I was born in 2002 in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. It’s in one of the richest counties in the U.S. It’s mostly white, with some Latino neighborhoods. My mom home schooled me, so I never got the chance to branch out and see what a public school was like, or to see kids from different ethnic groups.

My dad ran his freight brokerage company from home. He was abusive and an alcoholic. He was also an extremely conservative Baptist, so I had a very religious upbringing. That heavily influenced my schooling; every subject had a religious element. And of course there were things I wasn’t allowed to learn, like evolution. Science in general was hit or miss.

My parents rarely talked about politics, but we watched Fox News every day. I came to understand that their politics were a bit extreme. Dad had many problems with the Obama administration, although he mostly spoke in generalities. I didn’t really understand what was going on.

When I reached high school age, my parents started having marital problems. As their marriage fell apart, my mom developed a series of health problems, so she wasn’t up to teaching me anymore. I was self-sufficient, so I ended up schooling myself, piecing together my own curriculum to meet the state graduation requirements.

I was fourteen when Donald Trump got elected the first time. My parents didn’t talk about the election much, but I started to realize politics affects our personal lives. I thought, “This is so exciting, we’re getting a new president. This is going to change the whole trajectory of my life.”

I didn’t start to become politically active until I was sixteen or seventeen. I was really looking forward to being able to vote when I turned eighteen. I wanted to understand everything so I could cast a well-educated vote.

But when you grow up in an echo chamber, it’s hard to get out of it. Since Fox News was always on in our house, I watched it to try to figure out what my beliefs were. Because of the conservative Christian values I was brought up with, I was very conservative. 

I was of course intensely anti-abortion, having been taught it was a cardinal sin. I also became stridently anti-immigrant. Immigration was presented to me as a phenomenon in which people were illegally crossing the border to smuggle drugs. I thought that was the only reason they came here, to sell drugs and commit crimes. I didn’t realize they might be refugees from war, violence, or poverty.  So I was like, “Yeah, close the border. We don’t need more drugs, we don’t need more evil people coming here.”

My dad always said, “You work for what you have.” So I always opposed the idea that everyone had a right to health care. I adopted the attitude of, “My tax dollars shouldn’t go to someone who’s not working. If you want health care you have to work for it, and I’m not going to help you.”

By the time I turned eighteen, I was in a very large echo chamber. I watched a lot of Fox News, and I followed people like Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, and other right-wing commentators on Instagram. I thought whatever they said was prophetic, that they could do no wrong. I thought they were the ones calling it like it is.

I thought Trump was the greatest president ever, that he was going to save us by closing the border. I remember someone saying, “You’re so MAGA,” and I didn’t know what that was. I checked it out, and saw I subscribed to its ideology, so I now had a name for my political home. I even aligned with QAnon. 

George Floyd was murdered just a few days before my eighteenth birthday. That really kickstarted my political activism. Even though I was raised not to talk publicly about politics, I became very outspoken on social media. I parroted the MAGA argument that Floyd wasn’t murdered, that he was on drugs. I claimed racism died once we ended slavery. I said the Black Lives Matter protests weren’t peaceful, that BLM was terrorist, and the government should call in the military. 

I posted multiple things every day. I would fly off the handle. I was having massive text arguments with people. I just didn’t shut up. I ended up losing a lot of friends.

I graduated from high school a couple weeks after Floyd’s murder, and I decided to take some time off from school. I moved out of my parents’ house and moved in with my then-fiancé, who was a far-right conservative Christian. Our families were the two most prominent families in our church. But he didn’t like his parents, and had a bunch of siblings, so we agreed to live together. When we moved into our apartment, everyone lost their minds.

I worked at a grocery store. We were also in the middle of the pandemic. I thought the virus was fake, a scam made up by the Biden administration so it could control all of us. I had to wear a mask at work, but otherwise I didn’t wear one. I thought, “I’m not going to be a blind little sheep and wear a mask just because the government wants me to.” I got banned from a gas station because I ran in really fast to grab something and I didn’t wear a mask. They said, “Don’t come back.”

That summer of 2020 also marked the beginning of my religious deconstruction. I had been very heavily involved in my church: choir, children’s ministry, you name it. People would say to their kids, “Be like Addy.” But my dad was having a very public affair, and I started talking about it, as well as his alcoholism and abuse. The leadership refused to believe me, and kicked me out of the church for “spreading rumors.” They said I was just a moody teenager who didn’t like her dad.

When they kicked me out, I thought, “Hell no.” I walked away from Christianity. It had been my whole identity, so I scrambled to find pieces of myself. I began a journey in search of a new spiritual home. I explored New Age stuff, Buddhism, paganism. I got into Tarot, crystals, polytheism, hippie stuff. 

My search taught me to respect the Earth, be kind to others, and have empathy, to understand other people’s struggles. That wasn’t a concept I’d been exposed to a whole lot. I started to see things through a different lens. In the conservative Christianity I was raised in, life is all about you and your relationship with God; no one can tell you what to do because of that. Now it struck me that there was a whole lot more to existence than that, that it wasn’t just all about me. 

