PODCAST · society
Mormon to Muse
by Kristin Martineau
You didn't lose your faith. You found out something true — and now you're figuring out who you are on the other side.Mormon to Muse is a podcast for women navigating life after the Mormon church — the faith transition grief nobody prepares you for, the identity loss that comes with leaving a high-control religious system, and the slow, honest work of reclaiming yourself.Each week I explore what it means to find yourself again after the Mormon church — through creative practice, life coaching tools, and the kind of honest conversation you can't have at Sunday dinnerIf you've spent years being everything for everyone else and you're only now starting to wonder who you actually are — you're in exactly the right place.Start with: "You Were Never Just a Calling."
Episodes
-
Temptation Isn't Real: Unwinding the War for Your Soul
For years, wanting something you "shouldn't" felt like proof you were losing a spiritual battle. It wasn't. It just meant you had a healthy nervous system. In this episode, Kristin unpacks one of the most disempowering ideas she inherited from Mormonism — the concept of temptation — and why it...
-
"I Could Never Do That": Untangling Nature, Story, and Belief Post-Mormonism
"I'm just not creative." "I could never do that." "I'm not the kind of person who finishes things." You've said one of these — or something close to it — so many times it stopped sounding like an opinion. It started sounding like a fact. It isn't one. In this episode, Kristin breaks down the...
-
The B- Version Is the One That Counts: Overcoming Perfectionism After High-Control Systems
Are You a Perfectionist? Here's Why That's Not the Compliment You Think It Is Perfectionism gets worn like a badge of honor. I used to wear mine that way too. But underneath the polished exterior, perfectionism isn't a high standard — it's an impossible one. In this episode, I break down what...
-
7 Things I Wish I Knew During Deconstruction
Faith deconstruction isn't a clean process. You're rebuilding a self while still going to work, parenting, managing a marriage and a household. There's no roadmap for it — you're improvising for the first time in a life that used to hand you all the answers. In this episode, I'm walking through…
more -
Making Peace with the Human Void: Why That Empty Feeling Isn't a Problem to Fix
There's a particular kind of longing that shows up even when my life is good. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is happening. And still — something feels missing. A low hum of restlessness, the sense that I forgot something, that there's supposed to be more. This is the human void, and every healthy…
more -
The Number One Mistake I See Women Who Leave The Church and How to Fix It
You know you don't have to do what everyone else wants anymore. So why is it still so hard to figure out what you want? If you left the Mormon church and you're still second-guessing every decision, still scanning for the "right" answer, still feeling like a stranger in your own life — this…
more -
What Is Eros Energy? Reclaiming Your Aliveness After Leaving the Mormon Church
I spent years experiencing my own aliveness as a problem to manage. I was a mother of young kids, restless out of my mind, bored without intellectual stimulation — and certain something was wrong with me for wanting more than playdates and toddler story time. My husband was off chasing his dreams...
-
The Manual You Didn't Write: Why Other People's Behavior Isn't the Problem and How to Reclaim Your Peace After the Church
We don't usually realize it, but most of us are carrying an unwritten rulebook about how the people around us should behave so that we can feel okay. Brooke Castillo calls it a manual, and in this episode I unpack why it has such a fierce grip on those of us who grew up Mormon — where the manuals...
-
The Midlife Trifecta: When Faith Identity and Body Shift All at Once
If you're somewhere in your forties and it feels like everything is coming apart at the same time — your faith, your body, your sense of who you are — you're not broken. You're in the midlife trifecta: faith transition, perimenopause, and kids leaving home, all colliding at once. In this episode,...
-
You Were Never Unworthy: How Unconditional Positive Regard Heals the Damage of Mormon Worthiness Culture
What if the system that claimed to be making you good was actually the thing standing in the way? In this episode we go deep on one of the most important distinctions for women rebuilding after Mormonism — the difference between unconditional positive regard and worthiness culture. Not as…
more -
You Can Trust Your Feelings Again: Emotional Literacy, Embodiment, and Self-Trust After Faith Transition
Download the 7 Day Reclamation Sketchbook There is a feeling you know very well. You felt it in sacrament meeting, reading scripture, bearing your testimony. It was warm. It was certain. It felt like coming home to something true. And you were told — explicitly, repeatedly, from the time you were...
-
The Sinfulness of Selfhood: Why Differentiation Feels Dangerous After Mormonism
Episode 51: The Sinfulness of Selfhood: Why Differentiation Feels Dangerous After Mormonism There is a word the church uses for a woman who trusts her own mind over the institution. The word is proud. There is a word for a woman who grows in a direction the people around her didn't agree to. The...
