The other day, I got a call from a financial professional I work with; I’ll call her Jenny. She’s always friendly yet all business, and we rarely exchange personal stories. But for some reason, on that day we got into a conversation about how she’d left the Mormon Church a couple of years ago.

As a lapsed Catholic myself, my limited experience with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes occasionally binging the “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” and listening once to Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven” on a cross-country road trip. I was definitely interested in Jenny’s story and wanted to learn more.

A member of the Mormon Church “from birth,” Jenny comes from a long line of Mormons. Her ancestors on both sides were pioneers who came to Utah from Scotland, England and Sweden to follow the teachings of Joseph Smith.

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“It’s all I knew,” Jenny said. Following the rules of the church was “the way to get to heaven,” she said. “Growing up in Utah County, your friends, your family, your whole community — everybody believed this. So I just accepted it as my reality.”

But over time, things started to feel off.

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“The church seemed more focused on the rules rather than the concept of love. It was like a checklist,” she said. Jenny mentioned the Word of Wisdom, for example, in which followers are promised health, wisdom and strength if only they abstain from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea and recreational drugs.

“I began to think, well, that’s kind of stupid. I can’t believe God would keep me out of heaven because I drink coffee,” Jenny said.

 “The rules go on and on. It’s exhausting. And if you can’t keep up with the rules, you feel like you’re failing.” She said the pressure “to be perfect” causes a lot of anxiety and depression. Jenny felt it in her family and in herself.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, and people stopped going to church services, everything changed.

“That first Sunday that we missed, it was a beautiful day. For once, we didn’t have to hurry,” Jenny said. “Normal life in the church was like being on a hamster wheel of go, go, go! But during the pandemic, I got to slow down and just spend time with my family. It was wonderful.”

Soon after that, Jenny read Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind,” which explores the history and uses of psychedelics. It made her curious enough to try ayahuasca, a South American psychoactive brew traditionally used for spiritual healing. Working with a shaman, she found the experience did more than change her mind. It helped her change her life.

“I thought holy cow, this isn’t just against the church, it’s against the law!” she said. “But you’d be surprised how many Mormons are into psychedelics. There’s even a podcast about Mormons on mushrooms,” she added with a laugh.

Through several guided ayahuasca explorations, Jenny came to think, “God loves you just the way you are. When you recognize your behavior is not in alignment with who you are, you can change it and move on — you don’t need to descend into the depths of sorrow and shame.”

After the pandemic, when she eventually went back to the church, “my whole perspective shifted,” she said. “I knew it no longer felt right. There was so much more out there.”

“I used to think, ‘If I don’t believe this, then who am I? What do I believe? When all the rules and the foundation are gone, what are my values?'” Jenny said.

She used to worry about losing her community, as well. Jenny told me she has lots of friends in the church “who don’t believe a word of it, but they stay because they don’t want to lose that connection to their friends in the church.”

“But now I know, I’m a good person because I want to be, not because someone is telling me that’s what I have to do,” she said.

“When I walked away, I knew exactly what I was giving up,” Jenny said. For starters, a church leader told her if she left, she would no longer experience joy. “That’s bullshit,” she said. “I feel joy times a thousand!”

Jenny shrugged it off when I tell her it takes courage to be willing to stop and look at things from a different perspective, not to just go along with what you’ve been told all your life — “to leave the known to go into the unknown,” as she put it.

“I found that having that different perspective was just so easy, so relaxed,” she said.

“What’s next?” I asked her.

“Well, I’ll just continue on my path,” she said matter-of-factly. “If I do something I think is wrong, I’ll think, that’s not who I want to be. Next time I’ll do better.” As they sang in the musical “The Book of Mormon,” “Tomorrow is a latter day.”

 “It used to be if you had a question about your beliefs, they would tell you to doubt your doubts,” she said. But for Jenny, letting her brain ask questions was the path to finding her own authentic truth.

Sometimes, losing your religion means gaining a whole new kind of faith in yourself.