Beyond the White Picket Fence: Breaking Out of the Life Everyone Expects You to Live

By Krista Kathleen

Growing up, Krista Kathleen followed all the rules... She went to church every Sunday, got straight A’s in school, found a high paying job, and married her college sweetheart at the age of 26. From the outside looking in? Life looked picture perfect. But inside? She couldn’t shake this nagging feeling that something was missing...that she was meant for so much more. Then, at the age of 30, Krista tragically got fired AND divorced within the span of a week. Though on one level, these events were totally catastrophic, they were also the energetic wakeup call Krista needed from the Universe to leave her former life behind so she could start over again. This book holds the answers she found as she put the pieces of her life back together in a bold and daring way that TRULY fit Part memoir, part “how-to” guide, Beyond the White Picket Fence is a battle cry for the woman who wants to blaze her own trail in a world desperate to keep her on the well-trodden path. You’re going to walk away looking at your relationships, health, purpose, and connection to humanity in new ways and start asking yourself some really powerful questions maybe for the first time ever. At the end of the day, there are two kinds of women in this world: Those who follow the rules, and those who write their own. Beyond the White Picket Fence is for the latter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Krista Kathleen
• Release date: Mar 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578578941

Krista Kathleen

I train women to become online life coaches + business owners so you can leave your soul sucking day job, work from home, and create an income while making an impact from anywhere in the world!

Book preview

Good Girl Gone ‘Wrong’

Don’t be afraid of being different. Be afraid of being like everyone else.

- Unknown

In the end people will judge you anyway. Don’t live your life impressing others, live life impressing yourself.

- Unknown

Growing up in a conservative Lutheran community, I felt out of place almost from birth. The strict adherence to ancient customs and rules that I felt were meant to invoke fear rather than a true connection left me feeling empty and frustrated. I vividly recall a sense of abject boredom as I sat through Sunday sermon after sermon smelling old Bibles and shifting uncomfortably on the hard, wooden pews, always failing to really feel anything inside of me under the fluorescent man-made lights. I could never relate to the pastor’s monotonous boring sermons and my kinky adolescent mind would drift off to the hot boys sitting in front of me, leaving me wondering what it would feel like to be kissed by one of them. I would quickly push those kinds of sinful thoughts out of my head.

I couldn’t, of course, share these internal struggles with anyone and I was embarrassed that I seemed to be the only one in my community struggling to find my place in church. I was surrounded by people on a weekly basis having a very passionate relationship with God and Jesus that seemed to have their life all figured out. Why was I the only one going through this? How come no one else was admitting they felt these battles as well?

To be honest, this was the hardest chapter for me to write about in this book. After spending years in the Lutheran religion, it was deeply ingrained within me that you don’t question God or else you would get severly punished and the good girl inside of me hated getting in trouble.

But, I will honor my truth and hope this will land in the right hands of the readers who need it most at this time.

I wrote a blog for Elephant Journal about finding my unconventional spiritual path after religion, and I’d like to share some of it with you here.

I remember often looking around during the singing portions of a church service and seeing people in the congregation close their eyes and raise their hands high while swaying to the music with big grins on their faces. I could see in their actions that they truly believed in something greater than themselves. They looked so happy, like their lives were filled with glorious purpose.

I was jealous. I wanted to feel that passion inside of me too. I wanted to believe in something big, something that made me stand up during the middle of a church sermon, close my eyes, pump my fist into the air and scream, Yes, I believe!

As hard as I tried, that feeling never happened for me, so I began to justify my jealousy by thinking the people in my church were crazy and I was the smart one for being skeptical.

As I went through high school and college, I still clung on to some Lutheran values, because they were all I knew, but for the most part I fell away from the church system with huge loads of guilt. I still had this gut feeling that there was a different path I should be taking, and religion was not the answer.

I searched but couldn’t find anyone who felt like me. All I felt was judgment and strange looks from my Lutheran friends when I tried to express my unhappiness to them. So, I remained alone and deeply lost on my spiritual quest.

I decided to try a yoga class in 2008 during my junior year at the University of Missouri. I immediately fell in love with the practice. For the first time, I felt love and support from people for wanting to follow my own path.

I was so happy that I signed up to become a yoga instructor. I started to slowly wake up with passion in my life. That numb feeling I would get when sitting in church was dissolving. I was encouraged to explore myself on a deeper level and find contentment with not always having all the answers.

