I Left the Flock to Find the Flame

A Reclamation of Spiritual Sovereignty

It wasn’t lost on me that I began writing this piece a day before the Pope passed. I don’t believe it was coincidence, I supposed I was already speaking of sacred things.

I didn’t yet grasp the weight of what was stirring. I was simply following the quiet current within, answering a call I could no longer ignore. In hindsight, the synchronicity feels less like chance, and more like the sacred nod I didn’t know I needed. But since waking up in the morning and seeing the headlines, something inside me paused. I felt the unmistakable click of synchronicity. I knew I wasn’t writing in a vacuum. I was writing in rhythm with something greater, a collective exhale, a symbolic ending. Something old had begun to take its final breath. And what was quietly unfolding in my heart felt directly, divinely connected to that moment.

There’s something I can’t quite name about the timing of it all. His passing felt oddly poetic, not because I wished him gone, but because it mirrored something quietly unfolding in me. A kind of symbolic handover. The end of a chapter ruled by external authority, and the beginning of one shaped by inner knowing. I felt a soft, almost sacred happiness, not for his death, but for what it represented. A turning. A threshold. A moment where I could finally step fully into my own light. And I truly hope he found his.

This piece is not about organized religion. It’s about what rises in its absence. It’s about what awakens when the chants fade and the incense clears. It’s about the voice that emerges when no one else is speaking over it. It’s about the sacredness I never lost, only the courage it took to reclaim it.

There comes a moment in every soul’s journey when the path that once felt holy starts to feel hollow. When the scriptures stop echoing truth and instead echo control. When the rituals become heavy with performance instead of light with presence. And when the systems built to guide your spirit start to feel more like walls around it.

I didn’t lose my faith. I expanded it.

I didn’t walk away from God. I walked away from the noise that kept me from hearing Her whisper.

When I shared the last blog post and the song Pastel Lies, I knew it would stir something. And it did. The ripple came fast. Some messages were soft, curious. Others were wrapped in polite concern. But all carried the same undertone, an attempt to pull me back, to remind me of where I supposedly belonged. As if leaving the flock meant I had somehow fallen. As if wandering away from their idea of God could only mean I had wandered into darkness.

But the truth is, I am not lost. I am remembering. And memory is dangerous to any system built on amnesia. Because I am not someone seeking something to believe in. I am someone remembering what has always been true.

I don’t need temples. My soul is already a sanctuary.

I don’t need prophets. My wounds have whispered their own gospel.

And I certainly don’t need salvation because I was never lost. Only buried.

My path is not one of worship. It is one of witnessing. Witnessing the aching beauty of being here, now. Witnessing the lies I was told and the truth that kept breathing quietly beneath them.

I’m not on a spiritual journey the way it’s marketed. I’m on a soul reclamation. I’m pulling back every thread from the versions of me that were told to bow their heads, to bite their tongues, to carry shame that never belonged to them.

Last week a stranger with a beautiful soul called me "a walking cathedral of the spirit". And for the first time in my life, I didn’t shrink from that description. I didn’t flinch or deflect it with self-doubt. I felt it land, as true as bone. Because that is what I’ve become. I carry the sacred within me. I always have.

I don’t see God as a man on a throne. I see the Divine in the quiet between breaths. In the way a child remembers something she was told to forget. In the way a mother breaks a generational chain with shaking hands. I see God in the stars that echo stories buried beneath my skin.

God, for me, isn’t a name. It’s a frequency. A memory. The fire within me I carry. Sometimes I call it Source. But most of the time, I don’t name it at all, because naming it feels like trying to cage something that was never meant to be contained.

I walk with reverence, not religion. With devotion, not dogma.

I live in the liminal. In the space between logic and intuition. Between pain and transformation. Between the version of myself the world expected and the truth of who I was always becoming. I am drawn to ritual, not routine. To the alchemy of emotion, not the avoidance of it. To the sovereignty of the soul, not the subservience demanded by belief systems designed to shrink us.

I walk with archetypes. I notice patterns. I listen to the undercurrents while others skim the surface. These things don’t make me strange. They make me someone who remembers. Someone who lives with her eyes open to the language that Spirit speaks in whispers.

My truth is not printed in any book. My faith is not found in chapters or verses. It’s woven through my scars, my silence, my songs, and my fire.

I do not trust any system that asks me to obey before it asks me to understand. I do not believe in a God who requires abandonment of self in order to prove loyalty. That’s not love. That’s control.

I’ve already survived hell. It looked a lot like people-pleasing. Like shrinking myself at dinner tables. Like being told to smile while swallowing condemnation wrapped in holy words.

Hell was betraying myself for belonging. And I’m not going back. I was never a sheep. And I don’t need to be reined in.

I was born with a voice that wasn’t made to whisper. I was born to carry a flame, not just for myself, but for others who are still trying to remember their own.

I didn’t leave the flock to rebel. I left because I heard the flame. The one they tried to drown in doctrine. The one they tried to bury under shame. The one they thought would go out if they ignored it long enough.

But it didn’t. It grew louder. Hotter. Brighter.

And now, I walk with it.

To those who question my spirituality, I see your fear. But I also see your spark.

And maybe, just maybe, my defiance is the crack in your wall. Maybe the part of me you call lost is the part of you that wants to be found not by a church, but by your own soul.

If my words shake something in you, let them. If my fire feels too wild, good.

Growth doesn’t come from comfort. Don’t confuse discomfort with danger. Don’t confuse my departure with destruction. Don’t confuse my voice with rebellion when it might just be your own soul knocking.

I will not be tamed by nostalgia for a system that only ever offered conditional belonging. I belong to the earth. I belong to the sky. I belong to the sacred that rises from within, not the one handed down in shame.

And I’ll be honest, sharing this hasn’t come without a tremble in my voice. There is a quiet fear that still whispers, Will they think I’m speaking in tongues not meant to be heard? Will they call this blasphemy, rebellion, demon talk? 

That fear is old. It is not mine alone. It belongs to centuries of women who were burned for being light in the dark. It belongs to the child I once was, who learned to stay small to stay safe. But I’m not silencing myself for safety anymore. These words are not an act of defiance, they are an act of devotion.

A devotion to truth, to freedom, and to the sacred flame that was never meant to be hidden. If these words shake something in you, let them. That’s how spells are broken. That’s how souls remember. That’s how we begin again.

So if you're standing at the edge, wondering if you're allowed to question, if you're allowed to leave, if you're allowed to feel the pull toward something freer,

Know this.

I’ll be here.

Not ahead of you.

Not above you.

Just beside the path of light.

Holding the torch

Tending the flame

Until you’re ready to find your own.