Mormon to Muse

Kristin Martineau
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You didn't lose your faith. You found out something true — and now you're figuring out who you are on the other side. Mormon to Muse is a podcast for women navigating life after the Mormon church — the faith transition grief nobody prepares you for, the identity loss that comes with leaving a high-control religious system, and the slow, honest work of reclaiming yourself. Each week I explore what it means to find yourself again after the Mormon church — through creative practice, life coaching tools, and the kind of honest conversation you can't have at Sunday dinner If you've spent years being everything for everyone else and you're only now starting to wonder who you actually are — you're in exactly the right place. Start with: "You Were Never Just a Calling."

  1. 3D AGO

    You Can Trust Your Feelings Again: Emotional Literacy, Embodiment, and Self-Trust After Faith Transition

    Download the 7 Day Reclamation Sketchbook There is a feeling you know very well. You felt it in sacrament meeting, reading scripture, bearing your testimony. It was warm. It was certain. It felt like coming home to something true. And you were told — explicitly, repeatedly, from the time you were small — that feeling was proof. That it was the Holy Ghost confirming the church was true. Then you found out the church wasn't true. And the crisis wasn't just about your beliefs. It was about your feelings. Because if that feeling — the one you had trusted your entire life — if that feeling was wrong, how do you trust anything you feel ever again? That is the question this episode is built to answer. And the answer is not what you expect. That feeling wasn't wrong. It was misread. Those are two very different things — and the difference between them is going to change how you understand every feeling you've had and every feeling you're going to have. This episode is the full primer: what feelings actually are, what that confirming feeling was really telling you, what the church specifically did to your emotional life, what it means to be embodied and why Mormon women were conditioned to leave their bodies, and how to actually process a feeling all the way through. Not manage it. Not perform it. Actually feel it. This is the thing nobody taught you. It starts here. In this episode: What that warm confirming feeling was actually telling you — and why it was real even if the claims it was recruited to confirm were not Why the church's confirmation framework depended on feelings as proof — and what that required of your emotional sophistication What feelings actually are: the biology, the body, and why the 90-second emotional wave matters The difference between a feeling, a thought, and a story — and what it costs you to collapse them Feelings as a compass, not a camera: what your feelings can and cannot tell you, and the one question that helps you read them accurately The specific mechanisms Mormonism used to distort your relationship with your feelings — prescribed emotions, spiritual bypassing, performed certainty, and the internal gatekeeper that keeps running long after you leave The particular emotional burden placed on Mormon women — and how being responsible for everyone else's emotional climate meant abandoning your own What embodiment actually means, why Mormon women were specifically conditioned to leave their bodies, and what it costs you when you try to process feelings without one The difference between experiencing a feeling and actually moving through it — and the tell that reveals whether you've been feeling or just managing A five-step process for processing a feeling from the body up Why emotional literacy is the foundation of self-trust, and why creative practice is one of the most direct paths there. References: Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight — the 90-second emotional wave Jill Bolte Taylor TED Talk: "My Stroke of Insight" The CTFAR self-coaching model (Brooke Castillo

    30 min

  2. MAY 10

    The Sinfulness of Selfhood: Why Differentiation Feels Dangerous After Mormonism

    Episode 51: The Sinfulness of Selfhood: Why Differentiation Feels Dangerous After Mormonism There is a word the church uses for a woman who trusts her own mind over the institution. The word is proud. There is a word for a woman who grows in a direction the people around her didn't agree to. The word is deceived. There is a word for a woman who becomes too much of a self — who wants too specifically, thinks too independently, needs too little from the structure. The word is lost. This episode is about what they were actually describing. And why the guilt you feel about becoming yourself has a source — and that source is not the truth about who you are. In this episode: Why differentiation is normal, healthy human development — and why Mormonism theologized against it The Correlation Program: how the church standardized not just doctrine but selfhood, and what it cost women specifically What differentiation actually is — and why it is not rebellion, selfishness, or rejection of the people you love The internal work that has to happen before the relational work can: finding your own voice underneath everything you were told to be Why the people who love you sometimes can't tolerate your growth — and the two distinct things that are happening when they pull away The pressure/yield/disinvest model from Jennifer Finlayson-Fife and how it maps onto your closest relationships Why Karl and I — both out of the church, both committed to each other — still had to learn to hold space for each other's growth The over-correction trap: how early differentiation can become its own kind of fusion The loneliness that comes with genuine individuation — and why it means something is forming, not breaking Why becoming yourself is the most loving thing you can do for the people around you Resources mentioned: Murray Bowen — differentiation of self theory Jennifer Finlayson-Fife — pressure/yield/disinvest model Combating Cult Mind Control — Steven Hassan   Are you just beginning to ask who you actually are underneath everything you were told to be? The Reclamation Sketchbook is a free 7-day guided art journal designed to help you start hearing yourself again — no art experience needed, no right way to do it. Just you, a page, and the first small steps back to yourself. → Get the free Reclamation Sketchbook

