Wendy grew up in a conservative right-winged home with an Evangelical Christian mother and Atheist father. The church she attended with her mother and brother was a Missionary Church.
Wendy's life included submission, obedience and following rules, with guilt and shame as an integral part of her mindset. After attending a 1-room church school for 7 years (A.C.E. – Accelerated Christian Education curriculum), she was able to attend a more “normal” Christian school for the rest of her high school.
Wendy went on several overseas short-term mission trips in high school. This further cemented her goal of being a career missionary. She met her 1st husband (who was a Missionary Kid from Papua New Guinea) at Prairie Bible College. After they were married, they pursued their missionary career in Brazil.
They had 3 kids and were part of the mission for 15 years. After many difficult events and challenges, Wendy’s first marriage ended. This was around the same time she started to question her conservative Christian beliefs.
She left her marriage, left the church, started a new career and rebounded into a 2nd marriage all around the age of 40. The 2nd marriage involved blending 2 families. That turned out to be very stressful with crisis after crisis. That marriage ended after 8 years, in 2018.
Back in 2017, Wendy started the Women Beyond Belief podcast and interviewed over 35 women. These women shared their harrowing stories of leaving religion. During that year, the #MeToo movement became mainstream. This created some difficult issues which Wendy found too challenging and stressful to deal with. Wendy tried to rebrand the podcast under the Just Us Women title but finally decided to end the podcast.
Wendy passed me the torch and I continue the tradition of creating space for women who have left religion to share their stories.
Today, Wendy is trying to find her way on her own as a single-income household with her youngest still at home. She is learning to find romance and fun again through online dating.
You can listen to many of the archive episodes of the Women Beyond Belief and Just Us Women podcasts. They are now under the umbrella title, Virtual Life Podcast.
https://virtuallifepodcast.com/
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