Welcome to Ask Dr. Julie Hanks podcast, a safe place for healing conversations that educate and empower women to prioritize their dreams, revolutionize their families, and personalize their faith.

I am your host, Dr. Julie Hanks, a therapist and coach offering online courses and programs

to help women all over the world heal themselves and their relationships.

Join me every week here as I coach a listener through a specific challenge and empower them with tools

to find the health and healing they need. And with me today is Michaela. Welcome to the show.

Hi. Thank you. So tell me what your question is today. So I've just been the last few years going through a faith transition, and it's had a pretty heavy effect on my relationship with my family.

It's caused a lot of not just contention, but just tension in general.

And I kind of kept it quiet for quite a few years. And I'm trying to figure out how to

best address it with my family without having, I don't know, I guess it's going to cause issues,

but trying to find, reestablish my relationship with my family, particularly my parents. Okay. Have you talked with

them at all about your faith transition yet? Um, we've kind of had like little, I mean,

not not specifically, I would say. We've talked about it a little, but never like head on.

Yeah. I think it's like a fear for me to like really come out that way

with where I'm at and where I feel like I'm headed spiritually. That is totally normal to have that

fear of kind of disappointing your parents or upsetting your parents. What is your biggest fear? Kind of describe that for me.

I would say my biggest fear is probably feeling like I have a big family. I have a lot of siblings and I'm

kind of afraid of like feeling alienated from those relationships because it's a big, I mean, I have a very orthodox family. It's a big part of the way they live their life. And it's kind of taboo for me to be going a different direction. And it kind of disrupts the whole foundation of my relationship. So my biggest fear is losing the closeness that I've had with

them my whole life. Yeah, that is, that is a scary thing, especially in a big family where they're

orthodox and things are a certain way and there are certain expectations. If your parents

were listening today, what would you tell them? Like, what do you

want them to know? A lot of things, but I guess first and foremost, just that they can trust

me and that I only have good intentions for myself and my purpose.

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