After a couple of years of practicing and teaching yoga, I was ready to expand my mind and see if there were other opportunities that might lead me closer to a spiritual experience and more meaningful answers about life. Even though I was feeling better and not quite as lost, I still didn’t like having nothing to believe in. Despite all the progress I had made, I was still scared to admit to people, even in the yoga world, that large amounts of unhappiness that crowded my mind, so I journeyed alone and in silence. The funny thing is, I ended up finding my true spiritual path in a way I would have never expected.

After attending college for four-and-a-half years, I graduated with a nursing degree and a soon-to-be-husband whom I met in nursing school. A great full-time job presented itself immediately after I graduated as well. Due to the distraction of a new life with a partner and a new job, I put my spiritual quest on the back burner. I thought that I had found true happiness at last and maybe that was all I needed.

However, five years into my nursing career I started to feel that something was terribly wrong. I was living a life that on the surface looked amazing but underneath I was silently suffering. I couldn’t really identify yet where the problem was, but I knew it had something to do with my marriage and my job.

Yoga was always my go-to when I was feeling sad and lost, so I created an at-home studio and started teaching yoga classes while holding on to my hospital job for stability. I started to feel a little more fulfilled having something else to focus on besides my crumbling I-got-married-too-young marriage and a job I really didn’t connect with. I wanted to get more serious with creating a self-sustaining yoga business so I could permanently leave the nursing field forever and maybe find true purpose and happiness.

I elicited help from a business coach that I heard about through a friend because I had no idea what I was doing as a first-time entrepreneur. Luckily, she was also a holistic life coach and could help build my business while gently guiding me to seek a more authentic life than the one I was living.

One of my life coach’s suggestions was to talk with a psychic that she used herself. She advised that this psychic might provide answers about who my target client might be as I started the business.

I was hesitant about seeing a psychic, initially because I was under the impression that they worked closely with the devil, or at least that’s what I was taught back in the day during religion class.

I also remember watching horror movies where people went to see psychics on their foreign travels and wound up forever cursed because the devil was now inhabiting their bodies.

Oh, how my imagination could have run wild and convinced me not to go. However, I greatly trusted my coach’s opinion, and decided to open my mind, step outside my comfort zone and book an online Skype appointment with the psychic.

The psychic’s name was Reese and she seemed like a normal and nice human being. We chatted briefly through Skype and I told her a few things about myself and the reason for my quest. Reese told me my spirit guides were saying that something really big was going to happen for my business in three months. According to Erin Pavlina, spirit guides are …incorporeal beings that are assigned to us before we are born that help nudge and guide us through life.

I decided to let go of fear and skepticism and embrace some possibilities. I silently joked to myself that in three months I might get a book offer or, even better, my own reality TV show!

Unfortunately, the reality of the situation was that I was fired from my nursing job and started filing divorce papers the same week with my soon-to-be-ex-husband…to be continued!

As you can see, in searching for a place to belong, I actually found part of my spirituality, but lost my job and my husband—nothing is free, and the quest for joy is often littered with temporary disappointments in order to fuel growth.

I’ve always had a problem with authority, and with people and organizations that label someone a sinner as a ‘bad person’ if they don’t follow their structured religion. That’s not how it needs to be. That doesn’t make anybody feel good. That’s leading out of fear, and bullying, and domination. I believe, instead, that love, and compassion are always the answer and will always trump shame at the end of the day.

I remember approaching pastor Brian at my church one time after a sermon and asked him:

Do pets get to go to heaven like us?

He laughed and quickly scolded me by saying, No Krista, pets aren’t allowed to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Like wtf?!

Why does Pastor Brian get to decide who does and doesn’t enter heaven??

These rules created by humans...It’s all bullshit if you ask me.

Lutherans and Christians talk a lot about love, God’s love, Jesus’ love, love thy neighbor, etc, but I just never felt that love deep inside of me. I was always fearful of God punishing me, and I’m so glad I was able to finally step away from that, because I don’t want to live my life being afraid. I would much rather prefer to feel like I have a spiritual team that wants to support me every step of the way and see me succeed on my true mission and path on this Earth.