-
Why You Can't Say No: How the Mormon Church Hijacks Consent
It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I really understood what consent meant. I knew the word. I could have given you a definition. But the actual lived understanding of it — what it means to check in with yourself before you agree to something, to treat your own yes and no as information…
more -
You Know More Than You Think: Rebuilding Self-Trust and Inner Authority After the Mormon Church
You've said it a hundred times. About what you want, who you are now, what comes next. I don't know. And it feels true — honest, even. But what if "I don't know" isn't always a fact? What if sometimes it's a thought your brain is using to keep you safe, small, and exactly where you are? In this...
-
The Loop — How High-Control Religion Uses Shame to Keep You Coming Back
Mormonism didn't just teach you to feel shame. It built a system where being human was the problem — and the church was the only solution. In this episode, Kristin breaks down exactly how that system works: how ordinary human experiences like doubt, desire, anger, and ambition get reframed as...
-
Beyond the Rulebook: How to Build a Values-Driven Life After the Mormon Church
What do you do with your conscience when the institution that claimed to own it is gone? This episode is about one of the most disorienting parts of leaving — not the grief, not the social fallout, but the quiet, unsettling question underneath all of it: who decides what's right now? Many women...
-
After Mormonism: How to Rebuild Your Identity When You Don't Know Who You Are Anymore
There's a particular kind of silence that happens after everything collapses and before anything new has taken shape. You're not who you were. You're not yet who you're becoming. And nobody around you quite understands what that space actually feels like to live in. This episode is for you if...
-
Fron Obedience to Inner Authority: How to Start Living Self Directed After Mormonism
Leaving a high-control system doesn’t automatically make you self-directed. Many women walk away from Mormonism expecting freedom—but instead find themselves stuck in indecision, self-doubt, and confusion. Why? Because obedience isn’t just a belief. It’s a skill that was trained. And...
-
Why Leaving Feels Like Dying - Understanding Faith Transition Grief
Nobody prepared me for the fact that leaving the church might be the hardest thing I ever did — not because I made a mistake, but because of how completely my identity was woven into it. In this episode, I name what so many women in faith transition feel but struggle to articulate: the grief of...
-
You Were Never Just a Calling — Identity Loss and Self-Reclamation After the Mormon Church
There's a particular kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with your schedule. It's the exhaustion of spending years showing up, giving, serving — as a version of yourself you never quite chose. In this episode we name what so many women coming out of high-control religious systems experience...
-
What Your Resentment Is Trying to Tell You — Anger and Healing in Faith Transition
Resentment gets a bad reputation. Most of us have been taught that resentment is something to suppress, overcome, or repent of. Especially if you were raised in a high-demand religious culture, resentment is often framed as a character flaw—evidence that you’re selfish, ungrateful, or lacking...
-
Parenting Without Panic — Raising Kids After Leaving the Mormon Church
Why managing your emotions matters more than any rule you enforce- Most parenting advice focuses on what your kids should do. Obey. Choose wisely. Make good decisions. Stay on the “right” path. But what if the real work of parenting isn’t managing your children — it’s managing yourself? In this...
-
40- The Truth About Awakening — Why Healing Doesn’t Make You Feel Better (and Why It’s Still Worth It)
Most people pursue healing, awakening, or personal transformation because they believe it will make them feel better. That eventually, if they do enough work, they’ll reach some stable emotional state where doubt, grief, anger, and uncertainty no longer touch them. This episode challenges that...
-
The Gift of Doubt — Why Questioning Everything Is the Beginning of Knowing Yourself
Doubt has a bad reputation. We’re taught to resolve it quickly. To replace it with certainty. To override it with belief, obedience, or confidence. But doubt is not the enemy of creativity. It is the beginning of it. In this episode, we explore why doubt is not a weakness—but a generative...
-
Reclaiming Flow — How Women Rediscover Themselves Through Creativity After Mormonism
Flow isn’t passive happiness. It’s deep immersion. It’s the state where time bends, self-consciousness softens, and you stop narrating yourself long enough to fully engage in what you’re doing. And research shows it’s one of the healthiest states the human brain can enter. In this episode, we...
-
Why Traditional Spirituality Doesn't Work for Women After Faith Transition — And What Does
For many women, spirituality was never meant to make us smaller—but that’s often what it did. In high-demand religious systems, spirituality is frequently defined by obedience, self-suppression, and service to the institution. Authority is external. Worthiness is conditional. Expansion beyond...