    27 min

  3. MAY 3

    Why You Can't Say No: How the Mormon Church Hijacks Consent

    It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I really understood what consent meant. I knew the word. I could have given you a definition. But the actual lived understanding of it — what it means to check in with yourself before you agree to something, to treat your own yes and no as information worth collecting — that didn't come until much later. This episode is about that. About every place the church engineered my body's compliance and called it a choice. About the performed yes that followed me out of the institution long after I stopped believing. Here's what I walk through in this episode: Why I didn't understand consent until my thirties — and why that had nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with a system that needed me not to understand it The difference between the absence of consent and the performance of it — and why the performance is the more dangerous thing Every place the church required my body to perform the yes: baptism at eight, confirmation, callings, sustaining church officers, temple covenants, confession, and the sexual consent education that was never given Why "it's not the church's job to teach sex ed" falls apart when the church had extensive opinions about my hemline, my desire, and my worthiness How the absence of sexual consent education left women without the language to name what was happening to their bodies — and how that silence became shame, and how that shame walked them into a bishop's office to confess what was done to them The Dallin Oaks quote that states the policy out loud: it is wrong to criticize leaders of the church even if the criticism is true — and what that does to a woman's ability to trust her own accurate perception of reality How a lifetime of physical compliance trains the nervous system to override interior experience The practical work of reclaiming consent: the pause, the body check, the small daily practice of letting my yes mean yes and my no mean no What I want you to walk away with: You did not agree to as much as you were told you agreed to. The covenants that have been used to hold you accountable were not made under the conditions that make real covenants possible. The shame you have been carrying about your body may be built entirely on a foundation that was never real. Physical action is not consent. Say it again if you need to.

    33 min

  4. APR 26

    You Know More Than You Think: Rebuilding Self-Trust and Inner Authority After the Mormon Church

    You've said it a hundred times. About what you want, who you are now, what comes next. I don't know. And it feels true — honest, even. But what if "I don't know" isn't always a fact? What if sometimes it's a thought your brain is using to keep you safe, small, and exactly where you are? In this episode Kristin breaks down why "I don't know" has such a hold on women who've left the Mormon church — and how to tell the difference between the kind that's actually freedom and the kind that's keeping you stuck. Plus the one question that cuts through the fog every time. In this episode: Why Mormonism trained you to skip "I don't know" entirely — and what that costs you after you leave The self-coaching model and why "I don't know" is a thought, not a fact Why your lower brain loves this thought and what it's actually protecting you from The difference between "I don't know what God is" and "I don't know what I want" — and why that distinction matters more than you think The Byron Katie framework for figuring out whose business your uncertainty actually belongs to The one question that replaces "I don't know" and actually moves you forward Resources mentioned: Episode 5— How to Know the Truth: Rebuilding Your Sense of Reality After the Mormon Church After Mormonism Book a free Reclamation Session with Kristin — 45 minutes, real coaching, one clear next step → Schedule here   This podcast is not therapy and Kristin is not a therapist. If you are in a hard season and need clinical support, please reach out to a mental health professional. You deserve that care. Keep finding your way back.

    22 min

  5. APR 19

    The Loop — How High-Control Religion Uses Shame to Keep You Coming Back

    Mormonism didn't just teach you to feel shame. It built a system where being human was the problem — and the church was the only solution. In this episode, Kristin breaks down exactly how that system works: how ordinary human experiences like doubt, desire, anger, and ambition get reframed as spiritual failure, how the shame it creates is designed to be chronic and self-replenishing, and why the loop follows you even after you leave. This is not abstract. This is the specific architecture of how you were managed — and why understanding it matters for how you show up in your life right now. In this episode: The difference between guilt and shame — and why it changes everything How high-control religion pathologizes normal human experience to create dependency Why suppressing sexuality (and desire, and anger) makes the problem worse, not better How the shame loop gets internalized so you no longer need the church to run it Why creativity reaches shame where talking alone sometimes can't Where to start when shame is something you're actively working through Book a free 45-minute mini session with Kristin → HERE Real coaching on what's hardest for you right now, plus a short therapeutic art practice — so you can feel this work for yourself. Book first and get a therapeutic art kit (a $55 value) shipped free.

