Breathing Again by Kristen Neighbarger
Have you ever felt like you had it all together,
…knew what you believed, and were confident in who you were? I spent decades in high-control religion convinced I had all of these things figured out.
I grew up in a rural community and attended two small evangelical/verging on fundamental highly controlling churches. From birth, I was taught my brotherhood of churches was the only church preaching“truth.” I believed this wholeheartedly. In fact, when I was in elementary school, I actually put my best friend on the prayer list because she went to a Presbyterian Church with a female pastor, and I was worried she was going to Hell.
The scary part of this whole experience is this: No one batted an eyelash at my prayer request. The very adults teaching my Sunday School class encouraged this behavior.
Through a series of unfortunate, tragic, and chaotic events, the indoctrination that had dominated my life cracked and, ultimately, fell apart. Over several years, I deconstructed everything I had been taught and then reconstructed a faith of my own with fresh eyes, an open mind, and an entirely new perspective.
While I would change some aspects of my journey if I could time travel, I wouldn’t change the outcome. I love who I am in my forties! I married the love of my life in 2022, and together we launched my daughter into the adult world this year. I lead a thriving women’s ministry in my church I affectionately monikered as “not your grandma’s women’s ministry,” I’m writing full time, and I just completed my writing coach certification and launched my writing coaching and faith reconstruction coaching business out into the world.
Most importantly, though–I have a peace in knowing what I believe and why I believe it instead of simply blindly following indoctrinating man-made theology.
I want this peace for everyone who has deconstructed.
I wrote Breathing Again: Finding Peace While Navigating Faith Reconstruction for all the misfits, misunderstood, and marginalized sojourners who have deconstructed and now find themselves on this lonely journey of faith reconstruction. It’s my passion to help survivors of church hurt, spiritual abuse, and religious trauma reconstruct their faith so they can live shame-free, in freedom, and in truth.
Melding narrative, memoir, Scripture, and an applicable guide for those reconstructing, Breathing Again is the book I wish I had had while I was on my reconstruction journey.
You can grab it from Amazon today! Breathing Again
I’d love to send you a free Faith Reconstruction Guide. You can find grab it on my website Here
I’d love to get to know you better, friends. Let’s connect on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/kristenneighbarger/
https://www.pinterest.com/kristenneighbarger2022/
https://www.facebook.com/kristenneighbarger/
https://twitter.com/k_neighbarger
https://www.threads.net/@kristenneighbarger
For those of you who are writers, I can’t recommend Brian Dixon’s new book Your Hope Story. I learned so much from Brian as I wrote Breathing Again, and he took all his knowledge and put it in a book for the
masses! How cool is that?
Or, if you’d like some one-on-one guidance, I’m also a Hope*Writers Certified Coach, and I’d love to help
you! You can check out everything I offer and book your FREE 15-minute discovery call on my website! https://kristenneighbarger.com/coachingservices