-
Audacity Over Permission — Reclaiming the Right to Take Up Space After the Church
Audacity Over Permission Why Waiting Isn’t Wisdom—and Showing Up Changes Everything. We’re often taught that patience is a virtue. That waiting is wise. That if we just prepare a little more, heal a little more, learn a little more—then we’ll be ready to speak, create, lead, or take up space. But...
-
Creating During Chaos — Why Your Creative Practice Matters Most When Life Falls Apart
Feel calmer in 5 minutes. Click HERE to download free anxiety calming art prompt. Want to be the first to know when an in person class opens? Sign up HERE so you won't miss it! There’s a belief that surfaces during times of collective crisis: now is not the time for creativity. That when the…
more -
Why Self Care Isn't Working — Reclaiming Real Rest After High-Control Religion
CLICK HERE to get on the interest list for in person classes in Utah. You'll be the first to get all the details when a class opens. We’re told self-care is the answer — but what if it makes you feel irritated, resistant, or worse? In this episode, I talk about why I hate self-care sometimes —…
more -
Goals Without Overwhelm — How to Move Forward When You're Still in the Middle of Everything
Setting goals is supposed to feel empowering—but for many of us, it quietly turns into pressure, self-judgment, and nervous-system overload. In this episode, we explore why goals so often create overwhelm (especially for women who were raised in high-demand systems), and how to approach...
-
What a Better Life After Mormonism Actually Looks Like
Creating a better life after Mormonism doesn’t mean building the opposite life. It doesn’t mean dismantling every discomfort, rejecting everything you were taught, or proving that leaving was “worth it.” In this episode, we slow that idea way down. We talk about what a better life actually means…
more -
Why Everyone Quits — The Four Stages of Learning and Faith Transition
What if the frustration, self-doubt, and awkwardness you feel when learning something new isn’t a sign you’re failing—but proof that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be? In this episode of Mormon to Muse, we explore The Four Stages of Learning and how this framework can help you understand...
-
The Cost of Distraction — Why Women in Faith Transition Stay Busy to Avoid Feeling
Get the Anxiety Soothing art prompts HERE Distraction isn’t a personal failure. It’s a symptom. In this episode of Mormon to Muse, we explore distraction not as a productivity problem—but as an attention and devotion problem. Especially for women who were raised in high-demand systems…
more -
Abundance as Rebellion — Reclaiming Prosperity After a Scarcity-Based Religion
Leaving a high-demand system like Mormonism often leaves us with an unexpected residue — a deep, body-level sense of scarcity. Scarcity of time. Scarcity of worth. Scarcity of permission. Scarcity of possibility. In today’s episode, we explore what it means to practice abundance as an act of...
-
Holidays After Mormonism — Reclaiming Meaning When the Traditions Don't Fit Anymore
Hi friends, Get my Anxiety Soothing Art if you need a small ritual to bring peace. This week on the podcast, we’re talking about rituals—the ones we inherited, the ones we outgrew, and the ones we’re allowed to create now. If you grew up in Mormonism, your life was full of ritual. Prayer, family...
-
The Psychology of Internalized Constraint — Why You Still Follow the Rules After Leaving
What happens when the rules you grew up with continue running your life long after you’ve left the system that taught them? In today’s episode, we’re talking about internalized constraint—the invisible expectations, fears, obligations, and “shoulds” that live inside your nervous system and shape...
-
Why Myth Matters — Recovering Your Story After High-Demand Religious Systems
In this episode, we explore one of the most important—and misunderstood—stories in the feminine archive: Bluebeard. This tale isn’t about morbid curiosity or a woman “disobeying.” It’s about awakening. About reclaiming the instinct to know what you know. About refusing to live in a house of…
more -
Learning to Trust Yourself — Reclaiming Intuition After High-Control Religion
Get the free Prompts to calm anxiety When you've spent years—or decades—being told what is right, what is true, and what is best for you, trusting yourself again can feel disorienting. Many women raised in high-demand religious systems were taught that external authority is more trustworthy than...
-
Anxiety After Faith Transition — What Your Nervous System Is Trying to Tell You
Get the anxiety reducing art prompts HERE When you’ve spent years under spiritual surveillance — constantly monitored for worthiness, obedience, and purity — your nervous system learns to stay on high alert. Even when you leave that system, your body doesn’t automatically feel safe. Freedom can...
-
It's Not Too Late — Reclaiming Your Life After Leaving the Mormon Church
Have you ever caught yourself thinking, “It’s too late for me”? Too late to change careers, to create art, to follow that dream you tucked away years ago? In this episode, Kristin shares a deeply honest conversation about regret, renewal, and the beauty of starting over — no matter your age or...
