So I stopped going to church with my dad shortly before I turned eighteen because I didn’t have to stay with him on weekends. I actually really enjoyed my situation within the church because I didn’t have to have a testimony, I didn’t have to commit to anything, there were no consequences for me not following certain teachings or practices. And so I didn’t pay that much attention to that side of things, but I did very much enjoy going to dances. So, I kind of took advantage, where I could, so I had a really strong background in what I was interested in and kind of let everything I didn’t care about go by the wayside. And when I left going to dad’s every weekend behind and was an adult, we don’t tend to move away for college in Australia, colleges tend to be right there, so I still lived at home and helped my mom, and I started attending a non-denominational, I guess you’d call it a Christian Fellowship. I actually became the lead singer in their band, really enjoyed that, until I got kicked out for calling out the pastor for lining his pockets with the offering money and playing favorites and disfellowshipping.
Even though it was a very, very casual environment there were some people who he decided weren’t welcome, and some people who he decided were, and I decided to call him out on that. And he didn’t take very kindly to it and told me I couldn’t come back.
And so I floated for a little while, kind of just reviewing what spirituality meant to me, because it had always been such a massive part of my life. And it was almost more of a bigger choice—in my life, even my parents, were kind of whinging, “What is she gonna choose,”—than pretty much almost anything else. I could have had twenty different careers and they wouldn’t have cared, but this was the big thing. So committing to something was a big deal, and I didn’t want to do that. And so I just kind of floated around, and I was like, “Well maybe I don’t want to be part of anything,” but it felt like I was really missing something. And I’m not really sure what that was, just routine, or whether it was really missing something. And my decision to join the church itself actually was subconscious.