PhD in psychology, researching atheists who claim to have had some kind of mystical-type experience, and to look at how they make sense of these experiences and whether it affects their sense of atheist identity. The more she studied the psychology of religion the less religious she became. Although she now considers herself an atheist, she says she still has a soft spot for some aspects of religion, and believes it can be helpful for some people. The problem, she believes, is the lack of transparency and accountability of many religious leaders that in turn leads to corruption and exploitation. Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson 

Originally Published June 29, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title.Brian Peck is a licensed clinical social worker in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in faith transitions and religious-based trauma. His practice, Room to Thrive PLLC grew out of a desire to reduce the suffering unique to faith transitions and to trauma experienced within a religious context.In addition to providing clinical services, Brian offers online coaching for individuals navigating faith transitions. While distinct from therapy in its focus and approach, Brian’s coaching is informed by evidence-based principles and practices.For the past several years, Brian has collaborated with fellow clinicians, researchers, and members of various post-theist communities on a new online venture that adapts evidence-based resources to the unique challenges of faith transitions. The Faith Transitions Project is about the whole person and infuses flexibility into a process where it’s often easy to get stuck.Brian grew up in the Conservative Holiness movement and was deeply committed to his faith, traveling to China, the Philippines, and Honduras on missions trips. It was during a year of Bible college that Brian began to discover the many ways his religious faith no longer worked for him.Over the past 12+ years, Brian has done a lot of personal work related to the experience of leaving the church. His curiosity, openness, and desire to reduce human suffering are guiding principles for a life committed to human wellbeing sans supernatural beliefs. Brian earned his Master’s of Social Work degree from Boise State University and completed the required post-graduate supervision and training to gain clinical licensure. Brian is a member of the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science (ACBS) and serves on the steering committee for the Social Work and ACT Special Interest Group. Brian is an active member of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), has served on the board of directors for the Idaho Chapter (NASW Idaho) for several terms as a branch chair, and has served as the chair for NASW Idaho’s Political Action for Candidate Election (IDA PACE) committee.Originally from Pennsylvania, Brian now lives in Boise, Idaho with his wife and two boys where he enjoys spending time outdoors, sharing in conversations around the fire pit, enjoying a cup of home-roasted coffee, and living life as fully as possible.Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson

Originally Published June 23, 2017 under the Women Beyond Belief podcast title. Andrea Powell grew up in Texas, but now lives and works as a designer in NYC. Christianity was a part of her life from the start. She and her family were active in non-denominational Bible churches. She participated in a number of faith-based activities such as Awana, Vacation Bible School, and Christian summer camps throughout her childhood. Andrea was a curious child who loved science and spent much of her time reading. She voraciously consumed the Focus on the Family magazines that were a constant presence in her home. After hearing Ken Ham speak, she became fascinated with creationist explanations of how the natural world came to be. Throughout middle school and high school, Andrea was an active member of her church youth group. She loved her time with their small groups, Bible studies, mission trips, local outreaches, and eventually she even became part of the leadership team.In the summer before she went to college, Andrea attended a two-week program aimed at preparing young people to defend their faith in the face of the secular worldviews and liberal academic environments they were likely to encounter in higher education and the professional world beyond. Then she attended College which was a whirlwind. Andrea joined the local branch of Campus Crusade for Christ and proudly shared her testimony to professors and classmates. Outside of the classroom, she spent hours debating issues of politics and morality and was surprised by the variety of arguments and examples she had never encountered during the years she had spent preparing for such conversations. Somewhere around the third year of college, the nature of these debates shifted and began more often to include people from within the church. The debates covered differing denominational positions toward the LGBTQ community. These included the questions such as whether faith could persist in a mind that had accepted evolution to be true, and the condescending nature of many church positions regarding the roles of women in leadership and within families. By her fourth and final year, Andrea had grown frustrated with the dismissive ways her questions and concerns were often received by other Christians. She began stepping back from ministry responsibilities, and instead spent more time with her friends outside the church. After graduation, Andrea headed overseas and, after months of meeting fellow travelers from all corners of the globe, few of her childhood assumptions about morality and truth seemed to make sense any longer in the world she was encountering. By the time she made it to NYC, the desire to re-join a church community had evaporated for good. Over the next several years, Andrea hungrily consumed scientific, historical, and philosophical resources that had never been included in her faith-focused education. And slowly, she came to terms with an understanding of the universe and morality that could exist without the intervention of a supernatural being.Original Music Composition by Esther NicholsonDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the podcast host, Wendy Nicholson