This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we're back with our American stories.

Up next, Tasha Layton.

After her success throughout her time on American Idol,

Tasha toured with Katie Perry as one of her backup singers,

and she did so for many years.

But even after all those incredible life experiences,

she still felt empty.

So she gave it all up to find God.

Take it away, Tasha. I grew up in a little town in South Carolina called Pauline. We had a volunteer fire station in a flashing light in our town. It was

just really small. And I grew up in the middle of nowhere and a trailer

on a bunch of acreage. But I didn't know that we weren't normal like other folks until I started

school. And the teasing started, you know, getting called trailer trash or being bullied for the shoes I'm wearing or the kind of car my parents picked me up from school in, just that we weren't, you know, well to do.

And I go throughout school and notice that I started getting sort of this like chip on my shoulder,

like a need to succeed, a need to present myself a certain way so that I wouldn't be rejected.

My parents were good people, saw to the earth, give you the shirt off their back people, and

they took us to church every Sunday morning and every Sunday night and every Wednesday night.

And basically every time the doors were open, we were there.

I loved, you know, my family and our life, but what I had known of religion

was kind of this hard pew on Sunday mornings and frilly socks that itched that I had to wear

to church and being told to be quiet. It was kind of like the shoulds and shouldn'ts of religion.

When I was eight or nine years old, we switched churches.

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