Re-Launch: Something Had to Change

In this first episode, I’m opening up about what happened to A Wife Like Me, why something had to change, and why this conversation is so needed for Christian women right now.

FOLLOW on Instagram (+ GIVEAWAY INFO): https://www.instagram.com/theamandadavison/

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Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evdfm6ri-Es&list=PLiz_uL6MBQv84IKvQR4XoJ8jW-26-mNO6

In this episode, we talk about:

• the pressure to be the “good Christian woman”
• obedience, purity, and submission teachings
• spiritual guilt and losing your voice
• why so many women feel anxious, stuck, or disconnected

If you’ve ever felt like: something in your faith didn’t sit right, you’ve been told to stay quiet or “just submit”, you’re trying to do everything right but still feel overwhelmed...then you are not alone.

Jesus came to bring freedom—not silence, fear, or control. And it’s time we start having honest conversations about what’s really been shaping us.

Transcript

Today we are talking about what happened to a wife like me, why things are changing, and where we're going from here. My name is Amanda Davison. I'm so pumped you are listening to the podcast, formerly

Amanda Davison (00:20.856)
Today we're talking about what happened to a wife like me, why things had to change, and where we are going now. My name is Amanda Davison, and I'm so glad that you are here listening. I'm so pumped to be back and really excited for what is in store for all of us. And PS, you definitely want to listen to the end of the episode because there's some important giveaway information there. If you're new here, a wife like me started back in 2018.

And we linked arms with writers, speakers, counselors to make and build and restore biblical marriages and families. We did that through so many different platforms and we had a blast doing that. And if you've been here for a while and you are so excited to be listening right now and wondering and so curious about what I'm about to share, thank you. And I'm I'm just so glad that you've been a part of this community for so long.

If you're new here, I'm also so glad you're listening. but this is this has been a huge part of my life. This is what was part of my everyday for so many years. And it was amazing getting to know so many of you throughout that process. We all grew together and we all got healthy together. I do want to say that right now I just wanna say that I'm sorry because.

I'm about to share things that I just did not have clarity on as things were happening. And that's why I couldn't share it with you. I couldn't see it and I couldn't put words to it. So I didn't know how to come on and really update you because there were so many layers to what was going on, which we're gonna talk about. So let's just dive in. Let's

Amanda Davison (02:16.675)
So let's

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You are listening to the Amanda Davison podcast, where us kind of feral Christians gather to tell the whole truth, live free from spiritual pressure, and finally embrace who God made us to be. So let's say what's scary. Going back to COVID, my role at a wife like me shifted big time into working with wives and couples one-to-one virtually. Like most of my every day was spent

working one-to-one with couples or wives. And it it just completely changed my role. What what we saw was couples and wives were not going to the people we thought they would during COVID, the people that they we thought they felt safe with, meaning their pastor or a counselor. They came to us. The community that we had built at a wife like me, they felt safe with and were so grateful for that.

They came to us for help then during COVID. And I was that point person. So what became my everyday was a lot of carrying grief and difficult, difficult crisis situations. And it got to the point where I was becoming burnt out. And I was so grateful again to do that work, but it it really, it really took a toll on me.

And the beginning of two thousand

Amanda Davison (04:01.186)
Then the beginning of 2023 came, and one morning while putting on my makeup, I sensed a clear direction from the Lord that He was releasing me from a wife like me. And I had no idea what that meant. And honestly, at that time, I I didn't even know I was burnt out. I didn't even know I was exhausted. But I I sensed that the Lord was saying that to me. And so I shared it with our board and we all began praying about what that meant.

And six months later, we opened up a an application really for my position to see, you know, maybe the Lord has someone else to step in to lead and run a wife like me. Six months later, it was very clear that that was not in the Lord's plans for a wife like me. So also during that time, my dad had a a stroke and developed Lewy body dementia. And then my focus was really on him. When I wasn't doing sessions, I was

I was really focused on trying to get down to see him as much as possible. 2024 came and my dad passed away. And I do want to say during that time, 2022, 2023, I was also behind the scenes internally wrestling with a lot of things that I wanted to talk about, like big questions that I personally was wrestling with.

But I didn't feel I could talk about them on a wife like me, given it was so marriage-focused, right? So that's PS why we're also here now, today, and why things are shifting. but there was just this stirring in me for a way to do that and talk about those things with you, but I didn't know how that could look. Further, after working with so many women and and couples.

