Part Four
Growing Up Apostolic — and the Quiet, Unnamed Journey of Leaving Without
Leaving All at Once
“Any religion that doesn’t allow questioning and curiosity is dogma.”
Without knowing it, I had stepped onto a path I didn’t yet have the language for. I didn’t know to call it deconstruction. I didn’t know others were on the same road. I just knew I couldn’t go backward.
I was unfolding.
I was becoming.
I was finding the courage to question the things I was once afraid to even name.
And though I couldn’t fully see it then, I had already started to walk away from a version of faith that demanded I disappear.
What I was walking toward — that would take time to discover.
But the most important step had already been taken:
I had chosen truth over tradition.
Curiosity over compliance.
Myself, over silence.
I didn’t know then what I know now — that obedience without understanding is not faith, that silence is not peace, and that compliance is not the same as wholeness. It took years of quiet unraveling and deep, painful unlearning to recognize that my questions were not wrong — they were the beginning of freedom.
Deconstruction didn’t break me; it freed me.
I no longer live by the rules and dogma that once defined every corner of my life. And yet, I hold no contempt for those who choose to stay. I understand the comfort of certainty, the weight of community, the cost of walking away. But for me, choosing truth — even when it meant letting go — was the most faithful thing I could do. I carry that freedom with me now — not as rebellion, but as truth reclaimed.
Whenever I return to Toronto, and drive by a Caribbean church, I think of my mom. I feel sadness for her-but I also honour her. She lived by the rules that bound her to a pew, that convinced her obedience was the only way to survive. Sometimes I pause. Not with longing, but with grief—for all the ways she folded herself into silence. This was the cost of her faith— paid, week after week, in the currency of her voice.
The last time I visited her grave, it was an October Autumn day but it was summer weather, I wore orange overalls with a white sleeveless t-shirt. In her rich Jamaican Patois, she would’ve asked me what I’m wearing but not expecting an answer. I stooped by her headstone, resting my arm and head on it. I believe she would’ve been proud of me. I’m living the life of freedom I knew she wanted for herself but wasn’t able to realize.
My mom gave everything to that church and it gladly took it. Her hard earned money in offerings, her tithes scraped from pay checks already stretched thin. The sweat of her service in the church kitchen. All given in trust and faith.
I walk freely now not, because I’ve forgotten where I came from, but because I’ve unearthed who I was before they named me obedient. My questions were never rebellion; they were my soul’s oxygen. Once, I swallowed curiosity like contraband under my tongue. Now, I voice it in my banner of becoming. My anthem of freedom.
I honour the girl who whispered why.
I honour the woman who said no more.
I honour my mother who, in clinging to the rules,
accidentally handed me the key.
May all our swallowed questions take wings.
May they carve doors where there are walls.
May they bloom freely and wild,
in the soil of our defiance.
I hope this four series resonated with you in some way.