Today’s episode felt like group therapy, exvangelical comedy hour, and a crash course in surviving holiday family systems — all rolled into one conversation with the incomparable
of Stuff Christian Culture Likes.We kicked things off with talk of snowstorms, Santa Lawrence, and our big Blue Friday push… and also the fact that we accidentally listed Stephanie twice because we love her that much. When she popped on screen (“Mercury might finally be direct”), it felt like catching up with the Gen X cousin who escaped the evangelical South and lived to tell the story.
And tell it she did.
Stephanie walked us through her Arkansas–Texas Baptist upbringing, her move to Seattle, and the moment she finally realized her depression and anxiety weren’t personal failings — they were symptoms of being raised in a high-control environment. The phrase kept landing like a tuning fork: the idea that some families use religion as a tool to manage emotions, deny intuition, and maintain control rather than build relationships.
She told the long arc of unraveling that conditioning: asking her parents to go to therapy with her, receiving a cold “We’ll never see you again,” and realizing she wasn’t crazy — just conditioned to tolerate the intolerable. It was raw, clear, and devastatingly familiar to so many GenXers listening.
From there we moved into estrangement, reciprocity, and the generational shift that makes GenZ absolute masters of the boundary fade (“I’m leaving the group chat” — no drama, no monologue, just gone). Stephanie talked about learning to follow her own intuition — including ignoring texts from family members whose names on her phone physically activate her nervous system.
And then came the evangelical holiday survival game, possibly the most brilliant coping tool ever invented. The rules are simple:
You and your partner “draft” predictable comments from certain relatives.
Assign each one a dollar value.
Quietly tally your winnings during the gathering.
Buy yourself something spectacular — be it a high-end Japanese knife or, as Stephanie put it, “Pixie Stix or ketamine.”
Honestly? Merchant opportunity.
From there we veered into Old Testament misogyny, the Council of Nicaea’s men-only editing room, the weaponization of evangelical culture, and the strange comfort of discovering that the Bible was written by factions who argued with each other like rival op-ed pages.
The episode wasn’t just funny — it was clarifying. Stephanie helped articulate something so many of us feel but rarely name: that GenX is the first generation to say out loud, “The cycle stops here.” That we can break patterns we never saw modeled. That trauma work is the job.
And as always, she made it feel possible.
A gorgeous, honest, and deeply human conversation. One of our best.
Thank you
, , , , , and many others for tuning in. We love you, mean it!