I saw a much deeper pattern that is connected to all this. It was a pattern that really many marriage struggles, the reality was

Amanda Davison (06:12.018)
Further, after working with so many wives, it became really clear to me that I saw a deeper pattern going on. Many marriage struggles were not being fixed by what we were offering. And that was really hard. And it was because most marriage struggles were rooted in spiritual pressure, religious conditioning, and what Christian women have been taught.

about roles and submission and self-worth.

and these

And these were the patterns I saw repeatedly. Women were shrinking themselves, dismissing their own feelings, their own needs, their own experiences. Women feel a spiritual guilt and pressure to be a certain way as a wife, a mom, a Christian woman that wasn't even biblical. And marriage advice really centered on erasing themselves, you know, what she had been told her whole life.

life, these wives, us wives have been told their whole lives was that his needs matter more, not hers. But now then, you know, she's realizing later that she's tired of living without her own needs met, without having a voice, without feeling and experiencing and expressing what it is going on and what she's craving now. And there's also, I saw such a fear of questioning

Amanda Davison (07:50.713)
how she even got to this place. And as hard as we'd work through things at the core of women is, I sense this a lot of angst around what might change if she actually digs deep and is honest with herself and with her people about who she believes God has made her to be and what scripture maybe does say and what how she might be interpreting that.

The bottom line is that I started realizing that many women weren't struggling because they are somehow bad wives or their faith isn't strong enough. They were struggling because they had never been allowed to be fully who God made them to.

The bottom line is wives were not struggling.

Amanda Davison (08:46.722)
The bottom line is I started realizing that wives are not struggling.

The bottom line is I started realizing that women are not struggling because they're bad wives or because their faith isn't strong enough. They're struggling because they've never been allowed to fully be who God created them to be. And then I was also faced personally, as I'm realizing these things, I was also faced with a darkness that made me question everything that I thought I knew.

was true about life, about faith and the religious systems around me. And I just want to say, if you're wondering, like Amanda, what even is going on right now? I want to say to you that my faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior is stronger than it has ever been. Ever been. The fire inside of me for for people to know the gospel that God has sent his son

To die for our sins, a death we deserve, because he loves us and he proved himself powerful by rising from the dead and has given us the gift of eternal life, but also not only that, his spirit to help us live here on earth and build his kingdom here and now. I that message is more fiery in me than it ever has been. Okay, but.

What needed to shake in me was shaken in me. Everything that is not a part of that gospel message was broken, and I'm so grateful for that. But that was a very painful process. And so that happened in 2024 for me as well. And the truth is, I just can't ignore it anymore. I have to talk about these things. I I'm so excited to talk about these things. And I'm not staying quiet.

Amanda Davison (10:49.418)
About what I see happening in Friday in

I'm just, I'm not gonna stay quiet about what I see happening right in front of us, all around us. I refuse to tiptoe around it because the truth is a lot of us have been living under spiritual pressure and conditioning that has kept us small. It's kept us silent. And honestly, it has given darkness way too much power in our own lives, in our own minds, in our everyday life, and in our relationships.

And I'm sick and tired of it. It is why Jesus came. He did not come to make us smaller, quieter, or more controlled. He came to set us free, free from the lies, free from fear, free from anything that keeps us bound up, second guessing ourselves, living in chains. He came to free us from all of that. And yet somehow we've been handed teachings.

That feel the exact opposite of freedom oftentimes. We have been shaped. This is the truth. We have been shaped. And it might get uncomfy you. It's gonna be okay. But we've been shaped by obedience culture. We've been shaped by rigid, one-sided submission teachings. We've been shaped by conditions that keep us quiet, spiritual guilt that creates self-doubt.

And these exhausting good woman, good Christian woman expectations that we're supposed to live up to. And I'm tired. I'm tired of not only recognizing this in myself, but also seeing so many of us not living fully free from these things. And again, I was not even self-aware of a lot of this before these different things happened in my life.

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But it became more clear and I'm here now to talk about them and to free us from these things because it it shows up in

Amanda Davison (13:09.568)
Because it's playing out and it's showing up as we are losing who we are. It shows up when we stay silent instead of speaking the truth. It shows up when we stay in unhealthy, sometimes even harmful situations way longer than we should. And it shows up as anxiety that we cannot shake.

Amanda Davison (13:40.183)
It also shows up as anxiety we cannot shake. And it shows up in the constant pressure to people please instead of actually living in truth and freedom. So I'm not okay with that anymore. And I'm hoping you are curious enough to dive in and see: hey, is is anything like this a part of my faith journey? Is it a part of my everyday? Or am I truly living from the gospel message alone?

And that is what this podcast is going to be about. We're gonna clearly define how any type of spiritual pressure has been or culture of car

Amanda Davison (14:28.696)
So that's what this podcast is really gonna focus on. We're gonna free ourselves and each other from spiritual pressures that have kept us bound. And the point, the purpose is so that we can live free and full and whole, be the women that God created us to be without holding back, without hesitation, without fear. And so we're gonna trust ourselves again. We're gonna learn how to question harmful.

narratives, we're gonna reclaim our voices, we're gonna build healthy boundaries, we're gonna heal from religious pressure, we're gonna redefine relationships.

Amanda Davison (15:14.606)
So that's what we're gonna do here on the podcast. We're gonna learn how to trust ourselves again. We're gonna question and learn how to identify harmful narratives. We're gonna reclaim our voices, build healthy boundaries, we're gonna heal from religious pressure, and we're gonna live authentically without shame. And so you can expect here at the podcast sometimes solo episodes with just me.

