[Virtual] Lessons from My Year of Living Spiritually: A Secular Quest for a More Soulful Life

In 2017, Anne Bokma embarked on a quest to become a more spiritual person.  After leaving the fundamentalist religion of her youth, she became one of the 80 million North Americans who consider themselves spiritual-but-not-religious, the fastest growing “faith” category.  In mid-life she found herself addicted to busyness, drinking too much, hooked on social media, dreading the empty nest and still struggling with alienation from her ultra-religious family.  In response, she set out on a year-long whirlwind adventure to immerse herself in a variety of sacred practices—each of which proved to be illuminating in unexpected ways—to try to develop her own definition of what it means to be spiritual.  Along the way, she reconsiders key relationships in her life and begins to experience greater depth of meaning, connection, gratitude, simplicity and inner peace.

A leading expert on North America’s 80-million strong “spiritual-but-not-religious” demographic, Anne Bokma was the award-winning “Spiritual But Secular” columnist for the United Church Observer (now Broadview) for four years before writing her popular My Year of Living Spiritually blog for the magazine.  Anne also leads workshops and gives presentations on topics relating to spirituality and writing, including how she left a fundamentalist religion, the importance of finding community, how to live a more soulful life. Her work has been honored with awards from the Canadian Association of Journalists, the North American Travel Journalists Association, the Canadian Church Press, and other organizations. Anne is the mother of two grown daughters and makes her home in Hamilton, Ontario, where she is an active member of First Unitarian Church.