-
Creating vs. Consuming — Why Making Things Matters for Women in Faith Transition
Get a free therapeutic art prompt delivered to your email every week. CLICK HERE to join Sunday Muse. Have you ever noticed how scrolling, watching, or even listening to “inspiring” content can leave you feeling tired — not fulfilled? In this episode, Kristin Martineau explores the energetic...
-
Reclaiming Desire — Learning to Want Things Again After Mormonism
Come visit me at the Energy Healing Conference! Tickets are regularly $30, but I have a limited number to give away for free! CLICK HERE to claim them before someone else does! Don't miss free the therapeutic art prompt that goes with this episode! Join Sunday Muse here. In this episode of Mormon...
-
Confidence After the Church — How to Trust Yourself When You Were Taught Not To
Get your FREE tickets to the Energy Healing Conference October 18th in Sandy Utah. I'll be there all day at my vendor booth and I'll be speaking also at 5 pm. Come say hello! If you want to come to my class be sure to purchase the art kit ($10) ahead of time to guarantee your spot! Confidence is...
-
Stressed or Inspired — How to Use Stress Wisely During Faith Transition
Come see me at the Energy Healing Conference Oct 18 in Sandy Utah. Get your FREE TICKET HERE! Stress is one of those words that instantly makes our shoulders tighten. But what if not all stress is bad? In this episode, we unpack the complicated relationship we have with stress — from the kind…
more -
9 Reasons I Love Being Wrong — Embracing Uncertainty After Leaving the Mormon Church
What if being wrong could actually be a gift? Most of us were raised to avoid mistakes at all costs, but in this episode I want to flip that script. Being wrong has been one of the most powerful teachers in my own life—helping me grow, deepen relationships, and even discover that I am an artist...
-
Us vs. Them — The Insider-Outsider Dynamic in High-Control Religious Systems
Have you ever noticed how leaders—religious, political, or otherwise—use “us vs. them” language to stir emotions, create loyalty, and shut down critical thinking? In this episode of Mormon to Muse, I break down how this kind of rhetoric works, why it’s so effective, and the impact it has on...
-
Breaking the Legacy of Suffering — Generational Patterns in Mormon Families
Generational pain is real. Many of us carry not only our own struggles but also the unhealed wounds of our mothers, grandmothers, and the women who came before us. They were taught to endure, to stay small, to sacrifice themselves, and often to silence their own needs. Without realizing it, we...
-
Redefining Connection — How Faith Transition Reshapes Relationships and Community
Leaving or deconstructing a faith system doesn’t just change what you believe—it changes how you relate to the people you love. Whether it’s family who remain devout, a spouse who doesn’t understand your journey, or friendships that once revolved around shared beliefs, relationships can feel like...
-
Leaving vs. Deconstructing — How to Tell the Difference and Why It Matters
How to Tell the Difference Between Leaving and Deconstructing Faith | Episode Summary: Leaving a high-demand religion and deconstructing your faith are not the same thing. In this episode of Mormon to Muse, we’ll explore the crucial difference between the two—and why understanding it matters for...
-
The Art of Moving Forward — How to Rebuild Your Life After Leaving the Mormon Church
Change is inevitable, but moving forward with grace, courage, and creativity is a skill we can all develop. In this episode of Mormon to Muse, I explore why change feels so uncomfortable, how our brains resist it, and how we can use both mindset tools and the creative process to embrace new…
more
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
You didn't lose your faith. You found out something true — and now you're figuring out who you are on the other side.Mormon to Muse is a podcast for women navigating life after the Mormon church — the faith transition grief nobody prepares you for, the identity loss that comes with leaving a high-control religious system, and the slow, honest work of reclaiming yourself.Each week I explore what it means to find yourself again after the Mormon church — through creative practice, life coaching tools, and the kind of honest conversation you can't have at Sunday dinnerIf you've spent years being everything for everyone else and you're only now starting to wonder who you actually are — you're in exactly the right place.Start with: "You Were Never Just a Calling."
HOSTED BY
Kristin Martineau
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Mormon to Muse have?
Mormon to Muse currently has 62 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Mormon to Muse about?
You didn't lose your faith. You found out something true — and now you're figuring out who you are on the other side.Mormon to Muse is a podcast for women navigating life after the Mormon church — the faith transition grief nobody prepares you for, the identity loss that comes with leaving a...
How often does Mormon to Muse release new episodes?
Mormon to Muse has 62 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Mormon to Muse?
You can listen to Mormon to Muse on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Mormon to Muse?
Mormon to Muse is created and hosted by Kristin Martineau.
URL copied to clipboard!