If you’ve ever felt like your spiritual self was too much for the people around you, this one is for you.

There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with waking up spiritually while everyone around you stays asleep. You start to feel things differently, see things differently, want different things – and suddenly the life you built doesn’t quite fit anymore. The people who raised you don’t understand the words you’re using. The friends you’ve had for years look at you like you’ve joined a cult. And somewhere in the middle of all that shifting, you’re just trying to figure out how to be yourself without losing everyone you love.

I know that feeling intimately.

For years, I carried my spiritual evolution like a secret – something I could only fully express in certain rooms, with certain people, in certain corners of my life. And even when I did share it, I was always bracing for the reaction. The confused look. The dismissive response. The silence that said more than words ever could.

The roots of spiritual hiding

I grew up in a strict Roman Catholic household. God was a man with a white beard sitting on a cloud somewhere, deciding whether I was a good girl or a bad girl. Desire was dangerous. The body was shameful. And spiritual connection meant following a very specific set of rules – rules I didn’t choose, rules I didn’t understand, and rules that slowly severed me from my own intuition.

I remember being seven years old and stealing a crossword puzzle from the grocery store checkout. When my mom caught me, she passed me off to my dad – and he told me I was going to hell. He said my first grade teacher, a nun, would send me there herself if she found out. I can laugh about it now.. but at the time, it encoded something deep in my nervous system. Fear became the foundation of my relationship with spirit.

By the time I reached adulthood, I had pushed God away entirely. I hated the word. I wanted nothing to do with it.

The moments that cracked me open

My grandfather passed away in 2012, and in his final words to me, he said something no one had ever said before: “Take care of yourself, Lauren.”

I had heard “be a good girl.” I had heard “make your parents proud.” But nobody had ever told me to take care of myself. And when he came to me in a dream a few days later – through a voicemail on my phone, the way all my passed loved ones visit me – I felt something stirring. A remembrance. A call.

That was the beginning.

Two years later, I was climbing Cathedral Rock in Sedona with my boyfriend, now husband. The trail was covered in fog. We couldn’t see two feet in front of us. And I was falling apart inside – drinking too much, overexercising, numbing with pharmaceuticals, completely disconnected from who I was.

When I reached the top, everything went silent. And then I heard a voice in my head say, “Oh, you’re here now – let me show you.”

The fog opened. And I saw a view I had never seen before in my life.

I felt God. Not the one from my childhood. Something real. Something alive. Something that didn’t need a building or a priest or a set of rules.

I texted my dad. I told him I thought I just felt God on a mountain.

His response: “That’s nice.”

The trap of seeking validation

That moment taught me something I’ve had to learn over and over again. When you have a spiritual experience that feels undeniably real to you, there’s a part of you that wants to share it – to have someone else confirm that it actually happened, that it matters, that you’re not making it up.

But validation seeking is one of the fastest ways to get distorted on the spiritual path.

Your connection to spirit is personal. It’s yours. And while it’s beautiful to share and celebrate with the right people, going to the wrong people – the ones who can’t hold it, can’t see it, can’t meet you there – can make you doubt the very thing that’s trying to save your life.

I didn’t have anyone back then. No one who got it. No one who resonated. I had books from authors like Wayne Dyer and Ram Dass – teachers whose words felt like lifelines – but no one in my physical world who could witness what I was becoming.

And so I learned to witness myself.

The two paths of awakening

What I’ve noticed in myself and in so many women I’ve walked with is that when we start waking up, we tend to go one of two directions.

The first path is hiding. We stuff it down. We don’t tell anyone. We go to work and act normal. We sit at family dinners and say nothing about the practices that are changing our lives. And over time, that suppression creates a massive separation – until one day the gap is so wide we can’t ignore it anymore.

The second path is over-identification. We become so attached to our new spiritual identity that we swing to the other extreme – offering to sage everyone at the family gathering, bringing up ayahuasca in every conversation, doing breathwork at the dinner table in front of people who have no context for what we’re doing.

I’ve done both. And honestly.. both are uncomfortable.

The middle path – the one I’m still learning – is about embodiment without performance. Claiming your truth without needing anyone else to validate it. Adjusting to environments without abandoning yourself. Holding your essence as sacred and non-negotiable, while also recognizing that not everyone needs to understand.

You were never flawed to begin with

One of the most important things I realized on this journey is that I was never broken in the first place.

I wasn’t flawed. I wasn’t damaged. I wasn’t too much or too weird or too spiritual. I was just being raised in an environment that wasn’t conducive to my expansion. I was carrying belief systems that were never mine. I was holding ancestral wounds that had been passed down for generations.

And when I finally started returning to my body – trusting her, listening to her, honoring her wisdom – everything began to shift.

The body is how we find our spiritual truth. Not through memorizing rules or following dogma, but through coming home to the heart. Through feeling what resonates and what doesn’t. Through recognizing that your intuition has been trying to guide you all along.

Coming out is a layered process

Here’s what I want you to know: coming out of the spiritual closet isn’t a one-time event. It’s not a single declaration followed by freedom and ease.

It’s a layered process. Over and over again. Every time you deepen, every time you evolve, every time you connect more fully to who you really are – there’s a new edge to meet. A new truth to speak. A new version of yourself to let be seen.

And every time, you’ll face the old wounds. The fear of rejection. The need for approval. The part of you that still wants your parents to get it, your friends to support it, your world to welcome it.

But if you can meet those moments with compassion – radical, tender compassion for yourself and your journey – you’ll find that the fear starts to loosen. The truth becomes easier to hold. And the permission you’ve been waiting for finally comes from the only place it ever could.

Yourself.

This week’s episode

In this week’s solo episode of The World Needs Your Medicine, I share the full story – from the crossword puzzle at age seven to the mountaintop in Sedona to my journey with plant medicine and earth-based healing. I talk about what it really looks like to reclaim your spiritual essence after a religious upbringing, why the rebellious teenager within you holds so much power, and how to stop abandoning yourself for the comfort of others.

If you’ve been hiding parts of who you are, this episode is your invitation to come a little closer to the truth.

This episode is now live, and you wont want to miss it. Tune in below!

Listen on Apple Podcast!