When Beliefs Shift, What Do We Hold On To?

When the Story Changes

We don’t all stay on the road we were set on. Some of us find ourselves stepping off familiar paths into landscapes that feel unfamiliar to the people we love. When that happens, it isn’t just an intellectual shift; it’s a reckoning with belonging. A question nags at the edges of family tables and church pews: What happens to love when beliefs change?

This question isn’t hypothetical. I’ve watched it play out in the life of someone I love, and I saw it again while sitting with Hana O’Neill. Hana was raised in a Pentecostal church that framed her world. When her family left, their community turned their backs. Leaving meant losing more than doctrine. It meant being exiled from an identity and all the rituals and relationships that had held them. In the void, she searched. Agnosticism. New Age spirituality. A day in Louisiana when something unexplainable happened. Each stage was not a replacement so much as a bridge to the next question, the next possibility. It is not tidy. It is human.

The Weight of Leaving

Leaving a spiritual home — whether because you are no longer welcome or because you’ve outgrown it — isn’t like stepping out of a club. It can feel like exile. In Hana’s story, the decision to leave was not an act of rebellion but of integrity. She realised that the place she loved had become harmful. In her words, it felt “more like a cult.” She and her family were told to stop asking questions. When they left anyway, they were “kicked out and shunned.”

The language we use around leaving matters. We often ask, Why would anyone abandon their faith? as if it were a simple choice between right and wrong. A better question might be: What if faith abandons you? Hana’s story reminded me that exclusion often happens first — a quiet withdrawal of welcome, a refusal to accommodate curiosity, a spiritual community more interested in conformity than compassion. In those moments, leaving can be an act of survival.

The Wisdom of Names

Words carry worlds. If you grew up hearing that witches were evil, the word itself feels like a slur. To hear Hana reclaim it as wise — “Witch means wise; it’s about taking your power back and doing no harm” — disrupts the narrative. Suddenly the witch is not the villain in the story but the person who studies herbs, honours the seasons and refuses to give away her agency. It is a reminder that naming has always been a way to control or to liberate. When institutions take words and fill them with fear, reclaiming them becomes an act of dignity.

Reclaiming names also means reimagining practices. Hana calls spell‑crafting “spicy prayer.” She speaks with reverence about the golden rule — do no harm — recognising it across many traditions. This isn’t a rejection of prayer or morality; it is a reorientation toward a form that resonates with her lived experience. For those of us who stayed within more conventional forms, there is an invitation here: can we recognise echoes of our own rituals in the practices of someone we’ve been taught to fear? If a spell is just a prayer with herbs and intention, perhaps the gulf between us is smaller than we thought.

Choosing Curiosity Over Fear

What keeps people together when beliefs diverge is not agreement. It’s curiosity. My own daughter began exploring a different spiritual path as a teenager. I would like to say I navigated it perfectly. I didn’t. But I learned that fear — fear of being wrong, fear of losing connection, fear of what others would say — only widens the gap. Curiosity, on the other hand, builds a bridge. It allows us to stay in relationship, to say “tell me more” instead of “come back.”

Curiosity isn’t passive. It asks us to sit in conversations that unsettle us. It may require us to admit that our tradition, however precious, may have harmed someone else. It asks whether the God we love is big enough to handle our questions. It asks whether community can be expanded rather than policed. As Hana’s story unfolds, what emerges is not an invitation to convert but to listen. There is so much about her journey that many of us will never experience. There is also an undercurrent that many of us recognise: the desire to belong and the courage it takes to walk away when belonging demands silence.

Brew the Change: Making Space at the Table

At the end of our conversation, I offered a simple challenge. Brew a pot of coffee or a mug of hot chocolate and invite someone whose beliefs differ from yours to share it with you. Not to convince them. Not to debate. Just to listen. In a world that values quick judgments and public opinion, sitting down with someone and saying “help me understand” is an act of quiet rebellion. It is also an act of faith — faith in the idea that we can love each other across difference and that truth is larger than any one of us.

This challenge is not a solution to spiritual division. It will not undo centuries of prejudice or heal every wound. But it is a start. It’s a practice in humility and hospitality. If you try it, you may find that listening changes you more than it changes the other person. You may find that you are less certain about what you thought and more hopeful about what connection can hold.

Leaving the Question Open

There is a temptation to tie up stories like Hana’s with a neat bow: she left a church, became a witch, found peace, and now everyone understands each other. That isn’t true. There are still people who won’t speak to her. There are family members who keep their distance. There are questions I still wrestle with about faith, community and difference. The bigger truth is that we don’t have to resolve everything to stay in relationship.

Perhaps the most honest way to honour these stories is to leave space for more questions: How do we love people who leave our tribe? What do we do when our language fails to describe someone else’s experience? When is leaving an act of faith rather than betrayal? I don’t have simple answers. I do know that the willingness to keep asking, to keep sitting down with people, and to keep our hearts open is the only path I trust.

Watch the episode with Hana O’Neill – The Suburban Witch