In this intimate episode of Remembering You, Ryan opens the pages of his life — from growing up in a large, homeschooled family shaped by evangelical faith, to the tender threads of love, loss, and rediscovery that have defined his path.

He shares stories of childhood innocence and early spiritual wonder, the pressures of purity culture, and an arranged marriage that began as devotion but unraveled into heartbreak. Along the way, Ryan reveals what it means to live as a highly sensitive person — one who feels the world through an almost electric empathy — and how that sensitivity both shaped and complicated his relationships.

Through betrayal, grief, and the collapse of everything he once believed, Ryan found a new understanding of love as the ground of being — a way to keep his heart open even when life broke it wide apart.

This is a story about awakening — about what remains when faith systems fall away, and how pain can become the doorway to a deeper, truer freedom.

https://rememberingyou.life

00:00 Welcome to Remembering You

00:58 Early life in Columbus, Ohio

03:12 A Jesus-hippie childhood and homeschool beginnings

07:47 Meet Ryan’s parents – love, faith, and hard work

13:10 His mother’s resourcefulness and activism

17:55 Dyslexia, patience, and life inside the homeschool cult

21:35 Childhood faith and the first glimpse of wonder

23:40 The death of his grandfather and learning to feel grief

26:00 Purity culture and the fear of desire

33:00 Growing up as a highly sensitive person

36:00 The energetic bond with his mother and early spirituality

40:50 Gregorian chants, silence, and the search for stillness

46:00 An arranged marriage — “God’s gift” and the pastor’s blessing

52:40 The illusion of doing life “the right way”

59:00 Early marriage, faith, and four children under five years old

01:03:00 When faith fractures — losing God and finding love again

01:09:00 Questioning hell and discovering a new kind of gospel

01:13:00 The unraveling — betrayal, loss, and the breaking open

01:20:00 The night she left and the panic that followed

01:32:00 Keeping the heart open — learning not to numb the pain

01:40:00 Rediscovering love, self, and the courage to begin again

01:46:00 What freedom really means

01:48:00 Closing reflections and gratitude