Lori Williams | A Liminal Space

Tag: spiritual awakening

  • The Pirate in the Mirror: What Backrooms Knows About the Rooms We’re Afraid to Enter

    I watched Backrooms on vacation and couldn’t stop thinking about one image — a giant in a pirate costume, his face twisted in absolute misery. I recognized that look. I’d seen it in my own mirror. What this film knows about the rooms we’re afraid to enter might surprise you.

  • My Faith Wounding Is Not Intended to Harm You

    If I had a physical injury — like walking with a limp after a serious car accident — you might understand my faith wounding differently. My story isn’t about threatening your faith. It’s about working through what happened to me.

  • Breaking Down the Barriers to Love

    “I spent almost half a decade looking into the mirror and seeing someone else. Who did I see? Someone who everyone else expected me to be. People-pleasing doesn’t give your true self the opportunity to be loved—and it doesn’t give someone else the opportunity to be loved by your true self.”

  • When the Shell Cracks: Finding Truth Beyond Religious Performance

    Truth always finds a way to surface. Our ego tries to keep everything together, but eventually the shell cracks and what’s inside starts leaking out. If we’re brave enough to look at what seeps out instead of frantically patching the holes, we might find what we’ve been searching for all along.

  • The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Finding Truth Beyond Collective Narratives

    We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” Joan Didion wrote. But what happens when those shared stories—our collective narratives—become barriers to the very connection they promise to create? Growing up with parents whose lives were like apple carts filled to capacity, I learned early how fragile our shared stories can be. One uncomfortable truth…

  • When Authority Becomes the Enemy of Truth

    “Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” — Albert EinsteinThe ambulance lights cut through the darkness at the convenience store. Someone had played Russian roulette and lost. As I drove past that night, seventeen and heartbroken after my boyfriend left me for my best friend, I looked up at the empty sky…

  • Walking in Shadows: A Journey from Darkness to Light

    The toxic faith I grew up with convinced me that looking inward was dangerous—that if I dug beneath the surface, I’d discover nothing but the rot of an irredeemably sinful heart. But what happens when someone already drowning in that internal darkness looks outward and sees nothing but more of the same? When it finally…

  • You’re Not Crazy: Psychology Finally Recognizes Religious Trauma

    “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson For years, those of us who walked away from toxic religion were told we just had a ‘bad church experience’—but a groundbreaking American Psychological Association article is finally validating what we’ve known…

  • What Remains

    This weathered church down the road speaks to me in ways I never expected. Its broken windows and peeling paint tell the story of my own spiritual evolution—how I had to step away from rigid doctrine to find something more authentic. What looks like decay from the outside is actually transformation. The hollow sanctuary isn’t…

  • When Stars Fall: Finding the Light Within

    “Sometimes life feels almost too heavy to bear. I find myself turning off the news or closing social media after yet another story of a bright star crashing into darkness—someone whose light had guided so many of us through our own difficult days. But why do their lights go out? Why do they sometimes choose…