A large part of growing up in a conservative Lutheran community for me was having to suppress my voice and natural desires. I was the quintessential ‘yes’ girl, always putting others’ wants and needs before my own. Upsetting my parents, friends, co-workers, supervisors, and my spouse gave me great anxiety, and I went to great lengths to avoid this, even at the expense of my own joy. As a straight-A student and Homecoming Queen, I strove to please my parents, and did everything I could to be ‘the good girl" (whatever that means). I never expressed my true feelings on church, as I was so scared of what people would say and disappointing my parents. I thought I was seriously fucked up for feeling this way, and that surely something was wrong with me.

I carried so many of these beliefs over with me into my young adult years as well. I was taught to believe that sex before marriage was an egregious sin, and when I didn’t save myself, I was surely going straight to the firey depths of hell. I delved into sex to a small degree before meeting my ex-husband, but always felt awash in guilt after the experience. I was truly a prisoner of my religion’s beliefs.

There are so many rules in religion, and I hate rules--they feel so stuffy and overwhelming. I remember I felt like the most judgmental I ever was in my life during the years that I went to church. I recall looking at women who chose to have an abortion and thinking that they were terrible people, murderers and sinners, which is ironic considering I ended up getting an abortion later on in life (more on this later, I promise!).

In the Christian religion, and especially the Lutheran denomination, you’re supposed to be straight, pro-life, believe that Christ is the only way to Heaven and most definitely you’re supposed to save sex for marriage. You are supposed to do so. many. things so you can hopefully one day enter the exclusive VIP nightclub in the sky also known as the pearly gates of Heaven. And as I got older, I realized there were a lot of people not actually following these rules even though they claimed to be Christians. and I was naturally concerned for them. I was taught that my God is the only one true God and that everyone else is wrong if they believe in something different. You must accept Christ as your savior and repent of your sins. I remember when I was traveling around the world and learning about other people’s cultures and religions wondering - how is it that Lutherans are the only ones who got it right and everyone else were the unfortunate ones...do you hear how ridiculous this sounds?

I attended a Lutheran High School in St. Louis and as I started to become more vocal about my true thoughts online surrounding religion/God/Jesus I knew that I would get some interesting reactions. Religion is a taboo topic that makes people very heated when they discuss it which is why most people avoid the subject altogether. But I truly feel it’s a part of my purpose to start and invite people into difficult conversations from a place of love and viewing mindset shifts from a different lens. One of my Lutheran friends reached out one day after reading a post on Facebook about my true thoughts with religion and My friend responded with criticism in her voice, Krista, that wasn’t the point of everything we learned in high school and in religion class. You don’t have to fear God. I think you missed the whole point of the Lutheran religion.

Though I respect her right to her opinion and speaking up, I didn’t like that comment because I didn’t feel heard or acknowledged. I don’t remember anyone telling me that it was ok to question or doubt what we were taught in church. Or that I get to decide what my own relationship with God looks like. Actually, the first person that challenged me to start thinking on my own away from society’s norms was my boyfriend, Finn (the guy that I ended up falling in love with when I was in a polyamorous marriage, but more on that to come later). It’s important that someone acknowledges us for our personal life experiences because no one else is inside our head at the end of the day. I just needed someone to say Krista, it’s ok that you didn’t get the experience you wanted through the Lutheran religion...What were you looking for within the Lutheran religion that you didn’t receive? Is there something else out there that can give you the religious experience you were craving? Boy those questions would have opened up a lot for me and also have given me my power back. I needed to acknowledge that my feelings are valid as are my experiences. Though they may be different from others’, they are still my truth. Someone may love going to church every Sunday; it’s their sanctuary and their saving grace, and that’s wonderful! I truly do want everyone to find their own connection with the Universe but for me a conservative religion just isn’t’ the answer and after years of struggling to admit that out loud I’m finally ready to accept it. Even just talking about Jesus doesn’t feel right inside my body, Talking about God in the form of a man doesn’t connect with me either. Why do Jesus and God have to be tall white Caucasian men with long hair? People living in Judea and Egypt during the time of Christ were short and had brown eyes, dark hair and olive skin.

To me, it’s a form of white privilege at its finest (not to mention historically inaccurate). I don’t understand how people can put the Universe into a specific gender role, and then portray it as Caucasian, when geographically that’s not possible. It feels like superiority to me, and I just can’t support that.

