Spiritual Pyro
How do you reclaim your life after it's been burned to the ground by systemic corruption? Long-time friends Sarah Carter and Corinne Shark were forced to find out after joining brave survivors and speaking up about their own experiences of religious corruption and sexual misconduct within two organizations - a U.S. megachurch and an anti-trafficking non-profit. Finally, after years of work to reclaim themselves and know their own stories, Sarah and Corinne are sharing it all with you. The ruin. The rise. The return. It's all here. Maybe your story lives in this rhythm, too. Episodes release each Sunday. Learn more at https://www.spiritualpyro.com
Episodes
After the ashes of Ruin and the slow climb of Rise, comes Return — the sacred threshold where Sarah and Corinne find their way back to themselves. This is the part of the story where reclamation takes root: where the quiet becomes a kind of summoning, and where survival turns into something luminous and whole.
Corinne reads from her “Sanctuary” chapter, a glimpse of reclaiming her thirteen-year-old self...
S1E14 - Excerpts from "Rise" section of "the skies are full of us" by Sarah Carter and Corinne Shark
After the "Ruin" section of "the skies are full of us" comes "Rise" - the place where Sarah and Corinne lift their eyes and begin pushing up from the ashes of their former selves.
Corinne reads from her "desert muse" chapter:
...The desert air is thick with a femininity I’ve never noticed. Gorgeous blooms burst from every branch and ...
At long last, Sarah and Corinne share excerpts from their upcoming book, "the skies are full of us: a true story of speaking up, burning down, and the unbreakable bond of friendship" releasing from Rebeca Books on October 21, 2025. Each of these readings is from the first of the three sections - Ruin, Rise, and Redemption - into ...
Continuing their discussion of friendship from Episode 11, Sarah and Corinne delve deep into their evolved understanding of how to behave and be when the smooth waters of relationship get choppy. What do you do when you get to a point in a relationship where there's a miss, whether that's a misunderstanding, a miscommunication, or a misalignment? When fracture or disruption happens, both parties are the...
After decades of believing friendship would just happen naturally, midlife often reveals a different truth: finding your people is an intentional, soul-level pursuit. Sarah and Corinne talk about the ways we locate — and are located by — the women who feel like home. They explore Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ idea that sometimes we must howl to find our pack, and what it means to send out that c...
After you've deconstructed and set aside the beliefs that you've grown past, what's next? How do you go about rebuilding and reconstructing yourself? Sarah and Corinne explore the idea that leaving religion doesn't mean leaving yourself, though it may feel that way sometimes. They discuss the concept of benevolent patriarchy, which appears kind on its surface but actually serves as another way to negate a woman's agen...
While they’ve left their former religious tradition behind, Sarah and Corinne now must begin the arduous task of creating a new paradigm through which to live and understand. When Sarah’s beloved father-in-law passes, she falls back on her old ways and walks into a Christian church – only to be confronted with triggering music and environment that send her running outside in a panic. Corinne listens to Roby...
Sarah and Corinne discuss the experiences within and outside the church that led to their independent deconstructions of faith. From seeing behind the curtain of how churches operate to experiencing other faiths, they each came to similar places in a similar timeframe.
To connect with Sarah or Corinne, find them on Instagram: @heysarahcarter @thesaltyshark @sarahandcorinne
For more infor...
Sarah and Corinne look back on the stories from their early years in Christianity, before the Willow Creek and Exodus Road debacles. From purity rings to liturgy, youth groups to evangelical t-shirts, their sincerity and commitment were everything the Christian church hopes for in a believer.
To connect with Sarah or Corinne, find them on Instagram: @heysarahcarter @thesaltyshark @sarahand...
So far, Sarah and Corinne have shared some of the hardest stories of their lives. In this episode, they share some of the easier, beautiful ones and the nuggets of insight that accompanied them. Pull up around this bonfire and join in the laughter and wonder that come when wise women share life in story.
To connect with Sarah or Corinne, find them on Instagram: @heysarahcarter @thesaltyshark @sarahandcorinne
F...
Sarah and Corinne are grateful for the outpouring of feedback from you, letting them know how their experiences are feeding into your own as we all live into through the cycles of life and healing in whatever ways are available to us. In this episode, they discuss various resources that have given insight along the way, including IFS-based therapy (Internal Family Systems) and the books No Bad Parts : Hea...
Healing isn’t a grand finale — it’s a thousand tiny rebellions.
This week, Sarah and Corinne share the fires they lit along the way: voice memos and therapy sessions, a yellow notebook full of unfiltered truth, and the forgotten joy of playing again after years of survival mode.
This isn’t a blueprint. It’s a conversation around the fire — tender, true, sometimes messy, and full of warmth. If you’re some...
To connect with Sarah or Corinne, find them on Instagram: @heysarahcarter @thesaltyshark @sarahandcorinne
...
Fast forwarding from the stories shared in Episode 1, we now join Sarah and Corinne at the point in their journeys when they realized they were being inspired to write a book together. The act of doing so ushered in a sense of freedom and return to self unlike anything they'd known since the devastating experiences discussed in the ...
To connect with Sarah or Corinne, find them on Instagram:
@heysarahcarter @thesaltyshark @sarahandcorinne
For more information about Spiritual Pyro, visit www.spiritualpyro.com.
To connect with Sarah or Corinne, find them on Instagram: @heysarahcarter @thesaltyshark @sarahandco...
You are about to hear the personal experiences of Sarah Carter and Corinne Shark, told by them, in their own words. Sarah's husband is the former lead teaching pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois. At the time of his service, more than 25k congregants gathered at Willow Creek each weekend to worship. In 2018, multiple women came forward to assert that the founding pastor of Willow Creek ha...
Full episodes begin weekly releases every Sunday starting April 27, 2025.
Pull up a chair, gather around the fire, and don't forget your matche...
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