We're gonna have bold conversations. If you've been around this podcast for a while, we interviewed a ton of people and they were great and they had helpful wisdom. But we I am determined we're gonna have raw and honest conversations that are not tied up in a spiritual pretty bow. That's not what we're gonna do. We are diving in deep right off the bat every episode and we're going at it and we're talking about it, and it might not be a pretty little

conversation. We're gonna have experts in psychology, trauma, religious conditioning even.

Amanda Davison (16:21.688)
So that's what we're gonna do here on the podcast. We're gonna have sometimes solo episodes with just me. We're gonna have bold conversations with other women. If if you've been around this podcast, the Wife Like Me podcast, formerly known as the Wife Like Me podcast, you have heard us have many interviews, which were phenomenal. And you can go back and listen to any of those at any time. But I am interested in raw conversations that

Ma oftentimes do not have a pretty little bow wrapped up around them. I'm not interested in spiritual bypassing or spiritual phrases that make us feel something. We're supposed to just like pull up our bootstraps and it's gonna be great. No, I'm not interested in that anymore. I am gonna have dive in deep, right off the bat, conversations with real people who are gonna give it to us straight. And we're gonna have experts speak into different topics as well.

we're gonna, I wanna have listener Q<unk>A's and I want to have stories of women who've been liberated as well from these spiritual pressures and really just rebuild, who've rebuilt their faith without the junk in it. and so I'm excited. I'm so excited. I wanna say, wherever you are, just as always, wherever you are on your faith journey, you are welcome here.

It's okay to have big questions. It's okay to wrestle. It's okay to struggle, to be confused, to want something different. It's okay if you feel something is off, if you feel overwhelmed, if you feel like you're alone or tired of grieving. It is all okay. Here I can promise you that you will not feel pressured. You're not ever going to feel shamed here, or you're never going to feel guilted.

into something, into anything, you're not gonna feel rushed and you will not be given anything fake or any

Amanda Davison (18:26.988)
I just want to say, like I always have, that you are welcome here, no matter where you are on your faith journey, whether you believe in God, you don't even think he's real, wherever you're at, I hope and pray that you just lean in and get curious. You are welcome here. If you have big questions, if you have doubts, if you're unsure, if you're confused, if you want something different, if you're alone, if you're tired of grieving, you are welcome here. Wherever you are at, it is all okay.

I promise you will not feel pressured here. You will not feel shame here. You will not feel rushed here. This space is not about attacking anything. It's about building a faith through real freedom and honesty. Galatians 5.1 says, it is for freedom that Christ has come to set us free. It is for freedom. He came to set us free. And scripture then says in Galatians 5.1, do not then. Do not.

again be burdened by a yoke of slavery. And that is what we're gonna do here. So if you've ever felt like your faith

So if you've ever felt like your worth was measured by how small you could make yourself, this podcast is for you. If you're tired of wandering around unsure who you are, this podcast is for you. If you want to wake up, find your own discernment.

Amanda Davison (19:56.472)
So if you've ever felt like your

Amanda Davison (20:00.994)
So, if you've ever felt like your worth was measured by how small you could make yourself, if you're tired of wandering around, unsure who you are, if you want to wake up and light your own faith on fire and truly live, truly become who God created you to be with nothing else in the way, this podcast is for you. This is what we're gonna do here. If you are excited about this journey or you want to hear more, make sure you hit that subscribe button, hit the like button.

Share it with a friend su

If that's what you wanna

If that's what you want to do here, make sure you hit that subscribe button, hit the like, share it with a friend, because that's what we're gonna do. Now.

Amanda Davison (20:53.952)
If that's what you're interested in and you do not want to miss an episode, you want to follow along, you're excited to dive in and grow more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button, hit the like button, share this with a friend so that you don't miss another episode. Now, the fun giveaway rules. Here's what you gotta do.

Amanda Davison (21:21.28)
Now for the fun giveaway rules, here is what you gotta do. Giveaway

Amanda Davison (21:32.342)
Now for the giveaway rules, we're giving away a fun basket full of lots of goodies. You can go check out what that basket is over on the Amanda Davison Instagram account linked below. Go over there, follow my account on IG.

Amanda Davison (21:51.392)
Now for the giveaway rules. I'm so excited. We have an amazing

Amanda Davison (21:58.806)
Now for the giveaway rules, I'm so excited. We have my gosh.

I am so excited, ladies. I'm giving away this awesome basket full of great fun goodies. I want to keep it all for myself. You can go check out what that basket is on my Instagram page, the Amanda Davison, also linked below. And you can go and here's what you gotta do, which is also over on the graphic on Instagram that is pinned at the top. Follow my account and tag a friend on the giveaway post.

To be entered to win. Every friend Utah gets you more entries. And the giveaway will be drawn May 17th at noon Central Standard Time. So pumped, so pumped. This is gonna be fun. We're gonna have a great time and we're gonna grow like legit grow, ladies. So let's go.