A Welcome Letter to the Spiritually Homeless
Dear Spiritually Homeless Human,
I’m glad you’re here. If you've fled your former religious sanctuary, chapel, mosque, or temple, stepped out of systems that claimed they had all the answers and punished your questions—you are not alone.
If you've sat at the edge of your bed or the edge of your life, unsure what to hold onto anymore;
If you've walked away from religion and wondered whether that meant walking away from spirituality entirely;
If you've felt grief, anger, confusion, relief, or just plain numbness in the wake of leaving your religious home;
This letter is for you.
What you left may have been the structure, but it is not necessarily the sacred. That, is already within you.
Many of us who’ve left high-control religions and patriarchal belief systems weren’t solely deconstructing doctrine. We were deconstructing the very bones of our identity, our entire community, and what we thought was belonging. In that unraveling, the question often follows:
“What now?”
What do I believe in?
What kind of person do I want to be? What do I do with my longing to become? Where do I place the ache I still feel for ritual, wonder, awe, and connection?
Where is my spirituality now?
The world offers many different replacement structures such as astrology, witchcraft, fierce atheism and trust in science, wellness gurus and fitness programs, and even MLM’s.1 They all tend to offer solutions and structures, formulas and factoids, with the ends that justify their prescribed means. But the truth is, there is no blueprint for life, especially after you shed the templates preferred by religion.
But I want to tell you something I know deep in my bones—not as dogma, but as a truth felt and lived:
Spirituality doesn’t require a hierarchy, a template or a list of to-do’s. It requires honesty and connection to Self, others, nature, and purpose.
Spirituality isn’t owned by religion.
It doesn’t belong to the pulpit or the priesthood or the patriarchy.
It’s not locked behind orthodoxy or confined to creeds.
It belongs to humanity; to all of us.
Spirituality is what happens when we meet life with presence, meaning, and intention.
It’s in a shared moment of joy or pain. Or a slow deep breath and knowing silence. In the way healing can softens us. In laughter and hands held across difference. In rage that clears space for new things to be born.
It's in ritual—yes. But now, they are your rituals.
Lighting a candle at dusk.
Dancing barefoot on your kitchen floor.
Writing poetry that no one else reads.
Gathering with others not because you should, but because you long to.
It’s in finding your way through the dark, like a lotus flower trusting its murky journey towards the sun-filled sky atop the surface.
It’s in gathering community not built on shame, fear, or performance, but mutual healing and truth-telling.
It’s in trusting your body again, after years of being told not to.
It’s in reclaiming your sacredness—not as something handed to you by an institution, but something that has lived in you all along.
“True wisdom is the moment in the iconic Truman Show where he opens the door, and the doorway is dark… That image is tattooed onto my brain because it’s so relatable to what real growth looks like.”
— Brit Hartley, No Nonsense Spirituality
You are not spiritually empty.
You are not broken.
You are not lost.
You are in the wild and holy in-between.
And in this liminal space—between what was and what will be—you get to build.
A spirituality that is trauma-informed, expansive, embodied.
A spirituality that doesn’t gaslight your pain, but honors it.
A spirituality that’s rooted in consent, in authenticity, and in choice.
A spirituality that leads you to trust your own inner knowing, instead of relying on outside control dressed up as ‘truth’.
So, Welcome, friend!
Welcome to the wandering.
Welcome to the gathering.
Welcome to a spirituality that doesn’t demand belief, but invites you to explore.
Here, you get to rebuild at the pace of safety.
Here, you are allowed to grieve and rage and celebrate and rest.
Here, you are invited to connect and never coerced.
You belong, even (especially) in your questions.
You belong in your story.
You belong in community.
You are not spiritually homeless.
You are spiritually seeking.
Warmly guiding and cheering you on as we traverse routes and put down roots2
~ Megan Verno, CMHC
Therapist & writer on religious trauma, spiritual burnout, and healing in community.
Let’s stay connected.
If this resonated, I’d love to hear from you. Comment below or reply to this letter and tell me where you are in your journey. And if you’re seeking safe spaces to explore community and spiritual reclamation, stay tuned for upcoming support groups and gatherings. You don’t have to do this alone.