Breadcrumbs Episode 9: Stepping Into the Light

This is the companion post to Episode 9 of Breadcrumbs, my behind-the-scenes series for paid subscribers. The full episode is available to paid subscribers after the paywall.

I Told the Internet Today

I recorded this episode the same day I published a post on Instagram telling the world, publicly, for the first time, that I had an abortion.

In 2017, after a year of fertility treatments, I had a quadruplet pregnancy. My husband and I chose to reduce the pregnancy to twins — a form of abortion I had never heard of before it was offered to me in a doctor's office.

This was the experience that led to complete ego death for me. I didn't tell anyone for five years. 

What Five Years of Silence Costs

I know why people keep secrets. It's terrifying to be honest about things that might bring judgment on you. But here's what I learned: people will judge you, but someone else's judgment can never hurt you as much as your own judgment of yourself.

Once I started working through my own judgment, the fear of everyone else's stopped running my life and I realized, oh yeah, I remember why I don’t want to keep secrets.

What I Wrote Before I Was Ready

I've always been a journaler, but there are long stretches where I stopped — and I knew even then that it meant I was avoiding something. Journaling has always been my prayer practice. When I couldn't write, I was hiding from God.

In this episode I read something that I wrote in July of 2019 Three years before I told anyone, I already knew that keeping secrets to try and avoid being misunderstood wasn’t going to be a good long-term strategy for wholeness. In chapter 7 I write about the knowing-doing gap — the space between understanding what you need to do and actually doing it. There's no shame in that space. But it does often come with a cost.

The List

When I decided to write this book, I told myself I wasn't going to write about the abortion or about Rebecca. Then I sat down to write and those were the first stories that came out. They had been living in my body for five years without ever being spoken.

So I got into therapy — every other week for almost four years — and I started telling people.

I have a page in one of my journals that says, at the top, People I've Told. As I had each conversation I'd cross the name off and write the date. Then a second list: people to tell. Family, community, work, closest friends. I share more about that list and one of my best friends who was coming out as LGBTQ+ at the same time, and how we would compare notes.

The Fear Underneath

In one journal entry I named the fear directly: that I could say or do something irredeemable. That fear comes all the way back to how I saw God. When I understood God primarily through a lens of judgment, of course I lived in fear of judgment. Making the turn toward a God of compassion — the God of womb love — is what dissolved it.

My Words Have Power

My book comes out in four days. I don't know what happens next. But I know I can walk forward in complete assurance, because I am being radically honest and I am not afraid to be seen. Whatever happens, it's real. And for so many years of my life, I was not living in a real state.

Where in your life are you afraid to be honest — with yourself, with the people closest to you? You don't have to do it as publicly as I am. But it is so worth it to live in alignment, inside and out.

The full Episode 9 of Breadcrumbs is available to paid subscribers below the paywall. 

Faithfully Dissident Daughters publishes September 8, 2026 with Westminster John Knox Press. Pre-order here and get some fabulous pre-order bonuses.