I started to lean more into respecting others and being a nicer person. As I did that, I started to see some of the flaws in my political thinking, which had been stacked on top of my religious beliefs. For one thing, I realized I had a lot of internalized homophobia and racism. (My dad and his mom are very racist.)

My morals and values were shifting, but I was still politically on the right. I hadn’t started changing my news input yet. I was easing away from extremism, though, and settling into a more moderate conservatism.

I still believed in Trump, however, and voted for him in the 2020 election. When he claimed it was stolen, I believed him. Since I still got my news from the MAGA media, I went along with the idea that Russia compromised the election, that there was no way Joe Biden won. 

I blindly followed what I was told about the January 6 attack on the Capitol. I accepted the claim that it was Biden’s fault, that the crowd was peaceful, that Trump called for peace and Antifa came in and started the riot.

A few weeks after the attack on the Capitol, I broke up with my fiancé and moved back in with my mom, who by that point had divorced my dad. I focused on my work deconstructing religion and going to therapy. We talked a lot about the abuse I tolerated growing up. I was learning that as an adult, I could determine how I wanted to live.

In the summer of 2021, I had my biggest eye-opening moment. I was going to meet some friends at a mall, although I was uncomfortable because there had been shootings there in the past. Sitting in my car in the parking lot, it was as if a lightning bolt from the sky hit me in the head. I realized that other people’s experiences have nothing to do with me, that what they experience is valid even if it didn’t happen to me. That was my turning point. It hit me like a ton of bricks: I had it all wrong. I was the problem. “Everything I know is a lie,” I thought.

That moment began my journey out of MAGA. It wasn’t an overnight change; I remained a Republican for a long time. I researched what BLM really was. I started watching CNN, the BBC, and MSNBC. I saw how the things I consumed through Fox and pro-MAGA sources were portrayed differently on other platforms. Over time I realized I had been lied to and didn’t understand what was going on at all.

I kept up with media on the left and right. I wanted to hear from all sides as I sorted out my personal beliefs. If I didn’t know what my beliefs and morals were, I couldn’t advocate for anything.

I started an online program through Purdue in 2022, studying psychology. That helped facilitate a lot of my empathy. Studying childhood development, trauma and abuse cycles played a big part in my growth. And classes on philosophy and ethics helped put things into perspective for me.

I went through a lot of therapy, journaling, and self-help books. I had a lot to overcome, including a cultish mindset and a cultish upbringing, made worse by an alcoholic, abusive dad and a co-dependent mom. I was reconstructing my entire identity. I learned that my beliefs can change as I grow as a person. 

In late 2022 or early 2023 I started to find myself agreeing more with Democratic values, and I switched my voter registration. I’ve moved steadily to the left ever since.

I’ve gone through my political reorientation in waves. I’ll go at it for a couple of weeks, then back off for a while. I pay more attention to politics when my life is a little more stable. If you consume too much it will eat away at you, especially now that Trump is president again. 

I lived with my dad and his new wife this last year. He still watches Fox 24/7. Our conversations are respectful, but I scare him. I share my views and he looks at me like I’m crazy. I’m ACAB (“all cops are bastards” — a slogan signifying the belief that our police systems perpetuate violence against minorities). I’m anti-cop and anti-military. My dad is ex-Air Force, so he didn’t take that very well. “This isn’t how I raised you!” he’d say. I know, thank God!

I moved to Hawaii three months ago. I work as a behavior technician in a clinic working with autistic kids. (I’ve worked with kids on the autism spectrum for about five years.) After getting my BS in Psychology from Purdue last year, I am pursuing a master’s in applied behavior analysis through Purdue’s online program.

Only in the last couple of weeks did I go back and read about what actually happened on January 6. I learned that Trump did instigate it, and that members of Congress had to flee because people were going to kill them. I had the story all wrong. I also understand that Antifa isn’t anything. It just means “anti-fascist.”

I haven’t reconnected with my old friends from my teenage years. I was putting out some pretty hateful stuff then, and no one is obligated to forgive me. I burned that bridge. I haven’t had a lot of people in my corner to support me as I’ve gone through the process of leaving MAGA, so I did it on my own. It’s been very messy — I’ve stumbled through it.

Now I live with my boyfriend and our roommate. I told her my story, and she said, “You need to talk about this, to spread awareness that people can change.” I took her advice, and started posting on social media. 

I get a lot of hate. People in MAGA say I was never in the movement, that I was always a leftist, that I made up my story to get attention on social media. Meanwhile, some people on the left say, “I’m not going to forgive you. You made your bed, you’re part of the problem even if you walked away.” But sprinkled among all of that are positive comments, people saying, “Thanks for sharing your story, you’re so brave for doing this, we need more people like you.”

Having been in MAGA gives me a lot more understanding of how people in the movement think and consume media. I can meet them where they’re at because I’ve experienced it. 

Leaving MAGA commented on one of my posts, asking if I wanted to share my story. That led to me doing this testimonial. I feel this is so important, because the more you bring awareness to the idea that folks can leave, the more people will. If even one person sees my story and realizes they need to get out of MAGA, then my job is done. 

I understand how hard it is to leave. Admitting I was wrong gutted my pride and my ego. But I’m so glad I did, and that I had the strength to change. Everyone can do it. 

                                                                                                                                                                       —June 2026