By DeEtte Decker
Becoming is a slow sip, not a shot.
Bourbon and belief—two things that run deep in my bloodline—can both warm your soul and burn your throat if you’re not careful.
Becoming is about the long game, the slow refinement, the patient letting-go of what no longer serves so that something smoother, truer, and more complex can emerge. You see, bourbon and deconstructing faith follow strangely similar paths—both shaped by time, tension, and transformation. It’s less about what’s added and more about what’s refined, stripped away, or left behind. In bourbon, it’s the charred oak and quiet waiting that deepens the flavor. In life, it’s the questions, the contradictions, the long pauses between clarity and doubt that shape who we become. Making bourbon isn’t just about what you put in the barrel. It’s about what you let be stripped away. And if that isn’t a metaphor for faith and becoming, I don’t know what is.
Distilling bourbon starts with mash—an honest, messy mix of grains and water, all stirred up and full of potential. You heat it up, break it down, and wait for something invisible but powerful to start rising. Just as bourbon begins with raw ingredients—grain, water, heat—so too do we begin with inherited stories, handed-down theologies, and identity markers we didn’t choose. But over time, things ferment. Things shift. The pressure builds, the old containers crack, and something new begins to rise. That’s how life’s worked on me: a heat-and-pressure process that’s broken me open more times than I can count. Faith, too. It’s been brewed and broken, filtered and fired, put away to age, and—if I’m lucky—drawn out in good company.
These stories are for anyone who’s lived through that kind of alchemy. It’s for the ones who’ve outgrown easy answers, who are learning to trust the process of becoming—unfiltered, unfinished, but no less sacred. Think of it as a love letter to that process. It’s for the folks who’ve walked away from church pews but never stopped praying under stars, for anyone whose faith got cloudy before it got clear, and for those learning how to live and love with more depth and less dogma.
And because I believe in pleasure alongside purpose, I invite you to enjoy a long slow sip while you read and listen to our podcast.
May these stories and spirits leave a little warmth in your chest and a little light on your path.
Cheers!
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