Faith, Shame, and the Stories We Inherit

In this episode, Kimberly Wilder, LMHC sits down with filmmaker and storyteller Candace Young for a deeply personal conversation about faith, identity, and the stories that shape us.What happens when two people grow up with completely different experiences of Christianity and still choose to sit at the same table and talk about it?Kimberly Wilder, LMHC shares her experience of growing up in a highly rule-based, shame-driven religious environment in the South. Candace offers a contrasting perspective, describing a childhood where faith was modeled through love, connection, and lived example rather than control.Together, they explore what it means to question what you were taught, to define your own beliefs, and to navigate spirituality on your own terms.This conversation moves through:religious trauma versus relational spiritualityhow shame forms across different life experiencesracism, identity, and feeling like an outsideradoption, belonging, and internalized narratives of feeling unwantedthe pressure placed on women to carry and care for everythinglearning to trust your own voice and intuitioninterdependence and asking for help without guiltpurity culture, silence around sex, and generational patternsgrief, death, and evolving beliefs about what comes afterAt its core, this episode is about connection. Not agreement. Not conversion. Just the willingness to listen, to hold space, and to let different truths exist side by side.Resources & Media MentionedThe Motorcycle Diaries (film)American Pie (film)The Pitt (TV show)Claws (TV series)Let Us Prey (Documentary)Mickee Faust Club (Tallahassee theater collective)Five Wishes (end-of-life planning resource)