A year or so before I getting married, my boyfriend and I moved to California where my mother (who was still very active in the church) and my sister (who by then, wasn’t going to church at all) lived. The move enabled us to stop going to church. At first, we looked for a church but, after a few months, my husband said, "How about we just don't go to church for a while?"

As soon as we stopped the constant self-brainwashing sessions, I was able to start shaking the cobwebs from my mind and allow ed myself to be exposed to other viewpoints and write about other topics. I would say books saved me from fundamentalism, along with the honesty of friends I met on local BBS systems (pre-world-wide-web discussion groups). One friend told me that the day he realized he didn't believe in God, he felt a huge weight drop off of his shoulders, and felt a freedom he couldn't have imagined. I couldn't imagine it either, but I never forgot his words, because they were the opposite of what I'd been taught for all those years.

It took me many years to slowly escape from my self-imposed jail. Little by little, I saw that my true values were being suppressed by beliefs that I did not choose. A key turning point occurred when I was in my mid- 20s and I realized that every time I was emotionally moved by a sermon in church, it was when I had my period. You'd think I'd have noticed that years before, but I couldn't. I could only see the hand of God reaching down to touch my soul.

Today, I am an atheist, and I have reclaimed my core liberal values, realizing that they are not signs of a sinful spirit, but rather signs of a generous and loving heart. The transition took several years, as I spent time trying to reconcile my rational thoughts (which changed quickly as soon as I started reading more widely again) and my emotions (which changed more slowly). It was mostly my understanding of the universe through science that eventually made me drop the whole idea of God. The God I'd learned about and read about in the Bible simply was not big enough to have created a universe that was billions of years old and so huge and complex. (Perhaps this is why so many fundamentalists today are afraid of science—because their tribal God isn't big enough to have created the universe in all its magnificence and diversity!)

I was very fortunate to have early exposure to people of different faiths, cultures, and backgrounds. I wouldn't have wanted to grow up any other way (although I probably would have skipped the born-again stint or shortened it to to just a couple of years). I find it sad that so many Americans know nothing about people of different cultures and backgrounds. I find it difficult to understand those who are so afraid of anyone "other." I was very privileged to that my early years were not limited to a closed environment, and that I was able to free myself from the bondage of a closed mind that I developed as a teenager.

My grandfather, I think, would be proud.

Donna Druchunas is a freelance technical writer and editor and a
knitwear designer. When she's not working, she blogs, downloads music
from the Internet, reads science and sci-fi books, mouths off on
atheist forums, and checks her email every three minutes. (She does
that when she's working, too.) Although she loves to chat, she can't
keep an IM program open or she'd never get anything else done.