You might find my own particular take on God/dess and on religion as a whole interesting. And if you get all the way to the end, funny.

BTW I have a substantially different experience growing up than most Americans do. Unitarian/Quaker spiced with Buddhism and a whole lot of other stuff cobbled together (or created on my own that just so happens to resemble stuff in one or more formal religions). I had parents who did a whole lot of things wrong, but this was not one of them.

They encouraged critical thinking about ALL claims and never once chastised or attacked us in any way for our explorations into beliefs that contradicted their own. Such as they were! (That is, anything but "normal.")

I know most authors don't like having others post article links in their responses to articles on Medium, mostly because said links are often about promoting the (usually irrelevant) commenter's work rather than participating in discussions with the author of the article to which they are responding. (Damn, it takes a whole lot of words to be absolutely clear about one's pronoun references!)

https://a-room-of-my-own.medium.com/faithfulness-to-the-inner-spirit-ae3e45bd5be4

It's a bit long, but it's thorough, and I hope interesting enough to you to overcome its length.

Take your time. No hurries...