Becky L McCoy

Exploring Contemplative Spiritual Practices for Grief, Mental Illness, and Burnout

Writer, speaker, & retreat leader helping women, disillusioned with their faith, face difficult life circumstances with tenderness ✨ Grief, mental illness, and the burnout that comes with them turn our worlds upside down and leave us with more questions than answers. Many of us grew up in faith spaces without the tools to know how to live with the fallout of the worst parts of life - come explore how contemplative spiritual practices can help us navigate life while grieving and living with depression, anxiety, and other mental illness without shame or guilt.

Surprise! I've been keeping a secret...

Hi Reader!! I've been sitting on this secret for awhile: I'm writing a book! My hope is that this book will give you permission to explore and find spiritual practices that honor your limitations, be they from grief, mental illness, burnout, or any other trauma or illness. I spent too many years trying to force certain practices to work because I didn't realize there were other options. This book goes deep into the most vulnerable places of letting go of what my faith life *should* look like...

6 months ago • 1 min read

The panic attack that changed everything...

Hey friend, One Sunday morning in 2018(ish) as I was getting us ready to head out the door to church, I started feeling the tingling in the pit of my stomach that meant a panic attack was imminent. The kids were outside playing and I took a moment to sit down, breathe deep, and tell my body I was safe and everything was okay. Decades of panic attacks had taught me that slowing my body down can slow that misfiring of the fight or flight instinct. But as I let my muscles relax and used my...

8 months ago • 1 min read

For when you start to dream again: learning to hope after loss

Hey Reader, I've been thinking a lot lately about the experience of grief: what does it feel like today? What did it feel like when it was a fresh wound? How has it impacted the ways I've interacted with the world? I keep coming back to this memory... On January 1, 2016, I woke up – almost exactly one year after my husband died – thinking about the word ‘hope.’ What did it mean to hope when everything about life had already gone topsy turvy? I had already seen how hopes could get smashed,...

8 months ago • 2 min read

orange hammock with brown blanket in front of a background of trees

A decade+ of questions on grief and faith

Hey friend, I’ve spent the last ten or so years re-examining every part of my life. I’ve questioned my place in the world and my place in the church. I’ve wondered who is staring back at me when I look in the mirror and re-introduced myself like an old friend. My commitments and obligations ran up against my anxiety, depression, and ADHD and when I crashed and burned I wiped the slate clean. I journaled a lot and then I stopped journaling at all. I prayed and, when it felt like God had...

8 months ago • 1 min read

Writer, speaker, & retreat leader helping women, disillusioned with their faith, face difficult life circumstances with tenderness ✨ Grief, mental illness, and the burnout that comes with them turn our worlds upside down and leave us with more questions than answers. Many of us grew up in faith spaces without the tools to know how to live with the fallout of the worst parts of life - come explore how contemplative spiritual practices can help us navigate life while grieving and living with depression, anxiety, and other mental illness without shame or guilt.