Unfiltered Truth: Grief, Growth, and Rebuilding Identity

Listen to an expanded conversation between Bart and Sunny around this newsletter:

When Your World Turns Upside Down

What happens when the story you built your life on no longer holds?

What do you do when the story you built your entire identity on suddenly unravels?

What happens when truth shows up in a way that doesn’t match the script you were handed?

We have many people approach us on this subject and want to know more, so today we are pulling back the curtains to discuss how we navigated this part of our lives.

The Death of an Identity

Five years ago we left the religion that had shaped every fiber of our lives. For both of us it felt like a death. A total loss. We went through the entire grief cycle - deep grief, rage, betrayal… then repeat again and again! It was also like watching the ground shift under our feet. The shock of realizing that the documents, stories, and teachings we’d built our lives on no longer matched our reality.

Sunny’s identity wasn’t just tied to belief, it was the belief. It was the air she breathed, the framework for every choice she made. So when cracks started to show, it wasn’t just about leaving a church. It was about questioning who she was at the deepest level.

We did decide early on that bashing the religion we just left was not for us. We did not want to waste a moment in anger or lashing out. We love the people. We love our community. And we honor anyone and everyone if they are living what is true for them. The cool part about our community is, if we needed help today they would show up for us. We want to do the same for them.

Baby Steps Through the Void

When something dies in you — a belief, an identity, a worldview — you don’t just snap your fingers and “move on.” There’s a void that’s left. The energy that used to light you up is no longer there to sustain you, and the temptation is to fill that void with a new energy as fast as possible.

In our case, our personalities tend to balance each other out.

When a person feels caged or trapped and all of the sudden experiences what freedom feels like, it can blow them up in harmful ways if they aren’t careful. Bart often felt a little caged or trapped in our religion. His personality is very much - “I am now free and I want to experience everything I couldn’t before as quickly as possible!” Sunny, on the other hand, never really felt caged or trapped. For her, venturing out of who she was and being willing to experience new things was the challenge. She actually had to come to the realization that it was desirable to experience more out of life than she had previously experienced.

Through our conversations together we decided that baby steps matter. We realized that rushing to replace what’s lost often creates more damage than the loss itself, and we wanted to avoid that.

For Bart, that meant saying, “Can I just bring coffee into the house?” This is something so small for most people, but it was loaded with decades of meaning for both of us. For Sunny, it meant setting boundaries with other family members - choosing not to have endless discussions or be pulled back into debates.

Those baby steps kept our nervous systems from blowing up too much. They gave us time to grieve, to sit in the void, to not know and be okay with it. To really reconnect with ourselves and honor our own, personal journeys.

Nervous Systems Don’t Lie

Leaving a belief system isn’t just an intellectual act, it hits your nervous system like a freight train. It spikes stress because familiarity shatters. The body still holds the shock long after the mind makes a decision.

One day Bart asked Sunny to pick up some coffee for him at our local, community grocery store. Sunny hid the bag of coffee under groceries in her shopping cart, hoping no one would see her checkout. Her nervous system was in panic mode. For Bart, buying alcohol meant preparing cover stories in case someone saw - “I am buying this for someone else…” It sounds silly, but our sense of safety was literally being rewired and it is a process that does not happen overnight.

We can laugh about them now, but at the time it was stressful. Your body always keeps the score, and ignoring that reality is a recipe for anxiety, depression, and burnout.

The Courage to Tell the Truth

It’s an odd thing to realize, but as humans we are pretty afraid of telling the truth. And by truth, we mean “our truth.” When we tell our own truth, we are sharing exclusionary truths because we are describing our own, personal experiences… and the truth is, each of us sees the world in our own way. This causes us to hide from “our truth” because it is deeply vulnerable. It is being “seen” at the highest level.

We get afraid telling our truth to our partners and spouses because we’re afraid of the response we are going to get. Will we still be accepted and loved? One of the hardest parts of leaving our religion was the capacity it opened up for us to really get truthful with each other. As stated earlier, we’ve been married for three decades, and yet there were things we were afraid to say to each other out loud. We had many fears, desires, triggers, and patterns. We thought we were protecting each other, but in reality, we were projecting our fears.

The freedom came in saying, “Here’s what I really want. Here’s how I really feel. Even if it scares you. Even if it scares me.”

The funny thing is, those who know us best usually already know the truth. We just assume they don’t. Sometimes the truths we spoke to each other sparked hellacious conversations. Sometimes it sparked deep intimacy. But always, it was real. And we’d rather have real than pretend.

Writing a New Story

Leaving the old story forced us to ask: What’s our truth now?

We didn’t want to fill the void with another system that would own us. We wanted to architect our own life by design. That’s where our North Star Codex was born: eleven steps to total transformation, grounded in our North Star. Not on borrowed beliefs. Not on inherited scripts. Fully ours.

And here’s the thing: this isn’t just about religion. Everyone faces moments when the old story collapses. It could be in business, in marriage, in health, or in self-worth.

The question is always the same: Will you numb the void? Or will you pause long enough to rewire, rebuild, and design something true?

Final Thoughts

We don’t share this because we think everyone should walk away from their beliefs. We share it because truth matters. Your nervous system matters. Your story matters. And we have found one truth to remain consistent over and over again: your body (and your soul) knows whether you are telling the truth to yourself or not.

If you’re in the middle of a deconstruction — whether of faith, identity, or even your business — know this: you’re not alone. Take baby steps. Protect your nervous system. Tell the truth. And remember, you have the right to write your own story.

Life Updates:

• Well - as already stated, we just got back from a 15-day trip to Europe. We hit Sweden, Poland, and Portugal. It was a lot of travel, but really so fun. We got to experience life outside of the country and really reconnect with each other.

• Jet lag has been hitting us pretty hard since we got home. On the way to Europe we had a little FlyKitt that we were consistent with and it wasn’t too bad when we got there. On the way home we kind of had the mentality that we could rest at home so it wasn’t a big deal if we did or didn’t have jet lag… but hindsight is we should have followed the kit! It has been crazy hard to recalibrate ourselves!

• Last night we played some family pickleball - Mercedes (oldest daughter), Cobe, Xander, and both of us. It was an absolute blast and the weather was perfect for it.

• Xander is all set to start school again on Monday - boo! However, he decided he wants to give online school a go! He will attend jazz band (zero hour) and Wind Ensemble (first hour) and the rest will be online. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but we are game to give it a go!

• Mercedes brought Lyla (granddaughter) over today. It’s crazy how much she has grown and developed in just two weeks: she is pulling herself into standing position, clapping her hands, waving at us, shaking her head, and drinking out of a straw. She is such a little bundle of energy and so adorable!

• This Sunday we are heading to Boise for an Inner Circle meeting for a few days. Can’t wait to see our friends and get some biz time in. We will be staying in an AirBnb with our dear friends (we call them family), Fred and Jacklin. Love those two!

• We are also planning another trip, but this time it is for Xander’s birthday. We are heading to Nashville in September and are taking him to an Eric Clapton concert! Cobe will be coming with us as well!

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