She chased 'ego death' — first in religion, then in parenthood

Jia Tolentino , a staff writer for The New Yorker , talks about her religious upbringing and her rejection of that belief system.

She grew up in a very religious, conservative town in Idaho .

She says she wanted to see the world and be uncomfortable and get lost and find her way again and fall in and out of love.

Jia Tolentino says she has sought a feeling of transcendence ever since she was a young girl attending an evangelical megachurch.

She says she sought the experience of the boundaries of the self dissolving in drugs and music.

But she says she doesn't think there was a void left in her life after leaving religion.

The experiences of that ego dissolution are still cracking at the ego, she says.

Tolentino: "I think that I'll have more shifts in the way these issues manifest to me as time goes on" "I locate some sense of that spiritual wonder in that," he says.

"There's a shimmer of the divine around just the fact of our existence".