I trusted wholeheartedly in my Lutheran high school, my church and my religious friends when I was young. That was my community, my mentors and role models at a time of my life when I felt the most insecure and needed guidance and support. And I think still till this day I feel hurt and disappointed. There’s a grieving of loss of expectations that needs to happen on my end, and that’s ok. It’s ok to find something that doesn’t work for us but if we continuously stay focused on the past, we can’t see what new doors are opening up for us in the future.

One day I was perusing Instagram and came across my friend Zack Alexander’s feed and saw a post about religious trauma. Wow I thought! I’m not the only one who has felt traumatized from my past religious experiences, there’s an official name to this type of psychological abuse that apparently others have gone through as well. It’s always so nice to know you’re not alone in your struggles so you don’t feel so broken at the end of the day.

I felt a lot of validation after reading Zack’s post and graphic so I wanted to share it here with you all as well.

"Religious Trauma occurs when one experienced traumatic events within their life through the misuse of Religious structures &/or concepts by others.

Oftentimes, when one experiences Religious Trauma, their normal childhood development can be severely arrested. As children, we need to feel a secure attachment with our caretakers in which we feel safe to explore the world around us and develop an internal sense-of-self. However, if we are told that inner exploration is ‘wrong’ and that we must obey and adopt a specific set of beliefs without question, it can stunt one’s ability to make decisions for themselves and create confusion with personal identity.

If ‘Fear’ was the primary motivating factor within a religious community, then those who grew up within it can experience severe issues with anxiety, depression, panic attacks, & disassociation. When our safety is constantly being threatened through the ‘intimidation’ of a higher force punishing us, our nervous systems go into chronic hyper-vigilance, always over-analyzing for potential threats and how we need to control ourselves and those around us.

Also, one of the hallmarks around Religious Trauma is when one uses Religious concepts to coerce and force others into certain behaviors that are self-serving. This could even be a parent who uses the concept of ‘God’ to threaten their children into serving the parent’s needs beyond a level of what’s reasonable. The parent could tell their children if they don’t do all their chores and praise their mother even after she physically assaults them, that ‘God’ will be upset with them. This is a form of psychological abuse and is misappropriating the concept of a ‘higher power’ to control and manipulate the behaviors of others.

Religious Trauma largely goes unmentioned within society, but it’s a much larger problem than many are aware of and needs to be addressed. Many people I worked with have endured immense abuse and trauma under the guise of Religious institutions and authority figures. We need to begin to validate these people’s truths and no longer look away from the harm done to them and help them heal." - Zac Alexander, Holistic Life Coach

I now have a completely different belief system that works so much better and finally gives me the connection that I craved for so many years. I believe in the Universe and that God is like an energy—it’s a presence and it’s in everything. It’s inside all of us because we were created by this omnipresence-- it’s in the flowers, in the trees, in the grass, in the air we breathe, and it is all around us. The Universe wants us to succeed or Have our back as Gabby Bernstein describes it. I feel fully supported, loved and taken care of everyday by my spiritual team. I trust that the Universe will bring every opportunity I need at exactly the right time. I consult with the Universe everyday asking for help and support around which potential client’s to reach out to, what kind of coaching programs to create, where to travel next in the world and just about every life and business decision that I need more guidance with when I’m feeling overwhelmed. I quietly wait for the answers to appear within. If I get an expansive feeling inside then I know it’s a green light to move forward. I get a constricted feeling that makes me want to shrink then I know that it’s a red light and I need to wait a bit before deciding or say no altogether. It’s a beautiful supportive relationship I have with my Source and I no longer fear of fucking up and going to hell which was just absolutely exhausting. I once heard someone describe spirituality as religion without rules’’ which which makes sense as to why it feels so freeing for me.

I’m grateful for the yoga and life coaching community. Listening to my intuition and training to become a yoga instructor is what changed everything around my relationship with religion and finally gave me the permission to explore a different path that would free my soul and deepen my connection with my higher power. For you, religion might be the answer to finding your life’s purpose and a source of comfort amid your deepest struggles and that’s a beautiful thing. Having something to believe in feels so damn good and can make one feel alive and connected to your true essence. But for me, religion wasn’t my path and I’m ready to let people know there’s another way to connect with your Source that can feel more loving. I want to challenge you that it’s ok to question when something doesn’t feel right and that you’re allowed to explore alternative paths without the fear of being punished and sent to hell.

Journal Prompts:

What (if anything)