    20 min

  6. APR 12

    Beyond the Rulebook: How to Build a Values-Driven Life After the Mormon Church

    What do you do with your conscience when the institution that claimed to own it is gone? This episode is about one of the most disorienting parts of leaving — not the grief, not the social fallout, but the quiet, unsettling question underneath all of it: who decides what's right now? Many women leave and find themselves in one of two places: doing all the things they were told not to do (without asking whether they actually want to), or frozen — too afraid to make any move in case it's wrong. Both patterns have the same root. Neither one is actually freedom. In this episode, Kristin unpacks the difference between rules and values — because a lot of what Mormonism called morality had nothing to do with morality. And she offers five places to look when you're trying to find out what you actually value, not what you were handed. In this episode: Why leaving the church doesn't automatically put you in the driver's seat of your own moral life The difference between compliance and character — and why the church confused them How to use resentment, admiration, anger, and joy as values signals What values-construction actually looks like in real decisions (money, ritual, marriage, parenting) Why your goodness was always yours — the church just convinced you it wasn't Resources + next steps: Ready to do this work in community? The MUSE Method is a six-week small group experience for women who are done unraveling and ready to build. We start April 20th. Keep finding your way back. APPLY HERE

    20 min

  7. APR 5

    After Mormonism: How to Rebuild Your Identity When You Don't Know Who You Are Anymore

    There's a particular kind of silence that happens after everything collapses and before anything new has taken shape. You're not who you were. You're not yet who you're becoming. And nobody around you quite understands what that space actually feels like to live in. This episode is for you if you're in that gap. Kristin talks about what it really means to be in the in-between — why it's disorienting, why it's not a crisis even when it feels like one, and why most of the advice you're getting right now isn't landing. (Hint: it's not you. It's that the advice assumes a baseline of self-trust that was systematically trained out of you.) In this episode: Why faith deconstruction can feel like getting blindsided in the middle of the ocean — and what that actually means for your timeline The cruel irony at the center of this season: the thing you need most is the thing that was taken from you Why more information, more podcasts, more journaling isn't the thing that builds self-trust — and what actually does What Kristin's own "hunkered down" year really looked like (it wasn't a breakdown — it was a becoming) Why this process isn't linear, and why that's okay An introduction to the MUSE Method — the framework Kristin built for exactly this journey The MUSE Method Beta is open. Six weeks. Small group. Structured path through the gap. Begins April 20th. Investment: $497 (beta pricing — significantly reduced from future rates). Every participant receives Kristin's therapeutic art kit — black paper sketchbook, sparkly watercolors, white pen, and her 52-card creative prompt deck — mailed to your door. This cohort is small by design. Applications are first come, first served. → Apply HERE

    22 min

  8. MAR 29

    Fron Obedience to Inner Authority: How to Start Living Self Directed After Mormonism

    Leaving a high-control system doesn’t automatically make you self-directed. Many women walk away from Mormonism expecting freedom—but instead find themselves stuck in indecision, self-doubt, and confusion. Why? Because obedience isn’t just a belief. It’s a skill that was trained. And self-leadership is a skill most of us were never taught. In this episode, we break down: How obedience conditions you to defer, suppress, and seek certainty The hidden cost of external authority (decision paralysis, approval addiction, emotional disconnection) What inner authority actually is—and what it’s not The core skills required to rebuild self-trust Why creative expression is one of the most powerful tools for reclaiming your inner voice This isn’t about rebellion. It’s about learning how to lead yourself. If you’re ready to reconnect with your intuition and start living self-directed, download the free Reclamation Sketchbook

    21 min
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About

You didn't lose your faith. You found out something true — and now you're figuring out who you are on the other side. Mormon to Muse is a podcast for women navigating life after the Mormon church — the faith transition grief nobody prepares you for, the identity loss that comes with leaving a high-control religious system, and the slow, honest work of reclaiming yourself. Each week I explore what it means to find yourself again after the Mormon church — through creative practice, life coaching tools, and the kind of honest conversation you can't have at Sunday dinner If you've spent years being everything for everyone else and you're only now starting to wonder who you actually are — you're in exactly the right place. Start with: "You Were Never Just a Calling."

Information

  • Creator
    Kristin Martineau
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    52
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Mormon to Muse