In this deeply personal Sunday Solo, Sarah shares something she has been unpacking for most of her adult life: what happens when the spiritual framework you were raised in stops fitting who you are, and what you find when you finally give yourself permission to look beyond it.

Sarah grew up immersed in faith. Church was community, church was family, church was the lens through which everything was understood. There was genuine beauty in it: the hymns, the stories, the practice of prayer, the feeling of being held by something larger than yourself. And there were also questions, lots of them, that a sensitive and curious kid couldn't quite make fit. Questions she eventually stopped asking, until life made her start again.

She traces a journey that will feel familiar to a lot of listeners: leaving organized religion behind in college, finding her footing in the material world, becoming a parent and reaching back toward the big questions, and then being confronted by loss. The death of her best friend's six-year-old son, her own child's best friend, was the moment she could no longer stay comfortable in a purely material worldview. Sarah went down the mediumship rabbit-hole looking for answers.

Along the way, Sarah reflects on her mother's sustaining faith, the compassion she found for her parents as she understood why they made the choices they did, and an unexpected encounter with the late Rachel Held Evans during meditation.

This episode isn't about leaving faith behind. It's about what happens when you stop outsourcing your spiritual knowing to someone else's rulebook and start trusting the one that lives inside you. If you've ever felt like your beliefs needed to evolve but weren't sure you had permission, this one's for you.

Key Takeaways

• Faith is not a fixed target. It evolves with every experience we have and holding space for that evolution is not a crisis of faith. It's an expression of it.
• The spiritual practices we absorb in childhood can be more resilient than we think. Prayer, presence, the sense of being connected to something larger; those things don't have to be thrown out with the framework they came in. They just may need a new container.
• You cannot pass on a spiritual awakening. That kind of knowing has to be lived firsthand. The most loving thing anyone can do is create the conditions for someone else to find their own way there.
• Grief has a way of reopening the questions we thought we'd put to rest. Sometimes the losses we can't make sense of are exactly what leads us toward a deeper truth about consciousness, connection, and what continues.
• Spiritual gatekeeping, the idea that you need more credentials, more permission, more of someone else's approval to trust your own experience, is worth examining closely. Your direct relationship with the Divine is valid on its own terms.
• The ultimate litmus test for any belief, rule, or framework: does it move you toward love, or toward fear? That question belongs to you. And you get to apply it to everything.

Direct Quotes

"Faith and spirituality aren't a fixed target. They're fluid. They change with everything we experience."

"I don't think you can pass on a spiritual awakening. That kind of knowing has to be lived. It has to be yours."

Links and Resources

• Rachel Held Evans
• On Being with Krista Tippett — episode with Jeff Chu on Rachel Held Evans
• Medium Curious episode: Spiritual Rules — Which Ones Do We Actually Need

Explore the Intuition & Mediumship Course: https://www.mediumcurious.com

Book a reading with Jane Morgan https://www.janemorganmedium.com/

Book a reading with Sarah Rathke https://www.sarahrathke.com/

Jane's Substack: https://janemorgan.substack.com

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